Turpentine and Truth

I was watching Warner Brothers' not insignificantly flawed but immensely atmospheric The Two Mrs. Carrolls:

Sally Carroll (Barbara Stanwyck), having gushed into an upper-floor studio, freezes, instantly sick and horrified at the sight of Geoffrey, her artist spouse (Humphrey Bogart), assiduously and zealously going over a canvas with a turpentine-soaked rag.

Sally: Geoffrey, what are you doing?

Geoffrey: Something I should have done weeks ago – I'm sick of looking at it – it was phony.

Sally: Oh, Sweetheart, you shouldn't have done that – you might not think it's so good, but someone might have bought it.
Geoffrey: Well, I don't care what other people think – it's what I think.
Sally: But you thought it was good once.
Geoffrey: That's why I know I'm slipping.
Sally You can't always paint masterpieces.
Geoffrey: Well, I can always try.

Barbara ... Babs ... Missy ... Sally – don't get me wrong – my sympathies are with you in the grand scheme of this little Warner Brothers drama. But your crazy, murderous, obnoxious, implacable husband is right, here: If you're an artist – heck, even if you're not an artist, but merely a person of integrity – you can't shove something out, to which you feel no sense of attachment or commitment, on the hope or assumption that no one will recognize its inauthenticity or feel its counterfeitness and that people will clamour to buy it, blinded by its slick, shiny veneer. Sure, you know they may buy it, purchase it, with money. But ultimately, in another more important sense, they won't buy it – they'll become aware of its absence of credibility. You know that – as an artist, a human being – and you can't be associated with something that is simply "product," statement without substance. Even if you have no pretensions to producing masterpieces, you can't put out intentionally small, modest things – you can't release words – that are just puffs, hollow. You have to omit – or keep the turpentine handy.

Funny that a no-good bum but ego-maniacal character like Geoffrey Carroll could see this much.


*The Two Mrs. Carrolls screenplay by Thomas Job

Heigh Ho ...

From Untamed, a favorite of mine
Charles E. Scoggins, story
Sylvia Thalberg, writer
Frank Butler, writer
Willard Mack, dialogue

An oft-quoted (by me) exchange on the enormities I currently find myself pondering:

Ernest Torrence as Ben Murchison: Another day in the funny old game of life.
Holmes Herbert as Howard Presley: One wonders why we trouble to play it at all.

Bob and Joan: Pondering, it appears, too

June 30

Eternity begins in forty-five minutes [...].
Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan in Boys Town

Nelson Eddy
5/30/97 - 6/30/09

My pal, Nelson: here and everywhere, now.

I love you, Boy.

"... just futures."

Sometimes, I just have to watch Gilda. As you may imagine of someone leading such an outwardly ... scintillating life, in which neither vacations nor nightlife as commonly viewed figure prominently, I've seen the film a zillion times – but that, and the attendant fact that I can recite the entire script practically line for line, doesn't matter. Through the years, since first being knocked out by the struttings, frettings and interplay of the fantastically beautiful redhead (faux or no), the sinisterly handsome scar-visaged chap and the boyish male lead and their alluring backdrop of a lavishly-appointed gambling house, Buenos Aires and post-WWII intrigue, I've returned to the Columbia money-and-icon-maker when I've felt the need for glamour, a look at 1946 in all its sheen with disillusionment around the edges, and "Put the Blame on Mame," in its various performances. Last night, I thought of a line, in tune with my current thinking, and plopped Gilda into the DVD player.

... Well, to digress a moment: My movie ratings book (rather out-of-date but, then, considering my viewing preferences, it hardly matters) doesn't esteem Gilda too greatly – two-and-a-half out of a possible four stars and then this:

Gambler meets the new wife of his boss, and it turns out to be the gal he once loved. This one was hot stuff when it first came out, with the Hayworth-Ford combination very successful. It may still be, but it doesn't hide the fact this is merely a routine melodrama, not particularly well done.

At least it acknowledges that the picture indeed sizzled upon its release and (grudglingly) that it may have retained its heat. Gilda is hot stuff; never fails to hit the spot. I remember smiling, years ago, at Mom's account of her and Dad, in their courting days, taking in the flick at the drive-in ... with my maternal grandmother in the backseat.

Much as I adore the picture, I will say that I find it too conventional in its philosophy to rate the noir label often attached to it. Gilda, at times, sports the look of noir, but though both the titular character and her erstwhile lover are deeply wounded, neither bears the scars of the classic noir "murky past"; neither, we find after things play themselves out, is beyond emotional and/or moral redemption. ... As for the third point in the triangle, Ballin – well, he's just crazy, and you don't have to inhabit the noir universe to be that.

They might not be scarred, but they're mighty darned burned up at each other a good part of the show: I particularly like Gilda's cool warning to Johnny, "I hate you so much that I'd destroy myself to take you down with me," as well as Johnny's disgusted likening of Gilda to a bundle of laundry, to be taken and picked up, without feeling or attachment.

Anyway, to get back on track – my recent reflections on my past, hardly sordid but in many ways unproductive in terms of my definition of accomplishment, and eventual thought that it would be nice to progress in a personal association, be it platonic or romantic, without the encumbrance of the past, without a feeling that it needed to be referred to, made me recall Ballin's silken-voiced comment to Johnny: "All three of us with no pasts – just futures. Isn't that interesting?"

But even as I just plain don't feel like talking about the last twenty years or so of my life, I realize that, though I'm not a nosy person, I probably would feel wary toward anyone who displayed to me evasiveness with regard to his/her past. And that's hardly fair. You can say, as Johnny does, in an early reel of Gilda, "Get this, I was born last night, when we met in the alley. No past and all future. I like it that way." But is it really possible to proceed in your interactions with another in such a manner? Would I like it that way? Unlike newly-ejected infants, adults bring to relationships not merely chromosomes and (if there are such) universal instincts but also character-and-outlook-shaping experiences. Who knows – maybe a claustrophobic stint in stir (for copyright infringement; nothing bloody) accounts for your love of wide-open spaces. Or maybe you're just like me – someone who has led what those fixated on colourful incident would, I expect, find a boring life. Do we need to know? Is it truly conceivable to begin together, as grown-ups, with no pasts – just futures?

Infinite Relativities

[C]ompared to the life I lead, the last man in a chain gang thoroughly enjoys himself.
Katharine Hepburn as Linda Seton in Holiday

One need not be a poor little rich girl, or even a – in the self-describing words of the character – "black sheep," to relate.

Fear and Faith

We're all cowards. There's no such thing as courage. There's only fear – the fear of getting hurt and the fear of dying. That's why human beings live so long.

Houseley Stevenson as Dr. Walter Coley in Dark Passage

Maybe the question is too obvious, too banal, even in all its implications, to pose. Maybe the answer, whichever it might be believed to be, is too evident – or thought to be too evident: "Which came first – fear or faith?"

Well, I can't say that the conundrum just came – separate, naked, out of any context – to me. I was listening to a recording, I now forget which, of a song, perhaps not a genuine religious hymn – I rather think not – but one whose theme was religious faith, and I thought something like, I can believe in this particular expression of belief and conviction, because it is so beautifully contagious – which seems a silly reason to believe – without quite being able to believe in what is proclaimed, by the singer, to be personally believed. ... I just don't know. Someone once told me, simply, concisely, meaningfully, "That's why they call it faith." Maybe it's trivializing to talk about it in a blog post. ... Or is it? Well, I'll risk denunciation.

Soon after hearing that record, I thought of the Dark Passage line. Don't miss Houseley Stevenson's brief appearance in that movie. How cheap and vulgar and irreverent of me to link spiritual faith with Hollywood. ... It seems to me that faith comes in answer to fear. Part of everybody's standard equipment is fear – in one form or another, of something. Fear is intrinsic. Faith, belief in a higher being – beneficent, forgiving and overseeing – is a comfort, a means of overcoming or coping with the fear. Or so I believe. But what would I know?

... Then again, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. Maybe "Which came first – faith or fear?" is not the question because, fear being an inherent component of mankind and faith being intellectually arrived at or the result of a mental process, maybe the chronological precedence between the two is not being debated; the answer is clear to all, is the same for everybody.

Maybe I'm not actually presenting a question; maybe I'm merely confessing to my preoccupation with the relationship between fear and faith – or to my belief that there is a relationship between the two in that faith is an intellectual protection against fear. I don't think there's anything wrong or shameful or ignoble or reproachable in developing this protection. Just as I don't think there's anything wrong in recoiling from a flame. It's reflexive, even as it's an act behind whose commission is the knowledge or a theory of how to avert pain, physical or emotional. It might sound nicer to say that faith is based on the observation of all the good – abundant, predominant, undeniable – in the world, but I truly believe that faith is primarily fear motivated. ... But what would I know? Practically everything apart from matters mathematical is opinion.

Another Time, Another Place

In One Way Passage, surrounded by lush dance music and revelers, before the bar of a Hong Kong nightclub, Joan Ames, played by the incomparable Kay Francis, and Dan Hardesty, played by suavity personified, William Powell, bump – literally – into each other. The attraction is immediate, intense – and as jarring as the bump. They share a few drops, those not spilled – in the bump – from Dan's glass, of an exotic concoction, romantically labeled a "Paradise Cocktail." Jarred, again, this time from paradise and back to reality, Joan asks if Dan would care to meet the people in her party; Dan demurs with a courtly, poetic and, we later discover, prophetic comment about the few drops of paradise allowed them by Fate. Smiling and gracious, Joan attempts a conventional good-bye; Dan counters with an exquisitely pronounced "Auf Wiedersehen," on which vocabularic premise the film's remaining sixty-some minutes proceed. It is a profoundly touching moment in one of Cinema's most poignant offerings.

Those of us who converse in English get the idea of auf Wiedersehen; absent the input of a certain German-born gentleman, a fellow web-journalist, I shall attempt an Americanized translation, aided by The Free Dictionary's explanation: see/dig you later; so long. Auf translating to until and Wiedersehen to seeing again communicates a temporary, rather than a final, goodbye. In 1932, the year of release for One Way Passage, as the Great Depression was tightening its grip on the United States, songwriters Al Hoffman, Al Goodhart, Ed Nelson and Milton Ager offered a tender reassurance for a beaten populace that had found itself bidding, to concepts and possessions as well as to people, too many permanent goodbyes – the beautiful "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear." Interestingly, the film that directly preceded One Way Passage for both William Powell and Kay Francis, the naughtily delightful Jewel Robbery – glaringly, gloriously Pre-Code, with its marijuana cigarettes (I'm shocked!) and casual attitude toward the bonds of matrimony – features prominently the lilting, lovely "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear" amid the struttings of impudent and debonair jewel thief Powell and not fanatically married baroness Francis. Though One Way Passage employs the equally sentimental Al Dubin-Franke Harling "Where Was I?" as the love theme for doomed lovers Dan Hardesty and Joan Ames, Powell's delicate dropping of the German version of the French à bientôt is, we can be sure, a nod to "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear" the popular song.

These last few days, with my recently purchased Epiphone (OK, scoff, Gibson snobs) acoustic, I've been kicking "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear" around the parlour. I love its melody – importunate but gentle. Though I don't croon the now sadly archaic, other-worldly words, "Come, let us stroll down Lover's Lane ..." I feel as if, in merely plucking the notes, I'm speaking in a foreign tongue. Does anyone relate to such sincere, sensitive sentiment today? I don't imagine many, if any, would care to hear my rubato renderings of '20's, '30's and '40's romantic ballads – so I don't take to the trail, guitar case in hand.

Italian-American crooner and musical prodigy (and, at the time of his death, fiance of Carole Lombard) Russ Columbo introduced me to "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear." I've since heard no interpretation of this song to equal his. Dead, at 26, in 1934, Russ, like me, "Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear," William Powell, Kay Francis, Pre-Code Cinema ... and a lot of other things, belongs to another time and another place.

Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear
Music and Words by
Al Hoffman, Al Goodhart, Ed Nelson
and
Milton Ager

It happened in Vienna;
If you were there, you'd see
Two lovers in the moonlight,
Beneath a linden tree.

Sweet violins were playing;
And to his love, the lad was saying:

Come, let us stroll down Lover's Lane,
Once more to sing love's old refrain.
Soon we must say, "Auf Wiedersehen,
Auf Wiedersehen," my dear.

Here in your arms I can't remain,
So let me kiss you once again.
Soon we must say, "Auf Wiedersehen,
Auf Wiedersehen," my dear.

Your love will cling to me,
Through the lonely daytime.
Each night will bring to me
The magic memory of Maytime.

I know my heart won't beat again
Until the day we meet again.
Sweetheart, goodbye, auf Wiedersehen,
Auf Wiedersehen, my dear.

The Look ... and Lonely

Taking in my usual high quotient of late '40's flicks, I've run into the redoubtable team of Bogie and Bacall twice this week – re-screening (yet again) two of my favorites, 1947's romantic noir, Dark Passage (spoken of, in Relative Esoterica, here), and the following year's gangster drama, Key Largo (discussed, in RE, here). Perhaps with solitariness – volitional or circumstantial – on the brain, I've found myself thinking about what struck me through these closely held viewings of the two films: Dubbed, upon her introduction to the world at large, "The Look" for her cool, in-control, eyes-at-half-mast gaze, Bacall, in her cinematic aspect, is a loner – and this is one of the chief reasons why she paired so exquisitely in celluloid with quintessential lone wolf Bogart. Yes, opposites, we know, attract – both each other in the real world and, projecting themselves from the make-believe of the silver screen, audiences. The same, though, can be said for sames.

In Dark Passage, when Bogart's escaped convict Vincent Parry, asks Bacall's artist-heiress Irene Jansen, "Don't you get lonely up here, all by yourself?" she – desirable and desired – responds, "I was born lonely, I guess." Through the actress' delivery, the character, clearly, is both resignedly lonely and at once naturally and preferentially a loner. Irene Jansen, despite the dissimilarity between her circumstances and Parry's (both those on display in the present and those we must imagine for the past leading to his incarceration), is just the right girl to come to the aid of a fleeing, emotionally beaten man who, for a chatty cabbie's benefit, comments on his own dislike for talk with a dry, matter-of-fact "Yup, that's why I don't have many friends." Irene and Vincent are star-crossed lovers – and loners.

In Key Largo, Captain Frank McLeod and Nora Temple are both just meeting and – through their connection, the now dead George Temple, Nora's husband and Frank's army buddy and underling – well-acquainted. Seeing the quiet, hard-working young woman's current situation – companion to and caretaker for her father-in-law and proprietess of an island hotel, with no man in sight – Frank (echoing Vincent Parry) inquires "You're never lonely?" and Nora offers a slight and ambiguous shake of the head. Sketching her past, she follows with, "George tell you, I met him at a USO dance. He was lonesome, and he wanted company. I was working in a defense plant; I knew lots of people, but I was lonesome, too." Like Irene Jansen, Nora is both separated by her nature from the hordes and in need of the understanding of one person. Frank, another in a long line of Bogart rugged individualists, venturing that now, the War over, he might take to the sea as a "hand on a fishing boat," declares, "Life on land's become too complicated for my taste." Though Nora explains her sense of place and rootedness with "Now, I'm like one of these mangroves" and Frank, conversely, is, at this time, feeling footloose, having had enough of pre-War and War ties, roots and responsibilities, they are alike: lonesome loners. In a nice, twins-over-as-well-as-under-the-skin touch, they even wear matching white button-down shirts through the entire film.

Bacall, almost immediately iconic upon her mid-'40's slink to fame, was the perfect female counterpart to the great Bogart. The two, individually, were cool; as a screen team, bringing to mind the lyrics of the beautiful, noiresque "Alone Together," they were cooler.

Alone Together
Music by Arthur Schwartz, Words by Howard Dietz

Alone together, above the crowd;
Beyond the world, we're not too proud –
To cling together;
We're strong as long as we're together.

Alone together, the blinding rain,
The starless night were not in vain –
For we're together.
And what is there to fear together?

Our love is as deep as the sea;
Our love is as great as a love can be.

And we can weather the great unknown
If we're alone together.

Fearsome Attraction

In the noir masterpiece, The Woman in the Window, a middle-aged associate professor of psychology and a beautiful ... well, she's a courtesan, who have just met, converse over drinks at a local nightclub. The woman asks the man if he would care to take her home, so that he might view (in a variation on etchings) an artist's sketches of her. When the man shows reluctance, the woman, flirtatiously, incredulously and mock-innocently, asks "You mean you're afraid? Of me?"

See the scene (plus a little more at either end)

Are we not more often plagued by fear of those things and people with which we desire contact (of one kind or another) than those with which we do not?

Touching Reality

This ain't real, what's happenin'; you're havin' a dream.
Edward G. Robinson as Johnny Rocco in Key Largo






"Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about."
from "Strawberry Fields Forever" by John Lennon (Lennon/McCartney)

Is reality a condition created through the forces, combined but not concerted, of nature and all human beings?

If reality is a state of existence based in what is real and true, why are some people said to be "living a lie"?

Is reality a perception? Is it individualized ... or is my reality yours?

Is reality the outward circumstances, unanticipated and sometimes frightening, in which you find yourself? ... Or is it the inner world, calm and ordered, of your own devise?

Third Point in the Triumvirate

I read, yesterday, that Ann Savage, who created one of my three favorite film femmes fatales – Vera of the noir masterpiece, Detour – died on Christmas Day, at the age of eighty-seven. By all accounts, the actress, whose most recent screen appearance occurred in 2007, in the highly regarded Canadian feature, My Winnepeg, was a far cry from the vicious Vera, the hitchhiker who proves the undoing of perennial loser Al Roberts (Tom Neal).

There's Barbara Stanwyck's steely Phyllis Dietrichson of Double Indemnity, Jane Greer's cold-blooded Cathie Moffat of Out of the Past, and Ann Savage's savage Vera: the Femme Fatale Triumvirate. Though no less lethal than her noir sisters, Vera is the only one among the deadly three to display any vulnerability. She is the crudest; unlike Phyllis and Cathie, she has no intriguing, beguiling veneer – but ultimately she arouses sympathy, even as she inspires repulsion.

Al Roberts in Detour:

That took me by surprise and I turned my head to look her over. She was facing straight ahead so I couldn't see her eyes, but she was young, not more than twenty-four. Man, she looked as if she'd just been thrown off the crumbiest freight train in the world. Yet, in spite of this, I got the impression of beauty. Not the beauty of a movie actress, mind you, or the beauty you dream about when you're with your wife, but a natural beauty, a beauty that's almost homely because it's so real.

Ann Savage was indeed "not more than twenty-four" when she played Vera. Nice acting, kid.

Who Comes Down Your Chimney – Santa or Santy?

I have been fascinated by the word Santy – a variant of Santa, as in Santa Claus – since first I heard it, some years ago, uttered by the most recognizable child actress of all time, in one of her films. Why Santy and not Santa? I wondered. Encountering Santy again, in other vintage movies, but still not in real life, I imagined the word to be a colloquialism fallen out of favor in these homogenized times in America. (Since forming this conclusion, I have happened upon, in song and verse, the rather rustic-sounding "chocolate [substitute flavor of your choice] sody" for "chocolate soda," which seems confirmation.)

Whence Santy and does anyone in this day exercise this pronunciation option? This from "The History of Santa Claus" at NorthPoleSantaClaus.com:

In the 1600's, the Dutch presented Sinterklaas (meaning St. Nicholas) to the colonies. In their excitement, many English-speaking children uttered the name so quickly that Sinterklaas sounded like Santy Claus. After years of mispronunciation, the name evolved into Santa Claus.

According to Wikipedia, Santy Claus is one of a few designations used by the Irish for the jolly, bearded one.

I kind of like the air of informality in "Santy," with its t softer in emphasis than that in "Santa." I find myself keeping track, in my movie-viewing, of who says "Santy" and who says "Santa":

Clark Gable says "Santa" in It Happened One Night
Ginger Rogers says "Santy" in I'll Be Seeing You
Kay Francis says "Santy" in In Name Only (this floored me, by the way)

Shirley Temple and James Dunn say "Santy" and Jane Withers (playing Shirley's inappropriately named nemesis, Joy) says "Santa" in Bright Eyes

Betty Grable and Robert Cummings trade choruses on Robin and Rainger's jauntily romantic "You Started Something" – Betty singing "I believe in Santa Claus" and Bob singing "I believe in Santy Claus" – in Moon Over Miami



In popular music, (the ill-fated) Joe Harris baritones "Santy Claus came in the spring" in Benny Goodman's version and Cliff Weston tenors "Santa Claus came in the spring" in Tommy Dorsey's version of the winning Johnny Mercer concoction.

A New Deal-era Santy
(Some viewers may find certain images, reflecting racial stereotypes, offensive)

For whom are you leaving out milk and cookies tonight?

Your Hand in Marriage?

[...B]ut, you see, marriage is a very tricky business. People have impulses, compulsions, drives, let us say, towards escape – escape from loneliness. They seek that escape in the companionship of someone else and, lo, just when they think they've achieved it, they find they've put on their own handcuffs.
Sydney Greenstreet as Dr. Mark Hamilton in Conflict

Though it's not in my nature to knock something I haven't tried, I, a bachelorette, incline toward this belief held by Sydney Greenstreet's Dr. Mark Hamilton – the character himself a bachelor.

To Really Live

One must have courage to really live in the world.
Miss Gilchrist in The Seventh Victim

Sometimes you just have to split the infinitive. ... Yes, really living – as opposed to merely existing, which demands neither effort nor bravery – requires determination and great courage. Living is an active state; existing passive. In living, you make things happen; in existing, you let them happen. What are you doing? What do you want to do? ... I want to live, to really live!

Assessing the Damaged

From my viewing, which took place many years ago, of a mere snatch of Moontide I had retained a foggy memory only of fog, the nebulous stuff of both literal and figurative atmosphere, and Ida Lupino. These elements were enough to convince me to order the film, a brand new addition to the "Fox Film Noir" DVD series. A couple of nights ago, I watched Moontide and found it beautiful – in the way that something containing ugly aspects can be beautiful. Beneath the falseness of its dreamlike construction lies the truth of Moontide's essential substance: Loneliness, a condition intrinsic to human beings, and the need to be comforted and loved compel even those emotionally mangled to reach, from the crushing rubble that is the past, for one specific understanding soul.

Among the special features accompanying the film is a fairly short but densely-packed with information and insight documentary entitled Turning of the Tide: The Ill-Starred Making of Moontide. I was surprised – and yet not – to find two Noir experts – Eddie Muller and Megan Abbott – using the phrase "two damaged people finding each other" in summarizing the main point in the story's plot. I don't imagine for an instant that these cinephiles decided together upon the "two damaged people" label. It just fit, and they both knew it. The pair of dinged and dented souls to whom the description is applied are Bobo, a longshoreman and nomad, played by Jean Gabin and Anna, a former "hash-rassler" and wharf waif, played by Ida Lupino. Bobo has a dark secret buried in the shallow grave of memory: His quick temper and strong hands came to his aid when a man came at him with a knife – he strangled the weapon-wielding antagonist. Too, his most recent alcoholic blackout (depicted in a Salvador Daliesque sequence) gives rise to the suspicion that he has killed another man. Though under '40's Production Code dictates, Anna's past is kept unclear, she enters the story attempting to drown herself to escape this past and prevent the unfolding of an unpromising future. (Documentary contributors reveal that in the book, Willard Robertson's Moontide, on which the film was based, Anna, a prostitute, has been raped, is poor and can't find work.) Bobo pulls Anna out of the water, takes her home to his bait barge ... and, the next morning, Anna fixes eggs – sunny side up – for Bobo. She, a "damaged" person, becomes – almost inconceivably, at first – his "Sunny Side." "[A] gypsy is dying and a peasant is being born," observes Nutsy, Bobo's sage friend, of Bobo's transformation. A tender treatment of Irving Berlin's bittersweet "Remember," wafting from the phonograph of a neighboring barge, provides the film's love theme. How ironic: "You forgot to remember," reproaches Berlin's heartbroken protagonist – while Bobo and Anna must remember to forget.

Moontide, indeed, is, in Eddie Muller's full phrase, "[a] story of these two damaged people finding each other and falling in love." More generally, it is about these two and other damaged people. Tiny (played by the great Thomas Mitchell), weak and yet sadistic, having witnessed the murder-in-self-defense, has attached himself like a lovesick flea to Bobo and demands maintenance in exchange for silence. Nutsy (played by adorable Claude Rains) – wise, clearly well-educated and kind – hasn't "slept since about 1936" ("or was it '37?") and wanders about, casually-groomed, in an old "Smokey the Bear" ranger hat, philosophizing in his nightwatchman's off-time. (His toasting with a bottle of Coke suggests a reformed alcoholic.) Mildred (played by Robin Raymond), a young patron of the extremely lively Red Dot bar, is a prostitute. Everyone, it seems, bears scars, nicks and chips.

Having seen Moontide, when I heard "damaged people," I found myself wondering when experience becomes damage . At what point do some of us transmogrify from a person to bring to a relationship a unique perspective, shaped by the individual process of living, to something like those shelter puppies deemed "hard-to-place?" However horrific the event, however great the accumulation of events, it is, I decided, not what has happened but its effect on the affected that is the determinant. In Moontide, Bobo and Anna are damaged but not totaled, and each recognizes this not only in the other but in him/herself. I like to believe that those beyond the celluloid realm, you and I, too may assess our own damage and decree our own redeemability.

Watching Westerns like a Girl

My copy of Warner Brothers' newly released Errol Flynn Westerns having arrived yesterday afternoon, I watched, last night, the earliest film in the collection, 1940's Virginia City. Well, I found the picture rather entertaining – if a bit convoluted. I've grown quite fond of Westerns in these last few years; I never paid any attention to them before – which is odd, really, as when I was a tot, I adored playing cowboys and Indians. I suppose that at some point I realized that a little girl's conception of the world of cowboys is quite different from that world itself, or even from '30's and '40's Hollywood's version of it. However ill-suited I have come to see that I am for a life on the open range, though,I can't watch a Western without thinking that I hope that, before I die (naturally), I have an opportunity to ride in a covered wagon.

Well, I shan't launch into a plot description of Virginia City. Lacking the gift of conciseness, I have never been terribly adept at writing synopses. Besides, I've lost all taste for trying to write them. Too, fond as I am of what I term "Golden Age" movies, I crave no identification with the fraternity of the so-called "classic film blog." ... I will, though, say something about Virginia City.

When the credits were rolling, I was surprised by Randolph Scott's name. I've always thought him awfully handsome; I like his boyish haircut as well as the fact that it appears that he used little or no pomade. For some reason, once I learned that he was in Virginia City, I wasn't prepared to find him playing antagonist to Flynn; I didn't think about The Spoilers, with Scott and John Wayne, which I saw a few years ago. Well, Randy, as Confederate officer Vance Irby in this one, is an honourable, if desperate, adversary to Union man Flynn.

Bogie I was expecting to see. My goodness – that mustache ... ugh! And the Mexican accent – horrible, phony as a three-dollar bill. How Warner Brothers abused that poor guy. At this point in his career, his fine and, it later became apparent, iconic turn in The Petrified Forest – a film in which star Leslie Howard had insisted that Bogie be cast in the part of Duke Mantee, as he had been in the Broadway play – had proven a false breakthrough. The powers that be (or were) just didn't recognize his gifts or potential. He'd been curly-haired, riding-booted, Irish Michael O'Leary in Dark Victory in '39, and now, in '40, he was a half-breed outlaw, opponent to both Flynn and, as things turn out, Scott. And it appeared that big Flynn or big Scott could have flattened slightly-built Bogie with one punch. Well, a gun compensates. ... Thank goodness that High Sierra came along for the one-and-only Humphrey Bogart.

... And Mr. Errol Flynn. Well, he was just excruciatingly beautiful. I don't mean that he was pretty – I don't like pretty men; he was very masculine-looking. I just mean that he was so exquisitely put together. My gosh – the eyes, the profile, the jaw, the (naturally streaked) hair, the physique. In Virginia City, he delivers another thoroughly convincing, heroic performance. I'm glad to see that critics are beginning to acknowledge what a fine actor he was. As was the case with Gable, Flynn's larger-than-life quality became the preoccupation and his talent was unjustly neglected.

I don't want to sound catty, but I'm not sure that Miriam Hopkins, excellent actress though she be, was just the girl for Virginia City's Julia Hayne, barroom chanteuse/Confederate spy, role. Then again, I'm not sure that frequent Flynn co-star Livvy de Havilland (who, at this time, sagely understood that she had to get away from Errol and period pictures) would have been right. Whom would I have cast? Well, let's see, who was at Warners then: Well, Queen Bette – she was out. ... Ann Sheridan maybe? Or was she too sexy – perfect for the saloon singer bit but not quite so for the determined Rebel agent aspect. This is a tough one. Anyway, Miriam was far from bad ... and she did have a number of costumes that I found to die for. Also, she had a marvelous line:

Once in the titular town, Flynn's Kerry Bradford goes into the local watering hole and is disillusioned to discover that Julia, whom he thought a proper lady, is a common entertainer. Julia, becoming torn between patriotic duty and love, wistfully tells him:

[B]ut, you see, Kerry, no matter how much a man's in love, he really wonders whether the woman's quite ... good enough for him or not. But when a woman's in love, well ... she's just in love and ... that's the end.

I share this point of view. 'Course, I'm a girl.

Well, though, after she says this, Bradford responds with, "Uh-huh." So he evidently agrees ... and he's a guy. Is this, Julia's statement, so? I can speak only from a girl's perspective.