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 Well, to digress a moment: My movie ratings book (rather out-of-date but, then, considering my viewing preferences, it hardly matters) doesn't esteem Gilda too greatly – two-and-a-half out of a possible four stars and then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

Of Lamplighters

Having finally gotten 'round to reading Niven Busch's 1948 novel, The Furies (my copy of which came with Criterion's DVD release of the film by the same title, starring the great Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston), a few days ago, as I neared the book's conclusion, I happened upon an especially pleasing paragraph:

In the street the lamplighter was going from pole to pole, turning on the gaslights; fog rolled in from the harbor, shrouding each light in a soiled halo and wrapping the home-going crowds in mystery.

In reading Busch's painterly passage, I was instantly reminded of Paul Francis Webster's poignant lyrics for "The Lamplighter's Serenade," which were set to Hoagy Carmichael's wistful melody.

The Lamplighter's Serenade
Music by Hoagy Carmichael,
Words by Paul Francis Webster

My, how times goes flying back;
It's eighteen ninety-three.
As from a one-horse open hack,
There steps a grand old memory.

A moment after dark, around the park,
An old-fashioned gent comes parading.
Dressed in funny clothes, but singing as he goes
"The Lamplighter's Serenade."

The old boy loves to talk with couples on the walk;
But when it's half after love time,
He reaches for his sticks and from his bag of tricks,
He lights ev'ry star in the sky.

And if a lady or a beau should answer, "No,"
He sprinkles their hearts with his magic.
Then he steals away to sing another day,
"The Lamplighter's Serenade."

This morning, remembering that today, this first day of March, is the one hundred and fifth anniversary of the birth of bandleader, arranger and trombonist Glenn Miller, I thought again of the beautifully nostalgic Carmichael-Webster collaboration; the Glenn Miller Orchestra, that Swing Era aggregation which, perhaps more than any other, brings to vivid life, through its recordings, a somewhat distant past, produced my favorite version of "The Lamplighter's Serenade." The appropriately slow and dreamy side ranks easily among my favorites by Miller. In my travels, upon printed page and through cyberspace, I haven't been able to locate an arranger credit, but I want to attribute this lovely chart to Bill Finegan, an immensely talented chap who did his painting with black dots. I love the Ray Eberle and Modernaires vocals; particularly nifty, I think, is the way in which, in the introduction and coda, the quartet, anticipating doo-wop, echoes the trombone choir's figure.

In one way, Glenn Miller, like the lamplighter, is part of a time capsule, someone enclosed and suspended in an irretrievable past. In another, he is – again through his recordings – a part of a perpetual now.

Speaking of the continuing relevance and power of popular music recordings of one period in the 20th century, the ever-opinionated Artie Shaw had this to say, in an interview for George Simon's The Big Bands:

[...] But then, take the energy and ferocity of what was going on in the late thirties and early forties. That's hard to beat. It's hard to top what a Basie does or an Ellington does at his peak. It's hard to top what I was doing at my peak, or what Benny [Goodman] was doing at his peak, or Tommy [Dorsey] at his. You see, I didn't mention Glenn [Miller], because Glenn, too, was the recipient of an enormous amount of mass publicity—the fact that he died in the mysterious circumstances that he died in, and all that. But musically, his was essentially ground-out music—ground-out like so many sausages. [...]

Sausages. Hmmm ... Well, that's one way of looking at it. If this were so, however, I don't believe we'd be talking today about Miller's late '30's-early '40's recordings any more than we would about last Thursday's pot roast. When I hear Glenn Miller's music, I think not of sausages, to be ingested, digested and forgotten, but both of lamplighters and their gas lights, icons illuminating the past – and the timelessness of the romantic emotions that this music stirs.