Traveling Man

We're going to need a bigger list

Someone asked me to list the films I knew by heart.  Boy, that's a long list.  I calculated last year that I've seen over 3,000 films in the theater.  I can't even guess at the number I've seen on television.  And television dramas - often better storytelling than many of the films I've seen - just add to that. 

My first list: Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Help!, Rio Bravo, Jaws.  Someone asked me about the difference between that last film and the book. 

The significant difference I remember (and that was a long time ago) is Matt's affair with Brody's wife Ellen.  It would have been distracting in what's essentially a horror film with a happy-ish ending.  More to the point, Matt would have probably been killed by the shark; moral lapses are what drives horror films.  Instead, Matt, Brody and even Quint are all redeemed from their excruciatingly slow slide into irrelevance.

I could add to the list rather easily: Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Maltese Falcon (Bogie made everything memorable), Gone With the Wind, The Searchers, Clockwork Orange, Lolita, Barry Lyndon (everything Kubrick did was memorable), Fritz the Cat, The Greatest Show on Earth, Frankenstein, Die Hard, Clint's spaghetti westerns, High Noon (which, I think, is overrated), What's New, Pussycat?, Manhattan, Annie Hall, Them!, Psycho, Goldfinger, and two hundred more.  (All older films, btw.  Modern films may or may not be memorable in some way, but few have great dialogue.  It's not important, marketing-wise.)

So.  Yes, I've read thousands of books, watched thousands of films.  But I was never a couch person; I've traveled a million miles, too.  My blog de plume is Traveling Man for a reason.  I heard that song from Ricky Nelson when I was 10, and it was embedded in my consciousness.  Or I was simply born with the itch to see what was down the road, and found that song meaningful.

Either way.  Fifty years later, I can say: it was the best of times.

Ten reasons to be born

Okay, these are the 10 best films from the year I was born, 1949.  (Of course, "best" can mean so many things.)

In no particular order:
Criss-Cross: A film-noir classic starring Burt Lancaster, Dan Duryea, and Yvette DeCarlo.  Directed by Robert Siodmak and briefly introducing Tony Curtis.  A Greek tragedy as bleak as they come, but compelling.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: Stars John Wayne, Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen, Harry Carey, Jr, etc.  The second of John Ford's cavalry trilogy (after Fort Apache and before Rio Grande), this one is melancholy, touching, humorous, insightful, and full of great characters, to the point that it has Shakespearean tones.  It works better as the end of the trilogy, and reflects on what's been lost and what was magical about the untouched frontier.

Sands of Iwo Jima: A credible drama depicting a now-familiar trope in war films - a sergeant first training men, then taking them into combat.  It stars John Wayne, John Agar, Forrest Tucker, Martin Milner (who made it all the way to Adam-12), Richard Jaeckel, and Julie Bishop, who gives a lovely performance and helps to humanize the brutal sergeant John Wayne plays, and also helps us see what a good man he really is.  The raising of the flag over Iwo Jima is evocative.  The film's only real weakness might be that John Agar overacts.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game: Busby Berkeley, somewhat subdued.  Singing and dancing with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly as ballplayers who come up against a crooked gambler trying to ruin their pennant chances.  Of course, Gene falls for the new owner, played by Esther Williams (the most beautiful woman in Hollywood).  Other people are in the movie, too.  Ignore them and the plot and enjoy the stars on display.

Samson and Delilah: Another of Hollywood's biblical epics, but crafted on a more personal scale.  You know the story.  Starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr (another great Hollywood beauty, she gives a subtle but smouldering performance).  Angela Lansbury is Samson's love and intended bride Semedar.  She is also courted by Philistine Henry Wilcoxin.  George Sanders, Philistine Saran of Gaza, is Samson's nemesis and rival for Delilah, who loves Samson. There's a great scene right out of the Odyssey.  At Samson's wedding feast, he is betrayed by his bride-to-be Semedar, who marries Wilcoxin instead.  Samson kills the Philistine warriors in the same fashion as Odysseus did when he finally returned from Troy to find Penelope's suitors settled into his house.  Powerful scenes, high drama, great style from George Sanders.

It Happens Every Spring: Okay, another baseball film.  Disney could have made this one.  Ray Milland plays a chemistry professor who creates a solution that repels wood and becomes a star pitcher.  His catcher, Paul Douglas, is both strong and funny.  Jean Peters plays Ray's wife.  Let's not think about the ethics of all this.  It's entertaining.

Love Happy: The last Marx Brothers film.  That puts it on this list.  Detective Sam Grunnion (Groucho narrating), Chico and Harpo.  A criminal farce.

Rope of Sand: A South African adventure starring Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Corinne Calvert and Burt Lancaster.  Diamonds, greed, lust and violence in the desert.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Okay, you didn't even believe they made this movie.  From Mark Twain's book.  The time-traveling Bing Crosby becomes Sir Boss to Cedric Hardwicke's King Arthur.  Also starring William Bendix (one of my favorites) and Rhonda Fleming.  Merlin (Murvyn Vye) plots with jealous Lancelot (Henry Wilcoxin again) to thwart Bing.  A really odd film.

All the King's Men: Robert Penn Warren's book, the film recalls Huey Long, a popular politician who was assassinated.  Broderick Crawford (who won an Academy Award) plays Willie Stark, populist politician who climbs the ladder, becomes corrupted by power, and is, well, assassinated.  Powerful film.

And some more hits of 1949:

The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand's book and script, incredible subtext)
Battleground (fine war story)
Champion (boxing, powerful)
Intruder in the Dust (from Faulkner novel, about racism)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (black comdey with Alec Guinness)
The Stratton Story (another baseball film, stars Jimmy Stewart)
Twelve O'Clock High (great war drama with Gregory Peck)
The Third Man (suspense with Joseph Cotton, from Graham Greene's book)
White Heat (crime drama with James Cagney, over-the-top but compelling)
I Was a Male War Bride (romantic comedy with Cary Grant)
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau's fantasy)

And I'm done.

It's not magic

I'm studying  an old magic book to learn how to make cards spring from one hand to the other.  In fact, the trick is called, "To make the cards spring from one hand to the other."  It belongs to the art of the juggler rather than to that of the magician, but it's so familiar a move that it behooves magicians to master it.

Criticism of genre fiction is an identifiable skill, too.  When it's done well, it addresses the genre.  When it does not, it seeks to make genre fiction something it is not. 

In the field of literary criticism, there are more jugglers than magicians; that's why so much genre fiction is so poorly appreciated.

Books for sale

I was at the flea market last Saturday and picked up a first American edition copy of Quo Vadis, in fairly nice condition and only cost a dollar.  I buy books like this all the time.  Today I went by the library sale (lucky me, I live next door to a library) and picked up a first American edition (no dust jacket) of Animal Farm, a book called Card Tricks, written by the mysterious Professor Romanoff and published in 1930, a first American edition of H. G. Well's Thirty Strange Stories (a very uncommon book, probably bootlegged; in 1897 the publishers weren't quick to offer royalties; better, I don't think this collection was ever put together in Britain), and a first edition, with dust cover, of J. M. Barrie's Courage.  All in very nice condition, all for $5.  The current value of these books would be about $250.

The flea market dealer said to me,"Print's dead."  I couldn't disagree with him more.  But is my opinion the only one that matters? 

Yeah, I think so. 

first lesson of the year

    I live in downtown Wilmington De.  On New Year's Eve, the city hosts First Night, a celebration with music, street vendors, a temporary ice skating rink, carnival games and small rides, and indoor events.  We listened in one of the churches to the Sweet Adelines (a very good, all-women's choir that presents show tunes, standards, etc.), a jazz band playing beneath a tent in Rodney Square, a ghost storyteller at the library, and an art exhibit in one of the lobby banks (it's Delaware; everything is a bank.  We even live in a former bank.)

    The exhibit presented art by 92-year-old Edward L. Loper, Sr., a local but internationally-recognized artist.  (This is the land of N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Frank Schoonover, Maxfield Parrish and others.)  As I studied a complex painting, I was approached by a scruffy old black man, one of the numerous street people we encounter every day, living downtown.

    "What do you see?" he asked. 
    "A reflection of the world outside." 
    "What else?" he asked me with a cackle.   
    "Furniture."
    "Is it in the painting?"
    Two minutes into our conversation I realized I was talking to Edward Loper.
    "The outside world is a reflection, while the furniture is both outside and inside the glass.  But it's all run together."
    "What else do you see?"
    "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"  We shook hands.  "I'm an artist, too," I said, and I admire this work.  But it's challenging."
    "What else do you see?" he asked.
    "That things are not always what they seem to be."
    "What else?"
    I realized finally that he was in teaching mode and gave up.  I was tired, and my wife was across the room.  "Thank you," I said.  I wanted to go up to my apartment across the street and get my Loper print and bring it back for an autograph, but I let it go.  He waved as I walked away.

    Art is enough.