1468 Teenager Lorenzo the Magnificent became head of the d’ Medici family and the de facto ruler of Florence on the death of his father. His grandfather had made an enormous fortune in banking throughout western Europe, and his son had consolidated it. Grandson Big Larry spent the fortune on art. We saw some of it when I spent a semester at the European Universities Institute there.
1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduced potatoes to England from Colombia. The Inca Empire cultivated dozens of varieties and they spread from there. Is that potatoes or potatos? Ask Dan Quayle.
1854 The Battle of the Eureka Stockade began near Ballarat, Victoria. Been there; I have commented on the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka elsewhere on this blog.
1947 In New York City ‘Stella!‘ is heard as ‘A Street Car Named Desire’ opened on Broadway. Seen it and been on that streetcar in NOLA.
1967 In Cape Town Dr Christiaan Barnard successfully completed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky. The heart came from a car accident fatality. The operation was successful and the patient died eighteen days later.
‘Murder by Invitation’ (30 June 1941)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 7 minutes, rated 6.1 by 202 cinematizens
Genre: Old Dark House
Verdict: It took a long time to get to the Old Dark House.
Querulous relatives unite, briefly, to have elderly Aunt Cassandra certified so that they can get their hand on the dosh she teases them about – more than two million smackers which in today’s geld is about 30 million iron men — which she says she has secreted in her Old Dark House. Whoa!
We start in a courtroom where Cassie appears crazy like a fox. But then what law school did that attorney attend? His prime argument for her being nuts is that she puts vinegar on apple pie. Really! Who doesn’t?
The vultures of the press enjoy the spectacle. The judge gavels Cassie into sanity.
To show how much she enjoyed the outing Cassandra invites the mob of scheming relatives to her Old Dark House (at last) for a week while she will decide how to divvy up the dosh. They have to go and go they do, one at a time.
No sooner do they arrive than the body count starts. Stabbings, shootings, poisonings here and there reduce the number of relatives. Is Cassie getting her revenge? Did Hillary do it, again? Was the vinegar off?
A newshawk and gal pal have insinuated themselves into the proceedings and Cassie finds that funny. The local sheriff is off work from the circus where he is the clown.
Turns out…. [Spoiler a-coming!] one of the relatives is reducing the number of claimants. To add to the confusion the villain(s) keeps moving the stiffs around. No explanation is ever revealed for this mystery. What, why, and how all are left to the memory-hole.
We also have the house staff, mercifully free of a black comic relief stereotype, a lugubrious butler, a greasy chauffeur, a snippy maid, a jolly cook. There is also an ever present nosy neighbour peering in windows to add to the soup.
The denouement is unexpected, though it is historically inaccurate as we pedants have to say. The Confederate States did not print a $10,000 bill. Tsk, tsk. It also turns out the neighbour is more than a neighbour. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Phil Rosen directed with panache the crisp story by George Brickner.
The best part may be the end, when one of the players breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience saying the Hays Office (1930-1968) will not like this film.
For those born yesterday, the Hays Office was a voluntary production code for the Hollywood factory. The code permitted chaste kisses, but not too many. No profanity and, of course, no nudity. No mixing of races. No adultery. And, hardest of all, law enforcement officials had to be portrayed positively. In its first and last decades it was largely toothless but between 1942 and 1955 it dictated much. As significant as it was, this is the only time I have noticed a reference to it in a movie, and this one is irreverent.
Sharp eyes will spot Hays Code certification as above on many films from that era.
The players were diverting in this exercise. Wallace Ford, a perennial supporting actor, made the most of the male lead. Marian Marsh as his wise cracking assistant held up her end of the partnership.
2 December
1823 Jame Monroe declared the eponymous doctrine of hemispheric independence. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote it. At the time both France and Germany had designs on parts of Latin America. With the silent approval of Great Britain, President Monroe warned them off the hemisphere. Later the Doctrine became a cloak for all manner of ignoble purposes. A study of Monroe’s presidency is discussed elsewhere on this blog.
1929 The skull of Peking Man – homo erectus – was found by Davidson Black. It led to breakthroughs in understanding evolution.
1942 In a tent on a squash court at (Alonzo) Stagg Field (University of Chicago) Enrico Fermi engendered the first controlled nuclear fission. ‘The Italian navigator has landed in the New World’ was the coded message send to the White House. Football fans will realise that Alonzo Stagg was himself an innovator in his domain, football. He devised the huddle, the forward pass, and end sweeps.
1867 Charles Dickens did his first public reading of an American tour. We have been full of the Dickens at many times.
1950 Isaac Asimov published ‘I, Robot.’ Read them all and published an article called ‘I. Burocrat’ once. It was struggle to get that spelling through the process.
‘Flying Saucer Rock and Roll’ (2006)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 25 minutes but it seemed like m o r e, rated 4.3 by 48 members of the cast.
Genre: Amateurism and Sy Fy
Verdict: The 1957 Chevrolet is the star of the show, along with some (not enough) period music.
A group of thirty-year olds pretend to be high school students wearing saddle shoes, poodle skirts, a-lines, letter sweaters, sporting duck tails, and so on. The period detail was the best part of the effort.
Dweeb’s date with Date is interrupted by Bully and company at the soda shop. After an embarrassing departure, Dweeb and Date go parking, where is seems Dweeb does not know what to do. Did he sleep through human biology in eleventh grade or what?
The inaction is punctuated by a platoon of zombies who could not get date and hence were available to be suborned by Martians claiming to be Republicans. The zombie make-up is far better than any production that starred John Agar, and when I think of that old stone face, I realise the acting here has some energy.
Dweeb and Date are joined by Escapee from Zombieism and the three of them battle the Martian scourge, only two of whom were seen earlier. In a decaying farm shed they find a DIY manual to make an anti-Martian ray gun which they proceed to do. The manufacture is cloaked by the insertion of comic books frames, which were rather cute.
Somewhere, some how, some time along the way we learn that the Martians have ordered the zombie army to zombie-nap teenage girls because ‘Mars Needs Women’ (1967) [discussed elsewhere on this blog]. The zombies are such more respectful and polite to their victims than most jocks on a Saturday night date.
They blast the zombies, who let us remember, were innocent teenagers trapped by the two green Martians dressed up in Masonic gear we saw near the beginning.
These victims were shown with bongo drums, and the whiff of marijuana in the air, berets, beards all the usual paraphernalia of beatniks in the 1950s. They each also have a large number ‘3’ on their labels. Where were ‘1’ and ‘2’? Who knows? Not even close watching revealed the answer to that mystery. Number ‘6’ is way beyond this effort and the fraternity brothers.
Be that as it may.
After saving the world by seeing off the Martians, Dweeb has the confidence to sock Bully.
The end.
1 December
1824 The Presidential election went to the House of Representatives which voted for John Quincy Adams, though Andrew Jackson had more popular votes. There were two other candidates. Curiously both Adams and Jackson had the same Vice Presidential running mate, John Calhoun. Jackson had campaigned vigorously on the program of the corruption of Congress, only to discover he had no friends there.
1917 Father Flanagan founded Boys Town in Omaha. Quite a story. Seen Spencer Tracey do it. Been there more than once.
1955 In Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Parks was jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws. In those angry, volatile, and murderous times she had volunteered to be a test case for the NAACP.
1987 Under great pressure from the Fitzgerald corruption investigation Country Party Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen resigned as Queensland’s longest-serving Premier (1967-1987). He freely manipulated electoral boundaries to weight sparsely populated country seats. Recalling his garbled speech reminds me of President Tiny.
1990 Shortly after 11 am, hand-held drills penetrated the last rock wall and to connect the Chunnel linking Great Britain with the European mainland for the first time in 8,000 years. It took four more years to bring the it into service. Been through it a couple of times. Napoleon had an engineering assessment of such a tunnel in 1804. It was assumed in ‘The Trans-Atlantic Tunnel’ (1935) discussed elsewhere on this blog.
‘Shadows on the Stairs’ (1941)
IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 4 minutes, rated 5.7 by 343 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Whodunit?
In Pea Soup London a turbaned Stereotype is up to no good on the docks, observed by Smooth. Turns out Smooth and Stereotype are residents of a rambling boarding house whose residents include keyhole peepers, sidlers, creepers, sneakers, priers, snoopers, and suspicious characters all.
Smooth gets stabbed, often, to death; plod appears. He ready to charge anyone and everyone. As the bodies pile up, Plod blames each murder on the next victim. He does not notice this. Well, he is consistent.
Writer-in-residence and Belle, daughter of the manager of the boarding house, take up the investigation while Plod smokes a pipe. They discover everyone’s secrets, including the cross-dresser.
Ha, ha, ha, turns it was all a joke, since it makes no sense otherwise.
Despite the regiment of genuine British accents, it was made by Warner Brothers in Burbank California with denizens of the Hollywood British colony. Many are familiars from the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films of the time.
It was the first Hollywood film for Turhan Bey, the Austrian Jew who fled Anschluss to play stereotypes in Tinsel Town.
30 November
1016 Cnut the Great (Canute), King of Denmark, took the English throne. Notice the Ecco shoes as he explains climate change to retainers.
1876 Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the gold mask of Agamemnon. We saw it in Athens and also visited his house.
1886 First commercially successful AC electric power plant opened, Buffalo, NY
1906 Republican President Theodore Roosevelt at the bully pulpit denounced segregation of Japanese school children in San Francisco.
1924 First radio transmission of photographs from London to New York using the work of Canadian inventor William Stephenson from University of Manitoba. Facsimile forerunner.
‘A Man with One of those Faces’ (2016) by Caimh McDonnell
GoodReads meta-data is 362 pages, rated 4.1 by 2252 litizens.
Genre: Krimi
Verdict: Craic!
Slacker Paul ekes out a living in contemporary Dublin by doing six-hours of charity work a week. As long as he does this work a stipend from his late, fabulously wealthy aunt, who despised him, gives him a bare living. He was her only living relative. Her idea was that this stipend would get him started, at long last, on earning a living. She over-estimated her man, because his idea is to scrape along on that stipend. As a consumer he has learned how to make that stipend stretch to cover his very few needs. No bargain bin in Dublin escapes his notice. Most Op Shops are too upmarket for him.
Most of the gratis charity work is visiting inmates and patients at hospices and retirement (old folks) homes in and around Dublin. He has shopped around and found the best set-up, taking into account transport cost to and from, level of demands from clients, opportunities with female staff, and such. Paul is none too bright despite all his scheming. The staff at the institutions verify his work and he lets the elderly clients talk to him and he pretends to be whomever they say. He takes the chits to the lawyer managing the trust fund and gets the Euros. Simple. Too. To last.
Those patients that are assigned to him have no other visitors and are pretty confused about who any one is or where they are. He has one of those non-nondescript faces that they can project onto and he is a good listener.
Then one night, as he listens to a new client rattle on, the dying old man, Mr Brown, riddled with cancer beckons him closer to whisper weakly in his ear, or so he thinks. He moves the chair and leans forward and the old coot stabs Paul in the shoulder with a scissor blade he had secreted in the bed. What with all the tubes and wires on the old cuss the two of them get tangled and fall to the floor, killing the patient who was eighty if a day, and leaving Paul bleeding from the stab wound with additional bumps and bruises.
A routine police investigation soon discovers that the cancer-ridden client was not Mr Brown but rather Moriarty long since thought deceased in Montevideo. Whoa! Where has he been these last thirty years and what has he been doing? Who did he think Paul was that he wanted to stab him? None of this interests Paul, until….
It get worse when Paul barely escapes another much younger villain. His car is booby trapped. He is on the run! He blames the nurse who sent him to listen to Moriarty and she feels guilty enough to club together with him, because it seems someone is trying to kill her, too. Indeed anyone is a target who had anything to do with Moriarty at the hospice.
The pace is fast and furious. The throw-away lines are many. The Irish idioms are delightful. Much ground is covered in and around Dublin. Little is as it seems: The beautiful TV journalist is rancid. The upright police commissioner isn’t. The shifty cabinet minister is honest. The objectionable husband (never mind the details) is a wounded lion. The helpless shut-in is far from helpless. Even the dead are not what they seem.
Hurling figures in the story, as does Guiness so we know it is Irish.
The characters who pass in review include Bunny, the hurling coach who never bluffs, Dorothy who lied about the gun collection of her late husband, Detective Inspector Stewart who may be the last and only honest Gardià in All Ireland, pregnant lawyer Nora whose taser is illegal and all the more welcome for it, but nary a priest though the pews were near full.
Glad I read it on Kindle since I could look up the Irishisms as I went. It is the first of series of four or five titles by Caimh McDonnell.
I started the next one a few hours after finishing this one, and finished them all since I drafted this post. Craic!
‘House of Secrets’ (1936)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 10 minutes, rated 5.1 by 233 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Where is the old dark house?
While visiting London a brash American chipmunk inherits a House of Secrets. Whacko! Off he goes to claim the abandoned, empty, vacant, House of Secrets only to discover it is occupied and the occupiers have barking dogs and shotguns to prove it. They seem strangely indifferent to his legal claims, as do the local Bobbies.
Meanwhile back at the ranch lawyer’s office there are many phone calls to people with plummy accents. Now the lawyer tells him to sell and skedaddle. Meanwhile he has fallen in lust with a wispy blonde lurking about the House of Secrets. No way is he going to leave this damsel behind.
The next 55 minutes consists of Chipmunk asking a number of people — the lawyer, Bobbies, plummy accent 1, plummy accent 2, wispy blonde, shotgun totting butler — what is going on. They respond by saying they cannot tell him.
Why not? Because it is not in the script.
Meanwhile also in London are three American stereotypical hoodlums who want to break into the House of Secrets and find the treasure. Treasure? Well, any House of Secrets is bound to have treasure, right? Huh? How it got there is…. contrary to the laws of physics.
In the last five minutes, they break in, the secret is revealed, and a treasure is found.
Spoiler coming.
The house is being used to experiment on an anti-poison gas. Evidently no research facilities are available for such a purpose. Budget cutters had been at it again. The ace scientist was also given to acting like a Republican — screaming, grabbing, and going all sanctimonious all at once — and had to be sequestered and sedated far from prying eyes. Further, please, shouted the fraternity brothers. Usually these types get Senate seats.
The house is hardly used apart from a basement. Where are the sliding panels, secret doors, spy holes, remote switches, cobwebs, and the other conveniences of the Old Dark House? Nor is the damsel in distress until the gangsters appear, partly led there inadvertently by Chipmunk.
It was filmed at the Gower Street studios of RKO in Hollywood. The plummy accents all came from the British colony in Tinsel Town at the time.
Poison gas was the atomic bomb of the age, and any British audience would have shuttered at its mere mention. Ditto many in an American audience like Rondo Hatton, as is discussed in another post on this blog. But it is also mentioned in the last ten minutes and has nothing to do with Chipmunk, the gangsters, or much else.
29 November
1803 The Louisiana Purchase agreement was signed. It included all of six states: Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and parts of eight more: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Louisiana. Nearly doubling the area of the country. The purchase was opposed by some Senators and Representatives whose names are now forgotten.
1935 Physicist Erwin published his famous thought experiment ‘Schrödinger’s cat’, a paradox that illustrated the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. To observe is to alter.
1948 The first mass-produced Australian car, the Holden FX, rolled off the assembly line in Melbourne. The automobile industry has been a child of the tariff wall and thereafter a political football.
1949 Chang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist regime left mainland China for Taiwan and stayed. Kate’s mother once sold a pup to Madame Chang. True fact.
1972 Atari released Pong, the first commercially successful video game. More came.
