Here's Your Monocle

I recorded a TCM showing of THREE RING CIRCUS and watched some of it last night. I am pleased to tell you about the villain of the piece (pictured), Puffo the Wonder Clown. First of all I am pleased to tell you that his name is Puffo the Wonder Clown. He is addressed often. "You're drunk, Puffo." And, when he is fired from the circus, "Draw your money, Puffo." I cannot explain the pleasure such sentences gave me. "Puffo, he's stealing your thunder!" says another clown, referring to Jerry Lewis. So later Puffo goes out there and kicks Jerry Lewis in the behind and jumps up and down on him. The circus audience turns on Puffo! And I must say I was surprised because it seemed like regular clown business to me. I'm not sure what clued in the audience that Puffo really meant it. Clowns are always brutalizing one another for our amusement, and we thank them for it. But one little girl jumps up and yells, "Stop it! You're killing him!" I may be paraphrasing. After Puffo nearly murders Jerry in the ring (I guess - as I say, it was difficult to distinguish from everyday clown violence), Jerry says in his saintly mewl, "Here's your monocle. I'm not mad, Puffo." You see, Puffo had dropped his monocle in the sawdust to get Jerry to bend over. You know how it is. Oh, Puffo. I am not sure I can rightly call Puffo a sad clown, though he is certainly a bitter clown. Jerry - who tinkered a lot with the script of this famously troubled production - seems interested in rage-filled clowns. Think of the snarling clown who hates America in his film THE FAMILY JEWELS. Think of him, I said! And of course drunken clowns are a national treasure by any standard. Puffo is a mean drunk, as opposed to the garden-variety sniveling of a typical drunken clown like Twitchy, who meets his sad end at the hands of a psychopath in the Mickey Spillane circus thriller RING OF FEAR, but I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Will you mind very much if we stop talking about clowns for a second? In a subplot, Dean Martin falls under the spell of Zsa Zsa Gabor as the haughty queen of the circus. And I had never really thought about it, but that's a common story element, isn't it? The beauteous, dominant circus woman? I think of Steve Martin in THE JERK (its title an homage to Lewis's THE PATSY?), in the thrall of the sexy motorcycle daredevil who pushes him around. In conclusion, I cannot justify Puffo's honorific. At no point in the film are we given any indication that he is, in fact, a "wonder clown" of any kind.

A Defining Gesture

Thanks to a timely tip from Megan Abbott I watched some of I'LL TAKE SWEDEN on TCM last night. But - and here's the fascinating part! - I went to bed before it came on. But then I couldn't sleep! So I got up and watched it until our old, box-shaped TV from the 1990s finally died. I'LL TAKE SWEDEN killed our TV! And then - this is true, also - I got up and had a terrible new back pain and I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror and some of my hair had turned white! I mean, I noticed a lot more white than I've noticed there before. I'LL TAKE SWEDEN! It's mostly Bob Hope walking around gracefully in many different beautiful suits, which I am sure he kept, because he was a terrible cheapskate. But I mean, he is a good walker and hand gesturer. Here (above) we see him with one hand just below his ribs, seeming to pantomime the thought, "These kids these days!" I would describe it as a defining Bob Hope gesture, though it occurs just once in the film (at least in the hour I saw last night). McNeil could confirm its essentialness and describe it better than I could. He has a knack for cataloguing these things. I remember once we were watching a movie in which Jeremy Northam played Dean Martin, and Jeremy Northam (as Dean Martin) was applauding something while holding a cigarette between two fingers, and McNeil said with delight and authority, "That's just how Dean Martin clapped!" Oh, how I wish McNeil had been here. Only he would have understood why I actually laughed a couple of times, once at a fantasy sequence in which Bob Hope's imaginary grandchildren are forced to eat a parrot, and once at some dumb wisecrack Bob Hope made while riding around with his head sticking out of the sunroof of a small Swedish vehicle.

There is one part (seen here) when he is looking at Frankie Avalon with real hatred. Like, I don't think he's acting! Or, actually, I think he turns out to be a better actor than we ever gave him credit for. Or both! He seems to be thinking, "THIS is what it's all come to? THIS? THIS FRANKIE AVALON?" Or he could be deep in character, thinking, "No way this motor-scooter riding rascal is gonna marry MY daughter!" I just can't tell. In addition, Frankie Avalon takes Tuesday Weld to a strip club on a date! For all his grousing about Bob Hope do you think this is where Mike Nichols got the idea for the scene in THE GRADUATE? Tuesday Weld is much more blasé about the strip club than Katherine Ross was, though there is identical twirling involved! However, it is not graphically portrayed in this case. The twirling in question occurs offscreen and is alluded to discreetly by Bob Hope and Tuesday Weld (see also). The strip club is called The Pink Kitten and the bouncer dresses like this:

Rupert Hitzig!

Yesterday we watched WOLFEN and then we started watching ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (pictured) and Dr. Theresa yelled out, "Rupert Hitzig!" and I said "WHAT!" And she said, "Rupert Hitzig worked on both of these movies." And she was right! I checked it out on the "internet." It was just a coincidence. We weren't having a Rupert Hitzig film festival, not on purpose. I don't know who Rupert Hitzig is. He's still around, it seems. He's on facebook, it says here. Rupert Hitzig!

Magic Prison

Here's something I don't know anything about: CYMBELINE by William Shakespeare. Took the newish movie version of it over to Lee Durkee's. Lee - who doesn't usually care for this kind of coy tampering - was pretty excited that it is set in the world of motorcycle gangs. But there weren't enough motorcycles to suit him! There were hardly any. Motorcycles were usually represented by an offscreen revving. One character pushes his out-of-gas motorbike down a country path. A bad boyfriend glumly glides along on his skateboard. "Why didn't they make Cymbeline the king of a skateboard gang?" Lee said. After the movie was over, Lee said he didn't like it - not enough motorcycles! - and he didn't like the play, either. He theorized that it was just a Beaumont-and-Fletcher mashup of Shakespeare, a kind of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits, "Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending," is one way Lee put it. He challenged me to think of any compelling use of language in what we had just heard and seen. "When the guy said he was going to cut the other guy's head off and throw it into the sea and then it could tell the fishes it was the queen's son," I suggested. "That was the best line in the movie," Lee admitted. "And I liked that one soliloquy," I said. "I want to look it up and see what it's all about. The one about being immured for life in a magic prison." Lee searched digitally through the text of CYMBELINE and couldn't find anything about a magic prison. A little more digging revealed the compelling passage to be an Emily Dickinson poem that the filmmakers just stuck in there! Which proved Lee's point, I guess.

The Only Explanation Was Offered By Our Dentist

Yesterday I picked up some good research items from that used book stall I like so much. It's in that strip mall across from Big Bad Breakfast, way in the back of the antique store. Check it out! One thing I found might be the most interesting self-published book I've come across since THE SCRAPBOOK OF A DETECTIVE. This one is by a livestock inspector named Dr. Harold Wallman, and it's a lavishly produced overview of his many collections of things. It's called 640 OF MY COLLECTIONS. They're put into alphabetical order and numbered. For example, collection #5 is "Alligators." The paragraph about his alligator collection begins, "The most intriguing alligator is controlled by two buttons." No set-up or anything, he just gets right to it. I don't think I'm getting across how unusual this book is. I'll keep trying. Collection #141 is "Cinema Photographs." He found most of these "in a Chicago alley. There were way more than I could take in a car, but I kept some... I had some fun with them by putting captions on them as to what I thought each character was saying. In one for 'Bed Time for Bonzo,' Ronald Reagen [sic] is standing there and he says, 'Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.' The lady holding the chimp says, 'You mean father, Ha Ha Ha.'" Dr. Wallman also has a collection of newspaper articles and cartoons containing the name Arnold. The description is somewhat muddled, but they seem to be a tribute to his friend Arnold Cohn, and he put together a scrapbook that is partly (I think) about the real Arnold Cohn and partly about other people who happen to be named Arnold that he pretends are Arnold Cohn (?), including, writes Dr. Wallman, and note the quotation marks, "a picture of 'him' on a motorcycle, as a wrestler, and with a great body. It ends with his car accidents, death, services and auction. Many entries are completely anachronistic." Collection #155 is "Coffins." The descriptive paragraph begins, "One of my skeletons came in a rosewood coffin." So right away you know that he has a collection of skeletons, and indeed there it is, collection #507: "Skeletons - Human." Here we learn that his RV caught fire in 1986, and the only skeleton he owned at the time was destroyed: "I soon tried to replace it at dealers in Texas and Chicago, IL. I was told that human skeletons were no longer available." He finally got one but "it is light brown in color. The only explanation was offered by our dentist who said it got that way from being kept in the dark." And yes, I read between the lines that he was driving around in an RV with a human skeleton, and you'll have to trust me that it's only one of the disturbing things I've read between the lines - and in the lines - in this book. In a closing thought, Dr. Wallman regrets all the collections he couldn't include. "Too late to be more than mentioned are dolls, scout parapernalia [sic], bird feeders and houses, feathers, crutches, lead sinkers, enema cans, and cloth patches." Speaking of dolls, I believe he claims to have a pornographic Charlie Chaplin doll...? Details are vague, though the doll is mentioned in collection #432, "Pornography." Hmm, it seems that the thermos mentioned there is definitely pornographic (don't ask) and maybe the Chaplin doll is something he picked up in the same lot. "There is also a 'dirty' pocket watch and wrist watch," concludes Dr. Wallman. Such is the fascination of this book that only now do I find time to mention that Dr. Wallman's 392nd collection consists of owls, of course.

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once more to McNeil's Movie Korner, your only place on the "internet" to the get the latest and greatest news about Hollywood's star-studded hits of the silver screen in Tinsel Town Land! "Watched DONT MAKE WAVES yesterday. Jim and Henny Backus played themselves," McNeil writes. Then he expresses regret that he never got his copy of the Jim and Henny Backus autobiography for the Doomed Book Club. I told him he wasn't missing much except for the obsessive chapter[s?] where Jim and Henny Backus try to figure out who is constantly pelting their roof with rocks. It goes on for years! Did I tell you about this before? I don't know, who cares. One day Jim Backus's pal Keenan Wynn has had enough of this crud and he hops on his motorbike and races around the Hollywood Hills, searching for the perpetrator with the intention of wreaking a terrible vengeance. But nothing comes of it and somebody just keeps throwing rocks, enormous ones, at Jim and Henny Backus, or at their roof, anyway. This story takes up a large percentage of the book, as I recall. I feel like at one point the police locate a guy several miles away with a giant slingshot (or am I dreaming this?) but he's cleared of all charges and anyway the mysterious rocks of endless torment never stop coming. But anyway who cares about Jim and Henny Backus so here is Claudia Cardinale from DON'T MAKE WAVES with those sunglasses I like.

The Ichthyologist: Modern-Day Undercover Procopius?

As you will recall from reading the New York Times with me every day, their gossip columnist ONLY writes about celebrities eating fish. They should make up a new name for her. Like, right now they call her "The Nocturnalist" but they should change it to "The Ichthyologist!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Because of the fish. Sure, Martha Stewart feeds her a Jordan almond in today's installment. BUT! She also sees John McEnroe eating "Alaskan black cod" in a parking garage. For real! "Click" here if you don't believe me. But don't "click"! Because then you will have to read about a fancy gala where rich people dress up like rich hoboes or something, with "motorcycle evening gloves," whatever those are, and someone walks by and exclaims, "Glam in the gutter!" to The Ichthyologist. Ugh! Somebody really says that! They are hanging around in a parking garage for irony! They're having fun pretending to be partially poor! Like, only their gloves are poor. I don't know, part of me thinks that The Ichthyologist is secretly thinking "ugh" along with me like some modern-day Procopius but it's all just too subtle for me I guess.

It Wasn't a Dream

Don't you wish there were a movie called THE NAKED FACE? And what if it starred your favorite acting team? That's right: Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, and Art Carney! And like any movie starring Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, and Art Carney, our theoretical movie should have come out in 1985 - often known as "The Year of Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, and Art Carney." Dear friends, it's not a dream. It's real! I watched it last night when I couldn't sleep. Well, some of it. I should state right away that the title is misleading: Roger Moore's face is not naked at all. In fact, in many scenes he wears glasses as large as Louis Jordan's in SWAMP THING. Maybe they're the same glasses! And maybe my brain was a little hazy in the wee hours when I flipped on THE NAKED FACE, but I could swear it features an assassin who turns his wheelchair into a motorcycle, just like those Transformers all you kids love! Next there was a scene of Rod Steiger ranting and screaming the way he does sometimes. He was ACTING. He was a ranting, screaming police detective with his eyes popping out of his head, and his partner was Elliott Gould, which was a surprise. Elliott Gould just stood there against a wall in that laid-back, slightly slack-jawed way of his while Rod Steiger stomped around looking for any remaining bits of scenery to devour. I'll tell you one thing I learned last night: Roger Moore, Elliott Gould, and Rod Steiger went to very different acting schools. You should see them together. It's like watching three entirely different movies at once! What a bargain. So some other dudes are trying to kill Roger Moore and he runs into his little bedroom and props a chair under the doorknob! It seemed so quaint, and not at all like James Bond. The killers were thwarted by the doorknob, which they kept rattling in vain. Next Rod Steiger comes back to investigate and this time he decides to whisper. He's still very tense, but he just whispers everything for a change of pace. Like, "I really think my character would whisper everything in this scene." And the director was like, "Whatever you say, Rod Steiger." Then Rod Steiger goes to a diner with Elliott Gould and whispers some more but Elliott Gould gets on his nerves and all of a sudden he's screaming again. What a roller coaster ride! And all this time I'm thinking, "Must make it to Art Carney... Must make it to Art Carney..." He was third-billed in the capsule description after all. But friends, I didn't make it to Art Carney. It gradually seemed preferable to lie in bed staring at the ceiling and contemplating the terrible abyss, which is exactly what I did. The end.

Enemy of Bronk

In the BRONK episode "Wheel of Death," Bronk's enemy is a motorcycle daredevil! I found that out on the "internet."

Elke Sommer Paints Paintings

Well, this is quite the coincidence. Yesterday I talked about what our friend Shields is up to these days: making sculptures of raccoons riding motorcycles. But mostly the "post" was about Elke Sommer. Today I found out (and why didn't I already know this?) that Elke Sommer has a gallery where she sells her paintings. There is one called "The Doll Cemetery." But I can't take you there or show it to you because of the fine print on Elke Sommer's "web" site: "Using parts of this website for any project, whether in printed, electronic or any other form, as well as including this website in other web pages through links or frames or other means, is prohibited by law." So Elke Sommer (or her representative) is saying that I can't "link" to her online gallery... which is counterintuitive, I think, because that means the only way you will be able to see Elke Sommer's paintings is if you take the time and trouble to seek them out for yourself. Maybe you are too busy! But if there was something you could "click" right here, you might "click" it, mightn't you? And then you might buy a painting! But who am I to question Elke Sommer's business decisions? Nancy Kwan did not mind when I "linked" to her "web" site! That is all I am saying.

Elke Sommer Speaks Five Languages

Remember our "post" the other day about Shields and Yarnell? What? You don't? What's wrong with you? I was going to tell you what Shields has been up to lately. This comes to me courtesy of Phil Oppenheim: it's a "link" to Shields's online shop where he sells his artwork, for example, a sculpture of a couple of raccoons on a motorcycle (pictured). Phil is also kind enough to say that I "made [his] day" with my recent Elke Sommer ruminations. He volunteers to "do the same" for me with a clip of Ms. Sommer bantering with Jack Benny (below). I know! You have no idea who Jack Benny is, unless you are friend of the "blog" "D." from Atlanta, who is the world's last known seriously hardcore Jack Benny fan. But chances are you are not him! Chances are you are a youthful "on the go" type person who can't be bothered to look up Jack Benny on wikipedia. In that case, I will describe the clip for you so you don't have to watch it. We find out that Elke Sommer speaks five languages (which is true) and then Jack Benny makes a joke about how nobody cares because she's so pretty. Then Elke Sommer sings a song from her hot new record album on the MGM label. I think it's called "He's a Clown." There's a sort of production number in a Spanish setting, maybe a nightclub. The background dancers are dressed as waiters and at one point they surprise everyone by whipping the tablecloths off all the little tables but leaving the dinnerware on top undisturbed, as in the classic magician stunt. Then they put the tablecloths over their faces Dracula style. They also end up twirling and whirling the tablecloths a lot. At the end they surround Ms. Sommer and everyone shouts "Olé!" There, now you don't have to watch this:

Fie, Tattered Maltin

Just watched BOY, DID I GET A WRONG NUMBER on TCM, thanks to a tip from Brian Z. Why does everybody hate it so much? My tattered Maltin assigns it one of its numerous pious "BOMB"s. I can imagine Godard loving this movie. For me, it's the kind of repressive desublimation we can all get behind: the harmlessly transparent and superficial kind. Like, Bob Hope refers to policemen as "fuzz," as in, "I've got more fuzz on my tail than a French poodle" (the line quoted to me by McNeil when he called - of course - to discuss the movie a few minutes ago). And Phyllis Diller, riding a motorcycle, squirts mustard into the faces of hapless "fuzz" through their driver's side windows, causing them to crash, which makes her cackle as she anarchically squirts more mustard onto the road. If I am recalling correctly, and I almost certainly am, my ex-boss Lisa once told me that Phyllis Diller on a motorcycle was one of the iconic images of her youth. Yet I searched the entire "internet" and couldn't find a still of it. So here's Elke Sommer holding an apple. See? Doesn't it remind you of CONTEMPT?

Barry B.'s Movie Korner

The intervals between new editions of McNeil's Movie Korner seem to be getting longer and longer. While we're waiting, here's a review hot off the wire from Barry B.: "I just watched Tommy. Have you seen that in a while? It's really a very strange movie. Everybody really overacts or underacts. They're all pretty great but it's just bizarre. Roger Daltry looks all wooden and glassy eyed (even when he's supposed to be normal). Eric Clapton looks like he's about to go to sleep. Oliver Reed is all sleazy looking and great but his singing is pretty awful. Keith Moon is really funny and out of control. Nothing he's ever doing seems to sync up to whatever music is playing. I think he should have been in Monty Python. The editing is pretty weird and choppy. At one point some violence is breaking out between a couple of motorcycle gangs and Tommy hang glides down and everybody starts flapping their arms like chickens, then some rockabilly looking guys are playing slot machines and Tommy hang glides down and they start dancing real crazy."

Gnarled

I watched THE BELLBOY yesterday. This time I was struck by one scene above all others. In that scene, Jerry Lewis plays himself. Shawn Levy describes the scene in his book KING OF COMEDY: THE LIFE AND ART OF JERRY LEWIS, so I will take the shortcut of using his words here: "The star arrives in a limousine escorted by a cadre of motorcycle cops. He is accompanied by an entourage of twenty-seven sycophants, all of whom emerge from the limo before him. His handlers brush off his clothing so much they rumple him; when he starts to smoke, so many lighters snap open in front of his face that his cigarette is crushed; when he tells the hotel manager he isn't feeling well because of a death in the family, the entourage breaks out in phony laughter." What struck me yesterday was the remarkable continuity between that scene and Jerry's portrait of celebrity more than 20 years later in THE KING OF COMEDY (the Scorsese movie, not to be confused with Levy's similarly titled book, which is absolutely essential and very tough on its subject, yet fair, thoughtful, and appreciative), especially - but not limited to - the plea for release he improvises in character to his captors. I sat down to "blog" about this four or five times yesterday, but each time weariness overcame me, yoked with the thought, you know, "Who cares?" But then I remembered the wise words of Chuang Tzu. Let me refresh your memory if you are too tired to "click": Chuang Tzu and a pal of his are talking about the uselessness of a big old gnarled tree and Chuang Tzu is like, "What does not invite the axe/ No creature will harm/ What cannot be used/ No troubles will befall." And I was like, "Yeah." So, in other words, now I'm "blogging" BECAUSE it doesn't matter and no one cares. Which gives me the strength to add that in his film (sic) ANTICIPATION, Godard had Anna Karina quote one of the last lines from THE BELLBOY. Also that the opening narration of THE BELLBOY is spoken by object of mild "blog" curiosity Walter Winchell. And now you know... THE REST OF THE STORY. This is Paul Harvey........... Good day!

Kolchak!

A new communique from the reclusive novelist James Whorton, Jr. (author of FRANKLAND and APPROXIMATELY HEAVEN), who reports that he has been renting episodes of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. That old TV show also happens to be a sentimental favorite of both my brother and my wife. The last time I was in California, my brother had Tivoed (that is a verb, right?) every episode, and showed me his favorite scene, in which Kolchak has to shoot a monster - disguised as a gentle, doddering old lady - with a crossbow. As for Theresa, she made sure that the complete series on DVD was one of the essential items we brought with us to Oxford. Nor am I immune to the show's charms. I particularly admire Darrin McGavin's willfully eccentric lead performance, and retain a vivid childhood memory of the episode when a motorcycle-riding ghost was cutting off people's heads. As a fan of coincidence I am compelled to mention that McGavin came up in the class I taught today - specifically, the leg-lamp his character won in the film A CHRISTMAS STORY. "I feel as though I have been reunited with a long-lost family member," Whorton writes of Kolchak. He goes on: "McNeil and other people who watch UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE every day might like to be reminded that Carol Lynley played Kolchak's girlfriend Gail in the original made for tv movie. She tries to convince Kolchak that the killer is a vampire. Then she irons his shirt and he says, 'You iron a pretty good shirt there, Gail.'"