John Saxon in The Glove

(This blog is part of the John Saxon Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget and Cinematic Catharsis)

Following Enter the Dragon (1973), directors (I’m hesitant to say Hollywood) began to see John Saxon in a different light – that of action hero – leading to his appearing in a string of adventure films through the rest of 1970s, including The Swiss Conspiracy (1975), Raid on Entebbe (1977) and several Italian crime/action flicks among others. The final film in that run was The Glove (1979).

John Saxon: If the glove fits

Saxon plays Sam Kellog, an ex-cop turned bounty hunter, six months behind in child-support payments and experiencing a full-blown existential crisis, doubting his career choice, waxing nostalgic over his pre-cop minor league baseball days and generally confused by his purpose in life.

(We know this because director/screenwriter Ross Hagen's script has Saxon provide voiceover narration about “the emptiness in my gut,” or “when you live on the edge, one push and you’re over” and “a bounty hunter does things the police can’t.”)

When Kellog catches wind of a $20,000 reward for the capture of Victor Hale (Rosey Grier), an ex-con suspected of the brutal murders of several prison guards, this is the opportunity for him to at least solve his financial woes.

Hale was beaten in jail by prison guards using an outlawed riot glove, described as “five pounds of lead and steel.” He now has his own version of the glove and with revenge on his mind, he punches through a car windshield to get at one victim and destroys a bathroom while beating another. This is no Nintendo power glove.

Kellog and Hale play cat-and-mouse before an epic showdown on the roof of Hale’s apartment building. They beat each other silly before Kellog concedes defeat, but as Hale offers to escort Kellog from the building a rival bounty hunter suddenly shows up, leading to Hale’s death as well as that of the bounty hunter when residents of the building take matters into their own hands avenging a death of “one of their own.”

You might say (if you’re corny enough and I guess I am) that the role of Sam Kellog fits Saxon like a glove. He’s a complex character, whether interacting with his grade-school daughter, joking – a fluffed line that was kept in the movie – with his kibbitzing boss (Keenan Wynn) or providing cynicism and world-weariness in his narration. Saxon even does his own stunts, including a fight with a bail-skipper in a meat-packing plant, which includes using animal parts as weapons.

After a successful career in pro football, Rosey Grier moved on to TV and films, including The Thing with Two Heads (1972), and becoming almost better known as a macrame and needlepoint enthusiast. In The Glove, when he’s not beating people to death, he’s a gentle giant playing guitar, befriending a neighborhood kid, driving a Country Squire station wagon and shopping for groceries (he buys a bouquet of flowers for his shabby apartment).

Along with Grier, the supporting cast also includes Joanna Cassidy, Keenan Wynn, Michael Pataki, Jack Carter, Aldo Ray and Joan Blondell (her final role before her death). 

The Glove can feel a bit schizophrenic. When Saxon is onscreen tracking down bail jumpers and bemoaning his lot in life, the film takes on a noirish quality. When the focus is on Grier, the vibe is one of Blaxploitation. Overall, the film has the feel of an extended TV pilot, serving to introduce Sam Kellog and his world to viewers.

Either way, the movie holds its own as an action film, John Saxon playing a hero who is a Hamlet for 1970s: plagued by self-doubt and uncertainty while outfitted in an Adidas track suit (the jacket fashionably unzipped enough to show off his bare chest).

Bad company

While they may picture themselves as The Avengers or The Justice League coming to save us from rising egg prices and DEI hiring practices, the next administration’s cabinet appointments, a cavalcade of the weird and unqualified, seem more reminiscent of the old Marvel super-villain teams, dangerous but ultimately second-rate bad guys with dubious superpowers, laughable costumes and names. 

Any of these names are probably available at the right price for a plaque nailed to this next cabinet’s clubhouse door. 

The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: Super-villains team brought together by ideology: mutant superiority (homo superior) over humans (homo sapiens). Magneto recruited Scarlet Witch and

Quicksilver by rescuing them from an angry mob in their “Central European” home. Mastermind, a John Carradine lookalike, had a creepy interest in the much younger Scarlet Witch. Toad’s name described his springy bouncing ability and how he toadied up to Magneto. Magneto wasn’t much on team building; the Brotherhood quarreled endlessly. 

Sinister Six: A team-up of some Spider-Man’s initial rogue’s gallery: Sandman and Electro (with no lessons learned, both would join other subsequent super-villain teams), plus Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, de facto leader Dr. Octopus and the Vulture. Together, they never add up to anything greater than the sum of their raw talent as they insist on going after Spidey individually and not as a united front. 

Frightful Four: The Wizard, Sandman and the immortal Paste Pot Pete (who changed his name to the Trapster to keep superheroes from laughing themselves silly) couldn’t beat the Human Torch singly in any of his early solo adventures, yet somehow when they added Medusa of the Inhumans they defeated the Fantastic Four once and had them on the ropes a second time, a storyline that launched a two-year run of issues of the Fantastic Four that to my mind has always been The Great American Comic Book Novel. 

Emissaries of Evil: Daredevil’s laughable archenemies band together to no effect. Electro and the Gladiator, with twin circular saws on his wrists could be formidable, but the rest of this crew? The Matador would throw his cape over a foe’s head to create confusion. Scary. Stilt Man wore a telescoping device on his legs that extended his height. That’s it. Top-heavy at best, he may be the dumbest villain concept ever except for another Emissary of Evil, Leap Frog with his exoskeleton frog costume, complete with webbed feet. 

The Fellowship of Fear: Mr. Fear’s contribution was fear pheromones from gas pellets shot from a special gun. According to an online Marvel database, he recruited Ox and The Eel primarily because of their low intelligence, making them easier to control. The Eel was a classic Marvel second-banana bad guy. Ox was Lenny from Of Mice and Men. The sightless (but with other senses enhanced Daredevil) knows Ox is around by his heavy breathing and “cheap hair tonic” – the first time Vitalis contributed to the bring down of a super-villain team.

One final last at bat

On October 6, 1985, at Shea Stadium against the Montreal Expos, Rusty Staub was the final batter of the Mets’ season.

The Mets will finish second place and with Darryl Strawberry (23 years old, 27 home runs) and Dwight Gooden (20 years old, 24-4 record), anchoring a young and talented team, the Mets are primed for promise.

Almost in anticipation of ticker-tape parades to come, the fans are shredding paper and throwing it onto the field: hot dog wrappers, pages torn from programs, newspapers, toilet paper, falling to the ground or getting swept up into a current circling the inside of Shea Stadium.

From WWOR's game broadcast, 10/6/85

Staub watches paper falling through the air and fouls off the first two pitches, then takes a ball. Indifferent ownership, the inability to get funding for a new stadium, dropping attendance and other economic pressures over the coming two decades would tip the scale in favor of a relocation, and in 2004, the Expos became the Washington Nationals.

Another pitch out of the strike zone for a ball. Staub began his major league career as a 19-year-old with the Houston Astros in 1963; Shea Stadium opened the following year as a multi-purpose stadium built for baseball and football. Aging badly and with the trend towards stadiums built expressly for baseball (while acknowledging a certain old-time vibe – archways, brick facades, distinctive angles to the outfields), Shea was demolished in 2009, replaced by Citi Field.

He calls time, distracted by more paper falling from the rightfield grandstand. The count goes to three balls and two strikes. Never a Hall of Famer, but certainly a first-ballot induction in any mythical Hall of the Nearly Great, Staub retired that winter to organize charitable programs and focus on his Manhattan restaurant, Rusty's, specializing in steaks and ribs. Nearly 30 years to the day of his final at bat, on a flight from Ireland to the U.S., he went into cardiac arrest. Two doctors on board assisted in resuscitating him. He died in 2018, three days before his 74th birthday.

The last swing of the bat is a grounder to the Montreal second baseman, who bobbles the ball but still throws the slow-running Staub out at first. Even the best batters succeed only three out of ten times. The field is littered with white paper, resembling a tentative late autumn snowfall that barely covers the grass, a reminder that winter is right around the corner.

The last at bat

For sustained brilliance in writing about baseball there is Roger Angell. But the greatest one-hit wonder is John Updike’s only venture into sports reporting. His 1960 essay about Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams’ final game, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” is not just amazing writing, but a masterpiece of production against a hard deadline. While a good portion of the essay was likely thought-out in advance, Updike turned around 6000 words about a game played on September 28 in time for the October 20 edition of The New Yorker.   

Updike was a fan, offering no alibis for Williams’ behavior. Williams was a complex player, disliked by many fans and reporters alike. The product of a broken home, he was moody and quixotic in his belief that playing baseball might be much more enjoyable (for him) without those sports writers or fans watching. A view, Updike points out, that may have cost Williams not just plenty of goodwill, but two MVP trophies, which are voted on by the baseball writers. 

The author gets off a couple of wonderful and insightful lines: 

The Boston team was the worst in twenty-seven seasons. A jangling medley of incompetent youth and aging competence. 

The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance; it has been a marriage, composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. 

As his shadow in the record books lengthened, the Red Sox teams around him declined, and the entire American League seemed to be losing life and color to the National. 

(If the use of the word “color” in that last quite is a potshot at the American Leagues’ lack of urgency when it came to integration, it is subtle but well taken). 

Updike also got a storybook ending: Williams’ final plate appearance was a solo home run in the eighth inning: Williams etching in own career epitaph within the epitaph Updike had written. The Red Sox were scheduled for three final games, in New York versus the Yankees. Williams chose not to accompany the team. “So he knew how to do even that, the hardest thing. Quit,” is how Updike ended the piece. 

Updike wrote frequently about sports in his fiction. His most famous character, Rabbit Angstrom, was a star high school basketball player who found everything in life sour and anti-climactic after graduation. There’s a lot of golf playing in the Rabbit books and in his novel about swinging suburbia, Couples. 

If he often found sports a useful metaphor, it’s fitting that Ted Williams hitting a home run in his final career at bat could serve as a comparison to Updike’s high-pressure delivery of “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” one of the high points in a lifetime of writing, within 30 days.

Incredibly, footage of Ted Williams' final home run exists:

Jigsaw puzzles of the damned 

One of the cultural kid crazes of the sixties was the obsession with monsters. For a few years, I got caught up in it in a big way. Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Aurora monster models. Monster wallets. Monster figures. If it had anything to do with Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon or the Mummy, I was in. 

One Christmas, I received this: 

The box is a little rough now, something like 60 years later, but it’s complete, no missing pieces: 

The finished puzzle tells a pretty terrifying story, as the artist crammed as much as possible into a nightmarish scene: the sobbing woman, a hooded ghoul emerging from a coffin, the lizard and cat going after a corpse, a rattlesnake for some reason, prison bars and the mummy carrying some poor guy in the process of being mummified while still alive. 

The puzzle was made by the Jaymar Specialty Company of Brooklyn, started by Jacob Marx, father of famed toy manufacturer Louis Marx. Jaymar produced mostly wooden toys, including any number of puzzles based on licensed characters (Disney, Archie, Blondie). In 1963, Jaymar issued four monster puzzles: Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman and the Mummy. 

More coffins and dungeons. The guy lying on the operating table in the lower left has a hypodermic needle sticking out of his neck making a puddle of blood. Fun stuff when you're ten years old. 

According to one price guide, “parental objection to these gruesome puzzles soon led to Jaymar’s discontinuation of them.” I couldn’t find any other details, but if true, the puzzles belong in the same childhood limbo as Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away,” Chinese Cherry Funny Face drink mix and the Frito Bandito. Vanished, thanks to the whim of some supposedly well-meaning adults. 

The monster craze began to diminish for me with the discovery of Marvel Comics and the Beatles, and as I told myself that it was time to put childish things away, I donated the puzzle to a Cub Scout auction. A quarter burning a hole in my pocket, I realized I'd made a mistake. 

I was the only bidder. Reunited.

I don't care if I never get back 

My hometown of Hackensack is roughly ten miles from the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium. That’s a relatively easy commute if you work there and during the 1960s, before baseball players became richer than God, several Yankees rented summer residences in the area. 

Elston Howard settled year-round in Teaneck, one town over. Mickey Mantle was said to be in nearby River Edge. Tom Tresh and Andy Kosco lived in my neighborhood. Tresh a couple of blocks over; Kosco, in his only season with New York, rented a place maybe fifteen houses up from mine. 

The more famous Tresh was American League Rookie of the Year in 1962 and one of the heroes of the 1962 World Series. He played nine seasons in the infield and outfield, and played in two All-Star Games. 

In a ten-year career, Kosco played for seven teams. He is also peripherally connected to two events that helped frame 1970s baseball: he was traded from the Yankees to the Dodgers for Mike Kekich, who is best remembered for swapping families with fellow Yankee Fritz Peterson in 1973. The Dodgers later traded Kosco to Milwaukee for Al Downing, who allowed Hank Aaron’s 715^th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record. 

I can’t say that we ever saw either ballplayer out mowing the grass or holding a garden hose to the lawn. Their days were likely spent sleeping or watching television before heading out to work. We nodded in acknowledgement as we rode our bikes past their homes, although we never went knocking on their front doors looking for autographs. Possibly we saw them for what they were: ordinary guys roughly our parents’ age (maybe a little younger) who worked weird hours at a strange job. 

What we didn’t realize was that the best time to catch Tresh or Kosco was likely late at night, when much of the neighborhood was dark except for the occasional living room cast in the light from a television screen. Home from the game, sitting on a front step or in the backyard maybe with a beer and a cigarette. Out from the heat of the day, and from under the unblinking glare of the stadium’s high-intensity lights. Listening to the same crickets and far-off police sirens I heard while lying in my bed. 

Times change and summer nights pass quickly, along with childhood and the freedoms that came with it. What we’re left with are summer evenings that will never feel quite the same again.

Get Carter 

(This post is part of the Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts)

In Get Carter (1970), London gangster Jack Carter (Michael Caine) returns to his hometown of Newcastle to investigate the sudden and mysterious death of his brother. When he finds that his brother was murdered and his niece (who may be Carter’s daughter) was steered into making a pornographic movie, Carter relentlessly and violently tracks down everyone involved. (And without giving away too much, Carter the hunter has no idea that he’s also being hunted). 

“British gangsters were seen as silly or funny in the movies, and I knew from my background that all of the above wasn’t true,” said Caine. Carter may have a subtle sense of humor, but he’s also uncompromising, with a slow-burning temper that builds quickly into sudden violence. Immoral, as you’d expect from someone in his profession, but with a strong sense of family honor. 

Filmed on location, Newcastle’s rowhouses, outdoor plumbing and beach blackened with coal waste provide a grim setting. As Carter travels there by train, director Mike Hodges shows fleeting glimpses of the countryside, including several nuclear power plants, signaling that the glory days of Newcastle, once the center of a huge coal mining area, are vanishing. 

Back in Newcastle, Carter throws money around to smooth over any problems and shows off his slick metropolitan ways at the local pub when he orders a pint of bitter, then hesitates, adding “in a thin glass.” When his niece tells him she’s left school for a job at Woolworths, his deadpan, “That must be very interesting,” says it all about his contempt for his past life. 

Caine’s strong supporting cast included several actors with pedigree status in British popular culture. John Osborne, the original Angry Young Man, launched the British social realism with his play, Look Back in Anger (1956). Ian Hendry, who was under consideration to play Carter, starred in the first version of The Avengers (1961). Britt Ekland, maybe best known for her active social life, was in The Wicker Man (1973). 

Roy Budd’s soundtrack in jazzy and groovy with occasional Indian tabla percussion, and director Hodges allows some ambient noise, a ship’s horn, wind, to filter into some scenes, adding to the realism.

One moment in Get Carter easily overlooked is one of product placement: a copy of the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed album in a scene that also triggers the film’s bloody final act (see below). Released in late 1969, the record – like Carter – feels like it has a lit fuse burning through it, about to blow up what was left of the Swinging Sixties. To echo the final song on the record, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Carter will get what he needs, but ultimately not what he wants. 

Get Carter was released in the U.S. on a double bill with Frank Sinatra’s awful Dirty Dingus Magee. “We were in the toilet in two weeks,” Caine later said, crediting cable TV with introducing Carter to a larger audience. 

If gritty realism, urban settings, a true anti-hero and intricate plotting all count for something, Get Carter owes as much to the British kitchen sink social realism movement as it does film noir, making it the quintessential British crime film. 

As Caine said when marking the 50^th anniversary of Get Carter: “If you’d told me (then) that I’d still be talking about it now, I might not have believed you. Some films are special.”

A Jersey City lunchtime moment shared 

It’s probably true of all major metropolitan regions, but New York City TV weathermen differentiated themselves with their own, often quirky, brands and approach. 

Tex Antoine on ABC had a David Niven mustache and drew cartoons illustrating the current or forecasted weather. One got the sense that his first drafts were done on a cocktail napkin that afternoon. NBC’s Dr. Frank Field had head of the high school science department gravitas. Mr. G on CBS was the nice Jewish bachelor all the older women were trying to fix up on dates with their unmarried daughters. Roberto Tirado on PIX was smooth and stylish; you pictured him dancing the Latin Hustle with the top buttons of his shirt undone. 

WOR’s Lloyd Lindsay Young’s appeal was his corny, everyman exuberance. He had a booming voice and began each of his spots by loudly acknowledging a local city or town with his trademark “Hellooooo (insert name here)!” 

Young: “That all started by accident. I was working in Idaho Falls in television, and one day—and I don’t know what possessed me—but I knew there were viewers up in Wyoming, so I just blurted out “Hello Jackson Hole!” A bunch of people called the station. I thought, wait a minute, I might be on to something. The next day: “Hello Pocatello!” and a bunch of people called in again. The rest is history.” 

He carried it over to WOR, and it became something that people tuned into and talked about. What town would it be today? Greenwich? Farmingdale? Bushwick? Edison? Maybe your hometown! 

Dad comes home from work and the kids greet him. “Daddy, Lloyd Lindsay Young said Piscataway today – that’s where we live!” “That’s great. Is dinner ready yet?”

I was reading the electric and gas meters in a Jersey City bar. It was noontime and the place was packed with construction workers, guys in hardhats working on the office towers and apartment houses going up along the Hudson River waterfront at the time. 

The meters were accessed through a trapdoor behind the bar, and while I waited to get the bartender’s attention – the hardhat horde stood three deep, and he was kind of busy – Young’s weather segment came on the big TV mounted to the wall. 

The room became suddenly quiet. No doubt there were guys there from all over New Jersey and the five boroughs. One of our hometowns was surely going to be selected in the day’s Lloyd Lindsay Young lottery. 

On this afternoon, Young held the note, stretching out his hello seemingly forever, while everyone in the bar was suspended in mid-air holding our collective breath. 

When he finished with “Jersey City,” it was as if we’d all chipped in on a lotto ticket and won. The place erupted with a liquid lunch roar. It may have been my imagination, but I’m sure there were guys hoisting their beer mugs saluting Young, while others hugged and clapped each other on the back. It was Bastille Day, V-E Day and V-J Day all at once. 

For all I know, some of them may have filed out into the street to kiss the first stranger they came across. 

Construction worker home from the job. “Honey, Lloyd Lindsay Young said Jersey City today.” “That’s great. Dinner’s ready.”

 Honey West

(This post is part of the Aaron Spellingverse blogathon hosted by Reelweegiemidget)

The way Aaron Spelling told it, he commissioned an artist to come up with a few concepts for an idea Spelling had about a TV show featuring a femme fatale private investigator. When ABC showed interest, he bought the rights to G.G. Fickling’s series of Honey West novels.

Honey and Bruce

G.G. Fickling was a husband and wife writing team, Gloria and Skip Fickling, whose Honey West paperback potboilers were published between 1957 and 1971. Honey, the authors said, was a “beautiful, brainy and a very much determined, sensual female.”

What Spelling seemed to have in mind was for Honey West was an American version of The Avengers; his first choice for the lead was Honor Blackman, who played Cathy Gale in The Avengers and was fresh off the blockbuster Goldfinger film.

The role went instead to Blackman lookalike Anne Francis, whose most prolific film work included Forbidden Planet (1956), Bad Day at Black Rock and Blackboard Jungle (both 1955) before she moved on to a long string of television guest shots.

Honey was introduced in a back-door pilot episode of Burke’s Law in April 1965. She wore slinky evening wear, drove a Jaguar convertible and is referred to twice as a “private eyeful.” Clearly Burke’s equal, they circled each other warily before teaming to solve a murder. Five months later, Honey West was on ABC’s fall schedule.

Smart, confident and sexy, Honey inherited her father’s private eye business and with partner Sam Bolt (played by John Ericson; he and Honey had a wisecracking, do-they-or-don’t-they relationship), they often rely on high-tech (for 1965) gimmickry: a microphone disguised as a martini olive on a toothpick, lipstick radio transmitter, two-way communication devices wired into sunglasses. A disguised TV repair truck serves as a roving surveillance nerve center (an idea borrowed from notorious real-life L.A. private investigator Fred Otash).

Also on the scene was Honey’s pet ocelot Bruce, whose “playful” behavior got a little rough at times. If Honey or Sam needed the occasional tetanus shot, they also spent a lot of time in concussion protocol. No episode was complete without one – or both – of them getting clunked on the back of the head with a pistol butt, despite Honey’s proficiency in judo and karate (which Francis studied prior to shooting).

Sharp and chic, the show started strongly, as Honey and Sam bust a cocaine ring, take on industrial spies, gem smugglers and arsonists, and match wits with Don Draper-style smoothies like Ray Danton and Lloyd Bochner. Every episode seemingly guaranteed a slugfest in the final minutes and a reason for Honey to wear her form-fitting black jumpsuit.

But with the debut of Batman in January 1966, the plots grew sillier and camp: robots, a Robin Hood imposter, “kooky” pop artists, Honey’s evil double (Anne Francis in a dark wig, of course). A random POW! superimposed over a fight scene clearly signaled the show’s death knell.

Francis soldiered on, winning a Golden Globe and being nominated for an Emmy. TV Guide reported that she was pulling in a $5000 weekly salary and owned 20 percent of the show.

Despite all the trappings we’ve come to expect in an Aaron Spelling production: attractive leads, glamour and adventure, Honey was a one-season wonder, a victim of scheduling (going up against Gomer Pyle) and the less-expensive availability of, ironically, the syndicated The Avengers.

Coming full circle, Anne Francis’ last appearance as Honey was in the 1994-95 revival of Burke’s Law, this time as Honey “Best.”

Honey West crashed the all-male adventure series party, paving the way for Charlie’s Angels. While Aaron Spelling’s success suggests that he was never in need of an elevator pitch, he likely had the perfect four-word proposal for his series about the crime-fighting adventures of three women working at a private detective agency in Los Angeles: Honey West times three.

The What If Woodstock

Hard to believe that Woodstock II, as it came to be known, was 50 years ago this month, August 1974. All the news magazines back then, back when their word meant something, were tripping over themselves trying to describe it.

Time, going a bit overboard, called the festival goers "running dogs of capitalism,” picturing us as willing servants to the event’s many corporate sponsors including RJ Reynolds, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and several record companies (and not to mention a few high-profile drug dealers who funneled cash into the event). William Buckley’s National Review called it the “last gasp of hippie idealism.” Newsweek seemed more optimistic, noting that with Richard Nixon leaving the White House that month, Vietnam in the rear-view mirror and the military draft all but over, Woodstock II was a “national redemption.”

For those of us who attended, we look back with fading memory at the little things, totally mismanaged at the original festival, but in 1974 planned and handled correctly: fences that kept everyone without a ticket at bay, food stations, showers, jitneys that took us to and from the festival site, camping grounds with toilets. Luxury.

But it was the movie and the record box set that made Woodstock II a cultural touchstone (a phrase the media somehow missed in 1974). There was nothing dodgy about any of the acts at Woodstock II, grouped here into handy categories.

The usual suspects: Allman Brothers; J. Geils Band; The Band; Eagles; Grateful Dead; Eric Clapton; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Stills, Crosby, Nash and Young

Oddballs not normally associated with festivals: Steely Dan, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Traffic, War, Renaissance 

Anointed forefathers: Muddy Waters, B.B. King

Perennial opening acts: Joe Walsh, America, Blue Oyster Cult, David Bromberg, Garland Jeffries

Game-changers (and here’s where Woodstock II out us into some sort of fugue state): Pink Floyd playing Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety as the moon rose from behind the stage on Saturday night. The unannounced appearance of an obviously drunk John Lennon, backed by several of his Lost Weekend buddies, including Ringo Starr, doing a messy set of 1950s oldies. The brave idea of ending the festival with the funk of James Brown and Stevie Wonder, plus icon-in-the-making Bob Marley. Some didn’t dig the thought of three black acts in a row, but tough shit. Roll over Beethoven.

Nick Drake

Life-changers: Bruce Springsteen, with only two albums to his name, onstage at 9 a.m. Saturday and afterwards vowing to never play another festival or open for anyone else ever again. Friends of Nick Drake convinced him that playing the festival might help lift him out from under the blanket of depression that threatened to swallow him. He later wrote in his memoir that at some point during his performance he underwent “a mystic epiphany” and didn’t look back from there, with more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums over the next two decades.

From the list of Woodstock II acts, the music was clearly beginning to splinter off into different areas, some unforetold in 1969. Try as hard as we might, the sixties were over, man.

More than over

Early on in my career, more than three decades ago, I found myself in a discussion with two older colleagues about when to use “more than” versus “over” in our corporate communications.

They decided – I was more of a spectator in this conversation – “more than” should always be preferable, except when writing about spatial relationships; it wasn’t more than six feet, it would be over six feet. This was the nuts-and-bolts stuff of writing, and I remember thinking I'd gotten pretty far on some natural writing ability, but this was the big leagues. I'd better start paying better attention to the elements of style.

I learned on the job, backed up by the Associated Press stylebook. I stuck to “more than” through the years, whether writing or editing other people’s pieces. I was defending, in my small way, the stability of the universe of grammar – isn’t that something writers are supposed to do?

Last month I was proofing something my boss wrote, and he used “over” when the sentence called for “more than.” I marked it up and got an email back from him with a link to a ten-year old article in Forbes. Citing overwhelming usage, AP was now allowing “over” in place of “more than.”

Ten years ago? How'd I miss that?

The world keeps turning, although sometimes consistency is the gravity keeping our feet on the ground. I just finished what I believe will be my final week as a corporate communicator and I’m okay with moving on from a world where “over” replaces “more than.” Just not here.

One of one hundred, 1972

Songs that enter the Billboard Hot 100 at #100 are obviously at a huge disadvantage when it came to getting airplay and therefore selling records, but a few become unlikely success stories or just have an interesting narrative around them. Here are eight such records from 1972, listed by song title, artist and the date it entered the Hot 100.

Joy – Apollo 100 (1/1/72)

Nut Rocker – Emerson, Lake and Palmer (3/18/72)

Nights in White Satin – Moody Blues (8/5/72)

Somewhere between the Beatles’ studio innovations and the excesses of prog rock, symphonic rock was a trend that mostly affecting British bands. Apollo 100 came up with a rousing, bouncy, harpsichord-driven version of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring that hit #6 in the U.S. Emerson, Lake and Palmer, never synonymous with fun, redid Nut Rocker, a sped-up arrangement of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker originally done by L.A. studio band B. Bumble and the Stingers (#23 in 1961). A live favorite, and certainly a relief after sitting through concert versions of Pictures At An Exhibition and Tarkus, the single died at #70. The Moody Blues were originally a British Invasion act that leaned heavily on American R&B covers. They disappeared after their 1964 hit Go Now, bought Edwardian suits and a mellotron, then recorded Nights in White Satin with the London Symphony Orchestra. It was their best-selling single, going to #2 in the U.S. 

The Moody Blues

Taxi – Harry Chapin (3/11/72)

Did you know that Taxi is 6:40 long? It feels much shorter, a credit to its production and noirish storyline. Or that Harry Chapin recorded a sequel to Harry and Sue in 1980, called Sequel? (It was something better left alone; Harry should have just kept the change). Chapin’s bass player, John Wallace, sings the soaring falsetto bridge which always felt somewhat reminiscent of the “sail on silver girl” coda to Bridge Over Troubled Water. Taxi stayed on the charts for a long 16 weeks without ever getting into the top 20 (#24). 

Sylvia’s Mother – Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show (4/1/72)

The Cover of Rolling Stone – Dr. Hook and the Medicine How (12/2/72)

Sylvia’s Mother went to #2, Rolling Stone to #6. Both written by Shel Silverstein, who also wrote A Boy Named Sue and someone whose bio includes award-winning children’s book author and Playboy Mansion predator. 

Down On Me – Janis Joplin (7/15/72)

Record companies have no misgivings about releasing, or in this case re-releasing, posthumous recordings. Otis Redding singles and Jimi Hendrix albums released after their deaths were usually weak reminders of past glories haunting the record stores but not the Hot 100. The same fate awaited Down On Me. In 1967 (credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company) it got to #42. This time it only inched up to #91. 

Hi, Hi, Hi – Wings (12/16/72)

This was a mystery when it came out, and not just for impenetrable lyrics about a “sweet banana” and a “body gun,” although Paul McCartney swore he’s singing “polygon” there, which doesn’t make much sense either. The song felt too loose, chaotic, to be the usually precise McCartney production unless he was having flashbacks to Helter Skelter. Thanks to the title, the obligatory banning by the BBC followed as the song went to #5 in the U.K. and #10 in the U.S.

Tubi clearance sale

Three movies that I’d bookmarked for future viewing on Tubi were about to depart the channel, so I had to move them up in my queue and watch them quickly.  

I’m not sure why Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) begins and ends with “Hooray for Hollywood” – it folds into the "L.A. Noir" category, but much of it takes place in Malibu and Mexico, with no mention of films or filmmaking. 

Elliot Gould plays the venerable private detective Philip Marlowe with an insouciant charm, a hipster anti-hero and the only character in the film who wears a business suit, even on the beach, smokes (constantly, striking wooden matches on any flat surface within reach), or has zero interest in a sorority of potheads who practice topless yoga on the balcony across from his apartment.

If you're looking for Altman’s sometimes leftfield casting, The Long Goodbye includes Jim Bouton, with a pivotal role (but thankfully few lines), and Nina van Pallandt, a 1970 headline maker thanks to her role in the silly 1970 Clifford Irving-Howard Hughes “scandal.”

Toss in the excellent Gould, Sterling Hayden playing to type as a blocked Hemingwayesque writer and Henry Gibson, going against the grain as a tough-guy, and you have the best of the post-Bogart Philip Marlowe movies.

The social order within the Rat Pack is never more apparent than in Salt and Pepper (1968). Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin share top billing in a drama like Some Came Running; Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis get stuck with this comedy (which they co-produced) about nightclub owners in “Swinging London” who find themselves involved in stopping a military coup of the U.K.

Sammy isn’t just the co-owner of the club, he’s also the nightly entertainment, and gets a big song and dance number, frugging and whipping off a “solo” on an electric guitar that isn’t plugged in. He only needed to wait a year for his real shot for a big number in a big movie, The Rhythm of Life in Sweet Charity.

A fascinating subtext throughout, knowing how Lawford and Davis died, is watching them forever lighting up, smoking or having a cigarette smoldering between their fingers. There’s no oxygen tank assistant listed in the credits, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.

One year after Dirty Harry comes Hickey and Boggs (1972), with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby menacingly pointing big guns. This is one dark and brutal movie. Culp (who directed) and Cosby play private detectives financially and emotionally at the end of the line. As a disillusioned Cosby says, “There’s nothing left of this profession. It’s not about anything.”

But even as both are prone to confusion about their identity, purpose and meaning in life, they also buoy each other.

The plot is somewhat convoluted, but a missing person case leads to a string of deaths (a lot of deaths) and shootouts (including a firefight in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium and on the field of the Los Angeles Coliseum).

Professional hitmen, Black Power nationalists, dark bars at midday, Mexican immigrants, sunbaked urban settings – as a noir movie about the “seamy underbelly” of Los Angeles in the 1970s, Hickey and Boggs is an underrated gem.

Stuck a feather in his hat

Friedrich Wilhelm Steuben (AKA Baron von Steuben) was born into a Prussian military family in 1730. He enlisted in the Prussian Army as a teenager and put in 17 years of military service, rising to the rank of captain. He was abruptly discharged in 1763, then spent 11 years as a private citizen.

But Steuben yearned for military life and when Benjamin Franklin made overtures to have him join the Revolutionary War and help lead an inexperienced army of farmers on its heels battling far superior British troops, he jumped at the chance.

Working without compensation, Steuben arrived in the colonies to find a ragged and undisciplined Continental Army. He established military drills, paid attention to housekeeping details like placing latrines and mess halls on opposite ends of encampments, and taught battle tactics unknown to the colonials, like how to use a bayonet in close-quarter combat. 

Now prepared and battle-ready, the war shifted in the favor of the colonials. Steuben won over George Washington, becoming a trusted advisor.

Baron von Steuben was also apparently openly gay at a time when the term “homosexual” had yet to be invented and “gay” meant something else entirely.

Steuben remained unmarried his entire life and there is no mention of female companions in any of his correspondence. He took on several long-time companions, younger men who served as aides-de-camp and translators (Steuben spoke no English, only profanities). At Valley Forge he met two officers in their twenties, William North and Benjamin Walker, and legally adopted them as his “sons,” able to inherit his estate, a common practice before gay marriage was legal.

There is also a story that at Valley Forge Steuben organized, at his own cost, a dinner party for the troops, demanding everyone who attend be nude or in their underwear. Maybe it was his way of saying that rank didn’t matter, we’re all the same underneath. Maybe not.

Steuben may have been openly gay, but the specter of sodomy laws were always present, with a maximum penalty of death in Virginia. (Thomas Jefferson tried to reduce it to "simply" castration).

With the war over, Steuben was discharged with honor, became a U.S. citizen and a thankful New Jersey presented him with the use of an estate, known as Steuben House, located in New Bridge Landing (today River Edge). The home had been confiscated from a Brit loyalist and it served briefly as George Washington’s military headquarters. Steuben and William North lived together there for several years before Steuben moved to New York State, where he died in 1794.

You can become blasé growing up so close to history – Google Maps says it’s a 23-minute walk from where I grew up to Steuben House – but thanks to many school trips, Baron von Steuben was as familiar a name to us as George Washington or Alexander Hamilton. The place always had a ghostly presence, sitting as it did among busy roadways and faceless garden apartments (named The Steuben Arms).

Ironically, it’s also just a half mile away from another New Jersey landmark. Club Feathers opened in 1978, making it the state’s oldest gay nightclub and currently the only one in North Jersey. Its a place where, according to one online review, people can feel safe, welcome and accepted. 

Sounds like the kind of place Baron von Steuben might have liked hanging out in.

Much of the historical information about Steuben is taken from “Washington’s Gay General,” a graphic novel written by Josh Trujillo and illustrated by Levi Hastings.

 

One of one hundred, 1965 

Songs that enter the Billboard Hot 100 at #100 are obviously at a huge disadvantage when it came to getting airplay and therefore selling records, but a few become unlikely success stories or just have an interesting narrative around them. Here are seven such records from 1965, listed by song title, artist and the date it entered the Hot 100.

Whipped Cream – Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass (2/20/65): The title cut of the ubiquitous album whose cover mesmerized us kids who frequented record stores. There’s a video on YouTube featuring one those guys who go around haunting thrift shops and garage sales for records showing off the literally dozens of copies of this album that he's picked up over the years. Never to be confused with Pat Cooper’s excellent parody.

The Mouse – Soupy Sales (4/24/65): Even with Soupy promoting the song (and dance) on Ed Sullivan, The Mouse wasn’t the national hit that I thought it was, only charting up to #76, but it hit #6 on New York City radio (WABC). The Mouse wasn’t much of a dance, mostly a lot of face-twitching but it was even easier to do than the Twist.

From A Window – Chad & Jeremy (7/10/65): From a Window was written by Paul McCartney, attributed to Lennon- McCartney, and a big hit for Billy J. Kramer with The Dakotas. For some reason, World Artists thought it would be a good idea to release Chad & Jeremy’s cover less than a year later; it peaked at #97. 

The “In” Crowd – Ramsey Lewis Trio (7/31/65): The Ramsey Lewis Trio featured Lewis on piano, drummer Redd Holt and bassist Eldee Young. The In Crowd reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, sold more than one million copies, won a Grammy and gave Lewis entrée to record a slew of jazzed-up pop songs (A Hard Day’s Night, Hang On Sloopy, Wade in the Water), and a music career model that guitarist Wes Montgomery tried to follow, but with much less success. Holt and Young formed their own Young-Holt Unlimited and had a hit record with the Ramsey Lewis soundalike, Soulful Strut.   

What Are We Going To Do – David Jones (8/14/65): David Jones was from Manchester when it was cool to be a Brit, personable, photogenic and had a singing contract with the record company for Columbia Pictures–Screen Gems. As Davey Jones, he was an easy call to be cast as one of the Monkees. 

Jenny Take A Ride – Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels (12/11/65): Second only to You Lost That Lovin’ Feeling as the year’s best white soul record. 

Uptight – Stevie Wonder (12/18/65): One of Motown’s signature songs with a horn riff said to be inspired by Satisfaction and 15-year old Stevie’s committed vocal. Why this didn’t debut any higher on the charts is a mystery. Maybe Motown was spending most of its resources promoting the Supremes?

The List of Adrian Messenger

(This post is part of the It’s In the Name of The Title Blogathon hosted by Reelweegiemidget and Taking Up Room)

The List of Adrian Messenger is one of those Golden Age of Detective Fiction yarns that revolve around gathering clues and solving crimes as if they were puzzles. The plot is a bit convoluted, as it relies on an improbable coincidence or two, but essentially the list in question contains the names of people whose seemingly unrelated accidental deaths Adrian Messenger believes are in truth linked murders. He asks a friend, a retired MI5 agent (George C. Scott) to investigate.

As it turns outs, there’s a killer murdering his way to a royal title and the regal manor that goes with it, wearing several elaborate disguises to hide his identity. “One man who becomes many men,” is how Scott’s character puts it.

The List of Adrian Messenger was George C. Scott’s fourth movie and first as a good guy. He doesn’t have any scenery-chewing scenes as in Patton or The Hospital, but he maintains a reserved conviction and clipped accent that never wavers even when he’s muttering clues to himself. He’s downright Holmesian in his doggedness and attention to the smallest details.

This is a mannered production; all the characters are courteous to a fault, somewhat chilly and distanced, and there’s a climactic fox hunt that ends with a gruesome death by farming machine. Today, the film is probably best remembered for the novelty of casting five of the era’s most recognizable actors – Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra – each heavily disguised, allowing audiences to guess at just who was playing whom.

In the movie’s epilogue each actor pulled off their prosthetic latex pieces and spirt-gummed hair for five big reveals. But the real revelation was that only Douglas, Mitchum and Curtis appeared in the actual film, with Lancaster and Sinatra just participating in the finale. Uncredited actors played their roles with voices dubbed in by versatile voice actor Paul Frees.

Guess who?

“It wasn’t grand theft, but it was pretty close,” admitted John Huston, the film’s director. But what Huston did cook up was a movie that was winkingly self-referential, a disguised killer lurking among a cast of disguised actors. The List of Adrian Messenger was meta before there was meta.

In a larger sense, this movie, along with The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (released a year later with Tony Randall hiding behind all seven faces) were among the first to acknowledge the bizarre make-up jobs that are central to each film by giving them prominence on their posters. And maybe in their own way helping trigger an interest in movie special effects that has only grown since.

Not to mention that whenever Rollin Hand (Martin Landau) pulled off yet another latex-face disguise to acknowledge the successful completion of a Mission: Impossible adventure the show was – whether intentionally or not – hearkening back to The List of Adrian Messenger.

This movie is a curio, but one worth checking out.

One of one hundred, 1968

Songs that entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #100 are obviously at a huge disadvantage when it comes to getting airplay and selling records, but a few become unlikely success stories or just have an interesting narrative around them. Here are eight such records from 1968, listed by song title, artist and the date it entered the Hot 100.  

A Tribute to a King – William Bell (4/27/68) Despite the timing and title, this isn’t about Martin Luther King, but Otis Redding. Redding and William Bell both recorded for Stax Records, located several blocks from the Lorraine Motel where King died. Black musicians often stayed there; it’s where Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd stopped by Wilson Pickett’s room and wrote In the Midnight Hour. 

Here Comes The Judge – The Magistrates (6/1/68) One of three songs that entered the charts this week with the same title, one of those weird cultural moments that happened when everybody watched the same TV shows. The Magistrates’ record died quickly while Shorty Long’s (also released that week) went to #8. Two weeks later Pigmeat Markham's (who originated the judge routine in the chitlin’ circuit) version came out, which today sounds like the first rap record. 

Soul Meeting – The Soul Clan (7/27/68) The Soul Clan – a name that was probably picked quite purposefully – consisted of perennial soul music contenders Solomon Burke, Don Covay, Joe Tex, Arthur Conley and Ben E. King. They asked Atlantic Records for a $1 million advance, envisioning seed money to buy real estate in black neighborhoods and helping black-owned businesses. Atlantic balked, the idea fizzled out and the group recorded this one single. 

On The Road Again – Canned Heat (8/10/68) In 1968 you could get away with recording country blues against the background of a droning Indian tamboura. Canned Heat had two hit singles and recorded several albums that blended into one boogie-fest that all sounded the same. Thanks to the appearance of lead singer Bob “The Bear” Hite, who looked every bit of that nickname, Canned Heat was featured in the Monterey Pop and Woodstock films. 

Fly Me To The Moon – Bobby Womack (8/17/68) In those endless online debates about who does and doesn’t belong in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, nobody ever brings up Womack – possibly because no one knows he was inducted or what he did to get there. 

Naturally Stoned – The Avant Garde (8/31/68) Fluffy pop written by future conservative radio host and anti-vaxxer Chuck Woolery. 

Lady Madonna – Fats Domino (9/7/68) Fats Domino covers Paul McCartney’s Fats Domino homage. 

Ride My See-Saw – The Moody Blues (10/12/68) Beyond the flutes, mellotrons and drippy poetry/lyrics, The Moody Blues did occasionally know their way around a song that rocked.

Feeling a draft 

From my first days as a football and New York Giants fan, I realized the importance of the college draft. 

In 1971, I was home from school for some reason and desperate for an update on the NFL draft being conducted that day. Nothing on WINS, the news station, or WNEW, “home of the New York Giants” – only Knicks and Rangers scores from the night before. It wasn’t until the 5 p.m. news on WNEW that I learned that the Giants’ first round pick was, and this is as it was announced, Ralph “Rocky” Thompson of West Texas State. Wait, we took a guy named Ralph? West Texas State? 

Draft coverage in our local newspaper The Bergen Record was pathetic: a list of teams with names underneath. I needed to know who got picked, by which team and in what round. In order. I began buying The New York Times on the day following the draft, with its complete listing in order, cryptic shorthand explaining the lineage of each pick, traded from one team to another. At one point in the 80s, with the draft occurring while we were visiting Florida and with The Times nowhere in sight, I found that USA Today gave a similar recap. 

The Times draft posting was valuable enough that at one point, I went through back editions at our city library on an ancient microfilm viewer with dials you turned to advance each page and made copies of previous drafts. 

The NFL opened its doors to the proceedings to spectators at some point, and in 1975 I drove to midtown Manhattan, and with absolute faith in my ability to parallel park my Toyota Corona into the tightest spaces possible, found a spot on the street and attended the draft at the New York Hilton. Sitting in the ballroom balcony, I stayed for an hour or two; my recollection is hazy. I remember Pete Rozelle announcing a couple of first-round choices, and I took a sheet that the NFL passed out detailing the trades that had been made thus far that morning. One of those things I wish I’d held on to. 

Rozelle and fans at the 1975 draft

In 1980 ESPN began broadcasting the draft live. When I was reading meters, I could track the draft’s progress, house by house, sneaking a peak at televisions tuned to ESPN or in a quick conversation with a customer. Much later, on a business trip to Detroit, I put the draft on the hotel TV, fell asleep, then woke up in the middle of the night with the first round well over. 

I won’t fall asleep in front of the TV tonight, but once the Giants make their pick, I’ll head for bed. And the journey of how we get our news keeps changing. With the draft now broadcast on something like eight different channels and services, and online coverage eating up as many column inches and megabytes as a presidential election, there’ll be no need to buy tomorrow’s Times.