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.