***The Stuff Of Dreams- Harry Madden, “The Grifter,” R.I.P.

“Hey, Peter Paul, long time no see,” yelled Harry Madden, seemingly forever known as “The Grifter” in North Adamsville childhood lore, from across Commonwealth Avenue near Kenmore Square, or better for those who do not know Boston, near Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox, on a hot summer’s day in 1967. Peter Paul Markin, a little high and in a funk thinking about his latest also seemingly endless problems with Joyell, took a couple flashes to recognized the Grifter, not having seen him in a couple of years. A couple of youth-changing 1960s years so that the Grifter’s eternal sharkskin suit, white shirt, thin, really almost stringy brown tie, and pattern leather black shoes, shined to a mirror look see, short 1950s style hair, short, with no facial hair showing anywhere, seemed strange in the new faded blue jeans, ratty tee-shirt, long-haired, bearded, scraggly or not, hard rock night.

What was not strange was the Grifter’s request, or rather demand, as he crossed the street and met up with Peter Paul, “Markin, lend me a hundred dollars, I’ve got a hot deal, a hot grass (marijuana, for the innocent, or unworldly) deal going down coming in straight from Mexico where I can make a score, a big score, and be on easy street, finally on easy street just like I said I would be back in those North Adamsville days when we dreamed our dreams. I‘ll pay you back double, hey, why don’t you give me two hundred and we can be partners and split down the right down the middle.”

Markin, warily and wearily in equal parts, replied quickly that he did not have two hundred dollars but that he could see his way clear to lending the hundred, for old times sake, and because, frankly, although not every word of their conversation is being restated here, the Grifter held a spell over the usually rational Markin, and everybody else whom he had ever encountered for more than two minutes. That was the Grifter’s charm, and his claim to North Adamsville fame. So the pair made their way a few blocks over to Markin’s tiny student ghetto apartment on Westland Avenue to get the money, share a little something for the head(that aforementioned grass, okay) from Markin’s stash, and talk over old times. That was the last time Markin saw Harry Madden, blessed childhood Harry Madden, alive.

Who knows when Harry became the Grifter. Maybe it was when they, along with a couple of other Adamsville South Elementary School classmates, decided that they would sell Kool-Aid one hot summer’s day in the early 1950s, Markin was not exactly sure of the year but it was when they were very young, in order to raise enough of a stake to go down to Carter’s Variety Store and load up on penny candy. Penny candy being the po’ boy’s (and girl’s too) way of satisfying their sweet tooth by buying it by the piece. Things like tootsie rolls, necco wafers, mary janes (no, not dope), chunkies, and so on. Stuff that dear mothers would not throw by the bagful into shopping carts on shopping days.

Well, the boys set up the Kool-Aid stand without much of a problem, using an old wooden crate for a stand, placing cups, and pitchers of Orange and Grape Kool-Aid on display for thirsty customers to dare to walk by at two cents a glass. And that day was a very hot one, and the neighborhood kids had a great thirst, a great thirst for those pitchers of Kool-Aid coming off the playing fields behind the old school. Harry, and he was just Harry then, came up with the bright idea that they could increase their profits and make enough money to get ice cream cones rather than just cheapjack penny candy if they added water, and, well, really just diluted the product a little. And that night, as they licked their chocolate, strawberry or vanilla cones amid satisfied chuckles, Harry had a band of brother that would follow him through hell.

Maybe it was when the band of brothers was twelve, perhaps thirteen, Markin again was not sure, when Harry, now already called the Grifter, came up with the idea that they should pool their lunch money together and buy a lottery ticket. And to hear the Grifter give his spiel they would thereafter all be on easy street, and maybe have so much money that they could leave dreary old school for the has-beens (the Grifter’s term for anybody who did not get in on one his schemes, without questions). Sold, idea sold as usual, when the Grifter put on the press for one of his “hot” ideas.

And the idea was sold solidly when they “hit,” for twenty dollars a few days later. What the others, Markin included, did not know was that the Grifter had just said they had made that hit, what after all did they know of lotteries except as the road to easy street. The Grifter had used his own money as the first prize, and all the later funds collected from his boys that whole school year went into his pocket for his real scheme- working some shell game that he lost the money on when a couple of rough customers stole his dough after telling him the facts of life. The facts of life being in this case that Lefty Looney held the exclusive rights to who and who did not promote shell games in Adamsville. It was only by accident that one of the band, Bizarre Benny not Markin, found out from a cousin the details of the Grifter’s game, having lost a few bucks at it.

Or maybe it was just from the womb that the Grifter had some gene, some grifter X or Y or G gene, embedded in his life system that made him an such an easy mark for the lure of easy street, for the bright lights of “being somebody,” some easy way somebody. In any case, in the end it was not pretty, as Markin heard the story a couple of years after that Kenmore Square chance meeting (or was it), while the Grifter’s friends and family were standing around the funeral home talking about his various schemes over the years, and about how he could have been somebody, somebody no question, if he had spent just a little less time worrying about easy street.

Apparently Harry, Markin says let’s call him Harry now at least to show a little respect for what he could have been and to kind of wash the grifter thing away from his memory, actually did use Markin’s hundred dollars to finance a wholesale drug purchase (marijuana, ganja, herb, weed, whatever you may have called it then, or call it now), sold the stuff on the street, making enough of a profit to make a bigger purchase, and more profit. Things looked very much like easy street just then. And in those early days selling dope to students, young working class kids, and even adults who hated their day jobs was as easy as hanging around the Boston Common, whispering a few words, and having people flock to you like lemmings to the sea. Especially if you had the good stuff, stuff like Acapulco Gold and Columbian Red, and Harry had it.

Then, as usual, Harry had to go one step beyond, although if you follow a certain logic Harry’s idea was not that crazy, starting out anyway. See the streets were okay for a while, but the legal questions, the surfeit of dealers and the decline of quality was killing the street market, or driving it indoors. Harry, sensing this, decided that he would take his tidy profits and buy into distributorship, a free lance distributorship. In short, sell to the street dealers and go indoors himself. And for a while he was again successful but the two things happened. The drug cartels at the higher levels were squeezing the Harrys out and putting their own people in the distribution system, and were moreover beginning to push high profit cocaine more than weed, and the profit margins at Harry’s level for the good stuff (that Gold and Red) were declining. Harry could daily see himself sinking, sinking back into Adamsville oblivion.

Harry though was never short of ideas, especially ideas on the fly. Harry came up with an idea, actually two inter-related ideas. First, to raise more capital he would cut his dope, cut it with oregano, twigs, whatever, to his street dealers. Second, he would, cut through the system and bring his own dope out of Mexico. Now cutting dope was generally something street punks did, did for the weekend “hippies” who were glad, glad as hell, to even have the idea, the essence of dope. However for a distributor this was poison. Now a lot of people have the image that your average street dealer, dealing out of his or her pocket, is just a mellow head spreading the good news.

But see Harry was dealing with street dealers from the ghetto and barrio then and cutting product on them was well, death. And before long Harry was forced to leave town or face the unknown wrath of several important street dealers who would just as soon cut up a skinny white hustler like Harry as look at him. According to one report, one unconfirmed report but with the ring of truth about it, Harry was within a day or two of “as look at him.”

And, of course, by then Harry had, straight-out had, to flee to Mexico to get right. Of course as well in Mexico, Sonora, Mexico as it turned out, Harry found out to his regret, while one could have all the money in the drug world if one was not connected, and more importantly as the structure of the cartels was getting in order, not part of the distribution system you were out of luck. Harry, naturally, believed he was born under a lucky star, he was still alive wasn’t he, and tried to arrange a large purchase to take out of Mexico, to make things right in Boston. But see in Sonora every drug deal went through Pablo Sanchez, or it didn’t go down.

When Senor Sanchez, or one of his agents, heard about it (through a guy who worked for the guy Harry was putting the deal together with from what was gathered) Harry was a marked man. The rest of the story is plain as day to see coming and, moreover, Markin got pretty shaky telling the rest of it but they found Harry looking very much like Swiss cheese in a back-alley Sonora street, face down. Yes, Harry, R.I.P.

Note: Markin wants one and all to know that Harry Madden was a grifter not a grafter. Harry was no ten-percent man taking some small piece of some other guy’s action, and practically on bended knees praying for that cut. No Harry, like a true grifter, small or large, made his own deals, big or small, good or bad, and he was the guy who gave the cuts, if that was his pleasure. Got it.

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Stuff Of Dreams- Harry’s Dreams- Richard Widmark's “Night And The City"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Night and the City.

DVD Review

Night And The City , Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Herbert Lom, directed by George Dassin, Paramount Studios, 1946

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip- synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) Some, like the film reviewed here, Night and the City, while not strong on plot line or femme fatale-ness (ouch) get a nod for other reasons. Little reasons like having a young Harry Fabian, oops, Richard Widmark, practically scream out his grifter’s dreams with his expressive face. And have that face, the faces of other characters in the film, and places beautifully directed and captured on film. Not bad for a B-rated movie.

But now to the characterizations that make this such an interesting and well-acted (by Richard Widmark anyway) film. You know, know deep in your bones, if you were brought up in a working class or poor neighborhood, and maybe in other neighborhoods too, the grifter Harry Fabian played here by Widmark, The guy, and it was almost always a guy back in the days, who was smart, well smart enough, friendly, almost too friendly, always willing to accept a little dough, a little touch dough for his endeavor, always with a little larceny in his heart, always looking for easy street, always looking for the short cut to glory, and never quite getting there. And always, always, having to be fast of foot, and fast of sneak away to stay just the south side of the law when that surefire scheme also goes south. That’s our Harry.

And Harry was the guy that your mother warned you about from early on to not be like or you would "wind up just like him." And that was the magic mantra that held you in check, for a while anyway until you got your own Harry thoughts. And if I had to visualize my neighborhood Harrys then one Richard Widmark, a young Widmark would not be a bad way to do so. No question jut-jawed, slightly hazy wide-eyed, made for no heavy-lifting, light of foot and made to slip into small dark places Widmark would make the top of any crime noir aficionados idea of guy that fits the bill in this genre.

And grifter Harry had a dream which is central to the plot. The dream like those of a million other grifters, drifters and midnight sifters, hell just every poor guy looking to get out from under, to get out from under, and to, as Harry constantly put it, “be somebody.” Yes, that's the ticket, and that idea drives the story line (and Harry’s angst). See Harry’s dreams, Harry's immediate post World War II London-set dreams are not earth- shattering to say the least, at least on the face of it. Just to corner the wrestling racket market and become an important impresario to the plebeian masses that throng to such events. Problem is, as is always the grifter’s fate, the market s already cornered, already sewed up and already underworld muscle-protected.

So Harry tried an end-around using the head wrestling mobster’s (Herbert Lom) father to promote real wrestling, that is Greco-Roman wrestling which is said head mobster’s father’s specialty. Yes, I know already you can see Harry’s problem a mile away, even if he cannot. Other than about twelve hard-core Olympic Games aficionados nobody cares, wants to care, or will ever care about Greco-Roman wrestling. Certainly not against the masked marvel, bad boys, “real” wrestling that is (now) driven by teenage boys (and teenage girls, a little). But that is Harry’s opening and he is bound to take it, working his “magic” on the father who is some kind of Greco-roman aficionado maniac himself. The clash is on, including a stellar defense of Greco-Roman wrestling in the flesh by the old man.

Of course like all old men who try to do a young man’s work he overexerts himself and dies after the heat of battle. Such things happen, but for Harry this is the kiss of death because as it turns out head mobster was fond of his father, very fond. Harry’s number is therefore up. And watching the scenes and gritty faces of the actors in the process of that number being up drives the last portion of the film and makes this a true noir classic.

Note: No femme fatales here, obviously, but there are women who enter Harry’s life. One, an unhappy wife of a mid-level grafter, wants to use Harry to get out from under her own heavy burden of marriage to said grafter. More importantly, and a little incongruously, Harry has a straight girlfriend, of sorts, played by Gene Tierney, who loves/protects him through think and thin. And who Harry doesn’t have enough sense to stick by, except when he is in trouble- needing quick dough mainly. It was painful from my own knowledge of such things to see Harry rummaging through her pocketbook looking for dough to make some awry deal right, to allow him to “be somebody” for another five minutes. Whoa.

***The Real Scoop Behind “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing the classic Great Depression song, Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?.

“Hey, brother (or sister), can you spare a dime?,” followed by “Got an extra cigarette, pal (or gal)?” Ya, Billy Bailey, used-to-be brash corner boy William James Bailey, certainly had the panhandler lingo down, down pat, after only a few days on the bum. Worst though on the bum in his own home town, his ever-loving’ roots, Boston. On the bum this time, this time a real fall and not just some short money, pick up some spare change, free campsite, Volkswagen bus pick-up sharing stews, brews and dope hitchhike road looking for the great blue-pink American West night with some honey, some Angelica honey, bum like a few years back.

Those days he practically made a religion, ya a religion out of living “free,” living out of the knapsack, living under bridge, no sweat, if need be. But those “golden days” dried up a few years back and now here in 1976 he was facing a real skid row choice. How it happened he will get to along the way but first let’s set the parameters of what 1976 panhandling, to put an eloquent name on it for “bumming”, shiftless bumming , looked like and how to survive in the new age of everybody me-ing themselves, even with people who were not on the bum. Christ, lord the times were hard, hard times in old Babylon, no question.

See, a guy, a guy who called himself “Shorty” McGee for obviously physical reasons but who knows what his real name was, maybe he didn’t remember either after all the rum-dum sterno heat years and the endless backsides of skid row haunts, that he had hitched up with for a minute, an overnight minute at the Salvation Harbor Lights Center over in the South End kind of hipped him to the obvious tricks of the new down-at the-heels road. Like putting the two requests together when you were panhandling. See, Shorty said it was all a matter of psychology, of working the crowd, the downtown crowd, the bustling Park Street Station crowd, and the Copley Square sunning themselves crowd just right to get you out of their sights and back to whatever sweet thing they were doing. So you endlessly put the two requests together, time after time after time, and always. And what happened was that when they turned you down for the dough, or maybe took you literally and pieced you off with just a dime, Christ a dime that wouldn’t even buy a cup of joe, could feel good about themselves, if they smoked, smoked cigarettes anyway, by passing you a butt. Billy thought, nice, this Shorty really does have it worked out just about right. Of course dimes and drags were not going to get him out from under, not this time.

Well, rather than leaving the reader out in the dark, Billy Bailey this fair 1976 spring was not just on the bum, but on the lam as well, keeping his head very far down just in case there were some guys who were looking for him, or worst, the cops, in case some irate victim of one of his scams took a notion to “fry his ass.” Of course he was counting on them, those victims, being mainly friends and acquaintances, of not putting “the heat” on him since he had already promised through the grapevine that he would make restitution. But we are getting a little ahead of the story, let’s step back.

The early 1970s were not kind to “free spirits” the previous name for what on this day were “free-loaders” and Billy, well, got behind in his expenses, and his bills, his ever expanding bills. But see the transition from free “s” to free “l” caught him off-guard, moreover he was just then in the throes of a fit of “the world owes me a living,” a serious fit. Why? Well see, he as a pauper son of the desperate working poor, “felt” that since he missed out on the golden age benefits of his youth that he was to make up the difference by putting the “touch” on the richer (not really rich but richer, no question) friends that he had acquired through his doing this and that, mainly high-end drug connections.

The long and short it was that he would “borrow” money off Friend A under some scam pretext of putting it to good use (yes, his good use, including several long airplane fight trips to California and other points west-no more hitchhike roads for this moving up the food chain lad) and then borrow dough off Friend B to cover some of his debt to Friend A. Something like an unconscious classic Ponzi scheme, as it turned out. And then when he got to Friend X or somewhere around there things got way too complicated and he started “kiting” checks, and on and on as far deep into his white collar crime mind a he could think. That could only go on a for a short while and he calculated that "short while" almost to the day when he would have to go “underground” and that day had sprung up a couple of weeks ago.

So it took no accountant or smart-ass attorney to know that dimes and drags were not going to get him back on his feet. Nor many of the schemes that Shorty had outlined over at Harbor Lights as ways to grab quick cash were. These were chicken feed for his needs, even his immediate needs, although some of the scams would fill the bill for a rum-dum or life-long skid row bum. But here is the secret, the deep secret that Billy Bailey held in his heart, after a few nights on bus station benches, cold spring night park benches, a night bout under the Andersen Bridge over by old haunt Harvard Square, and a few nights that he would rather not discuss just in case, he finally figured out, figured out kicking and screaming, that the world did not owe him a living and that if he wanted to survive past thirty he had better get the stardust and grit out of his eyes. But just this minute, just this undercover spring 1976 minute, he needed to work the Commons. “Hey, brother, hey sister, can you spare a dime?” “Pal, have you got an extra cigarette?”

Postscript: Not all wisdom ends happily, and not all good intentions grow to fruition. Yes, Billy paid off his debts to his friends, mostly. However, Billy Bailey was killed while “muling” in a drug war shoot-out in Juarez, Mexico in late 1979.

***Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night- Hey Guys, Crime Doesn’t Pay- John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” - A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for John Huston's, The Asphalt Jungle.

DVD Review

The Asphalt Jungle, starring Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, James Whitimore, (and a small, but striking, role by a very young Marilyn Monroe) directed by John Huston, M-G-M Pictures, 1950

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) I have even tried to salvage some noir efforts by touting their plot lines, and others by their use of shadowy black and white cinematography to overcome plot problems. Like The Third Man (and, in that case, the edgy musical score, with more zither than you probably ever thought possible, as well). That brings us this film under review, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, starring Sam Jaffee as the wizened, harden old con trying for one last chance at “easy street” with a big caper, and Sterling Hayden as, well, the “hooligan,” the “muscle”, the guy who has to clean up after, but also is looking for his own version of that easy street.

From the headline to this review you can tell that I have kind of telegraphed the problem here; crime doesn’t pay, okay. But that “wisdom” has not stopped a million "from hunger" guys (and not a few dames) from taking the quick plunge to easy street since way back, way back in phaoroah’s times probably. And it has not stopped Hollywood directors and producers from using that theme as the plot line for their cinematic efforts, some good, some bad, here very good. But in this film the beauty of the thing, despite the familiarity of the plot line and the predictable ending, is that the acting carries the day, especially by Jaffee and Hayden.

Doc (the role played by Sam Jaffee), old time con that he is, just released from stir for some previous big plan crime, had plenty of time on his hands up at the pen to work through his latest plan for easy street. A big plan involving knocking over a big jewelry store, having the merchandise “fenced,” and then off he goes to sun and senoritas, young senoritas by the way, the dirty old man, down in Mexico. Mexico before the drug cartels.

Such an effort need up front cash, and some major backing, to procure the master safe cracker, the expert wheelman and, just in case things get rough, the hooligan,(here Bix, played by Sterling Hayden), the guy who takes all the pot-shots for short money and also to secure a conduit to fence this high roller stuff after the heist. And that is where things start to go awry.

See, one of reasons that crime doesn’t pay, pay in the long or short haul, is that not everybody is on the level. Sure the safe cracker, the wheel man, and the hooligan, the “proles” are on the level. Especially farm boy Bix turned loose in the ugly, asphalt jungle city just looking for a stake to get back home to Kentucky and out of the city soils. Problem is the up-front dough guys, one way or the other, are not on the level. One has no dough (although it was easy to see why that was so since he was, well let’s just call it “keeping time” with a young honey, played by Marilyn Monroe, and even I could see where keeping her "happy”, and gladly, would eat up a guy’s wallet), and the other will wilt under the slightest pressure, police pressure. A few slap arounds and he will sing like a bird, the rat. But who had time to check with the Better Business Bureau when you are in the rackets to check the “fence’s” references (and bank book). Needless to say that while the jewel heist is pulled off, although not without complications, deadly complications in the end, the rest of the story is one where everyone in the theater gets the very painful message already telegraphed above.

Director Huston, however, is aiming at more, as he mentions in the introduction to the film, he wants to investigate that thin line between the bad guys and the good guys, and the good guys are not always the cops and respectable folks. Doc, for instance, is cool customer, and although he makes a few serious mistakes of judgment in whom to, and who not, trust he is a likeable crook. Bix, ditto, because he is a stand-up guy, gives one hundred per cent, for what he is paid to do, and does not leave his buddies in the lurch.

There is no real femme fatale here driving the male action forward to their oblivions but there is Doll, and Doll, Doll has got it bad for Bix, ya, real bad, and so the tensions between them help round out this film. Doll though never figured out the ABCs-that hanging around wrong gees, even stand-up gees, was anything but heartbreak hotel. But sometimes that is the way dames are, thankfully.

Note: I have on previous occasions needed to act the scold in regard to certain actions of the characters in crime noir films. Here I have to take Brother Hayden to task for not learning that crime does not pay. Hayden played Johnny in the 1953 crime noir The Killing, also a caper involving big dough, big dough from a racetrack handle and another perfect plan gone awry. The Asphalt Jungle precedes The Killing, so Brother Hayden shouldn’t you have learned by 1953 that these perfect plans, cinematically at least, are bound to go awry. Smarten up.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Time Of Frankie’s Carnival Time

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Time Of Frankie’s Carnival Time

 

An old man walks, walks haltingly down a North Adamsville street, maybe Hancock Street, or maybe a street just off it, a long street like West Main Street, he has forgotten which exactly in the time between his walking and his telling me his story. Near the high school anyway, North Adamsville High School, where he graduated from back in the mist of time, the 1960s mist of time. A time when he was known, far and wide, as the king, the king hell king, if the truth be known, of the schoolboy be-bop night. And headquartered, properly headquartered, at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor as was his due as the reigning schoolboy king of the night. But that schoolboy corner boy king thing is an old story, an old story strictly for cutting up old torches, according to the old man, Frankie, yes, Francis Xavier Riley, as if back from the dead, and not fit, not fit by a long shot for what he has to tell me about his recent “discovery,” and its meaning.

Apparently as Frankie, let us skip the formalities and just call him Frankie, walked down that nameless, maybe unnamable street he was stricken by sight of a sign on a vagrant telephone pole announcing that Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show was coming to town and setting up tent at the Veteran’s Stadium in the first week in June, this past June, for the whole week. And seeing this sign, this vagrant sign on this vagrant telephone pole, set off a stream of memories from when the king hell king of the schoolboy corner boy night was so enthralled with the idea of the “carny” life, of this very Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show carnival life, that he had plans, serious plans, to run away, run away with it when it left town. Condition, and of course there was always a condition: if Ma Riley, or Pa Riley if it came to it, although Pa was usually comfortably ensconced in the Dublin Pub over on Sagamore Street and was not a big factor in Frankie’s life when it came time for him to make his mark as king hell king, just bothered him one more time, bothered about what was never specified.

In any case rather than running away with the carnival Frankie served his high school corner boy term as king hell king, went to college and then to law school, ran a successful mid-sized law practice, raised plenty of kids and political hell and never looked back. And not until he saw that old-time memory sign did he think of regrets for not having done what he said that “he was born for.” And rather than have the reader left with another in the endless line of cautionary tales, or of two roads, one not taken tales, or any of that, Frankie, Frankie in his own words, wants to expand on his carnival vision reincarnation:

Who knows when a kid first gets the carnival bug, maybe it was down in cradle times hearing the firecrackers in the heated, muggy Fourth Of July night when in old, old time North Adamsville a group of guys, a group of guys called the “Associates,” mainly Dublin Pub guys, and at one time including my father, Joe Riley, Senior, grabbed some money from around the neighborhood. And from the local merchants like Doc over at Doc’s Drug Store, and Mario over at Estrella’s Grocery Store, Mac, owner of the Dublin Pub, and always, always, Tonio, owner of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor. What they did with this money was to hire a small time, usually very small time, carnival outfit, something with a name like Joe’s Carny, or the like, maybe with a merry-go-round, some bumping cars, a whip thing, a few one-trick ponies, and ten or twelve win-a-doll-for-your-lady tents. On the side maybe a few fried dough, pizza, sausage and onions kind of eateries, with cotton candy to top it off. And in a center tent acts, clown acts, trapeze acts with pretty girls dangling every which way, jugglers, and the like. Nothing fancy, no three-ring circus, or monster theme amusement park to flip a kid’s head stuff. Like I say small time, but not small time enough to not enflame the imagination of every kid, mainly every boy kid, but a few girls too if I remember right, with visions of setting up their own show.

Or maybe it was when this very same Jim Byrd, a dark-haired, dark-skinned (no, not black, not in 1950s North Adamsville, christ no, but maybe a gypsy or half-gypsy, if that is possible), a friendly guy, slightly wiry, a slightly side-of-his-mouth-talking guy just like a lawyer, who actually showed me some interesting magic tricks when I informed him, aged eight, that I wanted to go “on the road” with him first brought his show to town. Brought it to Veteran’s Stadium then too. That’s when I knew that that old time Associates thing, that frumpy Fourth of July set-up-in-a-minute-thing-and-then-gone was strictly amateur stuff. See Jim’s had a Ferris wheel, Jim had a Mini-Roller Coaster, and he had about twenty-five or thirty win-a-doll, cigarettes, teddy bears, or candy tents. But also shooting galleries, gypsy fortune-telling ladies with daughters with black hair and laughing eyes selling roses, or the idea of roses. And looking very foxy, the daughters that is, although I did not know what foxy was then. Oh yah, sure Jim had the ubiquitous fried dough, sausage and onion, cardboard pizza stuff too. Come on now this was a carnival, big time carnival, big time to an eight- year old carnival. Of course he had that heartburn food. But what set Jim’s operation off was that central tent. Sure, yawn, he had the clowns, tramp clowns, Clarabelle clowns, what have you, and the jugglers, juggling everything but mainly a lot of whatever it was they were juggling , and even the acrobats, bouncing over each other like rubber balls. The big deal, the eight- year old big deal though, was the animals, the real live tigers and lions that performed in a cage in center stage with some blonde safari-weary tamer doing the most incredible tricks with them. Like, well, like having them jump through hoops, and flipping over each other and the trainer too. Wow.

But now that I think about it seriously the real deal of the carny life was not either the Associates or Jim Byrd’s, although after I tell you about this Jim’s would enter into my plans because that was the carnival, the only carnival I knew, to run away with. See down in Huntsville, a town on the hard ocean about twenty miles from North Adamsville there was what would now be called nothing but an old-time amusement park, a park like you still might see if you went to Seaside Heights down on the Jersey shore. This park, this Wild Willie’s Amusement Park, was the aces although as you will see not a place to run away to since everything stayed there, summer open or winter closed. I was maybe nine or ten when I first went there but the story really hinges on when I was just turning twelve, you know, just getting ready to make my mark on the world, the world being girls. Yes, that kind of turning twelve. But nine or twelve this Wild Willie’s put even Jim Byrd’s show to shame. Huge roller-coasters (yes, the plural is right, three altogether), a wild mouse, whips, dips, flips and very other kind of ride, covered and uncovered, maybe fifteen or twenty, all based on the idea of trying to make you scared, and want to go on again, and again to “conquer” that scared thing. And countless win things (yah, cigarettes, dolls, teddy bears, candy, and so on in case you might have forgotten). I won’t even mention that hazardous to your health but merciful, fried dough, cardboard pizza (in about twenty flavors), sausage and onions, cotton candy and salt water taffy because, frankly I am tired of mentioning it and even a flea circus or a flea market today would feel compelled to offer such treats so I will move on.

What it had that really got me going, at first anyway, was about six pavilions worth of pinball machines, all kinds of pinball machines just like today there are a zillion video games at such places. But what these pinball machines had (beside alluring come-hither and spend some slot machine dough on me pictures of busty young women on the faces of the machines) were guys, over sixteen year old teenage guys, mainly, some older, some a lot older at night, who could play those machines like wizards, racking up free games until the cows came home. I was impressed, impressed to high heaven. And watching them, watching them closely were over sixteen- year old girls, some older, some a lot older at night, who I wondered, wondered at when I was nine but not at twelve might not be interfering with their pinball magic. Little did I know then that the pinball wizardry was for those sixteen year old, some older, some a lot older girls.

But see, if you didn’t already know, nine or twelve-year old kids were not allowed to play those machines. You had to be sixteen (although I cadged a few free games left on machines as I got a little older, and I think the statute of limitations has run out on this crime so I can say  I was not sixteen years or older). So I gravitated toward the skee ball games located in one of those pinball pavilions, games that anybody six to sixty or more could play. You don’t know skees. Hey where have you been? Skee, come on now. Go over to Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore, or Old Orchard up on the Maine coast and you will have all the skees you want, or need. And if you can’t waggle your way to those hallowed spots then I will give a little run-down. It’s kind of like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small bowling balls for you non-New Englanders) with a small ball and it’s kind of like archery or darts because you have to get the balls, usually ten or twelve to a game, into tilted holes.

The idea is to get as high a score as possible, and in amusement park land after your game is over you get coupons depending on how many points you totaled. And if you get enough points you can win, well, a good luck rabbit’s foot, like I won for Karen stick-girl (a stick girl was a girl who didn’t yet have a shape, a womanly shape, and maybe that word still is used, okay) one time, one turning twelve-year old time, who thought I was the king of the night one time because I gave her one from my “winning,” and maybe still does. Still does think I am king of the hill. But a guy, an old corner boy guy that I knew back then, a kind of screwy guy who hung onto my tail at Salducci’s like I was King Solomon, a guy named Markin, already wrote that story once. Although he got one part wrong, the part about how I didn’t know right from left about girls and gave this Karen stick girl the air when, after showering her with that rabbit’s foot, she wanted me to go with her and sit on the old seawall down at Huntsville Beach and I said no-go. I went, believe me I went, and we both practically had lockjaw for two weeks after we got done. But you know how stories get twisted when third parties who were not there, had no hope of being there, and had questionable left from right girl knowledge themselves start their slanderous campaigns on you. Yes, you know that scene, I am sure.

So you see, Karen stick and lockjaw aside, I had some skill at skees, and the way skees and the carny life came together was when, well let me call her Gypsy Love, because like the name of that North Adamsville vagrant telephone pole street where I saw the Byrd’s carnival in town sign that I could not remember the name of I swear I can’t, or won’t remember her’s. All I remember thoough is that jet-black long hair, shiny dark-skinned glean (no, no again, she was not black, christ, no way, not in 1950s Wild Willie’s, what are you kidding me?), that thirteen-year old winsome smile, half innocent, half-half I don’t know what, that fast-forming girlish womanly shape and those laughing, Spanish gypsy black eyes that would haunt a man’s sleep, or a boy’s. And that is all I need to remember, and you too if you have any imagination. See Gypsy Love was the daughter of Madame La Rue, the fortune-teller in Jim Byrd’s carnival. I met her in turning twelve time when she tried to sell me a rose, rose for my girlfriend, my non-existent just then girlfriend. Needless to say I was immediately taken with her and told her that although I had no girlfriend I would buy her a rose.

And that, off and on, over the next year is where we bounced around in our “relationship.” One day I was down at Wild Willie’s and I spotted her and asked her why she wasn’t on the road with Jim Byrd’s show. Apparently Madame LaRue had had a falling out with Jim, quit the traveling show and landed a spot at Wild Willie’s. And naturally Gypsy Love followed mother, selling flowers to the rubes at Wild Willie’s. So naturally, naturally to me, I told Gypsy Love to follow me over to the skees and I would win her a proper prize. And I did, I went crazy that day. A big old lamp for her room. And Gypsy Love asked me, asked me very nicely thank you, if I wanted to go down by the seawall and sit for a while. And let’s get this straight, no third party who wasn’t there, no wannbe there talk, please, I followed her, followed her like a lemming to the sea. And we had the lockjaw for a month afterward to prove it. And you say, you dare to say I was not born for that life, that carnival life. Ha.

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers”- A Film Adaptation-A Second Take (1964)

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1964 The Killers.

DVD Review

The Killers, starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickerson, Ronald Reagan, Clu Gulanger, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, Universal Studios, 1964

As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this crime noir genre I am an aficionado, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. I mentioned in a review of the 1946 version of the film under review, The Killers, starring Burt Lancaster (as the smitten fall guy) and Ava Gardner (as the femme fatale, what else) that for plot line, and plot interest, femme fatale interest and sheer duplicity that film was in the former category. This techno-color version pales (no pun intended) by comparison although in spots the twists in the plot line here are interesting.

Neither screen adaptation owes much, except the opening passages, to Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name. The beauty of the shortness of the Heminway story is that it left plenty of room for other possibilities to expand on his plot line. But in the end the central question of all three vehicles is the question- why did two professional killers, serious, badass killers want to kill the seemingly harmless fall guy (here, Johnny North, always a Johnny somewhere in these noir things, played by a young John Cassavetes)?. And why didn’t they run when they had the chance. But come on now, wake up, you know as well as I do that it’s about a dame, a frill, a frail, a women, and not just any woman, but a high roller femme fatale. In this case that frill is Sheila Farr (here played by Angie Dickerson who whatever her charms for a 1960s audience pales in comparison, again no pun intended, to the earlier version’s Kitty Collins played by sultry, yes sultry, Ava Gardner, as a colleen).

As I have noted recently in a review of the 1945 crime noir, Fallen Angel, femme fatales come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions. But high or low all want some dough, and a man who has it or knows how to get it. This is no modernist post-1970s concept but hard 1940s realities extended into the early 1960s. And duplicity is just one of the “feminine wiles” that will help get the dough. Now thoroughly modern Sheila, like Kitty is not all that choosy about the dough's source, any mug will do, but she has some kind of sixth sense that it is not Johnny, at least not in the long haul and that notion will drive the action for a bit.

And if you think about it, of course Sheila is going with the smart guy, the guy with things really figured out (Jack, played here by a demure Ronald Reagan wearing a smashing greased down pompadour hair-do and looking very non-presidential). And old chump Johnny is nothing but a busted-up old palooka of a race car driver (Swede in the 1946 version was a prize fighter) past his prime and looking for some easy money. No, no way Kitty is going to wind up with him in that shoddy rooming house out in the sticks hustling for short dough on the jalopy circuit , and waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Let’s run through the plot a little and it will start to make more sense. You already know that other shoe dropped for Johnny. And why he just waited for the fates to rush in on him. What you didn’t know is that to get some easy dough for another run at Sheila’s come hither affections he, Johnny North, is involved along with Sheila's current paramour, Jack, and a couple of other midnight grifters in a major hold-up of a old-timey rural U.S. Mail truck (go big, or don’t go at all, right) The heist goes off like clockwork. Where it gets dicey is pay-off time. Just like with the earlier version’s Kitty and Big Jim Sheila and Jack are dealing the others out, and dealing them out big time. And they get away with it for a while until the guys who did the “hit” on Johnny (played by Lee Marvin and Clu Glanger) get all balled up trying to figure out why Johnny just cast his fate to the wind start to figure things out.

And they follow the leads, or are led, naturally to figure out the big double-cross. But double-crossing people, even simple midnight grifters, is not good criminal practice and so all hell breaks loose. Watch this film. And take the same advise I gave in the 1946 film review stay away from dark-haired Irish beauties AND also tall, leggy, brunettes with no heart named Sheila, especially if you are just an average Joe. Okay.

Note: This is not the first Hemingway writing, or an idea for a writing, that has appeared in film totally different from the original idea. More famous, and rightly so, is his sea tale, To Have Or Have Not, that William Faulkner wrote the screenplay for and that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall turned into a steamy (1940s steamy, okay) black and white film classic.

Added note:

Ernest Hemingway was a prolific short story writer and I have argued in the past elsewhere in this space that perhaps some of these were his best literary efforts. Needless to say, a writer whose command of a sparse and functional style is going do very nicely when Hollywood comes a-calling. In this case the short story was indeed short. A couple of hired killers come into a lunch counter looking for someone on the run. He doesn't show and that is the end of the story. Although we presume his fate is foresworn. But not for Hollywood. In this remake of the 1946 film that starred Burt Lancaster the hired killers (played by Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager) remain but they are thoughtful (and greedy). They want to know why Johnny North (the guy on the run) does not run and stands for the hit. As befits a 1960's film they want to get the motive and will get it come hell or high water. Naturally, there is a woman (a young Angie Dickerson) involved that leads old Johnny astray. From there the film goes through a series of flashbacks to figure out how Johnny became the fall guy. The original is a little closer to Hemingway's sense of the dynamics that lead to the patsy's fatalism but this is an interesting take, as well.