To the Literary Battle Fronts

INSTILLING DIGNITY, CHANGING STORIES
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Mural by
The Graffiti Girls Kenya

Journalist Elizabeth Okwach: "In Kenya, a group of fearless women are finding ways to express themselves by painting graffiti. In the process, these women are challenging stereotypes by visualizing civic issues that are impacting their community.

"Working in Kenya’s capital Nairobi — and major surrounding cities — Graffiti Girls Kenya are painting murals that are gracing the walls of creative hubs and community centers. Even though the murals are bright with color, the themes of these works cover a wide range of societal ills."

Graffiti Girls "sees public art as a crucial venue to address"
the problem of Gender Based Violence.

Artist Nelly Bradbury: “Our messaging through graffiti is bold and clear. When people are passing by they are able to see it and even guide them . . . I believe that public art is changing the social conditions of our community and instilling a deep sense of dignity. It is also changing peoples’ stories that have been ignored or overlooked.

~from OkayAfrica, June 2, 2022

While the artists' collective raises awareness visually, the AMKA writers' collective takes a verbal approach. Director Lydia W. Gaitirira expresss concern that while "written works form a good basis for analyzing perceptions on important social, political, economic and other issues . . . a lot of the creative literature available to young women . . . is designed primarily to entertain . . . [and] often ignores the pertinent issues."

The Fresh Paint literature project offers a corrective to fill that gap. Through prose and poetry, numerous serious writers are telling their stories of personal and political revolution from "the literary battle fronts."

Featured recently on
Kitti's Book List and The Quotidian Kit

~ Volume 1 available on amazon ~
~ Title story available on wordpress ~

This post will focus on a few more selections
from the Fresh Paint collections.
In the following poems, a trio of poets
raise their voices and our consciousness.

1.
The first is a saga of birth, suffering, and as yet unrealized potential, somewhat reminiscent of Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, except -- instead of bird, boy, and sea -- the dominant motifs are mother, child, and earth (see also Yeats's "The Second Coming"). This is a long poem; here are the first five stanzas:

The Day the Cradle Gave Birth
~ by Kingwa Kamenchu (in volume 1, 108 - 112)

I know the story of how
She had once been
The cradle of all mankind,
The genesis of all living and breathing,
The birth ground of all empire.
But then in time,
Things had fallen apart

But I've been watching and waiting
And reading the signs
And they all tell me
That the cradle is once again pregnant
Heavy.
Ready to deliver
Any time soon

I see it in the way
Those children inside her stir,
Move, foment, and seethe,
With the pain of being inside
In that watery dark for far too long
A watery dark they have been stuck into
Pegged in, enclosed around, hemmed into,
Trapped down in, shoved upon, condemned to,
Misled, misinformed, and
Hoodwinked is their destiny
For far too long.

They know they must get out now,
Get away from the suffocation and bleakness inside.
These days, you see,
They have their learning; they have seen other worlds
Sniffed the tangy possibility of new vistas
They know who they are
What they want
And they will take no less

I see it in the way
Those children kick,
Jerk about, lash out, and thrust against,
Refuse, demur, dissent
To the condemnation; hit against the inner
enemies as well,
Refuse to be stifled,
After all these years
After numerous struggles
From the war trenches to the academies,
To the literary battle fronts,
They have never given up . . .


The sixth stanza describes Mother Africa's 50 - year pregnancy: "abnormal, surreal, absurd." While the other six continents "Dance, sashay and flourish" and "rule the world," she is restricted by her so - called "condition." In the seventh and eighth stanzas, "Her body has been one big war zone . . . Such a torturous existence" of labor pains, birth pangs, loss of blood.

Then for a brief moment, seven short stanzas, the poet is graced with a vision of hope. Africa has delivered the "home grown . . . fruit of her womb":


Fat, gurgling, cherub-cheeked babies,
Round and luscious, black skins satedly gleaming.
Long gone were the pathetic skin and bone wasted tots
Staring out of wide vacant eyes, flies nibbling at their corners
BBC, CNN, long packd up and trotted off to the
wildebeest great migration
in search of the new exotic; Real African picture. . . .

But I blinked
And when I opened my eyes,
She was still pregnant
Flailing her arms and legs
Rolling her neck from side to side
Moaning in pain and anguish
Like before

And it made me sit and wonder,
What will it take?
For this glorious, blessed cradle,
To give birth once again?


2.
The second poem, like the first, is rich in literary allusion and geography -- the Nile, the streets of Harlem, the "belly of the Sahara . . . a thousand lands." Jallow writes with hope that the world is wide and scorn may be supplanted by song. However, many wrongs remain to redress:

From Shame and Fantasy I Rise
~ by Maimouna Jallow (in Volume 2, 26 - 27)

I too, I dance and I rise
With diamonds at the meeting between my thighs,
Reclaimed the names that you gave me,
And found in them some things that might surprise.

Too many details remained buried under the cloak of the past,
Even if slavery never did lay its hands on my brown skin.
Shame and fantasy reduced my tribe to just half of a caste
Only the walls murmuring whispers of the original sin.

You called me Zero Point Five,
Mathematically drawing a decimal into my existence,
As though in those numbers did not lie
Thousands of years of resistance.

You called me IN-FER-TILE,
Supported by false tales of scientific evolution.
But I flow through man-made boundaries, a child of the NILE,
And my name is written in stone, engraved in the memory of revolution.

Now, just like then, Mule-atta dances off your tongue,
Insult camouflaged by exoticism,
An eroticism splattered on big screens uncensored.
Darwinism dons past colonialism and has just met commercialism.

But under the glow of Harlem streetlights, I too was reborn.
Invoked my sisters of the cowrie crowns,
We rose and danced away your scorn.
Cleaned away the bruises and beneath found mud brown.

And from the belly of the Sahara, we prayed to Orishas.
Baptised ourselves: half of a yellow sun, half of a full moon.
Journeyed a thousand lands learning the wisdom of philosophers
And found that God put a prayer and song in our mouths too.


3.
The third poem personifies and addresses Nairobi directly. The poet calls on the city to account for an unfair history and provide for an equitable future. All three poems share themes of revolution and rebirth. All three ask the reader to question the power of location and the significance of placenames. What will it take? Are you that place?

Are you that place?
~ by Nebila Abdulmelik (in Volume 2, 7)

Are you that concrete jungle
Crumbling under the weight of
Manoeuvring, manipulative matatus
Where passengers are shuka'd at whim?
Are you where darkness whispers sweet lullabies
Or where lights play dirty tricks
Where money is mobile
And glass ceilings tower as high as KICC?
Where freedom is plastered on bus stops
And injustice deeply rooted
Into territorial boundaries
Where few attest their tribe is indeed Kenyan
Where Tusker runs like maji
Where unga is revolutionised
And revolutions are most definitely not televised
Where radios relentlessly relay well kept secrets
Where the rain commands the city
And payday drives traffic
Where the likes of Kibera & Sinai make way
For the likes of Karen & Spring Valley?
Are you the capital of thieves and robbers
Or a megapolis of IT geeks, business gurus and self-made men
Where every pocket is packed with dreams
But not every dream packs pockets
Tell me, Nairobi, are you that place?

Tumutumu Mission Station,
Kenya, ca.1910-1930,
about 2 hours north of Nairobi

***************

Tumutumu Presbytery,
a few decades later.
My friend Mumbi says:
"This is not what it looked like
when I was baptized there at age 12."

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Esther of a Thousand Ideas

GOOD QUEEN ESTHER
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

~ Esther and Mordechai ~
Early 3rd century (244 CE) Roman Painting / Wood Panel
Dura-Europos Synagogue, Syria

Should you need a refresher course
on Esther's complicated dilemma,
please check out my daily blog from a year ago:

Don't Mess With Esther

. . . including the story as I learned it,
as depicted in my mother's childhood Bible storybooks.

You can also Click here for a helpful retelling of the conflict,
and here for an explanation of Esther's
role in the celebration of Purim.

****************

Artistic portrayals of Esther [and Vashti]

Both of the following
by Rembrandt (1606 - 69)

Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther, 1660

Haman Begging the Mercy of Esther, 1660

****************

Poetic portrayals of Esther and Vashti

Both of the following
by Stacey Zisook Robinson

Book of Esther: A Poem

That blush on my cheek?
It's paint,
And I have glittered my eyes
And robed myself in the finery
of silk and gossamer,
lapis and gold--
And whored myself for your salvation.

You asked for no thoughts.
You merely offered my body
to the king--
My life forfeit
If my beauty failed.

You asked for no ideas
And I gave you none,
Though I had a thousand,
And ten thousand more. [emphasis added]

Diplomacy was played on the field of my body,
The battle won in the curve of my hip
And the satin of my skin,
Fevered dreams of lust
And redemption.

That blush on my cheeks?
It is the stain of victory
And of my shame.

&

Vashti: A Poem for Purim

I remember when he crooned,
Come, dance for me!
And I would,
just for him.

And Oh! It was
glorious, all silk and
heat and lithesome.
I moved like fire
I moved like water

And later, he moved
with me, a different kind
of heat, and he called me
his queen.

When did crooning
turn to calling,
and calling to demand?

Dance, he says,
Dance for me, and move
your hips,
and wet your lips
and come - as if I were
his pet, a bitch to lap up
praise from her master,
kept on a collar and leash.

But I am queen.
I am fire,
and water,
and lithe.

I will not dance
when you call.

****************

Further intriguing connections include

1. a sci - fi character named Vashti
in E. M. Forster's 1909 story "The Machine Stops"

&

2. a three - part poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
produced on Broadway in 1906 as The Drama of Mizpah:

"The Revolt of Vashti"
"The Choosing of Esther"
"Honeymoon Scene"
[you can read the poems under Comments]

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Memento Mori

REMEMBER, OH THOU MAN
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

An important reminder for both Lent and the Ides of March,
"Memento mori" translates as "Remember you must die."

For this Fortnightly, I am recycling the following timely concepts because we are halfway through Lent and I need to remind myself. As I've said before, I remain perpetually perplexed by the inadequacy with which I have seen many elders approach their end - of - life, even though they've had a lifetime of eight decades or more leading up to it. I'm never quite sure how a bad diagnosis or a health calamity can come to anyone -- aside from the very young amongst us -- "as a total shock" or "a complete surprise" (those cliched phrases of denial). "It came out of nowhere" or "I didn't see it coming." Really? I mean, haven't we always seen it coming? -- especially once we surpass that biblical estimate of threescore years and ten.

One of the best ways to prepare, it seems to me, is read a book or two, watch some movies. The concept does not require excessive sophistication: you could start with Little Women, Old Yeller, Jesus Christ Superstar. So many characters dying all the time, right? Reading -- and contemplating what you have read -- will greatly enchance your comprehension of mortality, both your own and that of others. The following passages, each taken from a previous blogpost, serve as reminders that our days are numbered.


1. From Dust Thou Art

A a deep thought by Jack Handey
from The Lost Deep Thoughts
"Life is a constant battle
between the heart and the brain.
But guess who wins.
The skeleton."


2. Writerly

Death in the Afternoon
by Ernest Hemingway
". . . all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and . . . no true-story teller . . . would keep that from you" (from Chapter 9).

Foreword to the Second Edition of
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
"And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: 'How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of our Final End?' "


3. One Hundred Years From Now

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
from The American Scholar [See more.]:
An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
August 31, 1837
"So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios
from A Commencement Address delivered at Stanford University,
June 12, 2005
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."


4. Life or Death Matter

"Something is going to get all of us. We will all die. Healing involves our response to this certainty -- our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose in this life." ~ Dick Wall


5. Altering Events " . . . years of
Sleepless nights and months of uneasy
Days will be rolled into
An altering event called the
'Good old days.' And you will not
Be able to visit them even with an invitation
Since that is so you must face your presence""
~ Maya Angelou ~

6. Michael Lipsey

"There is no ego too large to fit into a standard grave."

Repeated thanks to dear Michael
for so generously allowing me to share his
artistry, witticisms, and wisdom on my blogs:
Quotidian, Fortnightly, Kitti's List

7. Duo Dickinson

from "Ash Wednesday and the Baby Boomer"
February 12, 2024
"As the death toll of our generation keeps climbing, the debate, conversation, and all other distractions from our mortality are coming to an end, our end."

[In keeping with my continued theme of Connection & Coincidence, you should also check out what my friend Duo has to say about Incidence & Coincidence]


8. Nadia Bolz - Weber

from "You're going to die: A sermon for All Saints in a time of war.
November 6, 2023 [intended for All Saints, but fits right in with Lent]
"But while the false promises of immortality through self-improvement might sell product, they do nothing for us in any real way other than to make us feel like we can avoid the most inevitable thing in the world: That you will die."


9. And a closing thought from Henri Nouwen

Did I offer peace today?
Did I bring a smile to someone's face?
Did I say words of healing?
Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
Did I forgive? Did I love?
These are the real questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One more directive that I would add to Nouwen's list:

Did I contemplate my mortality today?

"Cold, indeed: and labor lost . . . "

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Leap Day Wizard Dreams

THE ONCE AND FUTURE WIZARD STORE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Chetopa, Kansas

Bissextile Day is here -- February 29th, the Leap Day of our Leap Year! A day for lords a leaping, and leaping lizards and leaping wizards, and leaping across the U.S.A.

Across Kansas

My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.

Once you cross a land like that
you own your face more: what the light
struck told a self; every rock
denied all the rest of the world.
We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate—

My state still dark, my dream too long to tell.

by Kansas - born poet William Stafford
I wonder if Stafford and his family ever drove through Chetopa and stopped by Wizzard of Odds? I like the way that he concludes his poem with a reference to his "state" (of mind? or State of Kansas?) and also with a recollection of a "dream too long to tell."

Another connection:

Driving Through Kansas
~for Garry Ritzky

One knoll:
a handful of mourners
crying somebody's dream.

Beyond:
a distance too blue to see.

The road slices wheat
stunned with crows
here for more than kill.

you know the crow
can caw his soul
into or out of any hell,

know too the tumbleweed
you bang into will roll
as long as mourners
bruise the hill.

The wind letters every mailbox,
and solid gray holds in trust
the farmer's good last name.

by Oklahoma - born poet Jim Barnes [more poems]

This poem takes place not in the dark of night but on a day of endless, distant blue. Like Stafford's "Kansas," it yields a dream. Driving past a roadside cemetery where a funeral is in progress, Barnes describes "mourners crying somebody's dream." Somebody else's, the deceased, the mourners, but not his own, or is it?

Like Stafford and Barnes, I too have driven and dreamed my way across Kansas.

Getting our Kicks on 166

My siblings and I remember this place, not from our childhood years, but from recent visits, although it seemed to be closed down the last time we passed through (May 2021). Not long after that, I had the strangest dream that I had to share with them. The store itself wasn't in the dream, but we kids were sitting all sitting around in a good mood (in some unspecified setting -- like maybe the outdoor lounge in my brother Dave's backyard. Our Grandpa Lindsey was there -- my mother's father -- and he was saying, "Aaron used to drive me over to Chetopa to the Wizard Store all the time to have my fortune told."

That was the whole dream, just the frame of us all sitting there and Grandpa making that one remark. A strange and interesting dream, but very un-Grandpa like! I had to ask my brother Aaron if it was true! Of course, I knew it wasn't because, in fact, the Wizzard of Odds didn't even exist (or contained some other business) until at least a decade after our grandfather had died.

I usually forget every single dream, but I think this one is going to stay with me! Oddly enough, this is not the first Wizard Store dream that I have had -- and been able to remember. Around the same time that we discoverd Wizzard of Odds in Kansas, my sister Peg and my nephew Dan used to take me to a gift store in Maryland that we called The Wizard Store, even though its proper name was Flights of Fancy. In the dream, I was distraught, trying to catch a bus on a dark rainy night and repeating over and over to anyone who would listen, "Im trying to get to the Wizard Store," where I knew that Peg and Dan were waiting for me. What is it about these Wizard Stores leading to such wacky dreams?

Talking about our many drives through Chetopa over the years led to a conversation about the various family station wagons. How accurately could we remember?

The Pink Dodge

The Green Pontiac

The Silver Buick

Another Connection:
Our Grandma Lindsey's Map of Kansas Handkerchief

Too bad Chetopa got left out,
but Coffeyville and Independence made the map!

The Big Floor Map
at the State Line Rest Stop

My brother and I have a joke about this one:
Kit: Look! I'm standing in three states at once!
Four actually, since I'm also in a state of crippling despair . . .
Bruce: No fair counting Kansas twice!

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Classic Cinema, 1924 - 1945

KEYWORDS ARE YOUR FRIEND
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

New York Movie (1939)
Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967)

This post serves as a memory prompt and a keyword search for the growing list of movie classics that Gerry and I have been watching recently. Not to be lazy, but my goal here is modest, no reviews -- just a list of titles and stars.

It turns out that we were watching so many old-time classics that we couldn't keep them all straight in our heads. Thus, I have compiled these lists in an attempt to prevent all of our recent viewing from merging into one huge indiscernible dramatic mishmash.

Here are the movies we've been watching, loosely organized by year, with a few cross references and connections of interest thrown in for good measure.

For the specific day - month - year of every release,
try this website: The Numbers
1924 Battleship Potemkin

1927 Metropolis

1930 Anna Christie ~ Greta Garbo

1931 Susan Lenox ~ Greta Garbo & Clark Gable

1933 Baby Face ~ Barbara Stanwyck, John Wayne

1933 Duck Soup ~ Marx Brothers: Chico, Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo


1934 The Thin Man ~ William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan

1934 The Barretts of Wimpole Street ~ Norma Shearer & Frederic March & Charles Laughton & Maureen O'Sullivan

1934 Babes in Toyland ~ Laurel & Hardy
[see also 1998 The Impostors ~ a tribute of sorts to L & H with Stanley Tucci, Oliver Platt, Alfred Molina, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, Billy Connolly]

1934 It Happened One Night ~ Claudette Colbert & Clark Gable

1934 Imitation of Life ~ Claudette Colbert
[see also 1959 Lana Turner]

1934 Of Human Bondage ~ Bette Davis & Leslie Howard


1935 Top Hat ~ Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

1935 The 39 Steps ~ Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll

1936 Modern Times ~ Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard


1939 Goodbye, Mr. Chips ~ Robert Donat & Greer Garson
[see also 1969 with Peter O'Toole & Petula Clark]

1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1939 Wuthering Heights ~ Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven [and many more versions]

1939 The Women ~ Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Lucile Watson, Mary Boland, Florence Nash, Virginia Grey, Marjorie Main, Phyllis Povah, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Butterfly McQueen, Theresa Harris, Hedda Hopper

And this isn't even the complete list!
Film scholar Victoria Amador refers to The Women as a
"gay camp classic film . . . an estrogen-soaked comic souffle . . . "
So many women!

1940 The Shop Around the Corner ~ Jimmy Stewart & Margaret Sullavan

1940 The Great Dictator ~ Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard

1940 His Girl Friday ~ Rosalind Russell & Cary Grant

1940 The Philadelphia Story ~ Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart

1940 The Letter ~ Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson


1941 The Lady Eve ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Henry Fonda & Charles Coburn

1941 The Maltese Falcon ~ Humphrey Bogard & Mary Astor

1942 Mrs. Miniver ~ Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon

1942 The Magnificent Ambersons ~ Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead

1942 Now, Voyager ~ Bette Davis

The title derives from this brief poem by Walt Whitman:

"The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Thanks again to Victoria Amaddor, Ph.D.
for additional insights & witty repartee

1943 Casablanca ~ Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman

1943 Shadow of a Doubt ~ Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton, Macdonald Carey


1944 Laura ~ Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price

1944 Arsenic and Old Lace ~ Cary Grant

1944 Double Indemnity ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson

1944 Meet Me in St. Louis ~ Judy Garland


1945 Blithe Spirit ~ Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford

1945 Christmas in Connecticut ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, S.Z. Sakall

1945 Leave Her to Heaven ~ Cornel Wilde & Gene Tierney

1945 The Valley of Decision ~ Gregory Peck & Greer Garson, Jessica Tandy, Lionel Barrymore, Reginald Owen

1945 Mildred Pierce ~ Joan Crawford
[also 2011 ~ Kate Winslet]

For a continuation of the above list:
Classic Cinema, 1946 - 1986

For a list of current suggestions:
Barb Reviews the Movies
We always read and follow - up on these lively suggestions!

For a comprehensive contemporary list:
Joan Tollifson's Recommended Movie List
Thanks to my friend Diane Cox for sharing Joan's master list!

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, February 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Classic Cinema, 1946 - 1976

SPOILER ALERT
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

It all started way back in early November 2022 when Gerry and I were watching The Big Sleep, with all those dark night driving sequences, leading up to an eerie, dreary mansion. Something about the droll way that the butler greets Bogart in the opening scene rang a bell in my brain. What other movie had we watched recently that began with a similar scary driving scene and a wacky butler?

How hard could it be to remember the name of an old black and white movie that begins with a man driving over a rickety wooden bridge to a big old house where he is staying for a house party / dinner party? Sadly my memory was embarrassingly hazy! I could recall neither the stars, nor the crime, nor any further details that might narrow down the possibilities.

All I could come up with were some behind - the - scene subplots involving cooking in the kitchen, or hiding in there, or something like that. Or maybe the host of the party decides to some of the cooking. There is definitely one of those scenes, like in an Agatha Christie, where all the characters are sitting around the dinner table questioning each other."

I called on my movie experts, Steven and Victoria, who wrote back with their hunches. Perhaps I was thinking of Crimes at the Dark House (1940) or Dead of Night (1945). These are good movies to know about, and I appreciated Steven's connections:

1. I haven't seen Dead of Night for a long time. I keep mixing it up with Dead of Winter starring Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowell. That's not the movie you're looking for, though; it's in color from 1987.

2. Crimes at the Dark House (1940), starring Tod Slaughter, was originally titled The Woman in White because it was loosely based on the 1860 Wilkie Collins novel The Woman in White, which was later made into a movie of the same name, in 1948.

However, neither one of these titles rang exactly the right bell. The plot summaries didn't quite match up with my memory, despite containing winding roads, dark and stormy nights, haunted houses. Of course, a lot of classic thrillers contain all / most of those elements; so I definitely needed to provide more information. Or better yet, we needed a good coincidence!

A few weeks later, I was flipping through my journal from the year before, and there it was: Murder By Death. I knew right away, that was it! Funny, it was not old, after all, as I had been incorrectly remembering, but a 1976 spoof with guest appearances by Truman Capote and Peter Falk! Mystery solved at last! Now it made sense why each of the other movies seemed similar but not quite right -- because Murder By Death includes motifs from all of them! As Steven sums up, the "problem with Murder by Death was that after the characters are introduced, the script doesn't really go anywhere. Same with Clue. They should both be much cleverer than they are."

Agreed! All the effort is in the elaborate set - up. Yet, you never know what will start you off on a scholarly path. After all the work I did (with a little help from my friends!) to retrace my viewing steps and retrieve Murder By Death from my memory bank, it has become a show that I will not soon forget. Nor will I get it confused with The Big Sleep!

From this wild goose chase, Gerry and I learned that we need to keep a movie list. We've been watching so many cinematic treasures that we've missed over the years, or forgotten about -- old black and whites, film noirs, box - office hits of yore, whodunits, musicals, holiday favorites. It would be a shame to forget the specifics, as we wander nightly from genre to genre.

We also owe our seemingly random but somewhat intentional viewing of American classics to this incredibly informative World War II documentary:

Five Came Back ~ on Netflix
exploring the war-related works
-- and continued popular cinema --
of John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston,
Frank Capra, and George Stevens

and to the Facebook page: This is Archer,
a gold mine of legend, lore, references,
connections, and literary allusions.

***************

So, for now -- with a promise of more to come --
here is our once and future film survey,
stretching from 1946 -- the year of The Big Sleep,
to 1976 -- the year of Murder By Death:
1946 May 2
The Postman Always Rings Twice ~ Lana Turner
[and 1981 ~ Jessica Lang & Jack Nicholson]

1946 May 24
Dressed to Kill ~ Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
[no connection to the 1980 film with Michael Caine & Angie Dickinson;
in fact, the title doesn't really fit either movie]

1946 August 15
Notorious ~ Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains

1946 August 30
The Killers ~ Ava Gardner & Burt Lancaster

1946 August 31
The Big Sleep ~ Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall
[& 1976 Murder By Death]

1946 November 1
Stairway to Heaven: A Matter of Life and Death ~ David Niven & Kim Hunter

1946 November 21
Best Years of Our Lives ~ Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright

1946 December 16
Great Expectations ~ John Mills / Anthony Wager, Valerie Hobson / Jean Simmons, Alec Guinness

1946 December 20
It's A Wonderful Life ~ Jimmy Stewart & Donna Reed


Check this very helpful website
for the specific day - month - year of every release:
The Numbers

1947 Out of the Past ~ Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer, Virginia Huston [also 1984 Against All Odds ~ Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward]

1947 The Voice of the Turtle ~ Ronald Reagan & Eleanor Parker

1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ~ Gene Tierney & Rex Harrison

1947 Miracle on 34th Street ~ Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood, Edmund Gwenn


1948 The Winslow Boy ~ Margaret Leighton & Robert Donat
[also 1999 ~ Rebecca Pidgeon & Jeremy Northam]

1948 The Red Shoes ~ Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring

1948 Sorry, Wrong Number ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Burt Lancaster

1948: Road House ~ Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark


1949 Criss Cross ~ Burt Lancaster & Yvonne De Carlo

1949 Twelve O'Clock High ~ Gregory Peck, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe

1949 Shop Around the Corner ~ Jimmy Stewart

1949 The Heiress ~ Olivia de Havilland & Montgomery Clift
[based on Henry James' Washington Square]

1949 The Third Man ~ Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard


1950 In a Lonely Place ~ Humphrey Bogart, Martha Stewart, Gloria Grahame

1950 Sunset Boulevard ~ Gloria Swanson & William Holden

1950 All About Eve ~ Bette Davis, Celeste Holme, Anne Baxter, Marilyn Monroe

1950 Come Back, Little Sheba ~ Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, Terry Moore
[also 1977 ~ Laurence Olivier, Joanne Woodward, Carrie Fisher]

More by William Inge (1913-1973)
1953: Picnic
1955: Bus Stop
1957: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still ~ Michael Rennie & Patricia Neal

1951 A Place in the Sun ~ Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters

1951 Strangers on a Train ~ Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker
[see also The Lady Vanishes 1938, 1979, 2013]


1952 Carrie ~ Jennifer Jones, Laurence Olivier, Eddie Albert
[based on Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie]

1952 Singin' in the Rain ~ Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor


1954 Hobson's Choice ~ Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie, Prunella Scales, Daphne Anderson, John Mills, [a treatment of King Lear]

1954 Three Coins in the Fountain ~ Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, Maggie McNamara,

1954 Rear Window ~ Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr

1954 White Christmas ~ Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger


1955 Daddy Long Legs ~ Leslie Caron & Fred Astaire

1955 All That Heaven Allows ~ Rock Hudson & Jane Wyman

1955 To Catch a Thief ~ Cary Grant, Grace Kelly

1955 Not as a Stranger ~ Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame

1957 The Seventh Seal ~ Max von Sydow

1957 An Affair to Remember ~ Deborah Kerr & Cary Grant

1957 Witness for the Prosecution ~ Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton [also 1949, 1982, 2016]

1957 The Three Faces of Eve ~ Joanne Woodward, Lee J. Cobb

1957 Sweet Smell of Success ~ Tony Curtis & Burt Lancaster & Martin Milner


1958 Marjorie Morningstar ~ Natalie Wood & Gene Kelly & Martin Milner

1958 Touch of Evil ~ Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich

1958 Vertigo ~ Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak


1959 North by Northwest ~ Cary Grant, Eva Maria Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau

1959 Anatomy of a Murder ~ Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick


1960 The Apartment ~ Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday

1960 Psycho ~ Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh

1960 Elmer Gantry ~ Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Shirley Jones, Patti Page, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe

1960 Inherit the Wind ~ Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly, Dick York,

1960 Where the Boys Are ~ Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, and Frank Gorshin

1960 Breathless Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo
[French New Wave crime: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard]


1962 Light in the Piazza ~ Olivia de Havilland, Rossano Brazzi, Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton,

1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ~ Bette Davis & Joan Crawford


1963 The Birds ~ Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette


1964 The Night of the Iguana ~ Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon

1964 Carol for Another Christmas ~ Eva Marie Saint, Percy Rodriguez, Peter Sellers, Britt Eckland


1965 I Saw What You Did ~ Joan Crawford & John Ireland


1966 Georgy Girl ~ Lynn Redgrave, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, James Mason, and Redgrave's mother Rachel Kemps

1966 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ~ Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis


1967 Up the Down Staircase ~ Sandy Dennis, Eileen Heckart, Patrick Bedford, Jean Stapleton

1967 To Sir, with Love ~ Sidney Poitier & Lulu


1968 Targets ~ Boris Karloff


1976 Murder By Death ~ David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith
[Niven played detective Dick Charleston and Smith played his wife Dora Charleston, a little intertextual pun on Nick & Nora from The Thin Man]

1995 Devil in a Blue Dress ~ Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals
[American neo-noir set in late 1940s]


Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, February 14th ~ More Classic Cinema, 1924 - 1945

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com