CONVICTS AT LARGE

A Ralph Forbes vehicle, which was mighty strange.  Forbes was the Liberace of his day, facially and voice wise, I don’t know whether he was gay, one assumes he was, but he certainly looked and sounded so, and therefore was pretty weird as a two fisted heterosexual, um, architect, I guess, who is mistaken for a hood.

We see him coming up with good ideas for architecture which is both cheap and beautiful for the poor, which of course has no market in the business, indeed no one in the 30’s or today would give a rat’s ass about this kind of stuff in the building trade, let alone politicians – and we see as he tries to sneak in a few drawings at his job, where he is a minor clerk, he is all but beaten savagely by a boss who holds his outside efforts in profound contempt, telling him to stick to working his job and nothing else.

After having to work eight or ten more hours overtime for being such a crackpot, Ralph, hungry and broke, then goes back to his miserable boarding house, where his fellow tenants mock his work, his lack of a lovelife, his dreams and looks – so far, you can see, a cinema verite effort, and if Ralph’s character had drowned his sorrows in a local tavern and fallen madly in love with a cheap whore, we would have gone to bed as reassured as if we’d seen a fake commercial telling us some poor sap from the midwest had won the lottery just in time to keep from being evicted from his trailer.

However, there’s no whores male or female for Ralph.  No siree, Scott Thorson!  Ralph is in love with a female ‘singer’ he knows from the radio which he begs his two roommates to let him listen to because well at this very moment, they’ve decided to play one of her songs.  Glad that worked out!  Unfortunately, they talk all the way through it, making sure to get in plenty or more mocking and the moment they run out of breath and poor Ralph can actually listen to a few minutes of a very wretched song indeed, the show is interrupted, again, realistically, just as it gets to the best part, by an announcement that two cons had just escaped from the local pententiary).  There’s probably never been such an announcement in the history of radio, why panic people by the pentetentiary into protesting and closing the place, so Ralph is not only fucked – he’s implausibly fucked!  And angered by the shabby treatment of his so-called friends who apparently laugh like jackasses that the song he was going to listen to, was not resumed, and that Ralph, after a hard twenty hour day working in a soul deadening job for some Dickensian meanie, couldn’t even listen to a four minute song on the radios without getting screwed over – the poor would be architect for the poor walks off talking to himself six to a dozen like a loon.

Again, so far, nothing is even a eyelash out of line with life as we know it.  Pathetic artist (loser) is slapped down at every turn, can’t even enjoy cheap, pathetic entertainment without having it RUINED and seeing that the board from his rooming house has been entirely consumed by his do nothing roomies, he goes out, counting the nickles in his jeans, hoping to find an all night diner to get a donut and cup of coffee and he talks to himself about his dreams since no one else will listen.  And then we’re on a city street.  There’s a shot of a donut truck, there’s a shot of Ralph and just as walks manfully forward, is convincing himself that he’s really on to something (he’s limning out a pitch to potential investors) the poor, architect for the poor is savagely mugged from behind!

Yes, it’s one of the escaped cons, William Royle, and he hits Forbes so hard, the architect for the poor twitches like an electrified turkey.  Wow, does he go down hard!  He doesn’t slump over and just kind of lay there.  He twitches, grimaces, and falls, holding the sore spot on his head and smashes the side of his face on the curb.  First time I’ve ever seen that one, which of course, all of us would do!

Time passes and Forbes wakes up a half hour later, not in the city anymore, but in the woods(¿!) bleeding, woozy and without his pants!  Considering the guy who robbed him was an excon, I suppose he should be happy his underwear weren’t down around his kneecaps, but apparently, he wasn’t the con’s type.

In any case, he wanders around cold and woozy (again, realistically) now I guess by a bridge, perhaps the woods were north of the city and there’s a river east of the woods.  Anyway, at this point exactly, a couple of criminal mugs (who we’ve seen earlier, being pretty typical baddie disposable torpedos) who have been instructed by their boss to throw a bag of clothes with some money in it onto the road so that the escaped con, a jewelry thief whose swag has never been recovered, can come in and give the boss the jewels appear on a nearby mountain road (the mountains, I guess being west of the woods).  Naturally the dumb crook keeps the money meant for the con, and replaces it with some counterfeit money, as you or I would do in his place.

Ralph sees the sack, thrown down to him from the mountain road and is delighted that the pants fit and… I should say at this point that the usual convention from 1938 was firmly in place.  Even though the escaped con is painfully almost THIN MAN thin and Forbes, well, has been eating well, the pants fit, and Forbes is given the chance to display his legs, which he apparently thought were excellent, and are set off nicely with expensive socks and a garter.  Apparently Ralph although never quite having enough money to eat protein did keep up appearances, and the con didn’t need socks or garters or perhaps they weren’t his shade.

Then in a suit so wrinkled it literally rippled as he walked, Ralph ends up, well at the nightclub where that girl he liked on the radio is singing that night.  It seems to be on the outskirts of the woods but not back in the city.  I’m picturing this as New York, and assume that Ralph has been mugged, dragged across the Hudson River to Jersey, so he could be stripped of his clothing (except for the garters and well, his shirt, odd that the con decided to keep the prison blouse and eschew the business shirt that went with the suit he stole – perhaps it was pitted out from that long work session Ralph pulled to get in those plans the boss needed if he wanted to keep his job!  Anyway, Ralph apparently then, perhaps because of his wooziness walked or hitchhiked up through Rockland County, Westchester County and into Orange County where in the 30’s there were two kinds of entertainment for people who liked to drink out for a good time, the Catskills, for Jewish patrons, and for normal regular white people, there were the roadhouses run by people like Legs Diamond.  And apparently this Bear Mountain Club where the nightclub singer he likes his singing, is the very place he ended up.  Glad that worked out!

Ralph looks at the club, and then at the menu, and he looks discouraged.  You think, well, this isn’t going to work out.  He’s just going to have to walk the two hundred miles back to New York City.  But no!  He finds the counterfeit bills in his pocket and decides, he does have enough for a nice meal and drink at the nightclub.  Glad that worked out too.

Me, I would have called the cops somewhere along here, but he figured, probably rightly , that the cops wouldn’t do anything productive for a poor mugging victim, probably the damn donut eaters would make it seem like him walking along doing nothing, somehow was a stupid enticement to the escaped con and really it was his fault more than the con’s that he was beaten and robbed of his clothing and 15 cents dinner money and arrested him for some quality of life crime and kept the small packet of bills that he now possessed.  So Ralph goes inside.

Now again, Ralph doesn’t look good.  Remember he started off the night looking tired and disheveled and that was before he was mugged so savagely and dragged, probably by his ankles across a river and fifteen miles upstate.  Indeed Ralph looks so disheveled in this suit, that when he passes a table of two women, without dates on a Saturday night, they don’t even look up!  Now that’s dissheveled! 

Ralph orders a ham sandwich, I guess not noticing that the countefeit bill in his hand is a hundred.  He’s clearly not used to ordering expensive things off the menu, or perhaps is planning to put that extra $95 to buying a car to drive home.  I mean Bear Mountain is a three hour drive from New York City and that’s in good weather.

No sooner is the plate delivered, on a platter more suitable to a Child’s restaurant of the time and not a fancy roadhouse nightclub, does Ralph sees the great love of his life.  Fortunately for him, there’s an artists’ sketch pad lying on the table and so Ralph does a sketch of her.  Now that is fortunate!

I mean I’ve seen restaurants where they provided you with a small jar of broken crayons so you can draw or write, ‘The service sucks in this place!’ on the table cloth, but this is the first restaurant I’ve ever seen where they gave you what looks to be a ten or fifteen dollar artist’s pad just for walking in the door.  Maybe that’s why the two women didn’t look up.  Maybe they were sketching something complicated with tiny lines and shading.

The actress, Paula Stone, whom I’ve never heard of, odd, you would think they would give the co-star love interest billing, but perhaps she was hiding out from the law in Hollywood and told the publicists to downplay her appearance, rather like Bill Murray in TOOTSIE.

She sings, is drawn to him because instead of mooning over her like the rest of the men, he apparently is only half-interested.  Self-esteem issues, I guess.  There but for the grace of god… Anyway, upping the stakes she then bursts into a fab tap dance.  As it turns out she’s a much better tap dancer than singer, which must surprise everyone as much as it surprised me, since she’s certainly not identified as a dancer, on the nightclub poster or in any publicity on the radio or otherwise.  In any case, she, who is so good, I will now call her ‘Dancy’  twinkletoes over and sits and admires Ralph sketch (perhaps she also admires earlier sketches in the book from other diners, as she oddly turns the other pages of the book - perhaps there was a study of sugar and ketchup which caught her eye).  Then, the maitre d’ and waiter, again, in documentary fashion, kvetch and moan about the scumbag customer (these are the kind of ‘service’ staff who fling down food with a flourish that interrupts a diner’s conversation with his date, with an attention demanding ‘Here you Go!”) ordering a cheap dish and hanging out forever talking up the entertainers.  They present Ralph with the check.  He gives them his counterfeit hundred, they complain that if he had so much money he should have ordered more.

And then they realize the money is counterfeit.  Now I don’t know what kind of roadhouse they’re running here.  Ralph isn’t forced, or even encouraged to order a drink.  There’s no cover.  He is seated without a bribe a ringside table and then, no high roller (and they know this, they ask him if he’s alone before seating him) they let him order a five dollar and do not whisper their vocal disappointment that this primo front row table is going to earn them at best a 35 cent tip.  Well, I guess it’s a slow night or something.  Glad that worked out.
 

Anyway, these gangsters are undoubtably disappointed that the ham sandwich is as gone as vaudeville and they aren’t even going to make 35 cents, indeed they’re going to have to pay that five dollars out of their tips, but apparently they eschew cheap revenge (which is a dish, like the ham sandwich, which is apparently best eaten cold), and instead of giving Ralph a beating that would cause the coroner to faint, they take the counterfeit bill into the boss.  I guess he wants to know when someone tries to beat a five dollar check.  And now - we find out it’s the criminal mastermind who had his men throw the bag of clothes on the road before!  Glad that worked out!

Criminal Mastermind decides since his flunky identifies the counterfeits as his own that Forbes must be the escaped con.  This seems a little dubious to me, since apparently the escaped con was more or less a member of the gang, but perhaps the boss is near sighted, a Magoo type, or think Forbes gained weight in prison, curled his hair and started talking with an effeminate lisp.

Despite the fact that he’s not the kind of criminal mastermind who never forgets a face, the boss wants the jewels.  And he wants them.. well, eventually!

Forbes doesn’t understand, so the boss threatens to cut up the nightclub singer if he doesn’t spill the beans.  Again, a little quick, I mean Dancey and Forbes have just met – AS THE CRIMINAL MASTERMIND WELL KNOWS and if Forbes really is a hardboiled jewelry thief who just burst out of jail killing several guards (seen earlier in a murky credits sequence) he’s hardly unlikely to give up those hard fought jewels for a woman he’s just met, drew and flirted with a little at a nightclub (and in a weird moment shared a ham sandwich with – Forbes in the scene, ate a ham sandwich the way a regular person would, not nibbling so as not to ruin his make up and lip liner, and not pretending to eat so he wouldn’t have food in his mouth and have to speak around it, and not pacing himself, since he might have to film the scene multiple times, no he eats like he’s been in prison, or perhaps a hole in the ground for a month - and, as you or I would in his place, when Dancey politely has a little bite of the sandwich and looks to be about done, he grabs her half, slathers mayonaise on it, so she won’t be tempted to ask for it back, and then polishes it off in a couple of more bites - what a man!)  Well… what an entertainer to be sure.  And like Lee used to say, laughing all the way to the bank!

Saw STAR TREK which I basically enjoyed. As usual I could care les about the explosions and toys and constant references to STAR WARS which in trying to have things both ways is kind of goofy.  But the story’s okay, certainly Star Trek-esque without doing a bad version of one of the well known episodes, the acting’s okay, I didn’t mind most of the reimaginings of characters, although I could have done without Scottie having an Ewok.   Poor Leonard Nimoy looks old as God, but he was okay, and I guess they’re saving Grace Lee Whitney’s character for the sequel.  The actors are all pretty good, no stand outs, but no complete wash-outs either.  I liked seeing John Cho as Sulu.  Hopefully, he won’t quit acting too to go into politics.

I play character parts, including gay characters and it’s interesting when the parts have multi dimensions to them, where again I’m playing a gay character who perhaps acts out in somewhat predictable ways, but the main thing I’m doing in the play is playing a banker or something, and not just having everything in the play have something to do with the fact that I’m gay, or Jewish, or Republican or even a Nazi.  Perhaps if I was any of those things, I’d be satisfied to just show that side of myself, but even when I’m playing characters who do more fit my personal profile, the fact that I’m this or that, is part of the character, but I would like it if this were subtext and not the subject of every character conversation.

to Penn Station, then up as fast as I can to Temple M for the opening matinee (sigh) of GRAY, then over to La Pregunta for the rehearsal of Inola’s play (sigh).  Perhaps, although I doubt it an interview with Jesse C for LINKON, although I think he’ll probably go with someone else.  Sunday, a little easier, GRAY again at 4 PM and then the performance of Inola’s play at LA PREGUNTA and maybe somewhere in there a coffee chat with Tzigane before he goes back to LA.

Monday, work again and the first recording session for ROSA, Tuesday work and TSP, Wednesday work and the second recording of ROSA, I presume, although they haven’t confirmed, BIKO dress rehearsal after work in St. Albans on Thursday, Friday, the first reading at the UN, Saturday, the first Biko performance in St. Albans, Sunday the last Gray performance at Temple M.  And so it goes.

THE HUCKSTERS
Now that I’ve seen this more than once, I appreciate it that much more.  Clark Gable was one of the few actors of this era that actually came across as a decent human being.  I don’t know that he was, specifically, but he played them very nicely.  Only Gregory Peck during this era had the same charm, and by and large Gable was a little better actor then.  Later, Peck became very effective within his limitations.  He and Deborah Kerr make a good couple,

Ava Gardner steals the movie with her brief appearance,

Sydney Greenstreet is hammy,

but as with some of his villain performances in the noir films, it works here, Adolphe Menjou and Keenan Wynn are good in their scenes, and with the exception of the ending, which I still find bleah, I like this movie very much.  Ironically, the movie’s point that TV would be no better than radio, certainly turned out to be true, however, as an old radio man, I would point out that there was, in the small radio market, and arguably in the public broadcasting narrowband broadcasting, the kind of maturity and quality that you would later find in some cable TV programs.  I suppose the same applies to theater, you can’t use entertainment simply as a tool to sell something else.  Make the product itself as good as you can make it, pitch it to the highest denomination and rest assured the hoy polloi is smart enough to grasp the basics of even very difficult material, and then charge people for the kind of entertainment they want, not the pap that patronizing jerks like Sydney Greenstreet want to foist off on the public. 

Jared McCallister

One-act plays coming to stage near you.  The Caribbean American Repertory Theatre will present two one-act plays next month in Queens and Brooklyn.

The works - "Steve Who? ... Biko" by Rudolph Shaw and "Jestina's Calypso" by Earl Lovelace - will be staged in Queens on June 6 and June 12 at the Theatre of the Living Word inside the Presbyterian Church of St. Albans, 190-04 119th Ave., at 7:30 p.m.  On June 19, the productions will be performed at the Meyer Levin School of the Performing Arts, 5909 Beverly Road in Brooklyn, at 6:30 p.m.

Steve Bantu Biko was born in King William’s Town, South Africa and was assassinated September 12, 1977 (aged 30) in Pretoria, South Africa. He founded the Black Consciousness Movement, which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement. His writings and activism attempted to empower blacks. He was famous for his slogan “black is beautiful, which he described as meaning: “Man, you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being”.

Saw a couple of movies in the rare moments I'm home and not on the phone arranging something or other.