"Answer The Question"

It is a really good question.

Unfortunately, to my chagrin and annoyance,

When I turned to some hoped-for illumination, 

I received no appreciable answer.

Wasting my valuable time.

(And that’s my job.)

Here’s the thing.

For some reason, addressed – no, “addressed” accords them unearned credit – alluded to – that’ll teach em! – in the TCM documentary Hollywood’s Golden Year, the year 1939 produced a greater number of memorable movies than any year in the industry’s history.  Before or since. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to know why?

I thought so.

So I turned TCM’s hour-long documentary on the subject to find out.

You know what I learned?

They had no idea why.

They didn’t say so out loud. 

They just didn’t say anything.

That’s “No clue”,

But without the honesty.

They showed numerous “film clips.”  Wove in ”Talking Head” pontification.  There was archival interview footage of “Giants in the Business”, including the Rushmorian Frank Capra.   

But there was no detectable rationale for why 1939 was the best movie year ever.

(There is the possibility it was a fluke.  But who watches an hour to hear that?)

It is normally a risky proposition to rate movies, because everyone has their personal “Favorites.”  (And a harbored disdain for the personal “Favorites” of others.  (Friendships have been destroyed by far less than “Your movie taste sucks.”) 

Still, Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington?  Most people would consider them indisputably “Top-of-the-Line.”

All of them came out in 1939.

As did The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ninotckka, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Beau Geste, Drums Along the Mohawk, Gunga Din and Destry Rides Again.

To name just eleven.

Go on.

Name another year, yielding eleven noteworthy movies.

And I picked them from a much longer list.  (Excluding “Weepy Romances”, which, even if great, I would never go near.)

There are actually even more standout movies I could have included.  (Dodge City, The Little Princess, Juarez.)

That’s fourteen really good movies.

All of them from 1939!

It would be interesting to know how that happened.  And reasonable to solicit the knowledgeable Turner Classic Movies to find out.

Sorry.  No answer.

The Golden Year settles for providing the story of studios, simultaneously delivering the best movies each had ever produced.  The closest approximation of a suggested rationale was some anointed “Talking Head” proclaiming, “They all stepped up their game.”  Suggesting this outpouring of unparalleled excellence hinged on the intense competition.

But were those studios not also intensely competing in 1937?

And every other year they were collectively in business?

So what the heck was he talking about?

There was a persuasive explanation for why things changed after 1939. 

Following World War II (1939-45), movies became murkily uncertain in their intentions, exchanging “narrative clarity” for buffeting “Post-War” confusion.  Simultaneously, or close to it, studios were required to sell off their movie theaters, reducing revenues for future production.  Television (with its free programming) loomed on the competitive horizon.  And actors, abandoning contractual servitude, became “free agents”, weakening the studios’ access to stars, the combined cluster of factors leading to the creaky “Studio System’s” ultimate demise.

Watching The Golden Year, I got why they don’t make as many great movies in a single year anymore.  But I was no closer to understanding their success that year than when I originally tuned in.

Maybe I should watch the documentary again.  Sometimes, eager to make my point, I miss the point undercutting my point.

(It happens.  Because I really like to be right.)

But if my point about this documentary is actually correct,

I’ll have a new point:

I did a better job than they did.

"How Did That Happen?"

(Deviating immediately from the “It’s okay not to know” perspective of just yesterday.  I guess, for me, “suspension of disbelief” is restricted exclusively to magic shows.  I mean, “simply accepting things as they are”?  What would I write about?­  Certainly not this.)

On my last birthday – wait, that sounds like it’s my last birthday!

Lemme try that again.

On my most recent birthday – that’s better – I received a large-format paperback entitled, Hollywood Hoofbeats, which is about recognized horses featured in Hollywood movies and TV shows.

You don’t need to know I know that Hopalong Cassidy’s horse was “Topper”, the Cisco Kid’s horse was “Diablo,” and Zorro’s horse was “Tornado.” 

Or that I know Gene Autry’s horse was “Champion”, Roy Rogers’s horse was “Trigger” and his wife Dale Evans’s horse was “Buttermilk”?

Or that singing cowboy Rex Allen’s horse was “Koko”, Alan “Rocky” Lane’s horse was “Black Jack” and the great Tom Mix’s horse was “Tony.”

(Note:  The foregoing was done without outside assistance.  Applause, appreciated but optional.)

Hollywood Hoofbeats also chronicles onscreen horses that did not appear in westerns, but in films ranging from Lord of the Rings to the Marx Brothers’ A Day At The Races.  It even includes Francis, the Talking Mule, though he was not technically a horse.  (And don’t think the horses were not pissed about that, one of them taking an outraged dump on the publisher’s carpet.)  (Or they would have, if horses read books.)

Thumbing through Hollywood Hoofbeats I came across a brief “mention”, making me wonder once again – as I have wondered about before – reprising this post’s title but adding “the heck”,

“How the heck did that happen?”

I draw your eager attention to Hollywood Hoofbeats, Page 121.

And I quote,

(concerning the oft filmed and televised saga of The Lone Ranger)

“‘The Legend of the Lone Ranger’ (1981) starred the unknown Klinton Spilsbury (whose high-pitched voice resulted in his being dubbed throughout the film by actor James Keach)….”

Okay.

Apprised of that historical tidbit, being of a curious and somewhat suspicious nature, I can’t help wondering, “What exactly am I missing?”

Just think about this.

After a long and painstaking “Search” for a man to play “the daring a resourceful masked rider of the plains”, an “Unknown” is cast in the lead role of a major motion picture, budgeted at 18 million dollars – I looked it up – which in today’s dollars is, I don’t know… more.

Up till there, this is possible.  It’s actually an inspirational story.  “Unknowns” everywhere can point to Klintin Spilsbury, and think, “If him, why not me?”  After momentarily thinking, “Why him?”  And also ignoring the word, “fluke.”

But a “cattle call” suggesting you’re “The Guy” is just the fortuitous “Step One.”

“Step Two?”

You have to “read for the part.”

Because Klinton Spilsbury is not “big in the business”, there is no,

“Klinton Spilsbury does not ‘read.’”

Marlon Brando does not “read.”

Klinton Spilsburg unquestionably “reads.”

And when he did,

Did they not notice his voice?

In which case,

“Thank you.”

“Was it my voice?”

“Yes it was.”

Apparently, that is not what transpired.

The man read for the Lone Ranger, as a “soprano”,

… and they gave him the part.

Why?

How did Klinton Splisbury get to star as The Lone Ranger?

Did he have a bad cold when he read, and his voice came out “normal”?

Did the producers fall in love with “The Look”, considering his voice sounding like Mickey Mouse in his prime something they would “figure out later”?

Is there a famous Hollywood “voice-lowering” coach they planned to recruit, but an unfortunately scheduling conflict made him unavailable for service, or they actually used one, but after working with Spilsburg, they threw up their hands in frustration, fuming, “He’s impossible”?

Was Klinton Spilsbury simply “a friend of the producer’s”?  (Or a blackmailer, promising to spill the ignominious beans unless they gave him the part, chirpy high voice and all.)

Or what this The Producers as a western, the studio sabotaging the project in search of a tax loss?

I don’t know why this curious hiring isn’t one of “Hollywood’s Greatest Mysteries.”

The movie quickly disappeared, so I guess nobody cares. 

But you know what?  I care.  And I have to live with not knowing.

As do capable actors of yesteryear, sitting at home, grumbling,

“I was the Lone Ranger.  And they gave it to Spilsbury.”

I know the world makes no sense.

But sometimes, it makes even less sense than that.
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Travel Note:  Today, I leave to visit Toronto, and later, our little log cabin in Indiana.  So if you see someone on Bloor Street or in Michigan City who looks like i write, feel free to say hello.  I may or may not write while I'm away.  If I don't, hopefully there is enough here to make do.

I shall be back in person on August the 5th. Enjoy your summer, and I will see you back then.

Oh.

Anyone who leaves a comment hoping for a personal response, I am sorry if I did not spontaneously come through.  I was actually unaware that I could, responding only in this venue if I found something to say that is of general interest.

My apologies for those who feel unintentionally ignored.

I appreciate everyone, and I regret if it appears that I don't. 

Again, happy summer.  And, as I instructed my kids when they were young, there is only one rule about swimming:

"Don't drown."

"How Magic Is Like Black-And-White Televisiion"

(To me, if not to anyone else; but, for me, that’s enough.)

It was the third time we had seen Helder Guimaraes, a wizard of card tricks and acts of magical illusion, perform. 

In his onstage demeanor, Helder Guimaraes is unflashily down to earth.  A local newspaper review said, “He seems remarkably sincere and trustworthy for a man committed to deception.”

(Possibly his first “deception” of the evening.)

Guimaraes begins his performance with a thematic anecdote.  He was driving down a very narrow street, when, as he was passing, a woman opened her driver’s-side door, causing an accident.  After exchanging pertinent “information”, in an effort to placate the misfortune, the woman said,

“Everything happens for a reason.”

After waiting a dramatic beat at the end of his anecdote, Guinareaes says,

“Does it?”

The magician then performs a series of amazing card tricks and illusions.  Confounding, “Everything happens for a reason”, what passes before our eyes is demonstrably unreasonable.

As in, “That cannot possibly occur.”

The inferred offering is a breather from our everyday life, looking for explanations and angles.  Guinaraes asks us to surrender fully to the magical experience.  There is actually no available alternative.  In this “80-minute show without intermission”, figuring out “How did he do that?” is simply – you will pardon the expression – “not in the cards.” 

So we may as well give in, and just enjoy being fooled. 

And, perhaps, after leaving the theater, consider the troubling elements in our personal lives we try constantly to explain but would be better off accepting as “unknowable” and just allowing them to happen.

And with that, I may have ventured an extraneous step too far.  (I just wanted to get that in.)  Going back a paragraph…

From the “audience perspective”, magic is an experience that cannot ultimately be explained.  (Beyond the explanation, “The practitioner is trying to fool us.”)  We look on, with feelings of genuine awe and amazement.  And no reasonable understanding of what we just saw.

The prevailing message is, “Here, it is legitimate not to know.”   What we just saw?  It’s magic.  And that’s it. 

Black-and-white television?

It is exactly the same.

(To me, though, perhaps, not to others.)

First of all, polls indicate that audiences in large numbers will not watch black-and-white movies on television.  That’s why “colorization” was invented – to eliminate the “black-and-white” experience from the universe.  (The way we, through science, try to eliminate magic?  Just asking, in parenthetical brackets.)

Me, I enjoy black-and-white movies on television.  And old, black-and-white TV shows as well.

Why?

(Note:  This idea came to me years ago, when I switched from black-and-white TV to a color Sony Trinitron, and I nostalgically missed black-and-white.  Though, as you know, I am a chronic complainer.)

First of all, I don’t understand why people reject black-and-white programming.  For me, the lack of color was never an impediment.  Not once watching a black-and-white movie was I distracted by thoughts of,

“What color is that shirt?”

(Because it is not black-and-white wardrobe.)

What I appreciate… okay, I have wondered what color Matt Dillon’s shirt is, but that’s all… what appealed to me about black-and-white programming was its exemplary uniqueness.

Black-and-white television was the one thing in my life not inevitably in color.

Everything else was in color, whether I wanted it to be or not.  Black-in-white TV was a glorious exception, a refreshing oasis in an oppressive “color-wherever-you-look” reality.

Just like magic’s an oasis from the necessity of trying to figure everything out.

That –  Ta-da! – is how magic and black-and-white television are alike.

I have spared you the tedium and me the frustration of explaining a phenomenal card trick in words, which, like, I have tried, and people check their phone messages while I am talking,

Instead, I dug up a TED Talk of Helder Guimaraes in action.

I invite you to enjoy watching it unfold, giving your “figuring things out” muscle a rest.

Then, watch a black-and-white movie on TV. 

You’ll be surprised how little you’ll think about the shirt.

And how much the two experiences are the same.

“The man’s tenacious, if nothing else.”

"I See It Different"

Let’s start with the analogy, and I’ll come back to it later.

If I remember.

In an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza explains to Jerry, concerning the issue of lying,

“It’s not a lie, if you believe it.”

(A condition we have been living with nationally since 2016.)

Okay, so there’s this.

When I was, like, five years old, the Toronto Hebrew Day School provided a “taxi” to take us to school, which was downtown and where we lived wasn’t.

Mr. Rosen regularly drove our “taxi.”  And one day bringing me home, as he walked me up to my mother waiting at our open front door to greet me, Mr. Rosen offers an unsolicited comment, concerning my five year-old demeanor:

“Your son is a chronic complainer”, says Mr. Rosen.

Not just a complainer, mind you.  A chronic complainer.   It takes time to establish yourself as “a chronic complainer.”  When did I start, when I was two?  Or prenatally?

“It’s too dark in here!”

Okay, here’s the thing.

Mr. Rosen picked us up in order of how far away we lived from the school, advancing closer to our pedagogical destination with each “pick-up.”  Due to geographical  circumstances beyond my control, I was one of the earlier “pick-ups”,

giving me one of the three seats in the back of the “taxi”, which was fine. 

For the moment.

However, as Mr. Rosen picked up subsequent “customers”, they were instructed to sit on top of the kids, already sitting in the back seat. 

Now there were three kids sitting on top of the three kids sitting in the back seat.

Still manageable.

Till they were followed by yet a third layer of “customers.”

Making it now nine kids sitting in the back seat. 

Three layers of three.

With me, smothered at the bottom of one of those layers.

So I say something about it.

Hoping I might, rotatingly, move up.

Because the children sitting on top of me are heavy,

I am unable to see,

And close to being unable to breathe.

And from that mention of legitimate unfairness and distress,

I earn the branding reputation

As “a chronic complainer.”

“Fast Forward” to this blog.

Shipments of Kind Bars arrive that I never requested.

And I say something about it.

Bi-monthly boxes of Altoids show up when I had ordered but one.

And I say something about it.

An unsent royalty payment was made virtually impossible for me to register to receive.

And I say something about it.

(By the way, I am still waiting for that payment.)

And most recently, while trying to recover a five-dollar penalty from Lyft because their defective “Tracking Device” sent the car to the wrong place and I was charged five dollars for not being there, in the process of rectifying that error, a car was mistakenly dispatched to pick me up and I was penalized ten dollars for not being there either.

And I am saying something about that right now.  (Without devoting an entire post to it, because it’s the same story, with just different specifics.)

Now…

You could say I am still “a chronic complainer.”

Or, as with “It’s not a lie, if you believe it”, you could say,

“It’s not complaining, if it is verifiably correct.”

“Yes, it is.”

Why?

“Because of the whiny tone and sense of personal entitlement.”

I’m being punished for a genetic sinus condition and drawing attention to actual injustice?  That is so incredibly unfair.

“Here we go again.”

Man, you can't win.

Even on your own blog.