Dr. Metablog

East Side, West Side (1947)

How should a person who is an enthusiast of classic cinema react when he finds himself loving a film that has been panned, dismissed and ignored for seventy-five years? 

The movie in question is a Manhattan tale called East Side, West Side. It was released in 1947 when I was a mere eight years and has sunk like a stone. It's a domestic drama (or soap opera) for two-thirds of the way and then goes full noir in its last thirty minutes. If East Side, West Side is remembered at all, it's for squandering big-time talent: actors Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse and Van Heflin; writer Isobel Lennart and director Mervyn LeRoy. I cannot remember a picture from that era that is studded with more stars.

In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther, the grand khan of 1940s movie critics, not only hated the film but was driven by it into a kind of moral uproar. "East Side, West Side," he wrote, "just about hits the low-water mark of interest, intelligence and urgency. And certainly nothing accomplished by the writers or the actors of this film does anything to raise it into an even remotely vital realm.... Frankly, we thought that films like this one had been put on the dud-list years ago." Yikes. Even though Crowther almost popped an artery writing his review, he was not explicit about what so offended him. Let me guess: "films like this" focus on frank sexual desire and more specifically with adultery and its consequences.  

East Side West Side has rarely drawn much comment, but in 1991, when other noir-y films of past eras were being re-evaluated and upgraded, this one was still considered "static" and "lurid, unconvincing and artificially chic...." In a word, "uninteresting melodrama trash."

And yet the two of us found it engaging and vital and not in any way lurid.

The plot is loaded with familiar post-War II elements. Brandon Bourne (James Mason) is married to well-to-do Jessie Bourne (Barbara Stanwyck) and has recently ended a too-public affair with ex-waitress Isabel Lorrison (Ava Gardner). Isabel left town and Brandon returned to his forgiving wife, but now the ex-"hash-slinger" is back in town and wants Brandon again. She gets him, way too easily. Jessie puts up with her husband's shenanigans for a while but eventually leaves him. Meanwhile, Mark Dwyer (played by the great underrated actor Van Heflin), who is some sort of spy/journalist/all-around good guy, returns from Europe and immediately falls in love with Jessie. At this point, the movie suddenly veers from its domestic track. Isabel is murdered and Brandon accused of the crime. Dwyer, turned detective, comes to his rescue.

It's an episodic but not unworthy plot. But there's more to the film than this brief summary. Here on Walnut Street, we fans of TCM appreciated elements of the film that Bosley Crowther, and many other viewers, had left curiously unexamined.

ES, WS declares in its title that it's going to explore class tensions and antagonisms. The well-known formula is that dwellers in the east side of Manhattan are patrician, rich, and snotty, while the west side is inhabited by down-to-earth working-class plebeians who are rough but joyful. The film both elucidates and challenges the cliche. Brandon Bourne epitomizes what would now be called "upper class privilege." He's rich (probably inherited money), accustomed to servants and to getting his way. He carries himself as though he was born in tux and tails. He loves his wife Jessie, he repeatedly claims, but there's no warmth or snuggling or flirtation between the two of them, which is the film's way of implying that she's cold and that he's not getting enough at home. (That's the way things are on the Upper East Side, don't you know?) On the other hand, there's ex-waitress Isobel Lorrison, who covets East Side wealth and who is overtly sexual; she's an orgasm waiting to happen. She covets Brandon's life of ease as much or more than he wants her passion. She has no compunction about introducing her eager sexuality into the Bourne household, all the better if it pollutes their establishment complacency and fancy dress.

Even though ES, WS gives us James Mason at his slimiest and Van Heflin at his must buoyant and likable, it is a film that is dominated by its female characters. It offers us five-count'em-five strong women, all of whom exhibit gobs of what has lately come to be called "agency." Jessie (who finds her strength only in the penultimate scene) and Isabel, of course, but also Rosa Senta, played by Cyd Charisse, a young woman who makes a very good decision; Jessie's mother (Gale Sondergaard), who has the best scene in the film, when she tells Brandon to his face that he's a vain and a fraud; and also Felice Backett, played by Beverly Michaels, a dame who is "built like the Empire State Building" and who is not afraid to throw a punch. Some of the best dialog in the film (and there's a lot of good stuff) is between women who are either the closest friends or the most bitter antagonists. There is, for example, a striking confrontation between mistress and wife:

Isabel Lorrison : Sorry I'm not more subtle. But, you must remember, I haven't had your advantages. When your mother was busy being the Great Lady of the theater, mine was in a burlesque show on 14th Street. And when your mother sent you to Miss Cavanaugh's School for nice, young ladies, I was slingin' hash! Oh, you learned how to pour tea properly and how to cross your legs at the ankles only - and that plain pumps make you a lady, but, putting bows on them make you something else. You learned how to make a good marriage. But, like all your kind, you think by marrying a man, you've done enough. Well, there's one thing that Miss Cavanaugh forgot to teach you. Something I learned: how to keep a man. How to keep him wanting you!

Jessie Bourne : My husband doesn't want you. He's finished with you. He told me so last night.

Isabel Lorrison : I'll call him and he'll come running.

That's classy writing. 

The women are not the only vibrant and credible characters. There's also Bourne himself, who is an exemplar of what would now, decades later, be called "sexaholism." He wants to be faithful, or at least says he does, but he can't help himself when Isabel Lorrison/Ava Gardner has a telephone in her hands. Whether he's ill or just weak and pathetic is left to the audience to decide.

And by the way, the film was written by a woman (Isabel Lennart) who adapted it from a novel by Marcia Davenport -- a writer well known in her day but long forgotten. The novel has been out of print for decades, but Interlibrary Loan has located a copy for me. It's now "in transit' and I'm waiting impatiently for it to arrive. 

 

Books I Read, 2022

This year's list is incomplete. During the Vermont summer, I neglected to keep good records. My porous brain can't bring to mind all I read in June, July, August, and September. In addition, it's a list of books only, so no periodicals (New Yorker, New York Review of Books), Northern Forests) or newspapers.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, The Last Gift; Daniel Fuchs, Williamsburg Summer; L. J. Davis; A Meaningful Life;  Marc David Baer, The Ottomans, Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn; J.M. Quigley, Lolita in the Afterlife; Daniel Fuchs, Homage to Blenholt; A J Rich, The Hand that Feeds You;  Alfred Kazin, Walker in the City; Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude; Colm Toibin, Brooklyn; Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies;  Emily Gould, Friendship; James Agee, Brooklyn Is; Jenny Offill, Department of Speculation; Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife; Kyle Harper, Plagues Upon the Earth; Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.; James McBride, The Color of Water; Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach; R. D. Rosen, Tough Luck; David Crystal, The Story of English; Seth Lerer, Inventing English; Paul Auster, Sunset Park; Richard Fortey, Fossils; Jay Neugeboren, Big Man; Magocsi and Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews and Ukrainians; Henry James, Portrait of a Lady; Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, The Golden Age Shtetl; Jay Neugeboren, Imagining Robert; James Huneker, The New Cosmopolis; Roland Ennos, The Age of Wood; Emily Bingham, My Old Kentucky Home; Marie Favereau, The Horde; John Dunn, The Glitter in the Green; Mike Unwin, Around the World in 80 Birds; Douglas Boyd, Plagues and Pandemics; David Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind; Riley Black, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs; William Shakespeare, The Second Part of King Henry the IV; Pekka Hamaleinen, Comanche Empire; Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood; Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending; William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair; An Italian Impressionist in France, Giuseppe De Nittis; Richard Powell, The Philadelphians; Pekka Hamaleinen, Indigenous Continent; David Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel and Language; Julian Barnes, Elizabeth Finch; Jeffrey Lovich, Turtles of the World; Andy Borowitz, Profiles in Ignorance; Tim Birkhead, Birds and Us; Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time; David Schiffman, Why Sharks Matter.

Neighborhood Movie Theaters

When I was an unadventurous Flatbush "yoot" back there in the 1950s, there were only two movie theaters that mattered: the Leader and the Kent, both on Coney Island Avenue, and both within an easy walk. The Leader was closer to my East 9 Street home and it was there that I spent many a rainy weekend afternoon ostensibly watching a double feature while sprinting in the aisles, hurling popcorn at the kids who were down in front, and dodging the "matron." The Kent was more of an expedition but still less than a quarter of a mile away. I once saw a show there with my father (Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)], memorable because it was the only time I ever went to the movies with him -- he was no frivolous moviegoer. In my childish innocence, I assumed that both the Leader and the Kent had been in place since time immemorial and that moviegoing began and ended with these two theaters. They were like mountains and rivers, permanent features of the landscape (or, rather, cityscape). I was very wrong. All is flux and movie theaters come and go. According to that most valuable resource, Cinema Treasures, over 27,000 cinemas in the United States have been closed or demolished, with many more endangered -- killed in the 1930s by the Depression and then in my time by the TV and DVDs and discs and streaming and covid. And also by self-inflicted wounds -- the studios and independents have failed to produce a regular supply of films for grownups and instead fill the shopping mall screens with CGI effects and infantile fantasies and "franchises." Nevertheless, the Kent is still in business, as a small-screen "art" theater, but the Leader long ago devolved into a bowling alley -- the Leader Lanes. Later it became a pharmacy. I don't know what has become of it lately; probably something dreadful.

There's much more to the story than the Leader and the Kent. In my youth, there was also the Culver Theater, the outside appearance of which I knew very well but never the interior. The Culver was located at the corner of 18th Avenue and McDonald, just a block away from the McDonald Avenue branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, where I shelved books for 75 cents an hour all through my Erasmus Hall years.  

The Culver was adjacent to and almost under the Culver Local, the "El" or elevated subway, that ran along McDonald (formerly Gravesend) Avenue. ("Elevated subway", by the way, is one of the most fabulous unappreciated oxymora of our time). The Culver was a big spacious theatre that sat 1445 people. I imagine that most of the paying customers had a tough time catching the dialog when a train rumbled by. I wish I could identify what film was playing when this picture was snapped, but alas the image is blurred. The styles of the automobiles suggest a date in the late 1930s. The Culver has long disappeared and nowadays the most prosperous commercial venture on its former block is the Tashkent Supermarket. 

Then there was the Beverly, located at the intersection of Church Avenue and East 2 Street, just a few blocks from Erasmus Hall High School at Church and Flatbush.

On the day of this photo, the Beverly was showing Away All Boats, a 1956 war drama featuring Jeff Chandler, but as we all know, Jeff was in fact Erasmus alumnus Ira Grossel. The movie in which he starred was playing just down the way from his old high school -- a marvelous serendipitous coincidence. The Beverly's second feature, Raw Edge, was a western with Rory Calhoun and Yvonne DeCarlo. Did I plunk down my quarter to watch a war movie and a western? It was certainly the kind of programming that would have attracted my seventeen-year-old self. I have no recollection of either feature but I am able to bring to mind an image of young lovely Yvonne DeCarlo. The Beverly operated from 1920 to 1981 and has since, sadly, been transformed into a T-Mobile showroom. 

There was also the Rialto

at the corner of Cortelyou Road and Flatbush Avenue. It was directly on my route as I walked to Erasmus Hall High School with Steve Lewin five times a week between 1952 to 1956. It was also a block or two from the Sears, Roebuck store, where in the summer of 1956, I handed out parking tickets to drivers entering the Sears lot. Their cars looked a lot like the ones in this picture. Last I heard, the Rialto had transmogrified into the Cortelyou Road Church of God -- a sorry fate. 

In addition to the theaters that I attended or might have attended in the days of my youth, there were another bunch that had already shut up shop. The most prominent was the Newkirk Theater on East 16th Street -- and therefore only five or six blocks from P S 217. It stood just across from Newkirk Plaza, the shopping center that also housed an express stop on the BMT line. The Newkirk started life as the TNF, named after the initials of its trio of builders. It might have been, originally, a legitimate theater.

In 1928 it reopened as a cinema with a performance My Best Girl with Mary Pickford (who lived for a while with Doug F. at 1320 Ditmas). It closed in 1940 and has since been demolished. It must have been quite an ornament to the neighborhood, but I rode my bicycle on that street many times and never detected the least sign that there had once been a handsome theater there. I wonder also what became of the grand Robert Morton organ that accompanied the silent films. Later the Newkirk acquired a proper movie marquee as can be seen in this fragment of an image.

 The Newkirk was gone for good in 1940.

Then there was the Dorchester, a the corner of Dorchester and Coney Island Avenue. Here's how its building appeared a few years ago:

 

I must admit that this slice of the old neighborhood has resisted gentrification.

 

I can't find an image of the Cortelyou Photoplay Theater at the intersection of Cortelyou and Marlborough, which seated 400 and closed in 1928, but here's how the Ditmas Theater at 115 Ditmas (near East 2 Street) looked in 2013. Apparently the building was derelict or near-derelict for a long while. Now, I'm told, it's been transformed into "luxury apartments."

 

I predict that in a couple of generations, the movie theater will be totally extinct although a few will survive as museums. Future ages, if there are future ages, will gasp at the way we entertained ourselves in the thrilling days of yesteryear. 

 

But I gotta tell you, it was hell of a ride while it lasted.

Turtles and Metempsychosis

I would not want to be reincarnated as a turtle. Not at all.

Should it happen that I were to be reincarnated, I would prefer to return as one of those great sea birds -- the Wandering Albatross or the Great Frigatebird  or the Northern Fulmar -- that cruise for hundreds of miles over the Pacific -- soaring effortlessly, joyriding the thermals, blissfully savoring the salt spray at dawn and dusk. It would be glorious -- although not entirely without a downside, because if I were such a bird I would have to sustain myself on a repulsive sushi diet of raw fish. Yeesh.

But to live the next or a subsequent life as a turtle -- what a grim unpleasant prospect! Turtles do not soar; they're earthbound, and they move so slowly that they're almost immobile. At very best, they slog or plod. It's not that they're unsuccessful in their own way; after all, they've been around for 200 million years. Generations, therefore, have plod, have plod, have plod. But is there a creature on earth whose bodily configuration is more limiting, more dictatorial? Turtles spend a lifetime schlepping carapace and plastron up and down hills or over the desert sands. How can an animal constrained to eternally lug an outsize ponderous shell experience any kind of freedom or joy? 

Besides, turtles are ridiculously ugly. 

 

Bulky thick inelegant legs ending in frightening claws. Absurd useless tails. Toothless gaping mouths. Prominent nostrils, wrongly placed. Horrid corrugated necks. No ears, none at all. Foolish, fatuous expression. The only part of the turtle that might be considered attractive is the carapace (when it's not coated with slimy vegetation or studded with leeches), but in the entire history of the planet, no turtle has ever been able to admire its own integument. 

 

Imagine being reincarnated as a creature so imperfectly designed that it can't regain its legs when tipped onto its back. If I were a turtle, I would hate that. Legs flailing in the air. Undignified. Double yeesh.

 

Plus, many turtles eat worms.

 

Moreover, if I or someone dear to me were to become a turtle -- it's going to be a long haul, reincarnation-wise. Let's say, for example, that you were to be born again as a dung beetle -- why, you would endure a very unsavory couple of months, but then -- on you would go to the next life. Once reincarnated as a turtle, however, you're liable to be stuck in that ungainly shell for a century. And worse still -- some turtles "brumate" for half their lives. That's a heck of a lot of time to spend in a state of suspended animation. In addition -- and this is rather shocking -- some turtles extract oxygen from water through their "cloaca." I can't imagine how they do that, and, frankly, "'twere to consider too curiously to consider so." Not to mention turtle sex. Do turtles cuddle or snuggle? It must be quite an accomplishment to work around those massive clanking  shells. 

 

So no turtle reincarnation for me. But to tell truth, I find reincarnation itself, like most religious or quasi-religious ideas, utterly baffling. I presume it works something like this. I die, my soul is released from my corpse and immediately enters into a new body -- in this case a newly fertilized turtle egg. (I have no idea how this process works -- but let's all agree that it does). Immediately, there's a glitch. Turtle gender is not determined in the usual way, by XX and XY genes. Turtle gender is a consequence of the temperature at which the embryos develop inside the eggshell. Warm, male; cool, female (or vice versa in some species). What this means is that if my soul was infused or assimilated or injected into a turtle egg, it would not be immediately known whether I was going to be a boy turtle or a girl turtle. I don't really care, frankly; there's not much advantage to being one or the other. Turtles are not particularly sexually dimorphic and both genders are equally hideous. But I would like to know right away and not have to wait on some quirk of the weather. 

 

Reincarnation puzzles me for still another reason. How can I be sure that I haven't already been reincarnated? Perhaps I was a turtle (or an albatross) in a past life. I don't remember being other than I am, but how can I be certain? 

 

Or, to switch points of view, perhaps one of the turtles pictured above was once, let us imagine, Ragnar Naess (1900-1972), a bachelor sorghum farmer from O'Neill, Nebraska. Or even one of my less brainy former colleagues. How could we determine it; how could the turtle know it? If it's undeterminable, why does it matter?

 

Gosh, reincarnation is a tough nut to crack.

 

[December 15, 2022. Pearl Maneli writes: "I believe current reincarnation theory explains that your soul wouldn't transmigrate into a turtle at the moment of conception; it would do so only when the turtle hatches from the egg. So you can let your mind rest easy on the question of your turtle gender."]

 

[December 16. Vivian de St. Vrain responds: "Thanks, Pearl. I am much relieved"]

A Few More Unusual Words New to Me

A matamata is a species of turtle found in South America. It's odd looking, even for a turtle.

The word matamata is an example of a reduplicative.  It is of unknown etymology.

 

A kurgan is a tumulus or mound erected over a grave, at first in the southern Asian steppes (4th century BCE) and later throughout southeast Europe. I myself saw many kurgans in Bulgaria, but for some reason never learned the word. A saiga is a kind of antelope. A zander is a European fish similar to a perch. A chillum is a kind of decorated bamboo pipe "often sold in places like Haight-Ashbury and Greenwich Village." A punkah was, in the late but not-so-great lamented days of the Raj, a large swinging fan, operated by a servant called a punkah wala. Arrack or arac is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of coconut flowers, which sounds delicious but is probably not available at our local liquor store. The astragalus, more often called the talus, is a bone in the human foot. The word's similarity to asparagus is inadvertent but nevertheless amusing. A condyle is "a protuberance at the end of a bone." A swidden is an area of land cleared to farm by slashing and burning. Swidden, a truly lovely word, is derived from an Old Norse verb meaning "to burn"-- as well it should be.

 

Lamellar armor was made from small plates of leather or bronze. Here's a terracotta statue of a soldier wearing scute-like armor. 

 

A guimpe (pronounced gimp, apparently), was a short high-necked Victorian blouse designed to be worn under a low-cut dress. It would take a specialist to explain the difference between a guimpe and a fichu. A tarboosh is a variety of fez.

A bident is a two-pronged weapon, two-thirds of a trident. Here's a statue of Hades wielding one:

Could there be a linguistic relationship between bident and Biden? Not likely, because a "biden" was originally a maker of buttons.

Proverbs for a Latter Day

You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the boy.  (Traditional)

The more you hold a baby in the first year, the less you have to hold it later on. (Dr. Catherine Lodyjenski, pediatrician.)

Don't skate to where the puck is; skate to where it's going to be.  (Wayne Gretzky)

Adolescence is not for sissies.  (EHP)

You can't coach seven feet. (Origin unknown)

Enough is as good as a feast.  (Traditional)

Enough is as good as a feast, and sometimes better.  (EHP)

"Both" is always an option.  (KM)

Everyone has a plan until I punch him in the mouth. (Mike Tyson)

Don't look back; someone might be gaining on you.  (Satchel Paige)

If you lose your man, go directly to the basket.  (Emanuel P.)

The only people who idealize the past are those who know nothing about it.  (EHP)

The longer something has been believed by mankind, the less likely it is to be true.  (EHP)

No one know what's going on between two people, even if you're one of them.  (EHP)

What's sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.  (EHP)

The secret of life is to turn routines into rituals.  (Origin unknown)

Nothing ever happens until it happens.  (EHP)

Babies rewire the parental brain. (EHP)

Everything made of wood was once a tree. (Origin unknown)

Your father is an enigma who takes a lifetime to decipher. (Origin unknown)

Never omit an opportunity to do a favor for a friend, and never be embarrassed to accept a favor from a friend.  (Emanuel P.)

Religion: my prince of peace can beat up your prince of peace.  (LERM)

No one owns anything;  the most you can say is that you have a lifetime lease.  (Emanuel P.)

You should be at least as polite to a wife or husband as to a person you meet on the street. (EHP)

Old age is not for sissies.  (Bette Davis)

You can't make old friends. (EHP)

You're immortal until the moment you die. (EHP)

There are no chocolate ice cream cones in the next world.  (LERM)

More Words New to Me

Calipash is the "gelatinous greenish material found underneath the upper half of a turtle's shell." Perhaps this word is well known to turtle-fanciers, but it's brand new to me. Calipash is "esteemed as a delicacy" but should not be confused with calipee, which is a fatty gelatinous light-yellow substance found immediately above the turtle's lower shell. Equally delectable, so say connoisseurs. Here's a dish of mixed calipash and calipee. I confess that it does not look delectable to me. Looks repellent, in fact, but each to his own.

The word calipash is a variant of carapace, the turtle's upper shell. The lower shell is a plastron.

Calipash could be served with pilaus, a Kenya spicey rice dish. One might, or might not, add beeswing to the menu. Beeswing is the "filmy translucent crust" that grows on port that has been bottle-aged.

Zenana is a word of Persian origin which refers to the part of a large house reserved exclusively for women; it is therefore equivalent to harem.  Here's a picture of a rich gentleman visiting a zenana.

 

Such a visitor might carry a yataghan, which is a type of knife or saber (a yataghan is sometimes called a varsak). He might also be accompanied by a dragoman or interpreter. And if he were in a generous mood, he might carry a cairngorm as a potential gift. A cairngorm is a jewel of yellowish smoky quartz. If he possessed 36 bushels of cairngorms, he would have a full chaldron of them. Would he also bring with him a narghile, a kind of hookah?

 

A pelisse once referred to a kind of jacket worn by cavalrymen; in this illustration, the pelisse is the furry item slung over Charles Stewart's shoulder.

 

Later, for unclear reasons, pelisse came to denote a fashionable woman's open coat.

 

Charles Stewart might also be wearing a spatterdash, a legging designed to keep the pants clean. Eventually, spatterdashes became smaller and tidier; so did the word for them, which was diminished to "spats." But even so unpretentious as a word as spats should not be vilipended (or spoken of in an abusive manner).

 

A fichu is an item of women's clothes designed to rescue the wearer of a low cut dress from immodesty.

 

A fichu would probably be made of silk rather than camlet, which is a fabric of goat or camel hair. 

 

A drysalter was once a dealer in glue, varnish, and dyes. In even older times, a salter bought and sold salt, while a wetsalter cured fish.

What We Read in the 1950s: The Philadelphian (1956)

Richard Powell's novel The Philadelphian has not worn well. It was a best-seller in 1956 and was made into a "blockbuster" film, starring Paul Newman, in 1959. We watched the movie (called, for some reason, The Young Philadelphians) on TCM and I was sufficiently intrigued that I ordered up the long-forgotten novel through our blessedly-efficient Interlibrary Loan. Gosh, what a disappointment! The Philadelphian is a pot-boiler, I'm afraid, very mid-century. It's got it all -- three-generations of rags to riches, heroic army service, blighted romance and cheesy sex, and a contrived climactic courtroom showdown. Powell's prose is flat, unstylish, at its best "journalistic," but marred by flights of tough-guy pseudo-Hammettian or Chandleresque prose: "He came slowly downstairs from the bedroom, with the pulse of blood hammering inside his skull like a rivet gun"; "Her head felt like a boiling tea kettle, and her thoughts kept escaping from it like steam"; "The applause had been a cheer for the underdog. Later it had developed that a wolf was romping around in underdog's clothing". Frankly, I'm surprised that the novel achieved such popularity in the years of my youth. Sorry to say but it's a trashy piece of writing.

The film is a bit better; more honest and more disciplined, hugely reliant on Paul Newman's youthful charisma.