Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

The Brain That Changes Itself - Dr. Norman Doidge

Medical students used to be taught that the brain was fixed. The brain was likened to a machine that had specific parts to perform specific functions. Ageing and trauma impaired function forever. Parts wore out and no tune-ups could really bring the brain back to optimal perception, memory, or attention.

Doidge’s thesis in this book is in fact, the brain changes all the time, not only with ageing and injury, but through everything we experience. The machine model is not the way to view the brain. It is not hard-wired forever for this or that function. Doidge explores the seminal concept of neuroplasticity, showcasing the brain's capacity to rewire itself in response to experiences, learning, and recovery from injuries and trauma.

For instance, Doidge argues that we have senses we don't know we have. We don't think much about balance until we feel dizzy. It is scary feeling to suddenly lose the confidence that we are not going to fall. The sense of tumbling down may induce panic too. Doidge describes new devices that can tell the brain to re-route signals to stay balanced. The brain does not care about the source of a signal but can process that signal and change its function to adapt to perform novel tasks.

The main appeal of this book is the lucid writing. Any thinking person who in interested in the topic will get much out of reading it. It also gives heart to readers who have middle age in the rearview mirror. Don't renounce physical exercise, never quit reading.

The Nones of Perry Mason 89

Note: Raymond Burr built up quite a reputation playing villains in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For instance, he plays a gangster who steals a diamond in the Martin & Lewis comedy You’re Never Too Young in 1955. Nothing, not even seeing Brother Ray, will induce me to watch a movie in which zany hijinks ensue when grown-man Jerry masquerades as a 12-year-old child to recover the diamond. Just the premise makes me breathe shallow.

Walk a Crooked Mile
1948 / 1:31
Tagline: “Smash Up of a Spy Ring!”
[internet archive]

Raymond Burr plays the muscle for a gang of Communist spies during the early Cold War era. Their mission is to steal nuclear secrets from a facility in California. The FBI, however, gets hot on their trail because of a tip from Scotland Yard.

Burr plays Krebs, a Communist thief out to steal atomic secrets. Conveying a sense of menace and danger, his character adds tension and intrigue to the film.  He beats people up. He picks secrets up at a drop in an 24/7 laundry. He takes part in a climactic shoot-out. Looking as if he is tipping the scales at nearly 300 pounds, he wears a suit floppily that calls to mind a loose-fitting Japanese samue.  A trim beard makes him look a tidy saboteur. The beard also makes him conspicuous in a population where clean-shaven is the norm and expectation. I would think the last look a spy would go after is conspicuous and memorable.

The FBI agents are played persuasively as smart dedicated men who are human enough to make mistakes. They conduct muggings to relieve persons of interest of evidence and commit B&E to toss apartments. They enter hazardous situations with no back-up. They carry precious evidence out of the office instead of locking it up. They leave suspects by themselves after they’ve been interrogated. They are fooled when the Communist spies disguise themselves as clergymen. They use “Slavic” to describe a “nationality” when in fact it is an “ethnicity.” Just as prone to as anybody else, they are subject to thinking errors like overgeneralizing, filtering, and anchoring.

None of my quibbles detract from the basic messages that 1) the Communists use vicious means in pursuit of their inhuman ends and 2) the FBI is working diligently to counter this menace. I never got the feeling that the anti-Communism in this movie was the dumb hysterical anti-communism that brought into disrepute principled anti-communism. In one scene an immigrant landlady in San Francisco glares at Burr and says heroically, defiantly, “My whole family was killed by men like you because they didn’t answer questions. I’m the last one that’s not going to answer questions.”

The production is very smooth and easy to look at it. Noirish angles and scenes of shadows and light dramatize the good guys and demonize the bad guys as they develop plans to counter each other.  The voice-over and jiggly camera give a feeling of a documentary. The voice-over is omniscient so it takes us into Communist meetings which is a little strange.

As I always say, I’m easy-going and open to meeting movies where they are coming from, so I liked the tense process of breaking up the spy ring. The film itself, directed by Gordon Douglas, is considered a solid example of Cold War-era film noir, blending crime thriller elements with political intrigue.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Frank Ferguson plays the owner of a laundry that is a drop for the Communists. Shocking he is a spy because he looks like the personification of Midwestern Reliable. He was a Sheriff in TCOT Perjured Parrot, an expert in TCOT Angry Dead Man, and another sheriff, though more of a dimbulb martinet, in TCOT Bluffing Blast. But his best performance was as good old Walter, the faithful friend of Frances Reid of in TCOT Golden Venom.

Pre-Mason Burr: Click away

Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]

Mac Fontana #1

Black Hearts and Slow Dancing - Earl Emerson

Regional setting, sense of humor, and deft writing are combined in this first-of-a-series mystery novel that features Mac Fontana. A firefighter and arson investigator, Mac has been through the mill, with a wife killed in a car crash during his own trial in the death of a woman he slapped to death. He’s moved to the Seattle area with his young son and been pressured into becoming the sheriff in addition to his duties as fire chief in the village of Staircase.

In Mac’s jurisdiction, a fireman from Seattle is found tortured to death. Mac’s investigation uncovers civic corruption in aid of urban sprawl. During his search to distinguish the good guys from the other kind, Mac is forced into an oil tank to die, tempted into You-Know by the victim’s strength-training GF, and supervises his crew at the arson fire of a church. Emerson has skilled hand for the rousing scene.

This is more a crime novel than a mystery since the perps are easy to spot. Readers that are leery of series books will have to tolerate the standard devices of local setting, emotionally damaged hero, diabolical moguls and their depraved minions. The barnyard language and humor, plus the loud stupid-on-purpose  atmosphere of a men’s locker room may be too much of a familiar thing for readers who spend quite enough time in a men’s locker room in real life, thank you very much. The three female characters can be summed up bluntly: one is a pain, the next a flake, and the last a brute.

What may or may not balance this for prospective reader: the wide-ranging action rocks, the pace is brisk, the plot twists and turns in remarkable ways. Plus, there is a Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd named Satan. The presence of a wonder dog wins extra points, of course. While this novel did not win any awards, Emerson has won honors for other novels, so he is writer that readers can trust will deliver an entertaining mystery.

The Kalends of Perry Mason 88

Note:  A. A. Fair is one of the many pen names of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of defense lawyer Perry Mason. The mysteries under the Fair pen name feature the private eye partnership Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.

Double or Quits – A.A. Fair

Writing as A.A. Fair, Erle Stanley Gardner released the fourth and fifth Bertha Cool – Donald Lam mysteries in 1941. In March, Spill the Jackpot had portly Bertha Cool lose weight due to a bout with a virus.  In December, Double or Quits finds Bertha and her crack investigator Lam taking the day off to go fishing. Learning from her health scare, Bertha becomes determined to make time for self-care.

But another angler at the pier turns out to be Dr. Hilton Deverest, an M.D. with a big problem. Jewels from his safe have disappeared and so has Nollie Starr, his wife’s social secretary. He hires Cool and Lam to find the secretary, get the jewels back, and let Nollie know that the doc will let bygones be bygones. Things get complicated for Cool and Lam when their client is found dead on the floor of his garage with his car engine running.

At this point with the case heating up, Gardner tells the tale of how Lam pressures Bertha to make the agency a partnership. Bertha howls as if stabbed, but agrees after Lam applies psychological judo. The first thing new partner Lam does is boost the wages of the agency secretary Elsie Brand. Not just a pretty name (I had two aunts named Elsie), she is a Gardnerian Ideal Woman: taciturn, loyal, resourceful, quick-witted, kind, and easy on the eye.

The setting and motivations are plausible. The characterization isn’t deep but Gardner gets across that the characters are adults having real-life problems. Dr. and Mrs. Deverest have a marriage so troubled it borders on the sick. The doctor’s niece Nadine Croy is dealing with an ex that is milking her for money. Heartless con men exploit widows’ loneliness and discontent. In a fine scene, Elsie Brand’s cooking appeals to cop’s appetite which proves to be his undoing since after Bertha makes him pay for his mooching a free meal, his nasty inclination to push people around, and his all-round poor judgement. Lam has great interrogation scenes and in one he plays a doctor like a fish, getting him to toss his professional ethics overboard.

More cheering is the relationship that Lam has with Elsie. It is not of the platonic nature of the one between Perry and Della. Near the end of Double or Quits, a nurse solemnly warns Elsie not to be alone with Lam because, under the influence, he might be “abnormally stimulated.”

Gardner writes, “Elsie Brand laughed in her face.”

True, the plotting gets convoluted and the reveal requires the focus of reading a loan agreement. A key deduction feels improbable. But this is worth reading just for the enjoyment of the comical interplay between brainy Lam and hard-charging Bertha, plus of the tender back and forth between Lam and Elsie. It’s strange how the Cool & Lam novels are a little hard-boiled and a little cozy at the same time. While the characterization is not what a hardcore reader of Faulkner would call strong, the characters are the best thing going for it.

European Reading Challenge #7

Franz Kafka – Jeremy Adler

This short, copiously illustrated biography tells about the life and times of the subject in enough detail to hold the interest of but not overwhelm the non-specialist. There are many pictures of Prague and the important people in the writer’s life. Also included are Kafka’s drawings from his notebooks.

In accessible language, Adler makes the point that the Jewish Austrian-Czech writer and novelist who wrote in German tore up the blueprint for the 19^th century novel. For example, he used both ordinary and implausible characters. Josef K. is an ordinary bank employee who is arrested one day for no apparent reason and put on trial. Gregor Samsa is a fabric drummer who wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a winged beetle. In plain language and a lucid style, Kafka creates characters that anybody anywhere can relate to.

Making the personal and private seem universal, Kafka deals with abstract concepts like “integrity,” “reality,” and “individuality,” as concepts that thinking members of all cultures must contend with in the modern world. His description of urban alienation and anxiety speak to readers who feel isolated in the world, cut off from traditional ways of thought.

The word Kafkaesque has entered our language like Orwellian and Dickensian. It usually describes being trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare of incompetent or mean or zealous (or all three) clerks, pointless protocols, and incomprehensible paperwork. But it seems unfair that Kafka’s name should be associated with such negative meanings when he had such a positive and humane soul. 

Besides, given the Nazis branded Kafka’s art “degenerate” and burned his books, that must mean he’s worth reading.

Forty Witnesses Saw the Killing

Note: Gail Patrick moved beyond ingenue parts when she played Cornelia the mean sister in My Man Godrey. After dozens of parts as the socialite bad girl, retirement from acting drove her batty with boredom. With her husband Cornwell, Gail Patrick Jackson formed the company that produced from 1957 to 1966 the greatest courtroom TV series in creation. One wonders if it was due to Jackson – a lifelong Democrat - that the writers so often returned to themes such as class inequality and friction, the treatment of marginalized groups, and the various forms of corruption in the business world and the entertainment industry.

Murder by Pictures
1936 / 1:09
Tagline: “Forty Witnesses Saw the Killing, But Not One Could Pick the Killer!”
[internet archive]

Gangster Nate Girard (Onslow Stevens) hosts a shindig celebrating his acquittal from a murder charge. But the party is pooped when his attorney is shot to death. No gun is found, but, as the tagline hints, forty witnesses are all suspects. 

In this large pool is Meg “Nutmeg” Archer (Gail Patrick) stands out because her father was killed by Girard. She could have provided evidence that convicted Girard, so Girard wants her to take the fall for the lawyer’s killing. The flatfoots suspect that news photographer Kent Murdock (Lew Ayres) is helping Nutmeg evade the meshes of the law. A flashback explains how a photo of the actual shooting exists and like the rifle in that famous Western (Winchester ’73?), the negative keeps changing hands.

At only 69 minutes, this comic mystery can’t help but move briskly. The clever twists and non-stop turns make up for the now creaky wisecracking. So much in style then, nowadays nonsense grates if the viewer is not in the right mood for period word play.  "Aw, come on. Skin back your ivories. You're as limp as spaghetti. You're the saddest group of courtroom victors I ever trained a lens on."

Granted, though, classic American tall-tale wackiness hits the mark when a deadpan cop reports: “We got her life story from Oklahoma. When she was 12 she shot out all the candles on her birthday cake. They call her Nutmeg.”

Beware: Confusing is the first fifteen minutes. The acquitted killer gives useful information in an aside that is easy to miss due to the muddy sound. Three brash newspaper reporters – Lew Ayres, Benny Baker, and Paul Kelly – all seem to be named Murdock. Trying too hard to hit the screwball comedy note, Ayres takes to the shower with his pants on. Also, Gail Patrick’s backstory is related to what everybody at the time would have known but we post-moderns have forgotten: that in the early Twenties the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were the richest people per capita in the world, which attracted murderous whitemen on the ruthless hunt for oil money.

There is one connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series. Appearing in this movie as his usual comic relief bumpkin is a 30-year-old Benny Baker, who in his fifties was to appear in three episodes of the series. He was good as a cold gambling commission bureaucrat in TCOT Gambling Lady, but he was great as the nasty henchman in TCOT Carefree Coronary and the worst adult male role model in the world in TCOT Shifty Shoe-Box with the great Constance Ford.

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click on the title to go to the review

·         If I Had a Million
·         The Phantom Broadcast
·         The Murders in the Zoo
·         Death Takes a Holiday
·         The Crime of Helen Stanley
·         Murder at the Vanities
·         The Preview Murder Mystery
·         My Man Godrey

 

Barbara Hale Week 4/4

Note: The last entry in our Barbara Hale Film Festival. She starred as Della Street, the office manager and confidential secretary of Perry Mason from 1957 to 1966. She had a solid career in full-length movies, just as flourishing as William Talman and probably moreso than Burr and Hopper. She could both 'girl next door' and 'femme fatale.'

The Houston Story
1956 / 1:19
Tagline: “Terror Over Texas!”
[internet archive]

This B-movie is a crime story produced in the waning days of the genre known as film noir. It’s an uneven movie with a shallow script. For fans of Perry Mason, however, the main attractions are two fine actresses. Barbara Hale was a regular on the show as Mason’s faithful sidekick Della Street. And Jeanne Cooper appeared five times as a guest star, usually playing a difficult complex woman.

Hale goes platinum blond in this picture. Lest I go completely ‘male gazey,’ I’ll just opine “In-frickin-credible” and let it go at that. Against her girl-next-door type in TheFirst Time and Clay Pigeon, she plays the ambitious ex-wife of Gene Barry's now dead foreman in the oil fields. Bored with a stable homelife and money problems, she deserted her happy home and took a new name, only to end up as a chanteuse and the mistress of a tool employed by the mobbed-up crime czar of Houston.

Jeanne Cooper plays Gene Barry's current girlfriend. Madge is a waitress, all wholesome loyalty, loving compassion and warm dependability. She’s even adaptable when, in the tradition of nice GF’s in film noir movies, she says they can live on the run from the gangsters out to snuff him. Her mistake is that she thinks that Gene Barry loves her and is not a crook. But in the end after she realizes his true wolfish nature, she returns to her core values of honesty and courage. The movie-goer can see her inner turmoil before she adds the proviso “unless somebody is in danger” to our cultural rule “don’t snitch” and moves the story to its inevitable conclusion.

The story gets rolling when Gene Barry pressures Hale into introducing him to the local crime lord Edward Arnold and his minion Paul Richards. Barry presents to the wise guys his plan to rustle oil directly from the fields and sell it on the grey market to unethical distributors and countries like Cuba under embargo. The wise guys agree to the plan, but Barry is a victim of his own smarts and ambition. Barry wants to rise in the syndicate, and Arnold and Richards plan to knock him off as soon as they learn what he knows about oil rustling.

Barry is clever and magnetic but he’s ignorant in various ways. He’s disloyal: he uses his childhood  friend as a patsy, the fall-guy whose signature is on all the contracts. He’s fickle: he cheats on honest Cooper with temptress Hale. He’s ruthless: he sends Cooper to his apartment though it is probably being watched by the hit men. He’s decadent: The montage shows him smiling as he orchestrates grand theft and bribery, looking nasty but charming (Barry was always charming) as he ruins businesses and livelihoods with crime. He’s dumb: he can’t imagine any rivals would really do him in, doesn’t see that he is just as vulnerable to a couple of rounds to the brain pan as the next guy. He actually says, “I’m the big boy now and nobody’s gonna get me out.”

The script comes close to a criticism of the “corporate man,” a story of rivalry among street-fighters in suits but doesn’t quite get there. The script is also blurry as a morality tale. It is not clear why Barry and Hale fall for each other so hard, nor why Barry is so callous about using a childhood friend like a tool. I suppose we movie-goers are supposed assume that Barry and Hale are both birds of a hedonistic feather, merely greedy for good times.

The pace of the movie, however, is brisk though director William Castle (yes, the William Castle) does give us breathers. One is on top of an observation tower at night (yeah, we get a plunge unto death – cool!). And another follows two hitmen through Houston International Airport, which is attractive to us movie-goers who like mid-20^th century infrastructure.

As for the connection with the classic Perry Mason TV series, Frank Jenks, who played the patsy best friend, drove a cab in this movie just as he did in TCOT Deadly Double. Jenks played a barman that had seen it all in TCOT Violent Vest. Jenks had a craggy face that made him look like an archetypal white working class American man. Paul Richards also appeared twice on the show, in TCOT Startled Stallion and TCOT Melancholy Marksman. Both characters were troubled souls.