European Reading Challenge #6

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life - Tom Reiss

This biography examines the life and times of Lev Nussimbaum, a stateless Azerbaijani writer who lived between the two world wars.

The narrative is a bit less on the mercurial, magnetic, and elusive personality of the subject than on the major geopolitical upheavals of the 20^th century, such as the collapse of empires after WWI, the rise of Russian Bolshevism, the tragedy of Weimar democracy and the rise of Hitler’s National Socialism.

Reiss departs from the intricate story of Nussimbaum’s short life (from the Caucasus to Central Europe to America to end in Posillipo, Italy) to give primers on the horror of the Cheka; the brutality of the Freikorps; and the global rise of conflicting revolutionary and counter-revolutionary groups. This will interest readers (like me) who knew about such phenomena only superficially.

Reiss’s narrative captures and holds our attention because he continually draws from eyewitness accounts in memoirs and interviews, and Nussimbaum’s letters to intimates and fragments of his autobiography. He compares this evidence against historical sources. Did Nussimbaum soften frightful events due to his own nostalgia? Or conversely when did he see harsh reality but soften it in his fiction? This critical approach allows the biographer to substantiate the claim that Nussimbaum was probably the author Kurban Said, who wrote the iconic novel Ali and Nino ​​(1937).

An exceptional work. The book is well-worth reading if a reader can’t stop reading about the painful history of 20^th century Europe. Historical figures are presented in an interesting way (such as the young bank-robbing Stalin knowing the subject’s mother). The vision of Baku at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as the Paris of the East brings us closer to the culture, customs and peoples of the Caucasus and neighboring regions that are never mentioned in our schools or the mass media.

Chandler but More Heart & Soul

Ask for Me Tomorrow - Margaret Millar

Gilda was married to B.J. Lockwood, a nice guy that bad stuff just happened to since he never learned from experience and was too dumb to evaluate the risks of impulsive decisions. B.J.’s decision to run off with their pregnant 15-year-old house girl back to her natal village in Mexico left Gilda at loose ends. Gilda then married Marco, who had a paralyzing stroke soon after their nuptials.

Wanting to conclude unfinished business with B.J., Gilda hires young lawyer Tom Aragon to go down Mexico way and find him. Though he’s by no means an experienced detective, Tom is bilingual and quickly finds out B.J. and a con man named Jenkins were jailed on fraud charges. 

Their hapless plan to convert a poor Baja California village into a resort transformed into a criminal enterprise mainly because they were both out of their financial league. As Tom gets closer to his quarry B.J., however, three brutal murders eliminate informants.  

I found the ending a surprising hoot, while harder to please, less willing to be tricked readers of mystery may be less impressed.

Millar’s settings of Southern California and Mexico in the mid-1970s feel authentic and evocative though the attacks on the corruption in both places may put off readers who like those places. The dialogue is snappy and funny, but sometimes we wonder if it is likely that sleazy Mexican cops would really come up with such witty rejoinders. Many scenes shine as Gilda and Tom interact with each other, mainly by phone, and with a variety of curious characters. I think the exposition, dialogue and characterization make this one worth reading.

Margaret Millar was married to Kenneth Millar who wrote mysteries under the pen name of Ross Macdonald.

And the Butler-Blonde Battle was On!

Note: It’s impossible to have the Gail Patrick film festival without talking about this movie though it's hard to come up with anything new to say about one of the most popular screwball comedies ever. Mean Girl Cornelia was the role that typed Gail Patrick as The Sexy Smart Haughty One for the next dozen years. When Patrick retired from acting in 1948, inactivity drove her crazy. So she created the job of executive producer for the TV series Perry Mason and did that from 1957 to 1966.

My Man Godfrey
1936 / 1:34
Tagline: “...and the butler-blonde battle was on!”
[internet archive]

William Powell claimed that the only actress right for the part of Irene was Carole Lombard. Only an amateur critic, I hesitate to argue with a respected professional, but I wonder if at 24 years old Lombard was a little long in the tooth for the role of the giddy socialite Irene Bullock.

But I’m wrong since what trivializes a couple of years too old is that Lombard personified Thalia, the goddess of comedy. Only the powers of a goddess could make uproarious being flopped over Powell’s shoulder when he carries her up the stairs to toss her into a shower. Somehow she still manages to convey that she’s fakin’ and is as content as a puppy being carried. Even the way she lolls her head and shakes her hands is funny. Hilarious when she romps around on the furniture like a four-year-old, gleefully sing-song chanting “Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!” Lombard was a fearless actress, not afraid to look a wet and disheveled mess or act the looniest of tunes.

Lombard herself felt the character of Irene Bullock had a sense of tragedy about her. The movie-goer suspects that Irene’s bounteous love and compassion have been frustrated. Family with scads of kiddoes and doggoes or running a charity would be just the thing for her. Any foundation would benefit from her strength and kindness that badly need to find an object.

Also having a sense of the tragedy of the waste of talent was the character of Cornelia, the tough cookie sister played by Gail Patrick.

Godfrey: Very well. You belong to that unfortunate category that I would call the "Park Avenue brat." A spoiled child who's grown up in ease and luxury, who's always had her own way, and whose misdirected energies are so childish that they hardly deserve the comment, even of a butler on his off Thursday.

Cornelia: Thank you for a very lovely portrait.

Cornelia is hurt and angry at this devastating critique because she knows it’s true. She knows that she’s wasting her intelligence, adventurousness, and determination. She is all too aware that she is turning away from the challenge of life by hanging out with wastrels and worldlings. When ex-spoiled child Godfrey is taking his leave of the Bullocks, he has learned even from bad examples. He says to Cornelia:

You taught me the fallacy of false pride. You taught me humility....Miss Cornelia, there have been other spoiled children in the world. I happen to be one of them myself. You're a high-spirited girl. I can only hope that you use those high spirits in a more constructive way.

High spirits, a powerful psychological resource, run in all of us, already there, we don’t get high spirits from somewhere else. High spirits fuel the warrior in Cornelia, making it possible for her to face adversity and overcome obstacles. She needs to fight whatever is stealing her joy and dampening her high spirits, figure out her own values and work toward her own unique goals.

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click the link below to read 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

Hercule Poirot #32

Mrs. McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie

First published in 1952, the Belgian series detective is called upon by Superintendent Spence to gather enough evidence to Stay the Executioner’s Chop. Though he worked up the case, Spence doubts that James Bentley committed the murder for which he was tried and convicted. 

But if Bentley was not the culprit, who bashed Mrs. McGinty over the head, got her cash from under the floorboards, and secreted the hoard in a place her boarder James Bentley had easy access to? And why frame harmless Bentley, an out of work, lonely oddball?

Spence asks ageing detective Hercule Poirot to look into the case quietly. Poirot grants Spence’s request. He goes to the village of Broadhinny where the crime took place. To his misery, he is compelled to stay in a guest house with draughts, squalor, half-wild kids and dogs, and bad cooking. 

He meets his old friend the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver. She is having a rough time collaborating with a writer who adopting one of her series characters for a play. Her detective is a middle-aged Finnish vegetarian but the writer wants to make him into a handsome, dashing, meat-eating 35-year-old.

Through logic and method, Poirot quickly enough finds other probable motives and culprits and discovers what brought about Mrs. McGinty’s killing. There is another killing. This causes Bentley's execution to be postponed and gives more time for Poirot, by exciting his little gray cells, to untangle the mystery. Poirot's boundless self-confidence is always on display and always likable.

Agatha Christie was a plot genius. I shake my head in wonder at how she weaves her magic. Happily, Poirot is on stage from the first page. The entire mystery, in fact, is told from his point of view. The unfolding of the plot is smooth and plausible but too many characters make the reader sometimes pause and wonder, “Now who was this.” 

She doesn’t spend time describing and moves incidents along. When we readers are misdirected we know we are being conned and marvel that we still feel the suspense. High entertainment value, with all suspects gathered in a room for the climax and period references – still rationing in the early Fifties!

A Strange and Fascinating Woman

Note: This picture is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife by George Kelly. Directed by Vincent Sherman, it is the second of three films he made with Joan Crawford when they were “close to each other.”  When Sherman later revealed the affair to his wife, she observed “Well, I guess it’s too much to ask of any man that he turn down the opportunity to sleep with Joan Crawford.”

Harriet Craig
1950 / 1:34
Tagline: “A Strange and Fascinating Woman, at War with the Whole World.”
[internet archive]

Harriet Craig (Joan Crawford) is severe in her appearance, wearing clothes with straight lines, no curves. Harriet, particular to the point of being peculiar, keeps her housekeeper and her cousin Clair on the hop keeping everything just so. The upshot is that the house has all the warm coziness of the waiting area of a busy urology practice. Harriet keeps her husband Walter happy where it counts especially when she can use connubial delights to divert him from golf games with poker buddies.

But it is not like she is buckling to all the expectations of a stern patriarchy. Though she believes a wife’s duty is to look nice, she wears a hairstyle that is easy to take care of instead of attractive. Though Walter wants kids, she doesn’t want messes so they don’t have kids. In an incredible scene, she damages her husband’s reputation with his boss to head off Walter getting a promotion and a long business stay in Japan. Harriet feels she has achieved a secure stasis and doesn’t want anything as uncertain as kids or trips full of illicit temptations to rock the boat lest they all be devoured by chaos.

Harriet Craig escapes into perfectionism for safety, a fantasy world in which she is in control of the course of her mother’s dementia, Clair’s marital prospects, and her husband Walter’s promotions and business trips. She can’t face without anxiety the reality that she has control over none of these things. This movie is about how the world, other people, and her own unhelpful responses to normal changes in life all form a tornado to topple her perfect house of cards, to blow away her nutty belief that by dominating other people with her tyrant ways, she will exert control over what is in fact out of her sphere.

Wendell Corey is genial as Walter Craig. He’s probably best remembered as the dour police detective in Rear Window, being all judgy about Stewart sleeping with Kelly without benefit of clergy.  He plays Walter as a social and reasonable guy. The movie-goer can see it in his face when the realization strikes him that Harriet doesn’t like or trust other people when she claims, “We don't need other people to make us happy.” K.T. Stevens effectively portrays Clair as vulnerable in her lack of confidence and experience, defenseless against Harriet’s manipulations. Her nonverbals are expressive when it hits her that Harriet is playing fast and loose with reality.

Joan Crawford's performance is outstanding. Commanding. I had to re-evaluate my previous dismissal of her as a habitually over-acting movie star, associating her often overheated style too much with the melodramatic roles and situations of her many movies. Crawford brings to life Harriet Craig's embattled and controlling nature as she deals, not well, with a crazy world in which husbands tell each other, “Wives are mighty handy gadgets to have around the house.”

The Ides of Perry Mason 84

Gold Comes in Bricks – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

This 1940 exercise in noir-lite was the sixth of 30 novels starring the private detectives Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Like Laurel and Hardy, the partnership features the shrimpy one (him) and the stout one (her). Temperamentally speaking, Lam is a thinking machine and Bertha a bull in a china shop. As Bertha frankly sums up:

You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back some time, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.

The strain between contrasting styles is as funny as Bertha’s smarmy pseudo-concern over Lam’s love life. Women inevitably fall in love with Lam for his kind respect and willingness to listen. So Cool is always worried that Lam will end up in romantically deep waters and be too distracted to do his assignments for her. It’s a hoot.

This mystery opens with Lam taking lessons in the martial arts per the orders of Bertha, who likes her tobacco, liquor, steaks, and comfort. She thinks it would be the smart move to get Lam to toughen up in order to minimize recovery time after he gets beaten up on the job.

The client Henry Ashbury has brought them a problem of a debutante in deep trouble, the kind of case pulp writers enjoyed (even Faulkner used "deb in danger" in his notorious potboiler Sanctuary). Dad Ashbury is concerned about his independent-minded daughter Alta. She is burning through his money either by gambling or paying blackmail, and Dad fears both. He hires Cool and Lam to look into the girl’s financial dealings with her rummy friends. So that the daughter will not wonder why Lam is in the house he is to pose as Ashbury’s personal trainer.

To say this is a cockamamie plan is to say it all. Miser Bertha sees only visions of dancing dollar signs earned by Lam’s labor. Dubious but really shaking the tree, Lam uncovers a bewildering trail involving fraud, blackmail, and murder. As is usual in the Cool and Lam books, they make the situation worse until they grift the grifters and narrowly escape being arrested just for being pains in the neck.

During Gardner's lifetime, discerning hardcore readers like us thought the Cool and Lam novels were funnier, grittier, and sexier than the Perry Mason novels. For we happy few, the comedy between our two protagonists balance out the rushed or confusing endings.

Powerful Techniques for Positive Change

Change Your Life Now: Powerful Techniques for Positive Change – William J. Knaus

I read this 1994 self-help book because Dr. Knaus was one of the stars of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Self-help books, to my mind, are a waste of time if the author doesn’t have the credentials.

Knaus presents a five-point change program, which is easy to follow. His advice is founded on research up to that time. Having seen hundreds and hundreds of patients, Knaus knows change is not easy and people throw up roadblocks in their own path for various irrational and rational reasons. He tells ways to overcome obstacles of our own making. His suggestions can be adopted for all the usual problems: improving diet, quitting smoking, finding love, beating back the urge to procrastinate, and changing careers.

The writing style is from 1994, when Knaus was still able to assume that even general readers knew how to read. That is, the sentences are a little bit involved and he uses some big words. The writing is concise and practical, given the reader does not have anxiety or depression to the extent that professional help really would be a good idea. This is for readers who are serious about change, and disciplined enough to change on their own, with just a book.

Murder at a Hollywood Preview!

Note: The Gail Patrick film festival continues, having viewed If I Had a Million, The Phantom Broadcast, The Murders in the Zoo, Death Takes a Holiday, The Crime of Helen Stanley, and Murder at the Vanities. What’s with all the attention, a reader wonders, to a forgotten actress on what is largely a Perry Mason blog? Gail Patrick Jackson was the executive producer of the greatest courtroom drama TV show in the history of creation: Perry Mason.

 The Preview Murder Mystery
1936 / 1:00
Tagline: “Murder at a Hollywood Preview!”
[internet archive]

This B-picture is a murder mystery set in a movie studio during the Golden Era of Hollywood. While the fast-paced story isn’t too far-fetched and the characterization amusing, the main draw is the “behind the scenes in Tinseltown” feeling and look.

That is, the mise en scene is literally the back lots and the soundstages of World Attractions, Inc. Director Robert Florey is known for being a pioneer of noir so this collaboration with cinematographer Karl Struss is worth seeing simply for its look. Silhouettes, outlines, profiles, and shadows make images striking, especially intense faces talking on phones. Florey, like Bergman and Fellini and Spielberg, likes eye-catching faces. Without being too arty they make shots from angles above and below. Inevitably he uses mirrors, but not too much and always to unusual effect. The pace and the rhythm of the movie are really fast, with a few fluid images lasting mere seconds; see the scene at minute 22 when the homicide detective is questioning a group of scared witnesses.

Imparting a feeling of unreality is the Thirties tech of switch banks, lights, lifts, dollies, and other equipment so antique as to be unidentifiable. Also putting us off kilter are the actors mingling in a variety of costumes from various time periods.

I got the feeling the writers were telling inside gags about Hollywood. The horror star Batboy (or something) is upbraided by the director for being a scaredy-cat though he is the one notorious for keeping little kids up at night sleepless and scared with his character. But when the director takes a close look at Batboy’s Igor (or whatever), he is so unnerved he calls for a break. Ironically, the killer is trapped because the big clunky technology of movie-making is used against him.

Giving a funny meta feeling is the movie within a movie when we are watching people watch the preview of a bad musical The Song of the Toreador. Over the top musicals are thus parodied with silent heart-throb Rod LaRocque, who looks slightly embarrassed to be singing. Gail Patrick assumes the melty and dewy look that damsels don for being sung to in musicals.

All the professionals like the director and the actors are watching the preview with a calculating look, that dispassionate eye of artists, crafters, and creative professionals not wholly satisfied with the version they see, convinced they could have done something better or planning to do a technique in another way in the future. "When I do this again, I am convinced that I will do it more effectively" seems like it would be a healthy stance in an artist or a crafter.

Contrary to my expectations, the print posted at IA was VG+, with good contrasts and nothing washed out nor any dropouts of sound. Gail Patrick and Frances Drake both look wonderful in their bodacious brunetitude. Patrick does not have all that much to do but the air around her seems charged, as if she’s a pulsar funneling particles. Drake, with her expressive eyes and luminous smile, plays the astrology-smitten girlfriend of Reginald Denny. Drake plays a steadying influence on the boisterous Denny who was prone to hyperactivity.

In what must be an in-joke of some kind, the end cast list provides not the real stars but only the supporting players like Chester Conklin - like LaRocque, another unexpected blast from the past.

The Nones of Perry Mason 83

Note: After playing the heavy in San Quentin (1946), Desperate (1947), and I Love Trouble (1948). Burr was probably happy to accept the small but atypical parts of a police detective in Sleep, My Love (1948) and the slacker father in Ruthless.

Ruthless
1948 / 1:44
Tagline: “Power...and Money were his gods!”
[internet archive]

Raymond Burr has one scene in a flashback in the first 15 minutes of the movie. As the boy hero’s ne’er-do-well father, he’s dressed in the tacky duds of the early 20^th century American fop and cad: a flashy suit with wide pinstripes with a showy vest. The deadbeat dad sports an oily chevron moustache and jaunty straw boater. The movie-goer can see the dandy character is putting on the dog, playacting “larger than life.” With the gaudy patter of the hustler that’s all talk and zilch walk, it’s easy to see how he insinuated himself in a rich young girl’s affections and then disappointed her and their son when he bugged out, only to end up living with a harridan of saloon-keeper and procuress.

It’s nice to see a departure from his usual typecasting as the heavy.  Burr brings to the bumbler a tentative side, with a bashful spark of paternal affection. It's as if he's baffled his son even likes him, considering what a terrible father he is. His role, while far from central, is significant in the film's exploration of the role of family dynamics in stoking unbridled ambition.

Anyway, this improving drama is all about a man with a fatal flaw. Zachary Scott comes out of broken home with a weak father and angry depressed mother a man deeply unhappy with himself. Not connecting with himself, he can’t connect with other people either so he grabs things and throws his weight around. He grows crazy rich not only because he is driven by inner demons but also because he finds it expedient and fun to manipulate women and is willing to disregard pressures in our culture to reciprocate good turns.

American writer Alvah “Hollywood Ten” Bessie wrote the screenplay. He was one of nearly 3,000 American volunteers to fight in the Spanish Civil War. On the side of the angels, of course. So we'd expect that his take on insatiable greed and intemperate ambition American-style would be nuanced. Thus, he has Sydney Greenstreet quote from Obadiah 1:2-4 "Though you set your nest among the stars, From there I will bring you down," as a gloss on his own fall due to Zachary Scott's machinations. 

Like the Chinese say, "If you ascend high, heavy must be your fall."  It’s also the message we get from literature and virtue ethics: it’s sociopathic to be so venal and power-hungry and it’s stupid to build your happy home on the sands of money, property, status, repute and other shit you can lose or rivals can take away from you.

In a big cast, many actors do a fine job.  Totally plausible are the child actors Bobby Anderson (what an expressive face!), Ann Carter, and George McDonald. Diana Lynn plays two characters, one sweet, one designing, both subtly played. Lucille Bremer and Greenstreet play a power couple that revel in putting the screws to people. When Greenstreet yanks her hair to pull her head back and kiss her, it implies way more than we want to know about their intimate life.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, noir duchess Martha Vickers appears in the 1959 episode The Case of the Jaded Joker as Sheila Hayes, a hard-nosed hustler determined to take financial advantage of the victim’s killing. Buffs will recall that she played Carmen Sternwood, the corrupt baby sister that posed for dirty pictures, who tries to seduce Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946).

Nigel Strangeways #8

Minute for Murder - Nicholas Blake

The setting of this 1947 mystery was probably inspired by Cecil Day-Lewis’ wartime experience working in the offices of the Ministry of Information, which Orwell satirized in his novel 1984. Series detective Nigel Strangeways is working at the Ministry of Morale in the Visual Propaganda Division.

Despite his name, Nigel Strangeways is not a collection of quirks and mannerisms a la Nero Wolfe. He’s an ordinary guy, at least as ordinary as a guy with literary leanings can be. Transferred from Intelligence in the last days of the conflict, he is happy to greet a friend who is returning from Germany. The friend has an odd war souvenir, a poison capsule. After showing it off around the office, a hottie blonde secretary collapses and expires. Nobody can find the capsule of death.

Seven persons of interest have a variety of motives. Strangeways cuts through the psychology and motives to identify the perp. Well worth reading.

The author captures the tensions among different grades of staff and the problems of supervising talented and brilliant but temperamental people. The characterization and red herrings combine to make this longer than the typical whodunnit, but the psychology is so convincing and the plotting so inventive that we hardcore readers don’t mind. Not too much, though a page count greater than 250 rather taxes my patience with a mystery.

Others by the Same Author: Click on the title to go to the review

• A Question of Proof (1935)
• The Beast Must Die (1938)
• The Smiler with the Knife (1939)
• The Corpse in the Snowman (1941)
• Minute for Murder (1947)
• The Dreadful Hollow (1953)
• Whisper in the Gloom (1957)
• The Widow’s Cruise (1959)
• The Worm of Death  (1961)
• The Private Wound (1968)

The Kalends of Perry Mason 82

Note: Like Epictetus analyzing Medea, I apply the Stoic orientation to the crooked thinking of fictional characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966).  Even when I was little kid I didn’t like the idea of role models because I thought only weak-minded people needed to imitate anybody. Boy, was I dumb! Now that I reflect on my youth I think Perry Mason gave me a sense of professionalism: fairness, tidy grooming, clear thinking, fluent speaking and doing the right action with confidence.

The Case of the Cautious Coquette (Season 1, Episode 18; January 18, 1958)

Stephen Argyle: I've done nothing I'm ashamed of.
Perry Mason: You're very fortunate, Mr. Argyle, most people have a conscience.

Marcus Aurelius asked, “… [I]s a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.”

That’s for when dealing with other people, the whole parade of brazen people acting badly. Massaging data until statistical significance is achieved. Denying credit to other people, especially subordinates. Stealing the ideas and work of others. Disregarding all social cues to sit down and shut up. Being confident deadlines will be relaxed for them. Playing dumb to avoid work, no matter the extra tasks for other people. Giving lame apologies after avoidable repercussions go off. Pretending they remember a conversation in which you approved their request.

Daily! Forever! Bring ‘em on!

But feeling ashamed of ourselves is tricky and complicated. On one hand, shame is rational and virtuous, for example, if I feel ashamed of my own cowardice, procrastinating telling a superior bad news just because they may get upset or it makes me look bad.

On the other hand, shame makes me not take showers in a locker room because I don’t want other patrons to see my sternotomy scar. Respect for people, I say to myself, suggests not to disgust people. But irrational is feeling ashamed of the appearance of my body, something I have zilch control over. How craven, to be worried about the reactions of people I don't even know, concerning things not up to me.

Like I said, shame is tricky and complicated.