FICTION FRIDAY: No Cellar Door

     “Welcome, oh seeker of knowledge, to the serene sanctuary of Madame Silsallabeth, whose eye sees all and whose mind…oh wow!”

     “Yeah, I’m back.”

     “Is that Patty?”

     “The last time I was here I was Lucid Student Patricia.”

     “The last time you were here you had two ears.”

     “And ten fingers.  But I still have both middle ones and I’ve saved ‘em both for you.”

     “What happened?”

     “You’re the one who sees all.”

     “Don’t tell me you confronted Mr. Frederickson once I gave you that counterspell.  I told you not to….”

      “And I told you he lived in Pennsylvania.  Even to watch him die, I couldn’t afford to go there.”

     “You had no relief at all?  That spell should at least have neutralized his control of the doll he made of you, and perhaps even reversed his curses.”

      “The pains got better for a while and it didn’t take so long for my eyes to focus in the morning, but then things got way worse.  Notice my hair?”

     “You used to be a blonde.  Did you dye it?”

     “It got ripped out one day.  One long day.  This is a wig.”

     “Perhaps he has a counterspell of his own  Well, let me check the infinite.  Can’t do these things without checking the infinite.”

     “Oh, thank goodness you still have that big crystal ball.”

     “Yes.  With this, I shall seek….”

     “I’ve been imagining where I’m going to shove it when I come around that table.”

     “Violence is so seldom the answer, Lucid Student Patricia.”

     “That crystal hasn’t been much use so far, either.”

     “Ah!  Mr. Frederickson felt the counterspell and knew who sent it.  He hated you more than ever.”

     “So he’s thought of new things to do to the doll.”

     “He’s dead.”

     “Many happy returns.  So it’s got nothing to do with him and it’s got nothing to do with you, huh?  Watch very carefully where I’m holding your crystal ball so you know which way to turn and what to open wide.”

     “He gave orders to his heirs om how to continue torturing you.”

     “So who are they and what are they doing?”

     “They don’t come into your story.  The only one who heard his orders was the nurse, and she assumed he was delirious.  His son threw all his tools of mystic enlightenment away, calling them mumbo jumbo.”

     “Imagine that.  So we’re back to Frederickson is dead and has nothing to do with me any more, and me grabbing that crystal ball and putting it where mystic light don’t….”

     “What’s happened, Patty, is that doll of you is still imbued with malevolent energy.  But it wound up in a dump, where the rats have gotten hold of it.  They’re trying to tear it into nesting material, but it is resisting them.  So except for its hair, fingers and toes….”

     “Ooo-Kay.  So now you curse the rats?”

     “Everyone curses rats.  It never seems to do them any harm.”

     “What, then?”

     “You need to buy long, stiff gloves, and a mask.”

     “Will that ward off the curse?”

     “No.  But it should hold off the rats while you’re fishing through dumps in Pennsylvania to find your doll.”

      “Oh, all-seeing wizard, oh wise one, are you sure you’re seeing me in Pennsylvania and not standing right here about to do a couple of things I only just now thought of with that all-seeing crystal?  YOU go fish through the ratholes.”

     “You were always hasty, Lucid Student.  Do you see that if I go to Pennsylvania, then I will be the one holding your doll?”

     “Maybe you see us going to Pennsylvania together, oh insightful seer, so I can check in the crystal while we’re searching.”

     “I would be the one looking in the….”

     “Not where I’m going to put it.”

     ”Listen, for no additional charge, I can throw in this flute which will help you charm the rats.”

     “I think it would be MUCH more charming to….”

     “And once they have brought you your doll, you can instruct them to build a new den underneath a tombstone that says ‘FREDERICKSON’.”

     “Gimme that.  You’re sounding wise again all of a sudden.  And I guess I can see you later and decide where to put that crystal.”

     “You’ll need me to fully deactivate that doll.”

     “And you’ll need to give me a good reason not to experiment with what rats will do when I tell them.  See you then, oh fount of wisdom.”

     “If you get back before I’ve packed, Lucid Student.”

Fishing for a Laugh

     Last week we went through a quick update on the large number of postcards new to my inventory concerned with dogs and their bladder relief.  Today we will revisit another topic we have considered before: the ever-popular fishing postcard.

     Sending a postcard JUST because you are on vacation is a phenomenon f only the last sixty years or thereabouts.  But the basic custom of sending people word to say how your time off was progressing was established early on.  AND if that respite from labor involved a fishing trip….  So there are several postcards featuring Victorian and Edwardian men, often in a summer straw hat, trying their luck.

     No one was better with a fishing postcard than Teich artist Ray Walters.  His fishermen are very much of a type, but he shows his artistry (and love of fishing?) in is glorious, glorious fish, which appeared only in the dreams (or nightmares) of the dedicated angler.

     What with one thing and another, I’ve never seen a postcard where the omnipresent icons of 1910s postcards, the Dutch kids went fishing.  But they were ahead of their time, as usual, with an early postcard sneering at such tiny fish as could be had these days.  (No, I haven’t had a bunch of the Dutch lids arrive in inventory, so we will not be revisiting them in this series of updates.  This could change without notice, if you are weeping on your screen.)

     If I didn’t expect to see the Dutch kids here, I also didn’t expect to find one of the inspirations for a major fishing movie in postcard form.

     As always, we have the philosophers of fishing, who reflect on how the sport reflects the rest of life.  Romance, as they would no doubt point out, has many angles.

     And in romance as in fishing, either sex can be the hooked (or the hooker.)

     The mishaps of fishing are the most popular theme of fishing postcards.  Did I mention Ray Walters and his glorious, fearsome fish?

     Not catching fish is a perennial topic, and the caption here is an equally perennial complaint of fisherman on their short break from the workaday world.  THIS example also repeats the theme of the really dedicated fisherman, who is so intent on catching fish, he doesn’t even notice what the vacationing fish has come here to see.

     This card concentrates on one theme only: that it IS possible to have a miserable time fishing.

     Of course, if you want to discuss miserable days, you can look over this card, which features a man who wasn’t even going fishing, but caught some anyway.  (You DO see his trunks are hanging on that branch, right?  Anyone who asks what he was using for bait has to stay after class and untangle fishline.)

SCREEN SCROOGES: Silent Supplement 3

     “Scrooge”, rereleased later as “Old Scrooge” for no apparent reason, appeared in 1913 and was the longest (known) version of the story up to that time, clocking in at some forty minutes.  It opens with a little pseudo-documentary beginning with shots of Charles Dickens’s birthplace (with people pointing at it in part so we know this is not just a stil picture) which relates the plight of the Dickenses to that of the Cratchits.  We then see Charles Dickens pacing a little in a book-lined study before sitting down to write “A Christmas Carol”.  This Dickens is the bearded version, though I believe that in 1843, the real Charles hadn’t grown the beard yet.  However….

     We are finally introduced to someone who looks like he just got out of prison and needs a bath.  He limps through the streets of London as though walking is difficult.  If you look closely, you may recognize Sir Seymour Hicks, who had been playing Scrooge on stage for a dozen years at this point and would reprise the role in 1935 as the first talking picture Ebenezer.  This Ebenezer, referred to by one critic as the dirtiest Scrooge in cinema, is not a terror to EVERYONE, as we see him pelted with snowballs by children (“though of course they shouldn’t”, the title tells us.)  When he gets a little peace and sits on a snowy bench to read his account book, we understand at once that he has done this so the children can regroup and jeeringly wish him a Merry Christmas, allowing him to deliver his first thoughts about the holiday.  His apparent difficulty walking reappears as he goes to his office door.  Behind this are steep and inconvenient stairs up to a wood-filled and cheerless office.  Meanwhile, Bo Cratchit, carrying Tiny Tim, has made his way to the same door.  He sets Tim down and sets him to walk home alone (different movie).  Blowing kisses to his son, he is snarled at by Scrooge through the window that it’s time he was at work.  After Bob hurries inside, we watch Nephew Fred approach, “poor and carefree”, and spot the “carolers” (those kids have done no singing up to this point and are now tossing around handfuls of flou…snow) and gives them all his money.

     Fred and Scrooge have their scene together: Fred seems shocked to find his uncle unmerry, and Cratchit rises to show him out long before Fred is ready to go.  Bob then lets in a poor woman begging for money so Scrooge can tell her off, using both the “poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket” line AND the “decrease the surplus population” one.  Bob tries to give her some money quietly, but she gives him away by kissing his hand, allowing Scrooge to threaten that Bob will keep Christmas by losing his position.

     Cratchit makes matters worse not long after that by trying to replenish the fire and is told not to waste coal, as the chill will make him work faster.  And NOW the charity solicitor comes in.  Presumably whoever put this version together wanted a lot of little short scenes and speeches, because otherwise there was no reason for the begging woman at all.  (Maybe they just needed one more female character; somewhere in the cast you will find Ellaline Terriss, Sir Seymour’s wife.)  On leaving, the solicitor shakes hands with Bob, which sends Scrooge into another rage, allowing him to do the “all day tomorrow” speech.  We’re getting everything IN; we’re just doing it in our own order.

     It seems to be a very short work day, for Scrooge now hands Cratchit a new pen, hoping it will make him work harder, and reminds him to be here all the earlier the day after Christmas.    Muttering, Scrooge takes off coat and waistcoat, revealing the scruffy individual we saw at first, pauses to be annoyed by the sound of chimes and carolers, and then puts on a dressing gown.  He fetches a bag of gold that he keeps hidden in his writing desk, and settles into a comfy chair (which has been blocking our view all this time) to count and cuddle it.

     We are told he hears a chain, and a cadaverous man in a sheet moves into sight.  Presumably recognizing this figure, Scrooge drops to the floor in front of the chair where he will writhe through much of the traditional conversation with Jacob Marley.  The ghost does begin this by telling Scrooge “I come to your representing the Ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet To Come”, which the dead man MUST know means nothing much to Scrooge and is just a note to the viewer that this is all they get in the way of ghosts.  We see a younger Scrooge rescued from school by his sister “whom you abandoned in later life” and then we see his fiancée delivering her big speech to us, as we are apparently standing in for Ebenezer.  Scrooge asks why Marley delights in torturing him and Jacob replies that the vision for the present will be a happy family.

     We get a tight shot of the Cratchit Christmas dinner.  As Mrs. Cratchit brings in the goose, Bob proposes a toast to Mr. Scrooge, which his wife objects to.  Bob changes the toast to “us all”, allowing Tiny Tim to chime in with his bless us every one.  Scrooge admits he’s been a fool and asks if Tiny Tim will live.  Jacob delivers the “decrease the surplus population” reply and moves immediately to Tiny Tm’s deathbed, followed by “a neglected tombstone”, on which we read that Ebenezer “died without a friend”.  Scrooge implores for mercy or more time, and collapses when Jacob turns away.  When Scrooge wakens (we know he’s awake because the office desks, which disappeared for a while to make room for the visions, are back) he goes back to pleading, clutching his comfy chair instead of bedcurtains.  Realizing that he is still alive and that it is “not too late for me to have my first Merry Christmas”

     Clapping and laughing and occasionally spinning a hand in the air above his head (something he also does in the 1935 version) he throws open the curtains and windows and calls to a boy we can’t see.  When the boy enters the office, Scrooge grabs him by the collar and demands to know if Tiny Tim is still alive.  Only after he is told that the boy saw Tim does Scrooge ask about the prize turkey.  “Here’s gold.  Gold!”  Scrooge gives him money from a bag hidden inside those baggy pants and tells him to buy the turkey and take it to Bob Cratchit.  And to take a cab.  And to keep the change.  Then, in a move seldom imitated by subsequent Scrooges, he enjoys both the Cheat Ending we mentioned in the main article AND the canonical ending.

     He IMAGINES himself attending the Cratchit Christmas dinner, handing money to all the little Cratchits, kissing Tiny Tim, and causing great hilarity by producing mistletoe and kissing Mrs. Cratchit.  The shabbiest person at the table, he has a good laugh (reminiscent of Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster) and no doubt proposes a “God bless us, every one” toast.  (He got the last word on this in the 1935 version as well.)  Back in reality, he hears carol singers outside the window and desperately scrabbles to get the coins which fell from the bag he was cuddling earlier, so he can throw these.  He then rushes back inside to grab up even more coins to throw to them.  After this he gets dressed (throws the coat and waistcoat back on) to make “Christmas calls”.  We are told this includes dinner with nephew Fred, but do not see this.

     We jump to December 26 as Cratchit rushes into the office late and Scrooge plays his prank, suddenly calling his clerk “Bob” instead of “Cratchit” and eventually ordering him to go out and buy a ton of coal.  He even, apparently, allows BOB to say “God Bless Us Every One”.  Scrooge does get one last swirl of tone hand in the air to end the picture.  (This gesture also turns up several times in the 1935 version.  Must be a British thing; we see Bob make the same gesture on his way out to buy coal.)

     This version does a lot of trimming and a little padding to make its points.  On several points it either misunderstands Dickens’s intention or MAY be cutting corners because it is pressed for time.  Not everything it attempts succeeds.  But it’s a robust retelling and if you like Sir Seymour Hicks’s 1935 Scrooge (not everyone does, but I rejoice in it) then you ought to look over this scruffier take on the old miser.

     Next time: a clone of Seymour Hicks apparently encounters an ancestor of Marty Feldman.

FICTION FRIDAY: Knit Wit

     “Who goes there?”

     “A friend.  Winky sent me.”

     “What’s the password?”

     “More is more.”

     “Enter, friend.  But remember, no telling people….”

     “Oh, jingles!  Owwwww!”

     “Winky should’ve warned you to put these dark glasses on.”

     “The colors!  The….  Thank you, that’s better.”

     “Yes, we wear ‘em all the time.”

     “That explains a lot.  So this is the place all of the….”

     “Not all of ‘em.  But Santa likes to think we turn out the best new ones every year.”

     “Does Santa pick them out?”

     “No, he said he has to save his eyes for making lists.  He appointed Agent Gold, Agent Silver, Agent Green, and Agent Red to judge our designs each year.”

     “And they’re all…experts?  Or just colorblind?”

     “We’re not partial to judgmental strangers, stranger.”

     “I beg your pardon, Ma’am.  It’s just all a bit much to take in.”

     “I understand that.  Apologies accepted.”

     “It must be a challenge every year to produce even uglier Christmas sweaters than last year.”

     “That’s something else we’re not partial to, pilgrim.  We’ve got a poster on the wall about that.”

     “I see.  ‘The Only Ugly Sweater Is An Empty Sweater’.”

     “You should see them shiver when they wind up on the Island of Misfit Sweaters.  But Santa rescues ‘em and finds people who will love them.”

     “I’ve noticed that.  There doesn’t seem to be any sweater too….”

     “Step carefully, mister.”

     “Too unusual to find somebody who will wear it.  I expect they are all nice and warm, and the person wearing one doesn’t have to look at it.”

     “You might just catch on yet, pard.”

     “Don’t some of the designs make you a little uncomfortable, though?  I mean, I have seen several obscene sweaters that seem at odds with the season.”

     “Doesn’t bother Agent Orange.  He came down with Agent Green to be in charge of good taste.”

     “Is he acquainted at all with Charley the Tuna?”

     “If I was old enough to understand that joke, sport, I might resent it.  In that case, I’d have to tell Santa to put someone on the ‘Fruitcakes Only’ list.”

     “I’m sure I meant no offense.  Perhaps I’d better go and not get in the way of your important work.”

     “If you say so.  Now, remember not divulge our location to anyone.  I don’t want all your friends crowding down here to ask for the latest Christmas sweaters.”

     “Oh, if I were you, I wouldn’t sweat that.”

     “Wait, we could use you in the writing department.  We…consarn it, lost another one.”

GOING TO THE DOGS (or vice versa)

)

     Among the highlights of a recent influx of postcards into my inventory is a healthy assortment of dogs.  Now, as we have mentioned hereintofore, the number one activity of dogs on postcards is, well, Number One.  Note this card, for example, in which the puppy’s name, Pee Wee, is pretty much a safety rail to make sure you don’t miss the joke on your way to reading “I am fine.  How are you?” on the flipside.

     As mentioned before, this is a little unfair.  Dogs are capable of doing so many other things.  (My personal favorite in this picture is the underling coming sheepishly, or sheepdogishly, through the door, possibly with a late or negative report.)  But this collection does offer us dogs in roles other than hero of bathroom jokes.

     We can see in this example that they are capable of complex financial negotiations: not exactly WOLVES of wall Street but nonetheless puppies obviously in the know about what to do in business districts.

     In fact, this seems to be a fairly common concept.  The look in THIS dog’s eye, for example, indicates his confidence that he knows what he’s doing.

     But the mid-century canine was also capable of cultural pursuits.  Not only is there one glamourhound starring in the movie here, but one of the moviegoers has been moved to an appreciation of architectural layout.

     And here we see a group of neighborhood activists interested in architectural preservation.

     These might be dogs from the same group, or from another group concerned with ecological pursuits.  Their appreciation of neighborhood beautification is something it would be nice to see in other bland, comfortless areas.

     Of course, from the earliest days, the bloodhound was seen as a competent investigator, on or off the police force, but this does not get as much representation on postcards as it deserves.  Here is a longlost still photograph from the first episode of an early television detective show, airing at a time when you’d think dogeared old bathroom stereotypes were everywhere.  Instead, we see two detectives meeting at the same crime scene, initially suspecting each other of being responsible for the evidence.  (For those who do not remember the show, they eventually team up with the jovial criminal responsible, the family’s pet monkey, to enjoy a long run on TV as the team of Monkey Puppy Baby.)

     In view of all this evidence, it’s hard to imagine why  so many other postcard artists believed all dogs do all day is empty their bladders.  Perhaps some sinister postcard rivals were responsible.

SCREEN SCROOGES: Silent Supplement 2

     This is a supplement to the comparison of film versions of A Christmas Carol, taking a look at the surviving silent versions.  We considered the earliest surviving version, from 1901, last week.  After a lost version of A Christmas Carol made in Chicago in 1908, the next, and first American, Christmas Carol was released by Thomas Edison in 1910.  Marc McDermott was Scrooge, but Bob Cratchit was Edison reliable Charles Ogle, who, I believe is the only actor to appear as Bob Cratchit AND Frankenstein’s monster.

     We open as Scrooge enters his office, shakes snow from himself, and then scolds Bob Cratchit, having spotted a piece of coal missing from the scuttle.  Moe, Shemp, and Larry then barge in, shaking away snow and asking for a charity donation, to be sent away crestfallen at Scrooge’s reply.  Fred then comes in, accompanied by three friends—one male and two female—whom Scrooge sternly bows out again.  Fred, having shaken snow from his jacket, lingers, trying to get at least a Christmas handshake, but gives up.  Cratchit is scolded for putting on a coat, points out the clock, and is sent home.

     Going home himself, Scrooge appears startled by his doorknocker even before a see-through Marley face appears there (a little error in special effects timing) and goes into a room with a bed, a grandfather clock, and an undraped window (so we can see the snow,  Have you guessed yet that this takes place in winter?)  A filmy Marley with a chain hanging around his waist has an argument with Scrooge which you can follow if you remember the story, but fades away after shouting at his old partner.  He is replaced by the Spirit of Christmas; this gives our movie twice as many ghosts as the 1901 version.

     The visions of the past appear in front of the bed.  We see Scrooge’s sister rescuing him from school, the Fezziwig Christmas party (which does pretty well, considering what a small space it has to take place in), and then the breakup with the fiancée.  Scrooge reacts to these, most visibly as he is dancing along to Fezziwig’s fiddler.  The Spirit seems to disappear for a second and then come back, unless there is a difference in costume or face I’m not picking up.  That’s certainly the same fixed grin.

     The visions of the present appear in front of the clock (symbolic of time, or just a prop).  We are told these are scenes of what Scrooge’s money could do) and he frequently reaches for his pocket as he watches the Cratchit family toast his health, and then Fred at the Christmas party, where the young man is forbidden to marry the young lady we saw earlier, being broke.  This is the first but not the last movie where Fred has not yet married Mrs. Fred.  We are then shown the imploring hands of Want and Misery from the bottom of the screen, the Significant Children left out of so many movies.

     The Spirit disappears and comes back with a veil over his head and minus the grin, which makes him at once more human and less interesting.  Scrooge sees himself choking out his last breaths, in front of the housekeeper who, when she is sure the miser is dead, pulls a ring from one of his fingers and hurries away.  We briefly note his tombstone, which states that Ebeneezer Scrooge (sic) “lived and died without a friend”.  Scrooge, shocked, staggers over to collapse on his own bed.

     Scrooge is wakened the next day by carolers, to whom he throws some money.  He hurries around the room, pointing at things, convincing himself it all happened) and hugs his bedclothes for not being torn down.  (They weren’t torn down, actually, but we must move along.)  Heading out, he spots Fred and fiancée entering a building, but then spots those three Charity Stooges (who have snow on their jackets again).  He gives them money and a promise of more.  Fred and his fiancée are heading out again, and he accosts them, scolds them, and then hands his nephew a piece of paper on which he states that as his partner, “my nephew will be able to marry any girl you choose”.  This doesn’t make a LOT of sense, but Scrooge had kind of a sleepless night.

     The three of them head for the Cratchit place, where Scrooge terrifies the family, allowing Fred and fiancée to slip in with a basket of goodies, including a sizeable turkey.  When Cratchit, now armed, has this basket pointed out to him, the holiday spirit is restored, and Scrooge sheds a tear of happiness before Fred and his future niece-in-law hug him.

     It all makes for a reasonable condensed version (ten minutes) of the story.  Marc McDemott is an appropriately threatening and imposing old miser, and if his reformation involves a little too much hand wringing and fist pumping, well, he didn’t get to SAY anything, after all.  This is the last of the really short Christmas Carols.  Three years later, a British version came in at forty minutes, giving it not only space to show more of the story but to play around with it, AND produce a truly unique Ebenezer Scrooge.

FICTION FRIDAY: Grading on the Curve

“We’re glad to see you again.  What have you learned?”

“Well, it isn’t just folklore: your Dead Man’s Curve has indeed been the site of a strange series of fatalities.”

“That’s what we assumed.”

“In 1915, a Mercer Raceabout was the first car to crash, killing its driver.  But the car was salvaged and, two years later, sailed off the same spot, again killing the driver. It was restored but not used again until after the war, when, in 1919, a driver was killed flying off at the same spot.  The car was destroyed in that crash.”

“That’s true.  We knew all that.”

“But in 1921, a pre-war Imp was driven off the cliff at the same spot.  The driver was killed but the car was salvaged.”

“We know that. too.  We want you….”

“The buyer of the wreckage left a diary with a complete account of the renovation of the car.  It was completely rebuilt using parts of other old Imp automobiles from before the war.  There were, at least at this point, NO parts from that 1913 Mercer Raceabout.”

“Ah.  See, Jenkins?  I told you.”

“The Imp was completely destroyed in 1923, when it sailed off the cliff at the same point.  There were no more fatalities until 1925, when a Model T tumbled from the cliff.  The driver was killed.”

“And no parts from that Imp…the name, see, kind of suggests….”

“I have no data on that, but it would have been unusual for a Ford to have been repaired with anything but Ford parts.  The Model-T was easy to repair, it seems, and it survived crashes from that same point in 1927, 29, 1933, and so on, plunging over the same cliff at the same spot every two years, killing its unfortunate driver and sometimes passengers, until the war.  At that point, it waited in a garage until it was donated to a World War II scrap drive.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way to find out what it was made into.”

“That would be problematic.  But the fatal accidents began again in 1949 When a Ford Sportsman went over the cliff, killing the driver.  The same Sportsman was involved in several crashes until it was in turn destroyed and a Corvette began to take the plunge.  In due course, it became inoperable and then a Triumph crashed in the same spot.  And so on until the present.”

“So all you’ve done is establish that these different cars had no ‘cursed’ parts in common, and that the money the Council spent over the years on exorcists and Native shamans to remove the curses was a waste.  Do you expect payment for that?”

“I did go further, sir.  I was able to engage the services of a reliable medium who, after some work through intermediary spirits, was able to contact the spirit of Billy Ilmandotte.”

“Who?”

“The driver killed in the original crash in 1915.”

“Ah!  Now you’ve got something.”

“Yes, sir.  It was not what I expected, however.  I frankly thought that Mr. Ilmandotte wished to avenge his own death by killing other drivers.”

“No?”

“No, sir.  What his restless spirit is actually doing is possessing cars that he likes and forcing the drivers eventually to go somewhere by way of Dead Man’s Curve just to show he CAN make it around that corner at that speed.  He’s sure he just needs the right car and the right timing.”

“I see.  So can you think of any way to convince his spirit to go somewhere else?  Can this medium you employed do something along those lines for us?”

“Well, actually, sir, since I also found out how much the City Council has spent over the last century on candlemongers and shamans and priests, I did wonder why you don’t just put up a guard rail.”

“That seems…what?  Yes, Jenkins here is right.  Why spend tax money on a thing like that when we only have one person killed up there every two years?  We wouldn’t need it all once this fellow…wait.  Do you suppose if we awarded him a posthumous trophy for making it around the corner that he’d take that as a sign he was finished?  Silver, yes, Jenkins, with a mahogany base and….”

Naughtiness

     Last week, we considered a postcard showing a well-dressed young lady showing that she’d thought of you by holding up a finger with a string around it.  Being of a basically guttertrending mind, I questioned the choice of finger for this, but had to admit the US Postal Service, historically very conservative about what it lets go through the mail, had postmarked it and sent it along.  I have a few other postcards whose morals could be questioned.  Take this driver.  He knows he isn’t out of gas.  His passenger knows he’s not out of gas.  The MOON knows he’s not out of gas.

     By the way, prior to the “out of gas” excuse, the go-to story, which extends back into the days when couples would go out bicycling together, was that there had been a bad puncture.  Just to bypass any double entendres, this car does have a flat, which makes it all okay to be mailed.

     What city couples did when they went out to the country is again left up to the imagination, though Walter Wellman has added “Do Not Disturb” signs (paying off the “No Trespassing” gag) and a few discarded shoes.

     The moral here is obvious.  When you get back from the country, you should not let your wife unpack your suitcase.  The garment being brandished was not even allowed to be exhibited in shop windows in some communities, but the Post Office had no trouble letting this picture through.

     I think the wife, like the Post Office, should be glad she’s showing just an ankle to prompt his memory.

     This quite irreverent reference is found on postcards from the 1910s through at least the 1950s.  The Post Office may have been grateful people were still familiar enough with their Bibles to get the joke.

     The meaning of this joke depends on knowing what it meant when a woman “turns on the heat”, but in the heyday of the phrase, the scene of the scantily clad lady and the repairman was repeated on numerous postcards.  (And comic books.  AND movies.)

     You can guess that what she REALLY means is a style of hat.  So this is perfectly proper.

     And speaking of rough sailing….

     This was a wildly popular joke in wartime.  Someone asked me whether it was the man or the woman who was being offered the management job.  I had to duck after I said that obviously HER role was Labor.

     Of course, the fact that she is pushing a baby carriage CAN be unrelated to the dialogue (despite the fact the Junior is thumbing his nose to reinforce the punchline.)

     And this is really just my mind touring the gutters again.  The gag of farmers shooting city slickers in the backside is ancient and non-controversial.  I’m the only one who assumes this is the father of the hitchhiker above, recognizing the jasper from town, and aiming just a little lower than regular comedy calls for.  Yeah, I can’t unsee it, so I’m passing it along to you, and NOT through the Post Office.

SCREEN SCROOGES: Silent Supplement I

     A sorry spot in serializing some of my non-fiction works in this space is a nagging refrain of “Remember how hard this was to research?  Sure woulda been easier with the Interwebs”.  Take, for example, my comparison of screen versions of “A Christmas Carol”, serialized herein not so long ago.  It would easily have grown to at least double the size, with all the different versions of the movies which can now be found online, one or two of which were presumed lost when I was writing.

     No, I am not tempted to go back and start over.  Once was more than enough for the world, to judge by the rejections I had at the time and the wild excitement which did not greet each installment in this space.  HOWEVER….

     One thing that would have intrigued me very much at the time and which was almost inaccessible in my VHS days is the silent version of the Dickens tale.  Not all of these survive, but enough do exist to fill a little space between now and my deciding what manuscript will come next n Mondays.  (I wrote a sequel to The Sound and the Furry, for example, which apparently never went out to ANY publisher.  I was waiting for all the royalties from the first book to be deposited, I guess.)

     For example, when I was doing my original research, around 1999, only about fifteen seconds remained of “Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost”, the earliest known example of a film version of the story.  It appeared in 1901, and gets its title because Jacob Marley is easily at least the second most important character in the show.  It was one of the first films to have intertitles, pages of words between scenes to tell us where we are in the story.  This comes back into OUR story later.

     Footage is still missing at the beginning and end of the film, and what is left starts at the close of the first segment, with Bob Cratchit ushering someone (probably nephew Fred) out of the office of an angry Scrooge.  Bob is one of the Cratchitiest Cratchits whoever Cratchitted, perfectly meek and gormless as Scrooge orders him around.  (Scrooge is nowadays identified as Daniel Smith, after some fans, without a film to watch, thought it was Sir Seymour Hicks, star of the 1935 movie, who had started appearing on the stage as Scrooge in 1901.)  After Cratchit departs for Christmas revels, Scrooge exclaims in shock about Bob leaving a candle burning and then puts on one of the most ridiculous hats ever worn by an Ebenezer to head home himself.

     Scrooge’s house, obviously painted on a backdrop, and architecturally unlike any other Scrooge abode, is the setting for the one snippet available when I wrote my book: we watch as Scrooge pulls out his key, and a cutout appears over the doorknocker showing Jacob Marley’s face.

     Now we can follow as Scrooge steps away in horror, the face disappears, and the miser opens the flimsy door to go inside.  After jumping back in fear from his own curtains, he dons his bathrobe and cap and shuts the curtains, which are black so special effects can happen.  Jacob Marley is mildly impressive when transparent against these.  (Later, when he is shown solid, he looks like a man with a sheet over his head.)  Marley is in charge of the visions of Christmas Past—young Scrooge being rescued from boarding school by his sister and then breaking things off with his fiancée–and, in part three of the film, visions of Christmas Present.

     This is primarily the Cratchit Christmas, without much of a goose or plum pudding, but with a suitably limp Tiny Tim and a nice performance by Martha, whom her brothers and sisters hide UNDER THE TABLE until Bob gets home.  ‘GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE” is on a banner over the door, but after a general genial toast to Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim does propose the blessing, to Scrooge’s despair.  There is a very brief Fred party scene, and then we march outside to “The Christmas That Might Be”, the final chapter in the film as it now exists.

     The now solid Marley shows Scrooge  a wholly unconvincing gravestone right next to the sidewalk (putting the grave scene first in Yet To Come seems unique) and the briefest snippet of another scene: thanks to the intertitle card, we know this would have been at the Cratchits’ for the death of Tiny Tim.  The film breaks off, so we do not get to see the next morning, Scrooge’s conversion, and so forth.

     This movie gets a LOT of the story into what must have been a run time of about ten minutes (the longest version now online lasts about six.)  The acting is perfectly reasonable, the special effects effective enough (producer and director alike were fascinated by such things , and the work of producer Robert W. Paul was cutting edge at the time), and withal, a credible effort, though it works a LOT better for people who have read the book and already know what’s going on.  Scrooge spends most of his screen time simply reacting with hand wringing and fist pumping, but it’s not really fair to judge him without access to the big scenes at the beginning and end.  And if Scrooge’s house and gravestone don’t convince, well, there are weirder sets in talkies two generations younger.

     In our next thrilling episode, we’ll consider more silent versions which can be watched today, and a couple which can’t (and why that MIGHT be a sad thing.)

SO…DID THEY MEAN….

     The joke archaeologist, digging around in bygone postcards, has turned up several which might or might not be a little naughtier than they look.  Some of them I can help with, while others have confused me.  Take the simple example above.  Caption and concept were popular in cards around the start of the last century: women in their proper sphere showing men who was the weaker sex.  But, um, look at the face of the woman on the right and tell me whether this is going somewhere…no, wait until I’m older.

     This is of the same era and is one of a series with the same caption: different cards covered drinking, kissing, and modern fashion.  But other cards from other companies  used the same caption, covering the same ground.  I have seen people explain this as a salute to boozing and/or canoodling.  The line, though, became a catch phrase (or meme, as the kids were saying ten years ago) because of a wildly popular dance of 1909.  The full quote is “Everybody’s doing it!  Doing what?  Turkey Trot!”  The turkey trot, an extremely athletic dance which required hopping, jumping and scissor kicking, upset conservative souls.  The Saturday Evening Post’s parent company fired employees for doing the Turkey Trot on their lunch break (excuse me?) and even the Vatican felt called upon to denounce such immoral antics.  The Turkey Trot (along with the equally scandalous Grizzly Bear) fell out of favor as the Fox Trot, a less exhausting maneuver, took its place.

     Seriously, who got fired over this?  My own example, shown here, went through the mail, so maybe not everybody….  But that is definitely a hand gesture which goes back millennia, was repopularized in the nineteenth century (pre-Victoria, so your Regency lords and ladies would have understood) and now, I find, is considered by commentators to be especially associated with the music industry.  The lady herself seems unconcerned, and maybe it’s flattering that she thinks of THAT finger when she thinks of…or maybe not.

     Do people still use cloves (or Clove Gum) to cover the alcohol odor on their breath, or have we found something different?  And has anyone done a dissertation on all the foods used to cover the aroma of this or that on their breath?  A minor thug in Farewell, My Lovely uses cardamom, and kids in The Music Man were accused of using Sen Sen (licorice-flavored).  It might work best as a video, without some neutral observer doing the breath-sniffing to evaluate results.

     Here I am all at sea.  I have been unable to trace the origin of this phrase, which seems to have been very popular in the first decade of the twentieth century, at least on postcards, where it always involves the beach and/or swimwear.  Walter Wellman has turned it into something surreal, and I’m not sure I‘ve followed him all the way.  Is the lady on the right just a contrast to the mermaids?  Is the gentleman underwater, who does not seem to be wearing any breathing apparatus, a suitor or a disapproving parent?  And is that…but we’re supposed to be looking at the mermaids, not him,  so I just don’t know what all is going on.  You tell me.