Butcher Shop, Zsa Zsa, 5th Avenue

THE OLD BUTCHER SHOP

Shopping at the meat counter at Fresh Thyme yesterday reminded me of going with Mom to the Manito Grocery Store in Spokane where bald headed Herb was the butcher.  Although Fresh Thyme lacks the sawdust floors, it provides that friendly personal touch so missing at CUB or Target.

LIFE OF THE PARTY

Nervous about entertaining this holiday?  Alfred Hitchcock has the recipe for a perfect party in his 1948 film “Rope” with John Dahl and Farley Granger.  

ME AND ZSA ZSA

When Johnny brought the “Tonight Show” to Burbank in 1963 I was in the audience with my roommate John Miller of Ontario to see Zsa Zsa in person.  By then she was no longer one of the “beautiful women” from “Queen of Outer Space” (1958).  During the commercial break Carson lit up a smoke and exited the stage leaving Zsa Zsa alone.

Her maroon Rolls Royce with her name on the door was parked at Clifford Odet’s funeral in 1963 that I covered as a reporter for UPI.  Danny Kaye gave the eulogy.   Zsa will be remembered as the love starved scientist in “Queen” who falls for Eric Fleming in this Allied Artist cosmic classic.

CHRISTMAS MOVIE FAVORITE

A homeless squatter enters a mansion through a manhole and brings joy in the 1947 Allied Artist comedy “It Happened on 5th Avenue.”  Playing the tramp, Victor Moore is quite believable and helps reform a money mad capitalist who is estranged from his family.  Actors from fifties TV sitcoms in this holiday favorite are Don Defore and Gale Storm.  

I saw it at the rustic Spirit Lake, Idaho, theater in the summer of ’47 with Mom and my sister and never forgot the man in the manhole.