British Realism in 60s & Carry On

FROM BRITAIN — A customer at HMV on Regal St. in London in ’98 advised me that “Carry on Matron” was a good choice.  I bought it (5.99 pounds) and transfered it to the US standard when I got home.  (At that time, VHS tapes of this series were not available in the US).  After more than 20 years the tape is OK (not in Hi Fi).

Hattie Jacques as the hospital matron stole the film from Sidney James and the rest of the Carry On cast with their naughty, slapstick, low brow humor.  Carry On is an acquired taste and I am sure many viewers are repulsed with their over the top gags.  I got the bug while a student at  the U of Wash. seeing “Carry on Nurse” at a University District theater.

Sixties British films often dealt with working class struggles and “Leather Boys” is a prime example with Rita Tushingham as the romantic lead.  This is worth a look as is Georgy Girl and Alfie (original with Michael Caine.)  UK films vs Hollywood comdies — realism vs fantasy. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068339/ 

DARK CITY, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM

FINDING SHELL BEACH.  “Dark City” (1998) got mixed reviews and tanked at the box office, but then so did Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic “Metropolis.”  Dark City director/producer Alex Proyas has given moviegoers a mind-bending neo-expressionist classic that could prompt nightmares for a week of Sundays.  A real trip, I was swept along by this gem in wide screen and surround sound DVD that I found in early March for $1.50 at McCarron Lake’s thrift store.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGSLMl1XFs

Yet another restoration for the 1933 horror classic “Mystery of the Wax Museum,” Tom Weaver reports in the July 2020 edition of Classic Images magazine.  The new blu-ray avoids the blue night scenes and garish pink skin tones seen in the 2000 restoration by Turner Video, which I scored at Brand Name Deals liquidation store several years ago.  Wax Museum is very neo-expressionist with dark street scenes.  The 50s remake House of Wax featured Vincent Price in 3-D which I saw at the Walker a few years ago.

LUNCH WITH JANE POWELL.

  I should have said, “Keith Andes would have been a better choice over Cliff Robertson in your ’58 RKO Radio musical “The Girl Most Likely” but I kept still.  We dined at the same picnic table — me, Jane and comedian Louis Nye in the summer of ’63 in the alley between the Burbank NBC studios on Buena Visa Blvd.  I was an “editorial assistant” at NBC KNBC News then.

Jane and Louis were apparently at NBC to rehearse a nightclub act and were deep in discussion.  Food service at NBC was meager—a food truck with bad sandwiches and a picnic table, but it was a hot spot for gossip from technicians who would gab about Judy and June being drunk during taping of Judy’s CBS show recently.  Who was Dinah sleeping with now?

In “the girl” movie, Andes was a knockout in a song and dance Tijuana number with Jane, Kay Ballard and dancer Kelly Browne.  He also was the co-star with Lucille Ball in the Broadway musical “Wildcat,” was the romantic interest with Linda Darnell in RKO’s “Blackbeard the Pirate” and was the boyfriend of Marilyn Monroe in RKO’s “Clash by Night” drama.  The man was talented. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050438/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

Growing Up Absurd with Bernie Chantecleer

YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW.  Coppola’s first big budget movie defined me in 1967 wherein a suburban nebish escapes a clininging mother (Geraldine Page) to sample the temptations of New York City.  With the Lovin’ Spoonful (John Sebastian) on the soundtrack it had a subversive counter culture tone. Peter Kastner is the big boy.   

Big Boy Bernie is introduced to drugs by his shallow, poet co-worker (Tony Bill) and promptly falls for a man-hating actress/go go dancer (Elizabeth Hartman).  Memorable scenes:  a quick tour of sleazy sex shops in Time Square, flying a kite in Central Park on a sunny day and the off-Broadway risque play “The Department Store.”  

Memorable line:  Bernie learned from his parents “self loathing and self doubt.”

I ordered the VHS tape from Sun Coast Video in 1992 at Southdale and bought the soundtrack LP at a Woolworth’s in 1972.  

Big Boy was overshadowed a few months after it debuted by another coming of age comedy, The Graduate, which was dark LA while Big Boy is whimsical NYC.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_a_Big_Boy_Now

Shock Corridor, Long Voyage Home, East Side Kids, KBOI

WHAT WAS playing at the Bijou on the day you were born?   

While I was working my way down the birth canal, New Yorkers were queing up at United Artists’ Rivoli Theater to see the much acclaimed premier of “The Long Voyage Home,” adapted from a Eugene O’Neil short story.  Aqui es la vida!

No use crying of spilled popcorn.  So I said to myself:   “Relax kid.  You can catch it on VHS in 40 years.”  

Truth be told, ’40 may have not been such a great movie year in the shadow of 1939 with Gone With the Wind, The Hunchback of Norte Dame and more.  It was somewhat reminiscent of now.  War was raging in Europe and it would soon engulf us, sending Dad to Japan with the Allied Occupation Forces.

(Ironic that the movie “Childbirth” was also playing in NYC.  I am sure that was a gas!)

EAST SIDE KIDS — The character Muggs Malone played by Leo Gorcey in the East Side Kids comedies bears a striking resemblance to the contemporary Gorilla and Chief in DC.  

Muggs was the ad hoc leader of the hooligans in these 1940s Monogram films and considered himself an “expert” on most everything.  Of course he was a dunce like his pals.  

Muggs was famous for malaprops, like “It’s a lovely sediment.”  Typically his leadership resulted in out of control anarchy and confusion.  Sound familiar?

Their best film featured Bela Lugosi — “Spooks Run Wild” — (1941) with lots of slapstick comedy in a “haunted” house.  A sequel, “Ghosts on the Loose,” featured lovely Ava Gardner and Lugosi and is less hilarous. The “kids” kept Monogram Pictures afloat until the mid-40s when it became Allied Artists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Gorcey

HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND.  Where did you first see this? Who were you with and what did you think about it?  What was your favorite line?  The Vietnam war was playing in the background.

I first saw it at the Vista on the Boise Bench by myself which wasn’t unusual then.  Memorable line:  Dad to Ben: “What are you doing?”   Ben:  “Drifting, just drifting.”  This defined that moment in my life — doing rewrites on Little Britches Rodeo, fender benders and obits.  (In later years I saw the Statesman as the defining time in my life.)

That summer I saw this movie again at the Tops in downtown Caldwell and then again in ’69 at the Midway in St. Paul.  Bought the VHS and then the DVD, which has an insightful interview with Hoffman.

BOISE WAKEUP MAN.  Marty Holtman was the fast talking morning wakeup DJ on KBOI (950 CBS)  when I lived and worked in Boise in the 60s.  Holtman was a standout in flyover land.  Hub Warner, very low key, did afternoon drive.  Lon Dunne did mornings on KIDO (NBC) and recorded a soundtrack to a pollution slide show I did for the Capitol Jaycess.  

Holtman is featured in a photo in a VW Beattle doing a promotion for the movie “Love Bug.”  The photo is in “History in the Headlines,” the Idaho Statesman story.

By 1969 KBOI moved to about 670 on the dial and 50,000 watts, continuing with MOR music.  Holtman is featured in a November 2019 featured in the impressive Idaho Press. 

SCHOCKER.  When I was a flunky at NBC News in 1963, I got a lot of press preview passes for movies and I went to all of them.  I remember little about most except Allied Artists’ “Shock Corridor” which doesn’t fit neatly in any a catagory, film noir or horror? I saw it in a suburban bank auditorium, possibly in Glendale.   I have seen this Samuel Fuller epic several times since and it is crazy wonderful.

Casablanca, Hollywood, Citizen Kane, K-tel, The Oscar

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID.  It feels like we’re in a war so why not immerse myself in war-time movies and music.  Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains were a good place to start since they are outstanding in “Notorious” and “Casablanca.”  These two classics form a super double feature.  

WORKOUT MUSIC.  Hit after Hit Today’s Top Tracks audio casette from K-Tel (1986) is an ideal soundtrack for aerobics videos like those from YMCA 360.  If you like REO’s “Can’t Fight the Feeling,” Patti Labell’s “New Attitude” and more then you are on your way to wonderland.

An amazing casette from a company that was located in a nearby suburb. 

(K-tel was far more than a record label. Sure, the brand made its name selling disco compilations and Hooked on Classics tapes through television ads, but K-tel also pushed a plethora of quirky products. It was a true pioneer of the "As Seen on TV" phenomenon.)

WHAT IF …. In 1947 a Hollywood studio was run by a woman and produced a film with an interracial love affair and Anna May Wong won an Oscar?  That’s the story line on Ryan Murphy’s most provocative series, “Hollywood” on Netflix.  (I binged on the comings and goings of Jack Costello, Rock Hudson and more this weekend.  Call me crazy!)

THE OSCAR.  The lead character Frankie Fane in this 1966 movie is actually a thinly veiled Sinatra.  It took me two viewings of this frothy drama to figure it out, but the ironic ending when real life Sinatra accepts an Oscar is a device to divert us from the inspiration for this melodrama. It’s Sinatra, of course, in his Rat Pack days, punching out guys and being unfaithful to his wife. 

WHAT IF Orson Welles hadn’t portrayed Marion Davies as a lush in “Citizen Kane”?  Might Hearst have ignored the indulgence of a 24-year-old and not declared war against Welles?

By the 1950s the world had rediscovered CK through re-releases with the realization that this was a cinematic masterpiece. 

 And by 2011 Warner released a two-DVD set with a 4K restoration of CK and a super documentary, “The Battle Over Citizen Kane,” from PBS,

In retrospect, Welles, with his career ruined, wished he had left Hollywood after CK and pursued his writing, theater and politics.

Hearst, after destroying Welles, was remembered as Welles portrayed the “fictional” character Charles Foster Kane — an angry tyrant.  Susan assembling the pieces of a puzzle is symbolic in that the Kane story is a puzzle.

PALM SPRINGS PARTY

FABULOUS PARTY.  I was lucky enough to be Cousin Jan’s guest in about 2003 to the 80th birthday party of the Fabulous Ruth.  Performing were Frankie Randall (at the piano) and legendary folk singer from the 60s Trini Lopez (left).  

Fabulous Ruth belted out a rendition of a saucy cabaret number as well at this event in the fabulous Ritz Hotel, Palm Springs.

Frankie sounded much like that other Frankie on this 1966 RCA Victor album and Randall may have been part of the Rat Pack in better days.  Randall headlined an unfortunate low budget movie, Wild on the Beach, with Sherry Jackson and Sonny and Cher.  He also was a DJ on the network radio broadcast Music of Your Life that was heard on KLBB, Twin Cities.  

I had originally heard Randall perform in 1963 at a Sunset Blvd. bar in LA with my roomie John Miller when we lived in Glendale and I was working at NBC News.

Did I say this was “fabulous”?

GLEASON AS RILEY WORTH VIEWING

Although SLP mode, very viewable.

GLEASON.  Before he became Mr. Saturday Night on CBS, Jackie Gleason was very effective in 1949 in the Life of Riley on the Dumont Network.  The “Tonsils” episode where he seeks out a stranger for advice prior to his tonsilectomy is hilarious. 

Gleason underplays in every one of these filmed (not kinescope) episodes, unlike the boisterous personna of his more famous self. (Much of the nation never saw these episoldes because they lacked a Dumont affiliate or more importantly a TV set.)

New York City's WPIX, Channel 11, resurrected THE LIFE OF RILEY series in February 1977 and played it only on weekends during the 11 p.m. to midnight time slot, following Gleason's ever popular THE HONEYMOONERS. It remained on that channel for the next few years before being moved to 5 a.m. and disappearing from TV land once again by 1986.  If you didn’t live in NYC, you missed it.

Buildings I Have Known

RELEVANT BUILDINGS, WEST COAST.  KCET (TV) used to be the Los Angeles PBS station and was housed in the old Monogram Pictures lot and soundstages.  I learned to love Monogram movies: King of the Zombies, The Corpse Vanishes, Charlie Chan, Gale Storm and the East Side Kids.  This site, where Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi worked, was also the Mack Sennett studios in the silent era and now is owned by Scientology.

I learned how to be a news reporter while working in the KXLY Bldg. which was was a dump compared to this structure north of the river.  Working with Bobbi Ulrich, we would cover murder trials, Idaho forest fires and routine stuff for UPI in a cubicle buried in the old KXLY studios near the Realty Bldg.

Hello Frisco, Goodbye.  (lower right corner)  I had arrived in Idaho at the Statesman, 6th and Bannock, across from a park and City Hall, starting as a night copy editor, headline writer and reporter before graduating to local government reporter where I won a national award for environmental reporting.  I was living in a boarding house a short distance away near what now is the hospital.  I still have a couple of friends in Boise.

Carnival of Souls

ZOMBIE CITY

On a trip to Salt Lake City a few years ago, I convinced Mike that we needed to see Saltair, the site of the 1962 cult classic movie, “Carnival of Souls.”  Here I am at the rebuilt palladium and below is the historic building that burned down sometime after the film was released.  

I was pumped up about this destination from an article in Ford Times that I read when I was working at The Statesman in Boise.  The SLC library has a book on Saltair’s history.  Herk Harvey (producer-director) was sufficiently inspired seeing the deserted amusement park that he enterprised a movie based on the total spookiness of the site. I bought the Image DVD in SLC but Criterion may also market a DVD on COS.

ALOHA FROM KAWIKA

I didn’t get it right at the ’91 party in Honolulu so I did a week long refresher in 2017 aboard the Pride of America where I was given a Hawaiian name, Kawika.

The Star Advertiser reports today:  Hawaii recorded its third death from the virus “on Friday as state officials activated up to 250 troops from the Hawaii National Guard to help with airport screenings and other tasks in the battle against the growing pandemic that has topped 300 cases in the islands.”

JAZZ SINGER CINCOTTI

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PETER CINCOTTI?  I was excited as a teenager in August 2003 at The Dakota in St. Paul when I got Cincotti to autograph my CD, which I bought in Montreal that summer.  Catch Pete at NYC’s Birdland April 21 or in France in June and mellow out with the Pete. He was in the House of Cards TV series.

SILLY SUMMER JOB CONFESSION

    In the summer of 1959 behind the wheel of my dad’s conspicuous red and white Olds I would stalk the Erie Dairy home delivery truck in Spokane and write down every address where the driver stopped to deliver milk.

Suprisingly, I was never arrested for loitering.  Along with four other college students on summer break and an older adult leader, we were hired by the giant Carnation Co. to run Erie out of business, a bit of good old preditaroy capitalism.  Our leader was a goofy man reminiscent of Gillis on Life of Riley who would tell ribald jokes when we lunched in a neighborhood park.

Rightfully, the Erie driver was angry.  He probably was an independent contractor and we would be taking money out of his pocket.

A “bright” young man at Carnation hired us for this crazy scheme that was doomed from the get-go.  One could assume that Carnation was falling behind in home delivery sales so why not target the weakest competition rather than Darigold or Arden Farms.  I am happy to say that this predatory captalism marketing initiative failed and we were terminated after a few weeks of stalking Erie.  This effort must have alienated Spokane consumers from the Carnation brand.

Acting on a referral from the state emploment agency I took the job because it seemed like a good alternative to the misery of selling shoes at Leed’s downtown, manual labor at Alaska Junk or delivering for Miller & Felt drugs — all jobs that I hated.  

Although I became friends with one of the other students in the group, I am not proud of a short-lived Carnation career.  Summers in Spokane were uneventful and I longed to get from behind the wheel of my dad’s Olds and back to Seattle, the University of Washington and frat house comradery.

Spokane, Idaho Histories

Historic Merrygoroud Now at Downtown Park

Lloyd Vogel, the inebriated owner of Natatorium Park, said he was planning on moving the merry go round  to Pasco, when I interviewed him in November 1962.  This article for UPI News Service didn’t get released until I was on Coast Guard Reserve training in Oakland, Calif.

TRAGIC '62 PLANE CRASH

SPOKANE — All 44 persons aboard a Strategic Air Command jet tanker plane apparently were killed when the C135 plowed into a fog-shrouded ravine on 5,271-foot Mt. Kit Carson about 20 miles northeast of here Monday.

Thirty-three bodies had been recovered when nightfall halted the search of the 500-yard deep ravine.

"It's the worst sight I've ever seen," said a highway patrolman.

Aboard the plane were 39 Air Force men, all members of the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.; one civilian and four crewmen.

The tanker, based at Ellsworth, was carrying the airmen to Fairchild Air Force Base near here, where they were to stay while Ellsworth runways were repaired. The jet was only 10 minutes from its destination when it crashed.

BOY SCOUT WORLD JAMBOREE, FARRAGUT STATE PARK

Clipping from Idaho Statesman

I was a news reporter for the Idaho Statesman and assigned to report on the 12th World Scout Jamboree, which was held July 31 to August 9, 1967, and was hosted by the United States at Farragut State Park.

I slept on the ground in a tent and mailed my film and stories every day to Boise.  The following year I covered the national jamboree and stayed in a hotel.  It was fun.  Lady Baden Powell, widow of Lord Baden Powell, Scout founder, attended one of those events. 
Farrgut was a Navy base and had been closed for many years.  The press HQs were in the brig for the Jamboree.

Idaho Statesman Friends

left to right: Paul, photographer; Ralph Nichols & Jim Golden; Dave Frazier, Ken Burroughs.

IDAHO FRIENDS

I’ve known Duane Mitchell of Caldwell, Ida. since the mid-1960s when we were boarders at Mrs. Cook’s house in Boise on N. Sixth Street just a short drive from the Idaho Statesman where I was a reporter and he was an accounting clerk for Blue Cross.  He is still in Caldwell and I visited him and his wife Nancy in 2015.

Camp David is Dave Frazier’s mountain retreat in Southern Idaho.  It was 90 something that day and forest fires in Central Idaho.  Fraze was a classmate at the Idhao Statesman where we learned news reporting.  He, the police beat, me, local government.

Hello Frisco, Goodbye.  I had arrived in Idaho at the Statesman, 6th and Bannock, across from a park and City Hall, starting as a night copy editor, headline writer and reporter before graduating to local government reporter where I won a national award for environmental reporting.  I was living in a boarding house a short distance away near what now is the hospital.  I still have a couple of friends in Boise.

Candid Statesman staffers:  Paul (photographer), good friend Ralph Nichols and city editor Jim Golden and going away party at nearby state park, fishing buddy and cop shop reporter Dave Frazier who pursued a succesful freelance photog career, Ken Burroughs, TV editor who took me on my first hunting trip in his Rambler Classic when I arrived in the fall of ’65.  Ken worked in the desk across from me on he second floor.

Mitchell left and center

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, Bundle of Joy

You could buy Tops albums for $1.49 at Newberry's downtown

It was a big deal in 1956 when Mike Todd’s spectacular movie “Around the World in 80 Days” came to Spokane at the historic Post Street Theater, which had seen a mix of vaudeville and movies becoming a full time movie theatre which lasted until it closed in May 1972. It was later demolished.

Owner Joe Rosenfield remodeled the theater for this road show event, moving the projection booth from the second balcony to the first floor and installing a wide, curved screen to accomodate Todd-AO.  (I used to deliver prescriptions to Rosenfield at the theater when I was a Miller & Felt delivery boy.  See Confessions of a Teenage Delivery Boy.)

I attended 80 Days with either family or friends and was overwhelmed.  In fact, my Aunt Dora bought me the soundtrack LP on Decca with Victor Young’s soaring music.  Being in fly over land, Spokane was bypassed by Cinerama so this movie was very special.

I still thrill to 80 Days on DVD with surround sound and the quirky way the vertical images curve in at the borders reminding us that this was a movie made for a curved screen.

  In 1956 while the nation was fixated on Elvis’ hips and James Dean’s t-shirt, RKO premiered a new original musical, A Bundle of Joy, with America’s cutest couple Debbie and Eddie.  It was the wrong movie at the wrong time.

But there’s lots to love in this holiday favorite with Nick Castle’s choreography wherein our Eddie jumps up on a ping pong table and then jumps to the floor without wobbling or twisting an ankle.  They don’t make them like that anymore.

A dreamy department store is the backdrop for this love affair where Debbie has an entertaining duet with Nita Talbot and a great jitterbug dance contest production number with Tommy Noonan, a TV comedian of that era who later enterprised softcore porn films.  Falling in love with the department store heir gives our gal free reign on all ready to wear and furs in stock (or in the RKO costume department.)

Moreover there’s a too-fat Santa and Eddie’s office is littered with the latest hi-fi equipment for sale in the store.  Also the Eddie drives a British import Nash Metropolitan.  Very cool.   

Bill Goodwin, who pitched Carnation canned milk on Burns and Allen, is a very officious manager at the make belive department store.

The opening song, It’s All About Love, with Eddie is a knock out.  Bundle is very sentimental holiday stuff with the romance is fueled by a cute kid with curly blond hair.  Buy the Warner Archives DVD or catch it on TCM this month.

Irishman disappoints; American Factory excellent

In the three plus hour movie, “The Irishman,” the 50s classic cars are a good reason to watch this American history study from the gangster narrative.  The Hudson Hornet, Chrysler Imperial and Lincoln Town Car are among those featured.  What more is there to say about American gangsters, except the one in the Oval Office?

  

“American Factory” documentary on Netflix is an insightful investigative journalism expose of the corrosive management by the Chinese of an automobile glass factory in Dayton, Ohio.  Aside from the physical and mental toll the workers endure, many of them will be unemployed soon because of automation robots. See the Obamas endorsement of this film, also on Netflix.

HIGH SCHOOL, KOMO WORLD'S FAIR

“A word to the wise is sufficient” my freshman English teacher Mrs. Watrous at Lewis and Clark High School used to say.  Apparently this is a bible quote.  

I showed up late for the first class because I was lost in the hallway.  The first question she asked:  “What was your grammar school?” and of course I didn’t know what she was talking about.  One of the other students said “grade school” and I answered.  It was quite intimidating.  I shared a locker with Herbie Zimmerman and that was daunting trying to remember the combination to the lock and the location of the locker.  We used to talk on the phone.

I was happy to be done with grade school which was eight wasted years.  

QUEEN FOR A DAY

A job I really enjoyed was public relations assistant for KOMO TV-AM in the spring of 1961 when the World’s Fair opened in Seattle across the street at 4th and Denny Way.  It was part time and I was responsible for conducting tours of the studios for grade school kids who I escorted to the viewing balcony where they watched the Captain Puget kidee show weekdays.

I was a senior at the University of Washington majoring in Radio-TV and was buddies with the student who had the KOMO job but was quitting to work at something more promising than dealing with grade school brats.  (I handed out stale very stale candy to the kids.)  The captain was not all that kid-friendly.)

This Fisher Blend Station was going through big changes in 1961 having been a legacy NBC affiliate and losing that coveted connection to upstart KING-TV-AM-FM that year.  So KOMO became the ABC station in Puget Sound and inaugurated that move by hosting the Queen for a Day game show at the State Fair.

I was assigned to open up the radio studio in the basement on a Satuday morning for young women hauling makeup cases who had been hired to model clothing on the program.  

I was quite wound up that morning and wasted a lot of time flipping switches on the control board to get music from the radio station into the studio which the ladies were using as a kind of “green room” before the show would be taped.  (Never did figure out the control board.)

Jack Bailey was the MC on Queen and had been since in debuted on Mutual in 1945.  Not unlike Lets Make A Deal, contestants from the audience would be recruited from the audience to get their wishes granted for specific merchandise.  It bore a strong resemblance to Strike it Rich with Warren Hull on CBS, another game show for women.

(Later in my PR life I was a tour guide at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, wheezing on about grain trading in my monotone.)

After KOMO, I was a summer reporter for UPI in Spokane working in the KXLY (CBS) Building and reporting on forest fires in Idaho, a murder suicide and Air Force plane crash at Mt. Spokane where KXLY-TV transmits.  My photographer buddy at KXLY introduced me to 150 proof rum one evening.  Never again.  Ted Otto anchored the news and Bob Baker did sports on TV and news on the AM station which was Top 40.  

I also convered the Max Markham sensational murder trial in Spokane as a free lancer for KREM Radio, which was a middle of the road music station.  Eventually I wound up as an assistnat at NBC News in Burbank, not a happy time.  Dave Zarkin

Rank Choice Vote, City Elections

 BLOOMINGTON — joined Gretchen and Margaret Tuesday night at the League of Women Voters city election forum where we lobbied for Rank Choice Vote support.  Mayor candidate Tim Busse supports RCV while his Republican opponent Ryan Kulka opposes it.

BLOOMINGTON — During the League of Women Voters forum Tuesday night in City Hall Republican Ryan Kulka did not endorse displacing the current community center with a new structure.  

The center is an inadequate old grade school with a leaky roof.  His opponent, with eight years on the council, said he supports “forward thinking” on the center where he voted with the council to hire an architect for this development.

Kulka said he wants to open the city to business “again,” employing “the butterfly effect” and “blocking and tackling” which is language most aren’t familiar with in reference to commercial development.

In an obvious reference to Kulka, Busse said he is concerned about “a candidate” who gets mailings and phone banks provided by a political party. Kulka had no response to that remark.

Busse said the $15 minimum wage is inevitable and Gov. Walz would sign related legislation if it comes while Kulka endorsed the “free market economy” wherein businesses would decide on pay.

Regarding “racial problems” in the city Busse said there are “tensions” and “racists” while Kulka made references to “equity” and the “golden rule.”  (It wasn’t clear what Kulka means.) 

At leasat 130 people attended the LWV forum in City Hall with some people watching on TV monitors in overflow seating in the lobby.  — daz

Jet Pilot 1957

I saw this movie at the Deer Park Drive In about 1957.
Jet engines roar every time Janet Leigh removes clothing in Howard Hughes’ post war romcom, “Jet Pilot,” with John Wayne as the unlikely male lead.  I can think of a half dozen actors from 1949 who might have been a good match for Ms. Leigh but Wayne isn’t one of ‘em.

Charlie Chan (Roland Winters) is the top Russian officer who hopes to learn US secrets through Leigh’s sleuthing.  The “secret” is that John Wayne should remain on horseback in any movie with the exception of “Sands of Iwo Jima.  Bronislav Kaper, who was a Bob Crane favorite on the KNXR morning drive, did the music. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1038611_jet_pilot 

REMEMBERING EVELYN

Evelyn Lessen “learned to work the saxophone” in high school which brought her to a meeting at the Los Angeles home of noteworthy movie actress and director Ida Lupino who organized an all girls’ band in the 1940s.  Evelyn played the sax in that band.  Most dance bands were all male at that time.

This was Evelyn’s proud achievement that she shared with me at meetings of Or Emet Congregation.  

Lupino would have been keen on starting a girls’ dance band given her commitment to womens’ issues and her contempt for the patriarchal Hollywood structure.  Lupino also was a musician having composed a suite performed by the LA Philharmoic in the late 30s.

Several of us in Or Emet remembered Evelyn and watched a recorded interview she did at a potluck Satuday night in Golden Valley.  When you see “Some Like it Hot,” think of Ms. Lessen.