 The Music Man offers a bit of extra Whiz Bang for your buck.
We got an e-mail from Bill S., who writes about our Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang posting from last week: Speaking of, said periodical is numbered among “the tell-tale signs of corruption” by Prof. Harold Hill, the Music Man, when he terrorizes the good people of River City with the horrors of Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool.
“Is he memorizing jokes from Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang?”
Saw your post and went for my dvd copy of the great movie, as much about changing times as it is about music. Grabbed a screen shot of Buddy Hackett exposing a young lad as a Capt Billy’s reader to his mother. Love your site. You can see in Bill S.'s screen grab that, sure enough, Buddy Hackett is holding a copy of Whiz Bang. Meanwhile, Robert Preston is singing: “Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger? A dime novel hidden in the corncrib? Is he starting to memorize jokes from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang?” But Hollywood may have been taking liberties with the time period here, since the first Whiz Bang was published in 1919 and The Music Man is seemingly set years earlier. Bill S. responded: Prof. Hill lies about being a grad of Gary Conservatory ’05 (“aught five”) and since Preston looks like no spring chicken, I added 15 or so years. Gets it in the range of the mag. Seems like turn-of-the-century but out in Iowa there might have been a lag. Still might. And so Hackett may just be yanking Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang #1 out of the kid's pocket. The birth of modern pulp.
Re: the subtle subtext of a new era: it starts with the opening number, actually a “rap” about all the products the traveling salesman can no longer sell, and that even the profession of the drummer may already be obsolete. Hill’s nemesis sells anvils and carries a sample with him. Hill sells band instruments from a catalog by drop ship. He also peddles a teaching philosophy akin to modern self-help fads. The Think Method. And then there’s the unknotting of Shirley Jones’ repression. Oh my! Has any woman ever looked better in a movie?
An underappreciated work, that Music Man. Ripe for ridicule because of the obviousness of well-known show stoppers, but the love song was covered by the Beatles. Have to agree about the movie. It’s a good laugh. Even that famous Whiz Bang number—the song “Trouble”—is quite funny. If you get a chance, check it out here. It’s worth your time. When Hackett pulls out the magazine—around the 3:00 mark—you can see the cover clearly, and it’s the one below. What Bill says about Shirley Jones is true, also. She’s very tempting. See the post below. 
 This Gun for Hire is a celebrated proto-noir—but is it good? 
We checked the movie rating website Rotten Tomatoes for its assessment of the thriller This Gun for Hire and learned that the film scored over 92% among its stable of professional critics. Ninety-two percent? Then surely this must be one of the greatest films ever made, a near flawless work of art. But when you read the reviews more closely, many note the film’s unbelievable plot, reliance upon coincidence, cheesy musical interludes, and less-than-stellar dialogue. So then what’s with the high rating? Well, let’s just say professional critics sometimes rate with their sense of film history rather than their heads. This Gun for Hire helped establish tropes that would be used again and again as the film noir genre developed and flourished, so that’s a big reason film experts like the movie. But is it good? Well… Now, don’t get us wrong—we aren’t out to slam the flick. Who’d listen to us anyway? We’re just a couple of heavy drinkers who slapped together a website out of sheer boredom. But we’re also fairly bright, and fairly well-versed in film, and we feel confident in saying that any honest assessment of This Gun for Hire would stress the bothersome structural improbabilities. Example A: Veronica Lake plays a San Francisco nightclub performer/magician who happens to catch the eye of a big-time club owner, who invites her to perform in L.A., resulting in a train ride that not only coincides with his, but with that of a hired killer he has betrayed, leading directly to an eye-roller in which that very same killer sits in the only empty seat in the carriage—right next to our singer Ms. Lake. Anything that puts Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake together is justified, to an extent, so you’ll probably let that pass. Example B: Lake is engaged to a cop who happens to be part of an investigation into two murders committed by the very same killer sitting next to Lake on the SF/LA night express. Hmm. There’s more, much more, but you get the point. So what about that 92% rating? Well, Alan Ladd is magnetic and brutally handsome as the ice-cold killer Philip Raven. Veronica Lake is less good as the chanteuse Ellen Graham, but still manages a game performance in a role that could be better written. Robert Preston is note-perfect as the boyfriend detective. So there’s all that. The film looks good, is well-directed by Frank Tuttle, moves quickly and builds a nice atmosphere of menace. So there are those things too. And again, the film is a building block in the genre that would later become known as film noir. But if, hypothetically, you’ve never seen a film noir or classic melodrama and This Gun for Hire were to be your first, it would not convert you into a fan. On the other hand, if you already enjoy mid-century cinema, this one will fit snugly in your comfort zone. All in all, we very much appreciate the movie, but a film that rates 92% among professional critics should not be so chock-full of coincidences that even a fourteen-year-old would be incredulous. At top you see one of the movie’s three French-language posters. The other two are below. This Gun for Hire, which opened Stateside in 1942 but went unseen in Europe due to the inconvenience of World War II, finally premiered in Paris as Tueur à gages or “Hired Killer” today in 1947. 
|
 |
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
|
|
|
It's easy. We have an uploader that makes it a snap. Use it to submit your art, text, header, and subhead. Your post can be funny, serious, or anything in between, as long as it's vintage pulp. You'll get a byline and experience the fleeting pride of free authorship. We'll edit your post for typos, but the rest is up to you. Click here to give us your best shot.
|
|
