Crime Caper Movies Beat Smash & Grab Reality

The recent rash of “smash and grab” robberies made me think of a delightfully charming 80-year-old heist flick starring William Powell and Kay Francis. “Jewel Robbery” had breezy dialogue, no violence and the type of escapism the masses in the midst of the Depression needed to make their lives a little less gray.

For good measure, view another 1932 gem, “Trouble in Paradise,” with Kay Francis as a rich businesswoman preyed upon by tandem swindlers Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins.

Here is my list of crime capers to enjoy:

Jewel Robbery

Trouble in Paradise

Topkapi

How to Steal a Million

Charade (the Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn version)

The Sting

The Lookout

The Asphalt Jungle

They Live by Night

Larceny, Inc.

Double Indemnity

Oceans 11 (all versions)

Raising Arizona

Fargo

 

Marathon Musings and Top Racing Movies

I am not a long distance runner. Never was. Though in my youth—by that I mean at least till I turned 50 or so—I could run pretty fast. Short distances. If I hit a ground ball to the second baseman during a weekly softball game I had a better than even chance of beating his throw to first base. 

As a youngster I ran faster than any of my friends. They learned to ride bicycles. I didn’t. I reasoned I could keep up with them by simply running. I was wrong. I never learned to ride a two-wheeler until I was 40, long after my childhood friends and I parted ways. 

Age coupled with some peripheral neuropathy in my feet slowed me down. It mostly manifested itself during daily walks up and down Park Avenue during the last decade of my commute to and from work. Ever the competitive person, I would imagine myself in a speed-walking contest with an unsuspecting pedestrian at least half a block ahead of me. In the morning, upon exiting from Grand Central Terminal, I’d race him or her to my office at 425 Park Avenue midway between East 55th and 56th streets. On the way back home I’d race to the entrance to Metro North. 

My racing reverie was inspired by Sunday’s 50th anniversary of the New York Marathon. Gilda’s brother, Carl, did run marathons, so one Marathon Sunday some four decades ago we decided to brave the chilly weather and cheer him on. We waited behind blue police barricades at the 20-mile point, up in the Bronx. Carl was a good runner. We expected him to pass within an hour of the leaders.

We waited and waited for nearly four hours. No Carl. Numb from the chill and hungry, we headed home, figuring Carl must have pulled up lame before our vantage point. Being pre-cell phone days, we had to wait until we returned home to contact him.

Turned out Carl was not injured, that he indeed had kept to his expected pace. But the stress of the race had so contorted his image that we didn’t recognize him as he loped by. Ah, well…

It’s been many years since Carl ran a marathon. Since then several friends have trained for and run the NYC Marathon. I’m in awe of their discipline and stamina. Congratulations to the 30,000 who participated in Sunday’s race. They were winners even if they came up short of the required 26.2 mile course.

Racing Movies: Before anyone reacts to my list of favorite movies on land, sea or air with a racing theme, or significant scene, be aware I have not seen any of the “Fast and Furious” or “Cars” franchises. Here are my recommended films: 

National Velvet

Chariots of Fire

Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Rush

Ford vs Ferrari

Seabiscuit

Grand Prix

Prefontaine

A Day at the Races

Ben-Hur

Days of Thunder

Breaking Away

American Graffiti

Rebel Without a Cause

Grease

For Democrats the Time To Act Is NOW

I wonder if President Joe Manchin and Vice President Kyrsten Lea Sinema are happy today in light of a Republican gubernatorial win in Virginia and a potential upset victory in New Jersey? Oh, did you think they were just U.S. senators from, respectively West Virginia and Arizona? Not by a long shot. 

For, after all, it has been their repeated intransigence that has left the Democratic Party in disarray, unable to cobble together progressive pocketbook and environmental legislation that Democrats could run on instead of having to defend Republican attacks on culture issues. 

They, not Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and surely not Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, are driving the agenda of the current administration. Yes, Mitch Mcconnell and Kevin McCarthy are Republican stumbling blocks in the Senate and House, respectively, but the true cogs in the Democratic works are Manchin and Sinema. Manchin’s reluctance to accept Biden’s initiatives after repeated entreaties and adjustments validates what I wrote back on February 26, “Which Joe Is President? Biden or Manchin? (https://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2021/02/which-joe-is-president-biden-or-manchin.html).

For sure, there were statewide issues that sunk Terry McAuliffe’s bid to return to the governor’s mansion of Virginia and Philip Murphy’s nailbiting cling to the keys to New Jersey’s residence of power. The failure of Democrats on a national level to coalesce around meat and potato issues that could improve voters’ lives has left them vulnerable to unending local criticisms, and, just as pointedly, to the belief they do not know how to govern, that they just want to appease strident radical interest groups. 

One, if not two, more states could turn the clock back on progress toward equality, environmentalism and health care. Republican Glenn Youngkin’s boast that he would immediately suspend any teaching of critical race theory in Virginia public schools is particularly disheartening because it was in Virginia in 1619 that the first shipload of African slaves arrived on American soil. And nearly 200 years later the slaveholders of Virginia were in the forefront of breaking up African families by selling off individual slaves to cotton plantations in Deep South states. 

How reactionary will Youngkin be? He is on video privately assuring a supporter he will address restricting abortion rights if he won. Will the Robert E. Lee statue recently removed from downtown Richmond be reinstalled on prominent state property? 

It’s a painful exercise contemplating a return to repressive days of yore. On Facebook a posting fondly recalled 1962, with its lower cost of living. 

While everything is ridiculously less expensive (average rent $110/mo., Harvard tuition $1,520/yr., movie ticket $1, gasoline 27 cents/gal.), what is not included in the nostalgic look-back is quality of life: 

Blacks lived under public Jim Crow laws in the South and covert discrimination in the North; women would have to wait another dozen years to obtain the right to get their own credit cards separate from their husbands’; until 1975 in many states women could be barred from serving on a jury; working women had no pregnancy or maternity leave protection; many states outlawed any form of birth control, even for married couples; interracial marriages were illegal in many states until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia the restrictions were unconstitutional (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71353/8-things-women-used-be-banned-doing). 

Life may have seen simpler back in 1962, in a “Handmaid’s Tale” dystopian way. There’s no doubt the country is trending toward a more traditional nostalgia. Even in supposedly progressive New York State voters Tuesday harkened to Republican voices and rejected ballot initiatives liberalizing same-day voter registration and allowing anyone to cast an absentee ballot.

An effective, even transformational Biden presidency, rests with Manchin and Sinema finalizing their support of the president’s Build Back Better program. Concurrently, progressive and moderate Democrats in the House must stop their wrangling. 

As the battle over the Affordable Care Act in 2010 showed, compromise legislation is better than no legislation. While they still have majorities in the House and Senate, tenuous as they may be, Democrats must act NOW.

Facebook Language Woes of Its Own Making

Lost in Transliteration: Facebook has many problems, not the least of which is with its translation app. 

An Israeli friend posted a recruitment message in Hebrew for a technology company. Listed were several open positions. All well and good until the final job classification—the Hebrew transliteration of “fashionista.” 

 

The problem? Facebook translated it as “fascist.” 

Just past midnight Sunday I notified Facebook of the egregious app faux pas, but as of 5 pm Monday no correction had been made. Of course, I’ve also notified my friend.

Lost in Translation: Facebook no longer wants to be known as simply a social media company. So, founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg has changed the corporate name to Meta, signifying a transition to a metaverse, what he says is where the physical and digital worlds come together (please do not expect me to explain it in any deeper way).

Zuckerberg’s Meta has fostered its fair share of ridicule and skepticism, perhaps the most cutting from Israelis, including my friend Karin, who noted, “I think Mark Zuckerberg must have skipped that one Hebrew class when they explained what “Meta” means….Well, for my non Israeli/Jewish friends, “Meta” in Hebrew means - SHE IS DEAD…so good luck with that, Mark     ”

 

Original Intent: Many of our Founding Fathers surely led contradictory lives. Chief among them—Thomas Jefferson, whose statue will be removed from the New York City Council chambers because he was a slaveholder of more than 600 humans, who even upon his death failed to free most of them. 

This despite his credited authorship of one of the most famous passages in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent & inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.” 

Of course, that statement was the result of community editing with other delegates to the Second Continental Congress. 

In Jefferson’s first draft, a handwritten copy of which Gilda and I saw last week in an extraordinary Polonsky Exhibition of “treasures” collected by the New York Public Library (including a first edition Gutenberg Bible and a majestic King James Bible, an original copy of the Bill of Rights and original Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends dolls), the Declaration’s principal author had the following description of the slave trade expunged from the final, adopted transcript: a “cruel war against human nature itself” and “an assemblage of horrors.” 

The Library’s accompanying commentary properly reflects, “Jefferson’s omitted passage allows us a solemn opportunity: to imagine how history might have been different if, from the beginning, the United States had taken a stand against the evils of enslavement.”

Frankensteinian Attack: It being the season of Halloween, it was no surprise that a horde of horror movies, including “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” and “Phantom of the Opera,” found their way onto home television screens (can’t say “small screens” as in the past, as many, including yours truly, enjoy viewing films on 50-inch plus monitors). 

“Young Frankenstein,” the comedic sendup written by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, and directed by the former, was shown Saturday night on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). A few days before watching part of the film, I viewed a 2019 documentary TCM aired on Carl Laemmle, the German-Jewish immigrant who founded Universal Studios in the early 20th century and who rescued many Jews from Nazi Germany during the late 1930s. Among its many notable films Universal concentrated on horror flicks—“Frankenstein”, “Dracula,” “The Mummy,” “The Invisible Man” and their many offshoots, to cite a few titles. 

Deep into the documentary, there was a clip from 1974 of Brooks promoting his then new film on “The Tonight Show.” Brooks used the occasion to once again comically malign my given name. “There was a director many years ago by the name of James Whale who made all those wonderful ‘Frankenstein’ movies,” said Brooks. “He made ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘The Bride of Frankenstein,’ ‘The Son of Frankenstein,’ ‘The House of Frankenstein,’ ‘Frankenstein’s Friend, Murray.’”

Brooks never seems to miss an opportunity to verbally assault my given name (https://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/11/whats-in-name.html). 

 

More Westerns: I was admonished for not including some classic Westerns in my list of favorite oaters. Chief among them, “High Noon,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “3:10 to Yuma” (Van Heflin-Glenn Ford version), “The Shootist,” and the recently released “News of the World.”

Guilty on all counts, though to be honest, while I often rewatch “High Noon” I do not think it is among Gary Cooper’s best. As I wrote to a friend in my defense, “Gary Cooper was anti-violence in several movies—“Friendly Persuasion” and “The Hanging Tree,” to name two—so it was not a reach for him in “High Noon.” I like the movie but not as much as his others like “The Westerner” or “Along Came Jones” where he mixed in some humor in his portrayals.”