magpie commune in gardiner reserve this evening

 

margaret dumont pt 3: if you want something done right...

This image taken from this website is ostensibly of Margaret Dumont I suppose in the early 20th century. 

So I finally finished this book and yes it took some time (considering it is quite slender) as it was not a riveting read. A lot of the time I read a book and I think 'I could have done better' and usually I'm kidding myself (and anyway, I didn't do anything better). Once you've read a book it has no novelty so you quickly forget all the things it introduced you to. Nevertheless, aside from some information about Margaret Dumont's earliest years and the marriage which made her retire, as it turns out temporarily, from the stage the bulk of this book is a rehash of material not even necessarily that germane to Margaret Dumont's film career, let alone her actual life. We come away from this book not knowing anything about Dumont's personal life after the death of her husband (and by personal life I mean, sure, she may not have written letters to friends about her life and career or if she did they may not exist anymore, but where did she live? Did she communicate with agents, studios, etc?) Her voice in this book, such as it is, is entirely based on her public pronouncements which, as I said in my previous post, are as likely to have been manufactured by publicists as actually coming from her own mouth (and could be both). 

Spoiler, but she's dead and her death is dealt with in this book almost as offhandedly as her life - it's an afterthought during discussion of a remake she and Groucho did of 'Hooray for Captain Spalding' for television. 

So as mentioned in earlier posts I was so intrigued by MD that I had a vague, unrealisable (particularly now as I doubt I will ever go to the USA again) idea that perhaps somehow I could write her biography, of course I had no idea what exists of her in archives, etc. Having looked at the sources here I still don't know what exists of her in archives, really. There is a section on 'Historical Archives/Journals' in the bibliography of this book, which contains details of two archives consulted: 'Brooklyn Historical Society Library, Vital Records, Daisy Juliette Baker' (MD's real name) and 'Westchester County Historical Society, Daisy Juliet Baker Papers'. I had a quick look at the second of these and could find nothing at all while searching on various permutations of Daisy, Juliette and Baker in various places (I then searched on every 'Baker'). Those papers might be there, but they're not easily found (if they are there, then good work to these authors in locating them but not good work in using them, as the references to them in the text are paltry). There is one more item in 'Historical Archives/Journals' which is, ludicrously, an issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television from 1994 (the issue is from 1994, but the citation ends in '2015' for some reason). This entry does not detail at all what article it relates to, but it is presumably one of two (!) articles about RKO box office performance - as we used to say, 'big whoop!' Clearly this is a secondary source and it does not belong in these primary sources but the exact nature of the primary sources is very obscure anyway. 

And that is it for primary sources. So, when I angsted about wanting to research MD and thought no, it needs a good focused American-based researcher to do it and I couldn't possibly do it with my mean resources, I will now say yes, I most definitely could have done this better from my spare room, with a computer and a newspapers.com subscription and access to the fifteen books these authors used (and a whole lot more they didn't). Because firstly, I could have accessed all the information they accessed without too much effort and secondly I could have given this material a bit less of the extensive-description-of-the-Marx-Brothers'-lives and also extensive-description-of-the-Marx-Brothers'-films-without-Margaret-Dumont-in-them, and a bit more of the description of some of the other films (assuming they're accessible in some form), and a bit more discussion of her legacy because FFS, she dies and as far as the authors of this book are concerned they can walk away at that point and barely even talk about how the Marx Brothers' films enjoyed extensive revival in the 70s/80s let alone talk about any later discussion of MD. 

They didn't need to write this book, at all, and I can well imagine it would have been difficult to even convince a publisher that it had a market (I wonder if it did/does). So why do it so halfheartedly and without the most basic checking and most importantly (?) in a manner that suggests they really had no interest in their central subject? 

The other question is whether the book was written by AI. AI has come a long way in two years and maybe AI two years ago wouldn't have been capable of this but I have to say there is a lot that reads that way, errors AI might make but also a kind of weird alien-ness of the whole thing that makes it seem like it might well be a robot in charge. 

Anyway, I clearly muddled my way through their muddling through of the story of MD and yes, I could have done a lot better at least in terms of tone and engagement, but I didn't and neither did anyone else, so this is what the world gets. This is not even a hack job it's a... why-did-they-bother job.

Just thought I'd throw this in for no good purpose: a picture being sold on eBay for US$76 described as 'At the Circus 8 X 10 Still 1939 The Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont'. At least MD was in At the Circus but ffs. 

I'm not even joking, this one is being sold for about half as much but has exactly the same description. 

division 4 the grasshoppers

This is a truly classic episode called 'The Grasshoppers' (aired 9 April 1973). It is topped and tailed with these two river flats derros played by Michael Duffield and Jack Perry. Yeah, there's kind of circus music over the top of their scenes which isn't really what we wanted but it's a brilliant device and their scenes are nuanced otherwise. 

So much happens in this episode it's remarkable - all I really want to talk to you about is some of the locations - like Fishermans Bend and the wasteland around it, where the Westgate Bridge is under construction. 

There's a scene where Ross Thompson is chased through a scrapyard and I felt that this shot through a pipe was in part a James Bond-style reference but I might be wrong. 

Anyway, Ross Thompson. He appeared twice in D4 before this, in 1970 and '72, as Sergeant George Bell, a kind of endearingly clumsy novice policeman, and he made enough of an impact on me as a character that when I saw him here I assumed it was George Bell again and he was undercover. But no, this is Thompson playing someone else, an ordinary (and reasonably benign) crook. 

I wondered when two fingers became 'up yours'. I always think of that scene at the beginning of Don's Party where John Hargreaves does 'thumbs up' as an 'up yours'. I guess both gestures, meaning the same thing, were used at the same time but no-one was doing the thumb by the mid-70s, and the reverse v became the main thing. 

This is the house where the bad guys are mingling with some alternative types. In fact, the house is called The Alternative. It's right on what I think must be South Melbourne beach. 

One of the fabulous characters is a mute artist called Peach Tree, played of course by Bruce Spence. He's silent because he was shot in the - um - the trachea? During the (Vietnam) war. Here's him writing his name down for the police:

I could be wrong (how often do I say this?!) but I think this is a ship from Lorimer Street - until the bridge was finished these big ships could get further up the Yarra. 

I'd love to know what Peach Tree wrote in this letter Marg Stewart is reading but I can't see it well enough. I have to say that while I really enjoy the Peach Tree element, I don't think it's really pertinent to the overall story (drug deals, etc). 

And this is the beautiful final scene of the two itinerants of the riverbank wandering off. 

So nicely done. 

what's more offensive? (this morning 8:47am)

Music-making still performs the normal functions Background noise for people eating and talking and drinking and smoking That's alright by us. Don't think that we're complaining After all it's only leisure time, isn't it?

That's a verse from the BBC version of Soft Machine's 'Moon in June' and it's probably my favourite version of that song. The 'us' of course is Soft Machine, making the background music. I am not sure that the band were all of a mind on that one but I can't know. It would have seemed arrogant or weird for Robert Wyatt to just say 'that's alright by me...'

Anyway this morning I was in Mr Tulk awaiting the annual staff day, held this year in the State Library, and I was reminded once again that most people don't even notice, much less like or dislike, the background music played in places like this, and also, that the only thing they would notice is if there wasn't background music. I suppose this is where spotify sees a market for lame non-music* to be pumped into public spaces to its own profit. 

Anyway, this morning, AC/DC's 'TNT', a version (not the actual Beatles version, slightly faster, though it did sound like George Harrison singing) of 'Here Comes the Sun', and Supertramp's fucking fucking fucked 'Give a Little Bit' were paraded before me saying 'we won, we won, bland old shit music is here forever and you can't do anything about it', all that was required was a visual of Trump jigging and swaying to it.** 

Now, the music has been drowned out by 12 yarra trams ticket inspectors around the central table. I actually think that's preferable. I can hear something pumping underneath but luckily I can't identify it. 

* ie the music it pays people a pittance to create and sign over to Spotify forever. 

** Later song was Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely' which I can handle but the point still stands. Although I read on wikipedia that 'Wonder performed the song live for Queen Elizabeth II at her Diamond Jubilee Concert on June 4, 2012, with lyrics modified to refer to the Queen' which is gross. 

special cameo by 'louise humphrey'

This episode of D4 (screened 21 March 1973) is a great showcase for Cecily Polson who, for some reason, Crawfords always typecast as a slightly rough young woman, heart of gold optional. In this case she has one of those, and Polson plays her with genuine subtlety. But of course what really jumps out at me is Louise Homfrey, in this instance her name misspelt in the credits as Louise Humphrey. Once again, she plays a neighbour who is pissed off about being bothered. I wonder what Louise Homfrey did to get in the mood for these tours-de-force. Anyway, always good to see her. 

In this case she's talking with an extremely nasty piece of work, Bob Anderson, played by Bill Pearson. Aplomb all round. 

yet another sentimental journey

So for actual work reasons (book chapter I'm writing, I get paid for this) I watched quite a bit of the first season of Aunty Jack this weekend. I watched the whole of the first ('pilot') episode and bits and pieces of all the others. I was actually really impressed by it, on the whole, and the weirdest part of that is I remember watching most of these a couple of decades ago - or whenever the DVDs came out, it was a while ago - and finding them a bit tortuous. But no. It's actually pretty good. I have previously told you  the amazing news that Aunty Jack debuted on the ABC the same night that Monty Python was first shown (but earlier) and I still find that incredible (also, possibly I watched them both - I certainly remember watching Monty Python when we lived in Kew and that was 1972). 

One of the important things about Aunty Jack is that it is definitely Australian but the jokes are not jokes about Australia per se, or things Australians do. That's interesting. Also, another interesting thing, I heard Tony Martin say on Sizzletown a few weeks ago that he was inspired to do The Olden Days and Bargearse from watching What's Up Tigerlily? which makes sense but what I didn't know, but surely he does now because he knows a lot, is that there is a lo-o-ong sketch in Aunty Jack - I think it might be the last episode of season 1? which is an old roman (?) war epic completely dubbed the same way. 

This weekend was not bad, particularly because it was not superfucking hot, though it's going to get hot again towards the end of the week which sucks IMO. But overall, not unhappy. Laura and I watched Starstruck which is always good to see. Perry and I went for a longish walk. 

He made a friend. How jolly!

margaret dumont - still an unknown quantity

I mentioned a few weeks ago how excited I was that someone had finally written a biography of Margaret Dumont. I ordered it immediately at the beginning of January and it came quite soon afterwards. I started reading it, stopped about half way through, and came back to it yesterday. 

I admit, at the time of writing I'm coming up to possibly the most rewarding bit: the quarter-century of Dumont's career after she worked with the Marx Brothers. But people are always writing reviews of things when they've read the whole thing, completely avoiding the reality that to get to the end you also have to get half way through. Here are my thoughts so far:

If there are insights to be had into the mind and actions of Margaret Dumont that are not, magic-eye-like to be divined from unfocussing your eyes and imaginatively looking through decades of almost-hundred-year-old studio promo guff, to try and imagine whether Dumont actually said this stuff about herself and if so, whether she meant it, then the authors have not found it. Possibly they have not tried to find it. 

The authors are accomplished people, they didn't need to do this. Chris Enss writes about women in the old west (i.e. not character actors in mid-20th-century Hollywood) and has apparently written umpteen books on this topic, arcane but you can imagine why it would be popular. Howard Kazanjian is a very successful film producer, working on Star Wars and similar pablum. There's no special reason for him to be interested in writing about this person, much less in this cack-handed manner. I suppose it's possible that one employed the other to whip stuff into shape. 

If the non-Dumont Marx material (including for instance 1930s photographs of the Four Marx Brothers without Dumont, stuffed way into the section where Zeppo was long gone) was taken out, I don't think there'd be very much left. The authors may not have had the opportunity to see the films Dumont made outside the Marx orbit, and apparently she made many, reputedly usually playing the same kind of reserved, upper-class 'society lady' person but often in dramatic roles, etc, but you would have thought Howard Kazanjian for instance could have brought a bit of pressure, money, influence etc to bear to at least find copies of some of them to sit through and report on. Instead, I am going to say that they have not seen many Margaret Dumont films outside the ones she made with the Marx Brothers and indeed the ones they made without her get significant reportage too. When it comes to her non-Marx films, they just give a summary from, I assume, press reviews or reports from the period.*

Most of the text, as suggested above, is based on press reports of the films, their content, and things that were reported about Dumont and/or she reputedly said to the press. The authors do not for one second question any of this stuff, although Kazanjian surely, if not Enss, must understand that most of the material reported in the press as coming from the mouths of film stars was if not made up, then very processed (and sanitised). I have no problem with being given detail of what Dumont (or Groucho, or whoever) was reported as saying in the media in 1940, but I find the assumption in these pages that this is just what they said a bit weird. 

The Wall Street Journal's Jeanine Basinger calls this book 'prodigiously researched', which suggests to me that Jeanine Basinger has never done a newspapers.com search. I don't know for certain but there must surely be a huge amount of studio archives and so on which at very least would give some insight into how she was contracted to films and so on. Did she have a manager/agent? Did she have correspondence with publicists, etc? There must be some non-published sources that could have been consulted. There are even some things you could probably get to the bottom of online in half an hour - when MD's sister died in the early 1940s, what killed her? 

More soon... 

*It's quite possible that many of these films are lost. But then, they need to tell us that. But they won't, because they don't care if they're lost or not - they weren't going to watch them anyway (if they did, it's not at all obvious they did). 

back from going dead

So that was a prime bit of drama which was so quickly resolved I will have forgotten about it tomorrow. I took the phone to a nearby phone repair place where a nice lady told me various ways she might be able to fix it and so on, and asked me to come back in 20 minutes. When I came back, it was fixed. I said 'what was wrong?' and she said 'I don't know, he's fixed it, and he's gone to the toilet.' Elves and the shoemaker eat your heart out. It cost me $35. 

The thing was I had resigned myself to two days or so of no phone and what was it going to do to my mind, getting broadened so much by relying on its own resources? And yeah nah that's not going to happen. 

It's really, really hot outside and that is pretty disgusting. Mid-February really is the worst, also, 'February' is a ridiculously stupid word. 

gone dead

 

Some time in the last 24 hours my phone became unable to be charged. Can you believe it! I am completely cut off from everything and I will be until at least later today (perhaps tomorrow!). Obviously I know I am dependent on it for all kinds of mundane things, but also, the weirdest thing is how vulnerable you feel without a connected phone service. That is ridiculous, considering that firstly, until, um, 15 years ago most people were fine without, and secondly, you're probably more vulnerable if you're dependent on that for a lifeline. You're distracted, you're slow, you're stupid. I hate you with your phone you big jerk. I'm better than that. Why, when my phone was unable to be charged for about a day, I was absolutely fine and barely even cried. Of course I will be up at the repair shop at 9am hankering for a fix, of my phone I mean. 

ah fb

 

I have previously pinpointed the exact moment I first heard about facebook. It was when I was a contributor to Laura's excellent assemblog Sarsaparilla and one of the contributors explained the recent lack of content there... read my memory of that here if you wanna, it's coming up to 20 years I've been on it which is, like, a third of my life ffs. Speaking of my life, in many ways it remade my life. No doubt yours too, even if you have never been a member which, btw, makes you a bit of an outsider in western society, but it's OK.

I deleted fb off my phone about six months ago (but not my laptop... yet) and it made a big difference with my engagement, and the Meta bullshit re: Trump etc has made me want to completely leave (being on bluesky admittedly under Perry's name makes me appreciate how hard it is to build up a community afresh) and I'm still using it for various connections at the moment so it's going to be hard (a version of my strong resentment of the three main telephone companies here in Australia - which one do I hate the least so I can still have a telephone account? Probably Telstra, all they did was take money out of my account when I wasn't a customer and make it impossible to talk to anyone there to get it back). And then there's things like the above.

I have always had a soft spot for Jimmy Somerville. His single with June Miles-Kingston, a cover of 'Comment de dire adieu', is an absolute gem, a record I sincerely love.* I also of course could do with never hearing those Bronski Beat singles he made again because of overexposure but I fully admire him for them. Other things he's done have also really made an impact on me. But he just seems like a straight-up great guy. I tried to imagine him being rude to his PA or sullen in his manager's office or slapping a fan's autograph book to the floor or smashing a glass because someone confused him with Jimi the Human or Jimmy Hannan,** and I couldn't. So I like him. 

...And here he is, in my fb feed, uninvited but welcome, proudly showing me some ratshit thing like Brighton Beach, not the real one but the English one, where they have a beach made of kittylitter and fishtank pebbles, and I just think... fb can be so great when it connects me to a celebrity I have fond feelings for. 

I'm not going to follow him, just because I don't want to engage with fb any more than I already am, but I am going to feel a little bit better because somewhere, the algorithm thought hey, this 60 year old Australian man with a longstanding interest in pop music who likes Soft Cell and the Human League will probably want to see this post, and fuck it, I did. 

* In the old days I had a kind of pre-going out ceremony, sometimes, which by the way was semi-ironic but also semi-real, of playing some records I really liked that I thought of as my 'party records'. 'Comment te dire adieu' was one of them. Alongside 'Epic Merriment' by the Craven Fops, 'Roxy Roller' by Nick Gilder (or the Sweeney Todd version), 'All You Want to Do Is Dance' by Trevor White, 'Cool' by Pylon, 'Love by Numbers' by Ash Wednesday... I'm sure there were plenty of others but I can't recall them atm. All singles. My 'Comment tda' is a 12". 

** Or Jimmy Savile. I bet he gets that a lot, not because he's anything like Savile, but because the names sound so similar. 

division 4 ramps it up

Right from the first moment of this episode of D4 'Today is Eagle Day' (14 March 1973), you know it's a whole new ballgame. For a long time - years? - the opening credits have been dark, sharp and cool. Now, it's bright and full of action, like a cartoon, everyone introduced in full flight, in snippets of scenes I don't remember, which is interesting, suggests they were specially made.* 

Jeff Ashby is stunningly good as the stuttering bank robber Noel 'I ain't promisin' nothin'' Reid who has a bunch of people, including Sergeant MacLeod in what strikes me as his first real featured role (being heroic, getting shot etc) though he's in almost every episode, held hostage in the Yarra Central rates office. 

More greats. The fabulous Roly Barlee, of whom I have previously written:

There's also Joseph Fürst who apparently is infamous for appearing in an early Dr Who as well as Diamonds are Forever. This D4 appearance is one of his early Australian ones - he migrated here in the 70s. What interests me, and I can find absolutely no information on this, is whether Fürst was a refugee from the Nazis (he was born in 1916) or how he ended up in Canada, the UK etc and for that matter when. You know when something is so conscientiously avoided in potted biographies you always wonder what was going on. 

Great ep. You don't need me to tell you all about it. Watch it. 

 

*The closing credits are not redone on this episode, though.

'he gave us a thorough con' - ???

 

blondie box

Last week I forked out for the (2022) 4-LP Blondie box set of demos and rarities called Against the Odds. It's actually pretty freakin' excellent. I have no actual Blondie albums (I wonder if I ever did? I think so. I think I had Plastic Letters and Autoamerican, though Autoamerican I always thought was too self-indulgent to be really enjoyed - I may have a different opinion today). There were two versions of this box and the bigger version would have solved my problem of having no actual Blondie albums because it included them all. But I don't actually care much. 

This purchase went hand-in-hand with finally finishing the Chris Stein memoir, Under a Rock. I really enjoyed that book, too. It is really engaging in many ways, not exactly naive, not exactly wry, not exactly wise, not exactly a passive recording of events, but all of those. I am not going to forget it in a hurry. 

Some Blondie tracks get up my nose. I never liked 'The Tide is High' much (though I will say the demo version on this collection is pleasantly clunky). I always loved 'Atomic', like, to the max and 'Heart of Glass' and 'Rapture'. They basically just, in case you hadn't noticed, had some really incredible songs and while they also of course honed those in part via some really incredible producers there's still no doubt that somehow the group was a hive. 

Nothing more to say at the moment but if I do have more to say I guarantee you'll hear it here. 

big bad john - division 4 7 feb 1973

Cast-wise this is a complete classic D4 with the only D4 episode to feature Bud Tingwell and also Jackie Weaver in one of only two D4 episodes she did (she did 9 Homicides). They are father and daughter. It's a George Miller (the other George Miller) joint, or at least the external scenes are (John Jacob did the interiors).

Tingwell plays a character called 'John Smith' which is a truly terrible name for a character and really doesn't cause enough comment in the program (aside from, 'that John Smith'). The show kicks off with stock footage of Sydney Harbour because John Smith is from Sydney but if the show was an attempt to ingratiate Sydney viewers with the Crawfords Melbourne world it's very othering. Smith is a hotheaded boor who has a particular problem with hippies but in this case he's grinding the right axe because his daughter Val is mixed up with filthy scum in the form of a weasel named Hank (David Cameron).

There's some really good art in this episode, from little touches like the above to framing Cameron through the hole in a gate. 

There's also an amazing penultimate action-chase scene in Luna Park

 in which, like all the best Australian drama, the ending is not Hank being shot and falling from the top of the ghost train. Instead (SPOILER) it's Hank being caught, arrested and ready to come quietly, then being pushed off by Smith. 

By the way also this...

is 59 Glenhuntly Road Elwood. Another great example of Crawfords product placement where a business is so keen on exposure the fact that they will be depicted as happily not bothering with proper references for prospective tenants as long as they get a big enough deposit up front, is barely a consideration.