History Lessons

The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War by Richard Lingeman

This book is an informal history of the United States from 1940 to 1950. After discussing a section of history, the one on the economics of the period is truly boring and it shouldn't be because this is when a steel workers strike could stop the US economy cold, the author attempts to connect it to a movie of the time that echoes the concerns and fears of that history section. When was the last time that anyone has ever been frightened by a strike lately? How Labor has Fallen.

The movie that the author discusses along with the strikes of the period is The Long Night directed by Anatole Litvak that stars Henry Fonda as a World War II veteran with a bad case of PTSD who kills some guy and then barricades himself in his apartment and has flashbacks all movie long. I haven't seen the movie yet so I don't know just how that relates to Strikes other than barricading oneself in one's room is sort of like walking a picket line in a strike. You can only hope someone is paying attention and if you kill someone, you do draw some notice from authorities and the media.

The history, other than the economic side, is mostly interesting and well presented by the author. The connection with some of the movies (the ones that I have seen) is slight to incidental. The author is really not all that interested in the movie correlation side of the book. I assume that his agent or publisher made him include the movies in the book to make it easier to sell. The author's own experiences in the time period, he was a drafted soldier in Army Intelligence in Japan, were much more interesting and well presented. I assume that correlating his own experiences with the history period was what he really wanted to do and probably was what he originally did in the book before he had to tart it up with Hollywood blondes.

What I took away from this book was that America was having a moment of Mass Fear and Hysteria and Paranoia in the later part of the forties. The loss of FDR must have been truly frightening despite the winning of the war. The similarities with present day America are also disconcerting. Once again we have elected officials like Senator McCarthy, only today we have many of them not just one, who manufacture Fear crises like the National Debt and Bengazhi!!! and the Second Amendment to advance their careers over the Real Life and the Truth and The Way that It Really Is.

Hmmmm, perhaps this is why Fantasy and Science Fiction and Magic movies are so popular these days. The crazies want us all to share their delusions.


The Entertainer: Movies Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century by Margaret Talbot

This is another history book about the times and the movies of those times. It is also a memoir of Lyle Talbot, an actor who began as a Magician's Assistant at the beginning of the 20th Century, starred in Roaming Theatrical companies and their plays, and then went to Hollywood at the beginning of the Talkies Movies and made his career as a B-movie lead and later as the best friend of Ozzie Nelson in TV.

The book is written by one of his daughters, Margaret, and she includes family history and reminisces to give an even more intimate picture of her father and his career and his family. Miss Talbot does a good job with remembering her father's and her past. Like Mr. Proust, it is the little things that she remembers that become the crux of the interpretation of her and her father's life. She also writes well.

As for Mr. Talbot, I have seen one of his Pre-Code movies, Three on a Match, (Bette Davis is in this one, but this is before Warner Brothers figured out just how interesting an actress that she was and was still making her play unremarkable Good Girls. When you think about it, it is amusing, Miss Davis found her Bad Girl after the Era of Bad Girls in the Pre-Code movies. It is also a tribute to Miss Davis' ability to handle subtlety and subtext in her acting and that is amusing because I don't often think of subtlety when I think of Miss Davis' acting.).

Any way, I liked Mr. Talbot and his character in the movie that I was watching mainly for Ann Dvorak, a Pre-Code Female Star. Mr. Talbot played a stinker with some moral scruples, you felt sorry for the poor sod. I have seen some episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet which was The Cosby Show of the fifties and sixties. I hated his character on that one. Mr. Talbot played the obnoxious neighbor and best friend of Ozzie. His character was one of those "Hail Fellow and Well-Met" men with idiotic jokes and Loud Camaraderie, and that shows just how undervalued his acting skills were when you compare the two characters.

Mr. Talbot was also in some of Ed Wood's cult classic Bad Films.