Sundays without TCM

The days of Turner Classic Movies in India seem to be over. If rumours of the channel’s exit from the country are true then my regular Sunday dose of old Hollywood classics has come to an end. I have been a loyal TCM fan since Turner Entertainment started broadcasting as TNT in India several years ago.

The largely non-commercial movie channel from the Time-Warner stable discontinued its service a few days ago but so far there has been no official word from TCM.

On September 12, Tata Sky, the direct-to-home television service I subscribe to, flashed this terse message: “TCM channel is no longer available on Tata Sky as the telecast of the channel has been discontinued by the broadcaster.”

If TCM has, indeed, pulled out of India then I can only think of two reasons: financial non-viability and lack of popularity. I’m inclined to think it’s the former more than the latter. I’m sure there is no dearth of TCM fans in the subcontinent.

Nearly a fortnight has passed and I’m still feeling the absence of TCM in my living room. As exaggerated as it may seem, the “closure” of the channel is a culture shock. Where do I watch old black-and-white silent-and-sound classic films now? Movies dating back to the 1920s downward and across key genres like romance, musical, war, comedy, western, thriller, and adventure. Buying an occasional DVD is not the same as being able to watching old films round the clock.

MGM is a poor substitute for TCM but then there is almost nothing in common between the two channels. MGM shows some pretty good movies from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s but it lacks the class and charisma of TCM.

On Sunday, I sat down to watch a film or two but there was nothing appetising on the films menu. My restless thumb zigzagged over the remote, from Star Movies to HBO, Zee Studio to Sony Pix, AXN to MGM, and WB to Movies Now, the eight English movie channels beamed in India. And what did I get? Let me see… 

Among the more notable fare, Star Movies telecast Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smith, Speed, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Salt, and Home Alone—all reruns of reruns.

HBO was equally predictable with Yogi Bear, Thor (for lunch and dinner), Sky Kids: The Island of the Lost Dreams, Troy, and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

Zee Studio, a part of the media and entertainment company Zee Group, was none too original either. The channel’s film menu for the day consisted of The Incredible Hulk, the more credible version with Edward Norton as the green goliath, Rambo II & III, Scary Movie 3, and The Sixth Sense.

Sony Pix did better with reruns of Madagascar and Angels and Demons and at least four movies I had never heard of—Underworld: Awakening, Hook, Furry vengeance, and The Eye. I wasn't tempted to watch any.

AXN broadcasts films in between sitcoms and reality shows. Yesterday’s fare included Bicentennial Man and Meet The Fockers. I have seen both and prefer Robin Williams in the former to Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro in the latter or its prequel Meet The Parents. There was no saving grace in the Stiller-De Niro films that I could think of. 

MGM showed a few good films most of which I’d seen before, notably Interiors by Woody Allen, The Offence starring Sean Connery, Under Fire with its power-packed cast of Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, Gene Hackman, and Joanna Cassidy, Curse of the Pink Panther with David Niven as the Pink Panther, The French Lieutenant's Woman which proves why Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep are such fine actors, and Triumph Of The Spirit with Willem Dafoe in a compelling role set during WWII. 

WB had only one movie that was worth 120 minutes of your time—Million Dollar Baby—and most of us have already seen it.

Movies Now, owned by Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd which publishes The Times of India, vied with Star Movies in the telecast of the reruns, such as, Robocop 2, Marmaduke, Spider-Man 3, Conan the Destroyer, Night at the Museum, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Jurassic Park III. If I were held by the scruff of the neck and forced to watch any one of these films, I’d pick Conan; he’s a fictional and comic-book character I like, a role that fit the  6' 2" Arnold Schwarzenegger like armour. The bunch of oddball characters, including the 7' 1" Bombaata (the late Wilt Chamberlain) and the 5' 10½" Zula (Grace Jones), made this film an enjoyable fare. A tall film by any measure.

Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in The Shopworn Angel

For some reason TCM India continues to show its schedule on its website. Here’s what I might have watched on Sunday had the channel still been around…

1. Rose Marie, 1954: Howard Keel and Ann Blyth
2. Random Harvest, 1942: Ronald Colman and Greer Garson
3. Grand Hotel, 1932: John Barrymore and Greta Garbo
4. Mrs. Parkington, 1944: Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson
5. The Clock, 1945: Robert Walker and Judy Garland
6. The Shopworn Angel, 1938: James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan
7. The Moon Is Blue, 1953: William Holden and Maggie McNamara
8. A Farewell To Arms, 1932: Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes

Now compare these films with the ones broadcast by the eight English movie channels and you’ll know why my Sundays are never going to be the same again. I’m hoping Turner Classic Movies does a Turneround, hopefully, by this Sunday.

Opening lines

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel is the best and simplest way.”
— Ernest Hemingway

The opening lines of a book, a mystery, thriller, humour, sf or horror in particular, often tells you whether you are going to like it or not. Now I don’t judge the merit of a novel based on how it begins. It does, however, give me a feel for the book, that, maybe, I can sit back and look forward to a pleasurable read.

I have paid scarce attention to the opening lines in the books I read in the past few years but a casual glance through a pile of secondhand mystery paperbacks I bought recently got me thinking about this challenging aspect of a writer’s narrative.

Flipping through You Live Once by John D. MacDonald, I came across this plain opening:

“I have never awakened easily. I have always had a sneaking envy for those people who seem to be able to bound out of bed, functioning perfectly. I have to use two alarm clocks on work mornings.” 

You don’t know where MacDonald is taking you and vague as the opening lines may seem you want to go with him and listen to his story.

If those lines caught my eye, so did the beginning to Elmore Leonard’s Unknown Man No.89.

A friend of Ryan’s said to him one time, ‘Yeah, but at least you don’t take any shit from anybody.’ 

Ryan said to his friend, ‘I don’t know, the way things’ve been going, maybe it’s about time I started taking some.’ 

Then there is Ed McBain who tells it like it is in Jigsaw, which I read last year:

Detective Arthur Brown did not like being called black. 

This might have had something to do with his name, which was Brown. Or his colour, which was also brown. 

How easy—or difficult—is it to write the opening lines in this manner? All the openings are written in a simple, transparent, and original style. A style that entices you to pick up your pen and start writing similarly, only it doesn’t happen, not to everyone at least.

I tried my hand at it and came up with this feeble opening...

Allergic Pharyngitis leaned over the shoulder of a fellow intern and peered into the bloody hole and at the tangled mass of intestines.

“Do you think he was shot?” she asked, without looking up. 

“No, Dr. Pharyngitis, he was carved with a pen knife,” Chief Surgeon Arterio Sclerosis said sarcastically.

Pharyngitis cleared her throat…

 So, what is it going to be—mystery or humour? I don’t have a clue.

FILM REVIEW

Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and The Birdcage (1996)

A couple of comedies for this Tuesday's edition of Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check out the other fascinating reviews over there.

Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams): Could you make me a woman?
Frank (Harvey Fierstein): Honey, I'm so happy!
Daniel: I knew you'd understand.

What is it about some films that make you want to see them again and again (assuming you do watch a film more than once)? 

What usually inspires me to watch a film twice, maybe more than twice, is the entertainment value, the family quotient, good humour, great music, familiar cast, sound performance, a terrific script…you can toss and turn the order if you like. Mrs. Doubtfire scores on all seven fronts.

Now Robin Williams is a damned good actor and yet I don’t like him in some of his films because he clearly overdoes the acting bit. He’s loud and all over the place. What do you expect? He’s a comedian! Yes, I know. Maybe that’s why I like him more in Patch Adams, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, The Final Cut, Jack…and even Bicentennial Man. I mean we’re not talking Jumanji here, are we? (That one’s for kids…I saw it seven times.)

Whatever…I prefer Robin Williams the actor to Robin Williams the comedian, though I’m willing to make an exception or two—the exceptions being Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and The Birdcage (1996).

Assuming you haven’t seen the second, Mike Nichols, who made The Graduate (1967) and Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), has done the world of film entertainment and film goers a big favour by bringing Robin Williams, a fun-loving gay cabaret owner, and Gene Hackman, a senator with serious political aspirations, together, in a film that will have you holding your sides. The ebullient Williams and the deadpan Hackman are a rare treat as is the incorrigible Nathan Lane who makes every drag queen proud with his…her….his…well-disguised performance. Actors Dianne Wiest, Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart and Christine Baranski add value to this delightful comedy for the entire family. 

We owe Mike Nichols for making The Birdcage, one of the funniest movies of the 1990s. There, I have put my head on the block.

In Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams gives “versatility” a new meaning as the old Chris Columbus hand effortlessly transforms from Daniel Hillard, the just-divorced doting father of three, to Mrs. Doubtfire, the perfect housekeeper to “her” kids—with hilarious consequences. Now you don’t need visitation rights to be with your own kids, do you? All you need is acting skill, a bloody good disguise, a little sophistication, and some funny lines.

Did you know her first name is Euphegenia? Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire…I didn’t catch that even on the eleventh run.

Daniel’s wife Miranda (Sally Field), who struggles to look and sound angry at her out-of-work husband, has a fling with the dashing Stu Denmeyer (Pierce Brosnan) in a passable attempt to get on with her life. Of Brosnan it must be said, here is a gent who can carry humour on his broad shoulders. In the end Daniel wins back his kids, shows Stu the door (in the middle of a family dinner in a restaurant) and proves he is not the loser Miranda thinks he is.

A Robin Williams film can only have a good ending and Mrs. Doubtfire nearly does, albeit with a liberal dose of advice for families that break up. As Mrs. Doubtfire says, “If there's love, dear... those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever.”

Highly recommended, if you’ve overlooked or forgotten the film, though I doubt you have. 

While we are on about Mrs. Doubtfire, did you know Bollywood, the land of remakes, came out with a successful Hindi version of the film called Chachi 420 (Aunty 420 or The Trickster Aunt)? Seasoned actor-director Kamal Hassan directed himself in this 1997 film.

Spot the difference: Mrs. Doubtfire and Laxmi Godbole 

Sudden Rides Again

He rode a horse as black as night. He wore two guns tied low, the butts worn as smooth as the leather they nestled in. He was a tall, capable man heading into the Arizona badlands, moving towards trouble.

He was James Green: gunfighter, killer, and murderer — a man with the kind of reputation that made men flinch when his eyes met theirs, that stilled hands on their way to holstered Colts.

He was an outlaw, heading for a deadly double-agent's game in an outpost of hell itself!

In case you're figuring out who wrote those lines it was British writer Oliver Strange who, in my opinion, created one of the most memorable fictional characters of the Wild West—James Green alias Sudden, the Texas outlaw. I have read western fiction by numerous authors but nowhere have I come across a more romanticised western gunfighter than Strange’s quiet, brave hero. 

If I were to compare James Green to anyone, off the top of my head, it would be Flint (Louis L'Amour) and Shane (Jack Schaefer).

The above passage is the blurb on the back cover of the fifth book in the series Sudden Rides Again (1938) which begins thus, “It may be that I’m sending you to your death.”

What makes the novels of Oliver Strange so special is that the Englishman, apparently, never travelled to America and wrote about the daring exploits of Sudden from his imagination. As I said in an earlier post on Sudden, the author’s graphic description of the American landscape, its towns, its people, its cowboys, its ranches, and its gunfights is close to the real thing.

I remain fascinated by the Sudden series for another reason: the lingo, the slang, the colloquialism. I don’t know if English in the Wild West was spoken the way Strange tells it in his novels, but I have never come across anything quite like it in other western fiction.

Here are a few samples of conversation from Sudden Rides Again, courtesy Corgi Books:

[1]

“I said for yu to put yore paws up,” came a rough reminder.

“Shore yu did, but my hoss needs ’em—he ain’t no catamount,” the other retorted, as he picked a way down the decline. “Allasame, I’d as lief break my neck as be shot.” 

[2]

(Young Holt to Sudden) “Bin lookin’ for you all over,” he began. “They aim to git you to-night in there—a gunman named Butch has come a-purpose. Muley got drunk this arternoon an’ he’s bin tellin’ everybody to come to yore funeral.”

[3]

(Frosty to Sudden) Any idjut can look an’ laff,” he greeted. “Why don’t yu do somethin’, yu perishin’—ornament?”

“The Double K has dispensed with my services,” Sudden reminded. “Anybody out here with you?”

[4]

(Sudden to his black stallion) “Nigger, it’s goin’ to be dead easy—to break my fool neck.”

[5]

“Ain’t leavin’ us, are you Jim” (the sheriff of Red Rock) asked (Sudden).

“Shore am, an’ sorry to be,” the puncher told him.

“They let you go?’

“It warn’t easy; the Colonel an’ Mart made me han’some offers, Jeff an’ Frosty damn near pulled guns on me, an’ Miss Joan cried, which was wuss’n all.”

“Then why in the nation…?”

“Somebody’s waitin’ for me in Tucson.”

Dealtry thought he understood. “An’ she’ll be anxious, huh?”

Sudden grinned, “Yo’re way off the trail, sheriff. The person waitin’ for me is a shortish, middle-aged fella, with grey hair an’ a persuasive manner. They call him ‘Bleke,’ an’ he can be—times.”

“The Governor?”

“Yeah, an’ he’ll be wonderin’ if he oughta send a wreath.”

“So you’re from him? You kept it mighty close.”

“I’m the third.” He told the fate of his predecessors. “I expect they talked too much.”

The sheriff breathed hard. “An’ we thought he was doin’ nothing,” he said. “I’ll bet he’ll be pleased with you.”

“Just a shake an’ a ‘Well done, Jim’ ,” but I reckon them’s the best words a man can hear in this li’l ol’ world.” 

If you’re familiar with James Green alias Sudden then you’ll know that he isn’t responsible for any of the crimes pinned on him. Folks call him Sudden because he’s fast with his guns and there’s always a gunslinger waiting to prove he isn’t. He is Mr. Dependable who goes from one town to another, one ranch to another, and helps good people fight injustice and evil-doers. You'll enjoy his sardonic humour. Sudden, endowed with boyish good looks, is an honest man who plays straight with friend and foe. He is cool headed and has a unique ability of getting out of a blind alley. He rarely says who he really is. Folks usually discover he is Sudden when he is forced to draw, the bullet from one of his twin guns travelling faster than the eyes can blink. He is often sheriff and seldom mentions that he is also Deputy Marshal United States, a troubleshooter for Governor Bleke of Arizona.  

Behind it all is his true mission: to get the two men who got the man who raised him...a promise he made to a dying man, a promise he keeps in The Range Robbers.

For the uninitiated, Oliver Strange wrote ten Sudden novels while English writer Frederick Nolan wrote five more books under the assumed name of Frederick H. Christian and did notable justice to Strange's writing style as well as to the legacy of the Texas outlaw.

BOOK REVIEW

A Prairie Infanta (1904) by Eva Wilder Brodhead

This short novel by Eva Wilder Brodhead is my contribution to Friday's Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott's blog Pattinase. You'll find plenty of good reviews of good books over there.

“Life,” he wrote, was at best “a rough proposition.”

It’s certainly a rough proposition for the Texas-born Keene, who, upon the death of his lovely Mexican wife Margarita, leaves his young daughter Lola in the foster care of a stranger and goes away to a mountain camp, to prospect for coal and, some day, return a wealthy mine owner.

Eva Wilder Brodhead (1870-1915), the American writer and poet, has written a charming story about the love and sacrifice of Miss Jane Combs for the sake of the motherless child Lola, a precocious girl of ten or twelve.

Jane, who lives alone in a shack just outside the little Colorado mining town of Aguilar, is more than happy to take Lola under her wing. She accepts the girl as her own no sooner the local doctor, a kindly man, and Keene besiege her to look after Lola in the latter’s absence.

Understandably, Lola has a streak of rebellion in her—her mother has just passed away and her father has “abandoned” her. She refuses to move in with Jane whom she distrusts and whose house she finds ugly. Instead, she approaches Senora Vigil, a Mexican woman who lives next door with her large family. Being half-Mexican, the girl wants to be with her kind of people. It doesn’t help matters that the Vigils don’t get along with Jane because of a dispute over a piece of land. Jane wants to return it to the Vigils but the law won’t let her.

"I will not go with you," Lola cries.

The Senora, in spite of her affinity with Lola, is reluctant to take the girl in as she has been left in Jane’s care. Nowhere to go, Lola decides to follow her father and runs away from the town but she soon finds herself in trouble—trapped in a deep gorge and on the verge of being swept away in a thunder storm. However, local cowherd Bev Gribble rescues her and takes her back to town where she is restored to Jane.

The next fifty-odd pages of the ebook describes the relationship between Jane and Lola and how the girl eventually realises the true worth of the woman, a complete stranger, who loved and cared for her as she would her own daughter—to the extent that the girl, who grows up into a vibrant teenager, scarcely remembers her own mother and rarely talks about her father’s return.

"I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand,"
Mr. Keene tells Miss Jane Coombs.

A Prairie Infanta is the tender story of a noble woman whose sacrifices for the well-being of the girl are never too much, a woman who does everything in her grasp and capacity to keep her “daughter” happy. Jane does more than feed Lola or clothe her in finest dress. She also sends the girl to a paid school by mortgaging her house. When Keene fails in his prospect and desperately writes to Jane for funds, which he believes his daughter earns through housework elsewhere, she sends him money from her own meager savings.

Lola, of course, doesn’t suspect a thing. It’s only in the end that the full scale of Jane’s sacrifice is revealed to her, by no less a person than her own father who one day returns as a wealthy mine owner and shares his fortune with Miss Jane Coombs, the “broad, heavy, rugged, middle-aged” gentlewoman of Aguilar.

Lola presents Jane with Tesuque,
the Rain God.

I liked A Prairie Infanta for two things: the characterisation of Jane with her dignified demeanour and the town of Aguilar with its coalmines, adobe church, dirt streets and deep gorges, tall cottonwoods, mud-houses, goat-corrals, and Mexican children. The short novel is also a western story because it is set in a mining town many of whose inhabitants depend on prospecting to become wealthy. The mysterious Eva Wilder Brodhead, whose The Eternal Feminine is also set in Colorado, has written a good story really well. 

Source for A Prairie Infanta: Project Gutenberg

BOOK BUYS

A Max Brand here, a Mack Bolan there

I haven't done a "Book Buys" post for a while now. For the past few weeks, I have been buying secondhand paperbacks faster than I can read them. I bet I said that the last time around, too. The novels I picked up are in good condition and cost Rs.10 to 20 each [$1 = Rs.50]. I bought multiples of Don Pendleton (Mack Bolan), Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, Ruth Rendell, J.R. Roberts (Robert J. Randisi), Colin Dexter, Max Brand, Leo Kessler, and Nick Carter. I bought a few other books too but that would be really stretching it, or showing off, wouldn't it?

Here are some of the paperbacks I couldn't resist buying. The Elmore Leornard cover is the only one that doesn't match. Mine is a Pan Books edition.

Have I started reading any of these or the ones I haven't showcased here? Not yet, because I'm still reading the books I bought the year before last. What's bothering me, though, are the novels I didn't pick up from the old bookstore I drop in on my way home every evening—you seriously don't want to know what I have left behind!

FILM REVIEW

The Flying Deuces (1939)

This Tuesday, I’m going to tempt you into watching a black-and-white Laurel and Hardy classic as part of Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to read the other fascinating reviews over there.

Oliver: Shot at sunrise!
Stanley: I hope it's cloudy tomorrow! 

[After Stan and Ollie hear the verdict of their execution the next morning.] 

There are quite a few memorable scenes in The Flying Deuces (1939) starring the endearing pair of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The one I liked the most takes place towards the end when Stan and Ollie, who are enlisted in the Foreign Legion in France, sing Shine On, Harvest Moon and break into an impromptu tap-dance before the band and other uniformed members of the unit. 

There is nothing unusual about this scene except that Stan and Ollie do the jig while they are on the run from their commandant (Charles Middleton) and his men: the comic duo is wanted for desertion!

The ludicrous scene lasts just over a minute, as Ollie croons Shine On, Harvest Moon in his distinctive voice, but it’s the cherry on the cake for me. Click on the link below and see for yourself.

The song itself is a popular duet first sung by the husband-wife team of Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1908. It has since been performed by others in film and television, and on stage. 

Stan and Oliver join the Foreign Legion in the hope that it will help Ollie forget Georgette (Jean Parker), the Parisian innkeeper’s daughter he is in love with. 

Stan Laurel, Oliver hardy and Jean Parker 

When Georgette tells him that she already belongs to someone else, Ollie is heartbroken and leaves the inn with a self-portrait, a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates he had gifted the girl.

Back in their hotel room, Stan sits next to his friend and soothes him with tender words of encouragement (imagine that!) even as he pops a few more of the chocolates into his mouth and bumps into things around the room in his inimitable style. The seriousness of any situation is lost on Stan.

Stricken with grief, Ollie decides to commit suicide by drowning himself and he insists Stan come along with him—“After all that I have done for you!” Stan strongly feels otherwise. He whimpers in panic as the two of them prepare to jump into a shark-infested body of water with one end of the rope tied around their waists and the other to a stone. 

But then, an unexpected thing happens. Francois (Reginald Gardiner), a dashing officer in the Foreign Legion, is on patrol duty when he spots Stan and Laurel bungling their way through their imminent suicide. When he hears Ollie’s sad tale, he suggests they join the Legion as it would make him forget Georgette who, as you might have guessed, happens to be Francois’ wife. An elated Stan quickly unties the rope around his waist and drops the heavy stone into the water unmindful of the rope still around his friend—a predictable but funny moment, nonetheless.

Stan and Ollie join the Foreign Legion but trouble erupts when Ollie manages to forget his love and he and Stan decide to call it quits and walk out of the cantonment, as if they were walking out of a restaurant after a hearty meal. The last half-hour of the film is hilarious as the commandant and nearly every man in the unit look for the fleeing pair. They are to be caught and charged with desertion and might possibly have to face a firing squad. But, like I said, the gravity of the situation is lost on Ollie as much as it is on Stan. 

Reginald Gardiner as Francois

There isn’t a Laurel and Hardy film that I haven’t enjoyed since childhood. The Flying Deuces, directed by Edward Sutherland, has all the comic stuff that L&H films are notoriously famous for even though the slapstick humour is along expected lines. Stan and Ollie generate ripples of laughter, unintentionally so, as they bungle their way in and out of situations of their own creation. The two comedians may lack the emotion and sentimentality of Charles Chaplin but they delight you with their shyness and innocence in everything that they do, no matter how adverse their circumstance. I love their way of life. 

Stan and Ollie "bully" the commandant (Charles Middleton)