TANKS A MILLION

The latest star of
"Duck Dynasty."

The worst thing about the murder of John Lennon was the murder of John Lennon. The second worst thing was that every celebrity suddenly thought he or she was a potential target of a psychotic fan. It was no longer enough to have a bodyguard. Now you had to pack heat just in case an autograph hound came within ten yards of your space. 

In the years following Lennon's death, a pre-rehab David Crosby was seen skulking around with a handgun. Wouldn't that image disturb you more than that of a real killer? More to the point -- and I know you're thinking this -- who the hell would want to shoot David "Our house is a very very fine house" Crosby? Don't worry, Dave, your fans are either too stoned or more concerned about their prostate to use you for target practice. You're safe. Now push yourself away from the pasta and go for a walk.

Bing could always count on his
homie Phil Harris for protection.

As time went on, the rise of rap brought celebrities shooting each other, usually at concerts, recording sessions and awards ceremonies. Can you imagine if this kind of thing had existed in the 1940s? Picture Bing Crosby pulling a gat on newcomer Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater in Times Square. Ima gonna plug you, you skinny muthafucka, watch the girls scream now! It would have been The Road to Sing-Sing for sure.

Well, guns just aren't enough anymore to prove your greatness. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Now, heavily armored vehicles designed to withstand large-caliber ordinance are turning up at valets around town. At the extreme end of the spectrum is the Prombron Iron Diamond armored vehicle from Latvia's Dartz Motorz Co. (Dartz manufactured Sacha Baron Cohen's gold-plated presidential SUV featured in The Dictator.) According to car news website Jalopnik, Kanye West recently ordered two Iron Diamonds, for $1.2 million each. New York Knicks guard J.R. Smith was spotted in Manhattan's Meatpacking District parking a $450,000 Gurkha F5 armored truck -- the same brute driven by Dwayne Johnson in Fast Five.

Despite Kanye West's recent boasting to the BBC ("I'm the No. 1 rock star on the planet"), his fairytale romance with Kim Kardashian has probably so lowered his standing in the rap world that, as with David Crosby, nobody would bother putting out a contract on him. And while we're at it, don't worry about Ms. Kardashian, either. I've seen photos of her; bullets couldn't penetrate

 

Honk if you think the Knicks suck. I dare you.

that ambulating flesh-heap from a foot away. 

In the case of J.R. Smith, however, he probably needs protection from the suckers who spend up to $67,000 for season tickets expecting the Knicks to actually make the playoffs.

Can even an armored car contain the uber-manliness
of Steven Seagal and his pal Vladimir Putin?

Urban tanks, it seems, are the new smartphones. Every celebrity is getting one now, whether they need it or not, just to reaffirm their self-worth. Don't believe me? Steven Seagal is apparently in such fear of anyone taking him out that he's bought a custom-made armored car. Steven Seagal! Who knew that oaf was still alive, let alone allowed to carry a drivers license?

If driving around town in a vehicle that wouldn't look out of place in the suburbs of Kabul wasn't enough of an ego trip, the doorhandles are electrified in order to give a "nonlethal" zap to carjackers and paparazzi. As Bud Abbott would say, I'm all for it. Anything that prevents further photos of these people would be a boon to civilization. I would tweak it a bit, however, to make sure the shock sends the cameramen into a year-long coma. And if the celebrities themselves

The car nobody wants.

accidentally do the same to themselves, well, 
so much the better. 

As for carjackers -- maybe they wouldn't try to
steal it if it wasn't worth over a million dollars, genius. According to the Highway Data Loss Institute, the least stolen car in America is the Hyundai Tuscon. And with a top price of 
$27,095, there's a savings of around $972,000.  You're welcome.

These military-style vehicles aren't just for the bold-faced names either:

Texas Armoring executive vp Jason Forston says the company has seen demand in the U.S. soar the past five years... "You even have a lot of Hollywood executives, studio heads, people not in the spotlight." Forston credits the "climate of fear right now -- the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots" -- for the surge in sales.

Mickey better get a Mouseketank, pronto

Why would a studio head need this kind of over-the-top protection? Consider: two of Disney's big releases in the last year and a half, John Carter and The Lone Ranger, lost a combined total just shy of half a billion dollars. If I were Robert Iger, the Chairman and CEO of Disney -- salary reported by Forbes in 2011 at $33-million -- I'd be afraid of getting shot by my shareholders. Sometimes, haters gonna hate for a good reason.

J.D. Salinger, one of the most famous American authors of the 20th-century, managed to live a perfectly normal life in a little Vermont hamlet. No tanks, no guns, no bodyguards -- nothing, in fact, to attract attention to himself for the last 50 or so years of his life. 

So it's more than a little ironic that the Hollywood "haves" are behaving in such a way to further attract attention to themselves. So clueless are they that, in the process, they're fermenting a genuine feeling of revolt in a good deal of America. Perhaps those "heavily armored vehicles designed to withstand large-caliber ordinance" are a good idea after all. But if I remember my history correctly, the Winter Palace probably had some pretty good security, too.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "YELLOW CARGO" (1936)

Just in case you thought Yellow Cargo was a movie version of "The Banana Boat Song," a quick look at the poster to the left -- specifically the title's font -- should set you straight. 

As an immigrant official in the movie explains, "Asiatics are being smuggled in by land and water." I Googled the word "Asiatic" just to see if I could find a recent usage in the New York Times, but came up with 零 (that means "zero." There was no Chinese word for "bupkis").

Movies like Yellow Cargo weren't meant to stand the test of time. They exist today as they did when they were originally released -- to entertain, albeit on a different level.

"The problem is, a half hour later they
feel like smuggling them in again. HAHAHA!"

Allan O'Connor, a federal narc, is temporarily assigned to the Immigration Bureau to discover who's behind the Chinese smuggling operation in Los Angeles. As with the hero of Sucker Money, O'Connor is a former actor -- was this a common career move during the Depression or just a convenient way for moviemakers to explain the leading man's, well, leading man's looks?  This particular leading man, by the way, is Conrad Nagel, who often resembles James Spader when you least expect it. (Had things been different, Nagel might have starred in Sex, Lies and Flammable Celluloid.) 

"You must be an actor; you're always in
the same profile."

Soon after O'Connor arrives in L.A., he discovers the smugglers are operating under the guise of Globe Productions, a phony independent movie production company run by Al Perrelli and Montie Brace, who are even more disreputable than the Weinsteins. Under the guise of making a melodrama about Chinese pirates, Perrelli and Brace ferry 20 white actors (in Asiatic make-up) per day to an island off the coast. After shooting 30 seconds of footage, they pay off the extras and send them home on another boat. Real Chinese illegals are then smuggled back in the extras' place. If you ever wondered how studios stay afloat after releasing big-budget flops, there's your answer. 

Crack reporter Bobbie Reynolds displays her
Star Trek costume while her photographer
looks on in confusion.

O'Connor is aided by wisecracking reporter -- like there's any other kind -- Bobbie Reynolds, who takes a shine to him, probably because he looks like James Spader. She's been trying to do a story on Globe Productions, but keeps getting stonewalled. In an effort to go undercover in their criminal activities, O'Connor almost begs to be an extra in Perrelli and Brace's "movie" but keeps getting the brush-off. C'mon, Allan, the casting couch works for guys, too, y'know!

O'Connor almost gives himself away
by showing his right profile yet again.

Up 'til now, the audience's credulity has been stretched thinner than Gwyneth Paltrow on the Ex-Lax diet. But forehead-palming time really arrives when O'Connor successfully disguises himself as an extra without Perrelli recognizing him from two inches away. Meanwhile Bobbie and photographer Bulbs Callahan start snooping around as well. Soon the jig is up, leading to a chase scene featuring a highway sign reading U.S. 61. Just how they suddenly got on a road that runs from Louisiana to Minnesota is one of Yellow Cargo's many unexplained mysteries.

Two guys in the front seat with a bound & gagged
woman -- no, nothing suspicious here.

All turns out well -- Bulbs sticks a pin in the neck of the driver, which appears to kill him. (No matter how many old low-budget movies I've seen, I'm still pleasantly surprised by the endless ways they make absolutely no sense.) O'Connor, who has been on their trail after getting out of a hospital bed with a gunshot wound, cuffs the bad guys.  O'Connor and Bobbie admit their true identities to each other, Bobbie being yet another Federal agent on the trail of the smuggling gang. If all Feds are as dizzy as her, we can expect a terrorist takeover of the Herald Square Mall any day.

If LAX looked like this today, I'd live there.

For a movie that's supposed to be about human smuggling, Yellow Cargo's most interesting moments are those that have nothing to do with it. The location shots in and around L.A., so prevalent in budget-minded movies of its time, are always entertaining. (The original Los Angeles Airport looks more like a hacienda.) Too, the  subplot offers what are probably pretty accurate representations how fly-by-night studios operated, even if they weren't criminal fronts. 

And there's plenty of shoptalk, too. Bobbie wonders why a movie producer like Montie Brace doesn't want any publicity: "He's hiding something -- third dimension, color processor, another Garbo." Yes, they were talking about 3-D movies in 1936.  But the line must have hit a little too close to home for Conrad Nagel. Early in his career, he played Garbo's lover in M-G-M's extravagant The Mysterious Lady. Now here he was stooging for an actress with a Bronx accent (in L.A.?) in a Grand National programmer. But perhaps Nagel accepted his fate, if this quote is any indication:

"What, another freaking movie?!"

I was never a big star, so I never had a role like Moses or D'Artagnan. But being assigned to 31 pictures in 24 months, I had an opportunity to play every type of part. The variety, though, didn't keep me from becoming a drug on the market. My wife would say, "Well, let's go out and see a movie tonight." We'd get in the car and discover that I'm playing at the Paramount Theater. And I'm playing at the Universal Theater. And the MGM Theater. We couldn't find a theater where I wasn't playing. So we'd go back home. I was an epidemic.

Thirty-one movies in two years! I've known actors who would destroy any vaccine to be an epidemic like that.

You wouldn't expect Al Perrelli to be played by an actor named Jack La Rue. But it starts to make sense when you realize he was born Gaspere Biondolillo. La Rue kept pretty busy in B-movie gangster roles, never really graduating to the A-league. You might say he didn't have the range of his contemporaries. But in his own way La Rue's more convincing than all of them because of his limitations -- I mean, did John Gotti have a lot of range? Jack La Rue looks and talks like an honest-to-God hoodlum. (He's terrifying in the pre-code shocker The Story of Temple Drake.) And if Matt LeBlanc from Friends had entered crime instead of show business, he'd have looked just like him.

It's always interesting to see movies like Yellow Cargo -- that is, those made in pre-enlightened times -- just to hear how casually language deemed insulting today was not only accepted but part of the common vocabulary. The extras portraying "coolies," for instance. Bobbie, trying to remember a Chinese official's name, jokingly comes up with "Long Hot Poo." That's the kind of jape I use at home just to get a rise of out the missus and to make our semi-politically correct 17 year-old daughter laugh in spite of herself. This should give you further evidence, as if any was needed, of my emotional (im)maturity. 

So yes, times change. At some point, probably when it was sold to TV in the '50s, the title Yellow Cargo was considered disparaging enough to warrant a change. Take a look at the title credit of the prints now in circulation. If you were Chinese, would this make you feel better about yourself?

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WORLD NEWS ROUND-UP

Billionaire George Soros has married for the third time, in front of friends including World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia; and Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania, Paul Tudor Jones II and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. In lieu of gifts, Soros has requested that his guests continue to further the disparity between the rich and the working class.

A new book documents that New York's legendary Ray's Pizza was also a front for the Mob to push heroin. Police became suspicious when slices were sold by the kilo.

Fox News denied that Dennis Kucinich was representing the network during his interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.  When pressed for a clarification, Fox News president Roger Ailes said, "Frankly, I thought he was the guy who swept up at night."





Senator Chuck Schumer endorsed Caroline Kennedy's nomination for Ambassador to Japan. Schumer told his colleagues at the hearing, "By having the name Kennedy, she is eminently qualified for a job that she is otherwise unqualified for."



Representatives for the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced that its most recent Labor Day telethon raised $54.1 million. A spokesman told reporters, "While we are absolutely no closer to finding a cure than we were 50 years ago, we have managed to reduce the length of the telethon by 22 hours."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made his case Thursday to the American people and the world for "a constructive approach" to contentious issues including his nation's nuclear program, arguing that failing to engage "leads to everyone's loss." Secretary of State John Kerry responded by promising "an unbelievably small attack" on Teheran.

Public figures reacted with outrage over the recent shooting at a Chicago basketball court that left 13 people wounded, including a three year-old boy. Republicans condemned the "culture of basketball" for creating the wave of violence. Democrats, led by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, vowed to continue call for dialogue "until every child has been shot, if necessary." Rev. Jesse Jackson led a protest at the opening of a new Walmart.

Nike co-founder Phil Knight announced he and his wife would put up half of a billion-dollar push for cancer research. Knight said, "We couldn't have done this without the hard work of our overseas factory workers: their pride, dedication, but mostly their $6-a-day salary with unpaid overtime."

After hardline Islamists voiced opposition to the Miss World contest now being staged in Muslim-majority Indonesia, a rival World Muslimah beauty contest exclusively for Muslim women will announce its winner on Wednesday in the capital of Jakarta. Pageant officials say the winner will receive a crown, ermine cape and 50 lashes before being stoned to death.

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "APOLOGY FOR MURDER" (1945)

Maybe it's just my dumb luck, but I never met a woman who convinced me to murder her husband. It seemed to be all the rage in '40s movies, though, to the point where the studios were flirting with copyright infringement. 

Picture the dingy office of Sigmund Nuefeld, the president of PRC Pictures. Surrounded by clouds of cigar smoke, Nuefeld is sitting across the desk from his brother, director Sam Newfield. (If you don't want to be accused of nepotism, make the name change just a little less obvious, bub.) They're discussing the studio's next round of releases. 

SIGMUND: I was thinking -- remember Double Indemnity?

SAM: What, with Stanwyck and whatshisname, Freddie Murray? 

SIGMUND: Fred MacMurray. Yeah. It made a mint. Why don't we just do another version?

SAM: A remake? Paramount owns the property.

"Hey, didn't MacMurray and
Stanwyck meet on the stairs, too?"

SIGMUND: No, not a remake. Just -- the same, only different. Dame puts the moves on some sap, gives him a song and dance about her mean rich husband. Convinces the sap to knock him off so they can collect the shekels and run away. Only instead of an insurance agent, the guy's a reporter. And the Edward G. Robinson part, the insurance investigator who smells a rat? We make him the newspaper editor who smells a rat. 

SAM: Sig, you're a genius. Say, you've got Hugh Beaumont and Ann Savage under contract. Squint your eyes and they look like Murray and Stanwyck.

SIGMUND: MacMurray. Think you could finish it by Friday?

SAM: Gimme an extra C-note and you'll have gift-wrapped on Thursday.

SIGMUND: Whaddaya trying to do, break the budget?

One of the most shameless unofficial remakes ever made, Apology for Murder entertains whether you've seen Double Indemnity or not. In fact, it may be even more entertaining if you have, just to marvel at how they got away with it by making the smallest of changes.

Don't do it, Hugh! She isn't worth it!

Like instead of the sap cracking the husband on the skull before making it look like he fell off a train, the sap in Apology for Murder cracks him on the skull before making it look like he drove off a cliff. Oh, and the sap is typing his confession when his boss walks in on him at the office in the middle of the night rather than speaking it into a Dictaphone when his boss walks in on him at the office in the middle of the night. Things like that kept the Paramount lawyers away from the door.

I knew there was a reason why I once referred to Hugh Beaumont as the Poverty Row Fred MacMurray. Not only is there a physical similarity, they sound pretty near the same as well. He even keeps calling Ann Savage "baby" the way MacMurray does Stanwyck. They probably could've traded their roles in Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons without anyone noticing the difference.

The grief-stricken widow poses for a
shutterbug.

Come to think of it, that leads to another similarity --  the initial shock of seeing a baby-boomer icon of family sitcom fun as a killer. But a key difference is that MacMurray, in Double Indemnity, is a sleazeball right from the get-go, more than happy to start an affair with a married woman, even if it means sending the husband on a one-way trip to the morgue.

Beaumont, on the other hand, as affable newspaper reporter Kenny Blake, is led to believe that Toni Kirkland (Ann Savage) is single until their affair gets red hot. Kenny looks for an out, but once Toni flashes those baby-blues, pickers her lips and gives him the ol' song-and-dance about her terrible husband, they start brainstorming their matricide machinations. 

It's hard for a reporter to maintain his
objectivity when he's the real killer.

Once hubby is over the cliff, things start to go awry. Kenny's editor assigns him to cover the husband's death, which, despite having the aura of an accident, has more than a whiff of murder. Something of a drinker already, Kenny really becomes friendly with Jim Beam when the boys from Homicide pin Harvey's death on a business associate, Craig Jordan. While Toni is delighted that Craig is going to take the rap all the way to the gas house, Kenny is conscience-stricken. 

Adding insult to psychological injury, his editor discovers that Toni's having an affair with her lawyer, Allen Webb. "Anyone who'd go for a phony like her," the editor confidently tells Kenny, "can't be very bright." Ouch! (In one of those only-I-would-notice things, Kenny's editor is named Ward, which was Hugh Beaumont's character on Leave it to Beaver. To those who say there are no coincidences, I say... Eh.)

A man can take just so much from a dame, so when Kenny decides to pay Toni a visit in order to catch her with Webb, guns are drawn. ("You raise murder to a high degree of efficiency," Kenny tells her almost admiringly.) In short order, all three are plugged, with Kenny living long enough to drive back to work in order to write his confession. Frankly, it was no more convincing when MacMurray did it in Double Indemnity.

The Brangelina of Poverty Row. 

Where Apology for Murder surpasses Double Indemnity is the stars' sexual heat. Lacking Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler's brilliant dialogue, Beaumont and Savage have to rely strictly on their own personal style, and it's more than enough. Fitting of their Hollywood status, neither resemble A-level movie stars; nor do the slightly grungy sets scream glamor. But as many a B-movie has proven, sexual steam rises higher when it mirrors real life.

Ann in a not-so savage moment.

Much of that heat is freely emitted by Ann Savage, the greatest of the Poverty Row bad girls. Just watch her here when she first realizes that Beaumont's the Class A-1 pigeon she's been waiting for. No words are spoken -- just the look in her eyes and a razor-thin, humorless smile telegraph what she has in mind. I've always had a thing for film noir dolls, the kind you don't know whether to kiss or kill. And Beaumont ultimately does both, muttering, "You're not to fit to live" as he pulls the trigger after she's shot him. 

Yet even as life drips from him, he lovingly whispers to her corpse, "Wait for me, baby. I won't be long." Despite being played for the king of fools, he still can't get over her. And apparently, neither could movie director Guy Maddin, having cast Savage in the lead of his black & white noirish release, My Winnipeg in 2007, a year before her death at 87. What a doll. 

PRC director Edgar G. Ulmer supposedly claimed that the studio's original title for Apology for Murder was Single Indemnity, which is either a good joke or a shamelessness unmatched even by Hollywood standards. But as film historian Michael Price pointed out, before the TV-era there was usually no way you could ever see your favorite movie again once it left town. These low-budget copycat releases helped you re-live the experience. (Today's studios, however, have no excuse.)

Taken strictly on its own terms, Apology for Murder is a fine hour's entertainment.  While the dialogue isn't as hard-bitten as Double Indemnity's, it's certainly well chewed by its stars. Jack Newfield's direction makes sure the pace never flags. Best of all, Hugh Beaumont and Ann Savage are no less mesmerizing than their A-list counterparts. Apology for Murder has nothing to apologize for.

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To read about another Hugh Beaumont shocker, Money Madness, click here.

TODAY IN WASHINGTON

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House John Boehner held a joint press conference this morning regarding Monday's shooting at the Washington, DC Naval Yard.

In a rare display of unity, the Democrat and Republican agreed on a "commonsense approach" when it comes to mass shootings. "My friend Harry and I believe that we should continue to do nothing to prevent these senseless tragedies from occurring in the future," Boehner said as Reid nodded enthusiastically.  "All this talk about gun control, mental health screenings -- it's distracting us from the job voters sent us here to do, which is to prevent anything from happening at all."

"Remember the Sandy Hook massacre, when 20 children were shot?" Reid asked reporters. "All you guys in the press said, 'If this doesn't get Congress to act, nothing will.' And you were right, for a change," he chuckled. 

When asked why Congress refuses to take any kind of meaningful action regarding gun control, whether it be background checks or mental health screenings, Boehner said, "Look, like everyone in America, we in Congress are afraid of losing our jobs. And the only way we're going to keep them is to pay attention to the people who donate the biggest amount of money to our campaigns. And for Republicans and a few Democrats, that happens to be the NRA. Savvy?"

Reid added, "The thing I've told my children about work is, 'When it's your name on the bottom of the check, you can do whatever you want. Otherwise, do as you're told.' That's why I applaud President Obama for prosecuting more government whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined. Fewer people will lose their jobs if they're afraid to stir the pot. What was the name of that book that came out a few years back -- The Gift of Fear? Well, this is a perfect example."

Boehner agreed. "That so-called 'chilling effect' the press is always yammering about is really a cool breeze of continued employment for those who follow the rules. And that includes not budging on gun control. I mean, you might as well save your breath the next time a massacre happens. We're not going to change our tune one note. I admit it's mostly Republicans who don't want to talk about it. But there are enough Democrats pulling the brakes to make sure nothing gets done, too. So when people whine about wanting bipartisan co-operation, well, here it is. Now get back to work."

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WORLD NEWS ROUND-UP

The Vatican has opened the door to the possibility of priests getting married. A spokesman for Pope Francis said, "We thought it would be a good idea to let them know what hell was like first-hand."

“Big Brother” host Julie Chen revealed that she had plastic surgery to fix her “Asian eyes" at the age of 25. "But it had nothing to do with my subsequent success on television," she added. "I owe that to hard work, determination and sleeping with Les Moonves."

Hundreds of rare wild monkeys — some carrying herpes — are on the loose in Florida. Authorities believe they were infected by Miley Cyrus.

Audio pioneer Ray Dolby, founder of Dolby Laboratories, has died at his home in San Francisco. When faced with the diagnosis of leukemia, Dolby said, "Anything's better than mono."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s diary, leaked to the New York Post details his greed, countless sexual affairs while married, and  his hypocritical views on civil rights figures. A spokesman for the DNC gushed, "He's everything we want in a Kennedy."

Some of the world's leading scientists have gotten together to speculate how the world is going to end. Theories include global warming, killer asteroids and replicating Kardashians.

Just 49 percent of Americans said they had confidence in the federal government to handle international problems, according to a Gallup poll released Friday. The remaining 51% haven't read a newspaper since 1957.

Television marketers are using tactics similar to those used by Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble to get audiences to watch the new fall line-up. "Not only is it a fun way to promote our schedule," said a network executive, "but it's a hell of a lot easier than producing good shows."

The famed boardwalk in Seaside Park, New Jersey, was destroyed by a 10-alarm blaze. Investigators believe the inferno was caused by Gov. Christie's wienie roast.

                                        ********************** 

                                               

THEY LIKE TO WATCH

There was a time in my life (ages 6-15) when the most exciting day of the year was the arrival of the "Fall Preview" issue of TV Guide. No matter how lousy my home or school lives were, I could always hold out hope that a new primetime schedule would somehow change my life for the better. There seemed to be enough cancellations each year to make room for programs that finally, finally were going to prove Newton Minnow's "vast wasteland" comment a lie. That most of the cancelled programs had premiered only the season before made no difference. This time the geniuses who ran the three networks (Three! It seems charming now) were going to earn their salary, and that absolutely no series would get the ax. It never occurred to me that if this miracle were to happen, the "Fall Preview" issue -- my Bible, Torah, Koran and Great Expectations rolled into one -- would be moot.

This would be like a current network series
starring Gérard Depardieu, Michael Caine and
George Clooney.  Hey, I smell a movie franchise!

Yet even at a young age I knew something was very wrong in Televisionland. Because within six weeks of the premieres I would realize things were no better than they were before. Why, I would wonder, can't every show be as funny as Dick Van Dyke? Or Why is it that the few critically-acclaimed shows -- That Was The Week That Was, Run For Your Life, The Rogues -- get cancelled so quickly?  It didn't take long to realize that most people who watched TV were bottom feeders. Even I Spy -- a series with both a high pedigree and something of a following -- ran only three years. Gilligan's Island outlasted it by one year. It would have run much longer (I believe it was consistently in the Top 10) if the people running CBS hadn't been so embarrassed by it. (Yes, there was a time when networks were embarrassed by their product.) Gilligan's Island was constantly moved around the schedule, with the hope that people would finally give up on it. Yet like a pack of well-trained hunting dogs, viewers always found its prey. Finally tiring of the critics' nasty comments, the network nuked the island for no reason other than shame.

This guy went to Harvard.

Shame. Has any commercial network felt anything remotely like that in the years since? Jeff Zucker, NBC's former boy wonder, admitted in so many words that pride had no place at the peacock network. For the first time, a network head stated that he didn't care about ratings -- for him, it was all about the profit. And the quickest way to make a profit was to produce cheap "reality" programming where you didn't have to pay unnecessary people like actors and writers. Talk about your dreams coming true -- in no time, NBC was in sixth place behind Univision, the Spanish-language network. The Tao of Zucker had worked. NBC was making money while becoming a bottom-feeder itself. (He's currently working his magic at CNN, which is receiving ratings roughly a quarter of Fox News'. Atta boy, Jeff. Keep up the good work and you'll be behind MSNBC in no time!)

But can Carson Daly place a candle
atop a cake without knocking it over?

Still, Zucker's legacy remains at NBC. Concerned that the news isn't real enough, Today will now feature DJ and television "personality" Carson Daly -- the J. Fred Muggs of the 21st century -- reading Twitter and Facebook postings aloud just so you don't have to. In addition, he'll be video-chatting with viewers. Daly's net worth is said to be $15-million. Remember that the next time you're reading stuff online and talking with your friends on the phone.

If you've ever wondered how far "reality" programming would devolve, all you need to do is read a piece published earlier this week on the Deadline:Hollywood site: 

Bravo Media has greenlighted limited half-hour unscripted series The People’s Couch to air Sundays at 11:30 PM on October 6, October 13 and October 20. Based on the UK show, Gogglebox, The People’s Couch features real people watching and commenting on popular shows and news from the past week. The series will focus on the Fall television season by showcasing avid TV watchers in their homes, as they laugh, cry, talk, gasp, and scream at their TVs watching the network’s new and returning shows.  

Man, does this look like appointment-television.

To put it another way, people at home will watch a TV show about people watching TV at home. This isn't meta. This is uber-meta. Meta-meta. You can be sure that if it's successful -- and if The Biggest Loser, a series about fat people losing weight is a hit, why wouldn't this be? -- the initial three-episode run will expand in the spring for 13 episodes, followed by a 26-week pick-up in the fall. 

Continuing with the Deadline:Hollywood piece, “The People’s Couch is a funny, unfiltered comment on America’s current TV viewing habits,” said Bravo’s VP development Lara Spotts. "Funny"? I'd go with "sad." And as for "unfiltered" -- that's why we have a Brita water filter: so we don't have to consume the gunk. 

Bravo, if you haven't guessed, is owned by NBC. We have seen the wasteland and it is in living color, HD and stereo sound.

                                                           **********************

WORLD NEWS ROUND-UP

A new study from Emory University in Atlanta finds that men who tend to be a loving parent also have smaller testicles. In related news, the Father of the Year awards have been cancelled for lack of interested nominees.

Elliot Spitzer lost his bid for New York City Comptroller to Scott Stringer. When asked why he stayed in the race despite his history with prostitutes, Spitzer said, "Anyone who knews me will tell you I've never been one to pull out too early." 

Fellow disgraced New Yorker Anthony Weiner lost the election for Mayor, receiving only 5% of the primary vote. Coincidentally, that was the same percentage of his sexting partners over the age of 17.

An artificial egg backed by Bill Gates goes on sale at Whole Foods today. Gates promised that the egg would come with Word already installed.

In his address to the nation last night, President Obama assured that the U.S. military does not inflict "pinpricks" on its adversaries but is more than ready to scratch their eyes out.

Blind people in Iowa are now allowed to own guns. While anti-gun advocates bashed the move, NRA Vice-President Wayne LaPierre asked, "What are they complaining about? One hundred per-cent of the recorded gun fatalities have been responsible by people who can see."

The gulf between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America is the widest it's been since 1928. The good news is that the lower-income families are less likely to get hurt by flying champagne corks, suffer from food poisoning due to tekkamaki rolls or a get a flat tire on their BMW.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "TURN BACK THE CLOCK" (1933)

Anybody who says, "I have no regrets" is either a liar or Ivanka Trump, who made that grand pronouncement at the age of 17. (Being born to a multi-millionaire and whose future was assured when she was still an embryo -- and she had no regrets?  My hat's off to her.) Everybody plays the old "what if" game. I do it all the time. What if I hadn't started losing my hair 30 years ago? What if I had become an over-priced plumber instead of a blogger? What if I had been one of the cool kids instead of watching old movies that no one else my age had the slightest interest in?

At this point, my wife is probably wondering, What if I had thought twice about accepting a first date with my husband? And so the fantasies begin, spinning like a pinwheel, creating a new life where all is perfect, every move is charmed and each strand of hair in place. In movies, however, the fantasies turn out badly so as to make the audience feel better about themselves -- and the moviemakers better about their great lives. I can't swear Turn Back the Clock was the first "if I could do it all again" picture, but I'd have to go back in time to be sure.

Joe Gimlet, the owner of a cigar store, is visited by an old friend, Ted Wright, now a multimillionaire banker married to Joe's former girlfriend, Elvina. When Joe's wife, Mary, refuses Ted's offer to invest their $4000 savings for a

"There's no place like the past... there's no place
like the past..."

"guaranteed" $20,000 return, Joe walks out and is hit by a car. While under anesthesia, Joe gets his drunken wish to live his life over again. (The visuals for Joe's trip to dreamland would be replicated in The Wizard of Oz six years later -- minus the tornado and Toto.) If this had happened to me every time I was visited by a rich friend from the old days, I'd have my own wing at New York Presbyterian Hospital. That's why I stay home and curse the bathroom mirror.

Joe gets to return home and get nagged
by Mom all over again.

One by one, Joe's wishes come true. He marries Elvina, becomes a partner in her father's real estate business, and focuses on making money. Lots of money. Enough to give away a million dollars to veterans, which doesn't sit well with Elvina. Joe's predictions of World War I land him a job as a presidential advisor... which he loses when he starts stepping on the toes of war profiteers. (Presidential advisors have not repeated that mistake since.) But so busy has he been trying to make money that Elvina begins an affair with a banker named Holmes, with whom she secretly invests her and Joe's life savings right before the '29 Crash -- the Crash that Joe warned her was coming. Message to you ladies out there: Your husband knows best. Listen to him.

Joe, by the way, figured out that Elvina was having an affair when he found one of Holmes' shoes in their living room -- which means the guy must have walked out with one shoeless foot. Speaking strictly as a movie fan, this was a plot device, I believe, that could have used a little work.

"You dressed a little better
when we were married, but
I forgive you."

Joe finally realizes how badly he's messed up his life when he drops by his old cigar store -- now owned by Joe Wright, who's, of course, married to Mary. Joe, it seems, never really quite stopped loving Mary. And it's Mary he turns to when his banking partners, who have been ripping off the business, hang him out to dry when the Feds come calling. That's like a man, right? When the chips are down, go back to the woman that you dumped for the hot cookie. Joe wants her to run away with him to Athens (Athens?), but Mary -- who's always loved him -- refuses to leave her stogie-salesman husband. Message to the men: You're all the same, you bastards.

The Cabinet of Dr. Gimlet

In the resulting nightmarish, layer-upon-layer montage that wouldn't have looked out of place in an old Ufa psychological drama, Joe is chased by what appears to be every Tommy-gun-toting cop in New York. After escaping a firing squad, Joe runs into a cabal of cops who proceed to beat the living crap out of him... just as he awakens in his hospital room with Mary, Ted and Elvina at his side. Relieved that he's still married to Mary, he sighs, "I wouldn't change places with Ted Wright for a million dollars." Easy for the writers to say.

Much of Turn Back the Clock's success is attributable to Lee Tracy (as Joe Gimlet), the cynical, fast-talking actor previously discussed in Washington Merry-Go-Round.  Tracy, while forgotten by all but the most die-hard movie fans, is ironically probably the most representative of the early '30s acting style: snappy, sardonic, self-confident -- James Cagney without the rough edges. Somebody give this guy a film festival.
 

Not just knuckleheads.

A welcome surprise is the brief appearance by The Three Stooges as the singing trio performing at Joe and Elvina's wedding -- a rare M-G-M appearance without their mentor, Ted Healy. It's the closest they came to a "straight" part -- no comedy, just the three-part harmony Stooges fans will recognize when they would occasionally break out into "You'll Never Know Just What Tears Are," a parody of barbershop-harmony tearjerkers they wrote with Healy. Here, Moe and Larry sport early 20th-century haircuts while Curley, as usual, is tennis-ball bald.

At least one star of Turn Back the Clock, Peggy Shannon (Elvina), might have wanted to turn back the clock herself. Her entry on imdb.com is something out of Hollywood Babylon: "From 1937, her career was increasingly afflicted by alcoholism. On May 11, 1941, Shannon's second husband, Albert G. Roberts, and his friend found [her] slumped over the kitchen table dead with her head down on her arms, a cigarette in her mouth, and an empty glass in her hand. 19 days after Shannon's death, Roberts fatally shot himself right on the spot where she died."


Turn Back the Clock's cast and fascinating script (by Edgar Selwyn and Ben Hecht) are superlative, even if its basic storyline contains nothing really surprising: Man is tired of his middle-class life, wishes he could live it all again a different way, realizes he had it better before. You could reach into a box of Twilight Zone episodes and find the same thing. It's the movie's little details still ring true today: Discussions regarding high unemployment, low wages and war profiteers. Investors ripping off their clients. The lead character complaining, in the very first line of dialogue, about the President fixing the economy by "trying to get the banks out of a jam -- what about the rest of us?" If nothing else, Turn Back the Clock proves that absolutely nothing has changed in the last 80 years. Message to everybody: We're screwed.

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To read about Lee Tracy's savage political exposé Washington Merry-Go-Round, click here.

No clips of the Stooges' appearance in Turn Back the Clock are online, so here's a montage of some of their performances of "You'll Never Know Just What Tears Are" throughout the years: