Monday, June 28, 2021

Althouse

Althouse

5:04 a.m.

Posted: 28 Jun 2021 08:11 AM PDT

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"Adolf Hitler favored [Clark] Gable above all other actors. During World War II, Hitler offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable to him unscathed."

Posted: 28 Jun 2021 08:06 AM PDT

An interesting fact I ran across, reading the Wikipedia article for Clark Gable, which I was doing a propos of reading my son John's write-up about his favorite movies from 1939. "Gone With The Wind" came in third for that year. In any case, here's what got me started researching:

One of this great but frustrating movie's weaknesses is the lackluster performance by the out-of-place Leslie Howard, who, unlike Vivien Leigh, couldn't manage to put aside his real-life British accent and commit to playing a Georgian. I agree with this BBC piece ("Gone with the Wind: Is it America's strangest film?"): 

The idea that anyone — let alone anyone as unconventional as Scarlett — would choose this wishy-washy character over ... Rhett is absurd: the most preposterous aspect of a daringly, bewilderingly idiosyncratic film. After more than 75 years, we're still mesmerised by Scarlett. We're still tantalised by Scarlett and Rhett. But Scarlett and Ashley? Frankly, we don't give a damn. 

If only he'd been played by Jimmy Stewart! 

The reference to Jimmy Stewart makes more sense in the context of the entire post, the #1 choice for the year being a Jimmy Stewart movie. And the #4 choice.

Leslie Howard died in 1943 when his plane was shot down by the Nazis:

Howard's World War II activities included acting and filmmaking. He was active in anti-German propaganda and shoring up support for the Allies—two years after his death the British Film Yearbook described Howard's work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". He was rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot down BOAC Flight 777 over the Atlantic... on which he was a passenger.

Gable joined the Air Force in 1942, and "flew five combat missions, including one to Germany, as an observer-gunner in B-17 Flying Fortresses between May 4 and September 23, 1943, earning the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts."

During one of the missions, Gable's aircraft was damaged by flak and attacked by fighters, which knocked out one of the engines and shot up the stabilizer. In the raid on Germany, one crewman was killed and two others were wounded, and flak went through Gable's boot and narrowly missed his head. When word of this reached MGM, studio executives began to badger the Army Air Forces to reassign its most valuable screen actor to noncombat duty.

Gable was a conservative Republican, but he voted for FDR because his wife, Carole Lombard, a liberal activist, convinced him to do so.

As for Jimmy Stewart, he was the first movie star to enlist in the military in WWII:

After first being rejected for low weight in November 1940, he successfully enlisted in February 1941. As an experienced amateur pilot, he reported for induction as a private in the Air Corps on March 22, 1941. Soon to be 33 years old, he was over the age limit for Aviation Cadet training—the normal path of commissioning for pilots, navigators and bombardiers—and therefore applied for an Air Corps commission as both a college graduate and a licensed commercial pilot. Stewart received his commission as a second lieutenant on January 1, 1942.

I'll skip the details other than to say he attained the rank of brigadier general. John calls Stewart "the greatest male actor of his time." He also says: "Stewart was ahead of his time in having a soft, sensitive quality back when most male actors lacked such nuance." 

Of course, Stewart was a big right winger. I say "of course," but maybe you'd say "Oddly enough..." or "Nevertheless...." Ha ha. I wouldn't! I think the 2 things go together quite nicely. 

But Hitler favored that manly swagger of Clark Gable.

"I hate the word process, I just can’t bear it. People say, ‘What’s your process?’ My process is allowing my soul to leave my body and enter into the body of another human being...."

Posted: 28 Jun 2021 08:31 AM PDT

"I like to pretend that I'm the most attention deficit disordered person I'm ever going to meet.... I'm very conscious of keeping the reader's interest. And I'm easily bored — I'm easily bored by books, I hate to say. And so I want there to be some sort of suspense or some sort of payoff.... It's all about language.... Once I can figure out what the language inside [the characters'] head is — that way in which people talk to themselves without saying anything, the stream of what is running in your head — once I can figure out what that language is, I can get the character. It just clicks in."

From "'I'm Easily Bored by Books,' Says Writer of 22 Novels/The latest from the aptly named Francine Prose is 'The Vixen,' a surprisingly funny tale involving Ethel Rosenberg and the C.I.A." (NYT).

Notice that she's talking about inhabiting the head of the characters and the head of the readers. Those are 2 very different processes, but she's set on doing both things. If you had to choose one or the other, which would you pick? Do you want to read things written by writers who assume you have no patience at all? I'd rather be trusted to absorb what is actually good and also trusted to cast off what is bad. Write well, and earn our patience. Write badly and credit us with the sense to throw it off no matter how desperately you worked to grab our attention. So of the 2 processes, the better one is to get inside the characters' own stream of thought. Do that right and the problem of reader boredom should take care of itself. 

By the way, how funny is Ethel Rosenberg? Ethel Mertz funny?

FROM THE EMAIL: Paul quotes my long paragraph — the one that begins "Notice..." — and offers this quote from Umberto Eco's "Post-Script to The Name of the Rose" (1984):

My friends and editors suggested I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found very difficult and demanding. Without thinking twice, I refused, because, as I insisted, if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he had to accept the abbey's own pace. If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book. Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or initiation, and if someone does not like them, so much the worse for him. He can stay at the foot of the mountain.

ALSO: EDH sends this (and why have I never heard of it? I love Jermaine Clement!):

"What do you think of Howard Stern’s painting?"

Posted: 28 Jun 2021 06:15 AM PDT

My son Chris asks, texting this:

 

ME: it doesn't seem to express anything about him...
        just looks like a tediously copied photo...
        he's such a special person. he should express himself! 

CHRIS: His paintings always seem like realistic paintings of flowers and stuff like that 

ME: maybe what he's expressing is that he's a big old dullard!
        maybe it's a meditation or self-calming
        maybe he's atoning for his shock-jockeying 

CHRIS: Yeah I think he does it as a hobby as a calming thing
        His show has changed a lot over the years

Chris also sends that kitty-cat-in-a-shoe painting below. That's a Howard Stern painting from last year. 

ME: it's like he wants women to love him
        before he was overdoing his effort at appealing to men
        but where is the real howard stern?
        maybe inside he feels like nobody

"When she crossed the line and looked at the clock, McLaughlin covered her mouth with two hands and 10 pristine-white fingernails."

Posted: 28 Jun 2021 05:33 AM PDT

Fingernails loom large in WaPo's report "Sydney McLaughlin sets world record in 400-meter hurdles at U.S. Olympic trials." 

Pristine-white — has that descriptor ever appeared in the news before? 

Anyway, here's what matters!

And yet, I don't have a tag for running, and I'm not going to create one, but I do have a tag "fingernails," and I'm delighted to get to use it again. 

I hadn't used it since July 2018, when somebody had "tapered nails painted bright sapling-green." There's been newsworthy fingernail biting. And Viking beliefs about cutting one's nails. 

And my all-time favorite: "'Record nails broken in car crash.'... Not the worst car accident injury, though possibly the worst fingernail-breaking injury.... I wish somebody would bring her the world's largest blackboard."

Sunrise, 5:19 to 5:24 a.m.

Posted: 27 Jun 2021 03:52 PM PDT

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