Sunset Murder Case - 1938 - an Art Deco mystery burlesque fest

Here's another little treat from Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/SunsetMurderCase

It's no masterpiece but it's a cultural relic that we're very lucky to have. It stars the ephemeral Sally Rand. She was a precocious girl from Missouri with big ideas. At 13 she was dancing in the chorus of a local show and a few years later made her way to Hollywood where she was quickly noticed. Dancing was her natural talent and not being of a shy nature, she gave full expression to her creativity through the sensuality of her body.

You may not have heard of Sally Rand. But you have most likely heard of her most famous creation, the "Bubble Dance".

The Sunset Murder Case treats us to a beautifully filmed record of her famous bubble dance early in the story. She's a "good girl", daughter of a murdered policeman, who infiltrates into the nightclub owned by the man she believes is responsible for her father's death.

The club's interior is a classic bit of Art Deco design and another treat in this filmic box of chocolates.

This was back in the days when men wore tuxedos, women wore beautiful gowns and everyone knew how to dance.

More stills from the bubble dance...

Isadora Duncan's influence is highly visible throughout, in both the asymmetrical movements and tunic of draped fabric, elements of Ancient Greek art that inspired Duncan. The Duncan connection is no surprise. Aside from the fact that she was already world famous, Duncan was a native of San Francisco and Sally Rand spent many critical years in her career working in San Francisco. For much of the 1930s she owned The Music Box, a burlesque theater that later became The Great American Music Hall. She was also a hugely popular and notorious performer at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 (subject of a Charlie Chan film I'll write about soon).

We're treated to her bubble dance and also her "fan dance", something she may not have invented but she certainly perfected. The fan, in fact, was an array of which peacock feathers, or more accurately, lyre bird feathers. The lyre bird is a naturally white peacock. Her stately dance, imitating the strut of the peacock, starts with a group of woman wearing Erte inspired gowns drifting around the stage, setting the mood.

 Finally they wander off and the peacock is left alone. She does her thing, making the most of the stairs, wandering in circles as peacocks are inclined to do, spreading her feathers out in a beautiful display, or letting them trail behind like the train of a gown. 

 The dance reaches its climax as the peacock twirls in excitement, its feathers spiraling around itself. Then gradually she comes to rest in the calm attitude of supremely confident beauty.

 I wish we could have had a closeup of the final pose. But it's a miracle this movie made it past the censors at all. The Hays Code was at its peak when this movie was made. In fact the censors insisted the original title "The Sunset Strip Murder Case" be changed and the "Strip" dropped. Clearly these dances were far more sensual than the Code would allow. In fact, based on Sally Rand's reputation alone, there were many movie theaters that refused to show the movie, and the city of Boston banned its appearance.

In addition to this priceless record of Sally Rand's work the movie provides a lot of delightful Art Deco design and atmosphere. It also provides, for comic relief, 2 charming characters, male and female sidekicks to the leads. Here they are the first time they meet. You might have guessed the girl's first impression isn't entirely favorable, although we learn that in fact she's quite smitten but hiding it well. They have some very punny dialogue. The girl, I'm guessing, was one of Sally Rand's compatriots in Burlesque, someone who appeared in only a very few movies, sometimes as uncredited extras and who is credited in this movie as Sugar Kane. Turns out she has a "real" name though, Kathryn ... Kathryn Kane. I think I prefer "Sugar". Aside from the few movies listed on IMDB and a few studio portraits listed for sale on eBay I can find no other record of her existence on the internet. Her romantic interest and comic foil is Dennis Moore, a fellow with a long career ahead of him in westerns but who makes a passable newspaper reporter in this movie.

 Here's Sugar Kane singing her number in the nightclub. I wonder what ever happened to her. The movie was made in 1938 and if she was in her early 20s at the time and were alive today she would be in her 90s. Not likely but possible. Did she make hay while the sun shone and then marry some nice young banker that came to her burlesque shows? Were there children and grandchildren? I wonder if someone points to her in this movie today and says, "She's my Grandma."

If I didn't write much about the men in this movie its because they didn't have a chance. These two beautiful ladies, Sally Rand, one of the great burlesque stars and a creative artist, and Sugar Kane, someone who seems to have been forgotten to history, both stole the show.

If you're looking to pass an hour watching this movie is certainly one of the most pleasant ways to do it.

Dick Tracy Detective - 1945

As I'm not in the Middle East for the time being I thought I'd use the blog to share impressions of the fun old movies I've been watching lately. These all come from the great website Archive.org. a really excellent source for public domain movies that you can watch for free.

Tonight's movie is Dick Tracy Detective.
Morgan Conway as Dick Tracy
Anne Jeffreys and Tess Trueheart
Mike Mazurki as Splitface
Jane Greer as Judith Owens

The opening image, classic film noir, the night, a vacant storefront, high contrasts, long shadows, distorted perspectives. Dick Tracy's got it all and more, taking it from the level of style to the next level, a world all its own. The mysterious figure in black, as you will find out in moments, is the mysterious "Splitface" and he is on a rampage of unexplained, seemingly disconnected murders. We don't see him, only his silhouette...

 Dick Tracy himself, the man in charge, rock hewn jaw, eyes as cool as blued steel, a man's man.

And then, of course, there's Tess Trueheart, Dick's love interest, ever patient in her satin negligee and curls. She's no wimp though. She may be patient but she let's him know about it. And she's not about to be left behind when the chase for the villain gets hot. She's a real man's man's woman.

In Dick Tracy's world evil has an ugly face... in this case, Splitface... From behind the window he sees without being seen, but the window mullions not only frame him, they cage him. Evil is its own prison.

The set design is spartan. Like a cartoon strip there is no excess in the image. Here we are on a roof top, guarded by a metal barrier. There's no clutter. In the background are only just enough lights to suggest the skyline at night.

Vertiginous perspective, another hallmark of the style. Splitface watches from above, unseen. The strong horizontal light places him above the lit action, where he can watch in safety.

The undertaker, it's always convenient to have one around, if for no other reason than to have the hero walk through a room full of caskets. This man's balding head suggests an overactive intelligence, his beady eyes, a cunning mind, and his weak mouth and chin, a weak moral character. The slashing shadows behind him create an atmosphere of chaos and torment. All this is accentuated when in motion. That is part of the art of the "motion" picture.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Good triumphs over evil.

My stuff and other nonsense

Most of you reading this will already know that I've left the job in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and I'm back in my home in Brittany, France. I made the move at the end of November but haven't kept up the blog since then. I'll try to make up for that with a few short posts outlining my interim adventures but today I'd like to skip the intervening months and write about this morning.

First, though, here's a photo for those of you who are more visually inclined. It's me with river Goyen behind me. Here in Plouhinec we have a lovely 19th century chateau that has been converted into apartments. That's it behind me.

A few days ago I got a call from the moving company, saying I could expect my stuff to arrive on Friday. I've spent the last few days madly cleaning up some space in the cottage so that I'd have some place to put it. Yesterday I got the back area on the ground floor broom clean and did the same for the attic bedroom. I was planning to go over the bedroom space with a damp towel today, to get the fine plaster dust that kicks up when I sweep. That was my plan for today. But fate had something else in store.

I was lying in bed at 8:30, groggy eyed and thick headed, trying to decide whether to get up or roll over and go back to sleep when the doorbell startled me up. I clambered out of bed, into the next room to open the window and look down in the driveway and what do you suppose I saw? The top of a moving van and the top of the head of a prematurely balding muscular fellow.

He looked up at me and I realized the decision had already been made, by forces greater than me. I was getting up.

My stuff had arrived! One day early.

Anyhow, I changed from my pyjamas and we got to work hauling 3 palettes of stuff. By 10:15am it was all done.

Everything seems to have arrived safely and undamaged, though I haven't opened every box. I pulled out a very small stack of books and my paintings, so that I could enjoy a little reunion with my stuff.

In think I'm going to take the rest of today off and relax. Maybe I'll paint.

love to all my family and friends

And a big THANK YOU to Tristan and Tina for doing all that hard work at the Concord end to get my stuff moved.

Pyramid dust on my shoes

On the 19th of August I spent the day at the Pyramids. They are just on the edge of Cairo. The city has sprawled its way right up to the base of the Giza plateau and now the crowds of the living city are just a few hundred yards from the great necropolis.

I had the taxi driver drop me off at the north gate, near the ticket office. Clusters of boys, young and middle aged men were hovering around, hollering to get attention, trying to sell trinkets or offering to take me on tours. I've learned the art of ignoring and pushed my way through to the ticket office. Ticket safely in hand I braved the next bunch of clusters, paying special attention to ignore the young men who were trying to pass themselves off as some kind of "officials", wanting to get their hands on me, my ticket and I don't know what else.

I don't want to dwell on the negative. I'll just mention one more detail, the huge, noisy crowd between the gate and the first, largest pyramid, Khufu's tomb. There must have been over 1,000 boys and men, many racing their emaciated horses and camels, each of them pushing in front of the next to get my attention and try to convince me I wanted a camel ride.

A word of advice. Do not make eye contact or acknowledge them at all, unless you really do want to ride one of those poor beasts. If they get your attention they will NOT let you go. I anticipated the situation and slipped only once, letting one middle aged fellow engage me in conversation. He was all obsequious smiles until I repeatedly refused to buy whatever it was he was selling and expressed rather firmly that I wanted to get on with my visit of the pyramids. He then proceeded to swear at me in the filthiest way. But I was already out of his reach at that point.

One more word of advice. Women, expect to be sexually harassed. It is imperative to go with a man. But still expect the harassment. Among the few tourists I encountered (ratio of local to tourist appears to be about 20:1), was an Englishman with his 2 children, a girl of about 13 and a boy of about 8. The girl couldn't have been more than a year into puberty. The father told me that boys and men had been harassing her even in his very presence.

Okay, enough of the negative. As awful as it was it paled into infinitesimal insignificance in presence of the vast creation of those amazing people who flourished 5,000 years ago and whose presence still dominates the landscape. (What will there be to see of our civilization 5,000 years from now?)

The first pyramid is the tomb of Khufu, the oldest and largest of them all. I'm a firm believer that the best way to travel is on foot. That's the way to see things, slowly, from eye level. So off I set, on foot, across the sandy paths. I headed north, away from the crowd, and found myself in the "Western Cemetery".

It had the feeling of being a town, with roads, walls, doorways into interior courtyards... Although this area is called a cemetery I think it's possible people may have lived here as well, alongside the tombs, caretakers perhaps, and their families.

Archeologists now believe that about 10,000 people lived in the immediate vicinity of the pyramids. They would have been construction workers and the necessary support, such as bakers, and other trades. The idea that the pyramids were built by slaves has been discredited (though I've had a few Egyptians repeat the slave myth to me). Apparently, and not surprisingly, working at the pyramids was actually a very prestigious job because it put people in direct service to their God-King and earned them a lot of brownie points in the afterlife. After all, the afterlife was what it was all about for these people.

Beyond Khufu's tomb is the pyramid of Khafre, which still retains some of its facing stones at its peak. I scrambled around the mounds, made my way through the cemetery and found the road again.

This pyramid is at the highest point of the plateau. Like the other pyramids, it has a temple at its base. 

From here a road or causeway descends to the edge of the plateau and connects the pyramid complex to the village of Giza below. Beyond the village lies the river. In the next photo I am looking up towards the pyramid, with rock cut tombs on the left. 

In the photo below I am standing in the same spot but looking down towards the village and river. The Sphinx is at the left.

Here is a view of the surrounding rock cut tombs.

I believe they originally had some low relief decorations as well as other architectural ornaments, especially around the doorways. But these have mostly disappeared over the millenia.

The Sphinx sits at the end of the causeway, at the edge of the village, looking across the river towards the rising sun. By the way, the story that Napoleon's troops shot the nose off for target practice is totally false. It wasn't the evil European invader who did this. Apparently it was a fellow by the name of Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, in 1378, who was offended when he saw peasants making offerings to it in the hopes of increasing their harvest. He attempted to destroy it (shades of Bamiyan?), starting with the face. For his efforts, he was lynched by the peasants.

The circus of the entry gate repeats itself around the Sphinx, even though the precinct around it has been enclosed by a chain link fence. Children and teenagers scramble over this fence, which is a good 15 feet high, and into the protected zone. The handful of security personnel don't even try to put a stop to it... Enough said.

At the base of Khafre's pyramid...

The furthest pyramid from the main gate is the tomb of Menkaure, accompanied by its 3 smaller pyramids for Queens. These 3 were never completed.

Despite being incomplete, these pyramids, along with Menkaure's, are the only pyramids in Giza that retain some of their original pink granite facing stones.

Yours truly, in front of one of the Queen's pyramids. This photo was taken by the English gentleman I mentioned at the start of this blog post.

Like the Sphinx, Menkaure's tomb was also victim to an act of vandalism. This was at the end of the 1100s. The ruler of Egypt at that time was al-Malek, al-Aziz Othman ben Yusuf. The large gash in the side was an attempt by him to demolish the pyramid. This gash was the result of 8 months of effort, at which point he and his crew gave up. He died shortly after, at the age of 27.

Boats, naturally, were central to the lives of the ancient Egyptians, given that their lives revolved around the river, its patterns and cycles. So it is no surprise that boats played a large part in their mythology and cosmology, and that boats have been found buried around the pyramids.

One boat was found extraordinarily well preserved, though it still took 14 years of work to restore it. The boat can now be seen in a special museum at the base of the Great Pyramid.

Imagine the river with these boats gliding along, following the course of the flow as they went downstream, or with their rows of oars splashing as they went back upstream again.

After about 5 hours of continuous walking through the sand and dust, scrambling over mounds of rocks, dodging horses, camels and vendors, I decided it was time for a break. Just outside the entrance to the whole complex is a 19th century palace that was turned into a hotel in the 1880s, catering to the British tourists who were flocking to Egypt at that time.

I took refuge in the peaceful comfort of this place, and enjoyed an exquisite light lunch. My table overlooked the garden.

Next time I visit the pyramids I'm going to plan my break a little later in the afternoon and enjoy their afternoon tea. They do a traditional British tea.

Once I had recovered my strength I went back up to Khufu's pyramid and went inside. I can't begin to describe the experience of climbing into it, all the way up to the main chamber. All I can say is that it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and must be done. It is physically challenging though. It is hot and in places it is necessary to proceed on hands and knees. So be prepared.

Speaking of preparations, wear a long sleeved shirt and a hat and bring your own water. There are people selling water but the quality is not to be trusted. Also, the only real officials on the site are in uniform. Anyone else who claims to be there in an official capacity is lying. They will show you ID and tell you all kinds of nonsense about rules that you're breaking. It's just a ruse to try to separate you from your money.

Finally, after it was all done, after I'd circumambulated all 3 pyramids, paid my respects to the Sphinx and climbed into the main chamber of Khufu's tomb, I taxied and limped my way back to my hotel on the other side of the city. I plopped down on the edge of the bed and stared down at my feet, trying to find the strength to bend down and take my shoes off. As I slipped off my tennis shoes, I noticed how their color had changed from an indigo blue of denim to a dusty rose, the color of pyramid dust.

Cairo - revelations in the Egyptian Museum

I arrived in Cairo yesterday and pretty much crashed at the hotel, sleeping much of the day then getting a bite to eat at the mall next door. I guess I was more tired than I realized. Anyhow, after sleeping all day, then eating, then sleeping all night I managed to lift myself out of bed this morning and have a huge breakfast, intended to keep me going all day. It worked.

I spent most of the day at the famous Egyptian antiquities museum just off Tahrir Square. After about 5.5 hours of non-stop walking through the museum I managed to scratch the surface.

It is an awe-inspiring experience. It is vast, endless. The power and living spirit in the art defies words. These people, who had an apparent obsession with life after death managed to leave an artistic legacy that conveys their individual spirits down to the present day, 5000 years later.

 I just hope we can do them justice and preserve this work well enough that it will be there another 5000 years from now, to reveal to the people of that future time the potential of our species.

 Photography is not allowed inside the museum. So I've taken photos of the photos in my guide book for posting here. I'm probably breaking copyright laws. But hopefully this will inspire a few more people to go to the Museum and have this amazing experience.

The picture above is an unfinished portrait of Queen Nefertiti. A very similar one, finished, can be seen in the Egyptian collection in Berlin. It is most definitely the same face. People mistakenly characterize Egyptian art as "stylized" or idealized. But this is not the case with the real portraits, such as in the photos above, or the last photo in the post.

Even the animals have specific and unique expressions. I was stunned to see that the lion heads on the funerary bed of King Tutankhamun had expressions of grief and eyes that looked to the horizon, while the lion heads on his throne stared fixedly ahead with expressions of power and strength.

 The photo above is from the Tutankhamun collection. She is one of four goddesses who protect the shrine that held his canopic jars. These four figures must be seen in person. Photos do them no justice. They are among the most beautiful sculptures of the female ever conceived. Radiant, their very human curves seem delicately wrapped in fine gold linen while their faces and and gestures express love and protection.

 The museum building itself is quite a delight, designed by a French architect, Marcel Dourgnon, in the Beaux Arts style. It opened in 1902. The scale of it allows entire architectural ensembles and monumental sculptures to be housed within. The sculpture in the photo above was at least 30 feet tall.

 

The museum contains more than just sculptures. There are endless rooms filled with all the miscellany of everyday life, sandles, linen shawls, jewelry, tools... 

I hope some of you who read this will go there and experience it for yourself. For me it was a revelation. In a glass case was a necklace made of semi-precious stones and gold beads. The gold beads were shaped in the form of pumpkin seeds. Next to this necklace was a silver cup in the form of a pomegranate. I looked at these exquisite reproductions of nature in precious metals and suddenly felt I understood something about what they were trying to do. All of matter, in all its seemingly infinite forms, is comprised of just a few basic elements. But somehow, there is an ordering force that brings these elements together in varying forms with varying qualities. The pumpkin seed, containing within itself the ability to reproduce, to nourish and to create dozens more new seeds ... the pomegranate filled with sweet juice and yet again the seeds of its own reproduction ...  What is the mysterious force that orders the same basic elements into a myriad of forms, each with its own qualities, the pumpkin seed, the pomegranate, Horus the hawk, Anubis the jackal, Bastet the cat? If we could somehow reproduce the forms, would we perhaps be able to capture inside those forms the essential ordering nature? Would we be able to bring that ordering force to work in our own lives?