P.S. WE LOVE YOU

Last weekend Your Humble Narrator, The Wife and The Kid, along with one of The Chihuahuas—the other dislikes travel, and stayed with a sitter—betook ourselves to Palm Springs, California, on yet another pilgrimage to the annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival.

Along with Try and Get Me, which I had already seen, this year’s schedule included a really fun obscurity that was new to me: Mary Ryan, Detective, starring Marsha Hunt, who, now in her mid-90s, attended the showing.

This 1949 programmer, from Columbia, seems to have been intended as the first in a continuing series, but it ended up being a one-off. A pity; it’s delightful. I was expecting cutesy Nancy Drew stuff, but the title character was a female police detective, and plenty self-sufficient. She goes undercover to find the heads of a ring of jewel thieves, who turn out to be a Mom-and-Pop couple who run a turkey farm—they smuggle the loot out as stuffing! They also keep pointing out that the front makes dough, too; you get the feeling that it would be more cost-efficient if they just went legit.

Mom and Pop aren’t so sweet, though—at one point Mary has to remove a bullet from a wounded man who they would otherwise allow to die, and at the end they’re perfectly willing to dispose of her, too. What I liked was that there wasn’t some handsome male cop who, at the end, told Mary that her detecting days were over; he was going to make an honest woman out of her. This was probably only because they wanted to bring the character back, but still, it was refreshing.

The Kid went with me to this movie; her first noir! On the way to the Camelot she asked me if it was in black-and-white, and grumbled when I said it was (grrrr!), but she got really caught up in the story. It was also extremely cool that she got to see how pretty and adorable Marsha Hunt was in the film, and then see her brought up on stage for the Q&A afterwards, and see what a beautiful, elegant old lady she is now.

The next day I saw (by myself this time) another pretty good one, called High Tide, from 1947.

It was from Monogram, though it seemed more polished than their product usually does, and starred the great Lee Tracy as—what else?—a fast-talking newspaperman. He and Don Castle, “the poor man’s Clark Gable,” are trapped together in a wrecked car on the beach at Malibu in the opening, as the tide’s coming in, and the plot is a flashback as to how they got there.

By the end of the twisty, confusing story, I wasn’t much more enlightened than I was at the beginning, but who cares, if you get to listen to Lee Tracy talk? Though his character claims to be 42, Tracy was around 50 years old when he made this film, and he looks at least ten years older, but his acting chops were still intact.

As it happened, The International Al Jolson Society was holding its 63rd annual convention in Palm Springs that weekend as well, at the Spa Resort and Casino, so I got to stick my head in there, too, and listen to Jolie fans bellyache about how political correctness has unfairly besmirched the reputation of the man they call “The World’s Greatest Entertainer.” I went to the memorabilia auction—which the auctioneer basically treated as a chance to do stand-up, and he was quite hilarious—and scored a CD of Jolson performing schmaltzy standards as the host of the Kraft Music Hall in the late ‘40s, and trading quips with his piano accompanist Oscar Levant. Great stuff.

I also took The Kid for a ride to the top of San Jacinto Peak, on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, the world’s largest rotating aerial tram, currently celebrating its 50th year in operation.

I had ridden it once before, years ago, to an awards presentation for a film festival I was judging. Not a huge fan of heights myself, I hadn’t much enjoyed the experience, majestic though the view of the craggy mountainside and the Coachella Valley below undeniably is. But I decided it was worth a second trip to enjoy The Kid’s terror. She was disappointingly un-terrified, however. After I got home, a friend sent me an email of “Tram Safety Fun Facts” detailing all sorts of nightmarish things that have happened there over the years. Too bad I hadn’t had this information to tell The Kid beforehand.

By the way, my pal Barry Graham has completed “The Whitey Thor,” a decidedly adults-only comic about his encounter with novelist Brad Thor, illustrated by my pal Vince Larue; you can read it here.

JUMPIN' DRAC FLASH

If for no other reason than that it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s give the nod to the title character in Dracula A.D. 1972, released by the UK’s Hammer Films in the title year.

This was Hammer’s attempt to give a “mod” spin to their Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Dracula series. It opens in 1872 (long before the 1897 date of the Stoker novel) with Van Helsing (Cushing) & Dracula (Lee) fighting it out again on an out-of-control carriage. It ends badly for both of them—the Count meets the business end of a broken wheel spoke.

But a century later, after the opening credits, a Drac disciple with the rock-star-like name of Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame, looking insufferably pouty & Byronic) leads a group of thrill-seeking Chelsea hippies in an unholy ceremony in the ruin of a church, & succeeds in re-integrating the vampire prince, who is particularly ungrateful & entitled about it: When his young benefactor says “I summoned you,” he snaps “It was my will.” Typical freakin’ aristocrat.

I watched this for the first time in decades this past weekend, & was struck by how very little Lee was given to do in the film—with the title, one might hope for psychedelic party scenes of the Count mingling with the Mods, but except for the fight in the prologue, Lee, who’s top-billed, spends all of his brief footage in the wrecked church—to which Johnny A. dutifully delivers him such delectable snacks as Caroline Munro, Marsha Hunt & Stephanie Beacham, in return for an equal lack of gratitude—& speaks only a handful of lines. Cushing, as a modern Van Helsing, does the expository heavy lifting.

All that being said, the film is fun early-‘70s artifact, & it features an appearance by the American rock ensemble Stoneground. They perform, in an hilarious scene early on, at an upper-crust party that’s been crashed by decadent hippies, to the elaborate scandalized horror of the guests.