This gun for hire’ a larger than life billboard of an actor named Alan Ladd

Coming attraction poster ‘This gun for hire’ a larger than life billboard of an actor named Alan Ladd, co-star a sexy Veronica Lake, her blonde hairdo over her left eye, East 13th Street and Avenue J, the  Midwood theater, 1942, Brooklyn, New York….(balcony)…..Dr. Marvin Kochman’s eye emporium  (“Do you get the drift?”)…(Warner Brothers studio, Avenue M..Butcher market, Steubenville, Ohio..Vilna, Poland ghetto)

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Thousands and thousands of metamorphoses… growing up as a Cro-Magnon man on the Mojave Desert with the Air Force..Sheppard Air Force Base, Wichita Falls  (Texas Oklahoma panhandle) out of an oasis like RNCHO MIRAGE to  533 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs tennis club turf,(CharlieFarrell, “7

th Heaven” (( Janet Gaynor ,tennis club))

president..Ralph Bellamy ) a hardware store owned and operated by the actor and his wife  Sue Carol….

The reluctant hesitant (but not indecisive) gunslinger of “Shane” in counterpoint with Van Heflin Jean Arthur and  son Brandon de Wilde, dashing to their ranch stockade “Shane Shane”, the cameras grinding the fading moment…. Alan Ladd riding into the legendary distant dust..

Jack Palance, the desperado from Stanford University, lying dead on the ranch’s kitchen floor..his one armed pushup on  Ed Sullivan’s tv Sundays, all but forgotten, in the archives.

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Among the  North Hollywood High School alumni…..Alan Ladd, John Williams, Ron Tuller, (Lana, his wife at Walt Disney) Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor San Francisco Philharmonic, Susan Sontag, Farley Granger,  Russ Tamblyn, Marvin Miller, Teri Garr… 

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“This gun for hire” opening up a hamburger “hamlet” on graduation, “Tacos tamales burridos” Burbank Boulevard, Alan Ladd, a swimming champ, soon was doing stints on radio and small roles in the studios until he was cast in “This gun for hire”…. “Metamorphosing into “Shane”.           

A down to earth quiet actor, his daughter Alana gave your author her phone number when we met at a sweet sixteen party in Beverly Hills. Little knowing that we were catapulting back into Avenue J’s hardware stores, her mother and father recreating the scene 3000 miles away…a Danny Kaye borscht belt metaphor in reverse.

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His store exited the Palm Springs run after 33 years (the ‘33 Plymouth taking us across the Continent to Venice and the roller rink where Charlie Chaplin discovered his persona as “the Tramp”, the derby, mustachio, baggy pants, over sized shoes   cane, the empathy supreme.…

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Long live Alan Ladd’s own empathy…..Builders hardware, general hardware, appliances, house wares   gifts, paints, toys, patio supplies,m  sporting goods.

Established 1955-1988, “Shane” into 96 roles from 1933-1966.

May his memorable North Hollywood pathos and humanity endure forever….

Long live “Shane Shane” riding off into the distant dust….

October 12, 2015. Columbus Day. The City that never sleeps…..

Reflections of Abraham Lincoln High School

Reflections of Abraham Lincoln High School, Coney Island,Arthur Miller’s metamorphosis….his “Death of a Salesman”, “A view from the Bridge” ( in London’s West End)  his wedding bond with Marilyn Monroe. 

Screenwriting his wife and Clark Gable near the finale of his silver screen ending, rethinking his Carole Lombard loss and an alliance with the bourgeoisie life style in the San Fernando Valley’s Encino, South of  Ventura Boulevard. .

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As a substitute teacher at Abraham Lincoln High in Coney Island ( on Ocean Parkway) viewing Arthur Miller’s name on the first floor remembrance wall, we could never imagine that his destiny was sealed so early in adolescence.

As a kid, growing up in view of the board walk, Archie Leach on stilts  (Cary Grant) the Steeplechase, Luna Park, the  tunnelof mirrors, the parachute jump, the Trump elevator apartment buildings. 

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“The Misfits” the reality of the over the hill romantic idol  ( “I don’t give a damn, Scarlet (“Gone with the Wind”, Clark Gable to Vivian Leigh)

Archie Leach aka Cary Grant, arriving in Hollywood, anointing the Gable initials, while the actor (“Boom Town” with Spencer Tracy at MGM) was living in North Hollywood, taking acting lessons from his coach, whom he subsequently married. 

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Who can forget bare chest(ed) Fletcher Christian, giving the crew of (Charles Laughton’s Captain Bligh) “MUTINY!””Mutiny on the Bounty”, the aristocratic Franchot Tone  (before his alliance with  Joan Crawford . Her own notoriety with “Mildred Pierce” at Warners in Burbank.…..

“Mommy dearest”, her daughter’s revelations of her life with thePepsi Cola dancing temptress from  Texas, full of spit and vinegar in making a name for herself. .

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But enough of the cinema’s Golden Age, these ambitious actorsout to make a score. 

“I don’t give a damn, Scarlet,” said Rhett Butler ka Clark Gable in “Gone with the Wind”.

Years and years later, post Vietnam, calling Vivian Leigh at New Haven’s Schubert theatre….answering the phone….inebriated or not, her Old Vic accent sounded soberly Scarlet O’Hara’s “Gone with the Wind”.

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The myth however of the Arthur Miller alliance with Marilyn Monroe, managing the marriage thru the “Misfits”….heryesterdays, during WW2 on the Lockheed night shift as a riveter, married to a rookie policeman.

The photograph at Highland and Sunset photography store.. A screen test for a walk in role with Stanley Kubrick’s Sterling Haydn “The Asphalt Jungle” Louis Calhernn costarring.”(Morris Carnofsky, Larry Parks, his wife, Art S mith, the Public theater’s founder…

Her attempt to break through as an actress versus the starlet image at Daryl Zanuck’s 20th Century, her coach the Russian Maria Ouspenskaya, a Stanislavsky disciple,….the attempt to fulfill herself back in the Big Apple with the likes of the poetsand intellectuals..Arthur Miller….Elia Kazan, the Group theater gang of Harold Clurman, Sylvia Sidney, Brnado’s coach Stella Adler., ( later reprising the 
“Mutiny on the Bounty” role, that Clark Gable identified with,in n the first “Mutiny”.

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These then were the “tumult” yesterdays of our movie magic and the celebrity craze of the cyber space electronic algorithm connectivity, the landscape of multi sensors, streaming ego trips,what not.

For Marilyn Monroe to become a pawn in those hard print “romance” with “Jolting Joe” DiMaggio before Arthur Miller,was but fossil for the movie magazine readers. Her “Stanislavsky” was unfulfilled in the end..

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Like Steve McQueen, the King of Cool said near the end of Bullitt. “It’s all a racket,” paraphrasing his first ever role, a Molly Picon one liner  “Alts iz  farloyrn (“all is lost”)

Rhett Butler “I don’t give a damn, Scarlet”.

(Tomorrow how does one reconcile Alan Ladd’s “This gun for hire” with opening a hardware store in Palm Springs?)

October 7, 2015 The City that never sleeps.

What a satanic Gogol metamorphosis playing out

What a satanic Gogol metamorphosis playing out in those higher and lower education campuses where intelligence, quietmindedness and innocence are being gunned down….”a treadmill to oblivion” as Fred Allen put it.

A cornucopia of  trigger happy  lost souls, seeking revenge for their  fate… in life’s lottery.

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A perversion so immense that tongues are tied, critical minds are muted deaf and dumb, as the violent rampage goes on and on unabated.

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Even the late actor Charlton Heston, the spokesman for the politically powerful gun lobby …..

In his Henry V (fly over) recitation at Duxford RAF museum,joined the mercenary patter.

“My soul shall keep company to Heaven.

Tarry sweet soul for mine. 

Then fly abreast as if an Angel drop’t from the cloud.

O for a muse of fire that would ascend.

The brightest of invention.

A Kingdom for a stage.. Princes to act.

Monarchs to behold the swelling scene”

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Where is Colonel Paley , Ed Murrow,  Walter Cronkite to speak up as they did when Senator Joe McCarthy went on his self serving ballistic .

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“A treadmill to oblivion”.

October 2, 2015  The City that never sleeps.