-Harry`s Film Impressions (12)

von am 15. Dezember 2018 um 16:07
Veröffentlicht in: Film, Text

“Red” of “Murder Incorporated”

The wonderful thing about Orthodox Judaism is that your life is all laid out for you. All you have to is follow the religious laws. Do that – and you can’t go wrong!

Here’s a quote from a PR Text for “Kosher Nostra: Jewish Gangsters in America 1890-1980,” The Jewish Museum, Vienna, November 2003: “Samuel ‘Red’ Levine, a cold-blooded contract killer, who was a strict orthodox Jew and therefore did not murder on the Sabbath.”

Yeah, Red followed all the religious laws – save one, and he adhered to nine of the Ten Commandments. The only Commandment Red circumvented was the 5th.

Samuel ‘Red’ Levine

Red was the number-one hit man of Murder Incorporated. Maybe carrying out a contract isn’t quite so nice, but otherwise, he must have been all-right guy.

Listen, nobody’s perfect. Red was a good family man, and he saw to it that there was food on the table and that the rent was paid. He stayed home on the Sabbath, and if the lights were off, he stayed in the dark. Flicking a switch was taboo. Snuffing out a life on any other day wasn’t.

There have been films about Jewish gangsters who had a good side to them like Lepke and Bugsy. Red Levine’s story cries out to be filmed, but this is a film that won’t ever come to be. Red’s story is the greatest put-down of religion never to be on celluloid.

 

Elephant Story

In 1958, Darryl Zanuck produced The Roots of Heaven, directed by John Houston, based an the novel by Romain Gary which dealt with man’s decimation of elephants in Africa. In The Roots the elephant represents fauna, nature, freedom and all good things. A group of’ freedom lovers bands together and terrorizes the elephant hunters and ivory traders. Being humanists, they don’t kill them; they merely frighten and publicly humiliate them. To give an example, the freedom lovers crash a cocktail party at gunpoint and spank a lady elephant hunter.

While Houston was shooting the film in the Congo, producer Zanuck did some shooting of his own – he went elephant hunting.

 

Tarzan and Bogey on the Sidelines

At the age of eight I saw Tarzan Triumphs at the Garden Theater in Princeton, which was the local home of the B-films and Saturday matinees. While flying over the jungle, a plane carrying a group of Nazis has engine trouble and one and all bail out before it crashes. Tarzan comes to their aid, and to show their gratitude, they go about establishing a microcosm of the Third Reich among the natives and the animals. For a while, Tarzan doesn’t want to get involved and stays on the sidelines. Jane prods him and finally succeeds in opening his eyes to the danger of the “New Order.” Needless to say, Tarzan takes action to banish the budding Reich from his jungle home. Of course, we kids couldn’t wait for Tarzan to take care of the Nazis the way he took care of crocodiles. And we were relieved when he let out his cry and swung on the vines, closing in on the brown brood. The same theme manifests itself in Casablanca, which I saw at an evening performance at the more prestigious Princeton Playhouse the home of the A-films. Unfortunately that beautiful colonial-style theater has gone the way of most movie houses. Its ghost hovers over a parking lot. I and my friends Albert and Buddy sat in the third row looking up at a grainy Bogeyand Bergman, and in spite of the love scenes, we loved the film. It is the melodrama of all melodramas and the pot boiler of all pot boilers. The camera is everything but static. I’ve seen it several times since then. Nary a cliché is missing, but what marvelous direction! Michael Curtiz was a director who could get good juice out of the worst orange.

from the Movie: Casablanca

Like Tarzan, Bogey doesn’t want to get involved and tries to stay on the sidelines as the Nazis hunt down resistance fighters in Vichy Morocco. But of course, with the help of Bergman’s prodding, the patriotic message comes through and Bogey, alias Rick, joins the just fight.

Later on, as an adult, having returned to Austria, I simply wanted to write and stay out of trouble. But I was challenged right off the bat and I was confronted with the Tarzan-Bogey dilemma. I didn’t have Jane or Bergman to prod me, but then I guess I didn’t need any prodding. And once the pattern had been set, I had to take the Tarzan-Bogey decision again and again. I have termed my adversaries successors to their predecessors. They invariable labeled themselves as “anti-fascists.” Every Mafioso uses that pose as a cover for double-dealing.

The Mafia builds hospitals, orphanages and old age homes, but that’s not what the Mafia is about. It puts the first two to good use and helps to prevent the third from becoming a necessity.

Years later, as I look back, I wonder what gummed up the works. All I wanted was to be carefree and have an easy time of it, to skim the cream from the top, to have smooth sailing with no sweat and to stay out of conflicts.

Little did I realize as I sat in those dark movie houses half a century ago that a major revelation had been made.

 

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

-Harry`s Film Impressions (11)

von am 12. Dezember 2018 um 12:36
Veröffentlicht in: Film, Text

The Faithful Husband

“‘Red’ Levine, a cold-blooded contract killer, who was a strict orthodox Jew and therefore did not murder on the Sabbath. Then there was the merciless syndicate boss Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter (sic) who loved his mother more than anything and was respected by the family-minded Sicilians.”
– From a PR Text for “Koscher Nostra: Jewish Gangsters in America 1890-1980,” The Jewish Museum, Vienna, November 2003.

In Lepke, starring Tony Curtis and directed by Menahem Golan, Louis “Lepke” Buchhalter, director of “Murder Incorporated” is the best father and husband imaginable. He is happily married and completely faithful to his wife. Lepke’s specialty is, of course, carrying out contracts. You have to eat, have a roof over your head and provide for the wife and kids. And a job is a job.

His number-one hit man is also his best friend. The boss and his toady are dedicated to each other and indeed they remain friends till the end, but they do not walk off into the sunset together.


Somewhere along the line, things go awry. The Italian families decide that the good pater familias, who took care of so many contracts for them, must be sacrificed to the law. They throw Lepke to the lions so that the FBI will get off their tails. It’s no skin of their ass since Lepke isn’t quite Italian. Being Jewish is as close as you can get, but it’s not the real McCoy. His former clients finger him and he has to take it on the lam. At his dingy hideout, a knockout of a gun moll has her sights on him and tempts him. The temptation scenes are done in somber dark tones and with a Biblical ambiance. It brings to mind Putiphar trying to seduce poor little straight-arrow Joseph. Can handsome Tony withstand the wiles of the sexy dame who gives him more than a glance of herself in the nude? David and Bathsheba come to mind. Alas, the handsome family man has a moment of weakness, but then a moment is all that it takes, and he falls prey to the skilled seductress. After all, a man is a man, and even the best of us give in to temptation once in a blue moon. The number of tumbles is limited to one, but a tumble is a tumble and being unfaithful is being unfaithful.

The conjugal transgression is followed by deep remorse, torn lapels and ashes on the noggin. And while our hero is gnashing his teeth for having fallen prone to his lower instincts, his best hit man is taking care of suspected squealers with an ice pick. There’s a shot of him puncturing the neck of a doxy in a slip with the pick. (This gory scene was cut out of the TV version.)

Lepke decides to give himself up, probably as penance for his lapse, and he and the toady both end up on death row. The faithful toady gets what he deserves for the puncturing, and the unfaithful Lepke gets he deserves for the penetration. The two culprits are allowed to meet and embrace before the cell doors clank shut. We know what fate awaits the toady, but we see the repenting Lepke walk the last mile before the lights go out.

 

Bugsy

Bugsy Siegel was a gangster’s gangster, a spiffy dresser and a raconteur. He hobnobbed with the stars and celebrities. Film gangster George Raft was Bugsy’s real-life friend. In Bugsy Warren Beatty plays Raft’s friend and Annette Benning is Virginia Hill.

The film presents Bugsy as a ruthless killer who could rub someone out from another family without blinking an eye. And if that someone was from his family, he may have flinched before doing the job, but the job was done.

Bugsy was a member of the mob, but he detested fascists. He had Italian connections and made plans to assassinate Mussolini. However, the partisans beat him to the punch by hanging the Duce upside down.

No doubt about it, Bugsy was a gangster, but he was a gangster with vision. He made plans to establish a gambling paradise in the middle of nowhere – nowhere being the Nevada desert.

Bugsy Siegel

Bugsy was a ladies’ man and it was easy-come easy-go until he fell head over heels for gangland moll Virginia Hill. Ginny became his accomplice in the desert scheme – which didn’t make it less hazardous. Ginny was not known as a penny pincher. She liked the bright stuff and the fluffy stuff and all the nice things that money could buy.
Bugsy’s gangster friends thought that he was off his rocker concerning Las Vegas, and they knew he was off his rocker concerning Miss Hill. ilVirginia had charmed him, and he had to use his charm to convince his colleagues of the validity of his venture.

Among Bugsy’s talents was creativity as a chef. There’s a scene when Meyer Lansky and cohorts surprise him at home making an omelette. There he is in the kitchen decked out in and an apron and a chef’s high cap.

He throws in more eggs and serves up an omelette to his guests that is a gastronomical delight. And while his gangster guests sit down to have a bite, he explains the desert idea with conviction, wielding a wooden cooking spoon for emphasis.

The Lansky and cohorts are skeptical, but nevertheless they invest. Bugsy is industrious and a hard worker, and things begin to happen. But of course there are snags. Bugsy isn’t very frugal, and with a little help from Ginny, he finds himself a couple of million in the red. That would be chickenfeed today, but in the Forties it was a fortune.

As we know, the mob doesn’t handle debtors with kid gloves. Bugsy gets a stay of execution while Ginny goes to Paris on a spending spree. There’s another stay, but when he can’t come up with what he owes, the mob’s patience comes to an end. The ambitious gangster is found riddled with bullets in Hill’s Hollywood house. I remember seeing photos of his bloody body in the tabloids back ’47 when I was a kid.

When Ginny gets the news of Bugsy’s demise in Paris she interrupts what she’s doing to enter a period of mourning. After she discards her black attire, she hangs around Paris for a while, and then takes the chance of coming back home. For some reason, the mob doesn’t send her to join Bugsy.

The Kefauver Committee beckons and Virginia goes onstage to become the star of the hearings. When the stodgy senator K. asks her why so many big-time hoods had an itch for her, she replies that she is the number one in the country in the oral arts. Apparently, the mob had let off the financial hook due to her singular talents or talent.

Virginia carried on for decades before dying under mysterious circumstances in, of all places, Salzburg, Austria.

But back to Bugsy’s scheme: Since the desert venture is so far advanced, the mob decides to take a chance on it, rather than scrap it.

And we know the rest. The investment more than paid off in the end. The paltry millions brought in countless billions and billions.

Our American gangsters aren’t like those of other nations. They’re not simply hoods and killers. They are men with foresight who dream the American dream and can turn it into reality.

And indeed Las Vegas with its gambling palaces, luxury hotels and theme parks has become an integral part of Americana. It stands today as a monument to one gangster’s vision and to gangland’s prudence. But that prudence had limitations. The mob rubbed the city’s founder out.

 

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

-ONEOFUS

von am 11. Dezember 2018 um 13:43
Veröffentlicht in: Polemics, Text

ONEOFUS is to be commended for taking the High Road.
We don’t want to bar anyone from being on this planet.
Blessed Kudos are being showered on these idealists
by the Catholic Church.

In these days of rank libertinism, those who take the ethical high road
must be welcomed with open arms,

Here’s that spoilsport Frederick Hunt:
“They want to establish a Renaissance of the backstreet abortion
and bring about a revival of the knitting needle!”

On their agenda of doing good deeds is combating and curing homosexuality.

Frederick Hunt comments again: “How marvelous!
They want to shut down the Catholic Church!”
“Shut up, you spoilsport! Do you have to put a dampener on every good cause?!”

But you can’t shut Fred up. He’s there to oppose decency wherever it shows its beautiful head.

 

– Herbert Kuhner

-Events

von am 10. Dezember 2018 um 12:49
Veröffentlicht in: Politics, Text

The Boy

There’s one photo by Roman Vishniac that is indelible in my mind. A rabbi is teaching a Yeshiva class of young boys. One of the boys has turned and has been caught by the camera before seeing it. The location is a shtetl somewhere in Eastern Europe. That black and white photo seems to glow. There’s warmth between teacher and pupils. And the beatific smile of the boy who is turning is the smile of an angel. There’s no question as to what happened to the kindly rabbi and his class of boys. They didn’t have the money or means for escape. They went the way of East European Jewry. The route they were forced to take ended in the jaws of the juggernaut. They went the way of my Aunt Helena and my Uncles Fritz and Heinrich in the Leopoldstadt. That sweet world of the shtetl and cities like Chernovitz and Lemberg and Jewish sections like the Leopoldstadt of Vienna has been captured by the canvasses of Isidor Kaufmann, the camera of Roman Vishniac and the poems of Else Keren. That world has been trampled underfoot by Nazi hordes and turned to ash by Nazi gangsters and henchmen. That world is no more and it is gone forever. The boy with the beatific smile did not grow up and his world, a world of warmth and kindness went with him, never to return again. The world that followed his is a world where cruelty and barbarity reign untrammeled. The Third Reich may have been defeated in war, but its spirit has left its mark.

Roman Vishniac

 

The End of Fritz

We will gag the impudent Jewish mouth.
– Josef Goebbels

I discovered Kafka, Schnitzler and Zweig in my teens in the Fifties. These great writers took their place among the American, English and French writers that I was reading. As I was relearning German, I read more and more Austrian writers. I read German writers too, but the Austrians were my favorites.

I read their work, but I also read about their lives. That meant reading about tragic circumstances.

When I returned to Austria, I could not avoid being confronted with the reality of the past. Egon Friedell jumped to his death from the balcony of a house across the street in Gentzgasse, where I live. I pass the spot every day.

Gentzgasse_1180 Vienna

Kafka and Schnitzler died before the Third Reich became a reality. Zweig lived to see it, but couldn’t bear the reality of it and ended his life due to it. Just recently I read about Fritz Grünbaum’s fate. I have seen old films of Fritz’s cabaret routines. They are a pleasure for the eyes and ears – and life affirming! Fritz was small and bald, but he had oodles of charm. He was simply a delight.

Fritz Grünbaum

What life Fritz had! He seemed to catch on immediately. He was a man everyone liked – except the National Socialists.

Fritz did not manage to emigrate. He had spoofed the Nazis, and they had him on their list. When they marched in, he tried to flee to Czechoslovakia with his wife, but they were sent back at the border. It didn’t take long for the Gestapo to get him.

Life was fine for many Jews in Austria before March of 1938. It was fine for my family too, but during that month life turned into Hell. We got out in July of 1939. And for those who did not get out, Hell only ended with death.

I have to say this. The orders came from above and were unmerciful. But those who carried them out often didn’t need orders. They killed and tormented at random. And their means were “creative.” They thought up the most barbarous and painful manner of torture and murder.

Here is what the SS did to Fritz: He was forced to lie on the floor and ordered to stick his tongue out
while all those present wiped their boots on his mouth.

This was of course symbolic. That tongue and larynx had mocked Hitler and his Gang.

Fritz was shown no mercy. He was not killed on the spot. There was more excruciating suffering in store for him before his death. The utmost cruelty reserved for those whose opposition was public

I say that the guilt of this deed can never be expunged. If there is a Hell and the monsters who committed it are in it, no Hell could ever cause more suffering than Fritz Grünbaum underwent. And he was not the only one. He was one of multitudes

If there is a Paradise, an eternity of bliss could not make up for the suffering caused by such monstrous deeds.
Nor could an Eternity of Hellfire suffice as punishment for the perpetrators.

 

There is nothing more to say

The Past is Not the Past
A team was sent to Turkey by the Royal Saudi Head of State
to kill Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist,
and then to cut him up and dispose of the severed parts.
But that was not enough. They cut him up alive.
Members of our government do not want to hear the tape
of this event because they do not understand Arabic.

Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul

– Herbert Kuhner

-Happy Holidays

von am 7. Dezember 2018 um 11:56
Veröffentlicht in: Text

 

Happy Holidays to
Henry the Kiss of Death –
Down Here
and Dick, Ron and John Paul –
Up There,
who were instrumental
in establishing Repressive Right-Wing Regimes
in Central America.

Those fleeing Hell on Earth
are clamoring at the Gates of our Wonderful Country
with its Wonderful Head of State
and getting gassed.

Happy Holidays to all!

 

– Herbert Kuhner