Thanks to Netflix and the Turner Classic Movies
Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1, we just saw the pre-release, no-holds barred version of
Baby Face (1933), with the terrific Barbara Stanwyck as a woman on the make, armed only with her body and a secondhand volume of Nietzsche.
The first half is astonishing, a revelation, basically a series of sex scenes with ever-higher-status men, placed floor by floor up a phallic Art Deco skyscraper. The least interesting of Stanwyck's conquests is played by the 26-year-old John Wayne, then only beginning to make a name for himself in low-budget Westerns. Stanwyck herself was the same age as Wayne, but in their brief scenes together, you sure couldn't tell!
Stanwyck has one quickie in a boxcar, another in a ladies' room. She denounces her brutish (and possibly incestuous) dad for pimping her out from the time she was 14. Upon discovering the bodies of two of the men she's destroyed, Stanwyck's look of satisfied appraisal, on which the camera lingers, is colder even than anything she gave Billy Wilder's camera in
Double Indemnity, 11 years later.
The second half of the movie, alas, is downright dull, as Stanwyck's character has an inexplicable change of heart thanks to the never-very-interesting George Brent, the 1926 hit "Baby Face" is played about six times too many (minus the Al Jolson vocals), and a sorta-conventional "happy ending" is trundled in like creaking scenery. But that first half, everything pre-Paris, is something! I was reminded of Nicole Kidman's character in
To Die For, or Myrna Loy as the daughter of Fu Manchu.
Alfred E. Green directed
Baby Face, but I suspect what credit doesn't go to Stanwyck goes to Kathryn Scola, who co-wrote the screenplay. She specialized, for a time, in tough and sometimes scandalous dames; her other early-1930s credits include
The Lady Who Dared,
Wicked,
Midnight Mary,
Lilly Turner,
Female and
Night After Night -- which was Mae West's movie debut, in a supporting role.
I thought of
Baby Face this morning, when I read
in Ellen Goodman's column that Anna Nicole Smith "made a name for herself the old-fashioned way, using the only thing she had." Smith was one down on Stanwyck's character; she didn't even have Nietzsche.
Shrady, whose father had been one of Grant's doctors, got the commission to sculpt the memorial in 1903 and worked on it for the rest of his life. The artillerymen were finished in 1912, the cavalrymen in 1916, the figure of Grant in 1920. Shrady died just weeks before the dedication in 1922, on the centennial of Grant's birth. The Grant Memorial was dedicated only a month before the dedication of a much better-known D.C. memorial -- to Gen. Grant's commander in chief.
The Apollo-Soyuz crews also planted a grove in Moscow, and I hope to visit it one day.
James Patrick Kelly.
Joe Haldeman.
Patrick O'Leary.
Christine Mains.
Margaret McBride.
Mark Wingenfeld.
Andy Miller.
Elizabeth Hand and John Kessel.
Brett Cox and Jeanne Beckwith.
Daina Chaviano, Ted Chiang and Nalo Hopkinson.
David Lunde and Patricia McKillip.
Judith Clute and Ellen Datlow.
Bill Clemente, Donald Morse and Ellen Klages.
Sydney and Jim Casey.
Sydney and Rick Wilber.
Sydney with Jeanne Beckwith, Ellen Datlow, John Kessel and Brett Cox.
Sydney admires Margaret McBride's pin.
Sydney with Jacob Weisman and John Kessel.
Stefan Hall scares Marc Petersen.
Elizabeth Hartwell tries to tow dad David back to the room to change before someone takes his picture.
Edward James poses for Patrick O'Leary's cell-phone camera.
John Clute reacts to my saying, "John, you're just like Brian Aldiss!" -- by which I meant, they both tend to turn their heads and open their mouths just before the flash goes off.
Stacie Hanes is rightly skeptical.
Alex Irvine and Lindsay Kaplan put their heads together.
Gay Haldeman shows Rusty Hevelin no respect.
Ted Chiang explains all, but Daina Chaviano is distracted.
Brian Aldiss implores passers-by to take a photo of him and Amelia Beamer.
Gay Haldeman and Gary Wolfe flash the crowd.
Jeanne Beckwith beams.
Joseph Berlant, chair of the 2007 World Fantasy Convention, shows that power has gone to his head.
Charles Brown beats me for not being Sydney.
Brian Aldiss is haunted by Bernie Goodman.
Stanford University student Natty Bokenkamp, winner of this year's Dell Magazines Award for undergraduate science fiction and fantasy writing, with his editor, Sheila Williams.
Peter Halasz tells Brian Aldiss how things are done in Canada.
I am told that Engle's Bologna originated on the Engle farm just west of town. It tastes more like salami than bologna. It seems a shame to hide the taste by putting it on a sandwich with mustard and cheese; I eat it thick-sliced on Triscuits. In season, you can get deer bologna at B&B, too.
B&B Country Meats is on Route 936, a.k.a. Upper Georges Creek Road, at the foot of Welsh Hill. From I-68, take the Route 36 exit toward town, then the first left onto Cherry Lane, then turn right at the stop sign.
By 11:44, the rainbow effect had all but disappeared.
Little did I know, when I bought a Handy Can of WD-40, just how handy it was! Look at the grand claim on the back.
Shoot, we ought to send cases of it to the White House, to Capitol Hill, to the Pentagon ...
