Tucson -- Part 2 -- November 6, 2020

If there's a "Tucson - Part 1," that means there must be at least a "Tucson - Part 2." This is it.

The Tucson International Airport is dead. Empty. The bars closed. Nothing open. Signs thanking us for "our cooperation during these difficult times." Whoever wrote that pablum and whoever accepts it has either not lived or has not read. Read Anne Frank to learn about "difficult times." Visit a "Holocaust" museum to learn about "difficult times." Ask the greatest generation (those few who are sill living) about WWII. It's too late to ask those who lived through the Spanish pandemic of 1920 and WWI. Ask the Vietnam vets. Yeah, these are truly "difficult times." What a bunch of malarkey calling the current "pandemic" difficult times.

Anyway, enough of that. Once I quit blogging, if I have any time left, I will read the current issue of The New York Review of Books. I doubt there will be much of interest.

A digression: someone asked me the other day why I had not posted my thoughts regarding the election. I replied. More validation: The New York Review of Books has nine pages of essays from prominent politicians and analysts on the 2020 presidential election, a Part I and a Part II. No need for my comments when such knowledgeable sources are writing essays on the subject. Seriously, I will weigh in once the results are finally known and declared official and one or the other candidate concedes. Spoiler alert: historians will get it "right" twenty years from now.

Years ago I tried reading Nabokov's Lolita. I believe it was finally published in English in Paris in 1955, and finally released in the United States in 1958. It was held up in the US due to pornography and US mail issues, or something to that effect. The dates are important. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was published in the US in July (July 16th, I believe), 1951. At the end of the day there is overt pedophilia in one of the books, less overt pedophilia (and maybe of a different type), in the other. I've provided a link regarding this issue in an earlier post. I'll re-post it if I remember.

Whatever. 

Years ago, as noted, I tried reading Navokov's Lolita. I couldn't follow and I was greatly disappointed in the lack of overt prurient, pornographic passages. I doubt I read more than the first few pages, and thumbed through the rest looking for something to hold my interest. Nothing.

Then, completely unexpected, I caught the Hollywood interpretation of the book. Part of the screenplay was actually written by Nabokov, and after the original director was fired, Stanley Kubrick finished the film and  is credited as the director. 

The movie was superb; whether it followed the book; and whether it handled the subject correctly is another story. The important thing is that the movie, and subsequently reviews found through google searches, led me to appreciate the book. I have a copy of the book now and that's my reading material for the month. 

It's an incredibly good book. Times have changed between 1950s and 2020s and it is obvious that Americans misread the book when it first came out. "Misreading" is not the best word, but for now it will have to do. This book could not be published today without being slammed by every critic, except perhaps Bill Maher who would continue to  remark how great it was. 

The movie's "Lolita" was played by a fourteen-year-old. The novel said she was twelve. The censors, or Hollywood, or the producers, or someone told Kubrick that a "twelve-year-old" would not be allowed to play the part. The youngest they could go was fourteens years old. I did not know how old Kubrick's "Lolita" was when watching the film, but she could certainly have passed off as eighteen years of age the in the black and white film, the costuming, and the hair. If one does not accept eight years of age, then certainly a mature sixteen years old. But definitely not fourteen years old (I'm getting old so perhaps my age betrays me) -- and certainly not twelve. 

Break, break.

On Thursday, I believe it was, the day I left for Tucson, it could have been Wednesday, TCM was featuring a 24-hour film fest with Lizabeth Scott. Wow, what a great group of movies. This was my introduction to Lizabeth Scott and I was pleasantly surprised. I watch two of the six or so movies starting Scott that TCM was featuring in that 24 hours. I was unable to watch all of them, mostly because I could not stay away for 24 hours. Four of the movies would air after 11:00 p.m. In addition, by the middle of the third Lizabeth Scott movie I was saturated with her and could not continue. That was too bad. Apparently her best, and her personal favorite, was going to air about 3:00 a.m. I'll catch is some other time.

I said all that to write about two things. 

First, wow, what a breath fresh air. Read her wiki entry. Died at ninety-two years of age and nothing scandalous one expects out of Hollywood. There probably were a few scandalous items but if they were, I glossed over them. The wiki entry tried to stir up one scandal, but it seems incredibly weak. Ho hum.

Second, in Dead Reckoning, Lizabeth Scott plays opposite Humphrey Bogart. Wow.

The dates are important:

• Casablanca: with Ingrid Bergman, 1942.
• To Have and Have Not: with Lauren Bacall, 1944, and by this time, Humphrey and Bacall were married;
• Dead Reckoning: with Lizabeth Scott.

The TCM presenter, Bob Mankiewicz, did not have to tell us that Lizabeth Scott was a dead ringer, a döppelganger, a spitting image of Lauren Bacall. It was amazing. Kudos to great Hollywood marketing, of course.

But where Bob Mankiewicz was wrong was when he said Lauren Bacall would have been better suited to play opposite in Bogart in Dead Reckoning. Mankiewicz is dead-wrong. Maybe more on this later. 

My party is arriving.

I will come back later to proofread for typos.