Other Takes on the Stuff That Dreams are Made of

     

The movie version we all remember and treasure.

More than a decade ago ago, I was getting ready for bed.  It was late.  I was idly flipping through channels while finishing a late-night snack.  Then there it was.  On Turner Classic Movies (TCM)—The Maltese Falcon.  And I caught it only minutes after the opening credits rolled.  I was hooked.  John Huston’s 1941 directorial debut is one of those films you can watch over and over and it is fresh every time.  So, I watched.  Who needs sleep?

Then in the wee small hours, after Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade delivers the classic closing line to Ward Bond’s befuddled detective, “That’s the stuff that dreams are made of,” before I can finally pack it in I discover that next up was the odd Warner Bros. 1936 remake of a still earlier version, Satan Met a Lady.  I had never seen it.  Well, I wanted to see the sun rise anyway.

The Maltese Falcon originated as a serial in the pulp pages of a lurid magazine—The Black Mask.  It was penned by their most noted writer, Dashiell Hammett, a hard drinking former Pinkerton agent who had made a name for himself creating a nameless detective known as The Continental Op.  In the process he was re-inventing the mystery story into something much grittier.  Eventually it would be called the hard-boiled detective genre.  Out with the drawing rooms and genteel murders and in with the gritty streets, betrayal, flawed heroes, and brassy dames.

                                       

                                                        The pulp serial was issued as a novel in 1930.

In 1930 the serial was issued as a stand-alone novel.  It immediately elevated Hammett to the topflight of popular novelists, even though he would be moldering in his gin-soaked grave before it would be acknowledged as an American literary classic.

His character, Sam Spade, was a departure from the faceless operative of a giant corporation.  He was, like Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective.  But unlike Holmes his motives were purely pecuniary, his ethics iffy, and his methods by turns trading in betrayal and brutality.  In an uneasy partnership with Miles Archer, he operates a shady agency in a seedy part of town specializing in divorce, scandal, and perhaps a tad of strong-arm enforcement on the side.  His relationship with the police and authorities is  strained at best, although he has allies—most likely drinking buddies or former associates from an implied past.  Despite his general amorality Spade does have a rough personal and professional code which compels him to solve the murder of a feckless partner who he mistrusted and whose wife he was poking on the side despite any risks or temptations

The character and the lurid story, swirling madly around a McGuffin—in this case a fabulous gold and jeweled statuette known as the Maltese Falcon—were a natural for the new sound movies which could make the most out of tough, snappy dialog which Hammett delivered in, you should pardon the expression, spades.  Warner Bros., which was already distinguishing itself from other studios by its willingness to exploit crime and a little sex, gobbled up the rights.

By the way, there really was a Maltese Falcon, as described in the book and ’41 movie.  There really was an annual tribute of “one falcon” paid by the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V for bestowing the fiefdoms of Malta, Tripoli, and Gozo on them.  Known as the Maltese Tribute it was paid annually to Charles and his heirs for centuries—always as an actual bird, however.  No golden, jewel encrusted bird was ever sent and then lost to antiquity.

Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Danniels  as Sam Spade and Ruth Wonderley in in the 1931 Warner Bros. version.  The pre-code film was racy and a scene where Spade strip searches Wonderley made the Production Code Hayes office block a re-release.

Warners’s first stab at a movie looks like a dud when viewed today.  The camera work, dictated by the cumbersome and noisy Vidaphone process camera which had to be encased in a booth, is static.  The pacing drags.  The acting will win no awards.  Bebe Danniels as the temptress Ruth Wonderly gets top billing.  But the action and most of the dialog revolve around Ricardo Cortez as Spade.  Despite the Latin name, Cortez was a handsome, fast-talking New York Jew who was a hold-over silent leading man.  After early success in talkies, his career faded and he was relegated to playing mostly heavies in B movies.  The ubiquitous Una Merkel enlivened the proceedings as Spades loyal secretary and implied plaything.

Whatever its deficiencies to modern viewers, the film was a hit with audiences.  A few years later when Hammet was even a bigger name and rival MGM began producing the Thin Man movies, Warner’s tried to re-release The Maltese Falcon.  But the Motion Picture Code had come into play since the earlier release.  Code authorities refused to allow the release citing several sexually suggestive sequences—including a strip search of Wonderly by Spade and an acknowledgement of a homosexual relationship between villain Casper Gutman and his youthful stooge Wilmer Cook.

Instead, the studio settled on a remake.  But they felt that they had to even change the title to avoid a preemptive block by the Code Authority.  Thus, Satan Met a Lady was born.

The plot and much of the dialog remain, but the names of all of the characters are changed and the McGuffin this time is the supposedly jewel filled Horn of Roland based on a reference in the Medieval French epic the Song of Roland.  But for those of us steeped in the Bogart classic this is Bizzaro World.  To begin with, it’s a comedy.  Let that sink in.

Bette Davis got top billing but Warren William did most of the heavy lifting in a thinly veiled re-make.  To cash in on the popularity of MGM's Thin Man series, also based on work by Dashiell Hammet, the oddly cast film was played for comedy.

Warner’s reigning queen Bette Davis gets top billing.  But she has remarkably little to do but bat those famous eyes and play the temptress.  She is on screen for less than a quarter of the film.  This was just the kind of throwaway role that had her at constant odds with Jack Warner.  The real star is Warren William as detective Ted Shane. 

William was another Warner’s pre-code leading man.  Tall, handsome, glib and middle aged, he specialized in playing amoral businessmen and bosses in films like Skyscraper Souls, The Match King, and Employees Entrance.  He played the sort of a cad that women adored anyway.  His most memorable turn for modern audiences was as the prudish older brother of Dick Powell in Golddiggers of 1933.  By the time this movie was made he had carved out a reliable niche as the fast talking, close-to-the-line super-lawyer Perry Mason in a series of Warner’s programmers.  By the way, for those who grew up on Raymond Burr’s sort of stuffy and stodgy TV version, William is a revelation.

William’s Shane is basically Mason on steroids.  Glib and without an apparent ethical bone in his body, William plays it to the hilt while wearing, for some unknown reason, a black Stetson cowboy hat instead of a private eye snap-brim fedora.

But what really gives the film a house of mirrors feeling is the casting of supporting characters.  Villain #1, Joel Cairo as played by diminutive Peter Lorre five years later, here is lanky Englishman Arthur Treacher of all people as Anthony Travers.  Villain #2 vividly remembered for the film debut of Sydney Greenstreet as Casper Gutman is here grandmotherly Alison Skipworth as Madame Barabas.  And the teenage gunsel played by Elijah Cook Jr.  here is an over-sized oaf in a beret played by Maynard Holmes.  A very young Marie Wilson doing her best Gracie Allen cum Jean Harlow ditzy blonde is a delight as Miss Murgatroyd, Shane’s semi-loyal secretary.

Lanky Englishman Arthur Treacher took time off from playing butlers to play a heavy, the film's equivalent of Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo three years later.  William sported a black Stetson for reason's never made clear.

Yes, this remake was an odd film.  It makes nobody’s list of classics and Davis considered it the nadir of her career at Warners.  But I have to admit, it was kind of fun.  I bet if I had watched it with the aid of a little pot, like I used to watch late-late movies on my little black-and-white portable TV years ago, I bet it would have been hilarious.

But it won’t make me forget the delicious perfection of watching Bogie tell Mary Astor that he is “sending her over” because he “won’t play sap for you like those other guys did.”

Warning--1984 Wasn’t Meant to be an Instruction Manual

                                 

                                                        The suitably lurid American mass market paperback edition.

On June 8, 1949 George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel of totalitarianism triumphant Nineteen Eighty-—usually called simply 1984— was published in London.

Eric Arthur Blair a/k/a Orwell was at the time a 45 year old English writer who was born to a civil servant in India.  After a largely unhappy public school education back home—a private, residential academy to Americans—he returned to the orient as a policeman in Burma.  He was an outsider among his British colleagues there, preferring to explore the country, learn the language and culture.  He was soon sympathetic to the colonial people and alienated from his own Empire and career.

In the mid 1920’s Blare left the service and moved to Paris, the scene of a well-known expatriate community of writers and artists.  Even there, he spent more time with the French working class than with the self-exiled intellectuals. After returning to England, he based himself mostly at his parent’s comfortable suburban home while making frequent forays into the poverty-stricken London East End.  He tried to live the life of the poor at intervals, for instance as a Kentish hops picker.

Blare began to write about his experiences while teaching school.  His first book Down and Out in Paris and London an account of his life as a self-described tramp was published in 1933 under the nom de plume Orwell to avoid embarrassment to his family.

                                

                                                Eric Blair a/k/a George Orwell as a young man.

He published a novel and then a memoir of his Burma years in America but was only slowly establishing himself as a writer.  He knocked around London working part time in a bookstore, rooming with old friends, and then taking a walking tour of the industrial north, then in the depths of the Depression.  He attended meetings of both Oswald Mosley’s Black Shirt fascists who deeply offended him and of the Communists whose cause appealed to him even as their authoritarian methods left him queasy.  The result of that trip was The Road to Wigan Pier, published by the Left Book Club in 1937.  It contained a frank avowal and defense of Socialism while describing his journey from a middle class upbringing to it.  But he was not uncritical of the left and raised questions about barriers to a truly egalitarian society.  His publisher was so afraid that those critiques would not be met well by the left, that he inserted his own apologetic forward in the printed edition.

By the time the book came out Orwell had traveled to Spain to fight fascism.  Arriving in Catalonia he enlisted in the militia of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista—POUM, a Trotskyist Communist Party that was then in coalition with the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, a wing of the Spanish Communist Party, which was backed by Soviet Union.  All were fighting Federico Franco’s Falange forces under a supposedly united Republican banner.

Orwell is the tall man in the back row of this group of international volunteers in the POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War.

Catalonia and its capital Barcelona were the most secure ground of the Republic.  The coalition, largely led by the CNT was firmly in control, well-armed, and the economy, including a vigorous industrial sector and agriculture had been re-organized in worker and peasant co-operatives.  The province was able to send troops to other fronts and provide arms and food to the cause.  It was the heart of the Republic, operating along non-authoritarian communal lines.

Orwell’s experiences in Spain would forever change the idealistic young man.  In his first winter there, he was posted to a quiet sector and experienced mostly discomfort and boredom.  He yearned to get into the fight.  Returning to Barcelona he decided to ask for a transfer to the International Brigade so that he could get to the front around Madrid.  But in May of 1937, street fighting broke out in the city as the Communists attacked POUM, who it labeled as “objectively fascist” for supporting revolutionary reform of society even as the war was pursued.  In this they were allied with the CNT.  But on other issues they clashed with the Anarchists.  Orwell laid low during the fighting, aghast at the breach of solidarity as the war against fascism still raged at the front.

He decided to return to the with the Aragon front with the POUM militia rather than wait for the call from the Communists, who he now deeply mistrusted.  There he was wounded in the throat by sniper fire.  After nearly bleeding to death.  He was evacuated back to Barcelona where his wife managed to join him from England.  There the situation deteriorated even further.  The Communists had the upper hand and outlawed POUM.  They were rousting and imprisoning members, especially international volunteers like Orwell.  He had to go into hiding. 

In July Orwell and his wife managed to escape across the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean village of Banyuls sur Mer, France and from there to England.  He escaped just in time.  On July 15 he was charged in abstencia by the Communist Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason along with POUM leaders with “rabid Trotskyism.”  His trial was held in October.  Had he been in attendance he would have been found guilty and executed.  Orwell was recovering in French Morocco at the time and noted that the trials were “only a by-product of the Russian Trotskyist trials and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press.”

Orwell’s health was nearly broken by his experience, as he was nursed back to health he processed his experience in writing.  He concluded that authoritarianism of the left and right were mirrors of each other and equally evil. 

Homage to Catalonia was published in 1939 and was immediately attacked by the British Communist press and much of the left that was still sympathetic to them.  The opinion at home was the Communists were the heroes of the Spanish Civil War and that POUM and the CNT sabotaged the war effort by demanding immediate revolutionary reform instead of concentrating on the war effort.  In fact, as Orwell recognized the Communists concluded that it was better to lose the war in Spain than allow a successful alternative revolutionary system to arise.  The book sold poorly.  It is now considered a classic by the libertarian left.

With Britain’s entry into World War II, Orwell struggled to join the effort.  He was rejected by the military and for most active work because he contracted tuberculosis in Spain.  It took until 1942 to get a post with the BCC in charge of cultural programing to be aired in India to counter Japanese propaganda there.  He was not comfortable as a bureaucrat and left the service after two years to concentrate on writing his parable of fascism, Animal Farm.

                                         

                                                      Orlwell's barn yard fable of fascism was his fist critical and popular success.

Animal Farm was Orwell’s first commercial success and sales helped make him financially secure for the first time since his youth.  But his health continued to deteriorate.  He worked desperately on the manuscript for Nineteen Eighty-four. 

In this future world Britain was just part of one of three warring totalitarian regimes that between them control the world.  England is now Airstrip One of Oceania which is at war with Eurasia and Eastasia.  Oceania is supposedly led by Big Brother, the hero of the revolution which followed an earlier worldwide war whose image is everywhere along with the admonition that “Big Brother is Watching.”  But Big Brother may not even exist—he may just be a figurehead.   The official ideology of Oceania is EnglishSocialism or IngSoc in the official language New Speak.  But the system is socialism in no recognizable way.  Instead, it is a total surrender of the individual to the state enforced by constant surveillance.

Big Brother from the 1954 film version staring Edmund O'Brien.

Protagonist—hero is too strong a word—Winston Smith is a minor functionary in the Ministry of Truth whose growing doubts about the system make him yearn for rebellion.  As Animal Farm was about fascism, Nineteen Eighty-four was clearly an extrapolation of Stalinism.  The book was a success.  In some ways it stoked the Anti-Communism that was sweeping the West, particularly America.

                                 

                                                 New Speak--a perfect model for Trump Speak.

But the real enemy was totalitarianism of any sort.  In America anti-Communism was veering dangerously close to totalitarianism itself.  Enforced conformity and the unchecked power of the security establishment were the hallmarks of post-war America.

Orwell, his health finally collapsing entirely, only tasted the beginning of the influence his novel would have.  He died on January 21, 1950 in London.

77 years after the fact, the technology of the surveillance state described by Orwell has become a reality.  A new hobgoblin—terrorism—is now the excuse to unleash that technology on the citizenry.  Surveillance cameras are everywhere, the cell phones in everyone’s pockets become personal tracking devices, the National Security Agency seems to have the power and the capability to monitor all Americans’ phone usage, e-mail, and web surfing habits. 

Now in the era of alternative facts and Trumpian double talk, New Speak is fast becoming reality as well.

As a popular Facebook meme has it, “1984 was meant to be a warning, not a blueprint.”

A Snapshot of Metra Purgatory—Very Short Murfin Verse

 

Photo by Harold Rail.

My good friend Harold Rail, photographer and videographer extraordinary, posted the image above on his Facebook page in June 2017.  I was stunned.  Not only was it in some sad ways reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, but it spoke loudly to me about the world we now live in.

Many Chicagoans will recognize the scene—the glassed-in waiting area on the platform of the Metra commuter station serving the North and Northwest suburbs.  That platform and the train sheds are all that is left of what was once the Chicago & Northwestern Station.  The rest of the once imposing limestone structure was razed in 1984 and replaced with the glass-and-steel 42-story Citicorp Center completed there in 1987.  The bottom three stories were occupied by a new station which was renamed the Ogilvie Transportation Center in 1997, two years after the C&NW merged into the Union Pacific Railroad and surrendered its historic identity.

Today tens of thousands of commuters, and other cattle including some Amtrak passengers pass through the gleaming edifice which is lined with shopping opportunities and a food court worthy of any suburban mall.  They take escalators up to the platform level where there are ticket windows, more shops and kiosks, plenty of flashy illuminated advertising, and a sad little bar that serves over-priced drinks and which is jammed during evening rush hours.  They read arrival and departure times on airline terminal-like video monitors and rush through a bank of doors to the platform and 16 tracks where the locomotives wait with their stainless steel cars in the dim tunnel.

Just inside those doors is the waiting area for those with time to kill before their train.  In off peak hours and on weekends trains can run two hours or more apart leaving plenty of idle time for those who miscalculated and drunks who missed the last one.  If there are any delays at rush hour the little room is quickly overwhelmed, and it doesn’t take long before thousands are spilling over the platforms and out into the waiting commercial arms of the station.

Once upon a time weary travelers could bide their time while pursuing broadsheet newspapers and perhaps getting their shoes shined in the upper-level stately waiting room lined with green marble columns, measuring 201 by 202 feet and rising 84 feet to its barrel-vaulted ceiling.

Metra Purgatory

Inspired by a Harold Rail photograph

 

The holding pen.

Always dirty.

A shrunken dream.

Once there were waiting rooms like cathedrals.

 

—Patrick Murfin

Fighting Nazism On Normandy Beaches 82 Years Ago was the Biggest Undertaking in the History of the World

 Note—Ever relevant as we face domestic Nazis, Fascists, and White Supremacists at home and the Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds us that naked aggression and war crimes are no longer unthinkable in Europe today.  We revisit this annual reminder.

When it comes to World War II, certain dates are etched indelibly into the American consciousness, even occasionally piercing the historical unawareness of young people now generations removed from the events.  December 7, Pearl Harbor Day is one.  August 6 when the U.S. dropped the first Atomic Bomb making the end of the war with Japan inevitable is another.

So is June 6, known without further explanation as D-Day.

On June 6, 1944 the Allies invaded Nazi occupied France under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is the iconic event of World War II in the American memory. 

 

 American troops pinned down on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.

It was the largest coordinated movement of men, arms, and materiel in history and had to be conducted in enough secrecy to surprise the Germans who had at least 55 divisions in France while the Allied effort could only put 8 ashore to secure the beachhead on the first day.

Nearly 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen were involved in the total Operation Overlord, including those landed after the first day.  195,000 Naval personnel manned 6,039 vessels including 1,200 warships and 15 hospital ships.  The United States alone shipped 7 million tons of supplies, 14 billion pounds of material including 448,000 tons of ammunition.

Air operations in support of D-Day, which began in April, included 14,000 missions with a loss of 2000 aircraft and 12,000 airmen before the landing.  127 planes were lost on D-Day alone.

 

 British airborne troops loading a glider for their mission to be dropped behind the German beach defenses and secure roads and bridges inland.

On June 6th U.S. casualties were reported as 6,603 including 1,465 dead.  While these are awful numbers, there were several Civil War battles with greater dead.  The Soviets suffered more single day casualties four or five times.  And losses per men engaged in some Pacific landings were more than 5 times as high.  Total allied casualties that day among U.S., British, Canadian, Free French, and Polish troops are estimated to be in excess of 10,000.  German losses are less well documented but are estimated between four and nine thousand. 

After the beachhead was secured hundreds of thousands of men and tons of supplies landed across those sands because the Allies did not control any deep-water French port for weeks.  By July 14 over a million men had come ashore. 

 

 A fraction of the cost--American dead at the water line on Omaha Beach.

But heavy German resistance confined the invaders to a small zone around the landing beaches until a breakout began on July 25. 

Once free, the Allied advanced across France was remarkably swift.  Despite setbacks like the Battle of the Bulge in December and delays in getting a bridgehead across the Rhine into the German heartland, by the following April British and American units from the west met up with Soviet troops from the east.  Within a few days of that Hitler committed suicide, Berlin fell, and the German High Command surrendered unconditionally. 

 

 U.S. Army Air Force B-26 Marauder medium bombers fly over the invasion fleet to pound German positions.

It has been my honor to know several men who either fought on D-Day or who landed on the Normandy beaches over the next few days.  One of them was my late father-in-law, Art Brady. 

 

Centenarian vets returning for D-Day ceremonies were greeted by French school children at the Deauville, Normandy airport.

All of them are gone now.  Within a few years the last of the veterans of D-Day will go the way of the ghosts of Gettysburg and Belleau Wood.  The latter battle, coincidently, reached its peak on another June 6 in 1918 when U.S. Marines suffered their worst single day losses in history.

So much war.  So much grief.

Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for June 5 2026

 Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

                                                            Walking the Walk  

Pride Month up on us.  Celebrate as a critical part of Resistance.

Crystal Lake Pride Walk & Social  now sponsored by Crystal Lake Pride on Sunday, June 7 from 11 am-6 pm at Brink Street Market in Downtown Crystal Lake.

Woodstock Pride Fest--June 13-14 Annual family-friendly events celebrating the LGBTQIA+ Community. Multiple special events.  Pride Parade and the Festival on the Square 11 am to 4 pm.

June 14th: Happy Birthday NoKings--Sunday June 14, 2026 is the anniversary of the first NoKings nationwide protest against the Trump regime! We will gather again to continue our efforts to save democracy and show our patriotism in a joyful, peaceful demonstration. Our rally will be from 3-5 pm at the intersection of Rt. 31 and McCullom Lake Rd. in McHenry. Bring your signs, wear your creative costumes, and spread the message of love for freedom of speech and the right for all who want a fair and just America for everyone! As always, this is a peaceful, non-violent rally; respect the rights of all! Please make sure you park in areas not blocking any businesses, and remember to station yourselves only on public property! After the rally (or if you cannot attend), join the "RISE UP-SIGN OUT" Concert for the First Amendment at 7:30pm, a national broadcast to counter the fiasco earlier in the day on the front lawn of our White House.  Sponsored localy by Indivisible McHenry County.

                    

Ride/Walk to Leave a Light On--On and around Woodstock Square, Friday, June 19 7 pm.  Benefiting Break Crystal Lake Teen Center, Compassion for Campers, Community Connection for Youth, IMC--employment, education, health, and housing services, Jail Breakers, Lemonade & Advocate, Live4Lali, and Woodstock Pride.

Two Juneteenth celebrations:

Honoring Legacy, Empowering the Future presented by McHenry County Now.  Thursday, June 18 at 5:30 pm at the Cary Public Library.  Register here.

The McHenry County Juneteenth Festival will be held on Saturday, June 20, from 3 to 5:30 pm on Woodstock Square Woodstock.

Guests stocked up on gear and supplies at C4C's special distribution in Woodstock's Emrickson Park.

Compassion for Campers is back!  C4C was able to distribute our gear and supplies last Friday, May 30 at a special Stop Gap Day at the Hilltop Pavillion in Woocstock's Emrickson Park in cooperation with Stephen's Ministries. Warp Corps provided bus service from encampments in the Woodstock area and other providers like Live4Laly were also at hand. C4C was able to share and serve 16 guests.

Better news yet. We have secured a new base of operations and will resume regular distributions on Friday, June 19! We will be joining a new Community Resource Day coordinated by many of the former Willow Creek organizers and volunteers. Debora Anderson reported, "The McHenry County Mental Health Board has generously given us a temporary place in their offices, 620 Dakota Street, Crystal Lake, to host the events going forward while we continue to look for a permanent space to continue to host the event.  The facility has a welcoming intake area, wonderful office spaces, a dining area, and a shower!  There are a couple of things that cannot be provided in the space.  There is no way to do laundry and food must be prepared in a commercial kitchen." 

Many of the agencies and services from the Willow Creek events have already signed on to participate.  C4C is fortunate that we will have on-site storage for our supplies.  We will resume our regular schedule of distributions on the First and Third Fridays of each month

Financial support is critical to fulfilling our mission. The best thing you can do is offer your critically needed financial support to get us through this emergency.  Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .