Raymond Chandler Hated This TV Private Eye

by Stephen J. Gertz

“Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set” (Raymond Chandler).

A one-page, signed typed letter from Raymond Chandler on his personal letterhead to his Hollywood literary agent, H.N. Swanson, is coming to auction at Bonham's Fine Books and Manuscripts sale December 11, 2013. Dated August 8, 1952, and sent from Chandler's home in La Jolla, CA, within he scorns TV private eyes and a particular detective show. It is estimated to sell for $1,500-$2,500.

Here, Chandler, his prose always a fine rustic wine with acidic finish, allows the vino to turn into pure vinegar as he discusses a TV private-eye series that he considers the worst show ever, dips its lead actor into carbolic acid without the sweet smell, excoriates the crass commercialization of the show's sponsor, and denigrates the sponsor's product, apparently the worst of its kind to have ever been foisted upon the public.

TV is so bad he wants a job writing for it.

The letter's a doozy and grand fun. It reads in full:

August 8, 1952

Mr. H.N. Swanson
8525 Sunset Blvd.
Hollywood 46, Calif.

Dear Swanie:

Thanks for your wire and good wishes, etc. What's with the TV situation nowadays? Don't' we ever get any offers? There isn't a decent private eye show on the air. I read in the paper where Lee Tracy had made Martin Kane over into something fresh and beautiful, so I tuned it in last night, if that's the correct expression for TV, and if television has done anything worse, I am so happy to have missed it. Between the commercials I tried to study Mr. Tracy's approach to his art but was handicapped by having to look at his face, which on television seems to consist of some doughy substance or perhaps a soft white wax. His talent as an actor is considerable in the right time and place and would have dwarfed the rest of the cast, esthetically speaking, had they not already been dwarfs. He lights a pipe full of Dill's Best with enough enthusiasm to make you think the stuff is tobacco which, if my recollection serves me, it is not. One of these days they ought to try playing the whole program at the tobacconist's counter. I wouldn't be a damned bit surprised if they did, since the obvious destiny of this sort of cheap program is to be one long continuous commercial.

Yours ever,

Ray

 

Martin Kane, Private Eye was television's first detective series. Its roots in radio, it ran from 1949 through 1954.

"Private detective Martin Kane worked in New York solving crimes. Depending on the year, Kane was either smooth and suave or hard bitten and the cooperation he received from the police depended on the year. The only constant was Happy McMann's tobacco shop where Kane hung out" (IMDb).

This was the era in TV when sponsors owned the programs and called the shots. Product placement was the norm and overt promotion of the product within the program was standard. What a coincidence that Happy McMann always has plenty of smoking products from United States Tobacco Co. in stock and that Martin Kane asks for its Dill's Best pipe tobacco by name while he and Happy shoot the breeze and exposition between plot points. Might as well call the show Happy Hour with Dill's, Martin Kane and the story thrown in to fill time between pipe-fulls.

Hollywood Golden age actor Lee Tracy, who, along with William Gargan, Mark Stevens, and Lloyd Nolan, portrayed Martin Kane on radio and TV, took over the role on television in 1952. If his face looked like a  "doughy substance or perhaps a soft white wax," it was likely due to early television's poor lighting highlighting a visage aged in booze; Tracy was an "unapologetic bad boy, notorious for drinking, missing work, and being flippant to interviewers" (Bright Lights).

Early in his film career he perfected the manic man-on-the-make with moxie character that Hollywood and audiences loved during the 1930s. "Tracy was the definitive brash, wily, fast-talking, stop-at-nothing operator. He skated around in perpetual overdrive, jabbing the air with his fingers, spitting out his lines like a machine-gun, wheedling and needling and swearing you can take out his appendix without ether if he's lying (he's got you there — he had it out already.) He was homely and scrawny with a strident nasal voice, but you can't help rooting for his brazen, devious hucksters and reveling in his shameless moxie. He's a jolt of pure caffeine; watching him in action is like gulping a couple of double espressos. Audiences in the early thirties loved his snappy style and irrepressible irreverence; they loved him because he was nobody's fool" (Ibid.).

Dill's Best shag was, apparently, at best strictly from rugs and Raymond Chandler wanted to ream Martin Kane, Private Eye with one of Dill's Best Pipe Cleaners to clear out the gunk. But at this point in Chandler's career his career had gone into hiding. The year before writing this letter, his final screenplay, for Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, was produced.  He and Hitch fell-out during the production and Hollywood never called again. Chandler wasn't getting any offers, was in the midst of writing The Long Goodbye (1953), and, strapped, needed green shag in his pipe to keep pests away from his door.

It's interesting to contemplate Chandler writing a detective series for TV. Never an ace with plotting - his novels are almost incoherent in that department - he wished to write for a medium that, at least in its early years, was plot-driven. And then the sponsors: he would, without a doubt, have been subject to their whims and interference. I think it safe to say that if Chandler had ever actually written for television it would have been a personal and professional disaster.

MARLOWE, Episode 3, The Case of the Bottle Blonde

INTERIOR: Happy McMann's Beauty Supplies

 MARLOWE

Happy, from thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. She was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. I'm running out of quotes from my novels here, can you help me out, Hap?

HAPPY

You sure it was a real blonde, Phil?

MARLOWE

Only her hairdresser knows for sure. 

I'm going over there and put her on the grill.

CUT TO:

ESTABLISHING SHOT: EXTERIOR: Irma's Salon de Beauté on Hollywood Boulevard.

MARLOWE (Voice-Over)

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in...

CUT TO:

INTERIOR: Irma's Salon de Beauté. 

Irma is sitting on a grill.

MARLOWE (voice-over)

...I had her in the hot seat. 

I'd brought a bottle along for spiritual purposes 

and poured her a drink.

IRMA

Scotch?

MARLOWE

Only my bartender knows for sure.

IRMA
(after downing a long gulp)

It's like butterscotch. Goes down nice n' easy.

MARLOWE

It should.
 It's Clairol Nice N' Easy Natural Butterscotch Blonde, 

permanent with 100% gray coverage. 

Tones and highlights in one easy step.

IRMA

You got me, gumshoe.
 I thought I could cover it up.

MARLOWE

Not in this town.
The streets are dark with something more then night.
But not that dark.

Now, spill. And don't leave any highlights out.

IRMA 

(Panicked, shaking her hair)

I can't. They're permanent!

MARLOWE
(Grabbing her by the shoulders)

Take it easy!

CUT TO: C/U on Marlowe

MARLOWE

 Nice N' Easy. From Clairol.

And now, an episode (alas, not the one with dwarfs) from the show Chandler scorned, Martin Kane, Private Eye starring Lee Tracy. Kane doesn't show-up until 5:42 into the program. He is lighting his pipe, full, of course, with Dill's, the better to solve this pickle.

 ___________

Letter image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
___________
___________

The Glorious Future Of Detroit Under Glass, Including Television And The Hyperloop, In 1884

by Stephen J. Gertz

Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating Upon The Mistakes of the Church - The Mistakes of the Atheist Infidel and Materialist - God Not the Maker of the Universe - Progress the Evidence of a Merciful But Not All-Powerful God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of a Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter In Prose. Embellished with Nearly 200 Illustrations. Together with a Number of Fine Poems on Popular Subjects. Including Sketches of the City of the Straits - Past, Present and Future.

Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus (We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes”) - Motto of Detroit.

Current reports of Detroit's collapse are premature. Lyman E. Stowe, a citizen of pre-Motor City, saw the present in 1884, was pleased, and predicted a future for the metropolis that makes anything H.G. Wells ever wrote seem the product of a pedestrian mind completely lacking in imagination.

The first three of fifty-five stanzas to be recited to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

It's a future based upon electricity, chemistry, the abolition of ignorance, and the reconciliation of science and religion. It's a future told, for the most part, in poems that threaten the very existence of poetry. Scansion, smansion, who needs it? When you write fifty-five quatrains in praise of Detroit's present and direct that they be recited to the tune of Yankee Doodle, Erato sticks a feather in her cap, calls it macaroni, gets buried in poetical snowdrifts of thought and prays for a St. Bernard to find her beneath the avalanche.

Detroit in 1884.

Poetical Drifts of Thought is one of the many eccentric self-published works of American 19th-century imaginative writing yet it stands out from the usual crowd of crazy texts by sewing utopian literature, futurology, freethought, Swedenborg, Darwin, and social engineering into a crazy quilt that just won't quit. Lyman E. Stowe was a rugged individualist in the sea of rabid individualists that emerged during the Second Great Awakening in the United States, when the American ethos of individualism met evangelicalism and singular opinions and beliefs were tossed into a Christian fruit salad to present to the world a medley of motley ideas, many radical, in search of acceptance by someone, anyone - please listen!

The Flying Machine of the near Future.

Amongst the many visions Stowe has of Detroit in the year 2100 are air travel; television (“Seeing Distant Friends by Electricity’s Aid”); control of global weather patterns...

Elon Musk's Hyperloop.

...and travel by cars through underground pneumatic tubes. And you thought Elon Musk's Hyperloop was futuristic?  Late!

Food inhaled, not eaten, with acid-reflux vanquished.

Inhaling nutriment in gaseous form via electrical and chemical process.

How 'bout the replacement of solid foods with “nutritive gasses”? Combined with nitrous oxide for belly laughs?

Manufacturing clothes by gathering the particles direct from
water, earth, and atmosphere by electricity and chemistry.

Clothes may make the man but in Detroit's future man doesn't make the clothes. In a stunning blow to the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, clothing will be manufactured using a combination of electricity and chemistry to process particles of water, earth, and atmosphere into a three-piece, custom-made 100% merino wool canvassed suit with structured waist, single vent, hand-rolled lapels, padded shoulders, and handsome silhouette.

Preface as excuse for the book.

Typical in books of this nature, the author has his own ideas about book format and punctuation. Since he believes that a preface is nothing more than an excuse for a writer to rev-up before mouthing off, he calls it like he sees it. Then makes his excuse for writing the book.

Super-sized quotations marks lest the author forget them,
to be inserted by the reader where appropriate.

Stowe makes every attempt to be scrupulous with crediting other writers "but for fear that I might sometimes miss, I place these large quotation marks, large enough for all to see, and ask the fastidious reader to place them where they belong." In short, he leaves the copy editing to the reader.

Eden on Lake Michigan in the year 2100.

Current denizens of Detroit will be pleased or piqued to learn that in the year 2100 they will become peasants under glass, sharing life with hothouse flowers and exotic fruits in a greenhouse gotham where it's sunny, warm, and wonderful all year 'round.

Detroit in the year 2100, the City covered in glass and iron for
20 square miles. Heated by the internal heats of the earth, lit up
with electricity, with perpetual summer days and tropical fruits and
flowers growing all year 'round.

La dolce far niete aside,

All have a certain work to do,
Yet all are gents and ladies too;
All free from strife and toil and care,
They float and breathe the perfumed air.
Sweet music's swelling chorus rings,
And soothing echoes outward flings,
From cheering bands, their sounds inspire
Like sweet Aeolian harp or lyre

Here, Stowe apparently references The Funk Brothers, the uncredited and largely unheralded studio musicians who were the house band hand-picked by Berry Gordy in 1959 for Detroit's Motown Records.

The Battle of the Future.
Detroit's favorite son, Ted Nugent, at upper far right
(of course), attacks those at left (naturally)
who would undermine the Bill of Rights.

You'd think that one who envisions a paradise city under glass would avoid war - the results would be shattering - but no. Aeriel ballets with bullets n' bombs will still have their place as long as man has an immortal soul.     

"The mind is but organized matter, there's no immortal soul.

In a blow, however, to Christianity as we know it, Christian Lyman E. Stowe asserts that "the mind is but organized matter, there's no immortal soul," a strange sentiment from an anti-materialist but "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

"

Discovery of the Art of Renewing Life.

 

Then again, who needs an immortal soul when life can renewed as if a subscription to LIFE magazine? I see Ford's River Rouge factory repurposed, renewing life on an assembly line.

In what will be major news to the faithful of all monotheistic religions, Stowe asserts that God didn't make the universe and God's not All-Powerful. Then who, Henry Ford? (Ford thought so). 

Other books by Lyman E. Stone include: My Wife Nellie and I; a Poetical Sketch of Love and Fancy with Other Poems, Including Blank Lines for Autograph and Remarks (1895); What Is Coming is a Wonderful Exposition of the Prophecies and Comparison with Ancient and Modern Historical and Political Events Together with an Ample, Though Concise History of Money from King Solomon's Time to the Present (1896); Stowe's Bible Astrology: the Bible Founded on Astrology (1907); Astrological Periodicity: A Book of Instructions, Showing Man, Beast and Plant are Subject to the Influences of the Planets ... [which gives good and evil periods, which can be taken advantage of and be a benefit, not only to the individual, but to all classes of people (1907); Right Hours to Success (1907); Karmenia; or, What the Spirit Told Me, "Truth Stranger Than Fiction" a Series of Short Occult Stories, Real Experiences During the Life of a Man 72 Years of Age, Garnished in the Clothes of Fiction (1918).

All to be read to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

As for Poetical Drifts of Thought, "The book is what the title implies - 'Drifts of Thought.' You say you don't believe it or agree with it all. Well, I don't blame you, for I don't know as I do my self. Yet my theory is grounded upon logic that seems indisputable within the bounds of anything come-at-able.

"We all have a right to express our thoughts, and by free expression of our thoughts we learn from one another, but I must now say for the present, Good By. Good By."

See you later, alligator. Bankruptcy? Don't have a goiter, you Detroiter. This, too, shall pass - like that gaseous meal you just inhaled.

__________

STOWE, Lyman E. Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating Upon The Mistakes of the Church - The Mistakes of the Atheist Infidel and Materialist - God Not the Maker of the Universe - Progress the Evidence of a Merciful But Not All-Powerful God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of a Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter In Prose. Embellished with Nearly 200 Illustrations.. Together with a Number of Fine Poems on Popular Subjects. Including Sketches of the City of the Straits - Past, Present and Future. Detroit, Mich.: Lyman E. Stowe, Publisher, 1884.

First edition. Tall octavo. 319, [1] pp. Illustrated throughout with woodcuts. Publisher's gilt-pictorial green cloth over beveled boards.

Not in Negley, Utopian Literature, nor in Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature. 
__________
__________

William Blake Meets Batman

by Stephen J. Gertz

Garden of Love by Delphi Basilicato.

 In 2007, Letterpress II students at the Center for Book Arts in New York, under the direction of master printer Barbara Henry, produced Songs, a collaborative artist book in a portfolio of nine loose letterpress and hand-colored folded sheets that reimagined William Blake, excerpting twelve poems from his Songs of Innocence and Experience and illustrating them anew. The edition was limited to thirty-nine copies.

The poems included in this Songs for the modern age are: The Garden of Love; The Fly; A Dream; The Human Abstract; The Laughing Song; The Poison Tree; The Shepherd; The Tyger; The Blossom; The Sick Rose; Infant Joy;  Infant Sorrow. The compositor-printers were Delphi Basilicato, Amy Bronstein, Bonnie McLaughlin, Amber McMillan, Sarah Nicholls, Michelle Raccagni, Rosie Schaap, Louisa Swift, and Barbara Henry. Each sheet was signed by the individual printer.

Title-page.

William Blake's conceptual collection of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Experience, first appeared in 1794, a marriage of Songs of Innocence (1789), comprised of nineteen poems celebrating the human spirit when allowed to be free as in childhood, and Songs of Experience, twenty-six later poems in which he demonstrates what happens to the human spirit when the real world of adults intrudes and shackles us by rules and religious doctrines. He considered these to be the two states of the human soul. He illustrated the collection with his own engravings.

Blake's title page engraving sums it up: Adam & Eve in and out of the Garden of Eden. Blake was besotted by God and the Bible but not by the Church of Endland, nor any religion, for that matter. Influenced by the American and French revolutions, freedom of thought and imagination drove him; to him imagination was the body of God, the basis of human existence. It is unfettered creativity and imagination that bring us close to God, for that is what God is, the font of all creative endeavor. The mystic streaks through his work. He was the forefather of Romanticism.

Blake's original title-page engraving.

The conflict between spiritual freedom and imprisonment by religious dogma remains a constant. In Delphi Basilicato's contribution to Songs, a trio of superheroes, including The Dark Knight, confront a scolding priest with verses adapted from Blake's Garden of Love:

Priest: Thou Shalt Not!!! Thou Shalt Not!!! Thou Shalt Not!!!

Flash: Bloody fuckin' Christ...
           I went to the Garden of Love,
           And saw what I never had seen:
           A chapel was built in the midst
           Where I used to play on the green.

Green Lantern: And the gates of this chapel were shut,
                         And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
                          So I turn'd to the garden of love
                          That so many sweet flowers bore;

Batman: And I saw it was filled with graves,
               And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
               And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
               And binding with briars my joys and desires.

To Blake, it was the Church that corrupted the Garden, not Adam and Eve, and the Garden became a graveyard littered with broken spirits. To Dephi Basilicato, in Songs, superheroes - crusading, Christ-like angels, seraphim in capes and tights - are the only thing that stand between us and The Dark Church, saviors against those who would save our souls by crushing them.

In Basilicato's image artists are culture's superheroes, keeping repressive forces in check, the A-Team in battle against the bad guys, and Blake is Charlie, these angels' unseen, anti-Establishment chief, pointing the way toward enlightenment and resolution of the case.

__________

BLAKE, William. Songs. New York: Center For Book Arts, 2007. No. 12 of 39 copies. Nine folio sheets, each signed by the artist. Loose, as issued, in orange paper portfolio with white paper title label to spine.
__________

Internal images courtesy of The Kelmscott Bookshop, currently offering this item, with our thanks.

Image of binding courtesy of Center for Book Arts, with our appreciation.

__________

__________

The Misery of Edwin Drood: Bad Typography in the Movies

by Alastair Johnston

Once at the Monotype Conference in Cambridge I happened to sit at dinner next to the man whose job was to fabricate period typography at the BBC, and I told him how I envied his job. But I also needled him by guessing that he relied heavily on John Lewis’ book Printed Ephemera (W. S. Cowell, 1962) since I frequently saw the same posters on London streets in TV adaptations. He admitted that Lewis’ book was a good source for posters which he could photostat and then print out large and age suitably.

People tend to think of all British drama as originating at the Beeb, but there are also several independent production companies who have brought us the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes (Granada), the Catherine Cookson melodramas (Tyne Tees Television) and many others. In general it can be said of them that their attention to detail is superb -- perfect costumes, hairstyles and locations; when they are outdoors they do tend to gravitate to one or two places such as the Royal Crescent at Bath (The Wrong Box; The Duchess with Keira Knightley; Persuasion), but they manage to remove telephone wires and cover the road with dirt so you don’t see the painted “no parking” lines etc. Then they dress the set by adding structures to hide things they can’t remove, and decorate the walls with antique signs and old posters.

My dinner acquaintance must have retired because the new BBC adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, excellent as it is dramatically, is seriously flawed in its application of typography.

 This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, England’s most popular novelist. His serialized works (starting with Pickwick Papers in 1836) were eagerly anticipated all over the world. Dickens, in fact, pioneered a new style of writing with the serial, and nine of his novels appeared this way (in twenty self-contained parts which appeared monthly, each 32 pages long with an illustrated wrapper, sold at 1 shilling; by the end, you’d spent a quid without noticing it, and been involved in the ups and downs of some colorful characters for the better part of two years.) When The Old Curiosity Shop was in full flight fans became so agitated with anticipation that they lined the piers in New York awaiting the boat bringing the latest installment and, before the ship had docked, were yelling to the crew “Did Little Nell die?”

Two centuries later television serials have replaced novels in parts. In 2005, when Bleak House was dramatized for television by the BBC in a striking new version starring Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, American viewers couldn’t wait for the next installment to be shown on PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre. Andrew Davies’ adaptation highlighted the cliff-hanging nature of the original, while the direction and editing added post-modern touches to appeal to viewers who were used to fast cuts. Dickens was 58 and at the height of his fame in 1870 when he died of a stroke while working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which he had half completed. Like Jane Austen’s Sanditon (with which many writers dabbled, though not Margaret Drabble), the half-finished work has tempted later writers to try to complete it. (Curiously both works have a mulatta heroine in them.)

The manuscript is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and can be read on line if you can decipher the great man’s scrawl.

For the bicentenary, Gwyneth Hughes completed Edwin Drood as a screenplay, and it was broadcast this year featuring all the brilliant British character actors we have come to know and love (Alun Armstrong who was Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, Ian McNeice from Oliver Twist, Ron Cook from Little Dorrit) as well as an over-the-top Bollywood ending. Come to think of it Bollywood is the perfect manifestation of the Dickensian plot. Perhaps life in India is closer to the Victorian era with its caste system and splendor amid abject poverty.

Famously Dickens showed the seamy underbelly of English society at a time when Britain ruled half the world through military might and its powerful navy that reached from the Caribbean to Africa to India. And the vast English-speaking world responded with adoration of his rich descriptions and wild character studies. Reportedly Dickens would give a guinea to anyone who gave him a good name for a character, surprising one host who offered him a glass of gin and asked “Olive, or twist?”

However, there is a fly in the martini, as I will explain.

The titles are in Copperplate Gothic (designed in 1901 by Fred Goudy). OK, we will let that slide as “allusive” use, but we will not silently sit by when the OMNIBUS rolls into town and on its side are foot-high gold letters in ghastly Goudy Oldstyle (created in 1915).

 

The ludicrous memorial plaque to Mrs Sapsea, "admired" by the young clerk Datchery in the crypt, appears to be in Bookman which, technically speaking, could have been seen in Dickens’ time. But it is clearly machine-set and bears no resemblance to a hand-chiseled inscription. The histories of text typefaces and inscriptional lettering do not run in parallel.

The Drood family vault sign is routered in Copperplate Gothic and dated 1744. This is evidently wrong. While sans serif was initially reintroduced as an antiquarian style, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century. (Yes, I know Copperplate has tiny serifs but they are too small and silly to be taken seriously.)

Mr Grewgious’ signboard is in Times Roman (1931), which even lay people could spot as anachronistic at ten paces. This is appalling. Furthermore such boards would have been hand-painted & any self-respecting sign-painter would have used an ffi ligature in "Offices."

Captain Drood’s own memorial plaque is in a weird hybrid Garamond with what appear to be Bastard Baskerville figures. What the Dickens?

Mark Simonson, a graphic artist & type designer, has a segment of his website devoted to anachronistic typography in films. He writes, “it’s just sad to see such sloppy props. At least they weren’t in Arial and Comic Sans. It would be so cool if for once someone did a little bit of research and made props that looked authentic.”

Spotting typographic anachronisms is fun or irritating, depending on your mood. If those who tried to “out” George W. Bush as delinquent in his duty with fake documents from the Air National Guard had consulted an expert they might have proved their point a little more convincingly.
__________
__________

Hollywood Goes to the Library

by Stephen J. Gertz

The staff of the Greene County Public Library of Ohio has put together an entertaining video montage of library scenes from film and television. 

It includes footage from Seinfeld, Sesame Street, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, The Golden Girls, No Man of Her Own, The Shawshank Redemption, Philadelphia Story, Philadelphia, Harry and the Hendersons, Party Girl, Ghostbusters, Clean Shaven, Phineas and Ferb, The Music Man, Mr. Bean, Shadow of a Doubt, The Breakfast Club, Only Two Can Play, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Twisted Nerve, The Man Who Never Was, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, JAG, The FBI Story, Wings of Desire, Se7en, Harry Potter, With Honors, All the President's Men, and Strike Up the Band. 

Check it out:

__________

With thanks to our friends at LISNews for the lead.
__________
__________

Rocky and Bullwinkle's Rare Book Adventure

by Stephen J. Gertz

Bullwinkle: Hi-Ho culture fans! Today we journey into the fascinating world of rare books and book collecting.

Rocky: But Bullwinkle, you don't know anything about rare books.

Bullwinkle: Of course not. They're rare.

Rocky: So, how do you find them?

Bullwinkle: Watch me pull a rare book out of my hat.

Rocky: Not again...

Bullwinkle: Whoops, wrong hat.

Rocky: Or an angry first edition of Born Free.

Rocky: Why don't we go to a library to learn about rare books?

Bullwinkle: An excellent idea. Let's visit the library of a respected institution of higher learning.

Bullwinkle: Wossamotta U.

Rocky: I'm okay. But I'm worried about the cameraman.

Deep within the stacks of the Special Collections department of Frostbite Falls Library at Wossamotta U., Rocky and Bullwinkle consult with Lee Greenman, Library Director.

Rocky: Gee, Bullwinkle, Leonard da Vinci's Codex Leicester. I thought Bill Gates bought it in 1994 for $30,800,000. How did it get here?

Inside the fallout shelter beneath the rare book shop within the strip mall off the main drag of Hellhole Palms, California, the principals of Badenov Books ("If They're Badenov That's Good Enough For You") and their financial angel conspire.

Boris: Excellent news, Fearless Leader! We are now members of the ABAA.

Fearless Leader: The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America? You fool! They're trustworthy,  ethical, and know what they're talking about.

Natasha: No, Fearless Leader, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Albania.

  
Fearless Leader: Excellent! Finally, partnership with a fraternal trade organization of  evil Balkan no-goodniks with close ties to the very top of government by mafia. Our plan to conquer the rare book world is nearly complete! Did you get the check from Wossamotta U. for the Codex Leicester?

Boris: Yes, Fearless Leader, paid in full.

Fearless Leader: Excellent!

Boris: $3,800.

  
Fearless Leader: You idiot! How did you manage to sell a $30,800,000 book for $3,800?

Boris: Easily?

Natasha: It is my fault, Fearless Leader.

Fearless Leader: What is your excuse?

Natasha: Trade discount.

Fearless Leader: Let me understand this, Fatale. We offered the book for $30,800,000 and you sold it to Lee Greenman at Wossamotta U. Library for $3,800. That's some discount.

Natasha: He was worth it.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates, wishing to keep the whole caper on the QT, has sent a secret agent to Frostbite Falls to crack the case, with orders to be discreet.

Dudley Do-Right: Come out! Come out! Come out, little Codex, wherever you are!

Rocky: Gee, Bullwinkle, should we tell him where it is?

Bullwinkle: That will only make it more difficult for him.

Rocky: Why are you lying down on the tracks?

Bullwinkle: I'm tracking down the Codex Leicester.

Rocky: But we already know where it is.

Bullwinkle: I thought this was the obligatory scene.

 Rocky: No, that's the "wrong hat" bit.

Nearby, in a cheap room at the El Pollo Loco Lodge, Frostbite Falls' fast-food motel Mexicano con carne, Boris and Natasha plan the next step in their dastardly scheme to rule the world of rare books.

Natasha: Boris, how will we get Lee Greenman to pay the $30,796,200 difference?

Boris: What's this "we" stuff?

Natasha: You don't mean...?

Boris: Try not to enjoy it.

Later that evening....

Natasha: My, what a large-paper edition you have, Master Lee. I pray the first issue won't be its last. How much do we owe you?

The next morning, our heroes brokered a deal between Bill Gates and Greenman, who, innocent  of  all wrongdoing had turned lily-white, for the return the Codex Leicester. Gates reimbursed Frostbite Falls Library at Wossamotta U. the $3,800 it spent for the book and put a little smooge in Rocky and Bullwinkle's pockets, or wherever our boys stash change for parking meters.

And so Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose saved the rare book world.

Rocky: Golly, Bullwinkle, collecting rare books is really fun and interesting.

Bullwinkle: It sure is, Rock. I've decided to become a book collector, myself.

Rocky: What kind of books will you collect?

Bullwinkle: The works of M.F.K. Fisher.

Rocky: What's your favorite Fisher book?

Bullwinkle: The Compleat Angler.

• • •

Mr. Peabody: Thus ends another chapter of Octave Uzanne's Annales littéraires des Bibliophiles Estimés, Moose et Squirrel. What did you learn, Sherman?

 

Sherman: That outside of a dog a book is a man's best friend?

Mr. Peabody: No, that outside of a man a book is a dog's best friend.

Sherman: What about inside?

Mr. Peabody: Down, boy; don't beg the punchline. Now, go do your homework.

Sherman: Okay, Mr. Peabody. Want me to show it to you when I'm finished?

Mr. Peabody: Please. I'm famished.

_________

Apologies, admiration, and respect to Jay Ward and Bill Scott, creator and writer of Rocky and Bullwinkle, an American animated childrens cartoon television show (1959-1964), that presumed kids were smart enough to "get" what was clearly aimed to adults, and for many youngsters, this writer included, was a formative source that fostered a love of language and its possibilities as a playground for tongue and quill.

__________

For the Groucho-impaired, "Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
__________
__________