NO. 17 IN A SERIES
BY BERNIE LYON

BY BERNIE LYON

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LOOKING WEST FROM HASTINGS AND GORE, LATE 1960s
BY JACK DALE
(FROM UNFINISHED BUSINESS: VANCOUVER STREET PHOTOGRAPHS 1955 TO 1985)


LOOKING WEST FROM HASTINGS AND GORE, LATE 1990s
BY L.B.

FOR LLOYD AND LUCY

NO.16 IN A SERIES
BY BERNIE LYON

NAT AT THE GEORGE TAVERN — SEPTEMBER 2009
BY BRITTA BACCHUS

At a time when many litterateurs were decrying the ugly American, Sinclair Lewis went the other way with his romantic depiction of a man called Dodsworth, a successful businessman who has recently retired to his home in the American midwest. But he's not there for long.
The real ugly American is Mrs. Dodsworth, a foolish, prattling snob who treasures the fact that she's younger than he, but probably not by much. She engineers a lengthy voyage to Europe with its cultured sophistication and proceeds to betray herself by horribly incremental degrees. It's she who wrecks the marriage through her assumptions, vanity and silly aspirations.
Dodsworth, 1936, on Turner's Classic Movies Oct. 21 at 5 p.m., is directed by William Wyler, whose legendary tyranny paid off with some magnificent portrayals, by Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor (the character actress Maria Ouspenskaya plays an Austrian this time).
One of the best lines: Astor's character is shocked to hear Mrs. Dodsworth accidentally claim that she is younger than she, though this is clearly not true.
Mrs. Dodsworth: "I hope I look as good as you when I reach your age."
Astor: "Oh my dear, you're almost bound to."
— Lloyd Dykk

EAST 52ND
BY BERNIE LYON

Imagine never having heard of the Marx Brothers and suddenly discovering them by accident. I only use the Marx Brothers as the obvious example. I've never found them funny, and that goes double for Charlie Chaplin. I'm more partial to Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton but there are two men who outdid them all.
One recent night came as a sort of miracle. Turner Classic Movies was airing three 1930/31 comedies by Wheeler and Woolsey, a sublime comic duo each of whom started out on Broadway. I ate up every minute, then googled them for more.
At first I took Robert Woolsey to be George Burns, then dismissed the possibility since it would have made Burns too old too young. It turns out Burns patterned himself after Woolsey down to the omnipresent cigar, vest and speech patterns. Bert Wheeler gave me another start: he's the image of Lee Bacchus, and I'm not just saying that because he runs this blog.
Wheeler and Woolsey were anarchs in the true sense. Immensely popular but almost unknown today, they ran afoul of the more priggish critics of the times, who accused them of being vulgar and deprived them of their rightful place as classics in the pantheon of American comedy. Vulgar they certainly could be. Woolsey eyes the legs of a primly coquettish woman who says, "Are you looking at these?" Woolsey says, "I had higher things in mind." They were pre-Code and would never have got away with this stuff after 1934. There's a long scene with Wheeler in drag (to escape a thug) in Peach O'Reno, 1931, in which a line says something about making a football team. Silent, Wheeler rolls his eyes saucily. It was one of many times that I burst out laughing.
Google them — you'll get some idea of what they're about though you'll probably get just a musical number. But even those were wonderful, and never overdone. Maybe write a letter. They were too great to be overlooked. Maybe they were penalized for being so flighty and air-borne. They make today's idea of humor look dull and Victorian.
— Lloyd Dykk

NO.15 IN A SERIES
BY BERNIE LYON

NO. 14 IN A SERIES
BY BERNIE LYON

SATURDAY NIGHT — NOVEMBER 2004
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
BY BRITTA BACCHUS
(Britta's blog can be seen here)

#13 IN A SERIES
BY BERNIE LYON

If it weren't for the fact that it's on so regularly, there'd be something temporally sadistic in the most current revival of John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (Oct. 1, 25, Nov. 3 on Turner Classic Movies). This is the one that's almost bent over by the weight of prestige: the 1940 dustbowl epic whose elements of sentimental fraud are all but overridden by aspects so true that they're virtually documentary. Even the synthetic nature of the sets, as when John Carradine, the preacher, comes stumbling into the windblown foreground, are somehow truer than reality, in the way that an opera set selects a certain aspect of what is real.
Try to overlook the "pore white folk" talk, the probable exaggerations of labor camp venality, the grossness of Ma Joad's bravely hearty uplift (though the scene where Jane Darwell dangles her youthful earrings in the mirror and registers a sudden shock at her ugliness is too eloquent to question).
And the scenes of Granpa (Charlie Grapewin) and Granma (Zeffie Tilbury) — both of them by now as nutty as fruitcakes — are practically unwatchable for their pathos. "Shore wud lahk to git me a mesha shpareribsh," says Granpa, who has to be force-fed alcoholic cough syrup before he can be made to ascend the beaten-up old jalopy.
Even at this time of their lives, there is far from any rest for them.
— Lloyd Dykk

UNTITLED — MAY 2005
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
BY BRITTA BACCHUS
(Britta's blog can be seen here)

PATH (WALL STREET) — SEPTEMBER 2009
BY LEE BACCHUS

EMERY BARNES PARK (YALETOWN) — 2008
BY BERNIE LYON
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BED — 2001
BY LEE BACCHUS

LANE — SEPTEMBER 2009
BY BERNIE LYON

SPY STORE (BURRARD & BROADWAY) — SEPTEMBER 2009
BY LEE BACCHUS

SHANE MACGOWAN
BY BRITTA BACCHUS
Britta's blog can be seen here

CUSTOM COZY — SEPTEMBER 2009
BY BERNIE LYON