The Lovable Ruffian - James Cagney with Joan Blondell in Blonde Crazy (1931)

"Now the world owes me a living, and I'm gonna collect it, see." - James Cagney in Blonde Crazy

Pre-code films are spectacularly vulgar and this one is a humdinger!

I think until now the earliest Cagney film I'd ever watched was probably A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1935, which is brilliant, by the way. But I'd never ventured into any of his earlier films simply because they're a pain to track down. But I know a gal who found a way for me to watch all of these amazing old movies, so yay!

James Cagney was made for pre-code films. There's a certain raw, brutishness about him that you just can't get away with today. He's not even playing one of his infamous mobster roles in Blonde Crazy, he's just a guy who's an impressively foolish con artist and wow, quite the playboy!

If I met a man who drawled out "hoooooonnnneey" that way, I'd be tempted to sock him in the nose. Maybe that habit was common in 1931?

Let me expound on my reason for labeling James Cagney as The Loveable Ruffian.

Because I know that at this point he really doesn't sound all that loveable!

It's that raw energy, that wolfish twinkle, that I find repulsive, but at the same time, Cagney possessed enough acting chops to incorporate glimmers of regret, yearning, and genuine selfless love to make my label him as that loveable ruffian. He's kind of this way in most of his roles, at least the ones I've watched so far.

Blonde Crazy is entertaining because he's a guy who's always out to make a fortune anyway he can, even if it means selling his own hooch or pulling a fast one on visitors to the hotel where he works. Enter the plucky Joan Blondell, who I've never seen before but absolutely love. I'll have to track down more of her films, apparently she and Cagney were paired together quite often.

Anyway, Joan gets employed at the same hotel as a linen lady. Cagney takes an immediate shine to her, just as he would any girl who would get the job. Ladies man, like I said. But she'll have none of it. In fact, just as often as he drawls out "hoooooonnnnneey" she'll whip around and slap him in the face. I'm guessing that's what made him really fall for her? A girl who wasn't fooled by his tricks.

They do partner up as con artists, although she feels a bit guilty for it. Together they make thousands of dollars by conning suckers who can afford it. She finally has enough, falls for a good guy (or convinces herself she has), just as Cagney realizes he's in love with her.

The ending is quite the pip. I didn't quite see it coming, but I liked it, really, because it's a bit unpredictable, but also made sense.

One thing that could be either objectionable or admirable depending on your point of view is the pre-code era's take on sex. They actually acknowledge that it's a thing! They also acknowledge, whether they mean to or not, that men can be pigs. Perhaps it's my modern moralizing self looking almost 90 years into the past that sees this, but all of the men in this film, at some time or another, treat the women in their lives as possessions, something to be bartered or bought. That makes them pigs, but it was normal for men in that era to wolf whistle and eye a girl up and down as if she were nothing more than a hunk of meat.

Cagney's character helps Joan's character get a job and then he expects her to sleep with him. They didn't come right out and say that, but it's what he was thinking and required very little reading between the lines.

It's not the cleaned up version of Hollywood that sometimes gets presented. But like I said, I kinda admire that about really old Hollywood. They didn't put blinders on, just created movies to represent the morality of the era in which they were living.

I would actually watch Blonde Crazy again.

For one thing, I adore the absurdity of 1930s fashion. Some of it made perfect sense and was super stylish and some it was just insane, usually the ladies' evening wear. Sometimes I spent a good chunk of time wondering how the women held their gowns up!

Joan Blondell is delightful, just delightful. And Cagney's character is probably 50/50 turd to nice guy. All he needed was a little push in the right direction. And even when he realizes he can't have Joan, he actually turns his life around anyway. It's kinda funny.

If I were to label them as anything, I would say a realistic version of Bonnie and Clyde. It is the era, after all!

Read More

Pastor Frank Hogan: Why he took the "heart" from When Calls the Heart when he left

I find myself being very suspicious now, about Mark Humphrey's elimination from When Calls the Heart in the role of Pastor Frank Hogan. Now that my trust in Lori Loughlin (should any of us have trusted her to begin with?) is gone, I'm starting to feel that it was her idea to get rid of him.

I remember when she put out the call to "Save Pastor Frank," long after the decision had already been made to release him from the show. She would have known his contract wasn't being renewed, so why even bother asking the fans to fight for him? Except to give the impression that his going wasn't her idea and that she was upset that he wasn't staying.

We all know that Lori Loughlin wanted Abigail to be a strong, independent, single female. Just like almost every other woman in Hope Valley. I guess the logical thing then would be to get rid of one of the men who had "set his cap" for her, so to speak. I dislike thinking that she might have had even more devious intentions about removing the faith element from the show, but it's always possible that was her motivator too.

Keep in mind, I have no proof. This is just my theory, but right now, it sounds good to me.

I haven't watched When Calls the Heart this last season. 

Some might dislike me for jumping ship at the end of season 5, but I just can't continue. Some of it is probably due to Daniel Lissing leaving. You can't have your romantic lead die off like that and expect all of the fans to stay faithful. So by the time the Lori Loughlin debacle hit the news, I was already long gone. While I felt for the fans of the show and was horrified at her behavior, I wasn't invested in When Call the Heart anymore.

Why, you might ask?'

Because when Pastor Frank left so too did my love of Hope Valley.

Yes, all right, I liked Abigail and Frank more than Abigail and Bill, but that was never my main reason for liking the character. Frank was so much more than just a love interest for Abigail. He was the spiritual leader of the town. Without a pastor, that building Jack put together is just a school, not a church with a school in it during the week. 

I got tired. Tired of pretending that it was okay for there to be a church with no pastor and no Sunday service. Tired of pretending that I was okay with Pastor Frank leaving when his departure was so full of unanswered questions. Tired of feeling like the producers were avoiding giving us straight answers. 

I read Janette Oke's books growing up and they left a lasting impression on me. But there is so little of her books and her faith left in When Calls the Heart that, in a way, I'm distraught that the show is still running. We were promised a replacement pastor when Frank left. Where is he? I may not be watching the show this season, but I've kept up with the news about it and I know that church stands empty on Sunday.

Why? Why do I have to pretend that it's perfectly fine for a Christian television show to have all vestiges of its faith stripped away until all you're left with is a "clean" production?

I will always miss Pastor Frank. I miss his wisdom. I miss his experience. And I miss his redemption arc that made him feel so real and genuine. Christians aren't perfect. That's never the message of Jesus. Who does he approach? The hurting, the broken, and those desperate for a new way of life. That was Pastor Frank, a man with a past who had a hope for the future because of his faith in God.

Could When Calls the Heart eventually incorporate a new pastor? Maybe. But I'm not holding my breath anymore. After almost 2 seasons without one, I just don't have enough faith anymore. I'd rather watch a secular program that at least is honest with me about its motivations then one that pretends to be Christian but whose faith is such a thin veneer I can pass my hand right through.

Read More

Radio Theater: Orson Welles as the Count of Monte Cristo (10/1/1939)

No, you're not looking at a bizarre facsimile of Leonardo Dicaprio. Although I do find it strange that in their youth and based solely on appearance, Orson and Leo could have been brothers.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Orson Welles.
Most people probably know him for Citizen Kane and The Third Man, the latter of which his role lasts no more than 20 minutes and the former being a film I've not yet watched.
Instead, Orson Welles is my radio theater champion.
If you know of Orson but don't ever recall him playing the Count of Monte Cristo, you would be right, in a sense. He never performed as Edmond Dantes on the screen, but instead lit up the airwaves in a vastly abridged yet brilliant hour long radio play of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Performed October 1, 1939, Orson had yet to advance to the silver screen. He wouldn't move from New York to Los Angeles until November of 1939 when he began his work on what is, arguably, his most famous role in Citizen Kane. 
Instead, he's still in New York, performing every week for radio audiences.
There's nothing quite like the radio of the early Hollywood years. These performers were artists, really. Regardless of your opinion of Orson Welles as a person, no one can deny his epic, masterful voice. 
And he puts all of his skills to work in the role of Edmond Dantes.
I have never read the book. I admit it. I've seen the Jim Caviezel film and been struck by its morbid tragedy, but the book has always seemed daunting somehow. To have Orson Welles pare it down into an hour long performance staggers the imagination.
The story begins as a young and foolish Edmond Dantes trusts the wrong people in his life, young men he thought were his friends. Orson would have been 24 when he played Dantes, a little older than the youthful character, but if there's one thing Orson had, it was mastery of his voice,. He plays young Dantes as an eager to please, hopeful youth who simply wants to marry his sweetheart and live his life.
Of course, the next phase is the betrayal of Edmond by his so-called friends. It is suspected that he is a supporter of Bonaparte and he spends the next 20+ years imprisoned in the Château d'If, a prison island off southeastern France.  There's nothing more haunting than hearing a young man who has done absolutely nothing wrong, scream that he is innocent as the guards lock him away to be forgotten in solitary confinement.
After 6 years of utter silence, Dantes spends the next 6 months attempting to starve himself to death. At least, until a prisoner known as the Mad Priest, digs his tunnel into Dante's cell. The two spend the next 14 years in each other's company, saving Dantes from the sin of suicide.
When the Mad Priest dies of illness and supposed old age, Dantes switches himself with the body and when tossed over the side of the Château d'If, cuts himself free of the shroud and swims off to collect the treasure of Monte Cristo that the Mad Priest had essentially bequeathed to his young friend.
I'm prone to loving Orson when he plays supremely young characters. He imbues a certain whimsy into his lines that is just extremely attractive and charming. But there is nothing more terrifying than Orson as a vengeful Edmond Dantes, recently escaped from 20 years in a French prison.
You would almost think that the time spent in the Château d'If might have tamed the character. But not the way Orson plays him. Instead, Dantes is masterful, a man in his late 30s, performing a convincing masquerade as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo.
Revenge, of course, is enacted.
I suspect that the last half of the play might be the most condensed since we never know what happens to the villains who betrayed Dantes all those years ago. There's an intense, snarling confrontation when Dantes casts off his mask as the Count of Monte Cristo. But there is nothing after this point, which is probably good because I think one of the men commits suicide, another gets captured by bandits (maybe?), and the third goes insane. At least according to Wikipedia.
I do know that H. H. Holmes (the infamous devil of the White City), read The Count of Monte Cristo during his time in prison, but unlike Dantes, Holmes was GUILTY!
Ahem.
Orson's ability to move from youthful, wistful Edmond Dantes to the avenging devil Dantes is remarkable.
Think of it.
This is radio.
You don't have facial expressions or sweeping gestures to help you. The audience can't see them. All you have is your voice. And that has to be perfect, every time, if radio theater was your career.
If you get a chance, Audible has a 60 hour collection of Orson Welles' radio plays. I've listened to most of them half a dozen times now, and not all of them are classics, but contemporary plays, well, what would have been contemporary during the 1930s. But each of them gives a much more complete view of Orson Welles as a performing artist. Yes, he was excellent on the silver screen. So much so that I wish he'd gone to Hollywood sooner and acted during the 1930s. But if he'd done that, we wouldn't have his radio plays, and that is a sacrifice I'm thankful he didn't have to make.
More reviews of his radio plays to come.

Read More

Mount TBR - On the Shoulders of Hobbits by Louis Markos

Mount TBR 2019

Title:  On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis

Author: Louis Markos

Genre: Fiction

Publication Year: 2012

I thank Louis Markos for re-awakening my imagination with On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis. I've had this book in my library for 5 years now, but have never read it until now. I hate that I waited this long, but perhaps I needed to wait for such a time as this.

It's so easy to get bogged down in the cares of this world, of the corruption and evil we see around us every day. We live in a cruel and sinful world and it's a simple thing to be disheartened by it, but even though Louis Markos touches heavily on corruption and evil in his book, he doesn't stay there.

Instead, he draws the readers attention to Tolkien's masterful use of the classical virtues in The Lord of the Rings. To a lesser degree, he also chooses examples from C.S. Lewis' remarkable Chronicles of Narnia. He asks the question of why so much modern fiction is not fulfilling on an intimate level like it once was. The answer is simple; as a society, we no longer believe in "universal" virtues. Some of our knee-jerk reactions might be to deny this, but how can we? Everywhere we turn, people are encouraged to define their own truth, their own lifestyle, and their own virtues. Our world is chaos and there is no universal virtue to be found in chaos.

But that doesn't mean we're without hope.

In fact, Markos' rallying cry is that we return to literature that holds to the classical universal virtues because they are eternal, being: wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice.

This book was a return to my English literature classes for me. And, in many ways, a return to my Christian development classes, which were a requirement for my degree, and which ended up being some of my favorite courses during my college education.

I forgot how much I love literary analysis from a spiritual perspective. I actually miss that aspect of college. I was so steeped in literary analysis for so long that graduating from college and joining the workforce full time negatively affected me.

Somewhere in the last 5 years, I misplaced the ability to reason and discern from the literature I read. And that's where I have to praise Louis Markos for reinvigorating my interest in literary analysis from a Christian perspective. Because that's how I read, that's who I am, and that's how I need to approach life and the books that I read. There are reasons why some books powerfully impact us and others disgust us. What virtues are they holding to?

It's time to read On the Shoulders of Hobbits. It's time to demand something more profound from the stories we read. Stories can be fun and profound at the same time, without talking down to us or compromising the virtues we should hold dear.

Read More

Mount TBR - Henry Tilney's Diary by Amanda Grange

Mount TBR 2019

Title: Henry Tilney's Diary

Author: Amanda Grange

Genre: Fiction

Publication Year: 2011

If you read or watch Jane Austen, then you know Henry Tilney is the hero in Northanger Abbey. It's funny, but I was never really a fan of that story until I listened to THIS radio drama set from Audible. I absolutely adored their Henry Tilney, decided to re-read the book, and have been a fan of the story ever since.

Amanda Grange does a fair job of bringing the characters in the Tilney household further to light than Austen, simply because Jane focused on the heroine instead of the hero, per the usual with all of her works. I appreciated getting to know a young Henry and Eleanor Tilney before their mother died. Henry's inner dialogue is charming and quirky, just like him.

I don't always agree with Amanda Grange's interpretations of certain characters. I hate Captain Tilney, Henry's older brother, and always will. No, I don't think his heart had been destroyed by an early love that left him. I believe him to be utterly selfish, with no thought whatsoever given to proving to Catherine's older brother that he was in love with a fickle woman and would be better to find out now than later. Captain Tilney is a cad, there's no other description for the man.

I'm not sure how whimsical Eleanor would have been as a child, but anything is possible since her mother was still alive at that point. One thing I did love was getting to know Mr. Morris, the man who eventually was permitted to marry Eleanor. He's just this random name in Northanger Abbey but is given a character in Henry Tilney's Diary and I liked that a lot.

I've owned 5 or 6 of Amanda Grange's Austen retellings since May 2018 so I'm thrilled to finally buckle down and get at least one of them read. This book truly is charming, effortless escapism for the anglophile who craves Austen, but maybe from a slightly different perspective.

Read More

Mount TBR - From Barefoot to Bishop: A Rwandan Refugee's Journey

Mount TBR 2019

Title: From Barefoot to Bishop

Author: Rt. Rev. Dr. Laurent Mbanda

Genre: Memoir

Publication Year: 2017

I've never really been one to read a lot of nonfiction, but in addition to wanting to read more classics this year, I've also decided to work through my pile of nonfiction books that have been spent years on the lonely shelves of my bookcase.

Since I work for an NGO, I am always curious about those who have made the journey out of poverty. I heard about Laurent Mbanda through my mother who had read his book and gave a copy to me last year sometime. He is not a young man, so he was not a refugee during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Instead, when he calls himself a refugee, it is from his childhood when, in November of 1959, he and his family fled the first in a wave of massacres against the Tutsi people in Rwanda.

From that time on, Laurent Mbanda spent his life as a refugee. He lived in refugee camps in neighboring Burundi where they were accepted as a necessity but never truly welcomed. He knew hunger and hopelessness. He also found a relationship with Jesus Christ during this time. A child's faith is sometimes the strongest faith we will ever encounter and I am awed by the strength of Dr. Mbanda's faith during these hardest years of his life.

He knew early in his formative years that he wanted to go into ministry. So he strived to reach that goal, no matter the cost. Even if it meant illegally trekking 500 miles into Kenya to attend a seminary. These years were incredibly hard, but each year, each step he took, moved him further along the path God had set for him to walk. He ended up married to a lovely Rwandan woman and together they journeyed to Colorado so each of them could pursue higher education. While in Colorado, they welcomed 3 beautiful children into their home. 

Eventually, Dr. Mbanda ended up serving high up in the ranks of NGO Compassion International for 17 years. It was during this time that the Rwandan genocide of 1994 happened and he went back to Rwanda under Compassion's banner to do what he could to alleviate the pain and suffering of his people.

His time with Compassion ended in 2010 when he was pressed by the Lord to become Bishop of the Shyria Diocese for the Anglican church in northern Rwanda. 

This book enthralled me. To read of a man with such faith in the face of such trials is inspiring and intimidating in that I have never faced trials of my own, not like Laurent Mbanda's trials. How would I have reacted in his place? I don't know. But I'm thankful to him for telling his story. I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad I can share my profound appreciation for his journey with others through this review.

Read More

KidLit Challenge - Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis

KidLit Reading Challenge 2019

Title: Kat, Incorrigible

Author: Stephanie Burgis

Age Range: 8-12 years

Publication Year: 2011

Length: 295 pages

Official Summary

Katherine Ann Stephenson has just discovered that she's inherited her mother's magical talents, and despite Stepmama's stern objections, she's determined to learn how to use them. 

But with her eldest sister Elissa's intended fiancé, the sinister Sir Neville, showing a dangerous interest in Kat's magical potential; her other sister, Angeline, wreaking romantic havoc with her own witchcraft; and a highwayman lurking in the forest, even Kat's reckless heroism will be tested to the upmost. 

If she can learn to control her new powers, will Kat be able to rescue her family and win her sisters their true love?

Thoughts

Where in heavens' name do I start? 

Kat. That child has no more right being in a Regency novel than I would be in a psychedelic story from the 1960s. Why, oh why, do so many authors transplant the modern social mores into their historic literature? It never serves any purpose except to make me see red. I have no patience for such writers and so I'm afraid Stephanie Burgis was on shaky ground with me from the beginning. 

For someone who claims to love Regency England, she certainly disrespected every aspect of it that she could find in Kat, Incorrigible. Kat is the perfect, contemporary brat with no respect for her elders and no intention of ever acknowledging her failings. She'll be a charming little psychopath by the time she's 20. I'm stunned that neither of her sisters ever slapped her silly when she went off on one of her nasty little benders.

As for the rest of the characters, they at least fit into the concept of Regency England. All of the social graces are there, the propriety of character, all of those concepts are present in Kat's older sisters and the attendees of the house party. Frankly, if Kat hadn't been in the book at all, it would have been a much more enjoyable read instead of having to seethe my way through it.

I love the concept of writing Regency children's fiction since it broadens their horizons. But this is not the way to do it. If you're going to do Regency, do it right. Don't claim you love it by disrespecting every single aspect of the era from the courtship rituals to the expectations of society.

If I had a child, I would never permit them to read Kat, Incorrigible. It gives all the wrong impressions and would fill a child's head with nasty, rebellious ideas that are never apologized for and for which Kat is never held accountable. By the end, I pretty much loathed this book, which is a first for me since I love most KidLit.

To borrow a phrase from Emma's Mr. Knightley, "Badly done, Stephanie, badly done."

Read More