“Marvelous girl. Crazy as a bedbug.”

That was director Howard Hawks's description of Carole Lombard. Maus and I have watched a handful of her movies over the last few weeks — including that rare Hitchcock comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a surprisingly engaging melodrama called In Name Only, and the outrageous My Man Godfrey (second only to Bringing Up Baby in the screwball comedy genre).

What a woman. Like Myrna Loy and Claudette Colbert, she was one of those vampish, seductive beauties of the silent era whose comedic talents weren't appreciated until the advent of dialogue separated the talent from the pretty-faces (1920s-era photos of Lombard suggest a misplaced emulation of Marlene Dietrich).

After 10 years and nearly 50 pictures—and a brief marriage to William Powell—the career of the real Carole Lombard took off in 1934 with her fireball performance in Hawks's rolling comedy Twentieth Century. Over the next eight years, she would work with (and upstage) all of Hollywood's top leading men: John Barrymore, Frederic March, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Montgomery, Fred MacMurray, even ex-husband William Powell (whom she described as “the only intelligent actor I've ever met”). In 1939 she married “King of Hollywood” Clark Gable.

Both on and off the set, she was known for her generosity and compassion, as well as her outrageous sense of humor. In 1942, shortly before the release of Ernst Lubitsch's brilliant To Be or Not to Be, Carole was returning to California from a war bonds tour when she was killed in a plane crash at age 33. FDR posthumously awarded her the Medal Of Freedom for her sacrifice. Heartbroken, Clark Gable didn't work for three years, and his film career never fully recovered.

Lombard had a very rare kind of beauty — when still, she had that classical, Garbo-like elegance; in motion, she erupted into an unstoppable, fast-talking, kinetic delight. Her voice was light and captivating, her comic delivery devastating. Her physical attractiveness was concentrated almost entirely into her eyes and her mouth (every time I see her, I can't help but notice the striking physical resemblance to this familiar face).

If you haven't seen Twentieth Century, My Man Godfrey, or To Be or Not to Be, get thee to a video store. Watching Carole Lombard is akin to laughing so hard champagne shoots out your nose.

34

I can't say why, exactly, but 34 strikes me as a rather attractive number. Looks good on paper. Not particularly significant in any mathematical sense, but it seems like a nice balanced figure, with its sequential digits and that low-middleness it has about it. I'll have to ask my synesthetic friend Laddle how 34 "translates" color-wise... probably a nice mix of dark blue and green, maybe on a dark red background. Solid, strong colors. Good number.

So, to put the last year of my low 30s into historical context, a look at what some of my heroes and influences were up to at age 34:

• Already a celebrated humorist known for his lectures on life on the Mississippi and his adventures out West, and following the widespread popularity of his first published essay, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," Mark Twain published his first book, Innocents Abroad, at age 34.
  
  
• Wyatt Earp turned 34 the day after his brother Morgan was murdered in Tombstone in retaliation for his role in the OK Corral gunfight; Wyatt spent his birthday assembling a band of allies to help him escort his brother's body to the Tucson train depot, where he would kick off his bloodbath of revenge by brutally murdering Frank Stilwell.
  
  
• At 34, Edward Hopper had set aside his painting career for work as a commercial illustrator. He wouldn't achieve any measure of success with his brush until his 40s, when he turned out one of his first recognized masterpieces, House by the Railroad (which served as Hitchcock's inspiration for the Bates mansion in Psycho).
  
  
• Suffering from alcoholism, depression, and a failing marriage, Buster Keaton had just completed his final masterpiece, The Cameraman, and was working on what would be his last silent picture, Spite Marriage, when he turned 34 in October, 1929 — his loss of creative control over his films since his move to MGM meant his decade of unparalleled cinematic brilliance was effectively over.
  
  
• Alfred Hitchcock had just completed Waltzes from Vienna when he turned 34, and was starting work on his first production of The Man Who Knew Too Much, which (along with The 39 Steps the following year) would propel him into preeminence as the director of taut British thrillers. He was still six years away from Hollywood.
  
  
• At age 34, John Steinbeck had just published his first successful novel, Tortilla Flat. He had also started attending Marxist political meetings in San Francisco with his wife, Carol Henning, and was working on his next novel, In Dubious Battle, which reflected his strong socialist leanings at the time.
  
  
• Before he left Hollywood to pilot bombers in World War II, Jimmy Stewart had already secured a permanent spot on the A-list with films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Philadelphia Story (for which he won his first and only Academy Award). When he turned 34 in May, 1942, he was already training bomber crews for the Air Force. By the war's end, he would fly 20 combat missions over Europe and receive the Croix de Guerre, Air Medal, and Distinguished Flying Cross. His postwar film roles became much darker, starting with the despondent George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life.
  
  
• Already an established star with four Best Actor Oscar nominations, Gregory Peck was filming one of my personal favorites, The Gunfighter, at age 34 (this is the film Bob Dylan refers to repeatedly in the song "Brownsville Girl"). And his best roles — in Roman Holiday, Moby Dick, Cape Fear, and To Kill a Mockingbird — were still ahead of him.
  
  
• Edward Abbey was 34 when he did his first turn as a fire lookout on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and started work on his third novel, Fire on the Mountain. At the same time, his second novel, The Brave Cowboy, was being filmed as Lonely are the Brave starring Kirk Douglas. Abbey was still six years away from his first foray into nonfiction, Desert Solitaire.
  
  
• After a handful of B-movies and a successful turn on TV's "Rawhide," Clint Eastwood hit pay dirt at age 34 when he left Hollywood to accept the lead role in, of all things, an Italian western entitled A Fistful of Dollars.
  
  
• In throes of a painful separation and divorce from his wife Sara, Bob Dylan channeled his angst into his songwriting, the result of which was the sublimely melancholy album Blood on the Tracks, released just before his 34th birthday (and his strongest work since Blonde on Blonde a decade earlier). He also started work on his first protest song since the early 60s, a tribute to imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter entitled "Hurricane" — the song that first drew me to Dylan.
  
  
• Tom Waits was 34 when he recorded Rain Dogs — arguably his best album of the 1980s, and my personal favorite.
  
  
• David Byrne was 34 when the Talking Heads hit the zenith of their (mainstream) popularity with the release of True Stories in 1986.
  

Frankylize this

This guy has a penchant for landing sweet gigs. I was commuting from South Tacoma to North Kirkland to write tech manuals for a manufacturing software company when the first version of Microsoft's Cinemania came out, and all I could think was, now THAT'S a job worth a 2-hour commute. When Cinemania closed shop four years later, I had made my way into the vast editorial universe of Microsoft's late-90s CD-ROM boom (editing road-trip content, a close second to movies in my book). Heartbroken at the prospect of a Cinemania-less universe, I penned a commiserative e-mail to that team's lead editor, one Jim Emerson.

Within a year, I noticed that Mr. Emerson had resurfaced with his own slick and sublime film website, the Cinepad, offering such delights as Plumbing the depths ("how the movies use plumbing as a pipeline to the subconscious"); a section of Twin Peaks analysis; beautiful tributes to Buster Keaton and Barbara Stanwyck; and the intriguing but unfinished Dark Room (best tribute to film noir I've ever seen, woefully abandoned in mid-construction).

Today, Jim edits and blogs for Roger Ebert, gets to vote in the decadal Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll, and even has a Razzie nomination under his belt. All good stuff.

But Jim's greatest contribution to modern civilization, oddly enough, has nothing to do with movies. Rather, it is his patented marvel of modern algorithmic convenience — the Frank-ylizer. Simply input your plans for the evening (dancing? boozing?) and your venue of choice (Uptown Club? Starlite Lounge?), then step up to the bar and name your poison (champagne? bourbon?), and ring-a-ding-ding — the miracle Frank-ylizer spits out the perfect Sinatra soundtrack for your evening.

The damn thing actually works (at the very least, it'll have you running to Amazon or iTunes to fill in gaps in your Frank collection).

Set em up, Joe — and leave the bottle.

Hang in there

Harold Lloyd was featured on TCM last night — I got hooked by Safety Last and stayed up late for The Freshman, and there are 2 or 3 more of his films waiting at home in the Tivo. Brilliant stuff.

Of the three "masters" of silent comedy, Lloyd had the most gumption. Keaton was always the calm center in an increasingly chaotic universe, protected by his perfect, immediate sense of logic and his innate understanding of the mechanics of things. Chaplin was a true clown and a mischievous rascal, dancing through his world, flirting and teasing and finding trouble, letting himself wobble between joy and despair.

Lloyd was all grit and determination. Unlike Keaton, he found himself mostly at odds with his surroundings — the universe was rarely cooperative, and usually quite hostile. Unlike Chaplin, he fiercely believed in himself and the people around him, giving him a naive but honest optimism and confidence that girded him against a malevolent world.

In the face of adversity, Lloyd pressed on out of sheer doggedness (Keaton was driven by necessity, or momentum; Chaplin by playfulness, desire, hunger, or spite). The harder Lloyd tried, the more the world would throw at him to trip him up — his climactic moments were not so much a test of skill as resolve. He was the kind of character you could easily transpose to the beaches of Normandy, the top of Everest, or the 2004 Red Sox.

Consider his most celebrated sequence — the climbing of the building in Safety Last. Keaton might attempt such a stunt if a lady (or dog) were in danger; Chaplin would do it to escape a cop (or dog). Lloyd finds himself in this position for no good reason; it's just a publicity stunt, and he's "filling in" for the real climber, who is dodging an irate policeman. If Harold can just climb one story, the climber will take his place and complete the ascent... as soon as he "ditches this cop." Naturally, each time Harold reaches the comparative safety of the next ledge, the climber signals him to ascend just one more floor, promising to meet him there.

As he climbs — slowly and clumsily, floor by floor — to progressively dizzying heights, Harold gets tangled in a net, attacked by pigeons, smacked by a board, caught up in a clock, and punched in the face. A mouse runs up his pant leg. His toes get stuck in a foothold. A helpful old lady informs him that what he's doing might be dangerous.

There's really no reason for Harold to put up with this, except that the crowd below is cheering him on, as are the well-wishers whose heads conveniently pop out of windows as he climbs. It isn't courage that drives him — he is quite terrified and fully realizes the absurdity of his situation. But Lloyd keeps going because at this point he's committed. The shame of giving up would be worse than the splat associated with a very different kind of failure. There's just no quitting in this man.

It's also worth noting that Lloyd did his own climbing in the film, even though he was missing the thumb and index finger of his right hand (and wore a prosthetic glove to hide this fact), suggesting that Harold Lloyd the man had at least as much sand as Harold Lloyd the character.

Another telling sequence is the climactic football game in The Freshman. Lloyd desperately wants to get in the game, even though the coach considers him worthless (earlier in the film, the coach offers him a position on the team as tackling dummy, which Harold accepts with gusto, clapping his encouragement to his teammates even as they pummel him mercilessly). Harold explodes with joy when he's finally called onto to field, only to be told to give his jersey to another player whose shirt has been torn. Harold looks devastated for a heartbeat, then pulls off his jersey with sudden enthusiasm, slapping his teammate on the back and running off the field clapping for his team. Always the right thing, even when he's being humiliated.

Keaton remains my favorite — he is the truly heroic one (and classically so), the selfless and serious man of action who could bend the universe to his needs. Watching him, you can see the makings of Jackie Chan, Indiana Jones, or even the acrobatic heroes of The Matrix. But I'd rather have Harold Lloyd as a friend or a neighbor.

Few people possess the kind of supernatural talent it takes to be like Keaton. Far too many people behave like Chaplin, masking their pain with playfulness. What the world really needs is more of the doggedness, optimism, and enthusiasm of Mr. Lloyd.

Worth reading: Roger Ebert's insights and reflections on Harold Lloyd in his "Great Movies" review of Safety Last. Excerpt:

I could understand why Lloyd outgrossed Chaplin and Keaton in the 1920s: Not because he was funnier or more poignant, but because he was merely mortal and their characters were from another plane of existence. Lloyd is a real man climbing a building; Keaton, as he stands just exactly where a building will not crush him, is an instrument of cosmic fate. And Chaplin is a visitor to our universe from the one that exists in his mind.

Maus loves me most

Look what my wife sent with me to work this morning. Oh sweet cheeses, you SO wish you were me right now. Trust me. Yes yes yes.

Outed!

My heart belongs to Georgia Jones this week — I mean Brooke! I forgot that she came out from behind the mask recently. As did Becky. (Wow. It's like that scene in Beneath the Planet of the Apes where all the mutants pull off their "faces" to reveal their purplish, bald, veiny, irradiated heads to their Almighty Bomb.)

Maybe that wasn't the best comparison to draw. Brooke, Becky: you both have lovely skin. Nice hair, too.

SO. It was Georgia Brooke who Nancy Drewed her way to this site, left a note on the door, and added a link from her own blog while this damn thing was still parked in the garage! I'll bet you already know what you're getting for Christmas, don't you, Brooke? Probably even know where Perry Mason buried his wife.

It's nice to be noticed. I'm just glad she didn't stumble onto the page while I was still using the lyrics to The Greatest American Hero as placeholder text.

Anyway, here's this, then. Ta da. Basically I'm picking up here where Tripod left off (one of our "pods" migrated east earlier this year; the other one has been too overworked to post for several months — I'll never let go, Jeff; the Top 5 will go on...), which means a lot of spewing about movies and booze and baseball and assholes in high places.

For those who have enjoyed Shmool's Catster diary, allow me to also present Memoirs of a Dark Cat. Shmool thanks you for all the fan mail & hopes his new organ of record meets with your approval.

Maus has given her page a makeover as well — let me get you started off right by pointing you to this recipe. Gott in himmel!

Speaking of recipes, here's one I should get off my chest right off the bat:

Urban Bourbon
2 oz. bourbon*
½ oz. Tuaca
Shake & serve up with an extra-long lemon twist.

*Sweet, smooth bourbons work best: Maker's Mark, Woodford Reserve, Gentleman Jack. This thing of beauty comes from the superb Atomic Cocktails: Mixed Drinks for Modern Times.

Statement of principles

Champagne's funny stuff. I'm used to whiskey. Whiskey's a slap on the back, and champagne's a heavy mist before my eyes.

~Macauley Connor, The Philadelphia Story

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

~Dean Martin

Let's get something to eat — I'm thirsty.

~Nick Charles, After the Thin Man

Now don't crowd me lady, or I'll fill up your shoe.
I'm a sweet bourbon daddy and tonight I am blue.
I'm a thousand years old, and I'm a generous bomb.
I'm t-boned and punctured, but I'm known to be calm.

~Bob Dylan, Please Mrs. Henry