Corona, Fausto, Albert
There seems to be a mixed message in the medical profession’s plea for supplies, including masks, and its telling the general public it is useless to wear one. I’m not wearing one… In blocking the latest Corona relief bill. Dems seem to be adhering to one of the left’s mantras — “Never let a crisis go to waste.”… On my morning walk I could hear a poor guy’s hacking cough from a block away. He was headed in the direction of Coney Island Hospital. I put my gloved hand to my mouth and nose, just in case, then wondered if I’d sprayed them with Lysol after coming home yesterday. Such is life at present… Here’s an attention grabbing headline from nypost.com: “Supercomputer finds 77 drugs that could halt coronavirus spread.” Unfortunately, testing will take months… A poll from Monmouth University revealed 50% of respondents said President Trump has done a good job handling the outbreak, 45% said bad. 45% said the media were doing a good job reporting on the outbreak, 43% bad, roughly 10% said mixed or depends. 42% said congress has done a good job, 37% bad… This headline from foxnews.com says it all about politics: “House Dems’ emergency coronavirus stimulus bill includes $35M for Kennedy Center.”
From eight until ten last night, until Manifest aired, I had the remote control in overdrive, sampling from several stations. One of the PBS stations was running the 2015 version of Agatha Christie’s enduring And Then There Were None. At least five have been shot through the years. Movies!, channel 5–2 on over the air antennas in NYC, was airing The Valachi Papers (1972), starring Charles Bronson in the title role, directed by Terence Young, who helmed three early James Bond films. Although I’ve seen it several times, I stayed largely with it than other fare being aired. It was followed by a spaghetti western, A Man Called Sledge (1968), starring James Garner, written (with Frank Kowalski) and directed by Vic Morrow, who was replaced when editing began. What I caught before I fell asleep was mildly entertaining but choppy. Morrow also had one other stint at the helm of a big screen movie, Deathwatch (1966), an adaptation of a Jean Genet play about a prison gay love triangle, which he also co-wrote. And he directed eleven TV episodes, including seven of Combat!, his second-most claim to fame after his unfortunate death on the set of The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In researching the cast of both flicks, on which the legendary Dino De Laurentiis shares producer credit, I spotted the name Fausto Tozzi, who played whack job mobster Albert Anastasia in the former, and a maximum security prisoner in the latter. He had an interesting career, at home on the big or small screen. There are 73 titles under his name at IMDB. The best film in which he appeared was probably El Cid (1961), starring Charlton Heston as the Spanish hero and Sophia Loren as his love. Besides the famous mafioso, Tozzi got to play Roman emperor Hadrian in Constantine and the Cross (1961), Pat Garrett in an Italian version of Billy the Kid, I’ll Kill Him and Return Alone (1967), and Menelaus in an Italian TV production of The Odyssey (1968). He also had a hand in 13 screenplays and wrote a novel, El Cabezota (The Stubborn One), adapted posthumously in Spain four years after his death from respiratory failure in 1978 at 57. He also has a director credit, Trastevere (1971, literally “beyond the Tiber”), a comedy, on which he received sole writing credit. Here he is:
As for Anastasia, he had several nicknames: The One-Man Army, Mad Hatter and Lord High Executioner. He and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter ran Murder Inc., the syndicate’s enforcement arm. He served in the U.S. Army during WWII, training longshoremen, which earned him citizenship. He was gunned down at the Park Sheraton Hotel barber shop in 1957. I was going to post a picture of his demise, but I found the following infinitely more interesting:
Today it was 22 1/2 hours of isolation. At eleven I went out for a second time to soak up some vitamin D. I walked to the foot of Sheepshead Bay. There were people around, many wearing masks. When I swung into CVS on my way back, there was a guard at the door making sure entrants were spaced. I’m skeptical of the effectiveness of that, as I passed within inches of folks several times while in there.
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