Life’s Carousel

This guy is probably a shoo in, given the preferences of NYC’s electorate. Headline from nypost.com: “Manhattan City Council candidate caught with dominatrix in leaked video.”

This Idaho dad ran a marathon while wheeling his quintuplets:

Troubling snippet from an NYP article by Kerry J. Byrne: “The amount of fentanyl seized climbed 41 percent” from 2019-’20.

Nearly halfway through my re-viewing of Combat!, which ran from 1962-’67 on ABC, it has proven solid. It’s a sincere look at WWII which pales only when compared to the best films of the genre. The French and Germans speak their own languages, which adds to the authenticity. Last night Heroes & Icons, channel 9–4 on ota in NYC, ran The Little Carousel, Season three, Episode Eight, the best I’ve seen to date, rated 9.1 at IMDb. The story must have been stored deep in my memory. While I did not remember the details, I knew where it was going, and my eyes glazed. It begins with the siege of a town. Although successful, Sgt. Saunders, played brilliantly by Vic Morrow, is embittered by the loss of several men. A teenage girl is overjoyed at the liberation, finally able to use the nursing skills she has learned. Saunders is mean to her at first, wanting her nowhere in sight, well knowing the danger. Eventually she wins him over and they even share a play date at the spot mentioned in the title. Afterward he still expects her to get lost. Intrepid, she ignores his warnings and eventually saves him and Kirby (Jack Hogan), treating their wounds in the field. She is played by the luminous Sylviane Margollé, who has only eleven titles listed under her name, but also worked on the stage and dubbed the voices of Sally Field, Jamie Lee Curtis, Melissa Sue Anderson and Cheryl Ladd for her country’s audiences. In the end Saunders is proved prescient and the angel is killed tripping a mine. The good sergeant is devastated, howling with grief, releasing emotions he has plugged along his journey through hell. There is no dialogue. The squad members are stunned into sad silence. It’s the type of experience that periodically haunts those who’ve fought for the rest of their lives. The scene is as good as TV ever gets, directed by Bernard McEveety, who helmed hundreds of episodes of prime time fare, written by Gene Levitt, who wrote hundreds of scripts. Sadly, Sylviane Margollé passed away due to complications from surgery at 54 in 2005. Here’s a montage from the episode:

I wonder if I’ll ever cease my occasional segues into ridiculous emotion. While I was driving this morning, I was driven to tears thinking about the Combat! episode while listening to Michelle Branch’s beautiful vocal and Carlos Santana’s soaring guitar work on The Game of Love (Alex Ander, Rick Nowels). Sheesh!

It wasn’t as hot as I’d expected, especially since I spent most of today’s session of the floating book shop in the shade. My thanks to the gentleman who bought two thrillers in Russian, and to Bill Brown, author of Words and Guitar: A History of Lou Reed’s Music and other fine works, who purchased a bio of pioneer filmmaker Georges Melies by Elizabeth Ezra, in part because some of it is in French. Not much cash flow, but at least it wasn’t zero and I left with a bit less weight than I’d come. Three people offered to bring books. I told them to ask me next week.

The name Georges Melies may not be familiar, but I’m sure this image of his will be:

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