More & Moore
PC madness continues. Mississippi State’s new head football coach, the unconventional Mike Leach, whom many would describe in much stronger terms than that, posted a photo on Twitter of an old, white woman knitting a noose with the caption: “After two weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.” Not surprisingly, yahoos cried racism. Of course, the school’s hierarchy caved and has required him to participate in listening sessions with students and community groups — heaven help him. He is also required to take guided tours of the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, as if he hadn’t known racism is bad — duh! Sadly, he has also apologized. The worst aspect of all this nonsense is that it will continue long into the future.
Here’s some good news from DC in a headline at foxnews.com: “Emergency field hospital dismantled after treating no coronavirus patients.” Here’s another positive headline: “Georgia hospital workers cheer as first coronavirus patient transferred out of ICU.”
Last night Movies!, channel 5–2 on over the air antennas in NYC, ran Strange Fascination (1952), of which I’d never heard, let alone seen. It was written, directed and produced by Czech-born Hugo Haas, who also starred as the middle aged classical pianist who becomes obsessed with a woman young enough to be his daughter. She was played by Cleo Moore, who was unfamiliar to me, although I’d seen a couple of flicks in which she had small parts. She was competent, the movie only okay. I was more interested in the personal history of the femme fatale than that of the film. Moore was born in Baton Rouge to a family heavily involved in politics. At 15 she married the son of legendary Louisiana politician Huey Long. It lasted six weeks. When her family moved to California, it was not long before her beauty was spotted and she was given a screen test. That led to 25 credits, all but two on the big screen, only a few titles fairly notable. She was billed as The Queen of the B Movie Bad Girls. In 1956 she announced a run for governor of Louisiana. It went nowhere. Frustrated with not being taken seriously by producers, she left cinema. In 1961 she married a real estate tycoon and found success in the business herself. Tragically, she suffered a fatal heart attack in 1973 at 48. She left behind a daughter as well as her husband. Gone but not forgotten, here’s a publicity still of this interesting woman:
I’ve finished the second handwritten draft of the thriller I’m writing. Now it’s time to transfer it to a MS Word file to see how many pages it would be in book form. My guess is 80 or so, although I’m hoping for 100. I doubt it will grow much during the third draft, which will be done entirely on the PC. I don’t want to pad it unnecessarily for the sake of length. The story is simple, uncomplicated, unlike the intricately plotted novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and other masters of the genre. Anyway it goes, I can’t lose. It has given me something positive to do during the confinement, of which there is no end in sight in NYC, even though the number of hospitalizations have flattened.
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