Tor Johnson

Tor

ceramic 10cm high

signed, numbered, dated by Roman Scott, 2013

Tor Johnson (1903-1971) was a Swedish actor chiefly known for his roles as lumbering types in auteur-directed films. Alas, not Ingmar Bergman, but Ed Wood B-movies.

A former wrestler, he was a big man who looked fierce when he wanted to. However, most accounts have it that he was of a sweet disposition, easy to work with. Rudolph Grey's excellent biography of Ed Wood, Nightmare of Ecstasy, has some good anecdotes about Tor. But it's hard to find any compelling biographical info from the Internet at this time (such a common problem we encounter when researching pre-digital folk.)
One meme that has gathered steam over the last decades is that Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space is the worst film ever made. I disagree; such an entertaining film could never be judged as very bad. I will put forth a more reasonable candidate for worst film ever, in which Tor Johnson also starred: The Beast of Yucca Flats, by Coleman Francis. This film is execrable. The plot, acting, photography and editing are dreadful. And yet, even in this atrocity of boredom, Tor Johnson has a presence, something that sticks with you. He is perhaps an example of biological sculpture, a bodily form interesting outside of drama's requirements.

Ernest Borgnine

Cabbie 

earthenware toothpick cup

9cm high

inscribed: Cabbie, No.2, Roman Scott 2013

Ernest Borgine (ne' Ermes Borgnino) may be my favorite of all character actors. Certainly a scene-stealer, he needn't have had first billing to remain emblazoned in the mind. For instance, his portrayal of  Cabbie in John Carpenter's Escape from New York is equally strong as the morose Kurt Russells' Snake Plissken, or Lee Van Cleef's reptilian police commissioner. In this film Borgnine even had the last word, posthumously. Dying only last year, immortal Ernest is gone, but certainly not forgotten!

Carlos Allende, the most mysterious man

Carlos Allende was an enigmatic man who wittingly or unwittingly propelled the bizarre whispers of the Philadelphia Experiment into a wider public knowledge some decades ago. I had vaguely heard of him, due to my interest in conspiracy theories and the paranormal, but just now became enthralled after reading Berlitz's book about the Philadelphia Experiment.

The more Allende tried to disappear, the more he was hunted. The Navy published a book of his strange marginalia, or gloss-writing in a copy of Morris Jessup's UFO book. He seemed to be an unhinged outsider--but apparently the U.S. Navy was concerned about too many connections he drew to their advanced scientific projects.

Obviously I had to google him, to see what his fate had been. He died in Greeley, Colorado, in the summer of 1986. Allende had written about Albert Einstein's work on the Unified Field Theory, speculating that the physics had been applied by the Navy. (The Phili-Experiment was supposed to have been concerned with invisibility fields and teleportation.)

I can't really get my head around Unified Field Theory (unifying electromagnetism, gravity, and space-time), but I am struck with space intersecting with time. In the mid 80s I saw a fair amount of Greeley, the unprepossessing town where Allende lied low in his final years. In those years I attended the University of Denver, and often took the Greyhound bus to my grandparents in Laramie, Wyoming, spending some weekends. The bus would almost always be waiting or passing through dusty, frozen Greeley in the wee hours. The town was a transit point, a naked lightbulb lonely train whistle night town, a place in between, a netherworld passed through.  I was always happy to arrive at my destination, to drink buttermilk and hear a gentle tick of a clock on the bed stand.

Character Actors

Last month I bought Quinlan's Illustrated Directory of Film Character Actors at a used bookstore up in Oslo. It has proved a delight, inspiring this drawing. I won't mention who these guys are--I hope film buffs (especially B movie lovers) will recognize some of their mugs. I will hint that two are in the land of the living, both 74 years old now.

Quinlan's has a British style of clinical mercilessness, which makes for an entertaining read.  He has a knack for hyphenated adjectives, honing in subtly on particular qualities that a said actor displays in his specific roles. "fair-haired, blue-eyed actor...with carved lips, Frankenstein Eyebrows..."; or "Tall, spare, permanently-wizened, beak-nosed, small-eyed, bald, parrot-like..."

Though arranged alphabetically, the book is designed for thumbing through, with good photos of thousands of actors. It's a different mentality than we seem to have landed in recently, what with the IMDB, which requires that one knows the name of the actor first off, before researching. I do love web surfing, but it's also nice to have good reference books like this on hand. The book seems to be out of print, another internet casualty.

The Doctor

Yesterday one of the extremely old memories of childhood bubbled up in my head in the form of a bobble head doctor. I tend to think of my grandparent's basement a lot, the repository for so many memories. Not only my own memories, but those of the atomic culture of the time, c. 1960. 

The basement, where my father and uncle had lived, and whose rooms full of artifacts were preserved (unlike my own childhood rooms, which shifted during several moves my family undertook), was a sacred repository of mystery and imagination. Especially as a very young kid certain objects were not just fascinating, but downright terrifying.

Such was this thing, found in shadowy, neglected nooks in the ever-dim light of the sweet limestone- smelling space. (For a sound background, put in a David Lynch hum, a thudding breathing from the old gas furnace, supplying the ambient sound.) This little doctor doll was an object of horror, inexplicable, with it's malevolent head flopping and jiggling, as if suffering a neurological disease. The shaking, living quality would always be there, no matter how long you averted your gaze, hoping it to stop the next time you were unfortunate to look at the thing. Better yet would have been, to have the thing be gone entirely.

And so it was. Who removed it? It was not just hidden (as a cloth hid the bear head, which scared my brother.) The doctor never popped up again. He may have been simply thrown out by a concerned parent or grandparent. 

And so the doctor doll was consigned to the dustbin of memory--until I searched for it on Ebay. Sure enough, that was it, all right. I found that it was made by a company called St. Pierre and Patterson. Google as I may, I find no information about this cryptic, forgotten concern. They certainly had talent and wherewithal. I newly have a respect for anyone in the ceramics field, since I make slip molds myself. Many of their other figurines have this same style of grotesque humor (judging from others on offer on Ebay.)

My imagination runs wild... I imagine a Haitian folk artist being discovered by a declasse Anglo somewhere in the deep south. St. Pierre has a raw energy, while Patterson (wearing seersucker) has a salesman's gift, and some knowledge of the porcelain trade.  They land in Texas after a year or two, when the post War boom years really start simmering... Large fans whir overhead as Mexicans paint the wooden plaques and airbrush the finishing coats of underglaze...

Mr. Hudson

Upstairs Downstairs vs. Downton Abbey

 The last week I have been watching Downton Abbey, an Upstairs Downstairs-type of series. It is set in the same Edwardian era as the original early 70s show.
The new series is cast well, with high production values. It is more operatic than Upstairs Downstairs was, episodes being more dependent on the  overall narrative. The setting is more romantic, taking place in a large country estate, rather than a London townhouse.



With all the drama between the servants and their masters, butlers and lordships, I cannot help but recall the greatest butler of them all, Gordon Jackson in his role as Mr. Hudson in the original series.  With just a silent shift of his lips, he was able to express concern or disdain. Jackson died eons ago it seems (1990), but the expressions and opinions of the Scottish butler remain indelible and fresh in my mind.

I feel that we know the thoughts of Mr. Hudson far more than those of the butler in the modern series. Is this a tribute to the writers and actors of Upstairs Downstairs, or simply the way things have changed for me as a viewer? I saw the old show over the course of many years, gradually, growing up with it.  The modern show is something seen quickly, over the course of a week or two.

When we consume modern media in such a way, is it no wonder that it does not impress and move us in the same way that earlier works did?

Charles Bronson, the Quiet One

While watching the wonderful Vincent Price film House of Wax (1953) the other night, I noticed an oddly familiar face playing a deaf mute named Igor, a staff member of a wax museum studio. The face bothered me; darned if it didn't look like Charles Bronson.

When I investigated, sure enough it was the great quiet tough guy, in his very early movie career (then named Charles Buchinski), before he assumed what would be his stage name. As I figured, Bronson has been gone for a while, dying in 2003. He's one of those late actors that you just don't hear about anymore, unlike tough guys Lee Marvin or Robert Mitchum, who, despite being dead, live on as muses or idols for a certain type of musician or artist (Tom Waits, Jim Jarmush, etc.) 

Though a great icon, Bronson fell a bit on the wrong side of the spectrum. His features were unusual; they were rugged but not concurrently seizing in the correct way (a hint of the asiatic perhaps?) His roles tainted him for the young and hip, dark leather-wearing band crowd (for whom a special political perfume is needed.) He had too much the whiff of rightist vigilantism about him, his most famous role being the protagonist in Death Wish.

And by extension, dare I say... Bernie Goetz, the real life vigilante. This type of vigilantism, once the stuff of folk-hero mythos and TIME magazine covers, does seem somewhat dated. It hasn't aged well in the following decades, what with a changed context of "going postal", Oklahoma City, Militia Movement, and a litany that forever grows.

But back to the early Bronson, mute Igor:

Directors of the Vincent Price horror films really had fun. One ingenious trope is that of the living head amid the inanimate, such as Igor holding watch amid wax dummies. Another great use of this was in a much later film, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1973), wherein death-head scarred Vincent Price coyly watches Egyptoligists in a tomb, camouflaged as he is by lifeless skeletons.