“I need a big man!”
That’s Robert Stack on the right. In the future he’ll star in “Airplane!”
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Gerard Van der Leun
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Probably close to a hundred north Atlantic crossings 60+ years ago flying L1049 and C-130E, and I’ve been there up close, although not over that much water. Of all the aviation movies I’ve watched, this one impressed me the most. Not the Hollywood hoopla, but the various kinds of personalities and how they behave in a for sure existential crisis – i.e. if things don’t work out, you’ll probably cease to exist.
Speaking of Glen Campbell.
In 1970 John Wayne made a movie titled “Chisum” and in it is a song named “Turn Me Around” and the singer has sounded to me like Glen Campbell from the very beginning. Since “True Grit” was made the previous year in 1969 and Wayne had the habit of using the same people over and over in his movies it was easy to believe that singer was Campbell.
Well, a couple years ago I stumbled upon the fact that it wasn’t Campbell but rather Merle Haggard who I was never familiar with. Anyway, here is the clip from Chisum that has the song Turn Me Around, have a listen and see if it doesn’t sound like Glen Campbell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzGvZYBQqAA
Robert Newton (!!), “Blind Tom” in “The Desert Rats”, ably supporting.
…from the looks of some of the passengers that aircraft could never sink.
gwbnyc for the win with the Mae West joke.
Based on the eponymous novel by Ernest K. Gann, whose other aviation books are just as riveting (my favorite is Fate Is The Hunter), The High And The Mighty is one of my all-time favorite films because director William Wellman wove its character studies into its flight path narrative with considerable aplomb.
Look for Little Rascals child star Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer in an adult bit role as co-pilot of the search and rescue plane.
Talk about a small internet! I know this Porfle Popnecker guy. At a different internet time and space he was one of the best song parodists in the English speaking world, with a genius for free association. We were the best of internet friends!!
Casey for the Mae West follow-up assist on the win 🙂
Auntie- a scene in “Pat&Mike” yields Tracy, Hepburn, Chuck Connors, Charles Buchinsky and Carl Switzer in the same room.
My girlfriend thinks I’m nuts because I keep a library of physical DVD’s upstairs, but those films that I like to see again are available less and less frequently on streaming services. Of two titles mentioned, “High and the Mighty” and “Fate is the Hunter”, only HM is available and with a rental price.
“Fate is the Hunter” however I don’t have. It’s been decades since I’ve watched it. Can’t remember ever seeing it available on DVD. And I can’t find it on any streaming service.
Darn! Now I want to see it.
Probably be remade, with a ‘diverse’ cast. And a ‘music’ score by Cardi B.
My dear John The River, aside from its title the film Fate Is The Hunter has nothing to with Gann’s autobiographical novel of his career in commercial aviation. The movie is a disappointing muddle surrounding an airliner crash.
The other Gann novel in whose film adaptation John Wayne stars is Island In The Sky, a tale of a C-47 crew forced down in the barren frigid wilds of Labrador. Despite its location setting that doesn’t resemble the barren wilds of Labrador, this movie is worth seeing for its ruggedly etched characters, and it’s on a DVD whose special features are also worth the price of admission.
One of my favorite John Wayne movies is In Harms Way. The cast includes other greats: Kirk Douglas, Burgess Meridith, Patricia O’Neal, George Kennedy, Henry Fonda, and others. A good depiction between the reality of those who do what needs to be done vs preening peacocks trying to get favorable press to promote a political career during a time of war. The Duke overcomes them all, but at a high price.
All those John Wayne movies are in my library and get watched every few years. I couldn’t remember much about Fate is the Hunter other than it starred Glenn Ford and Rod Taylor, both of whom I’ve always liked.
Be thankful for Turner Classic Movies which I can get through Hulu. Almost all we watch.