Four

The number four has prominence

in our society,

It may not be Almighty One

but outshines two and three.

Four presidents on Rushmore:

George, Tom, Ted and Honest Abe.

Four Majors in the golf world:

Masters, Opens, PGA.

Music had some great quartets:

Beatles, Kinks, Coldplay, the Who,

the Stones, Led Zep, CSNY,

And don't forget U2.

Four suits are found in every deck:

Spades, diamonds, clubs and hearts.

Four evangelists wrote the gospels:

Matthew, Luke, John and St. Mark.

A swimming relay has four strokes:

Back, breast stroke, fly and free.

Four spaces on a music chart:

F, A, C and E.

The Rams' Fearsome Foursome,

The Steelers' Steel Curtain,
Vikes' Purple People Eaters,

All four-man D-lines I am certain.

A secondary has four backs,

Four infielders in baseball,

Four seasons comprise every year:

Spring, summer, winter, fall.

I've lived in the Quad Cities,

Four years under the Dome,

Illinois, Iowa, Nodak, Minny,

I've called each one my home.

Today I hit the Big Seven-0,

I look back at my life,

Four-plus decades of wedded bliss

with Mary, my patient wife.

We have been blessed with three great kids:

Gina, Michael, Jill,

They still find time for their old man

even though I'm o'er the hill.

Things 'round here haven't been the same

since two thousand thirteen,

A new day dawned, new roles assumed

for Momma Cuan and me.

How is it possible for these little girls

to send us over the moon?

We've got our own Mount Rushmore Four:

Rosie, Winnie, Lulu, June.

Rosie's an adventurer,

She's always on the go,

The zoo, the mall or T-ball,

She never takes it slow.

Winnie loves the great outdoors,

A Minnesota girl at heart,

You'll find her biking down the street

or swinging in the park.

Tiny dancer Lulu

has a rhythm and a beat,

She runs around and talks a lot,

She's lightning on her feet.

Four month old June's a happy babe,

Always ready with a smile

that can light up any room she's in,

though no teeth for a while.

I've always liked the number four

without reason or rhyme,

I could just as easily picked six,

or seven, eight or nine.

Now four means much more to me

than to most folks, I assume,

I think about them night and day,

Rosie, Winnie, Lulu, June.

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXIX

You no doubt recall from my Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXI posted on October 10, 2015, that I labeled The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as the greatest western of all time.  But that 1962 masterpiece was not included among the movies scanned in that post because, even though I'd viewed it several times pre-blog, I had not watched it during the relevant calendar quarter.

A few weeks ago the opportunity to watch it as a blogger presented itself on TCM, so of course I simply had to view it so I could include it in this post.  It remains my favorite western, ever!

The film was directed by John Ford, who was famous for filming westerns in cinemascope, using beautiful deserts, mountains and other landscape features for a backdrop.  By contrast, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was actually shot on a Hollywood soundstage, but this change of procedure does not detract from the wild west atmosphere which pervades the story.

The movie opens with a gray-haired U.S. Senator Ranse Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) stepping off a passenger train in a whistle stop town called Shinbone. His wife Hallie (Vera Miles) is with him.  When a young journalist from the local newspaper, the Shinbone Star, learns that a U.S. senator is making a rare visit, he and his editor talk Stoddard into granting an interview.  They are particularly curious as to why he and his wife made the cross-country trip from D.C. to the Rockies.  Stoddard's initial explanation is that they are in Shinbone to pay their respects to one Tom Doniphon, who died there recently.  The newspapermen have never heard of Doniphon, so they insist, almost rudely, that the senator provide a detailed background.  Stoddard puts up a mild protest, then proceeds to tell them about his long ago relationship with Doniphon.  Stoddard's recollections are revealed in a flashback, which comprises 95% of the remaining movie.

In the flashback, probably going back about forty years, Doniphon (John Wayne) is the most respected man in Shinbone.  Although he is not the town marshal, a role assumed by the worthless and cowardly Link Appleyard (the incomparable Andy Devine), Doniphon's presence alone is enough to keep Shinbone's problems to a minimum.  It doesn't hurt that Doniphon has a quick draw and a deadly aim with a six shooter.  He's putting an addition on his ranch house outside of town in preparation for the day when he will make Hallie, the pretty waitress at Peter's Place, his wife.

Lee Marvin plays Liberty Valance, a gun slinger who spreads fear far and wide with impunity.  His trademark is a silver-handled whip with which he administers ruthless beatings to his victims.  When Ranse first appears in the flashback, he is brutally assaulted by Valance during a stage coach robbery, and left for dead.  After Doniphon carts his near-lifeless body into town, Ranse is slowly nursed back to health by Halle.  Ranse is a brand new attorney with dreams of using the law as a means to bringing peace and order to this western outpost.  That directly contradicts Valance's violent modus operandi, thus putting the two men on a collision course.

Most westerns have one, at the most two, big name stars on their cast list.  This film has an abundance of riches, including an all-star lineup.  Liberty Valance was the first of three movies, all westerns, in which Stewart and Wayne co-starred.  By 1962, both were established veteran actors, with Wayne having appeared in over twenty films which Ford directed.  Marvin, who would win a Best Actor Oscar three years later portraying another cowboy in the western comedy Cat Ballou, was also a star on television.  M Squad, a police show my family faithfully watched every week because it was set in Chicago, displayed Marvin's serious acting talents.  Miles doesn't have much to do in Liberty Valance, but one year later starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a chilling tale.

The secondary players as well are uniformly terrific.  Besides the aforementioned Devine, Edmond O' Brien steals every scene he's in with his portrayal of the town drunkard who also happens to be the Shinbone Star's editor.  Character actor Strother Martin plays one of Liberty's sidemen.  Martin's career is mostly known for uttering one of the most famous lines in cinematic history: "What we've got here is a failure to communicate" (from 1967's Cool Hand Luke).  Liberty's other evil sidekick is played by Lee Van Cleef, who rose to stardom, along with Clint Eastwood, in the mid-sixties via the so-called Spaghetti Westerns, including The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.  

The movie star cast is only part of the reason Liberty Valance is a tremendous film.  You have the violent Valance opposing two disparate men, the peaceful Stoddard and the he-man Doniphon.  One of the subplots is the fragile relationships Halle has with Doniphon, her presumed future spouse, and the newcomer Stoddard.  And we witness Doniphon's anguished state of mind; just how far can he and should he go in protecting his rival, Stoddard, from annihilation at the hands of Valance?  The next time you hear Gene Pitney's hit title song on your favorite oldies radio station, pay attention to the lyrics.  The song tells the story without spoiling the ending.  Speaking of which, the final scene of the story, which takes place after the long flashback has finished, is one of the cleverest and most memorable endings of any genre, western or otherwise.

***

Here are the movies I watched at the QE during the third quarter of 2017:

1. An Affair To Remember (1957 romance; Playboy Cary Grant and charming red head Deborah Kerr, both engaged to others, think they've fallen in love with each other aboard a trans-Atlantic voyage, but to be sure they make plans to meet six months hence on top of the Empire State Building.) A-

2. Cinderella Liberty (1973 drama; James Caan is a sailor on leave in Seattle who falls in love with Marsha Mason, a single mom who makes her meager living as a pool shark and prostitute.) B+

3. Experiment In Terror (1962 detective drama; Glenn Ford is a federal G-man attempting to nab psychopath Ross Martin without getting bank employee Lee Remick killed.)  C+

4. Harold And Maude (1971 comedy; Bud Cort is an eccentric young man who fixates on suicide, mutilation and funerals, then finds a kindred spirit in seventy-nine year old Ruth Gordon, an offbeat lover of life.) A- 

5. Having A Wild Weekend (1965 adventure; The Dave Clark Five are stunt men who, with model Barbara Ferris, skip out on their London employer and head for the English west coast while eluding their pursuers.)  C-

6. Kissin' Cousins (1964 musical; Air Force Lieutenant Elvis Pressly is charged with the task of obtaining permission from his hillbilly mountain kinfolk, led by Arthur O'Connell, to build a missile base nearby on Porcupine Flats.)  C+

7. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962 western; Young lawyer Jimmy Stewart arrives in Shinbone gunless and clueless, but is coached by tough guy John Wayne when Jimmy's life is threatened by gunslinger Lee Marvin.)  A

8. Notorious (1946 spy drama; CIA agent Cary Grant helps arrange for Ingrid Bergman's infiltration of a post-war Nazi operation headed by Claude Rains in Rio.)  B+

9. Separate Tables (1958 drama; a disparate group of characters who live in a residential hotel on the English coast have their own lives' little dramas to work out verbally.)  A-

10. Taxi Driver (1976 drama; Robert DiNiro is a psychotic ex-marine suffering from insomnia, causing him to work through the night as a cabbie who's disgusted with the degenerates and filth he encounters on the streets of New York City.)  A-

11. Vertigo (1958 drama; Former San Francisco detective Jimmy Stewart, forced to retire due to acrophobia, falls in love with Kim Novak, a woman he's been hired to surveil.)  B+