It was a relatively quiet day. Warmer than yesterday and clear outside. I had to do some shoveling again. Not much.
Hey, it’s almost March. In March, you can start hoping for spring. You’ll be bitterly disappointed, but you can hope. At least the sunlight comes in larger packages now, which is nice in a time of inflation.
As I’ve mentioned, I like to have the TV on while I’m doing translation. Especially old B-westerns. I very much enjoy B-westerns. They’re cheaply done and obviously so, but they fill the silence demand little of the viewer. They were a comfort in my childhood, and they still make me feel good. Especially when they’ve aged badly.
Whenever I watch a Gene Autrey movie, I wonder, “How did this guy get to be a movie star?” He was not tall, not particularly handsome, and a little tubby. The answer, of course, is his singing. He started as a singer, and moved into the movies. Little boys loved him. Because, what do little boys know?
Today I watched Riders of the Whistling Pines, which I found notable for several reasons. It’s actually a more serious movie than Gene’s usual line – no comic sidekick, and some rather tragic themes. Gene plays a guy trying to establish a forest camp in an area where there’s an infestation of tree-killing moths. The local logger is rooting for the moths, because if the trees die, he can legally harvest them all. Gene is involved with trying to get the forest sprayed with – wait for it – DDT. The nasty logging baron spreads false rumors about the dangers of DDT to wildlife and human life, and deliberately causes some poisoning.
Yessiree, we’ve got a pro-DDT movie here. It was 1949, long before Rachel Carson. Trust the science!
Actually, I personally think DDT needs to come back, under controls, so I’m cool with it. Your mileage, as I persist in saying, may vary.
A second surprise was that I recognized one of the evil henchmen – by his voice. It was Clayton Moore, who in a few years would become immortal as the Lone Ranger. (I know a guy who knew him, when he lived in these parts.) In this film, he doesn’t even get a cool cowboy hat.
And finally, on a couple occasions one of the characters, a struggling alcoholic, fishes out a photo of his wife, who died while he was away in the war. She’s pretty. She’s a blonde.
She’s Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn was an unknown contract player for Columbia at the time, and this was a Columbia production, so they just picked her picture off a pile as an example of a girl a guy might pine for.
For all I know, it was her big break.