Quote of the Day (R.W. Church, on Cardinal Newman)

“Cardinal Newman is dead, and we lose in him not only one of the very greatest masters of English style, not only an eminent example of personal sanctity, but the founder, we may almost say, of the Church of England as we see it. What the Church of England would have become without the Tractarian movement we can faintly guess, and of the Tractarian movement Newman was the living soul and the inspiring genius. Great as his services have been to the communion in which he died, they are as nothing by the side of those he rendered to the communion in which the most eventful years of his life were spent….He will be mourned by many in the Roman Church, but their sorrow will be less than ours, because they have not the same paramount reason to be grateful to him.”—R.W. Church, in The Guardian, August 13, 1890, quoted in Nicholas Lash, “Waiting for Dr. Newman,” America, February 1-8, 2010

John Henry Cardinal Newman died of pneumonia at age 89 on this date in 1890, having resoundingly responded to aspersions on his character and that of Roman Catholicism with his autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua. His influence was also powerfully felt in his own day—and continues to be—with The Idea of a University.

This Day in Film History (“Sunset Boulevard” Premieres)

August 10, 1950—Billy Wilder’s mordant melodrama about Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, premiered at Radio City Music Hall, on its way to an all-time house record for a non-holiday release there with a box-office take of $166,000.

What audiences at the famous New York film palace didn’t realize, however, as they greeted the movie with rapture, was that the bitter satire had come perilously close to becoming one of the great Tinseltown bombs, courtesy of a preview audience that laughed uproariously—at all the wrong places.

The key scene in this regard was the opening, which can be seen now on recent DVD releases of the movie: “Conversing Cadavers.” In the Los Angeles County Morgue, we hear the voice of a corpse. Soon others are joining in, explaining how they got there, too.

Wilder loved this scene, but in Evanston, Ill.—chosen especially as an ideal Middle American audience that would serve as a lab test for the film’s racier themes—the audience was so busy laughing that they didn’t know what to expect from the rest of the film.

So Wilder and co-screenwriter Charles Brackett (this would be their last collaboration) huddled and came up with the iconic opening we know today: also featuring a corpse in voice-over, but this time alone, face down in a swimming pool. I don’t know if Wilder and Brackett had this in mind or not, but it echoed one of the closing scenes of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, where another young man pays dearly for his dreams by being shot in a pool.

Sunset Boulevard is a cinephile’s delight, of course, from its brilliant dialogue (“I am big. It's the pictures that got small”) to the multiple ricocheting ironies of the casting (Erich von Stroheim, playing the chauffeur who used to be Norma Desmond’s director, was star Gloria Swanson’s director in real life, and a scene from the disastrous production that short-circuited both their careers, Queen Kelly, is briefly glimpsed).

For me, however, the film gains much of its power as a study in desperation. Silent-screen star Desmond’s mad desire to get back into the movie industry, of course, drives the plot, but the two men who made the film work were Swanson’s director and male co-star, both of whom were intimately familiar with despair.

As a 20-year-old transplant from Vienna, waiting for writing jobs to turn up, Billy Wilder allegedly supplemented his income as a “taxi dancer”, or paid dancing partner, in Berlin’s Eden Hotel. He went into exile from Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power, and later his mother and grandmother died in the Holocaust. He knew all too well exactly what a human being would do to survive when hungry and/or hunted (Lena Wertmuller’s Holocaust film, Seven Beauties, would have been ideal subject matter for him—if it hadn’t been too personal).

If Wilder’s knowledge of desperation derived from a painful past, William Holden’s came from much more immediate experience. After his star-making turn in 1939’s Golden Boy, his good looks had become something of a liability, as he became continually cast in boy-next-door roles. He had taken to drinking heavily, and Wilder, none too impressed with the actor’s recent work, was not thrilled that Montgomery Clift’s rejection of the role of failed screenwriter-gigolo Joe Gillis had led him to this second choice. (Make that third choice—Fred MacMurray had turned down the role, too.)

Instead, Holden channeled all of his pent-up self-loathing into the role and revived his career, and he would go on to make two other films with Wilder (Sabrina and the actor’s Oscar-winning Stalag 17) that would make him one of the box-office champions of the 1950s.

Quote of the Day (Norris Church Mailer, on Bill Clinton)

“I would have so liked to be able to talk to him about world affairs and politics. But we frankly never talked much.”—Norris Church Mailer, on her short-lived but intimate relationship in the 1970s with Bill Clinton, rising young Arkansas politico (and fiancée of Hillary Rodham), in A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir (2010)

President Clinton gave a famous explanation for why he became involved in the relationship with Monica Lewinsky that, for a time, imperiled his Presidency: “Because I could.”

Norman Mailer, whom the model Norris Church would eventually marry, gave a far more interesting—creative, if you will—explanation of his philandering. To get in the proper mood for his doorstopper of a novel about the CIA, Harlot’s Ghost, “He said he needed to live that kind of double life, to know what his characters were going through,” according to his widow.

Nearly 30 years ago, listening to Mailer address a college writing class, I marveled that he could speak so fluidly and extemporaneously. I imagine that I would feel the same way if I heard the ex-President in a small setting, too.

With that said, I think I would find Ms. Mailer to be far more congenial company than the two charming but narcissistic rogues with whom she was involved. She has met all kinds of interesting people, carved out a career as a model, actress, and now, writer--but at least she has never had pretensions about surpassing Hemingway or JFK.

Quote of the Day (Robert Townsend, on Sex-Crazy Execs)

“It’s interesting that otherwise competent businessmen, capable of budgeting a complex operation, can't figure out that the cost of maintaining two women is twice the cost of one plus certain fringes. An early symptom of the mistress is a sudden surge of creativity in an executive's expense account. I once had a personnel vice-president who had taken up with one of our executive secretaries. If it had been outside the company I wouldn’t have minded unless it interfered with his work. But a personnel man with his arm around an employee is like a treasurer with his hand in the till.”—Robert Townsend, Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation From Stifling People and Strangling Profits (1970)

A while back, I was lamenting to someone experienced in outplacement about how certain corporate executives paint overly rosy scenarios about their financially strapped firms that they peddle not only to outsiders but even to their employees. “These guys are in the moment, so they can convince even themselves about what they’re saying,” he explained.

That’s the best explanation I know for Robert Townsend’s continually relevant, pungent assessment of executives’ turbo-charged testosterone levels. Townsend was talking specifically about corporate mistresses—the type of situation masterfully satirized in Billy Wilder’s 1960 Oscar-winning film The Apartment.

But, as I read the part in the above quote about a “sudden surge of creativity in an executive’s expense account,” its obvious application to the sexual harassment claim that brought down Hewlett-Packard’s Mark Hurd was all too apropos. Against all odds, Hurd (in the image accompanying this post) had to believe that his (mis)behavior would either never be noticed or simply excused. He was “in the moment.”

Sexual harassment, of course, was not a recognized realm of corporate law during Townsend’s days as CEO of Avis five decades ago. Nor were reality shows and soft-core straight-to-video/DVD flicks—the two movie genres in which Hurd’s accuser, Jodie Fisher, specialized before she crossed paths with the H-P head honcho—a recognized part of the entertainment landscape of his time.

But Townsend pinpointed a certain fatal instinct common to leaders of men, a tendency to self-destruct in ways one would not normally expect. Even if we take at face value the insistence by Hurd and contracto-consultan-whatever Fisher that nothing physical happened between them, then Hurd didn’t get much for those lavish dinners he inaccurately expensed.

(I suppose there is one sense in which Hurd’s conduct constituted a departure from the usual alpha-male behavior in these situations. Over the years, a number of female colleagues have pointed to executives from other companies they’ve known over the years. These men not only don’t want anything to do with women over 30, but even with those older than 25. Hurd is unique in that he seems to have been attracted to a woman who, at 50 years old, was close to his age.)

Oh, by the way: Did you notice that H-P’s board of directors dispatched Hurd with a $28-million severance package? Paying someone for their sins—not to mention embarrassing the company and sending its stock value plunging overnight—was not something Townsend anticipated. However, in this case, he was prescient about the role of board of directors: “Directors and the like spend very little time studying and worrying about your company. Result: they know far less than you give them credit for.”

Quote of the Day (Rev. Pete Scazzero, on Clerical Stress)

“It’s hard to lead a contemplative life on Queens Boulevard. But the insight I gained from the Trappists is that being too ‘busy’ is an impediment to one’s relationship with God.”—Rev. Pete Scazzero, pastor of the New Life Fellowship Church in Elmhurst, Queens, quoted in Paul Vitello, “Evidence Grows of Problem of Clergy Burnout,” The New York Times, August 2, 2010

When he was attending St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, N.J., in the early 1970s, I can’t say that I thought of the ministry as a future career for Pete Scazzero.

But, as is obvious from even the most superficial reading of The Bible, God continually confounds expectations, including in the latent possibilities He sees in someone who can bring The Good News to others. In particular, it’s obvious now that Pete’s infectious exuberance for life and interest in other people could help him connect to the multicultural congregation he leads today in Queens.

Discovering that this friend of my older brother had turned his life, in a serious way, to Christ was only the first of the surprises I’ve learned about him lately. A year ago, while browsing in my local Borders store, I found copies of the Rev. Scazzero’s The Emotionally Healthy Church.

Then, last week, while reading Paul Vitello’s front-page New York Times piece on the potential for burnout experienced by today’s clergy—and of their increasing recognition that vacation is necessary for them to continue their work—I was startled to learn, on the jump to the inside pages of the newspaper, more about Rev. Scazzero.

It seems that he not only advocates the same “rhythm of stopping,” or daily praying, that is practiced by Trappist monks, but that his two books on “emotionally healthy” spirituality are bestsellers and that he is “the unofficial leader of a growing counterculture among independent pastors who reject the constant-growth ethic that has contributed to the explosion of so-called mega-churches.”

I haven’t seen Pete in years and time changes us all, irrevocably and sometimes drastically. But I have to think he is the same warm, friendly guy I knew when he was a teenager. I’m thrilled to hear about his fulfilling current life, and hope he can continue to lead many people to Christ.

Quote of the Day (Albert Camus, on “The Most Urgent of Questions”)

“I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions."—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1942)

Quote of the Day (Peter Quinn, on Judge Crater’s Disappearance)

“He comes out here and a tan cab is heading west. He’s wearing a double-breasted coat. He’s just had dinner with William Klein, a lawyer for the Shubert brothers, and a showgirl named Sally Ritz. He tips his hat, climbs in the cab — and that’s it.”—Novelist Peter Quinn, describing the last sighting of New York judge Joseph Crater, quoted in Alan Feuer, “Judge Is Still Missing, but Novel Tracks Him Down,” The New York Times, August 5, 2010

Eighty years ago today, Judge Joseph Crater, in the midst of the world’s greatest metropolis, went missing—and, despite screaming headlines and every kind of tip, plausible or not, his fate has never been determined. Except for Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart, he remains possibly the most famous missing person of the 20th century (though, because the judge’s celebrity did not extend beyond the New York area, fewer people are likely to know anything about his case today).

If you want to find a plausible solution to this decades-old enigma—not to mention insight into not one, but two historical eras—you can’t do better than Peter Quinn’s The Man Who Never Returned.

For a long time, I wondered why there hadn’t been more Irish-American heroes in the hardboiled-detective genre. After all, what other ethnic group approaches Irish-Americans in the way they whip out wiseguy one-liners, regard authority with instinctive distrust, and believe strongly that the past is a continuing force that constantly weighs us down?

Quinn must have wondered, too, because he created Fintan Dunne, the protagonist of his last novel, Hour of the Cat—a character worthy to stand beside Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and other immortals in the American mystery genre.

That novel dealt with eugenics, a homegrown experiment in racist science that, in effect, served as a dry run for the Holocaust. It was set in 1938, in an America on the brink of another world war--a dark time indeed.

Dunne returns 17 years later, a quarter century after the disappearance of Crater. That perspective allows Quinn a window into two dark eras: the Great Depression and the mid-1950s, when America began to indulge its consumerist tastes even as it experienced the Red Scare.

The keys to a fine mystery, if you ask me, are misdirection and believability. You need misdirection in order to keep the reader guessing, but you can’t make the solution to the puzzle so surprising that it defies belief and logic. The tricky thing is that, indulged too far in one direction, the two are often incompatible.

Quinn adeptly handles this, and in a way that recalls one of his liteary heroes, James Joyce. The great Irish novelist once said that, if Dublin were one day destroyed, he hoped it could be reconstructed brick by brick by a reading of his work.

That same sense of verisimilitude underlies Quinn’s novel. You sense that he knows every building, every historical event, and every person that figures in his plot.

And why not? The man is not only, in his words, a “lapsed historian,” but also—as the son of a judge and congressman, former speechwriter for New York governors Carey and Cuomo, and recipient of Crater case files not looked at in years—someone who writes with unparalleled authority about Gotham past and present.

I could keep going on and on about the sharp characterization, ear for dialogue, smooth writing, swift narrative pacing, and sure sense of the past that Quinn displays on every page. But why don’t you just go to a bookstore, open up the novel, and start reading? You’ll want to buy it before the end of a single paragraph.

(While you’re at it, take a look at Quinn's marvelous blog, “New York Paddy.” He doesn’t put enough on it for my tastes, but then again, when you turn out mysteries this good, there is plenty of compensation to go around.)