Is Your Stick Straight?

In a recent blog dealing with justification, I mentioned that Steven Judd's 'stick was straight,' and someone asked me what that meant.  Ironically, I got that term from a 1950 movie, Stars In My Crown, which stars Joel McCrea.  You may recall McCrea was the actor who portrayed Steven Judd.



Dean Stockwell, Joel McCrea and Juano Hernandez
in Stars In My Crown

 In the film, Ellen Drew (who always played a woman I wanted to marry) tells of how she had many suitors, and yet turned them all down.  Her mother became exapasperated, telling her of a child who went into the forest looking for a perfectly straight stick.  The child spent all day looking for this stick, never finding it.  All the child managed to do was become lost.  The mother told her, "You're looking for a straight stick."  Yet when she met Josiah Gray (McCrea), she knew she'd found her 'straight stick.'

Steven Judd's stick was justification, and he found it.  Others have different sticks.  With some it might be love, and others power.  A few, it might be a goal for a sports team.  Those particular sticks won't be straight, as rarely are they undefeated.  We need to be careful what we set as our sticks, our goals.  The phrase "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it," is more than an adage," but a pearl of wisdom.

What is your stick?  And is it one that when it's obtained, will it be a straight one?

Never Count `Em Out

I am one of those who use the line they are an individual of many talents, but a master of none of them.  Writing is something I've loved to do since I was a child.  The first novel I ever started I never finished.  It was entitled Two Plus Two Equals Five and dealt with a detective named Herman Showalski who made Inspector Clouseau look brilliant.  One of these days, I need to return to the adventures of Herman.  I miss him at times.

In this era of computers, ipods, Kindles, etc., we wonder . . . why bother trying?  Everything is going to be on a handheld device before you can even get it to an agent.  There's no sense in attempting to give it a shot, correct?

Wrong.  According to a well-known literary agent I listened to this past spring, books will always be with us.  The reason?  Technology is always attempting to better itself.  One-upmanship has to come along with its doo-hickeys and have more things on its item than the competitor's gadget that just came out last week.  And the item you bought to read on just yesterday?  Why, it's already outdated.  So you eagerly anticipate the latest version and send your 'old' version to someone else as a Christmas present. And they're not that pleased, as this three month old gadget is a piece of junk as far as they're concerned.

But a book . . it's always there.  The same as it has been for centuries.  And there's nothing like the feel of it.  It actually takes ten percent less time to read a novel on the written page than it does on a Kindle.  This way, you get to start on another book that much quicker.  Some things are best left the way they originally were.  Books are one of them.
                                                                                                 
                                                                                                  

Justification

One of my favorite Westerns is 1962's Ride the High Country.  Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea are two older lawman who are ending their days guarding a gold shipment.  Scott's Gil Westrum intends on stealing it, and wants his comrade in on it.  He mentions all the hardships of the past and the ingratitude, asking, "Is that what you want?"  McCrea's Steven Judd replies, "All I want is to enter my house justified."

Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in the
finale of Ride the High Country

Not given the proper publicity by MGM, Ride the High Country started to die at the box office, but something happened.  The critics managed to find this film, and gave it raves.  As a result, Ride the High Country became a hit.  In his book Alternate Oscars, Danny Peary picks it as his best film of 1962 over Lawrence of Arabia.

What is so special about Ride the High Country?  It's just a Western, right?  So the teaming of Scott and McCrea might be special to Western buffs, but aside from that, no big deal.  And it's Sam Peckinpah in his early years for those who like him.

Those are a few facts, but that is nothing that makes a person like the film.  It's the script.  When Judd states his life's goal, you realize this is not your ordinary film.  It's a morality Western, one that Peckinpah would never make again.  Steven Judd is no fool.  He knows what his partner is attempting, and at the same time, Judd tries to reform him.  In between is Westrum's friend Heck, who follows him but begins to admire Judd. 

All throughout the film, Judd never loses his convictions.  He is steadfast, like a rock.  I miss the Steven Judds of the cinema.  As a movie fan, I often get into online discussions as to if we could be any character in film, who would we be?  I always reply 'Steven Judd.'  Someone once pointed out that he'd had a sad life, losing the woman he'd loved, etc.  I said all of this was true, but his stick was straight, and he was the most admirable person in filmdom I could think of.  Also, he'd accomplished his one goal.

Steven Judd will always be my cinemtaic hero.
                                                                                                     
                                                                                                 

Take A Stand



Sophie Scholl

 Most Americans have never heard of Sophie Scholl.  Yet in Germany she is  regarded as highly as Joan of Arc is in France.  Sophie and her brother Hans were member of the White Rose, an underground group that distributed anti-Hitler literature at the university.  Unfortunately, they were captured and interrogated. 

During this time, both Hans and Sophie refused to give out information on their comrades, insisting they did all the work themselves.  Sophie especially impressed her interrogators with her intelligence and when she was informed that if she would  say that Hans had coerced her into this action, she would get off with a lighter sentence.  Not only did she refuse to do so, she let the Nazis know she was proud of what she had done.  The judge at her trial was a maniac, and well known for being so.  When she was allowed to make a statement before her sentencing, Sophie said to him that someday soon, he would be standing where she was.

Generally, a defendant was given 99 days to appeal their sentence.  Between their arrest and executions, Hans and Sophie had a total of three.  The Nazis realized what a powerful propaganda weapon freedom had in the Scholls, and they wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible.  And in doing so, they thought they won.

But Hans and Sophie, in their deaths, won.  They made a stand, showing that while they weren't looking forward to what was happening, they preferred death to living under Nazism, something their interrogators couldn't understand.  They became martyrs for freedom throughout the world, and their final pamphlet, smuggled out of the country, was dropped over Germany several years later by Allied bombers.

The Scholls and others like them were resolute in their convictions, and inspirations for those fighting the Axis powers.  You don't have to be a freedom fighter to be an inspiration, but merely stand up for the right thing.  Many times, it's not the easy one to do, but the right choice often is not. 

As the Aaron Tippin song goes, "You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything." 

                                                                                                

Don't Quit

Hollywood has known its share of tragedies:  Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Susan Peters to name a few. 



Susan Peters in Random Harvest

 Susan Peters doesn't get the attention the others do.  She'd received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Kitty in 1942's Random Harvest.  Three years later, she was hunting with her husband, actor Richard Quine when a rifle accidentally discharged and she was paralyzed from the waist down.  The studio, which paid for her bills, eventually cancelled her contract.  In 1947, she divorced Quine, the majority of people saying she didn't want to be a burden to him.

In 1952, she passed away at the age of 31.  The coroner's report said it was a combination of kidney disease and anorexia.  But they were wrong. 

Susan Peters had simply quit. With her career over, she felt she no longer was productive.  Therefore, she wasn't useful, so why bother? 

Quitting is one of the easiest things in the world to do.  It's also one of the most selfish.  We quit due to the fact we "can't take it any more," but we forget about the other examples that suffered far greater examples.

Look at the British after Dunkirk.  They have every right to throw in the towel.  But they had a secret weapon no one realized:  Spunk.  Everyone knew the Germans would be coming, and Churchill merely said,

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

Consider the position of the United States on December 7, 1941.  At the day's end, they had every right to call it quits.  Instead, they persevered, coming together and forming the greatest team ever assembled. 

In 1914, the Boston Braves were in last place.  They were the joke of the National League, and  everyone thought the New York Giants had the pennant in the bag.  By the end of the season, the Braves had not only won the pennant, they swept the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. 

Thirty-seven years later, the New York Giants were thirteen and a half games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers.  At the end of the season, the two teams were tied and the Giants won a three game playoff in the bottom of the ninth of the last game.  Like the British, the U.S., the Braves, they didn't quit.

During the Great Depression, my grandfather had to work three jobs to feed his family.  He'd come home with his hands covered with dye and cry, wondering if he was going to be able to feed his family.  Yet in the early 1950s, he and his sons started their own business.  He never quit.

Quit is one of the worst four letter words in the English language, and it is also one of the worst things a person can do to themselves.  In another speech, Churchill merely said, "Never give in.  Never, ever give in." 

Our generation is soft compared to those who came before us.  We want to drop out, to quit, because it's the easy thing to do.  The easy road is often lined with more potholes than we realize.