The Homo and the Negro

by James J O'Meara

Although the country was well over 90% white, apparently Hollywood was so Judaificated by 1934 that a real WASP was a hot new commodity; and just the thing to portray the new White Rage rising in the heartland. Today, Bogart might be playing Timothy McVeigh, or debuting in Natural Born Killers.

  Tom Shone’s review has nicely summarized the interplay of Bogart’s heritage, career, and legend:

  His entire film career was to rest on a single, judiciously prolonged piece of miscasting: his stiff, slightly old-fashioned patrician bearing was slightly redundant when deployed in the service of patricians, but transplanted into the bodies of toughs, condemned men, and private eyes—the closest the modern world has to the knights of the round table—and the result was a brand of hard-bitten, rueful integrity that fit the times like a glove.284

  The whole premise of Kanfer’s book—Bogart as the greatest film legend—makes it unnecessary to go through the classic films to come; except perhaps to note that Bogart was no ingénue; he was well into his 40s, and had made over 30 films before becoming a “star.” Kanfer does an excellent job explaining the old studio system, the backstage business, and general cultural background, in order to provide us the context in which Bogart created some of the most iconic film roles.

  And Kanfer also documents what he calls Bogart’s greatest role, a man dying relatively young from cancer, hiding his pain to spare his family and fans. The doctor treating him said: “When a man is sick, you get to know him. You find out whether he’s made of soft wood or hard wood. I began to get fonder of Bogie with each visit. He was made of very hard wood indeed” (p. 220).

  Earlier, he had given a more public display of manhood when dealing with the tangled loyalties of the Hollywood blacklist.

  Kanfer seems to be a pretty standard liberal guy, but he’s refreshingly independent of what he calls “the romantic wish dream” (p. 131) of the Hollywood Left: the blacklisted as brave men and women, just ordinary citizens, standing up to ignorant, corrupt, badly-shaved politicos, as epitomized (of course) by Woody Allen’s The Front.

  In fact, as Kanfer says:

  More than half of the hostile witnesses had lied to their own lawyers about their Communist past or present, and presented themselves to the Committee for the First Amendment [the support group Bogart had joined] as innocent victims framed by the government.

  After witnessing their performance at the hearings, and making a few inquiries of his own, “Bogart was furious” one blacklistee recalled, “shouting at Danny Kaye, ‘You fuckers sold me out.’” (p. 127)

  Though he remained liberal in private life, he felt a justifiable anger about the way his name and reputation had been used. (p. 132)

  Alistair Cooke later recalled: “Bogart was aghast” to discover how many of the protestors “were down-the-line Communists coolly exploiting the protection of the First and Fifth Amendments. . . . He had thought they were just freewheeling anarchists, like himself” (p. 127).

  If Bogart was an anarchist, he was a Conservative Anarchist, in the tradition of Céline or Jünger, whose “Anarch” sounds like the typical Bogart character:

  [A]n extreme aloofness, which nourishes itself and risks itself in the borderline situations, but only stands in an observational relationship to the world, as all instances of true order are dissolving and an “organic construction” is not yet, or no longer, possible.285

  Or even a “Bohemian Tory” like Noël Coward, men for whom personal integrity, professionalism and loyalty to friends—like Foster with Gibson, Bogart stood behind those he could personally vouch for, using his star power to keep them working—were more important that politics or ideological purity. And to that extent Kanfer is justified in finding Bogart to have created a “new” masculinity, not the “post-feminist” sort but more like one of Evola’s “men among the ruins.”

  [To name names or not] was a matter of great importance to those affected, but it was not the only way to take the measure of a man, and many refused to be defined in such narrow terms. Humphrey Bogart was one of them. As the decade wound down, he continued to present his own brand of masculinity, which had nothing to do with polemics [such as the contrasting but self-exculpating works of Miller or Kazan]. (p. 132)

  In his recent book Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, Paul Kengor presents some intriguing bits of evidence to suggest a “Bogart” enrolled in a New York City indoctrination program in the 1930s could have been Bogart.286

  Speaking of communism, Aryan masculinity, and Noël Coward, consider their interplay in Beat the Devil, based on the novel by Communist Claud Cockburn (whose son, Alex, has just published a new edition),287 with a screenplay by Truman Capote. We know how Bogie hated commies, what about queers?

  Bogart’s attitude to homosexuals seems to have been amusement or puzzlement, but capable of changing to good will when they showed the same professionalism he embodied. The famously flamboyant Capote earned Bogart’s respect for his ability to crank out countless rewrites, sometimes daily, even from a hospital bed. Capote returned the compliment after Bogie’s death, recalling the way he divided the world into professionals and bums, and “God knows he was [a professional].”

  Moreover, he even beat Bogart at arm wrestling, and hustled $50 out of him doing it; an incident oddly reminiscent of an episode of All in the Family where Archie’s old pal comes out while they arm wrestle.

  It’s also reminiscent of the way Sam Spade deals with Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon, the first time Bogart, Huston, and Lorre teamed up. And yes, I know Bogart isn’t Sam Spade and that Spade is in fact an entirely fictional character. But what made Bogart’s Spade unforgettable, when studios had already flopped twice with other actors, was Bogart himself, and Spade’s character does give us a chance to see the range of Bogart’s response to sexual deviation.

  Cairo, played by Peter Lorre, with his lisp, piss-elegant clothes, and scented handkerchief, even resembles Capote. He is easily knocked out and disarmed, almost playfully (Spade allows himself a puzzled sniff of the handkerchief); but at the end of the scene Cairo gets the drop on Spade and insists on carrying out a search of his office. Spade, impressed by Cairo’s persistence and competence, lifts up his arms and says “Go ahead, go ahead” while Bogart gives a rather forced giggle. Fade to black; is there a sexual undercurrent here?

  Spade deals otherwise with the gunsel, Wilmer (seemingly pronounced “Wilma” by everyone). Played by Elisha Cook, Jr., he’s an obviously overcompensating fruit, swathing his scrawny frame in a thick overcoat, carrying two guns in his pockets, and talking in “tough guy” lingo. (“The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter,” Spade sneers, articulating the Aryan’s contempt for theatricality.) “What is it?” says the hotel dick, and Spade answers, “I don’t know, I’ve been watching it.” His conclusion is that Wilmer is weak and incompetent; Spade enjoys disarming him and then displays Aryan modesty: “A crippled newsie took them away, I made him give them back.”

  Spade is right in his evaluation. Wilmer is incompetent and a coward, who literally kicks Spade when he’s down and out; Spade repays him by offering him up as the fall guy, and the gang eagerly agrees. The actor will redeem himself in Bogart’s next detective film, The Big Sleep, where his wimpy character is killed protecting his girlfriend; “Your little man died to keep you out of trouble,” Marlowe points out to the ungrateful shrew.

  Finally, Kasper Gutman, Oxford scholar gone bad; Wodehousian accent, possibly Jewish, searching the world for the Maltese Falcon, like his contemporary, Otto Rahn, another homosexual academic Grail hunter (and possible inspiration for Indiana Jones); and a classic, even Classical, pederast. Here, Spade’s Aryan virtues play him false; his respect for Gutman’s age and erudition allows Gutman to mesmerize him, first with words and then with a mickey. A parable for the history of Aryan-Jewish interaction?

  And yes, Bogart even teamed up, after a fashion, with Coward himself. Here’s how Lauren Bacall tells it:

  He and Bogie
were guests of Clifton Webb one weekend. Bogie and Noël were assigned to the same room, and Noël was gay, as everybody on Earth knew, but nobody cared, because he was so great. Just to be in his presence was quite enough. And at the end of the evening one night, they were changing into their PJs to hit the sack. Bogie was sitting on the edge of the bed, and at one point put his hand on Noël’s knee. Bogie said: “Noël, I have to tell you that if I had my druthers and I liked guys you would be the one I’d want to be with. But, unfortunately, I like girls.” And from that moment on Noël never mentioned it, and Bogie never mentioned it. Class behavior! And they became fast, fast friends.288

  In his final chapter Kanfer addresses his broader theme: the unprecedented dominance of the Bogie icon. He gave us the answer already on his very first page, when he corrects Norma Desmond: the pictures did become bigger, and the actors smaller. The 20 highest-grossing films of all time are all “blockbusters” made for teen audiences, and their actors have the same dewy innocence and immaturity. Since it’s experience that produces character, today’s actors, however highly trained, are indistinguishable and interchangeable; no one, Kanfer points out, impersonates Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Christian Bale, the way men like Bogart or Cagney or even wispy Jimmy Stewart were a staple part of a comedian’s repertoire.

  One could quibble a bit here; Christian Bale, certainly, has given comics from South Park to Riff Trax a comedic foothold with his raspy Batman voice. And Bale’s The Dark Knight, despite showing up as Number 8 on Kanfer’s list, is arguably at least an attempt to create a more mature, more conflicted, Batman, perhaps not unlike one of Bogart’s bad guys with principles, making hard choices in a world morally adrift (See Trevor Lynch’s meditations on The Dark Knight.)289

  On the other hand, I confess that even after watching it about eight times, I still don’t understand the narrative of The Departed, since the three principals, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, and, yes, DiCaprio, seem exactly the same person to these old eyes. (Or was that deliberate?) Needless to say, no problem recognizing old school Jack Nicholson. Of course, Bogart’s scars, lisp, and cigarette-rasp were only the external signs, useful for an actor, of his inner maturity. In his review of Kanfer cited above, Shone also says: “These days, we measure toughness by the damage dished out to others—by body counts and kill ratios. Bogart’s toughness was an inside job.”

  In Men Among the Ruins, Baron Evola summarized The Roman, and generally The Aryan, style as:

  The sober, austere, active style, free from exhibitionism, measured, endowed with a calm awareness of one’s dignity. To have the sense of what one is and of one’s value independently of any external reference, loving distance as well as actions and expressions reduced to the essential, devoid of any exhibition and cheap showmanship—all these are fundamental elements for the eventual formation of a superior type.290

  That was Bogart: tough without a gun.

  Counter-Currents/North American New Right

  May 30, 2011

  HE WRITES! YOU READ!

  THEY LIVE

  Constant readers will know that I not infrequently make use of images or lines from John Carpenter’s schlock-cult classic They Live. But it was only the other day, my financial situation being but a few steps away from Roddy Piper’s in the film, that I had to luck to find a $1.99 proof copy of Jonathan Lethem’s excellent book,291 part of the “Deep Focus” series, from which I also recommend the one on Death Wish.292

  Both are written from the Default Liberal Position (otherwise they wouldn’t be published), but both are relatively free of ideological cant and more than a little willing to contemplate, for example, whether Bronson’s vigilante might have a point or two to make, so they make easy enough reading for those who might actually have a Bronson poster on the wall.

  It’s only 200 pages, and moreover it’s a small-sized book, so you can probably read it in one relatively short sitting. In fact, a movie time code appears throughout, so you can probably read it along with your Netflix stream. So in the spirit of such brevity, let’s do so, and I’ll just make a few notes along the way.

  1. Carpenter’s screenplay pseudonym, “Frank Armitage,” alludes to Lovecraft’s “Dunwich Horror,” while the originating short story is by an obscure author best known as one of the few to collaborate with Philip K. Dick, thus linking “two now esteemed artists situated in disreputable genres.” I would myself add, as noted here before, that these are the two greatest American writers of the 20th century, one in each half. Lethem does note, however, the irony that Lovecraft’s trans-dimensional Elder Gods have now become yuppies shopping for blue corn tortillas.

  2. He also notes that in the summer between the film’s production and release saw the riots in NYC’s Tompkins Square Park, which calls to mind the homeless encampment at the start of the film. However, not so much; these are “sheepish, demoralized, obedient” and seem to want to do nothing but watch television all day, which is convenient for the plot points, of course. More on these losers later.

  3. The use of ’50s sci-fi clips on the TVs leads him to speculate if, to Carpenter, the ’50s “seem a whole lot deeper than the ’80s,” which is a nice way to put what a lot of us here have been thinking. As Lethem later says, the glasses reveal that “color is lies, black and white the truth” or, as one revolutionary shouts, “They colorized it!”

  4. Lethem is all upset about the ways that the phrase “Hoffman Lenses” has been mutated in pop culture; Albert Hofmann? Abbie Hoffman? He likes pop culture re-appropriation, but like most good-thinkers, thinks some standards—his—should apply. Some people have dared to associate them with “holocaust denier” Michael A. Hoffman II, which he take as a warning to those who would set their memes loose on the world: “Free your mind, and an ass may follow.” Har-de-har-har. However, just to blow Lethem’s mind, here’s another: entheogenic drug researcher and cultural historian (and Heavy Metal theorist) Michael [no relation to Hoffman II] Hoffman. Take that!

  5. Now back to those hapless homeless. Lethem notes at various points one of the most interesting memes in the movie, quoting at length (as we will here) no less than NPR poster-boy Slavoj Žižek:

  [I]t totally turns around the usual new age idea of critique of ideology, which would be: “in everyday life we have ideological glasses, learn to put down, take off, the glasses, and see with your own eyes reality the way it is.” No, unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this. Liberation hurts. You have to be forced to put your glasses on. (Slavoj Žižek, “They Live! Hollywood as an Ideological Machine”)

  6. This is in reference to the (in)famous “longest fight scene in movie history” but it also crops up throughout the film. Lethem notes that Frank is not a “Magic Negro” (even using the term!) but more of a Danny Glover sidekick, then goes on to point out that while the White hero, Nada (which makes me recall Showgirls’ “Nomi”) is naïve, the Black guy is too-knowing in his cynicism: “a nice twist is in the works: Nada will eventually have to bludgeon his Black friend into seeing the truth Frank seemingly already possesses.” The “twist” being on the now-audience-expected theme, White guy learns grudging respect for the street wisdom of Black partner forced on him. In general, “knowledge in They Live is associated with head pain, grogginess and eyestrain. . . . It’s more comfortable not to see.” Moral? Even the most obvious victims of the system are more likely to just “tune in for more” as they used to say during station breaks, than rise up and throw off their mental chains.

  7. If the good ol’ American family won’t rise up (I think that’s why, along with budget restraints, Carpenter makes use of suspiciously normal looking families among his homeless group), then what to do? Who you gonna call? The Männerbund!

  EXCURSUS ON THE MÄNNERBUND

  Lethem starts off by calling to our attention that once we get away from the homeless camp, the LA scenes, especially Holly’s apartment, look like porn sets. True, but I’d just say that all of Southern California looks like a porn set to these
New York eyes and leave it at that; Curb Your Enthusiasm, for example, looks like a porn shoot to me; but Lethem wants to use this to set up his notion that there’s some kinda homoeroticism going on between Frank and Nada. Noting their obvious racial polarity, he trots out the tired Huck and Jim thesis of Judaic critic Leslie Fiedler, who tried to reduce all American literature to variations on boys on the raft.

  (The ne plus ultra of this was probably the Penguin Classics edition of Moby Dick, where critic Harry Beaver [!] created a 300 page text with 200 pages of endnotes detailing line by line Melville’s “phallic imagination”—Harpoons! Coffins! Peg-legs! Oysters! Dogs and cats living together!)

  I take Frank’s invitation to introduce Nada to the homeless encampment (hot food and showers!) as recruitment not into a sexual liaison but into a proto-Männerbund of working class types banding together in the economic chaos (though, as we have seen, not a very lively one, but serving to get him across the street to the fake church were he meets the real revolutionaries). Nada will return the favor when he later beats the truth into Frank, Fight Club style.

  Lethem would have saved himself some idle speculations, and real puzzlements, such as why Nada later takes a younger version of himself under his wing, if he had understood better that, as he says: “If it’s not that kind of hookup scene, it’s still a hookup scene.” As he says later, when Nada spews stupid, supposedly clever one-liners about ugly female ghouls, “this man of the people is more of the male than the female people.” And later, during the shoot-em-up at the Cable 54 offices, “He really shouldn’t be looking for Holly; he’s got no knack with women.”

  The Männerbund theme continues even when Nada “hooks up” with Holly, played by the “eerie” and ineffable Meg Foster.