Pete Kelly’s Blues (1947)
Peggy Lee was nominated for an Oscar for it. In Pete Kelly’s Blues she plays a singer abused by a mob boss. She gets thrown down the stairs and ends up with "the mind of a 5 year old.” I love Peggy Lee’s singing, but there was always something somnambulant about it. (Do you remember her dreary, scary hit ‘Is That All There Is?’ — it was my favourite song for awhile — but she sounded like she was half dead when she sang it.) Well when it comes to poker faces, Jack Webb makes Peggy Lee look like a circus clown. In fact, I find myself talking like him here. Now. In this blog. The dialogue in Pete Kelly’s Blues is imitation film. Noir. Dialogue. And it’s just as catching. Short, sweet — and to the point. No more than that. But. There’s no wit. There. No punch. But-. Okay. Enough. You get the idea. Jack Webb patented the character he created here and built his TV show Dragnet around it. When I was a kid I remember watching my father turn on the TV to watch Dragnet every night. I was told Dragnet was not for children, but I stayed up long enough once to sneak a peak of the opening credits: a giant, hairy, masculine arm, holding a hammer — dripping with sweat — carving the ominous letters ‘MARK VII' out of mute stone. It gave me nightmares. Why? Did I know that Jack Webb embodied masculinity? That he was ‘anti-me’ — the man I would never become? Dragnet is hilarious, and so is this movie, quite unintentionally. Cheery little Janet Leigh is always trying to get an emotion out of him; but Jack’s a serious musician fighting off the mob. He’s sensitive enough to have a pet bird, but explains; “I’m nice to him because I may get hungry some day and have to eat him.” On Dragnet this emotionlessness was pragmatic — Jack Webb was Sergeant Joe Friday, whose motto was ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’ He’d investigate a crime. There would of course be a victim or a witness — one who ‘d have a tendency to digress. Joe’d ask “What happened?” And the person— often a woman — would say: “Well I was just sitting alone at home, it was a rainy day, so I was feeling kind of depressed, or perhaps that was because my dog died last week —." Friday would throw a sarcastic glance at his trusty sidekick (Harry Morgan) — sigh — and say: “Just the facts ma’am.” Which is why I think art is essentially feminine, because to digress is a uniquely feminine pursuit; it is to be possessed of a heavenly imagination; to digress is to be divine. There are exceptions of course; Hemingway and Picasso — but I they were only abusive to women to try and prove how masculine they were. Poetry and painting are about habitually straying off the topic. What is the topic? Survival! Use! How are you going to put food on the table and keep the rain out? These are clearly Jack Webb’s obsessions and everything else is a waste of his valuable masculine time. So I’ve almost reached the 100 blog mark, and I must digress; or perhaps all of these blogs have been digressions — indeed they have, because I’m the kind of girl who likes to wander. I’m back in Hamilton looking out my window at dusk. I’m missing the Montreal hookers and drug addicts — the crazy tough-as-nails gals yelling, drunk, in the middle of St. Catherine Street, flipping their own big tits around and trying to start the party. I’m missing the boys on drugs, I’m missing the guy last night who lay in front of me on a stone slab (part of the AIDS memorial —which I realised on my last night in Montreal — is clearly orgy central) writhing about, thrusting his pelvis in the air. So I followed him into an alley and we started doing it, and then he said — ‘sorry man, I just— it’s the drugs — I need the drugs or else it just doesn’t work.’ So why would I miss that? And I miss the boy with the junkie dog and the black wrap that kept falling open revealing everything, and the boy who mooned me on the street and then told me I was gorgeous. I even miss the sad old man, the photocopy of myself, who offered me everything I needed to have a good time (and also things I didn’t need, too) and whose own climax seemed to come when he showed me his 3 bedroom, $650-a-month apartment. I miss the nights on the balcony reading Shakespeare to the man I love. And I miss not watching television. The self I was so afraid of confronting at the start of this ‘pandemic' — does that self live vicariously among street people, romanticising their desperate lives which are — truth be told — so unlike mine? I promise you I am not doing that; no, no, really — it’s about life — it’s about living it before you die, and not staying home safe, washing your hands. Dear me, there are still mad doctors on CNN and they are still talking about how children might get it, and probably won’t die, but could pass it on, and shouldn’t go to school. Is it just because somebody somewhere gets a kick out of stopping our economy? Back in Ontario, Fatty Ford has extended the state of emergency for another three weeks, so it’s time to put on your mask and and your hand sanitizer and think of England. This is what it means to live in a world dominated by use; this is Jack Webb’s world, this is just the facts ma’am. None of your art, your digression -- just tell me how to stay alive, and of course I’ll believe everything you say. I sat in District last night — which is one of the most horrible Montreal bars I’ve ever been in — but it was the only bar open on St. Catherine Street, and the only one you could actually enter, and the only bar I had set foot in for three and a half months. The people were young and beautiful — I obviously frightened them; that’s fine. It was enough for me that some drunk hipster was dancing down the aisles, and the cute waiter was using the ‘three meter stick’ to slap the table like it was somebody’s bum. I will not have the life drained out of me. If you want facts, you will not find them here. For God’s sake Jack-dry-as-dust-friggin-Webb! — all Janet Leigh wants you to do is dance! Sure she’s wearing a funny hat, but we all wear funny hats now and then, don’t we? Don’t you know that the only things worth doing are the things that have no purpose? Because you’re an awfully long time dead — but a very short while laughing for no reason at all.
