To Be or Not to Be. DIrected by Ernst Lubitsch - Starring Carole Bard and Jack Benny - 1942

 To Be or Not to Be. DIrected by Ernst Lubitsch - Starring Carole Bard and Jack Benny - 1942 - set in Warsaw in 1939 with German invasion imminent has strong comedic elements, great lines but it is not the laugh a minute film that To Be or Not to Be, directed by Mel Brooks and following the plot of Lubitsch's earlier version is.

2002, the American Film Institute selected To Be or Not to Be as one of the 50 funniest American movies of all time. In March of 1942, when the film was initially released, most critics weren't laughing. A movie lampooning Adolf Hitler may have been acceptable a few years prior (see, for example, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator [1940], though even then Chaplin began to regret his decision after learning more of the Nazis' "homicidal insanity"). But by 1942, Pearl Harbor had been attacked, America had entered World War II, and, to make matters even more dour, the star of To Be or Not to Be, the radiant Carole Lombard, had died in a plane crash less than two months before the premiere.

All told, those who saw To Be or Not to Be had their reasons not to be amused.

Now, however, with the benefit of time's remedial passing and decades worth of hindsight, Ernst Lubitsch's classic stands as an entertaining, surprisingly audacious, and powerfully poignant comic gem. One of the great filmmaker's final features (he would pass away just five years later), it is today most shocking not so much for the comedy itself, but rather the abrupt yet effortless shifts in tone, from screwball hysterics to genuinely austere observations.

Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker - 2007 - 442 Pages

 

Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker - 2007 - 442 Pages 

Seven years ago, in consultation with Max u, it was decided every December there should be a post in Observation of the Birth Anniversary of our father, born on December 2, 1918 in a small then very undeveloped tiny town in south Georgia, Cairo.

Our Father served four years in the United States Army during World War Two.  He was a junior officer serving under General Douglas MacArthur.  He was stationed in New Guinea and shortly after the war in the Philippines.  For the initial observation in December of 2018 I posted on a wonderful book, Rampage MacArthur, Yamashita and The Battle of Manila by James M. Scott .  Shortly after I posted, the author, a great speaker, did a book tour in Manila.  My wife and I attended one of his talks. Afterwards we had a lovely conversation with Mr. Scott.

In 2024 I came upon a perfect book for the annual birthday observation, War at the End of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight For New Guinea, 1942-1945 Book by James P Duffy.  

In 1937 our father was stationed in Panama. Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker is my selection for 2024

The Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in history; its completion in 1914 marked the beginning of the “American Century.” Panama Fever draws on contemporary accounts, bringing the experience of those who built the canal vividly to life. Politicians engaged in high-stakes diplomacy in order to influence its construction. Meanwhile, engineers and workers from around the world rushed to take advantage of high wages and the chance to be a part of history. Filled with remarkable characters, Panama Fever is an epic history that shows how a small, fiercely contested strip of land made the world a smaller place and launched the era of American domination.

"Matthew was born in El Salvador in 1970 to an expatriate family and while growing up lived in Britain, Norway and Barbados. He read English at Balliol College Oxford, then worked in a number of roles in book publishing in London from salesman to commissioning editor.

His first book, published in 2000, was about the Battle of Britain. Then followed Monte Cassino, Panama Fever (Hell’s Gorge in UK paperback), The Sugar Barons, Goldeneye and Willoughbyland. His most recent book, published on 28 September, tells the story of 29 September 1923, a hundred years ago, when the British Empire reached its maximum territorial extent.

When not writing/staring out of the window, he loves making sushi, pubs, growing stuff and visiting remote places.

He is a member of the Authors Cricket Club, and wrote a chapter of A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon. He is also a contributor to the  Oxford Companion to Sweets.

He has been elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives in East London with his wife, three children and an annoying dog." From the author's website

The Reading Life Review- December 2024

 The Reading Life Review- December 2024

Works Featured in November 

Nonfiction 

The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by Scott D. Seligman - 2020- 277 Pages

Novels 

1,  Castle Gripsholm - 1931- by Kurt Tucholsky- 244 Pages- translated from the German by Michael Hofmann -2019

2.  The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg - 2019 - Translated from French by Fred Wynne - 2020 - 60 pages

3. Green Witch by Alice Hoffman- 2021 - 70 Pages

4.  Legacy by Sybille Bedford- 1956 -385 Pages  - Introduction 2015 by Brenda Wineapple

Short Stories 

1,  "CHRISTMAS NOT JUST ONCE A YEAR" - A Short Story by Heinrich Böll - 1952 (Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit") - 7 Pages - included in the anthology A Very German Christmas-

2. "A Man Becomes a Nazi" 10

 Pages-A Short Story by Anna Seghers - 1943 - translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo - 2021

Movies 

1.  Young Frankenstein- Directed by Mel Brooks - 1974 - Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr 

Birth Countries of Authors 

1. Germany- 4

2. USA- 2

3. France - 1

Four featured writers are deceased, all but one we're featured for the first time, 4 writers are men, three women.

Blog Stats 

There are currently 4,627 posts on line

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Since in inception our posts have been viewed 8,204,099 times

Originating Countries of visitors

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5. USA 

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The posts most viewed were on stories by South Asian authors

The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by Scott D. Seligman - 2020- 277 Pages

 The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by Scott D. Seligman - 2020- 277 Pages

2020 National Jewish Book Award Finalist

The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 tells the twin stories of mostly uneducated women immigrants who discovered their collective consumer power and of the Beef Trust, the midwestern cartel that conspired to keep meat prices high despite efforts by the U.S. government to curtail its nefarious practices. 

With few resources and little experience but steely determination, this group of women organized themselves into a potent fighting force and, in their first foray into the political arena in their adopted country, successfully challenged powerful, vested corporate interests.

Keeping a Kosher household was a prime duty of Jewish housewives in New York City.  Most were immigrants from Russia or Poland but some were born in America.  The custom was the husband supported the family and the wife ran the household.  

Seligman goes into very welcome details about the women.  They were tough , smart and not afraid of the police and hired thugs

In the early  hours of May 15, 1902, three thousand Jewish women quietly took up positions on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Convinced by the latest jump in the price of kosher meat that they were being gouged, they assembled in squads of five, intent on shutting down every kosher butcher shop in New York's Jewish quarter.

What was conceived as a nonviolent effort did not remain so for long. Customers who crossed the picket lines were heckled and assaulted and their parcels of meat hurled into the gutters. Butchers who remained open were attacked, their windows smashed, stock ruined, equipment destroyed. Brutal blows from police nightsticks sent women to local hospitals and to court. But soon Jewish housewives throughout the area took to the streets in solidarity, while the butchers either shut their doors or had their doors shut for them. The newspapers called it a modern Jewish Boston Tea .

Seligman throughly explains the processes by which Beef can be certified as Kosher.  I knew nothing about the way midwestern raised cattle passed through Chicago on the way to New York City, The process was controlled by six companies know as The Beef Trust.  The secretly set prices and demanded kick backs in collusion with the railroads,  Butchers, Kosher and Gentile, had to pay their price.  Butchers depended on short term credit, they would buy on credit then repay after making sales. If they resisted the Beef Trust their credit needs were denied.

Scott D. Seligman is a writer and historian. He is the national award-winning author of several books, including A Second Reckoning: Race, Injustice, and the Last Hanging in Annapolis (Potomac, 2021) and Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China (Potomac, 2023).

The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg - 2019 - Translated from French by Fred Wynne - 2020 - 60 pages

 The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg - 2019 - Translated from French by Fred Wynne - 2020 - 60 pages

Told in the manner of a fairy tale, Jean-Claude Grumberg's The Most Precious of Cargoes tells the story of a woman who wanted a child, and a child who needed a home. It is a tale that teaches us that even in the darkest, most violent times, there is reason to believe in people's capacity for kindness.

Once upon a time in an enormous forest lived a woodcutter and his wife. The woodcutter is very poor and a war rages around them, making it difficult for them to put food on the table. Yet every night, his wife prays for a child.

A Jewish father rides on a train holding twin babies. His wife no longer has enough milk to feed both children. In hopes of saving them both, he wraps his daughter in a shawl and throws her into the forest.

While foraging for food, the woodcutter’s wife finds a bundle, a baby girl wrapped in a shawl. Although she knows harbouring this baby could lead to her death, she takes the child home.

Set against the horrors of the Holocaust and told with a fairy tale-like lyricism, The Most Precious of Cargoes is a fable about family and redemption which reminds us that humanity can be found in the most inhumane of places.

I found work deeply captivating. The epilogue is just so wonderful.

"Jean-Claude Grumberg was born in 1939. He started out as an actor before writing his first play in 1968. Since then he has written more than forty scripts for the stage and film. He currently lives and works in his native France. He was inspired by the loss of his own father in a Nazi concentration camps to write The Most Precious of Cargoes. He lives in France." From Harper Row

Young Frankenstein- Directed by Mel Brooks - 1974 - Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr

 

Young Frankenstein- Directed by Mel Brooks - 1974 - Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr 

Fifty years ago Mel Brooks, with an incredibly talented cast, gave the world one of the funniest most brilliant comedies ever done, Young Frankenstein.

Inspired by Mary Shelly's novel, the movie begins with the grandson of Victor Frankenstein, played by Gene Wilder,giving a lecture at an American medical college in New York.  A student asks him about his feelings on his grandfather's work focusing on bringing corpses back to life. He is so against his work that he insists his name be pronounced differently.  He tells the class his grandfather's work was total nonsense.  In the class room is a man has come five thousand miles, from Transylvania to bring him the will of his great grandfather, Baron Von Frankenstein.  He has inherited the castle where his grandfather worked,

After a bizarrely repressed goodbye at the train station with his finance, played perfectly by Madeline Kahn, he sets out  for Transylvania. In nezrly every seen in the movie there are marvellous comic moments (" pardon me boy is this the Transylvania station")

At the Transylvania Station he is picked up by Igor, played by Marty Feldman and accompanied by Terri Garr playing his lab assistant. 

I do not wish to reveal more of the plot to first time viewers of the movie.

I love this movie.  In these darking times I needed this movie.

Green Witch by Alice Hoffman- 2010 - 70 Pages

 The Green Witch by Alice Hoffman- 70 Pages

Alice Hoffman works I have so far read:

The Marriage of Opposites- 2015

"Everything My Mother Taught Me" - 2016

"The Book Store Sisters" -2022

The Foretelling - 2006

"Conjure" - 2014

Aquamarine- 2001

The Ice Queen - 2006

Property Of -1977

Skylight- 2007

The Invisible Hour 2023

Rules of Magic- 2017

Practical Magic - 1997

Faithful- 2016

When We Flew Away' A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary - 2024

My goal is to read all of her overe.

Green Witch was a delightful enchanting way to spend a part of my day, an excellent bromide against sad times.

"What is loss?

The echo that surrounds the word gone.

What is love?

The deepest of your heart’s desires.

Green lives every day with feelings of loss. Her family is gone, the boy she loves is missing, and the world she once knew is transformed by tragedy. In order to rediscover the truth about love, hope, and magic, she must venture away from her home, collecting the stories of a group of women who have been branded as witches because of their mysterious powers. Only through their stories will Green find her heart’s desire.

Alice Hoffman’s readers asked for the character of Green to return. Written after the events of 9/11 Green Angel began this story of renewal. Now Green Witch takes us farther into the achingly beautiful, ruined and redeemed world.

For the many readers who cherished Green Angel, Alice Hoffman’s miraculous story of a world destroyed and reborn, this new novel marks the return of an extraordinary character – one whose story was not complete in a single book. For new readers, it presents a beautiful exploration of how we must confront what we fear most, and how we can find love that is everlasting." From the publisher