Blog: Adios, Tenderloin Terry Zobeck

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Don

— Or; How the Tag Cloud Slowly Won Me Over. . . .

After the recent burst of posts about Musso & Frank, I noticed that the name of the oldest restaurant and bar in Hollywood muscled its way into my Tag Cloud — the clump of names hovering over in the sidebar area. Leo Grin, who has put on the feedbag in M&F every time I have, also popped up — and when I did the last of the posts about the residences where noir master Jim Thompson lived in Hollywood, suddenly Thompson’s name made the leap to the cloud.

Earlier I noticed the same thing happened with Dashiell Hammett Street. And Frederic Dannay, after an inundation of mentions. Even my pal John D. Squires made the cut awhile back — he said his name really should appear in the Tag Cloud in purple (that’s an M. P. Shiel joke, for those not in the know — Shiel fans get it, no one else will).

When the blog started, I wasn’t sure I wanted a Tag Cloud, because on other blogs I’ve seen they look pretty clunky — I find the ones where the Tags are listed in numerical order of hits especially mechanical — Dashiell Hammett Street (45), Dudley Do-Right (18), and so on. Just no organic rhythm. . . .

I barely know enough computer chops to do new posts. I didn’t know the Tag Cloud would form based on the first twenty-five or so names I tagged, or I might have juggled it differently. Or tried to. I thought those names would be it, I didn’t know some names would start to fall off and be replaced by others that were getting more action. Cool. Plus, I’ve noticed that the Tag Cloud wants names beginning with different letters, and searches for different angles — 891 Post got picked up because it starts with numbers (and is mentioned a lot), and at one point the title “Conan vs. Conantics” made the cut because its in quotes, but got dropped in favor of “Death and Company.”

I’m just an interested observer, at this point, I wouldn’t juggle the results even if I bothered to learn how. Tag Cloud Darwinism.

I guess I knew that the more hits a Tag got, the larger the name would appear, which has resulted in some nice idle reveries.

My favorite, and you can still see it, mostly, was when Valentine and Vince Emery floated in the cloud in the same font size, for months, side by side, and I started to think of Vince as Valentine Vince Emery. Like the names of the hoods who come into Frisco to rob the banks in Hammett’s The Big Knockover. Now I can’t think of Vince any other way.

And there was a great moment when I noticed that the name Tenderloin and Terry Zobeck were lined up, same size — I told Terry, hey, you can use the moniker Tenderloin Terry Zobeck!!! As a fan of The Big Knockover, Terry saw the appeal.

But as of a couple of days ago, Tenderloin Terry Zobeck is no more. Musso & Frank and the other new names muscling in had to push something aside, and Tenderloin was it. Now Terry is sitting in the cloud without a slang name, getting larger and larger with every appearance (he’s got three or four new posts ready to roll, so he well may be the largest name in the Tag Cloud in a couple of months).

And after this contemplative pause in the usual action, I’m not Tagging any name in this post — you can find most of them in the Tag Cloud and click away — every proper name dropped, except Dudley Do-Right.

Posted in Tour |

Hollywood Beat: 7741 Hollywood Blvd

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Don

Before the money from The Getaway allowed them to move closer to Musso & Frank, Jim Thompson and his family lived a little less than a mile away from the front doors, on the same street — far enough out to be in West Hollywood.

If Thompson was doing any drinking in M&F at this point, he could easily have hopped a bus back and forth — and the question comes to mind, If he was already familiar with M&F, did he use the loot from the Peckinpah film to allow him to move to Whitley, within easy walking distance? Or was it mere coincidence?

Of the residences in and around Hollywood, this is the one Thompson’s daughter didn’t like, remembering it as a dumpy little place — with the places on Whitley more upscale. That was almost forty years ago, though, and today the place and the neighborhood look nice enough. I was kind of hoping for one run-down shanty sort of place to evoke primo Thompson, but you don’t get anything like that with his Hollywood addresses.

Posted in Film, Lit | Tagged , , , |

Hollywood Beat: 1817 Hillcrest

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Don

The place Jim Thompson was living at the time of his death — check out a reputable source, but my understanding is that he died in this building — is roughly ten or twelve blocks from Musso & Frank. To get to 1817 Hillcrest from the front doors of M&F, go west to the major artery North Highland Avenue, north a few blocks to Franklin Place, left a block and right on Hillcrest. After a series of strokes Thompson stopped eating, and even lost interest in booze and cigarettes (and in this bleak noir universe, if you lose interest in booze and cigarettes, that’s it).

While you could walk from Hillcrest to M&F, my assumption is that Thompson wasn’t really up to it by the time his family moved to this address, and that it was the years spent on Whitley Street that made him a fixture in the grill, whether anyone there really knew who he was or not.

For me, Thompson is now the one writer, out of no doubt thousands of writers, I associate with M&F above all the others. What better ghost to haunt the bar?

Posted in Film, Lit | Tagged , |

Hollywood Beat: 1922 Whitley

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Don

When I got back to Hollywood to stop in Musso & Frank for the third time, I was really curious to check into what Dennis McMillan had told me — that Jim Thompson was a regular there, drinking at the bar almost every day, because he lived only about three blocks away.

Typically, I kind of waited till the last minute to look into it, and couldn’t find a copy of Robert Polito’s bio of Thompson, Savage Art, before I headed south — I’m confident Polito has every known address covered. However, Craig Graham solved that timing problem by calling up Thompson’s daughter and asking her.

We drove around, tracking down every place anywhere in the vicinity of M&F she told Craig about — I made a couple of notes, but most of the info here is from memory.

The closest address to M&F still standing is 1922 Whitley, roughly four blocks from the rear doors of the grill — you can duck around on some streets and cut across the back parking lot to shorten the distance, but Whitley T’s into Hollywood Boulevard about a block east of M&F’s front doors, then you head north three or four blocks — easy walking distance.

If I have the info right, the Thompson family made the move here after he got some film money from The Getaway, directed by Peckinpah, starring Steve McQueen, released in 1972. They had been living in an apartment the daughter didn’t like that much, further out Hollywood Boulevard, and at some point moved to her favorite place in this series — 1850 Whitley, south in the next block beyond Franklin — yes, one block closer to M&F! 1850 Whitley apparently was a three story building and they occupied the penthouse — today a large apartment house covers that section of real estate.

I guess that while they were living on Whitley, one or the other address, was when Thompson got to do his cameo as Judge Baxter Wilson Grayle in the 1975 Robert Mitchum version of Farewell, My Lovely  — if you’re a hard-boiled fan, it’s worth watching just for that.

And sometime before his death on April 7, 1977, the Thompsons moved about twice as far away from M&F — still not that far — where he died.

 

 

 

Posted in DMac, Film, Lit | Tagged , , , , , , , |

Hollywood Beat: More Musso

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Don

Finally, I got a date set-up — Saturday August 20, 2011 — where I could hit Musso & Frank with Craig Graham, the guy who first told me about the place. Craig reserved a table with a view of the bar. We were on.

I suppose I met the Grahams, Craig and Patti, and their Vagabond Books enterprise around 1994 or 95, when they operated a brick-and-mortar store in Brentwood, down the block from Mezzaluna where Ron Goldman worked — not long after Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were found murdered. Can’t remember what the exact reason for hauling down to LA was at the time, but it was something to do with Dennis McMillan.

They may not want it carved on their tombstones, but in the Posse McMillan Universe the Grahams have been most famed as the booksellers Dennis stopped in on (early 80s, I’m guessing) and his scrofolous old dog Skeezerinctum knocked up their dog. To become part and parcel of The Dennis Legend, it has to be something like that, you can’t just meet him at a booksigning somewhere. His dog has to knock up your dog. You have to hold a gun to his head. Something legendary. . . .

But in the real world Vagabond is quite respectable and handles lots of major antiquarian action — Patti mentioned that pretty recently they had acquired the Jimmy Durante library. I wouldn’t have thought that Durante would have had a library, but hey, I was glad to hear he did. The books just moved on recently, because although Durante died in 1980 he had married a much younger woman, a hat check girl in one of the New York clubs (something like that), who had kept the library intact.

So, we had the night lined up. Leo Grin was game for dinner, as usual, but Donald Sidney-Fryer wasn’t available. We parked in the back lot and moved in through the old room, where we paused to look at the Charlie Chaplin booth — up front, next to the doors, the only booth with a window looking out on Hollywood Boulevard — you want to be seen, a primo spot.

It was empty.

Our reserved table with a view of the bar was in the new room, but the host thought to ask if we wanted the Chaplin booth, since we were standing there, appreciating the history. Why not?

Found out that later on it became the favored booth of Steve McQueen. Cool.

This time we didn’t spot a single celebrity, at least that any of us recognised, but Craig mentioned that on one of his first stops in M&F in the next booth Lillian Hellman was dining. Yeah, everyone has set foot in M&F.

And before we hit the joint we made a whirlwind tour around to the various places Jim Thompson had lived in Hollywood. I figured they’d be mentioned in the bio Savage Art by Robert Polito, which I read the opening of once at somebody’s house — looked very detailed, thanks to Thompson’s widow having kept tons of material. But I never got that one. As I said before, I’m not that big a Thompson fan — which doesn’t mean I’m not interested in him.

I called Craig to see if he had a copy in stock I could get. He didn’t. But he said, “I’ll call Thompson’s daughter and see if she remembers the places.”

Suddenly we were going from a second-hand source to a first-hand source — very nice.

Posted in DMac, Film, Lit | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , |

Hollywood Beat: Musso & Frank

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Don

Since I missed out on Musso & Frank for years, I’ve been trying to catch up, stopping in every time I make the drive down to LA — I figure I won’t burn out, given that I only drop south once or twice a year. But its the kind of place where I wouldn’t object to being an habitué, staking a claim on a barstool or a booth. . . .

Craig Graham of Vagabond Books is the guy who sold me on the idea that I had to hit M&F next time I got to Chandlertown. I was hanging out in the Vagabond booth at the Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco, must have been in 2009, Craig was doing his raconteur thang and M&F came up — honest, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been aware of it. Old Hollywood, everyone went there, and it was a survivor, unlike The Brown Derby and other legends that lay by the wayside.

I would have met Craig for drinks during my first visit, but happenstance took me south on a weekend when Vagabond was holding down another booth in a book fair in Frisco. I wasn’t going to skip M&F, so Craig got a raincheck. Saturday February 6 2010 was the date — I snagged four or five hours sleep, pointed the machine in the direction of Hollywood and Vine, punched it through hour after hour of raging thunderstorms. En route called up my LA pal Leo Grin so he’d be ready to tag along with us on the initial exploratory.

So, we’re seated in a booth with a view of the bar (the vantage point Craig insisted on, for maximum effect). In a place once frequented by Hammett, Chandler, Faulkner — even Bukowski. Charlie Chaplin had a favorite booth. Tom Mix. Doug Fairbanks. Valentino. All the actors for decade after decade came in — Leo pulled out his smartphone and found a Yelp-like site where someone reported they came in on a busy Saturday night and were told they’d have to wait. Hey, they said, can’t we sit in that empty booth right there? No, we’re sorry, but that booth is reserved for Mr. Johnny Depp and his family. Right, they thought — sure. . . . Then after a few minutes Mr. Johnny Depp and his family came in and sat in the booth. Well. Okay.

We hit the scene between lunch and dinner hours, the place was pretty quiet — the next two times, later in the evening, it was packed. I wasn’t thinking we’d spot Johnny Depp. I wasn’t thinking I’d spot anyone I’d recognise. Then a guy in a hat walked from the front over to the bar.

“The guy in the hat,” I said, “who just went to sit at the end of the bar — he’s in tons of stuff.”

“What’s his name?” Leo asked.

My brain was hamstrung by too little sleep. I couldn’t bring the name up.

“You’ve seen him, he’s in tons of stuff. He’s in several movies with Charles Bronson. . . . Breakheart Pass, he’s in Breakheart Pass.”

Leo activated the smartphone. We knew he wasn’t Bronson.

“Richard Crenna?”

“No.”

“Charles Durning?”

“No.”

“Ed Lauter?”

“Yeah. That’s him. Ed Lauter.”

“That’s not Ed Lauter,” Leo said, cranning to see to the end of the bar.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Ed Lauter. You know, he’s in The Longest Yard. Born on the Fourth of July. True Romance. . . . ”

Later, Leo got a better look. “Hey, that is Ed Lauter!”

I didn’t want to bother Ed Lauter, but figured some kind of confirmation was in order. I asked the guy manning the front, “The guy in the hat, seated at the end of the bar — is he Ed Lauter?”

The host nodded, though I wasn’t sure he knew the name.

“He always plays the tough guy,” he said, “always the tough guy.”

Okay, then. Ed Lauter sighting confirmed. For my tastes, I couldn’t have had a better celebrity sighting. Musso & Frank, your rep is deserved.

Now I talk up M&F all the time, and thought to ask Dennis McMillan if he’d ever been there the last time I talked with him on the phone. He had. And more:

“Jim Thompson used to drink there at the bar every day. He only lived about three blocks away. Harlan Ellison wrote about talking to him there, he heard it was his hangout and found him — other people didn’t even know the guy at the bar was Jim Thompson.”

Hammett. Chandler. Bukowski. And Thompson. Hmmmm. . . .

 

 

Posted in Dash, DMac, Film, Lit | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Tour: October 23

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Don

Okay, another chance to put some wear on your gumshoes — a Hammett Tour open to anyone who wants to show up, noon, Sunday October 23. The usual. Four hours. Ten bucks. Rain or shine.

Posted in Tour | Tagged , |

Tour: Portland Weighs In

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Don

Out of the blue, a double-whammy from Portland.

Over on the Davy Crockett Almanack site Evan Lewis does a nice appreciation of Hammett’s The Big Knockover — the Op adventure that ought to make anyone with a pulse a Hammett fan for life — and mentions that he has picked up the new edition of the tour book against an upcoming visit to San Francisco. Yep, that’s what it’s for, hit town and go wild tracking down the sites.

And the Portland Book Review just ran a review of the tour book, as well  — mentioning that the book is “dense.” Yeah, it’s designed for serious Hammett fans, not people who are stricken with awe by a couple of tweets. You want superficial, just look at the photos and the list of stops. . . . And by the way, it is the 30th anniversary edition, not the 13th — I left thirteen years on the mean streets in the dust a long, long time ago.

Plus I hear that this blog itself just got some kind of mention in the November issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, in the column about Internet action by Bill Crider — I haven’t seen it, but apparently the posts on restoring Hammett’s pure texts by Terry Zobeck get particular attention, as well they should — Hammett deserves having his best texts in print, and if we help create a groundswell of opinion in that direction, cool. Any current publishers using less than the best texts are just going to look like some kind of apes, in a year or two.

Posted in Frisco, Lit, News, Tour | Tagged , , , , , |

Frisco Beat: The Return of Donald Sidney-Fryer

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Don

This coming Saturday, September 17, starting at 3p.m., you’ll find Donald Sidney-Fryer back in town for a signing in Borderlands. He did his stint as a San Francisco writer, starting sometime in the 1960s, tossing himself full tilt into the Hippie Scene in the Haight-Ashbury — in those years he prepped his 1971 poetry book Songs and Sonnets Atlantean, which has gained renown as the last title to appear from Arkham House in the lifetime of Arkham founder August Derleth. By one calculation of collecting, you could start your Arkham set with Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others in 1939 and consider it complete when Don’s small poetry collection is placed on the shelf — the titles released under the personal aegis of Derleth.

Another angle I’ve always liked: Don was instrumental in talking Fritz Leiber to moving to The City from Venice, California, after his wife died late in 1969 — setting Fritz on his own notable stint as a local writer, and leading by winding paths to his 1977 novel Our Lady of Darkness. In that novel of supernatural dread you will find DSF thinly disguised as the character Jaime Donaldus Byers — the way DSF speaks (even to talking in parenthesis), the mannerisms, all pitch-perfect.

For this Saturday’s signing I believe that trade paperbacks of DSF’s two most recent books are being featured. The Golden State Phantasticks — pretty much his complete essays and reviews gathered in 454 pages, with a heavy concentration on such California literary figures as Ambrose Bierce, George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith. The hardback on this one retailed for $40, but the trade paper goes for a more affordable 25 pazoors. And DSF finally has added the long-promised novel to his Atlantis saga under the title The Atlantis Fragments: The Novel. The hardback was $30, trade paper $20.

But if you’ve got other of his books, you could haul them out for a John Hancock.

In 1974 DSF left San Francisco for Sacramento and from there he moved to Los Angeles in 1998 — now thirteen years and counting in SoCal. He returns for a signing or talk maybe once a year — about as often as I drop down to LA to see what’s going on there.

The photo this time was taken Friday February 4, 2011 in the bar at Musso and Frank in Hollywood, one of my all-time favorite places — with DSF standing in front, then me, then the colossus Leo Grin. Great dinner with rounds of martinis, but only one celebrity sighting (half the people in the dining room may have been heads of studios or screenwriters or directors for all I know, but it’s like I say about writers — no offense, but unless you’re Ernest Hemingway or somebody like that I probably don’t know what you look like).

Leo did spot director Guillermo del Toro in a booth in the old room — if it wasn’t del Toro, it was his Evil Twin. Or Benevolent Twin, as the case may be. As I recall, at that time it looked as if his film of the H.P. Lovecraft novel At the Mountains of Madness might move into active production, but any green lighting got yanked soon after. I’m not terribly interested in bothering people who are eating dinner, but I did think to remark to DSF, “Hey, Don, do you think we should go over to del Toro and tell him that we knew several people who were pals of Lovecraft?” Guys such as E. Hoffmann Price and H. Warner Munn and Donald Wandrei — plus others who never met Lovecraft in person but corresponded with him, such as Fritz Leiber. DSF met several more of that circle than I did — hey, he met Clark Ashton Smith, the only writer of weird fiction among his pals whose work Lovecraft seemed to regard with awe. Del Toro probably should look into a CAS movie. . . .

Posted in Film, Frisco, Lit, News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Rediscovered: Frisco Mysteries

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Don

Randal Brandt of The Bancroft Library — honcho of the website devoted to mysteries set in and around San Francisco — shot in an email announcing an exhibit of local crime novels they just opened in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery in Doe Library. Free. The general public is welcome to take a gander whenever the library is open. “Unfortunately,” Randal says, “the library is closed on Saturdays, but it is open on Sunday afternoons starting at 1:00pm.”

The exhibit — titled “Bullets Across the Bay” — will be on display through February 2012. Plenty of time to see which novels they selected for showcasing. If interested, pencil a note on your calendar.

For anyone who doesn’t understand why anyone would care — these people are out there, trust me — I realized I better toss my essay on collecting San Francisco mysteries back into action. I had it up on my old website for awhile, but let it slide when I moved over into the blogosphere. I think it makes the case pretty well.

Posted in Frisco, Lit, News | Tagged , , |