A Witch Should Never Be Without Their Hat...

 The MGM film with Judy Garland really screwed up the narrative. In the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, Glinda is the Good Witch of The South, not the north; the Good Witch of The North is Locasta, unnamed in the books, but given that name by Baum when he adapted it for the stage; when Ruth Plumly Thompson continued the series after Baum's death, she gave that character the name Tattypoo, which sounds like the name of a mixed toy dog breed. I prefer Locasta. 

 Baum would also revise Glinda a bit as the books went on - instead of a witch, she was more-often identified as a sorceress; in his essay, "Why Gandalf Never Married", Terry Pratchett regarded a Sorceress as "..just a better class of witch," followed by "An Enchantress is just a witch with great legs." 

 And then there's Wicked, which hints that Glinda is more of a fraud, neither witch nor sorceress, but someone who is given a title - Glinda the Good.

 At least they gave her a neat hat to wear..

 Oh, wait..

I can't find any insight as to why Glinda wears a pointed hat in the poster for the musical, but in neither the musical or the film adaptation of the musical does it appear as part of her wardrobe.

 Instead, Glinda wears a tiara.

    Even the film doesn't give her

                      a hat.

  So..I'll use some A.I. magic to give Glinda a pointed hat:

           Bibbidy, Bobbidy-Boo

 As a bonus, I'll use A.I. to fancast Locasta..the following is the best result I got from suggesting Linda Cardellini in the prompt:

    I believe the A.i. got tripped-up

    by the quirks of a certain facial       feature Linda has and wound-up

    adding more lines along the            face and neckline...

 A witch's hat is like a cowboy hat - it's part of their iconography. While it's true that Glida never wore a pointed hat in the books - rather, a crown with elements of a top hat and tiara - I liked the idea of her wearing a witch's pointed hat better.

The Lady From The Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters And The Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

Creature From The Black Lagoon is a popular choice of old-fashioned Halloween monster movie viewing, as an alternative to the numerous Dracula and Frankenstein movies out there. A recent release of the DVD for Creature shows that the text on the back of the container has stopped attributing credit for the design of the creature to Bud Westmore, the then-head of Universal's makeup department. This was not always the case; older editions of the film on DVD and VHS cassettes would give credit to Westmore, though the Blu-Ray edition did not.

      The cover of the current DVD.

So...what brought about the change? There's substantial proof that Westmore was a fraud who took credit for more work than he actually did; the design of the creature was created and drawn by Milicent Patrick, a former Disney Animator - she was an assistant to Bill Tytla for the character Chernabog on the "Nightmare On Bald Mountain Sequence" in Fantasia:

   That's right - she drew this guy!

Milicent Patrick had movie star looks and could articulate her ideas clearly; Universal's marketing executives concocted the idea of having Patrick go on a promotional tour of various TV and radio stations to promote Lagoon; this rubbed Bud Westmore the wrong way. As head of the makeup department, he wanted to be the only individual credited with anything and saw this as a coup, even though Patrick is on record as working hard to downplay her own contributions, knowing quite well that Westmore was fuming. It wouldn't have mattered; Patrick was doomed - Westmore came from a family of designers with considerable clout in Hollywood; he made certain she was fired from Universal and would never find work at any other studio as a designer. Wrongful Termination lawsuits in Hollywood did not become known, or common until the early-80s, both cases involving actresses; Cindy Williams sued Paramount after she was fired from "Laverne & Shirley" because the studio would not allow for maternity leave and her schedule would've required her to work while 9 months pregnant; in the late-80s, Valerie Harper sued Lorimar Telepictures, the company her self-titled sitcom, Valerie, when she was fired from the show after asking for a pay raise. 

Could Milicent Patrick have sued Universal Studios for Wrongful Termination? I would say yes, she could, but she didn't - most likely out of fear that she would never find any work at all. Mallory O'Meara's biography of Patrick does a great job of covering the essential details of her life, but stops short of insight into what Patrick was thinking afterward. Patrick passed away over 20 years ago at an assisted living facility; after being fired, she briefly took on a career as an extra, appearing in small parts in TV series and some movies, then married a wealthy man and spent the 1960s & 1970s as a philanthropist & socialite; in the 1980s she was living in squalor - the Hollywood mansion she occupied had fallen into decay after a mudslide. Her health had also fallen into serious decline; the last decade of her life was spent marking time. She had no children and was estranged from most of her family, except for one niece, who had whatever remained of Patrick's belongings that survived, including documents. There's no mention of Patrick keeping a diary, so she remains elusive. O'Meara admitted in the afterword that she could not find any corroborating information that could explain why Patrick once described herself as "..a Bugs Bunny expert." And O'Meara then has to hazard an educated guess as to what Milicent Patrick's mindset was like by finding correlations with her own biography; the end result was that I felt like I knew O'Meara more than I knew Patrick, which reminded me of the Julia Child biopic Julie & Julia, but I don't find any fault with her conclusions. I definitely recommend this book.

If someone were to tell you, "If you're good at something, stick with it," what can you do if you've been shut out of your chosen field? Milicent Patrick's life story starts off as a success story, then becomes a tale of someone who moved on after success was fleeting, then seems to fall into entropy and isn't vindicated until after her lifetime. It's sad, but it's real life..and monsters in real life don't have to wear fangs, green makeup or prosthetic gills; they can look like Bud Westmore...

      Milicent Patrick, Pioneer, RIP

One Last Halloween Treat..

Halloween 2018 is almost over...random thoughts left stirring..not much innovation regarding Halloween candy, in my opinion, though I liked Russell Stover's candy corn-flavored marshmallow with white chocolate-shell pumpkins. I also liked M&M's candy corn-flavored white chocolate-shell candies. The combination is tastier than it sounds, despite the fact that white chocolate is not actually made of chocolate. So candy corn can be delightful when blended with something that cancels out it's dry taste.

Not much innovation regarding Halloween specials for television. All is right with the world (or, depending on your perspective on current events, there's still hope) if It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is still airing annually on network television.

There's more viewing options regarding movies these days. People are trying to make a big deal of the  90's Disney movie, Hocus Pocus. It has it's moments, sure, but maybe the reboot will improve on it...oh, sure, don't be surprised...I can see it happening...Disney tested the waters with a sequel novel, but I can imagine Tina Fey, Rebel Wilson and Aubrey Plaza as the new Sanderson sisters...or maybe do a race swap and reimagine the Sanderson witches as voodoo priestesses, instead...or just do Goosebumps 3 with a more substantial role for Jack Black this time around, assuming he's not busy filming the sequel to The House With A Clock In It's Walls, which, at a glance, looked like a movie starring Paul Dini & Misty Lee (that would be neat), though it's success means Puffin/Penguin/Putnam with hopefully reissue the John Bellairs novel in hardcover, because paperbacks age terribly.

And I'm still wondering why Blumhouse didn't cast Danielle Harris alongside Jamie Lee Curtis in that Halloween reboot film...saving Jamie Lloyd for the next reboot, I guess, since having an older version of Laurie's daughter from Halloween 4 confront Michael Myers and/or team-up with Laurie is one of the few new sequel ideas in that Trick or Treat pumpkin bucket.

I hope you all had a happy Halloween this year. Don't try to finish all the candy at once. Goodnight! ;)

"The Chocolate Falcon Fraud" by JoAnna Carl

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the 3rd adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's epic detective novel, The Maltese Falcon...the one with Humphrey Bogart and the statue of a bird. All kidding aside, The Maltese Falcon should rank among the top 2 greatest mystery novels of all time (the other being The Hound of The Baskervilles) and the film actually improves on it, particularly with the ending, which leaves out an additional scene in the book that sort-of cheapens our conclusions about the character of Sam Spade by implying that he's already over the drama, whereas the Bogart version of Spade is not likely to forget what happened after "..a couple of rough nights.." If you haven't seen it, please do.

Now...I realize the only surviving participant in the 1941 film is the prop falcon statue. There are two in existence. They both have aged to the point where they appear to be made of solid milk chocolate, in color and texture - like a chocolate bunny. Some replicas of this prop are gold-plated, so they resemble a solid chocolate falcon wrapped in gold foil..

With this train of thought in mind, it was easy for me to see the appeal of a mystery novel with a title that includes the words "Falcon" and "Chocolate". Right off the bat, I will say that there is no chocolate Maltese Falcon statue in the book, even though the protagonist specializes in designing original gourmet chocolate confections. The only chocolate falcons we get are described in a way that resembles those holiday chocolate candies Russell Stover offers - marshmallow-filled chocolates in the shape of Santa Claus, Halloween pumpkins and Easter eggs. These Falcon candies are offered by our heroine at a Maltese Falcon film festival/fan expo, a convention you might think would exist, given the popularity of the film, but is made-up for the plot of the book.

The Chocolate Falcon Fraud is a cozy - a sub-genre of mystery novel in which there's a puzzle to be solved, but it's not a tough puzzle; the real appeal is that the heroine (always a female protagonist; the closest you get to a male cozy detective series is M.C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth novels and Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhoddenbar books, which are mostly classified as police procedural and caper novels, respectively, but Hamish is a constable in a cozy Highland village and Bernie's a thief that owns a shop, so they fit in there) runs a shop that makes gourmet chocolate with her aunt, so the author gets to better her books with recipes and trivia about fudge and chocolate foodstuffs for chocoholics. It could be adapted into a film for the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries channel. More on that in a bit, but getting back to what a cozy is...they're light in subject matter and not too explicit in violent content. It's Miss Marple and Murder, She Wrote territory, where a headline on the front page of the New York Daily News might actually read, "Murder Stymies Cops!"

Lee Woodyard is our eager amateur sleuth. Her stepson from a former marriage has come back into town to become the target of an elaborate kidnapping plot by a group of con artists baiting him with a ruse about a possible 3rd falcon prop statue used in the 1941 film that he wants to purchase. Doppelgangers for Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Mary Astor show up. Gawdy keychain-size replicas of the falcon pop up. This is good stuff, but my big gripe (aside from the lack of a proper falcon statue made of solid milk chocolate) is that the cool Falcon riffs kick in halfway through the second half of this book. Most of what we get is teen soap opera about Jeff, the aforementioned stepson/scapegoat, whose transformation from ne'r-do-well emo teen punk to nerdy film buff/movie memorabillia tchotchke collector with a girlfriend is sincere...or if he's on the shenanigans.

The book is okay...but JoAnna Carl (a pseudonym used by Eve K. Sandstrom) dropped the ball by overlooking the most obvious gag a mystery novel with a title like that could have. It has a lot of nice ideas..I do wish there was a bigger fandom for The Maltese Falcon.

Should The Chocolate Falcon Fraud be adapted into a film for Hallmark Movies and Mysteries? Yeah! It would be terrific! I would like to suggest Danielle Harris play Lee Woodyard. I can easily picture her in a mystery involving a popular genre film, a fan convention and collectors and tchotchkes...and Will Wheaton could play her love interest, because Danielle's husband in real-life kind-of resembles Wheaton..if Wheaton was pumping iron a bit. And Jennifer Tilly could play Lee's Aunt Nettie, so yeah, this would be awesome.

And there will be a falcon statue made of solid milk chocolate..with marshmallow center, of course.

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween! To celebrate, I decided to simply offer a gallery of ghoulery to create the right mood...like an all-star Halloween TV special. I reccommend that you chow down on candy corn on the cob & chocolate spider-chip cookies while admiring all the beautiful...pumpkins. :)

Except From The Diary of A Nervous Husband...

Hey gang! I was at a swap meet and found a bunch of unmarked blank videocassette tapes that I brought for a buck!

...and then I found out why. I was hoping for someones pay-per-view recordings, but this was interesting ... and disturbing. Here's a transcript from a video diary on one tape dated October 14, 1997...


OK...Last time, I talked about how I was going to different flea markets, yard sales and swap meets - they're all kind of the same, but with different names, I don't get it - shopping for a specific type of lantern. Well, I've got eight so far and I need two more. I've maxed out my credit card and I'm worried if I borrow her card, she'll catch on to what I'm doing.

The tracking started to go on the video at this point. It continues for about ten minutes before the picture and sound come back.

I'm nervous about this. I was willing to believe the house was built on a hillside and the elevation kept us constantly adjusting furniture and anything hung-up on walls and anything on wheels - that type of thing. And when I found all those dead mice in the basement the day after we learned there were mice...and when we came back from our second Honeymoon and that whole family of squatters was found...hung from the ...

Another break, this time the color went to black and white and the whole image bent and at acute angles for a few minutes before the VCR went off. I checked the tape and blew off on odd accumulation of grimy ashes forming along the edges of the tape itself. Then I played it again...


I also didn't mind that she was into scary stories, particularly this Lovecraft guy. She's got boxes of stuff - all books, most of them in different languages, I think. Some of them have pictures of ...I don't know, some kind of  tantric kama sutra voodoo stuff with a guy wearing an Octopus head...My last girlfriend was a huge My Little Pony fan. Michelle, I'm sorry I made fun of you, then. You haven't met Pamela.

The last watchable footage on the tape shows the man, now holding the camera, showing off the lanterns he purchased. They are all laid out on the floor in the formation of the points of a pentagram, with their cords and extension cords connecting to form the completed shape. He is also waving a large unwieldy hardcover book with his remaining free hand.

This is it...the book shows that if I stand in the center with the lanterns powered on, I will be safe for the night. So, I'm going to put the camera back on the stand and let it continue filming while I go to sleep.

He places a rocking chair in the center of the pentagram after setting the camera on its stand. He then plugs in a power strip that is hooked-up to all the lanterns on turns it on. The lanterns light up the area, which looks like the living room of the house. A voice calls out. It does not sound friendly.

"Michael? Are you coming to bed?"

"Michael" rushes toward a nearby desk and pulls out a gun. He then scrambles into the chair at the center of the pentagram.

"I'll be right there. I'm still watching the Late Show."

At this stage the picture tends to fade out and fade in at ten-minute intervals, with "Michael" dozing off in his rocker. The gun appears to have fallen out of his hand at some point...then, the lanterns start to flicker and a weird gurgling noise starts traveling into the room from off screen. Michael is startled and starts to look panicky before staring at something lurching forward...again, off screen. Then the power goes out.

The tape ends there.

...I started searching the tapes for more information. It seems he taped "Full House", "Step by Step", "Hanging With Mr. Cooper" and "Family Matters".

Just when you thought you'd seen the scariest thing ever, there's always something MUCH scarier...

Halloween Specials.net - Rescuing Halloween Cartoons from the Dustbin of History!: DTV Monster Hits

Halloween Specials.net - Rescuing Halloween Cartoons from the Dustbin of History!: DTV Monster Hits This came in handy! Memories...If it wasn't for memories, I'd forget everything...;)