The Incredible Inman: January 2022

Screen Capture Theatre: "Attack of the 50-foot Woman," or A Big Hand for the Little Lady

Welcome back to Screen Capture Theatre! Our newest entry is the 1958 opus ...

Great expense was spared in assembling these titles.

"We interrupt 'Sex Sent Me to the ER' for this special report.
A big ball has been spotted in the California desert, just
glowing like anything. All mentally unstable heiresses who
drive big convertibles and have unfaithful husbands are
urged to be on the alert."

Hmm. Could this be --

-- uh oh. Too late. Nancy the unstable heiress, meet
big ball glowing like anything.

Nancy the unstable heiress (we will just call her Nancy
henceforth) runs in her cocktail dress back to the
thriving desert town of Bleached Skull and alerts the sheriff.

Meanwhile, in the town bar, unfaithful husband Harry is
being very unfaithful with his floozy, Honey. (Or
should that be with his honey, Floozy?)

Still, Nancy cannot resist Harry's irresistible good looks
and dashing manner, even though to the rest of the
world he is basically a smirk and a necktie.

Nancy tells Harry about her sighting and they set out
to find the glowing ball.

Suddenly the alien pilot, Mr. Clean, appears out of
nowhere because the producers couldn't afford
a spaceship door. He extends the big fake hand of
friendship toward Nancy --

-- and Harry suddenly remembers he left something at
home. His suitcase.

Mr. Clean thoughtfully takes Nancy back home, but she
has experienced special alien radiation, and so, like him,
she gets big fake hands.

Nancy is very tall now. She starts dating Manute Bol
and gets a job with the power company.

But revenge is on her mind! So she heads for the
bar at Bleached Skull.

There she finds Harry, and with just a touch of her
big fake hand --

-- she turns him into a badly stuffed Ken doll.

Alas, the end is nigh for Nancy and Ken -- er, Harry. It has
something to do with live wires, but don't ask me what.

The great men of science who have been following Nancy's
unusual case try desperately to control their emotions. The
town of Bleached Skull will never be the same -- at least not
until they rebuild that bar.

Grandma Dixie and the Feds

I've already written about my Grandma Dixie a time or two. She had the unique ability to play piano by ear, by just hearing a song and then pounding it out. Consequently she kept very busy, playing solo gigs and with musical groups all around Louisville from the 1930s until the early 1980s.

The groups she performed with most often were Clayton "Pappy" McMitchen and His Georgia Wildcats, and Cliff Gross and His Texas Cowboys. The photo at left shows her with Cliff Gross's group, and just around the time that photo was taken, Cliff Gross got into a little trouble with the gubmint.

In the summer of 1943, we were in the thick of World War II and gas rationing had been in place for about a year.

Except, apparently, for the Cliff Gross musical aggregation.

On June 17, the U.S. Office of Price Administration grounded Gross, all the Cowboys and one Cowgirl, charging them, according to this article from Variety, with purchasing gasoline through the black market. Was Grandma Dixie complicit or did she just go along for the ride? We will never know, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Here's the story:

Screen Capture Theatre: "Torch Song," or the Lone Arranger

OK, I think we can all agree it's been a tough couple of ~~weeks~~ ~~months~~ years. But buck up! If there's one thing we understand here at Screen Capture Theatre, it's that nothing puts a positive spin on the world like a ... Joan Crawford musical?

In this 1953 film, Joan Crawford plays Jenny Stewart ...

... a Broadway star of such hit musicals as "Evening with
Jenny," "Another Evening with Jenny," "Yet Another Evening
with Jenny," "Oh My God It's Jenny Again" and
"Go Home, Jenny, You're Drunk."

She is loved by all and is a big star -- so big that
her eyebrows have their own personal assistant.

Jenny is a hard-driving pro onstage and off -- she even makes
sure her robe matches the pencils on her nightstand.

But her hard exterior covers a yearning soul of
molten lava, cotton candy and unfinished Lisa Frank
coloring books.

The only person who can, you should excuse the expression,
penetrate Jenny is Ty, her blind arranger.

They get along splendidly.

Jenny even starts trying to learn braille until she realizes
she's just turning the radio on and off.

But Ty turns his back on Jenny. He walks out during her
big blackface number, a toe-tapper called
"Staggering Multicultural Insensitivity."

Still, Jenny can't stay away. She presents herself to Ty with
an outfit that's a stunning salute to autumn, which she
describes to him because he can't see.

Even an eye massage doesn't help.

Neither does Jenny's attempt to clone herself as a
larger, easier-to-see person.

But in the end it doesn't matter, because as well all know,
love is disabled. I mean blind.

Podcast: A Short History of Ridiculous Sponsor Interference

For almost as long as there has been broadcasting, there has been commercial sponsorship. But from the 1930s through the 1960s, sponsors had an unusual amount of power because, through advertising agencies, they owned entire blocks of time on the program schedule and produced their own shows. In this episode we look at a few examples of sponsor power run amok, resulting in complications that were sometimes dangerous, sometimes just silly. Along the way we will sample clips from “The Jack Benny Program,” “The Flintstones,” “I Love Lucy,” “Playhouse 90,” “The $64,000 Question” and “30 Rock,” among others.

Screen Capture Theatre: "Hell's Angels on Wheels," or Diff'rent Spokes

This time around on Screen Capture Theatre we look at the 1967 film "Hell's Angels on Wheels," or as I like to think of it ...

Who is this fine, upstanding citizen? Kindly Father Harrigan
of the local parish? No, it is only Psycho -- er, Cycle Sid,
a member of the upstanding Hell's Angels.