As Time Goes By

“Play in once, Sam, for old times’ sake.” Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in “Casablanca”

The song, of course is “As Time Goes By,” which Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) had ordered Sam the piano player (Dooley Wilson) not to play; but then Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) walked in and got him to play it, which began the resumption of their romance.   Later Rick told Ilsa that he had a job to do and where he was going she couldn’t follow; then he declared: “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.” Here are the lyrics to “As Time Goes By”:

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by

And when two lovers woo
They still say, I love you
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by

Moonlight and love songs never out of date
Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate
Woman needs man and man must have his mate
That no one can deny

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome loversAs time goes by

Written in 1931 by Herman Hupfeld for the Broadway musical “Everybody’s Welcome,” “As Time Goes By” was voted second best song of all time in films, surpassed only by Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” in “The Wizard of Oz.”

For July’s book club Brian Barnes will report on Noel Isenberg’s “We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Aftermath of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie” (2017). Ken Anderson is looking into the possibility of showing “Casablanca” in its entirety beforehand.  I can’t recall seeing “Casablanca” from beginning to end but am familiar with the most famous scenes and quotes such as “Here’s looking at you, kid”and “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship,” as well as Ilsa’s request, often mistakenly quoted as “Play it again, Sam,”when she returns unexpectedly to Rick’s Café, the Casablanca “gin joint.”

In a chapter entitled “Hollywood Goes to War” Richard Lingaman’s “‘Don’t You Know There’s a War On?’: Homefront, 1941-1945” mentions that the foreign intrigue plot depicted in “Casablanca” bore similarities to the spy and gangster genres of the 1930s.  Since most war news in 1942 dealt with defeats in the Pacific at the hands of the Japanese, Hollywood produced a spate of last-stand movies similar to what happened a century before at the Alamo, where heroic defenders defy overwhelming odds. In “Bataan,” for example a sergeant played by Robert Taylor shouts: “Come on, suckers.  What are you waiting for? We’ll be here!”  As the war went on, audiences tired of unrealistic or propagandistic war flicks and even booed phony scenes.

FDR and Churchill at Casablanca Conference

Kenneth S. Davis, whose fifth volume of his magisterial biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt “FDR: The War President, 1940-1943” (2000) was published posthumously, concludes with the President making plans for a summit conference in Casablanca, Morocco, in mid-January 1943, just months after Allied forces had landed in North Africa.  Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unable to attend, but Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would draw up plans for the invasion of Western Europe and proclaim that the war’s objective was nothing less than unconditional surrender by the Axis forces.  Davis ends with this White House scene on New Year’s Eve, 1942: 

 There was more unalloyed good cheer in the While House this year, as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt seated themselves with their guests after dinner in a room that had become the White House motion picture theater, where they viewed a film that, when released for public showing a few days hence, would become an instant box office hit and was destined to become a movie classic that would thrill scores of millions, again and again, through all the remaining decades of the twentieth century. A bittersweet story of love amid war, of individual lives overwhelmed by history and enabled to become significant of good or evil only through their willed responses to it, the film was soaked through and through with the selfless idealism and spirit of personal sacrifice to a transcendent cause (that of postwar world democracy) that was a dominant theme of the prevailing public mood of the 1940s. Even people who deemed themselves hard-headed realists and objected to the sentimental as a perversion of honest emotion were often deeply moved by this picture story.  Perhaps Franklin Roosevelt was moved by it to add to his customary midnight toast “To the United States of America” the words “and to United Nations’ victory.”

 The name of that film, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was Casablanca.     seminar organizer Julie Zasada and keynote speaker Ken Schoon

Julie Zasada and Ken Schoon

I drove to Cedar Lake for the third annual “Seminar for Organizations and Historians” organized by Julie Zasada of the Cedar Lake Historical Association and taking place at Lighthouse Restaurant adjacent to the lake.  When I arrived, Julie introduced me to Bryce Gorman of the Indiana Historical Society, who praised my just published Joe Louis Tracesarticle and helped me retrieve from the car free copies of Steel Shavingsfor the seminar participants.  IUN geologist Ken Schoon, the keynote speaker, explained the effect of the Ice Age on the Calumet Region.  I learned that the “Lake of the Red Cedars,” as Potawatomi referred to Cedar Lake, was formed as a result of a huge piece of ice breaking off from a glacier and ultimately settling in what eventually became marshy land.  Like last year, the meal was delicious steak with mashed potatoes, string beans, salad, rolls, and chocolate cake.  I chose to attend roundtable discussions on marketing strategies and event experiences by Bryce Gorman and Ted Kita of the Hesston Steam Museum.

above, Ted Kita roundtable; below, Jimbo, Andrea Ledbetter, Mika Lansdowne

Jim and Mika at Lassen Museum with Scott Bocock and Kim Trevino in background; photo by Andrea Ledbetter

I met former Tolleston resident Peggy Schmidt, who recalled Jack Spratt’s Ice Cream Parlor in Miller, and East Chicago librarian Suzana Bursich, who is interested in reviving that city’s historical society; I told her about the Latino Historical Society papers housed in IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  She knew about my publications and is working with Northwestern grad student Emiliano Aguilar, a former East Chicago Central valedictorian and student of Dave’s.  I also enjoyed meeting Decay Devils Andrea Ledbetter and Mika Lansdowne, a native of Athens, Georgia.  Andrea graduated from Gary West Side in 1990 and talked about girls basketball coach Rodney Fisher being gruff but dedicated to his players.  I tried not to openly stare at Mika’s impressive tattoos. 

At a wine and cheese reception at Cedar Lake Museum, formerly the Lassen Hotel, curator Scott Bocock congratulated me on the Joe Louis article and told me that “The Champ” once visited a gym that wrestler Ambrose Rascher established at the Lassen garage complex that is now part of the town hall during Louis’s brief career as a professional wrestler.  Rascher, an All-American at IU wrestling in the 174-pound heavyweight division, helped the Hoosiers win the 1932 national championship and went on to compete in the Olympics in Los Angeles.  Born in the hamlet of Klaasville just west of Cedar Lake, Rascher also lettered in baseball and football and had a short career with the Portsmouth Spartans, forerunner of the Detroit Lions.  A professional wrestler from 1934 to 1942, Rascher went on to promote matches at Gary Armory and Hammond Civic Center as well as Lassen Resorts and founded the Rascher-Fagen Insurance Agency.  In January 1988, two months before his death, Rascher was inducted into the Indiana Wrestling Hall of Fame.

I’ve come around to the view that an impeachment inquiry is necessary even though, as it stands, there is scant chance Congressional Republicans are ready to abandon their demagogic leader, who now is claiming past members of the FBI might be guilty of treason.  Disgraceful! The latest example of presidential pettiness: the navy used a tarp to cover up of the name of the U.S.S. John McCaindocked in Japan near where Trump would be passing, fearing the sight of it would upset him.  Trump claimed to know nothing about the fiasco but went on to say tastelessly that he was no fan of the former Arizona Senator.  Here’s Ray Smock’s convincing argument for a House inquiry: 

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in a brief but poignant public statement, his swan song on the Mueller Report, said the only thing that held down his investigation was a Justice Department ruling, not even a law, that determined the President of the United States cannot be indicted for crimes while he is in office. His report leaves no room for doubt that the President of the United States has committed enough acts of obstruction of justice and left enough evidence of criminal behavior and constitutional violations to exceed the threshold needed to launch an impeachment inquiry. It is the first step to gather information and to walk farther down the investigative path that Mueller has mapped for us. Mueller did his job. We cannot expect him to act as judge, jury, and executioner. He passed the torch to Congress to finish the race to defend the Constitution. 

This just in: Trump’s pal Kim Jong-un purged his top nuclear negotiators, evidently angry at their performance at the Hanoi summit.  Special envoy to the U.S. Kim Hyok-choi was allegedly executed by a firing squad.

I had lunch at El Jimador in Hobart with Gary native Joe Medellin, whom I interviewed a couple weeks ago.  Joe grew up a block from IUN’s campus in a small house now literally inches from the new Arts and Sciences Building.  My two-taco meal came with soup, chips and salsa, plus rice and beans for a grand total of $6.50.  I don’t know how the restaurant makes any money at those prices. I gave Joe a DVD of our talk, and we vowed to get together soon. On the way home I stopped at Chesterton library and picked a book of short character sketches by Ray Boomhower titled “Indiana Originals” and CDS by Warren Zevon, Fountains of Wayne, and The Beths.

 Marie Siroky, Jimbo, Mika Lansdowne; below Joey Lax-Salinas shots of City Methodist

Mika Lansdowne reminded me of the “Haunts” photography exhibit opening reception at the Gardner Center in Miller.  Curator John Cain introduced me to Joey Lax- Salinas, whose shots of City Methodist Church are truly haunting.  Mika was with Marie Siroky, who was wearing a Decay Devils shirt and familiar with my work, claiming to have an original copy of “City of the Century.” Tyrell Anderson was explaining the group’s mission to former Gary First Lady Irene Smith-King, who gave me a hug and said she’d purchased a half-dozen Gary pictorial histories for friends and relatives. I gave Jim and Elaine Spicer and George Rogge and Sue Rutsen copies of Steel Shavings,which I had in the trunk left over from Cedar Lake.