Pal Joey
Notwithstandingi the excellent cast, Pal Joeyii is not really worth watching.
The only notable bit about it, and by very far the only, occurs within the first two minutes : in the establishing shot, where we're supposed to find out just how cool this Sinatra Gooey fellow actually is, we get to see him being pushed up on a train with insistent entreatments to "not return". By a couple of cops. When he complains he's broke, they stuff a ticket in his hatband. These cops bought him a ticket, presumably out of their own savings ? So impressed are they, the cops, with this guy, the Gooey, that they passed on wifey's redecorationiii to buy him a ticket. Broke Gooey, but it dun matter he's broke, he's such a badass he gets to go places on local police dept's dime. How about that! Ain't he a pal ?!
But what might be the reason impelling all this propulsion ? What could've a broke hobo done to get the cops to pay his fare ? Hips or lips, amirite ? Guess what, since it's my god damned review I get to be rite as many times as I want. So yes, I'm rite : he doesn't even have to say it, because the cops will. Why should Pal Gooey be bothered with introduction when he's got the public force at his disposal ? So the cop tells us : they found a minor in his hotel room. "All you entertainers are all alike, you think every woman belongs to you". That's the cool, right ? Because supposedly, the 1950s meme goes, they do. Right ?
Gooey protests that he didn't know she was underage. She looked enough like a woman for his taste, and besides, "what was he to do -- ask for her id ?!?!" This stands without further ado -- of fucking course one can't be bothered from his cooing and necking to insert the state's nonsense. What fucking id ? One can't be asked for id, and the obligation to ask for id can't be foisted upon another about to fuck the one. Plain and simple as that. This'd then be the notable part : you've come a long way towards "papers please" since 1957, haven't you ? Back in 1957, that's 61 years ago, which is to say less years than your granma's, it was unthinkable, plain and simple, to expect some guy to ask some girl for her id. How about that ?
Leave aside how Frank Sinatra apparently thought fucking minors indistinctly en-cool-ens him. Not giving a shit, right ? Especially not giving a shit about the Old Woman's Howl (usually called "the state" in-universeiv). That's what cool was all about, right ? That's what the 60s, which this film fore-runs and prepares, were all about. Right ?
You've come a long way, what can I say.
———- I have no idea what they've been smoking, but consider some points :
- Rita Hayworth, who is first billed, nevertheless gets the mistreatment of a lifetime in this sad pile of inept footage. Woman has legs, right ? That's what you think of, when you see "Rita Hayworth" -- Legs McGee (and possibly when you see "legs", reciprocally, also). Well... her legs are never bare. Not ever. Nonce. And then... hair, right ? Rit' a hay worth's o' hair ? Well... nope. They gave her this mental patient haircut they usually reserve for hotties doing penance. She's hemmed in, utterly destroyed, I tell you I kept waiting for Rita Hayworth to show up, halfway through the film I was still waiting.
- Kim Novak has no other assets than her incredible fucking ass. This is absolutely never shown. They even put her in an incredible corset cutting her waist to perhaps as little as 18 inches, evidently made to favourably contrast her 60+ inch rump, and then never film the contrast. I kid you not, she's carefully cut through the middle throughout, and for good measure hidden behind a pile of floating garbage. It boggled the mind anyone'd include Kim Novak and not get her ass in the shot at least 70% of the time. GET HER FUCKING NAKED, IDIOTS!
I don't think I've ever seen such waste of talent ; perhaps with the exception of the pantsuit tards. [↩]
- 1957, by George Sydney, with Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak [↩]
- Don't tell me you've not noticed there's an entire class of these, idle useless women who imagine their contribution consists of "making decisions" as to the color of the walls and the color of the bits ? [↩]
- What, you never realised before all the "solidarity" junk, "organize the workers" bla bla bla is merely cucks trying to copy the survival mechanisms of whores ? REALLY ?!
You're slow. Think about it, the reason unsexy, ugly, obnoxious etcetera still exists in the female gender is... that it hasn't been rooted out. Evolution, right ? What protected it from being rooted out ? Not the fact that all the ugly bags, dogs and hags held hands and shrieked in unison whenever one was about to get her comeuppance ? Usure ?
"Sindicalism" was invented in the harem, long before writing or "the traditional family". [↩]
