On Sunday I had a dream about a Twitter library with two levels. There were two offices above each other. It was kind of a refuge that I escaped to. The top one was started by George Eliot Clarke, which is ironic since he’s not on any kind of social media besides email and seems to be a bit of a luddite in general.
I didn’t go anywhere and spent a lot
of the day catching up on my journal.
That night I watched an episode of
Peter Gunn. This story begins in Manchester, England in 1945 at a company
called Spain and Wilcox Textiles. Wilcox runs the scientific end of the company
and Spain is the businessman. Wilcox tells Spain he’ll have developed the
miracle fibre he’s been working on by morning, and so Spain leaves. Wilcox has
hired a poor man as an assistant and tells him he can wear one of his suits.
But after the man is dressed Wilcox knocks him unconscious, plants dynamite in
the lab and blows it up from outside. Fourteen years later, Spain is just being
released from prison. He's still rich but he only has one use for his resources
now and that's to track down Wilcox and kill him. He finds out that Wilcox
moved to the United States and so he goes there and hires Peter Gunn to find
him. Peter goes to Joe Jack Fabrics where Joe and Jack are very much like
Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They are super excited, always agree with one
another and often finish one another’s sentences. They are trying to make a
sale of some new fabrics to a middle-aged woman when she looks across the room
and exclaims, “That’s nice over there! What’s that?” She’s talking about Peter
Gunn, who’s just walked in. Joe and Jack seem to know Gunn well and are very
happy to see him. He inquires about Wilcox and shows his picture. They don’t
know him but they say if he’s in fibres and British he probably has a tweed
mill. They direct him to Sadie at the Men’s Clothing Journal. She lets Gunn go
through her files and he discovers that Wilcox has changed his name to
Blankenship. Gunn goes to meet him at his upstate textile mill just long enough
to hint that he knows whom he is. Blankenship makes a call and on Gunn's way
back someone shoots up his car on the road. Gunn goes to talk to Spain and
wants to know why he's being shot at. In exchange for Wilcox’s new name, Spain
confesses that he is there to kill him. Gunn calls Lieutenant Jacoby to get
police help in stopping Spain from killing Blankenship and thereby turning Gunn
into the finger man in a murder. Gunn calls Blankenship Mills to warn him but
finds out that Blankenship is actually right there in town for the textile
show. Gunn goes to see Jacoby and they have a comical discussion about the fact
that even if Spain kills Blankenship they won’t be able to charge him because
of double jeopardy as he’s already been punished for having killed Blankenship.
They go to the textile show to warn Blankenship. Even though this is filmed in
black and white it is obviously a very colourful setting with fabrics draped
artfully around and three bathing suit beauties are posing on a bridge over a
fountain. Blankenship is up on a ladder and Jacoby tells him that he's under
arrest for the murder of the homeless man in Manchester. Suddenly Spain arrives
with a gun and points it at Blankenship. Gunn and Jacoby tell Spain that if he
kills Blankenship it’s a new and separate crime and so double jeopardy won’t
apply. Blankenship throws the bolt of fabric he’d been holding down at Spain,
knocking him over. Blankenship lets his ladder fall and follows its arc to the
other side of the artificial stream. What follows is a scene similar to some of
the Blake Edwards chaos that one might see in a Pink Panther movie with other
people falling from ladders and scaffolding and bikini clad models getting in
the way of the chase. Blankenship climbs on top of some props and tries to
swing away Tarzan style on a rope of fabric, but Spain shoots him in mid swing.
Spain hands over his gun and just says, “I had to. It was all I lived for.”
Sadie was played by Helene Marshall,
who is a cousin of Veronica Lake.
Joe and Jack’s customer was played
by Jean Engstrom, who played a lesbian in the 1957 horror film, Voodoo Island.
The monsters in this movie were cobra plants that fed on women and ripped men
apart. So I guess if Joe and Jack were Tweedledee and Tweedledum then Jean
Engstrom was Alice.
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