Suzette Harbin

            On Friday morning I translated a few more lines of  "Complaint du progress" by Boris Vain.

            I finished memorizing ““La cible qui bouge” by Serge Gainsbourg and started working out the chords.

            I removed all of the books from the shelf on top of the dresser in the southwest corner of my living room and pulled the dresser out. I had expected to find some flat shelves and brackets that I’d thought I’d stored behind there but there was only the last of the cat hair, one hard piece of kitten poop and some foil balls that kittens had knocked underneath while playing pawball. I picked up the bigger stuff, swept and vacuumed the area and then washed the last segment of the floor. The living room was not officially done because in the next session I would still have to pull everything out again to wash the dresser and the bookshelf.

            For lunch I had about half of the lamb and rice that my upstairs neighbour David had given me the night before.

            In the afternoon I did some exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Andy has proposed to a beautiful woman by way of a lonely-hearts club magazine. But just as she is about to arrive in town to meet him the magazine sends him a letter informing him that they got the pictures wrong for the woman that he’d contacted. They have included her real photograph and her appearance is far below Andy’s expectations. His lawyer Gabby tells him that this is a case of “Contempt of court”. Andy asks him how that can be and he says that if Andy would court someone that looks like that woman he has Gabby’s contempt. Gabby advises Andy that his only way out of marrying this girl is to die. So Andy fakes his suicide and has Kingfish deliver the suicide note to the woman. But then the woman informs the newspaper of Andy’s death, which alerts the police that there has been a suicide they had not been informed of. The police arrest Kingfish for Andy’s murder and so Kingfish has to tell them that Andy is alive and hiding out in the basement of Shorty’s Barber Shop. The story ends with both Andy and Kingfish in jail. The woman comes to tell Andy that she had only come to town to break the news to Andy that she’d decided to marry her old boyfriend.  

            I took a bike ride and went down Spadina just south of Bloor to look for some books at Ten Editions, only to find that the place has closed. I looked in the door and saw that the shelves are still there but empty. I rode back up to Bloor and east. I looked for the disordered bookstore on the main floor of what used to be Rochdale but that store is gone as well. That’s three second hand bookstores that were downtown last year but have now closed.

            I went down University to Queen and then home.

            I worked on my journal.

            For dinner I had the other steak with four little potatoes and some gravy while watching Wagon Train.

            This story was about a beautiful southern belle named Juliette Creston. She is travelling to San Francisco with her Aunt Antoinette and their “servant” Lu-Sam after their plantation was destroyed by Union troops in the Civil War. Juliette is still bitter about the war and has contempt for any Yankees, including the wagon train leader, Major Adams. A Union cavalry outfit arrives at the wagon train camp and the Major lets them stay. But the Major expresses to Flint that he is suspicious because he’s heard of a band of renegade Confederate soldiers named Maury’s Raiders that refuse to accept that the war is over. He’d recently learned that Maury’s Raiders had looted a Union supply train and stolen several Union cavalry uniforms. Maury finds Juliette alone and he basically sexually assaults her while dressed as a Union officer without informing her that he is not a Yankee. She doesn’t put up much of a fight but argues with him while he’s kissing her. Suddenly there are shots as his men are caught trying to loot the train. He goes to join the battle and when one of his men calls him Captain Maury Juliette realizes who he is. The men escape but Maury is severely wounded. Juliette hides him in her wagon as they travel and nurses him back to health. When he is better he leaves but Juliette follows him. She lives with Maury and his raiders in their camps but becomes disillusioned as she sees they are no longer noble warriors but simply brutal bandits. She leaves to return to the wagon train. Maury’s men want to raid an outpost but Maury says it’s over. They mutiny and go anyway. Most of them die. Maury comes to Major Adams, officially surrenders and then joins Juliette to live happily ever after.

            Juliette was played by Wanda Hendrix, who was discovered in her hometown theatre in Jacksonville Florida. Her family moved to California and she began to get featured roles in films at the age of 17. She did “Ride a Pink Horse” when she was 19. She married Audie Murphy at 21 but the marriage only lasted seven months because he was violent and perhaps psychotic.

            Antoinette was played by Scottish actor Frieda Inescort, who had been successful on the British stage but waited until her 30s to come to Hollywood, which was considered too late for an actress to become a star.

            Lu-Sam was played by Suzette Harbin, who seemed too attractive to play the role of a servant when she was as pretty as the woman she served. She got into films after winning a beauty contest. She danced in “Cabin in the Sky” and “Stormy Weather”. She became an African American star because of her performance in “The Foxes of Harrow”. She entertained the troops in Korea in the 1950s and drew bigger crowds than when Marilyn Monroe performed.