A Warner Brothers Saturday Morning

Scrolling through selections on TCM yesterday, I picked Crime School (1938.) Humphrey Bogart who sets out to improve conditions at a reform school where the Dead End Kids were sentenced to two years.

Crime School was the second film with the Dead End Kids after the iconic Dead End. It's also a somewhat milder remake of 1933's  The Mayor of Hell starring James Cagney. The following year brought yet another remake called Hell's Kitchen with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Lindsay as the reformers. One subplot in Crime School--a bad guy manipulates an inmate to discredit a reformer--is used another Bogart film, San Quentin.

I don't know if other studios remade as many films or recycled as many plots as Warner Brothers did. I remember turning on TCM once and hearing dialog I recognized from the Bette Davis film Dangerous. But it was Singapore Woman that was on TV: a remake of Dangerous set in a new locale using recycled sets from another Davis film The Letter. In They Drive by Night, Ida Lupino killed her husband using the same technique Bette Davis used in Bordertown. Both characters also went insane on the witness stand in the hero's murder trials. 

The Dead End Kids made 89 films under several names:

Dead End Kids 1934-1939

Little Tough Guys (later known as Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys 1938-1943 

East Side Kids 1940-1945

Bowery Boys 1946 - 1958  

I grew up watching the Bowery Boys--there are 48 films in that series.

When Crime School was released, the characters were still fresh and their environments gritty. As the various series continued, the plot lines became more and more comic.

The next film I watched was Marked Woman from 1937 starring Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. I've always loved this film a fictionalized version of Thomas Dewey's legal pursuit of Lucky Luciano. I can't say much more about the film than I said here. Well, there's one more thing. This could  be a good candidate for a modern remake without the Hays Code restrictions. Come on, the women are prostitutes, not clip joint hostesses. Martin Scorsese, where are you?

First Quarter Review

It looks like I never officially made a list of 2025 goals. I'll review this quarter based on 2024 goals. 

Dryuary Plus: I didn't drink from January 2 until Valentine's Day. It was only difficult on one stressful day.

150 Gym Visits: Through March 31, I've gone to the gym 34 times, just a bit off the pace to hit 150. I only made it to 150 once, but it's doable at a pace of three visits per week. It was April 2024 that my gym visits virtually stopped for several months. I can't let that happen again. 

Reading: Last year my goal was 40 books, but I only read 27. By the end of March last year, I read four books. This year, I read five. I also read a simplified version of Little Women, which I'm not officially counting. The five are: Five Points. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII and his Court, Road of Bones, and Angel of Darkness. All of my books so far are good. 

Blogposts: My 2024 goal was to write 150 to 200: I wrote 132 and 35 through March 31. I wrote 38 by March 31 this year. on pace to write 152.

Writing: Once again, I didn't do specific writing goals, but I had been working with the plan of writing 500 words a day. I did it several days, but kind of lost my way. I averaged 334.6 words per day on the days I wrote (January 2 through February 8.) I started revising in late March. Have to get back into the daily habit. There's lots of time left in the year.  

A Discouraging Word

I've been in a weird pattern the last few weeks. Every good day, whether I was productive, wrote about Merwinsville, or the weather was nice, was followed by two days of being unproductive, not writing, or cold/raw/foggy/rainy weather. Even last Saturday's beautiful weather took a sudden change for the worse--it plunged by about 10 degrees in a few minutes and just kept getting colder. The Mets season start has been underwhelming. Overall, it's been disheartening, depressing, and frustrating. 

So, I've been trying to focus on the positive. I've seen many more beautiful daffodils since I saw my first spring blossom. That always makes me happy. The forsythia are turning yellow. The Mets had a promising home opener, winning 5-0, reaching a winning record of 4-3 for the season.

I still have more to-dos than I know what to do with. I knocked off a few items this week. It gives me a little boost to cross off to-dos. I just have to keep plugging away.