Well, that was the worst weekend in a very long time - with one shining interlude of amazement and delight! So that's what we'll spend the week discussing.

The people who were in the same room might not use "amazement and delight" as accurate descriptors, since the event consisted of people sitting in folding chairs with their heads down, looking at cardboard rectangles. Yes, it was the first true sign of spring. The Postcard Show. The place where I get so much of the stuff I post here, the place where your kind donations are turned into new material.  They also sell ephemera, and I found something I not only didn't know I wanted, I didn't know existed, and I can't keep it, and I have to send it to a museum.

But that's Thursday. So:

We're going to go least to best this week. There was a bin that said "Ten for a dollar," which was a ridiculous price. But it shows how there's rarely a commonly accepted price for these things. Some dealers jack up the price: someone might buy it. Or they might want to dicker. It's the guys who price everything low and fair who seem to do the best business, but they often have the most common mech.

In the 10 for a dollar bin, a sheaf of papers.

Interview forms.

“Assistant Superintendant at (Mxxxx) Motors, 2905 East Lake Street."

Here it is:

I don’t know if it survived the riots. At least it was still in the auto game.

Last one in the batch:

Ah!

These were first-take interview forms for police officers. He was a railroad bull at the time. It looks as if Officer S. Webb said "good." Mr. Nelson's house still stands; possibly a rooming house at the time.

Also in the bin, an envelope.

I've seen these ads in the movie magazines. Send us your pictures and we will make them bigger! And of course we'll keep a copy of the really good ones for our own collection. Hold on, forget we said that.

The address comes back to an old building that's surprisingly small; it was probably a small op. They worked all day and made a pretty penny.

The other side:

Bee's address comes back to a house. So what's with the % Hotel Gibson?

Was Bee sending for repros of something she didn't want the other people in the house to see?

None of this stuff is important, but it's the chaff of daily life. Better that we saw it for a moment than it went into the fire, no? Having scanned and posted, it goes into my Bin of Low-Value Detritus, eventually retured to the Stream. That's the least of what I found.

More tomorrow.

And now we return to Monday's Above-the-Fold feature, the fate of movies that appeared in a big 1929 promo push for . . .

TALK. Get it? Because now movies have chatter.

Fay did not have a big career. Five movies, this one being her last. She died in 1988, which means she spent 58 years not being a movie star.

Says the YouTube description:

Movie producer J. Pierpont Ginsburg, after declaring, in a Yiddish accent, that "talking pictures are in their infantry," decides to put all of his savings into a big budgeted musical, starring the sensation of Paris and a swishy leading man.

They're not kidding about the leading man:

It's coming up in Black and White World next year. I've seen the whole thing. It's a chore.

Lots of stuff here, little of which has to do with the movie. Yes, it's a plethora of inadvertant documentary!

Doesn’t this mean . . .

. . . it was published somewhere else first?

(Note: through some Google-fu, I’ve discovered that yes, it was published somewhere else. The Rotarian. If I was them, I’d be peeved.)

Some proto-Dragnet here:

The opening:

Our Actual Location:

Lots of inadvertant doc:

As usual, the Google World is mostly depopulated.

It’s Stamford.

By the way, this building . . .

Had an ad on top. Can we figure out what they were?

So we know the brand, right? Ballantine. This one . . .

The oval is our clue.

This one, though - I’m stumped.

I'm seeing ALE. I googled "Connecticut 1950s Ale" and came up with Hull's Cream Ale. I can see that. I can even see the apostrophe.

ANYWAY. The movie concerns an investigation of a murder. Someone shoots a priest. A beloved priest who’s a WHAT of the community? Correct. He was a pillar.

Great cast.

He’s always a more rueful, intelligent, cynical version of how Raymond Burr would have played the role.

Glenn Ford, concerned because his town has Sudden Noir Syndrome:

And Karl Malden, which leads us into the cool part of the movie.

They arrest everyone, and that gives us a chance to see a rogue’s gallery of 1947 faces. None of these guys look like actors.

This guy's seen some stuff. Hell, this guy's done some stuff.

The stuff he's done hasn't bothered him in a long time.

The head case who has to be restrained on accounta the DTs:

Smoothy McDapper, thinks he's a hit with the ladies:

If they hadn't seen his shiny metallic uniform under his coat, no one would have suspected he was an alien from Gamma 6:

In the jury interviews, standard-issue Eastern European Mama with the coke-bottle glasses. She's gotta be what, 50?

Vengeful young woman who’s trouble, brother, and then some, stay clear:

One more thing: the True Story murder actually took part in Bridgeport. So all that stuff about shooting in Stamford? Booshwa. And it happened in 1924.

That will have to do. Hope your Monday's better than I think mine might be.