Every scene in the film
Casablanca is so
good that they could all
be my "favorite scene" from WWII Hollywood films.
If I have to choose, I'll take the scene where Ingrid
Bergman is holding a gun on Humphrey Bogart (to get "the
letter"). Bogey steps forward almost to the point where
the pistol is pressed against his chest and utters the
single greatest anti-hero line in the history of great
anti-hero lines: "Go ahead and shoot. You'll be doing me a
favor."
Yet if I really think
about it, my favorite scene from WWII-Hollywood is
actually from another film. I was reminded of it the other
day when the sad news broke that Tarzan's sidekick (and my
soul buddy), Cheetah the chimp (the one on the left in the
photo), had gone to that Great Backlot in the Sky. It was
the final scene from Tarzan
Triumphs (1943). Cheetah jabbers his grunt-squeal
monkey gibberish into a microphone and the nefarious Nazis
listening in on the radio communication mistake Cheeta for
Hitler and stand to attention, raise their right arms in
the Nazi salute and shout, "ZE FUEHRER!" We knew
right then and there that the Krauts were done.
My next step was to
relate all this to Naples in keeping with the original Six
Degrees of Separation (SDS) premise of this series, Everything is Related to
Naples (see number one here).
Was Cheetah perhaps born in Naples? No. Was his trainer
Neapolitan? No. Is there a pizza named for him?—maybe one
with banana topping? Probably, but it's blasphemous even
to hold such a thought. This was going to be tricky.
Wait...
"By Jove, Holmes, you've done it!"
"Not at all, Watson. Just remember that when
you have excluded the sublime, that which remains must
be ridiculous."
So, working from chimp
to yours truly, Cheetah toiled for RKO Pictures, a company
founded in 1929. They are justly proud of their record.
Their RKO website brags on and on about Katherine Hepburn,
Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Orson Welles, Bette Davis,
etc., but I can't explain the Freudian misspelling in
their own self-promo on the website. Spot it and win
something:
RKO classics have included King Kong, Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life,
The Hunchback of
Notre Dame, The Belles of St. Mary, The Best Years of Our
Lives, as well as a host of Astaire-Rogers
musicals.
Nice going. You win one
Belle. Sorry, only one to a customer. Also, I think the
original title was "...of St. Mary's" and not "...of St.
Mary." In grammar that is called the Saxon Double
Genitive, not that you or cheetah care about such things,
but the young geek who put that RKO website up? —he or she
should care. (If I didn't live so far away, I'd tweet up a
flash mob to demonstrate outside their studio.)
Now, RKO made movies on
a backlot in Culver City, California, that everyone called
"40 Acres," even though it was only about 29 acres. (Maybe
that misnomer is traceable to the old "40 acres and a
mule" phrase from the US Civil War, but that is research
for another occasion.) The site saw the making of many
well-known films, including Gone with the Wind and King Kong. (As a
matter of fact, the effect of Atlanta burning in GWTW was
created by setting fire to leftover sets, including those
from King Kong!
Man, life is cruel.) It is also where Tarzan Triumphs was
made. RKO had acquired the property from Cecil B. DeMille
in 1926, who, in turn, had acquired it from "Italian
immigrate [sic] Achille Casserini." (I know, I know. It's
probably the same kid who wrote "the Belles of St. Mary."
I don't understand; Culver City used to have such a good
high school.)
Casserini (1865-1935)
emigrated to the United States and became a naturalized
citizen in 1890 in Santa Barbara County, California, but
he wasn't
Italian. (I think that's strike three on that website
kid.) He spoke Italian, yes, but he was from the
Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino, specifically the
tiny (current population, 60!) of Cerentino. That town is
only 15 miles from the city of Locarno at the northern end
of Lake Maggiore. And now...drum-roll... Locarno is where my
grandfather on my mother's side, Johannes Bodenmann,
married Anna Marie Herzog, my grandmother. (Of course, in
terms of SDS, that fifteen miles is not even close to six
degrees of latitude or Swiss longitude, so I'm way ahead
on that score.) Their grandchild, yours truly, lives in
Naples!