movie memorabilia – Page 6 – Boy Outa Brooklyn

Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo — The men of the stoop in their dreams.
(Movie poster for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo)

Many of the stoop sages are veterans of World War Two. Joe Pinto lost an arm on Guadalcanal but still holds down two jobs. And, veterans or not, everyone on the stoop agrees that the Allies should have unleashed General George Patton. At the end of the war, Patton wanted to go clear across the steppes of Russia and clean out those commie creeps once and for all. But, Truman wouldn’t let him.

“That’s why they killed him,” grunts Joe Pinto while crushing a beer can with his one remaining hand. “You think Ike wasn’t in on it? Jeep accident my ass.”

Let’s say it’s another soft, summer night in 1955. Only lightning bugs and burning cigarettes illuminate the faces on the stoop as they agree, again – “We should have unleashed Patton.” Later, only flicker from TV screens illuminate their faces as they sit on their sofas watching Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Again. And, sipping a beer, they murmur, again – “We should have unleashed Patton.” Their wives sipping beside them nod in agreement.

Boy outa Brooklyn a murder-memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: the smiling face of Steeplechase park in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Henry Fonda as Gil Martin in Drums Along the Mohawk directed by John Ford. — **“Kickin’ British butt in Brooklyn”**

The Battle of Brooklyn, the crucial battle of the Revolutionary War, takes place in Green-Wood Cemetery. George Washington loses but manages to escape across the East River while soldiers from Maryland fight a desperate retreating action across the cemetery and down into the swamps of Gowanus, where I will later work. The Marylanders are slaughtered on Third Street, where I will later live. Thus, my personal battles in Brooklyn trace the course of the Battle of Brooklyn.

The Old Stone House on 3rd street in Brooklyn where the American Revolution was saved. — **The American Revolution was saved here in Brooklyn.**

As a child, long before I know this bloody history, I feel a kinship with the fallen rebels. Oh, I like Westerns but I love “Easterns” – movies set in Early America. I am instinctively drawn to them. I know every frame in John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk. I want to live in that time and I’m sure that in a former life, I did. So, I devour everything in my history textbooks about Early America. And, when I walk on the dirt paths in Prospect Park, or hide in a weedy vacant lot, or merely jump over blades of grass sprouting through the sidewalk, I am transported to 1776 and have a musket in my hand and a powder horn on my hip. All this emotional connection, spanning centuries, is forged before I know that I am living on sacred, blood-soaked battleground. It is a psychic mystery of Brooklyn.

Category Archives: movie memorabilia

Thirty Seconds Over Brooklyn

Drums Along the Gowanus