Remember when Hollywood celebrities flocked across the globe to entertain and support American troops? Remember when Hollywood—as a community—denounced tyrants, Jew-haters, and mass murderers?

Joan Crawford as Miss Liberty

My father was a Rabbi, a Chaplain in the 42nd Division during World War II and the Korean War. He often told me just how much the troops loved and respected their Hollywood supporters.

Here’s just a brief sampler of what Hollywood patriotism once looked like.

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In February 1954, on her honeymoon in Japan with Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe took time off and traveled to Korea to entertain the troops. Monroe appeared on stage wearing skimpy outfits in freezing temperatures. The men adored her. She performed ten shows in four days, in front of audiences that totaled more than 100,000 soldiers and Marines.

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Marilyn performs Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.

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Dinah Shore, a hugely popular singer, traveled with USO tours throughout Europe. During one of her tours she met actor George Montgomery. They married in 1943. Soon after the wedding, Montgomery entered active service.

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In the late 1930’s Nazi agents approached Marlene Dietrich and asked her to return to Germany. She flatly turned them down. Dietrich was one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds. She entertained troops on the front lines in dozens of USO shows. Dietrich hated the Nazis and often spoke out against anti-Semitism. Here, she’s autographing the cast of Earl E. McFarland at U.S. hospital in Belgium 1944.

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Carole Landis probably logged more miles than any other actress in Hollywood during WWII entertaining American troops. She wrote a book about her experiences, Four Jills in a Jeep. Tragically, this generous but deeply unhappy young woman committed suicide in 1948 while carrying on a desperate affair with the married actor Rex Harrison—a notorious womanizer.

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Bob Hope, friend to GI’s, entertains American servicemen at the airstrip in Munda, New Georgia, an island in the central Solomons, on Oct. 31, 1944. Hope’s commitment to America’s troops brought him into four wars: World War II, the Korean War, Viet Nam and the Persian Gulf War. When on tour the great comedian usually performed in Army fatigues. A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Clinton named Bob Hope an “Honorary Veteran.”

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Carole Lombard raised millions of dollars selling war bonds. Tragically, she died in an airplane crash on January 15, 1942, after completing an eight-hour sales drive in Indiana in which she raised $2,017,513 in bonds . She was anxious to reunite with Clark Gable; they had only been married for three years. The last thing she said to him was: “You better get yourself into this man’s army.”

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Following Lombard’s death, deeply depressed and drinking too much, Gable rallied and asked MGM to release him from his contract. He joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. Most of Gable’s friends believed that Hollywood’s greatest leading man was seeking death. Far too old for active service, Gable worked hard to earn his stripes. Gable trained with and accompanied the 351st Heavy Bomb Group as head of a 6-man motion picture unit making a gunnery training film. Gable flew five combat missions in B17’s. In one mission over Germany he was almost killed when a German 20mm shell exploded through the plane’s floor and ripped the heel from one of Gable’s flight boots. Adolf Hitler offered a million dollar bounty to anyone who captured Gable and brought him back to Germany as a POW. Gable was Hitler’s favorite actor. Gable left the Army Air Forces with the rank of Major.

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Jimmy Stewart was a B-24 pilot in World War Two and flew twenty missions over Europe. Stewart ended the war as a command pilot and stayed in the Air Force Reserves until 1968, when he retired as a Brigadier General.

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The Hollywood Canteen, 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California was open from October 3, 1942 until the end of World War II. The club offered food and entertainment for American servicemen. The founders of the Canteen were Bette Davis, John Garfield and composer Jules Stein. All costs and labor for The Hollywood Canteen were donated by the various Hollywood guilds and unions.

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In the Hollywood Canteen, Bette Davis ladles out food for American servicemen. Davis devoted enormous amounts of time to the Canteen and served as its President. When funds ran low, she reached into her own pocketbook to cover expenses. Glamorous stars like Olivia De Havilland, Edward G. Robinson, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Sinatra, Dorothy Lamour, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Randolph Scott and hundreds of others, volunteered to wait on tables, cook in the kitchen and clean up. Notable by their absence in the Hollywood Canteen were three great stars: Jimmy Cagney, Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin. In 1944, Warner Bros. produced a star-studded film—a revue really—about the Hollywood Canteen. When the Canteen closed its doors in November 1945, it had hosted almost three million servicemen.

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Never Forget

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

In 1923, Colleen Moore’s starring vehicle, Flaming Youth was an international box office hit that ushered in the era of the Flapper. The Jazz crazy kids wore their galoshes unbuckled causing the rubber tongue to flap. Thus: Flappers.

 
Colleen Moore, studio portrait in the Stars and Stripes.

I’m waiting for that particular fashion statement to reappear.

Colleen Moore, born Kathleen Morrison, (1900-1988) and her husband John McCormick embarked on a grand tour of Europe to promote Flaming Youth, Colleen’s career, and enjoy a belated honeymoon.

Colleen’s look, specifically her Bobbed haircut, was a global fashion rage. Contrary to popular opinion it was Moore who pioneered the severe cut—not Louise Brooks. It is sad and certainly a skewed vision of film history that the current Louise Brooks cult has spread like a virus, whereas Moore, a far more important figure in motion pictures, is virtually forgotten.  George Cukor, a director who knew something about Hollywood stardom, was utterly baffled by the post-modern Brooks fever. When queried about the star of Pandora’s Box, Cukor forcefully exclaimed: “Louise Brooks? She was nothing!”

Anyhoo.

From where did the idea for this cubist haircut originate, so markedly different than the opulent Victorian tresses in favor at the time? Moore explains that her mother copied the look from a favorite childhood Japanese doll.

The new hairstyle sent a fascinating and complex message: this young lady is independent, plucky, fiery yet down-to-earth, tom-boyish but completely feminine; she’s the decent and adorable girl next door who is a boy’s best friend and then KABOOM! the love of his life.

Never a great beauty or a smoldering presence, Moore presented a new female paradigm: cute, feisty and refreshingly devoid of a self conscious sexuality. The surprising Bob helped cement Moore’s image as the modern American woman, and it changed the trajectory of the young actress’ career from feature player to star. At the height of her stardom Moore earned $12,500.00 a week.

The haircut also gave birth to a new product that is still with us: The Bobby Pin.

In Dublin, a celebrity starved crowd of 10,000 frantic fans broke through a police cordon and grabbed at Colleen who was wearing a stunning cape covered with intricately stitched tiny feathered plumes. Finally, McCormick lifted Colleen on his shoulders and carried her to the car where she arrived “looking like a plucked chicken.”

In Switzerland the mayor of Zurich arranged a dinner party in Colleen’s honor. An orchestra was present to play the the American national anthem.

Colleen describes the scene in her superb memoir Silent Star:

We’d no sooner sat down than the mayor, with a small bow to me, signaled the orchestra, who started playing “My Country,’Tis of Thee.” We all got up and stood very silent. When we sat down again, I said to the mayor, “That was the English national anthem, ‘G-d Save the King.’”

I should have kept my mouth shut. The mayor sent for the orchestra leader, spoke a few words to him in German, and no sooner had we started the soup course than the orchestra struck up again, this time with John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The Mayor stood up, beckoning to all of us, saying excitedly, “Stehen sie auf, bitte—everybody please stand up.”

We all stood, the orchestra finished, we sat down, and the American consul and I burst out laughing. When the mayor asked what we were laughing about, like an idiot I said, “That wasn’t our national anthem. That’s a march.”

The mayor, red in face, sent for the orchestra leader, spluttering German at him. The leader turned to me and asked the name of our national anthem. I said, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

He returned to the bandstand, the mayor watching him with an eagle eye. A few moments later the orchestra struck up “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” the mayor rose, saying, “Stehen sie auf, bitte,” and a tableful of by-now bewildered guests stood at attention once again. When we sat down, I smiled at the mayor and said, “That was lovely.”

In 1930, Soviet director Sergei Eisentstein arrived in Hollywood to set up several projects. The talented propagandist met everybody in the business, partied like one of the Communist hacks in Ninotchka, but, naturally, got stuck in development hell, and returned to mother Russia without a deal. Studio heads were baffled by his adaptation of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Eisenstein said a great deal about Hollywood and the decadent capitalists he encountered. He judged Marlene Dietrich dull, Greta Garbo stupid. But Collen Moore, rhapsodized Eisenstein, was the only intelligent woman he met in Hollywood.

Colleen Moore, Desert Flower, 1925

Colleen’s first husband, studio executive John McCormick, was, in many ways, responsible for steering the meteoric rise of her flapper film career. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic and frequently abusive.

Director Mervyn LeRoy in his fascinating autobiography Take One, describes a terrifying night when McCormick, on a bender, tried to hurl Moore out of a N.Y. hotel window. LeRoy—from an assimilated Jewish San Francisco family whose last name was probably Levine—saved Moore’s life by smashing McCormick over the head with a chair. The gallant and properly violent LeRoy—at the time a top “comedy constructor” for Moore—remained as her protector the entire night, the two of them aimlessly walking the streets of New York.

In Hollywood past and present, major movie stars have major tzuris.

In fact, Moore and McCormick’s troubled relationship inspired George Cukor’s top-notch insider Hollywood drama What Price Hollywood in 1932 as well as the three versions of A Star Is Born.

Colleen Moore, Her Wild Oat 1927.

Tragically, Flaming Youth, is presumed to be a lost film. Perhaps, somewhere in an archive in Eastern Europe, lies a decaying copy of this legendary motion picture. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

And as an example of how a lost film suddenly shows up—in this case Czechoslovakia—a Colleen Moore movie, Her Wild Oat, long considered lost, has been rediscovered and expertly restored. This article is an interview with archivist and historian Joseph Yranski who met Colleen Moore in the early 1970s, and remained friends with her until her death in 1988. Yranski was indirectly responsible for the rediscovery of Her Wild Oat.

Colleen Moore and the six-year-old Mickey Rooney in Orchards and Ermine, 1927

On DVD you can see Colleen Moore in Orchids and Ermine, 1927. Colleen plays a shop girl, a flapper, who’s looking for a sugar daddy. But she’s got to remain an innocent at heart, meaning she has to fall in love for the sake of love—not money. There’s romance, mistaken identity, and of course true love triumphs in the end. It’s a screwball comedy before screwball comedies were invented in the 30’s. Moore is magnetic as a gold digger who’s not as avaricious as she should be. A classic.

Colleen Moore in the dog house, in Ella Cinders, 1926.

Ella Cinders was probably Colleen Moore’s best role. In this spin on the Cinderella story, and much like Mabel Normand’s The Extra Girl, 1923, Moore plays a young girl in a dead end life who dreams of stardom, wins a beauty contest and goes to Hollywood. Once there, our heroine discovers that the contest was a scam. But with determination and talent Ella makes it in the movies and, natch, finds true love. This film is absolutely charming and Moore is delightful. Lombard before Lombard, Lucy before Lucy. You can get a DVD of the film here.

The Scarlet Letter, 1934, starring Colleen Moore and Alan Hale, 1934. This is a sound film, late in Colleen’s career. Moore was primarily a comedian but here she was trying to broaden her horizons as an actress. I haven’t yet seen this film so I’m clueless. But anything with Colleen Moore is interesting.

Broken Hearts of Broadway, 1923, was produced just before Moore broke through as a major star. Colleen plays the role of Mary, an aspiring actress who arrives in New York, all young and wholesome. Will she betray her friends for fame and fortune? This is a lovely show-biz morality tale, and Moore, as always, is genuine, vivacious, and utterly magnetic.

Reel Baseball/The Busher is a collection of baseball-themed silent movies. Colleen Moore co-stars with Charles Ray in The Busher, 1920, about a small town pitcher who is brought up to the big leagues but can’t quite make the grade. Colleen plays Mazie, his local sweetheart. Charles Ray was briefly a star of the silent era who specialized in playing rural heroes. On screen Ray was a one dimensional performer who relied on an aw’, shucks grin and a standard check list of hick mannerisms which appealed to audiences—for a short window of time.

Off-screen Ray was hugely tempramental, and according to Adolpf Zukor’s memoir had an inflated sense of his own importance. Ray spent his fortune lavishly and went bankrupt when he produced and financed his own pictures. Eventually, Ray devolved into alcoholism and uncredited walk-ons.  In 1935, Ray published a collection of short stories titled Hollywood Shorts, Compiled From Incidents in the Everyday Life of Men and Women Who Entertain in Pictures. Anthony Slide, in his seminal volume Silent Players, reports that, “…an undercurrent of anti-Semitism is evident in a number of stories, suggesting that Ray blamed his downfall on Jewish studio bosses.” Impoverished, Ray died from an infected tooth in 1943 at the age of 52.

I saw The Busher on TCM—I have a TCM addiction and I am powerless to control it—about a year ago. Moore, was not yet a star, just another feature player trying to claw her way from the middle ranks. But as soon as she appears on-screen—behold!—a refreshing, exuberant presence. The petite and vivacious Moore just blows the eager-to-please Charles Ray off screen.

Colleen Moore as Mazie on Charles Ray's lap in The Busher.

Fortunately for Colleen, the black and white film stock of the time never registered that one eye was brown, the other blue. She would have looked cross-eyed.

John Gilbert, who rose to be the first million dollar contract matinee idol at MGM, has a supporting role in The Busher as the spoiled rich kid who’s vying for Colleen’s affections over Charles Ray’s salt of the earth hero. Tragically, Gilbert, talented but immensely self-destructive, had a tortuous love affair with the great narcissist Greta Garbo—she left him stranded at the altar—and then, with the coming of sound his career crashed and burned in a terrific orgy of booze and babes.

After her retirement from motion pictures in 1935, Colleen Moore dedicated herself to an ongoing project: building the world’s most dazzling and elaborate doll house, actually a fairy castle. She toured with the fairy tale house to raise money for children’s charities.

The house is an engineering marvel. It has its own miniature sophisticated lights and wiring, a self-contained plumbing system, and a Lilliputian library with books signed by some of the greatest authors of our time. Every single detail of the castle is simply breath taking.

The fairy castle is on permanent exhibition in Chicago’s Museum of Science of Industry. Here’s the homepage.

Moore also wrote a best-selling volume: How Women Can make Money in the Stock Market.

Colleen Moore was Mervyn Leroy’s champion in Hollywood. She also mentored the luminous teen-age Loretta Young, and wisely cast an inexperienced but jaw-droppingly handsome Gary Cooper in his first starring role opposite Moore in Lilac Time, 1928. Moore believed that LeRoy, an incredibly bright, energetic, and creative young man, would develop into a fine director. She was right. LeRoy was known—before Orson Welles—as “The Boy Genius.” So let’s close with LeRoy’s warm words about this important actress and Hollywood icon:

Colleen Moore was a remarkable girl who grew into a remarkable woman… and became, next to Mary Pickford, the biggest silent film star of them all.

Later, she would retire from the screen at the height of her fame, marry well, and spend the rest of her life doing important civic works in Chicago, writing books, raising her stepchildren, and doting on her grandchildren. She was never anything but a lady, throughout her career and her postcareer life.

Her fame, however, never went to her head in any way. Perhaps because of her affluent background, she was never spoiled by her wealth., never seduced by her notoriety, never changed by her success. She was always sweet—in the best sense of the word—and kind and pleasant to everyone she met. I doubt that there was a man who worked on her pictures who was not platonically in love with her.

Links:

The Colleen Moore Project

Colleen Moore: Century Baby

Another Colleen Moore Site

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

She was the hottest sex symbol to hit the motion picture screen since, well, since the flickers started flickering. Bara was, the Vamp, the sexually insatiable woman, the lethal seductress who sucks the life out of a man, then abandons him, leaving only chaos and destruction in her wake.

This was, of course, a carefully created image.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra, 1917, a lost film.

Theda Bara was, in fact, Theodosia Burr Goodman, (1885-1955) a Jewish woman from Cincinnati who led a quiet and scandal free private life. In fact, she was a bookworm who liked nothing better than to curl up with a cup of tea and devour volume after volume of poetry and art history. She did not drink alcohol, go to night clubs, take drugs, or indulge in wild sexual escapades. She worked hard in the flourishing motion picture industry, saved money, stayed married to one man, director Charles Brabin, and wisely invested her considerable earnings.

A world-weary, hardened show-biz trooper who failed all efforts at a legitimate stage career, Theda got a break in pictures and patiently cooperated with the outlandish publicity which claimed she was born in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids, the pampered child of a beautiful French actress and an Italian sculptor.

Fox studio publicity men Al Selig and John Goldfrap—flamboyant geniuses who invented the playbook on celebrity publicity—further embellished this nutty tale as they coached Theda to speak to the press with a heavy French accent.

Theda Bara was labeled: The Wickedest Woman in the World.

Draped in velvet cloaks in an overheated hotel room—the press was told that she was accustomed to the desert climate of her native Egypt—Theda dramatically announced to the assembled reporters:

“Raised in a huge tent not far from the Sphinx, the oasis, our little home for years, was to us like the Garden of Eden. My mother taught me the languages, expression, and the art of pantomime. On the other hand, my father taught me how to paint, and the beauty and combination of colors. And through the instruction of both I learned the symphony of the soul.”

At the height of Theda’s career, while filming “The Forbidden Path,” and during World War I, Theda received a telegram that she lovingly preserved in one of her huge, crumbling scrapbooks:

Feb.11, 1918: 158th Infantry Regiment selected you for its Godmother by unanimous vote today. This regiment composed of Arizona men all sincere admirers of yourself. Mary Pickford has adopted 143rd Artillery Regiment here. Will be greatly disappointed if you turn us down. Please wire your acceptance at once.

Theda Bara’s brother Marque, was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in the Signal Corps. In 1917 Theda was asked to sign the American flag carried by a company of volunteers from York, Pennsylvania. Graciously, Theda autographed the stars and stripes. In gratitude the regiment sent her an ebony communion cup—unaware that she was Jewish.

This request from the 158th was profoundly touching to the patriotic movie star. She adopted the troops as her boys and finally got to meet the entire regiment in June 1918. She broke down and wept as she spoke to the star-struck soldiers.

“My heart is too full—words can’t come. This has been the most glorious day of my whole life.”

The soldiers responded by rewriting their marching song, doing their maneuvers to: “Vamp, Vamp, Vamp. The Boys are Marching!”

Theda, along with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were the most effective war bond salespeople in the United States. In 1917, on the steps of the New York Public Library, Theda sold $70,000 in bonds a single afternoon. She returned in November and sold another $300,000 worth of bonds during several rallies.

In times past, Hollywood actors and executives were deeply patriotic. As Jack Warner explained to Louella Parsons in 1941:

“My brothers and I are examples of what this country does for its citizens. There were no silver spoons in our mouths when we were born. If anything, there were shovels. But we were free to climb as high as our energy and brains could take us.”

As a first generation American—her father, a Polish born tailor, and her mother from Switzerland—Theda Bara most obviously loved America, and like all first generation American Jews, was grateful for the golden opportunities this land offered. This great movie star went out of her way to support her country and the brave troops who sacrificed so much on the bloody western front.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra.

In 1918-19 a flu epidemic swept across the United States. The motion picture business was hard hit. All across the country, film and stage shows closed, people wore cotton masks in the street. In October, one hundred and ninety-six thousand people died of influenza in America. World-wide, forty-million people lost their lives, far more casualties than combat deaths in the Great War.

Theda Bara, the vamp who made love to men and then cruelly destroyed them, in an act of incredible bravery and compassion, visited veteran’s hospitals while the flu was still raging.

She refused to wear a face mask, insisting that the veterans should have a chance to look their idol’s face.

That is a genuine movie star.

And a stark contrast to the bratty and ever so fashionable leftist celebrities who imitate—and quite badly—movies stars in contemporary tinsel town.

Theda Bara as The Vamp, publicity photo, 1915

During the mid 50’s, in one of her last interviews, Theda Bara spoke with Hedda Hopper about silent films and the essence of Hollywood stardom: glamor and mystery.

“To understand those days, you must consider that people believed what they saw on the screen. Nobody had destroyed the great illusion. Now they know it’s all make-believe… It’s the stars themselves who have been failing the fans. People have always been hungry for glamor—they still are. But it takes showmanship and a constant sense of responsibility to hold their interest. A star musn’t allow her public to see her in slacks. She should dress beautifully at all times—I don’t mean in a bizarre way. She must live their dreams for them and remain a figure of mystery. Glamor is the most essential part of Hollywood.”

Theda Bara, Motion Picture Magazine

For the information in this brief profile, I am indebted to Eve Golden’s book Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. A fine biography of this important star, highly recommended.

Theda Bara made forty-two feature films between 1914 and 1926. At the height of her fame she was earning $4,000 a week. Keep in mind that those were the days before income taxes. Complete prints of only six films still exist.  In 1937 there was a massive fire at Fox’s nitrate film storage vaults in New Jersey destroying most of the studio’s silent films, and the majority of Theda Bara movies. The rest were lost to nitrate deterioration or destroyed by uncaring studios. The four complete films—The Stain (1914), A Fool There Was (1915), East Lynne (1916), and The Unchastened Woman (1925)—to judge by reviews and articles, are not her best work. The loss of Cleopatra, save for 40 seconds, is particularly cruel. The costumes and sets, glimpsed in publicity stills, are stunning. Also lost are: Du Barry, Carmen, Salome, and Camille. Still photos from all four productions hint at deliriously lush productions.

A Fool There Was, 1915 DVD starring Theda Bara, May Allison, Victor Benoit. The film that made Theda Bara an overnight sensation. And yup, this is the movie where Theda commands: “Kiss me, you fool!”

Theda Bara.net

Denny Jackson’s Theda Bara Page

Silent Ladies & Gents, Theda Bara: Photo Galleries

Theda Bara: Silent Star of the Month

Theda Bara IMDb

Hi, gang. Michael Moore here.  I’ve been thinking a lot about patriotism lately.  I had an interesting conversation with my friend Joe about this, and I thought I’d share it. 

So me and Joe are sitting around at Mavis’s diner talking.  ”I’m not sure how a Man of the Left should handle Obama’s Presidency,” Joe confides.  

I ponder this question as I crush a large joint of mutton down my enormous feeding orifice. The
bones crack and pop like July fireworks as my massive tusks rend the meat and even work the bone into a thick paste of calcium and keratin.

Motes of blood spray out of my slavering eat-hole and onto Joe’s face.  He elegantly sweeps his glasses off his face and wipes the blood away.  ”We have so long fought the state.  But now we are the state, Mike.  If we indulge in the ‘new patriotism,’ are we hypocrites?  Are we just exchanging one jingoism for another more appealing to us?”

It’s a good question, no doubt. I wish I could answer it. I wish I could answer another question– How can I eat this cheesesteak, this Monte Cristo, and that four-gallon tank of pork lard simultaneously, when I have only two hands?

“We know where unchallenged, unthinking adoration of a charismatic leader usually leads.  And yet I find myself drawn to do so nevertheless — my heart sings Obama, while my brain whispers caution.”  

I’d like to tell him I respect his uncommon introspection, but I can’t speak, as I currently have my entire ginormous freakhead stuffed into the rib-cage of dangling cow-carcass the owners of the diner have hung by chains and tenterhooks for me. My daggerlike teeth slice through the raw meat like a squadron of yellow-brown warships upon a blood-red sea. 

Apparently my face shows a bit of sadness, as Joe now reaches across the table to comfort by squeezing my shoulder.  He withdraws his hand quickly as I snap at it, very nearly severing three of his fingers.

I slice through bone and tendon and tough cartilage with my wickedly angled, shark-like incisors, sending bone-bits and glistening black puddings of coagulated intestinal blood sailing across the diner with
each feral bite.

A pack of Guatemalan-Indian boys now come into the diner, speaking Spanish. Or gibberish. Who can tell the difference?

They walk over to me and ask me to lift my t-shirt.

“What’s this about?” Joe wants to know.

I lift my shirt and the boys begin scraping along the insides of my luxurious rolls of corpulent fat with old playing cards. One boy gently lifts my massive, pendulous moob and collects a big dollop of a yellowish paste that resembles spoiled soft cheese.

“Oh, I’m just doing my bit to help a downtrodden minority,” I explain to Joe as I wipe a turkey drumstick from the corner of my eye. “A tribe of Peruvian Indians have discovered that the pungent, semi-toxic munge that collects on my unwashed body is a powerful psychedelic drug of some sort. Ingesting my creamy filth-sweat brings them to death’s door, but it assists them in reaching the proper mental state for dream-quests.”

“Sort of like peyote,” Joe offers.

“My munge-cheese kicks peyote’s ass to hell and back,” I say with some degree of pride. “They call it La Mantequilla del Diablo — The Devil’s Butter.”  

The boys end up filling an emptied grout-bucket with my powerful psychotropic stank-juice. They’ll be having some powerful dream-quests tonight — even with my face covered in cow-meat and at least three live lobsters,  I can smell that I’m especially rancid today.  

One of the boys tosses a live chicken to me as payment. I snap at it with my powerful, overdeveloped jaw muscles, bulging and rippling like those of a sabre-tooth tiger, but the chicken manages a burst of flight and hovers in terror above my flickering, prehensile tongue.

“It’s the least I can do to honor our new President’s call to service,” I modestly explain to Joe.

“But that is the quandary,” Joe says.  ”To serve a better power, or to oppose all power on principle alone.”

 ”These are curious times, Joe, full of strange new feelings and conflicted thoughts,” I say, or rather that’s what I attempt to say. My words are garbled and intermixed with guttural grunts as I snap at the elusive chicken which yet manages to escape my all-ravening maw.

“Patriotism may be the last resort of the scoundrel,” I console Joe, “But it may also be the highest calling of the virtuous.”  I have now sprung to my feet in order to seize the escaped chicken. The fat ripples along my elephantine haunches as I coil to leap, lethal energy gathered to spring in a frozen moment, like the cocked hammer of a gun.

A really fat gun.

“Oscar Wilde said patriotism was the virtue of the vicious,” Joe counters.

But I have no time to riposte in kind, as I leap over the assembled humanity in the cramped diner, my claws sprung out and shiny-deadly, my lard-dimpled jowls puffed out like the hood of a cobra.  I beserk about the diner like the Tasmanian Devil, my heaving, snowy-pale he-knockers swinging around the room like whirling Zeppelins of Blunt Force  Trauma.

The chicken dodges a slash from one of my stunted fore-limbs, atrophied by disuse in favor of my tyrannosaurine slaughtermaw. It dives beneath the seat of a six year old boy, a ruddy-cheeked, haystack-haired, gap-toothed reminder of what this nation is all about.

The boy is inconveniently providing cover for the miscreant fowl, so I snatch him up with one sweat-drooling meat-paddle and I drop him, alive and screaming, down into my eager throat.

My roiling gastric acids will take care of the kid. I’ve got no time to chew.

The chicken runs.

“Let your brain be your navigator, but your let heart be your pilot,” I advise Joe as I bite out the throat of the boy’s mother, who has, as you might well imagine, sprung to her feet to protest my devouring of her sparkled-eyed tyke.  I slurp her still-pulsating gizzards down my slavering hell-void.

The chicken scampers over the well-worn hospital-green tiles of the ancient diner. It ducks through the doorway and exits to the street as a truck-driver enters the place.

Angry at the clumsiness of the truck driver, I snap at his head with my yawning pink vortex of saliva-roped doom, severing his head and neck at the clavicle. His body spews a riotously crimson fountain of blood at the ceiling, like he were some liquid roman candle.

The hot blood splatters on the diner’s windows and steams.

“But we are men of intellect, first and foremost,” Joe calls after me, but I’m on the street now, waddling like an aging Sumo wrestler with a wedgie, my dainty-tiny girlfeet pounding into the cool asphalt like fleshy
jackhammers.

“But men of intellect, too, can open their hearts to hope,”  I advise.

I hear the telltale whine of jet-engines– F-15’s, I’m sure. I’ve heard them before. I hear them everytime I go out on one of my rampaging murder-luncheons.

I’ll hear the rumbling of National Guard troop carriers soon enough as well– a platoon of “mercenaries” out to chill my right to dissent.  And my right to feed on human flesh.  

Even in this so-called “new age of freedom.”

Perhaps Joe is right after all.

But I have little time to consider that further as I bite the mid-body out of a riot policeman’s horse. Intestines ooze and slither out of the gaping wound like wet, grisly Slinkees.

The F-15’s scream down from the sky as they begin their attack run. My debate with Joe will have to wait.

I leap into the cool, slimy waters of the East River as the air-to-ground missiles slam into the cityscape behind me.

The filthy river greets me like an old lover. A murky, green lover that smells of cabbage, burnt engine oil, and feet. It smells like… patriotism.

The chicken has escaped.

But George Bush did not.  He will bear the terrible wrath of history’s judgment.  And, if I have anything to do with it, the terrible wrath of a morbidly-obese cannibalistic filmmaker.

Midland, Texas is only a few days’ swim from New York.

And anyway, I think some Austin Student Association wants to give me some award.   I don’t know what for, but they promised to hold the ceremony at Sizzler.

Revised and updated; an earlier version was originally posted on Ace of Spades HQ.

Witness Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s cavalcade of shiny, happy situational patriots appearing in a derivative public servitude announcement: A “Presidential Pledge” to President Barack Obama.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Forgive and forget? Right.

President Bush was not holding back Moore from “free[ing] one million people from slavery in the next five years.” Nor was he holding back the Obama-biquitous Will.I.Am from “chang[ing] how [he] live[s].” Ditto: Aaron Ekhart (”To be a better person,”) Marisa Tomei (”To integrate into my heart what I already know in my head which is that we are all in this together,”) Kutcher (”To the abolition to 21st century slavery,”) Anthony Kiedis (”To be of service to Barack Obama,”) P. Diddy (” pledge to turn the lights off, cause I used to leave the lights on but we want to conserve energy so I’ma turn the lights off, you turn the lights off,) and all-in-unison (”Because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek.”)

Missing are pledges not to kiss the ring of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and other pledged enemies of America. Nor are there pledges not to make movies that glorify these tyrants. Nor are there pledges to take seriously that we are at war, will continue to be at war under President Obama and that our precious and under-appreciated military is fighting an avowed and evil enemy — so that, among other things, Hollywood can continue to make decadent crap that actually motivates our enemy to fight us harder!

Unfortunately, what happens in Hollywood does not stay in Hollywood.

For more mind-numbing background read Kutcher’s companion piece at the… you got it… the Huffington Post .

The conservatives, Republicans and sundry non-lefties I know in show business have had nothing to say but positive and helpful things about the coming Obama presidency.

“We wish him well.” “He is our president now and he needs our help.”

These are the types of things I keep hearing.

And this is exactly the right attitude and exactly the right message.

God bless, President Obama. Even though I didn’t vote for him, and disagree with much of his agenda, he has my best wishes and all of my best efforts.

But that doesn’t mean I will forgive and forget an era of narcissism, petty complaining and conspiracy theory peddling from the majority celebrity class that began well before Iraq. [See "Hollywood, Interrupted " -- my book co-written with Mark Ebner -- which was written before and during the build-up to the Iraq war and before the WMDs weren't found. The public behavior from Hollywood even then was almost uniformly deplorable.]

Conspiracy theories of America’s complicity in 9/11 dominated cocktail party discussions for eight tedious years. They couldn’t simply disagree with Bush. They had to ascribe evil to his motivations and make sure the whole world agreed on that flawed premise.

Yet, hating the president doesn’t mean one can’t still help out the country in a great time of need. But many went to foreign countries and demeaned it instead. Called those that disagreed with them rubes and hicks. The elitism of the celebrities against flyover country America could not have been more pronounced. They made a boat-load of movies that affirmed this narrow and patronizing world view.

And now they want us back.

We’re all Americans — NOW.

It’s a convenient lie the celebrity left peddles that they were with us during the initial Afghanistan phase of the war, and even after 9/11.

No syrupy revisionism will change this fact.

[As I was writing this piece, I received the following unsolicited email from a Big Hollywood reader: "Reminder to liberal celebrities: It's time to set your Fluctuating Patriotism Clock from "Hate America" to "Love America" on Jan. 20th. Remember, it's "Springsteen Ahead - Falwell Behind." Funny.]

Featured in Moore’s goofy, derivative and pretty-in-a-grotesque-way video is none other than Cameron Diaz who had this to say before the 2004 election:

We have a voice now, and we’re not using it, and women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies…if you think that rape should be legal , then don’t vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, and you have a right to say what happens to you and fight off that danger of losing that, then you should vote…

Such mental insanity posing as erudition usually earns ostracism. But Diaz and her self-serious cohorts have no moral compass, no sense of proportion, no decency and, certainly, no shame.

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around.

The celebrity decadence during the “oppressive” Bush years was world class. The clubs raged. The boutique hotels rocked. The private jet industry at Van Nuys airport flourished. The party never stopped. And only a precious few (Thank you, dearly!!!) stepped up to support the American troops who have been valiantly fighting for Hollywood’s right to do lines off of each others’ buttocks at $10 million Hollywood Hills mansions.

They never spoke up against the movies that demonized our military.

They never made movies to counter the libel.

They took the easy route. And blamed Bush for everything.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Twenty years ago AIDS was the number one cause for the Hollywood left. Remember the trendy red ribbons at all the self-aggrandizing awards shows? Hollywood has moved on (dot org) to better blame-your-fellow-American causes. But President Bush didn’t. And aside from Bob Geldof and Bono , they ignore this president’s demonstrable goodness .

Amazing that Geldof and Bono could valiantly fight their battles and serve humanity without being paralyzed by the Leader of the Free World 2000-2008’s all-encompassing awfulness.

Remember this video: It is a instructive relic of the era of celebrity decadence and boutique anti-Republican activism under President Bush. It is a sickening display that they want fast and easy absolution for having comported themselves like ill-behaved children for eight difficult and war-torn years.

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.

But one culture has rejected a far-left film establishment that seeks to undermine its war on terror – the other has embraced it.    

The first culture – the culture that rejects its morally relativistic artists – is America.  The second culture – the culture that accepts and encourages its morally relativistic artists – is Israel. 

Hollywood may make tons of movies like In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, and Stop-Loss, but those movies tank.  Tel Aviv makes similar movies, and those movies are considered the greatest film achievements of the Jewish State. 

There’s a reason for that: while Hollywood believes American exceptionalism is passé, most Americans disagree.  By contrast, Tel Aviv believes that Zionism is passé – and that post-Zionist attitude has infected much of the Israeli populace. 

It’s no wonder that America is winning its war on terror, while Israel is losing hers. 

Let’s take just one example: Body of Lies vs. Waltz with Bashir. 

DiCaprio and Crowe star in "Body of Lies"

Body of Lies had all the elements of a hit.  Exciting action.  Solid direction by Ridley Scott.  Two first-rate stars in Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.    

And it bombed.   

It bombed because watching Body of Lies was like watching an in-depth investigation by Al Jazeera.  The movie did its best to equate American counter-terrorism efforts with Islamic terrorism. 

Body of Lies opens with shots of Americans – led by CIA operative Leo DiCaprio — beating a terrorism suspect bloody.  Near the end of the movie, as Leo is being tortured by an Islamic terrorism, he flashes back to beating an Islamic terrorist.  The implication is clear: the US and its enemies aren’t so different, after all. 

That’s not a message Americans really want to hear.  We understand that our enemies are murderous thugs, and by and large, we also understand that we may need to hurt them in order to get information from them.   

It’s no wonder, then, that Body of Lies was more of a sinking ship than Titanic. 

It’s a different story in Israel. 

The hottest new movie in Israel is Waltz with Bashir.  The movie has already won Best Picture from the Israeli Film Academy, Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics, Best Animated Film from the Los Angeles Film Critics, and Best Independent Foreign Film from the British Independent Film Awards. 

Waltz with Bashir is an animated post-Zionist journey into the mind of a former IDF soldier who fought in the 1982 Lebanon War.  It follows his investigation into what really happened during the Lebanon War, and it culminates in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, in which the Israeli Defense Forces failed to prevent Christian Phalangists from killing 700-800 Palestinians in those refugee camps.  The Phalangist attack was a response to the Islamist killing of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel.    

The film neglects to mention that only 35 out of the 700-800 killed were women and children – the rest were men, which suggests that most of those killed were in fact members of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization. 

In short, Waltz with Bashir is the Israeli version of Body of Lies, with less realistic action and more psychotherapy. 

In America, this sort of self-indulgent caterwauling is scorned by the mass public.  In Israel, everyone’s just pleased to be accepted by the Europeans for engaging in such self-abnegation. 

The film community in the United States may skew heavily to the left.  It may see its true mission as reshaping American foreign policy along European lines.  And it may make anti-war films with that mission in mind.  But the American public rejects the Hollywood view.  We want more Saving Private Ryan and less Redacted.  We want more We Were Soldiers and less Rendition. 

In Israel, the film community skews far left as well.  But Israel embraces those films.  Since 1948, Israeli film has been heavily focused on undermining Israelis’ patriotism – and Israelis have bought into it. 

Film has an impact.  It’s no wonder that so many Israelis are disillusioned with their state.  It’s no wonder that they’re apologetic for defending themselves.  It’s no wonder they keep trying to make amends for wrongs they haven’t committed.  It’s no wonder they love Waltz with Bashir.  

In America, it isn’t too late.  The American film industry may ignore its profit margin in favor of trendy pacifism, but such willful blindness can only last so long.  Eventually, Americans will demand to see movies that champion America.  Americans won’t let their children be convinced by nonsense like Body of Lies.