The blaze that began in Lake County, called the Valley Fire, has burned across 62,000 acres, and was only 10 percent contained. In Middletown, most of downtown — including a new arts center and Noble’s Saloon — survived untouched, but entire residential blocks were heaps of ash. Grape fields were scorched black. A scrim of smoke continued to rise from the tinder-dry mountains that ring the town.
As Walker writes, without a hint of irony, in Putting workers’ interests before special interests. (Des Moines Register, 9/15/2015) Yup, he's toast. And everyone else on the debate stage tonight knows it.
The Man with the Golden Arm, the fourth of Frank Sinatra's feature films to be released in 1955, opened at the Victoria Theater in New York City on December 15th. The movie is based on the book of the same name by Nelson Algren, which was published in 1949 and won the first National Book Award for fiction the following year.
Blanching at the topic of drug addition, the Motion Picture Association of America denied the movie its production code seal of approval. Which was probably just fine with director Otto Preminger, who seemed to revel in the controversy some of his films created.
Overall, New York Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther isn't particularly enamored of the proceedings.
Mr. Sinatra gives a plausible performance as the "junkie" who drifts back to the stuff when the pressures get too heavy for him after his return to his old haunts from taking "the cure." His old haunts consist of the cheap spots in a big town—Chicago, perhaps—where he is a professional dealer for a floating poker game. One smoky session in a backroom with the card sharps is more exciting than all the stuff about dope.
