Dad from Georgia: February 28, 1956

Dear Rosetta:

I hope you have torn up the letter that precedes this one. No sooner had I dropped it in the mail-box than I was sorry.  I should have kept it a day before mailing. It was a poor present and most certainly in very bad taste for any occasion.  Will you forgive me if I ask, penitent, barefoot, genuflected in abject misery before that image of beauty I carry with me, the memory of one--you.

For the last two days we have had high winds and rain.  Yesterday, they evacuated the camp theatre for fear of forecasted high-velocity gusts. We were alerted to the possibility that our barracks might suffer damage.  But, tough the winds were high, there was no damage.  This morning, the sun shone and it was cool, moist and fresh--almost like a Northern climate.

TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION:

"Shall we go back to the old way of living?"  I sincerely believe not.  I think that in coming here I have discovered an intangible that might make the difference. There has been a block between us that was preventing true understanding.  This is curious because both of us have an abundance of those things to give away that we both want.  I discovered, also, that it was largely my own fault that the obstacle existed, even though the two of us have created it by individual contributions. Perhaps it was action and reaction. I hope so, for if this is true, what I did I can undo. But I suspect this is not wholly the truth. In many of my letters I have purposely planted statements designed to get answers to what I want to know.  I know what direction I want to give to what I have but do you?  I'm sorry if I can't make this any clearer.  I'll try another time.

Stars so distant
Are cool and restful to the soul
But searing to the touch.

A kiss for now, Buddy.

Transcriber post script: I cannot presently find the letter to which dad refers which he regretted. I am not sure that I had it, and I have lost it, or that it never was in the package left behind in the first place. Dad had a tendency--and I am told I inherited it--to seem to be speaking directly without ever doing so. The letter above is an example. He was blaming himself for whatever was going on between them, but looking for her to reach out to him, but what he had in mind, I'll never know. My memories, albeit ones that are inherently faulty as I was young and memories always reconstruct themselves, was that they did not achieve what dad was hoping. 

Dad's Letters from Georgia February 29, 1956

I wish I were more consistent in transcribing the lovely letters my father wrote to my mother when he was at Fort Gordon, Georgia for army post training back in the 1950s. But I am getting there, and if you read prior entries and a couple of my prior blogs which for reasons of computer illiteracy I cannot access any more for additions, you will have the thread. But you don't need to--each letter stands alone. And each is a capsule of a time and place and sensibilities over 60 years past. This one was actually written in dad's hand, so I have scanned it here. I like the idea that my dad's handwriting is in the ether to be seen by generations to come.  I follow it by a transcription, in case the reading is difficult. The thing that always amazes me about these letters is that my father talks of love, and missing my mother, and refers to my mother missing him. Alas, when I was more than the baby in this letter, I didn't think they liked each other much. You never know the whole story do you?

                     The transcription:

Dear Rosetta:

Set your wherewithal this morning via three money orders. This should make it easier for you to cash the.  The sum total, for checking purposes was $280.00.  If, suring the month, it appears this will not be enough, write immediately and let me know.  As far as the baby's party is concerned, be assured you will have eough. First, because I shall send you some money the first of April and second because this month you will receive (sic) check for 45-60 dollars. Should th eneed arise, send it to me, I will cash it and return the case.

Received a letter from Rita today. She tells me how much you miss me, which information coming from a third person is very flattering. Please let me know if her observation is factual.

The last week of so has been very boring.  Some of the lectures which deal with confinement of criminals are really interesting but I have little sympathy with our concepts of crime and punishment and I find it hard to keep from saying what I feel. Of course, though, I will.

I was looking through the PX today.  They have some cotton baby dresses that do not impress me too much. They have an abundance of your Faberge perfumes. Name some others you might like. By the way, do you still use baby powder and Q-tips, baby oil-do you need diapers?

I miss you very much and will find this last month difficult. It should go by fast, though.  In the mea time, keep well and try not to be lonesome

Love, Buddy

Another in a Line of Too Many Things that Aren't Here Anymore

I suppose I shouldn't complain.  After all, when The Grove was built in Los Angeles surrounding and encompassing the site of the Farmer's Market, there was a real danger that that lovely old tourist trap would be torn down. Somehow, probably in large part because of community dissatisfaction that another piece of history was being bulldozed, and though some of the old stores and structures were demolished, the main section of that 1934 Los Angeles gem was retained. You still have the too expensive fruit and vegetable section, the Patsy D'Amore Pizza stand, Mariconda Meats, and a few newer eateries, like Monsieur Marcel, which even French expats seem to like. The people traffic into and out of the Rick Caruso amusement park like shopping, eateries and movie theater and into this kitschy tented oasis and the success of the Grove probably has helped not a few of the small businesses in their stalls. One of the oldest of those businesses, Gill's, which sold ice cream and all the accoutrements, founded in that very place in 1937, is though no more. The local paper I was reading while in the market today said they were closing on February 2. But when I went to the other side of the market I found out that it already was shuttered, except for a school notebook chained to the stone counter asking for guests to sign and make a comment. I did.

It doesn't seem to have been a matter of income, rather a matter of the landlord of the market wanting something more upscale, with nicer signage and veneer. The landlord's side of the story is that the space needed more than cosmetic repair-- substantial infrastructure upgrades The family who had owned it for 80 years wanted to maintain the original charm, and apparently they didn't think there was a structural problem. If there was, it's not a huge space, so I think we don't know the whole story. But, as usual, it was a legal issue and one that didn't settle. Frankly, it's the time warp charm that's alway drew me to the Farmers' Market.  It's what has drawn the neighborhood cronies to sit there arguing about movies and books. Over the time since the Grove grew up around it, I had also noticed some more fancy stalls. They never seem to survive because they were out of place and time. You can get that anywhere. The Market publicity people have been putting out ads around the place showing the location back in the old day, with cute little saying about how good the old days were. And yet, they are getting rid of one of the most iconic of those places.

I will bet that the space will be one of endless turnover. Just around the corner an eatery opened for about six months and has been closed for about that same period of time. But the landlord will get his structural repairs from someone else. Let's see if those renters last.

After 80 years, Gill's goes the way of so many places of good times to become fond fading memory. The Market itself is still there. That's something, but I can't get too comfortable. Progress is inexorable. It also isn't often really progress.

Mocha. Venti. Hot

It's late, no rather it's early, 12:30 in the a.m. I just sent an e-mail to the United Kingdom, to a library that has some information which interests me. Before that I was watching an episode of "Star Trek, the Next Generation".  I wish we were exploring space. We have lots of probes out, and lots of fascinating things are evolving from the information garnered on these unmanned missions, but I wish we were actually exploring space, at least establishing a colony on the moon. Not that I would be among the explorers. I am afraid of the 767. I hate to fly. I wish I didn't feel that way, and maybe before I die I will lose that fear. But, as I was asking Alexa to play me some New Age mood music (given the hour, even a classical mood music seemed a little jarring) I found myself delighted that I was experiencing a little of the Trekian future. This one seems particularly powerful. Alexa comes to me by virtue of the Echo Dot. She isn't the android Data, but she is pretty stunning. Not only did I ask her to play mood music, which she is as I write, if I ask her to "Stop" she does. I wondered if I could say "next" because one piece was annoying in its particular repetition, and darn if she didn't move to another song in the loop. Each day we play six questions of "Jeopardy", and she tells me if I am right or wrong. If you say to her, "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" she says, "I'm not a replicator." If I had a certain type of electronic system in my apartment, she could operate it. "Computer, Lights."

Now, I know there are limitations, but there is something mesmerizing about prognostication becoming reality in my lifetime. In the 1960s, a personal computer seemed out of reach for an ordinary human being. Yes, I know, there were places that had these behemoths, and the internet existed in some guise for the military long before any of us heard of it. But I can ask this little machine sitting on my breakfast bar to read me a book (if I join Audible, which I haven't yet, as I really prefer, like Elisha Cook in an episode of the original series of Star Trek to touch and read the real thing), or tell me the news, or, as it now is playing some delightful pastiche. If I get my instruction wrong, or she doesn't have access to what I want, she'll say, "I don't understand what you want." In Star Trek, I think the computer said, "I am not programmed for that information."

I am typing on a tablet. I have a smaller tablet that looks suspiciously like the one in the picture above.

There is a lot I don't like about the society in which I live. Civility is gone. Morality is relative. Still, and with some trepidation, I would like to see a lot more of these developments even as I worry that we will one day be debating the existence of the personhood of a robot like Alexa. We are not yet able to agree on the personhood of a fetus. We are not ready really for the advances hurtling toward us.

For the moment, I am not going to become discouraged by the nature of us humans to corrupt every invention. I am just going to enjoy Alexa, though it is time for both of us to go to bed. Maybe I'll pretend I am flying among the stars.

An Untoward Death in Weho

It was indeed untoward in the classic definitions of the word, as in unexpected, surprising, bad, unforeseen, unusual, improper, inopportune.  I have gone days wondering if I would write about what happened here in our little condo community just three days after the New Year. Or if I should. But ultimately I feel I must because it hit "home" literally, and figuratively. And because the suffering and death of another requires something to mark it, some testimony. So does the suffering, in greater or lesser degrees, of those whose lives have been touched. And it raises all those philosophical, theological, existential questions that never receive fully satisfying answers no matter how great the thinker who offers them.

A long time resident of my building shot himself to death by our pool early in the morning. I did not know the particulars right away, as since I am a late sleeper and in the back of the my apartment, I didn't hear anything. I came downstairs late in the morning on my way to daily Mass. There was the yellow tape for accident or crime scenes. And there were two sheriffs deputies standing at a distance from my stairwell. I did immediately think that someone had died, but assumed it was of natural causes. Even with natural causes, a death at home is by statute one that requires investigation.

I think I said a short prayer of some nondescript verbiage requesting God's intervention as I left the building. When I came back in the mid afternoon, there was a sign offering a meeting for the neighbors regarding the "incident" at the pool. Ah. An incident. Whatever had happened was outside, around that little oasis so many of us love, living the California life. I had begun to surmise who the victim might be, in part because of where the sheriffs had been stationed when I first saw them, but hoped against hope that whoever had died, for it was certainly that, had gone "naturally". But the word "incident" somehow stretched that likelihood.

The meeting was somber, and a chance for a kind of therapy for those with greater or lesser need. No one was on the spot when it happened. I say, "it happened" because the best anyone could assess he probably didn't intend to shoot himself. The bullet went into and out of his chest. That's what the people in the apartments nearest the pool heard, the shot. And his saying, "Ow!" which somehow suggests the unintentional. Somehow, I don't know precisely how, that makes a difference. One neighbor came out immediately. The paramedics were called.  And obviously the sheriff. Another neighbor felt guilty. She saw him shortly before as she was returning with her dogs. He told her he was waiting to be taken to the hospital. He was afraid that they would take him in a straight-jacket. She didn't know that he was having a delusion. Although he had given her and other neighbors in our pet friendly building complaint over barking, she saw his vulnerability of the moment, and they hugged. She said she'd put the dogs back in her place and come and wait with him. She has nothing to regret. The night before, another neighbor with whom he had dissension, over pets, said he had the first civil conversation of their acquaintance, although it was clear there was something bothering our neighbor.

In that brief interlude, he went back into his apartment and came out with a gun no one knew he had. He was the last person one would imagine would ever have a gun. And then he was dead.

There was a young woman who rented a room from him in his condo. She moved the next day. I understand that she is being assisted by the family of our late neighbor to find new quarters.

It was not a particular surprise to hear that there bi-polar disorder might be involved. He was edgy. He was often loud. I was happy to have a cordial relationship with him, although there were a few occasions in which whatever drove him led to calls to the police. When my father lived in the building I understand these were more frequent. Although he was certainly close to my age (he would never have said what that was) he seemed like a kind of Peter Pan. Puer Aeternus. The eternal child. Except he never seemed particularly happy.

He didn't buy the gun, apparently. He was given it. What I heard in that regard troubles me deeply. If someone knew of his condition, his bi-polarity, as it were, the last thing he should have had was a gun. I hope that isn't the case. There are few threats in our building or in our community. He didn't need a gun.

We have all been pretty quiet during the last days. You couldn't miss the guys from one of those companies that do crime scene clean up by the pool, where it happened. They left some rust colored chemical on the terrazzo for a day while the pool was drained so they could work there too, for yes, there was blood there too. I felt bad that I was angry now, where a day before I was sympathetic and sad.  How could he do this at all? But how could he disrupt this peaceful place, my/our little meditative space?  I noticed today that the bullet hole in the wall by the pool, very near another neighbors apartment, has been plastered.

Today, a young woman saw me as I was again leaving for Sunday Mass. She was a friend. She didn't know where he was. How do you break that news. I started slowly, using the euphemism--"He passed away." "In the apartment?" she asked.  "No", and I hesitated, "By the pool."  "Did he drown?" she pressed. That was oddly preferable to say if it had happened that way, at least in telling someone. "Are you sure you want me to tell you?" I didn't want to say, I realized. "I'm his friend," she repeated. I told her what I knew. And I introduced her to a member of our HOA board who I knew had the family's number.

Untoward? Surreal? Sad? Behind every face is a story, and some kind of pain.

It's warm enough today to be out on my terrace, and I have been. The hummingbirds have been especially active by the feeder, which overlooks the pool, in that corner that I love to sit in, reading, or writing, or praying or thinking.That has been a small blessing to moderate the awkward, weird, disrupted feeling I have and I am sure that every person in this condo shares.

All I can think to do is to pray.
Eternal Rest grant unto him O Lord. God knew all his struggles. Maybe now, he can rest in the peace that he did not apparently have in this life. Make it so, Lord.

La La Land: A Year End Reflection

When I first came to Los Angeles, I think I felt as optimistic and entranced as the young couple in the  new movie "La La Land". I know I did. I knew from the moment I saw the palm trees and the ever blue sky and upon leaving the tunnel into Santa Monica on the 10 freeway to experience the Pacific beyond that this had to become my home. It has been, for just over 35 years, longer than ever I spent time in my formative town, New York. I considered, and still consider, New York, my foundation, a love of sorts, but for many years Los Angeles was the hope of fantasy come true. I was young, not as young as Emma Stone's character, when I came, but I believed I had endless possibility. I was an attorney in New York and thought that getting licensed here in California would merely be a prelude, a bookmark for what would become my real career. Like so many before me, I wanted to be in the "Industry". I wanted to be a television writer. There was some inkling this might not be a pipe dream, a few meetings. A few interested people in the "biz". I had a partner, in New York, but his path, in the 1980s, did not yet take him to California.

I also had this unrealistic sense that in leaving New York, I would leave behind the overly rules bound, inhibited soul that most people knew. Maybe here I could meet the person who saw me anew. Not wild, but a little freer than the fearful child I had always been.

Of course, I had to make a living, and I passed the Bar, and it was not a prelude to being a writer. It became my career. And perhaps I did not have the drive necessary to follow my dream. I know I did not have the courage. My father, a depression era child, whispered wisely that I had to have real work, I had to think about retirement and what I would live on when that came about, and given how few people "make it", my dreaminess was not logical. He wasn't wrong. And with my writing partner 3000 miles away before the internet, my dreaminess was replaced with getting an ordinary life constructed. I live now a reasonably comfortable life because I listened. I am grateful. But I do think about the choices I did not make. Sometimes it did not feel like a choice, but something more inexorable. Good? Probably, when all is said and done, but hard to see in the unfolding.

Maybe that's why La La Land touched me so much. It is an amalgam of old time musical fantasy and down to earth modern film making that worked for me, though I see from the many Facebook comments, it didn't work for everyone. Maybe it depends not only on taste, but on the nature of experiences and ideas one had when taking first steps into the adult world.

When the two main characters meet, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a head over heels traditional Jazz enthusiast who imagines the day when he will own and play piano in his own club. Mia (Emma Stone) is a 20 something woman who has spent six years pursuing acting, and being rejected by thoughtless, arrogant directors and producers who text while she pours her guts out, or are interrupted by self important staff to confirm other appointments. When these two passionate people keep intersecting, and finally stop to talk, things break into music, not like the Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire days, but to me, more organically, with a nod to the days of old (which I love) but a 21st century flavor. They know and revere the traditional, but they are children of their millenial generation.

When, in the early iterations of their burgeoning relationship, Mia and Sebastian meet at a pool party where the musical offerings are entirely from the 1980s, I remembered exactly how I felt. I had a chance to make a mark doing something that I loved. If it were not writing, I figured maybe I could somehow use my voice, my speaking ability, which I had honed in college radio. Something would pop up, if I kept my eyes open, and I seized an opportunity.

Chance and choice. So much is chance, as well as choice. As their relationship becomes more important for both of them, Sebastian hears Mia talking to her mother on the telephone about him. No, he doesn't have a regular job. But he has a direction. He wants a jazz club. No, he doesn't have much, but he will. Despite his antipathy for a bland electronic jazz, he goes to work for a friend, and begins making 1,000 a week. But that means he is making albums and is on tour and he doesn't see Mia. Mia is alone, and not making inroads into her career. She mounts a one woman show, which he misses for a publicity shoot, and only a few people come. She hears two of the attendees say that she isn't very good, and she should keep her "day job." She goes home to Arizona, ready to resume her regular life, at a regular job. Dreaming after six years of rejection is foolish. And since Sebastian is not around to share either glory or failure, there is no dream to share. Sebastian and Mia break up.

But when a call comes to Sebastian by a casting agent who saw Mia at her one woman show, he is decent and kind and a bit of the old passion for their duality returns. He goes and gets her and pushes her back into acting. And her career takes off.  Now both their lives are on the road. She has her dream. Ultimately he gets his, a club called Seb's, the name her suggestion.

They meet one last time, when she and her husband happen upon the club of which he is the owner, doing his heart felt Jazz with other professionals of equal passion. He plays "their" song and one or both of them imagine their successes as if they had managed to stay together.

They danced together at the Griffith Observatory, or in the Hills of Hollywood against a red setting sun. They sang to one another. They loved. They won. They lost. Both at once.

Damien Chazelle, a millenial himself, is the director and writer, and my sense of him is of someone with an understanding of the past and his finger on the future. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone aren't great singers, but their ordinary voices with strong lyrics about love and the flame of hope and possibility that can define early adult lives worked for me.

Quite frankly, as I watched them trip through places that I have in the last many years, an LA that had become blah for me, that I would consider leaving, frankly, except for the weather which still I love (and even the rain that we have now which we have greatly needed), I found myself feeling something I haven't felt in a long time--the renewal of possiblity.

In 2011, that "safe" career I used to have no longer was. I was fortunate that I had been there long enough that I am and God Willing, will remain solvent, but that five minutes of being told the organization was going "in a different direction" wiped out 25 years of my professional existence in a line of work that I had never been passionate about. My former partner moved to California in 1997, but by that time, I had been ten years in my job and writing was not a primary consideration. He still had a regular job, but with a new partner, who moved out with him, he had not conceded his dream.

I always had ideas, but I never committed to dedicating time to them. Even after I found myself "retired" from the law. Something always took precedence. Rightly perhaps, but you can always use that as an excuse.

I had never let down the walls which might have led to love, as well. I can't say that I have been unhappy. I have felt a sense of some Providence, even in the wandering I have been doing, some of it useful, much of it not.

What this movie did for me, and I suppose in a time when resolutions are usually made (I haven't made any in the last several years) is kismet of a sort, is bring back a sense of possibility.

No one can stop me from writing. Either I want to do it. Or I don't. That's not about anyone else. It is entirely in my own hands. The passion stands alone. In every aspect of life. If I have become lazy, that's my bad. No one can stop me from becoming more open, less afraid. If I still don't, that's on me.

So, as Mia sings in the movie, here's to the Fools Who Dream:

My aunt used to live in Paris
I remember, she used to come home and tell us stories about being abroad.

I remember that she told us she jumped in the river once, barefoot.

She smiled, leapt without looking and she tumbled into the Seine!
The water was freezing, she spent a month sneezing, but said she would do it again.

Here's to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem.
Here's to the hearts that ache.
Here's to the mess we make.

She captured a feeling, sky with no ceiling, sunset inside a frame.
She lives in her liquor and died with a flicker.
I'll always remember the flame.

Here's to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem.
Here's to the hearts that ache.
Here's to the mess we make.

She told me: a bit of madness is key to give us to color to see.

Who knows where it will lead us?

So bring on the rebels, the ripples from pebbles, the painters, and poets and plays.

And here's to the fools who dream
Crazy, as they may seem.
Here's to the hearts that break.
Here's to the mess we make.

I trace it all back to that.
Her and the snow and the sand.
Smiling through it.
She said.
She'd do it. Again.  (From the movie, "La La Land")

Happy New Year!  It's not too late to be a dreaming fool.

When Rules Don't Apply

I have read that this Warren Beatty failed at the Box Office, in part because people under thirty probably never heard either of Howard Hughes, the once most famous and infamous aviator and filmmaker and drug addled, nutty icon of the mid twentieth century, nor of the filmmaker, Beatty, himself.

I don't get this idea that history, of film or of the world at large, isn't known to those under thirty. I mean, when I was a kid, in the mid 1960s, me and my generation were very aware of movies and history from before the 1950s, even unto the beginning of film itself. In a time well before the digital age, we were introduced to and fascinated by the stars of yesteryear. I knew the movies favored by my father and mother, as well as the music. I had a sense of continuity, and so did my friends.

From my perspective, the lack of interest by the current young generation in the lives of those who went before them is more evidence of the destructive narcissism which guarantees that the evils of history will repeat themselves. And, a kind of corollary proof of what happens when people take the view that rules just don't apply to them.

I don't know that Warren Beatty was intending any kind of morality tale with his movie, which whether it failed or not at the box office, was one for thinking adults--nary a CGI or an explosion in sight, thank the Lord! But I saw one that somehow partially explains to me the lack of interest by our soon to be young leaders--and now I say, "God Help Us!" on that score.

The character of Hughes is real. The tale told in the movie is fiction.

It is 1959 and a young girl, Marla Mabry, comes to Hollywood, with her mother at first, to be part of the Hughesian film-making stable of starlets. They get acting training, and they are given lovely places to live, and if Hughes takes a personal interest, one or more of them might even get a screen test. Marla is a Baptist. She is what was once known as a "good girl". She doesn't drink, and she hasn't taken the dive into sexual activity. Frank Forbes, a young Methodist engaged to his seventh grade first love, a young man who actually prays before he takes his meals, has arrived from Fresno to be one of Hughes' chauffeurs. There is a rule, one of the first that doesn't apply, that the staff is to have no romantic commerce with the starlets. Frank and Marla are cut from the same cloth. Though both are ambitious, they are not yet jaded. They are innocents. And they are naturally attracted to one another. But because Frank has already had sex with his fiancee, Marla considers him already married and not available to her. When they first meet, and although they are both presumably working for Hughes, neither has met him.

Once mother is out of the picture (a small role for Warren Beatty's real life wife, Annette Benning), things heat up for Marla, and for Frank. Marla finally meets the elusive Mr. Hughes in a dimly lit cottage at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and finally gets a screen test. Frank contemporaneously moves up from ordinary chauffeur to a kind of major domo for the lunatic Hughes' making sure that he gets every bit of a single flavor from Baskin Robbins he demands, and taking risky flights with the aging aviator at the helm.

Marla and Frank, together so often, are unable to remain a purely platonic couple and they have a embarrassing near consummation that causes Frank to break up with his girlfriend at home. Meanwhile, Marla is summoned to have her screen test reviewed with Hughes at the cottage--except it isn't Marla that Hughes wants to see, it is Marilyn Monroe. While she waits to be given the unceremonious heave ho by Hughes, who is convinced that the bankers planning on lending him money for a project with his airline TWA, want him committed, takes her first, second, third, whole bottle drink. Hughes is convinced that if he gets married, no one will be able to commit him, and he impulsively gives the inebriated Marla an emerald ring and pronounces them married. Marla flirts aggressively; Hughes is no gentleman, and she is deflowered.

Frank sees that she is having a relationship with someone, but he has no idea it is Hughes. Marla and Frank go their separate ways. Hughes does marry (the actress Jean Peters) in Las Vegas, apparently erasing his evening with Marla from his mind. When Marla tells Hughes of her pregnancy, he calls her a liar. Marla does not explain anything to Frank; she in fact rejects any rapprochement with him, and they part in anger. Marla returns to her hometown; she is no longer joyful or innocent.

Four and a half years later, Hughes has become more of a recluse. A book has been written about how unhinged Hughes is and his business interests are thus endangered if he does not prove he is functional. Frank has become even more significant a part of Hughes retinue. He is unhappy. He has lost any semblance of faith. Marla has information that can assist Hughes and she arrives at his Acapulco hideaway to impart it. She arrives with a little boy. She places the emerald ring long ago given to her in a box to be returned to Hughes. It is only then that Frank realizes what had happened to her all those years ago. The boy is Hughes unacknowledged son. Hughes is able to salvage his business by doing a radio interview that "proves" he is not mentally incompetent (although of course he really is), Frank quits the life where no rules apply and goes to join Marla and her son in an ordinary life where rules do apply.

To me the movie is really a morality tale, whether intended to be or not. Morality tales are somewhat passe. But I find they are all these days that give me any hope of personal sanity in a world gone quite quite mad.

It might well be that the "good old days" were not as good as was pretended, too rigid, too full of cruel consequence for rules transgressed, but the inexorable march to a world of no rules is not a tenable solution. I hope that the fictional Marla and Frank found a moderation between the two.

I'd say, get Rules Don't Apply on DVD. Its a respite from explosions and special effects and might be a cause for something little done these days, a bit of reflection on the meaning of life.