JF Ptak Science Books    Post 487

Roy Rogers–not the singing cowboy but a black-shirted, black-suited, white-bow-tied private slickee cop–shows us here all of the secret and impossible moves from those fast-fighting sequences in those hundreds of 1930’s movies in which men would fight furiously and not lose their hats.  Or, the same guys would have no hats but would have wildly whipping grease-hair and would be knocked down with an open-fisted shot the chest, collapsing on conveniently-placed collapsing-couches.  But Mr. Rogers, who claims to have taught these methods “in leading theatres in in almost every country in the entire world” was serious about his craft, even though the images used to illustrate his serousness look naive and sweetly quaint to our 2009 eyes.  In a series of images that almost never show anyone with an open or grimacing mouth, Mr. Rogers tried to show his grasping audience the tricks of his trade, or the trade of his tricks,

with various methods of restraint, and head butts, and finger holds, and balance-upsetters, and, yes, even the “death” blow.  It is remarkable, really, how far things have progressed in the way of savage fighting in the last 62 years–things have gotten so ultra-modern, so (in the words of the lovely Anthony Burgess) ultra-violent, that these secret combat doings from 1947 look like baby-room wallpaper compared to the nastiness of today.  And yet teaching this stuff kept Mr. Rogers in white ties and jet-black clothing.

If only this sort of combat packed the modern nightmare with dread, what a better place we would wake to–for me, these are pre-gore images of violence which look strangely removed when viewing them from our post-gore world.  Blood as a result of violence in the movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s (and even into the ’50’s) was a rare commodity; blood after the late 1960’s was delivered by the buckets-full, and then by torrent. The delivery of the visual birth of administered violence is relatively new in the history of “entertainment”, and we might’ve moved a little beyond that, as well, as almost nothing is shocking anymore in our pictures of advanced and sometimes impossibly-violent violence.  I imagine that the thought of depicting violence in the movies via 2009 standards to Mr. Rogers back there in 1947 would’ve seemed as remote to him then as the possibility of a computer smaller than an automobile.  

In any event, I find this to be a remarkable and quiet piece of Americana, capturing some of the stuff of life not normally captured.