Noir Dame Blog

Retro-inspired culture and media – audio drama, classic TV and film

On the anniversary of Nikola Tesla’s passing, it is our pleasure to present the world premiere “Tesla vs. the United States”, a new piece by Charles Moster, based on the life story of this fascinating and mysterious inventor. What do time travel, a death ray, the invention of radio and the FBI all have in common? Listen and find out!

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All audio content copyright 2010 by Charles Moster and Deus Ex Machina. Video produced by NoirDame.com. Visual of Supreme Court courtesy of

Media: please find a release and detailed background information at our Media Kit site.

Among the casualties of Ike, as many retro fans know already, was the Balinese Room, a Galveston island institution that had survived Hurricanes Alicia and Carla, but could not withstand Ike, despite its “Category 2″ designation. It was one of the first things we learned about, after our mandatory evacuation to Dallas, and watching the chaos unfold on television. The Balinese, of course, had been home to Frank Sinatra and many “old school” performers over the years, and was rumored to be a fave of Sinatra’s tougher buddies. Later, it had inspired a song by ZZ Top and most recently sponsored live performances – funk, rock, though we held out hope for more traditional music. One thing for sure, it was a beautiful sight whenever we were in town.

Owner Scott Arnold says he is willing to entertain “serious” proposals from investors to rebuild at the site, but is more likely planning to create a themed-club and museum on Market Street, near the historic Strand, in a building he owns there. Even this is positive news – as the equally famed Hollywood Dinner Club never came back from Galveston’s past. Meanwhile, the Texas Historical Commission has people on site who are combing through the wreckage for anything they can salvage. If you have heard of someone who managed to take artifacts away from the debris, as a souvenir, please get in touch with Lori Schwarz at the City of Galveston, or contact Scott Arnold directly through the Balinese Room website.

Meanwhile, there’s more happy news regarding the historic hotel of Tremont House, which fortunately survived Ike with minimal flood damage, along with several other treasures of Galveston Island, like the Hotel Galvez, which was created after the 1900 storm (to learn more about the history of this event, we also highly recommend Isaac’s Storm.) Meanwhile, the Galveston Historic Foundation is accepting donations to help rebuild damage after the storm.

The Harbor House at Pier 21 received damage from high waters, which implies that the neighboring Pier 21 theater, which showed a dramatic reenactment of the 1900 Storm, as well as a movie about Galveston’s pirate past, also may have been damaged. Only Galveston residents have been allowed to return on a limited basis, and as of yet, we’ve heard nothing regarding other historic and retro-themed beauties in town – like the hot pink retro apartments across from the Bank of America on Market Street (between Frost Bank and the Galveston Historical Museum) and La King’s Confectionary, the ice cream shop with 1920s’ era fixtures and old-fashioned shelves for their candy. The confectionary is raised off the ground of the Strand, but it’s unclear from photos how high the flooding was in the area. A picture on Preservation Nation shows the Strand’s flooding, including at Colonel Bubbie’s army-navy surplus store.

Paul Gross, (best known to American audiences for TV shows Due South, Tales of the City, and Slings and Arrows) recently premiered his film, Passchendaele, which kicked off this year’s Toronto Film Festival. Set in World War I, and shot entirely in Alberta, it tells the Canadian side of the third Battle of Ypres, and will hopefully illuminate WWI for a new generation of filmgoers.

Ypres was a town in Flanders, Belgium, and site where three of WWI’s bloodiest battles were fought. The last, the Passachendale (named after a nearby village) involved troops from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa battling the German army. (Previous battles at Ypres had also involved French troops and French colonial [Algerian] troops; the second battle, sadly, was the first in which poison gas was used by German forces.)

Passachendale was emblematic of WWI warfare, in which almost half a million casualties fought over an area of questionable strategic importance. It was infamous for “the Mud”; soon after the battle began, the drainage system was destroyed by fighting; in the water and muck, troops became sick, their feet heavy with trench rot; some even drowned.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before this movie is seen south of the Canadian border – offering new insights on WWI to American viewers and history buffs. “In Flanders Fields,” one of the great WWI poems, was in fact written by Canadian doctor John McCrae, who succumbed to illness while working in a field hospital.

Like Vimy Ridge and WWII’s Dieppe Raid, Passachendale disproportionately affected Canadian households. During 1917, the US had recently declared war after the emergence of the Zimmerman Telegram, but it was still some months before their “doughboys” began battling on the same scale as the Canadian troops.

One of the young men fighting in the long months of “the Mud” was Gross’ grandfather, who, at the end of his life, was troubled by the young German he had bayoneted during a battle. His grandfather’s guilt-stricken stories compelled Gross to tell a story about the campaign, as he explains in a great interview with the CBC.

Anita Page, a popular star whose performances bridged the silent era and early talkies, passed away on Saturday. She is best known today for appearing in Our Dancing Daughters, as a prototype “Mean Girl” competing with pious dancer Joan Crawford; and for her turn in Hollywood’s first real musical, The Broadway Melody.

The Washington Post has written a nice obituary – one that can be appreciated even by non-silent fans. Page was not only very pretty, but had a vulnerability that made her so interesting to watch.

The Post describes War Nurse as one of her lesser films, but it’s a precode worth catching when it next airs on TCM. Page is quite affecting in a role that offers a real change of pacefrom her parts in Our Dancing Daughters and its two “sorta-sequels”. She plays a naive young girl who volunteers in WWI France and joins a motley crew of young and middle-aged matrons.

So far, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) isn’t playing one of Page’s films until November, and then one of her later pieces from 1962 – The Runaway. Hopefully they’ll change the schedule to feature The Broadway Melody and Our Dancing Daughters.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out the two part interview regarding Page, with Allan Ellenberger, for the Alternative Film Guide.

Another talent, writer Tad Mosel, has also passed on.

In addition to his Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of All the Way Home, from James Agee’s book A Death in the Family, Mosel had written for Playhouse 90, Studio One, and other live television shows; like Page, who survived almost all her comrades in silent film, Mosel had been one of the few surviving writers from TV’s Golden Age.

He explains how wide open early television was for writers, compared to the stage and screen, in his thirteen part interview for the Academy of TV Arts and Science’s Archive of American Television.

A bittersweet moment, to be sure, for the surviving family members of Ensign Eldon Wyman, Ensign Irvin A.R. Thompson and Fireman 2nd Class Lawrence Boxrucker, whose remains were recently identified, and confirmed by the Pentagon today.

And here’s a round of applause for Ray Emory, one of the few surviving shipmates of Wyman, who was aboard the USS Oklahoma when it went down on December 7th. It was because of Emory’s tenacious work that relatives provided their samples for DNA analysis.

Here’s to never forgetting our war dead, and veterans, whatever flag they wear.