Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for August 16, 2014

OK. Has everyone gotten over yesterday’s comment war?

So there’s a fair amount of privacy in the balcony. That’s convenient. I sense they won’t actually be watching the films. They have important matters to discuss.

avenger09 said, “Oh oh, Annie’s belt changed colors; must be because of the listening devise planted on her!”What’s a “listening devise?”

HEEEEEY! I got it! The broach is………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..JUST A BROACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a former theater manager, I can tell you that the balcony would only be opened, prior to showtime, if the theater was expecting a big turnout for a blockbuster film or at showtimes if the auditorium became filled.

Continued: It was impractical to open for a few people to dirty it and waste manpower cleaning it!

Oh oh, Annie’s belt changed colors …Personally, I think that outfit looks better with a white belt, but of course, the colours of such things are of no significance whatever.

As for the broach (brooch), it’s just a piece of jewellery and doesn’t have magical powers like the decoder pins have. At least I hope it doesn’t, because that would just complicate matters unnecessarily.

Not much happening today because this is setting the stage for the Sunday strip. I get a feeling a lot of details are soon to be revealed.

You can view Hitler’s Madman here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036005/

Annie, I think many of us are tired of this pretend mush!

So, young Annie has been pretending “mush” while in public with Officer Tracy? And of course Lonnie the usher (remember those, oldtimers?) is perfectly happy to be complicit and allow them sole use of the balcony….Well, they had better come up with some good ideas towards their escape, because those movies sound pretty boring….

I notice that they are hiding the brooch (broach?) from us for some reason.

Belt color change—probably due to the lighting—movie theater marquees tended to be pretty gaudy back in the day.

Good morning fans. The plot thickens!

de-vise: noun, commonly found on de workbench in de garage in Southern Louisiana. Stilldamatt was right; I guar-on-tee!

Why isn’t Dick Tracy in the newspapers?

Don’t understand the need to meet to discuss any plans in a public place, especially in a movie theater where you are to be quiet. They might as well have met in the library. They met before in the club house; why not again? If they are planning to escape, they should do it now and not after the movie is over. The Silos will be expecting Annie home in a couple hours. Probably more to this that I can see.

Also don’t understand why Axel would permit the showing of anti-Nazi movies. Seems like the wrong way to go to keep the citizens of Simmons Corners on your side and keep them brain washed. And if Axel is planning on using Annie to get money from Daddy Warbucks, why hasn’t he made a move in that direction. Annie has been walking the streets with the ability to take off whenever she wanted to. Too many questions.

Good morning guys!

Thanks for the links

You wrote ." … must be because of the listening devise planted on her!-I’m sure you meant “device” … right? …

@SisyphosAnd of course Lonnie the usher (remember those, oldtimers?)

We still have them!

Do they have a snazzy uniform like Lonnie has?

Wow, I never saw “Spy Smasher” before this. I’ve always liked the director, Billy Whitney, primarily for his Roy Rogers films. The fight scenes were like watching a ballet. His style has been imitated a lot.

But THIS thing. Looks like Billy was ahead of his time. The dizzying quick edits are how movies are made today. Obviously, it’s meant, in this case, to look like more is going on than a bunch of bad costumes on an over-used sound stage.

Thanks for posting it here. It was terrible, but it helps to make my life a little more complete.

Thanks, Mike, for working in another comic book guest-star, Fawcett’s Spy Smasher!

how come Tracy knows Lonnie’s name?

Hitler’s Madmen was a famous anti-Nazi propaganda film loosely based on a true story about Nazi’s ruthless revenge against a Czech village during the war with John Carradine as an incredibly evil (Axel-type) Nazi officer.

A different version of the same story was made into the movie Hangmen Also Die (also in 1943) by Fritz Lang (German expressionist film maker who did the famous silent movie Metropolis), John Weley (most famous film-Angels with Dirty Faces), and the famous playwright Bertold Brecht (this was his only Hollywood movie).

Vista Bill may be interested to know that this movie featured Walter Brennan, since he used to use a Walter Brennan icon for his posts.

Brecht, Lang, and Wexley (and some of the actors as well) were all blacklisted by the McCarthy hearings (House Committee on Un-American Activities) because of alleged connections to the Communist party following the war.

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a poem based upon the original Czech village incident. Lang considered using Millay’s poem as the opening scene in Hangmen Also Die but did not. The poem does, however, appear in Hitler’s Madmen.

I hope this is going somewhere soon. It’s taking forever.

Tracy and Annie didn’t know what was showing until they got to the theater. Those were the days! It didn’t matter what was showing you knew it was something you could take your whole family to. Now as the Staler brothers said in their song, “Whatever happened to Randolph Scott?”, “you gotta read the paper and know the ratings of GP G and R and X and you gotta know what the movie’s about before you even go!” (I know some of those ratings are out of date now, the song was written in the 70’s but it still applies today.)

If this really was 1944, the usher would most likely be female and Lonnie wouldn’t be a civilian but serving in the Army, Navy or Marines along with just about all the other able bodied men.

NEVER question the mighty Gweedo! LOL!

Wonder if Dick will splurge for popcorn?

@Dberrymanal1Now as the Staler brothers said in their song, “Whatever happened to Randolph Scott?”, “you gotta read the paper and know the ratings of GP G and R and X and you gotta know what the movie’s about before you even go!” (I know some of those ratings are out of date now, the song was written in the 70’s but it still applies today.)

I think that song is older than that!

According to the Randolph Scott article on Wikipedia, the song dates from 1974.

From the 1930s, the so-called “Hays Code” made sure that all movies were suitable for everyone (all “approved” movies, at least). The G, M, R, X ratings were introduced in 1968, and changed to G, GP, R, X in 1970. That was revised again in 1972 to G, PG, R, and X, and stayed that way for another 12 years before PG-13 was added and later, NC-17. That means the song would have been a little out of date as soon as it was recorded, but with changes every 2 years, it was a little hard to keep up for a while.

I wonder why Annie’s dress isn’t the classic red??Doug

I enjoy seeing the movie theater of 1944 but still think it isn’t the place to discuss plans. Luckily they are the only 2 in the balcony. What if there were others? It would be a constant, “Keep quiet.” And although I also am enjoyed the story, I still wonder why Annie has been put here on this island. She was kidnapped and then brought here. Who was to benefit from the kidnapping? And if not for money, for what? Does Axel know who she is? I guess I need to enjoy the storyline (which I do) and stop asking questions!!

I still am waiting for an explanation of what happened to take him from the dinghy to the hospital room. I kind of followed the story after that. But the transition was a little unsettling.

_@Neil WickThe “X” was never officially part of the rating systems._.Actually it was an official rating. Some of the movies to receive an X rating wereLast Tango In Paris with Marlon BrandoA Clockwork Orange – Malcolm McDowellMidnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman – the only movie with an X rating to win an Oscar for Best Picture.

I think you must be thinking of the triple X or XXX rating that was invented by the porn industry and wasn’t really an official rating.

It was an official part of the ratings system, but the full story is a little complicated. Jack Valenti had invented a 3-ratings system, but the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) wanted a category to which no child could be permitted, even when accompanied by an adult. Without that, they thought they could get in trouble in certain states.

The X rating was specifically not a trademark of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) because they decided that anyone could self-apply it to any movie, even if they didn’t want to submit the movie for an official rating. As W H H points out, several movies from major studios were assigned an X rating, mostly because of violence, although many films were edited to avoid an X rating because many newspapers refused to run ads for X-rated movies and some theatre chains and (later) video stores refused to carry them.

Since the X rating was not a trademark of MPAA’s Classification and Rating Administration (CARA), and could be self-applied, it was applied to many pornographic films and acquired a reputation with the public of denoting obscene or pronographic films, so it kind of lost it’s original intended meaning.

What happened next was that the MPAA introduced the NC-17 rating in 1990, so they could assign a “no children” rating to films without it looking like it was a porno. Unlike the X, the NC-17 rating is trademarked by the MPAA and cannot be displayed without their permission. Many films previously rated X by the MPAA have now been officially classified as NC-17.