Dana Andrews MVP

 

 

Dana Andrews starred in Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), two of the best films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Today, critics still regard them as among the best films of all time. In Laura he played a police detective in Otto Preminger’s directorial debut, and in Best Years of Our Lives he played an Air Force bombardier returning from WW II in a film directed by William Wyler that swept most of the Academy Awards.

 

Both films are examples of the way the Hollywood studio system could bring together craftsmen and craftswomen to produce almost perfect art. The direction, the writing, the cinematography, the set design, the costume design, and the musical score were all of the highest order. The casts, from stars to featured players, were equally superb.  

For Dana Andrews these two films were the high point of his career and established his screen persona. He was handsome but not a pretty boy, tough but vulnerable, calm and quiet but could seem to contain hidden emotions. He was not nominated for Best Actor in either of these films, but his presence was the central core in each film. In a way, he was like a baseball or basketball player whose largely unnoticed quiet competence keeps the team together on its way to a championship.

 

Dana Andrews in Laura

Laura is a good example. Andrews was surrounded by an outstanding cast who all get their chance to strut their stuff, but they all play off of Andrews. He is the glue that keeps them together. Gene Tierney, one of the most beautiful actresses of all time, catapulted to stardom in the title role. Clifton Webb, in his first screen performance, gave a bravura performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination. A young Vincent Price, and Judith Anderson, a great actress in her own right, rounded out the superb cast.  Credit must go to director Otto Preminger for keeping all this talent in place, but the mere presence of Andrews was essential in bringing them together. 

 

Harold Russell, Dana Andrews,Fredric March

In The Best Years of Our Lives Andrews did not receive even a nomination for Best Actor for his performance in this story of three servicemen returning to civilian life after WWII. Fredric March, a veteran actor, won the Best Actor award, and newcomer Harold Russell, a young naval veteran who had lost both hands in a training accident, won the Best Supporting Actor award. However, I believe that Dana Andrews was again the central core in this film that also featured outstanding performances by Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and Virginia Mayo.

Andrews plays an Air Force Captain and bombardier who is haunted by horrific dreams and memories of lost comrades. His on-again, off-again, on-again romance with Teresa Wright is played beautifully and is central to the film. He also appears alone in what is a pivotal scene near the end of the film. He has lost his job, and his wife, and a new romance has hit the rocks. He is about to leave his hometown and waits at the airport for a flight to anywhere. He sees some de-commissioned and stripped-down bombers waiting for the scrap heap. He climbs into one and sits in the dusty cabin and the war memories come back. There is no dialogue but gradually we hear the engines starting one by one, and then the sounds of battle run through his head. It is one of the most iconic scenes in film history, filmed beautifully by famed cinematographer Gregg Toland. 

 

In between these two great films, Andrews starred in the 1945 war film, A Walk in the Sun directed by Lewis Milestone. He plays a sergeant forced to take command of a platoon after the death or incapacity of its leaders. His quiet competence keeps the platoon together on its mission. At the same time, he is the central core that keeps a fine cast together. Like most WWII films the platoon is full of characters, and they each get a chance to shine. At my age, it is difficult to watch war films anymore, but I can watch A Walk in the Sun over and over again. It is a faithful adaptation of Harry Brown’s small novel about ordinary men engaged in a dangerous mission, and Andrews’ performance helps to make it a classic. 

Today, it is hard to imagine that most people have not seen these films. I know my grandchildren don’t like to watch black and white films, and even baby boomers at my local senior center have never heard of them. But the directing, the photography, the sets, the writing, the great casts, and the haunting musical scores that permeate these films make them true classics that can be watched over and over again like any great work of art. The fact that Dana Andrews played an unforgettable role in each of these films earns him a place in Hollywood's Hall of Fame.

 

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Democratic Socialism

 

Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected Mayor of New York City, is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist. Detractors call him a Socialist, or even a Communist because of his stated intention to take over the means  of production in the city. All three of these labels have at least one thing in common: a belief that private enterprise, or profit making business, is inherently inferior to government or public run production.

Whatever the label, Mamdani brings to mind a character in a novel by the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.   

Solzhenitsyn, arguably the greatest and most influential author of the twentieth century, did as much to shake the foundations of Communism in Russia as anything or anyone else. He began writing while a prisoner in Soviet labor camps for almost a decade. After serving his term, he was released into exile in central Asia. 

While in exile, he developed a cancerous tumor and was allowed to return to civilization for treatment. His famous novel, Cancer Ward, is a fictionalized version of his experience in the hospital. He is obviously the main character but he describes the doctors, nurses, and other patients with great sympathy and understanding. * 

However, he had little sympathy for Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, the only Communist party member in the cancer ward. Rusanov was a party official who only consented to enter this remote facility until his wife could manage to pull strings and find an opening in Moscow. “But Pavel Nikolayevich was tormented no less than by the disease itself, by having to enter the clinic as an ordinary person. He could hardly remember when last he had been in a public hospital.” Rusanov looked down on the other cancer patients as riff-raff, non-Russian Asiatics, or even criminals. 

Solzhenitsyn uses Rusanov and his wife, Kapitolivna Marveyevna, as examples of how Socialist champions of the People can morph into privileged bureaucrats. We must remember that Communists in Russia, like Democratic Socialists in New York, were a small privileged minority despite their rhetoric..  

The Rusanovs loved the People, their great People. They served the People and were ready to give their lives for the People.

But as the years went by they found themselves less and less able to tolerate actual human beings, those obstinate creatures who were always resistant, refusing to do what they were told and, besides, demanding something for themselves.

The Rusanovs had an aversion to “teeming human beings, or jostling crowds.” They found travel on public transportation “disgusting” with loud, pushing, dirty workers struggling to get in. The worst thing was the “familiarity” of these people who would clap you on the shoulder and ask you to pass a ticket or some change along the car.

Eventually, the Rusanovs acquired an automobile of their own and avoided public transportation altogether. On railroads, they would only travel first-class on reserved compartments to avoid mixing with people “crammed in, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying buckets and sacks.”

Rusanov was a bureaucrat who had done very well in the Soviet system. He had a wife and two children, a car and a nice apartment as well as a small country place. It is true that he had never actually been a worker. He had never built anything, made anything, or designed anything. He had not even served in the military during the great patriotic war. His job had been to gather evidence and information that could be used to send enemies of the state to the labor camps.

Even though he loved Stalin, he was aware of the many shortcomings in his country. However, he blamed all Russia’s problems on speculation or what we would call private enterprise. 

Over the years Rusanov had become more and more unshakably convinced that all our mistakes, shortcomings, imperfections and inadequacies were the result of speculation. Spring onions, radishes and flowers were sold on the street by dubious types, milk and eggs were sold by peasant women in the market, and yoghurt, woolen socks, even fried fish at the railway stations. There was large-scale speculation too. Lorries were being driven off “on the side” from State warehouses. If these two kinds of speculation could be torn up by the roots, everything in our country could be put right quickly and our successes would be even more striking. There was nothing wrong in a man strengthening his material position with the help of a good salary from the State and a good pension… Such a man had earned his car, his cottage in the country, and a small house in town to himself. But a car of the same make from the same factory, or a country-cottage of the same standard type, acquired a completely different criminal character if they had been bought through speculation. Rusanov dreamed, literally dreamed, of introducing public executions for speculators. Public executions would speedily bring complete health to our society. (162)

Socialism did not bring equality to the Soviet Union or to any other Communist/Soocialist country. Supporters of Socialism have always blamed others for its failures, and claimed that they could make it succeed. Progressives in our country, like Rusanov, blame capitalism and private enterprise for our problems. They want heads to roll, figuratively, or maybe literally. In the Soviet Union the only true equality was found in the cancer ward. Cancer was the great equalizer and treated rich and poor alike.

Everyone knows that Zohran Mamdani's background is not that of an oppressed worker or downtrodden peasant. Like other Democratic Socialists, his parents were well off, he went to the best schools, and never held down a real job. He is a member of a privileged elite who has somehow managed to capture the support of the Democratic party in New York City.

*Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward, 1968. Penguin books, 1971.

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Today's Quote: The urge to save humanity is almost always a face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken

Election Day 2025

 

 

 

I have voted in every election, national and local, since I turned 21 back in 1960. I have always regarded it as a civic duty. Yesterday in my hometown of Fairfield CT was no exception even though only local positions and issues were on the ballot.

I must confess that I knew practically nothing about any of the candidates or town charter revision issues on the ballot. So, I fell back on identity politics. I have been a Republican for over 50 years and so tend to vote straight Republican even in local elections. This year was no exception especially when insider information alerted me to some nefarious goings on in Town Hall by the new Democratic administration.

I did make two exceptions. I voted for a Democratic friend who was running for a minor office, and I voted for a Democrat who was running for the zoning commission who spent some time discussing zoning issues with me and a friend while canvassing our neighborhood. He seemed affable, and well-meaning. Of course, my vote is usually meaningless since my district has been gerrymandered to normally vote Democratic.

Anyway, I offer the above as a preamble to my thoughts on the elections that made headlines yesterday. Elections are not always decided on issues or substance but on perceptions. These elections seemed to be examples of identity politics. Answer this question. If you only looked at images of the three candidates in this year’s New York mayoral election, who would you have voted for?

Zohran Mamdani, the eventual winner, looked youthful, energetic and self-confident. Andrew Cuomo had the appearance of an aging bloodhound. He appeared to be a relic of a failed past that even Democrats would like to forget. Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, was another relic of the past. The young Guardian Angel of the Giuliani era is now an old man. 

New York has always been a city of the young, with waves and waves of immigrants replacing the older generations and taking their place in politics. I believe young people supported Mamdani because he looked like them, not because of his radical views. What else would explain why nearly half the voters identified as Jews in polls supported him despite his apparent antisemitism? Of course, he also had the almost unanimous support of New York’s large Moslem community.  

I know little about the issues in the New Jersey and Virginia, but I suspect that identify politics were also at work in those states. Pollsters had predicted tight races, but two attractive Democrat women won going away despite obvious problems during their campaigns. 

The Democrats have learned their lesson and are abandoning the old timers in favor of the new. It looks to me now that Chick Schumer is toast and that AOC, if not Mamdani, will take over. 

Republicans must take heed. Trump is Trump and no one can duplicate him. He is old but still appears young, energetic, and charismatic. Moreover, he has a great sense of humor and can even joke about himself. Republicans must also abandon the old guard and come up with new faces. They may not be Trump, but they can at least try to be as authentic and genuine as he appears.

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Government Shutdown

 

The current government shutdown is in its fourth week. What is the issue? It is not Medicaid, or SNAP (food stamps). These are covered in the Continuing Resolution (CR) passed by the House of Representatives. The House resolution is called a "clean"one because it does not change anything. All current programs would be continued. The Democrat minority in the Senate, however, has used the filibuster to block the CR and demand the continuation of Federal subsidies for participants in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Apparently, Obamacare enrollment has never reached expectations, while claims have skyrocketed to the extent that large premium increases are expected next year.  

 One of the first things I learned when I went into the insurance business over 50 years ago was that insurance was simply the prepayment of claims. It is paying in advance to cover some future bill or expense. It does not matter if it is life insurance, automobile insurance, or medical insurance. The same basic principle must apply. A policyholder pays monthly or annual premiums and these premiums are pooled with others to pay eventual claims. 

 

Medical insurance is no different. It only had its origins in the 1930s during the Great Depression. At that time hospitals and physicians were finding it increasingly difficult to collect from their patients, many of whom were out of work. As a result we had the birth of the “Blues.” Both Blue Cross and Blue Shield were products of the Depression. In short, people would enroll in these plans and pay a monthly or quarterly premium that over time would build up enough of a reserve to cover their future claims. This idea seemed to benefit everyone. Doctors and other health care providers would no longer have to go after their patients like collection agencies; and the patients would not have to come up with a large amount of cash to handle large, unexpected medical bills. 

 

However, to avoid excessive or frivolous claims that raise the cost for everyone, most medical insurance policies included deductibles or co-insurance to reduce or eliminate small claims. This was right out of Insurance 101 since actuaries were well aware that the most cost effective strategy was to make the patient bear part of the cost out of pocket.

 

However, the use of medical insurance to cover future health care costs only took off after World War II. The war had finally taken the country out of the Depression and the economy was booming. In a major change the Federal Government allowed corporations to purchase group medical insurance plans for their employees. Employers were not required to provide health insurance but the government altered the tax code to provide a great incentive. 

 

Unlike other forms of compensation the cost of the medical insurance would not be considered taxable income to the employee. This was important especially to high salaried employees at a time when the highest tax rate was 70%. In other words, employees covered under such a group insurance plan could now have most of their medical expenses paid with tax-free income. It was a no-brainer. Instead of giving all employees a taxable salary increase, the employer could give them a tax-free benefit that would cover future health related costs.

 

The employer sponsored plans were incredibly attractive to all concerned and sparked a veritable revolution in health care in this country. Employers could deduct the cost of their plans as an ordinary business expense while employees could rely on their pre-tax medical insurance plan to cover major medical expenses. Since these were group insurance plans all employees had to be covered even if they had pre-existing medical conditions. Increasingly these group insurance plans came to dominate the market.

Nevertheless, the basic principle of insurance still governed these group plans. They all involved a pre-payment of claims most often through automatic payroll deductions.

 

This system of corporate sponsored insurance worked remarkably well for the great majority of Americans for many years. There were obvious problems, however, that needed to be fixed. People would lose their coverage when they lost or changed their jobs. Self-employed people did not ordinarily have access to these plans. Unemployed workers would eventually lose their coverage. People with pre-existing medical problems would find it almost impossible to get coverage on their own.

 

Attempts had been made to deal with these problems but critics of the system still insisted that over 30 million people were without medical insurance. Even if that number was accurate it would be wrong to say that all those people lacked access to medical care. One of the problems with the system was that so many people refused to purchase medical insurance and just went to the local hospital ER for even ordinary care.

 

Instead of trying to fix the problems in the old system, proponents of the Affordable Care Act sought to overhaul the entire health care system in this country. Now instead of getting a tax break as an incentive for providing employees with medical insurance, employers would be forced to provide such insurance or pay a penalty. Even though the Obama administration had arbitrarily extended the corporate mandate for a year, some employers still chose to drop their plans.

 

More importantly, at the time the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2014, President Obama indicated that it would not be so affordable, and that Federal subsidies would be needed for a couple of years to help participants pay their premiums. As it turned out, the subsidies did not go away. Because of these subsidies many enrollees in Obamacare did not have to pay the full premium for their medical insurance. No matter what you call it, it was no longer insurance but welfare.

Even with subsidies it would appear that most of the un-insured did not find the plans attractive, or were not able to navigate the red tape necessary to enroll. The expected number of plan participants never materialized.   

 

When Obamacare was passed the Federal government was over 17 Trillion dollars in debt. Now the debt is over $37 Trillion. How is the government going to pay these subsidies?  Will it just print more money and add to inflation, or will it have to raise the taxes on everyone. It is a problem that deserves careful study and cooperation, not drastic measures like shutting down the government, and shutting down the benefits of the needy. 

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