Re: Shadow Ticket—Pre-Code

Mon May 4 16:11:35 UTC 2026

Great stuff on them old movies, Laura.

On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 11:49 AM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:

> me: Pynchon hasn't specifically written about filmmaking in the Hays Code
> era, has he?
>
> Robin: Have you heard of a little pamphlet called Gravity's Rainbow?
>
> I don't recall any mentions in GR of directors working around censorship
> during the Hays Code period (during which GR takes place). Maybe I've
> forgotten some passing references? The whole Greta/ Gerhardt von Goll
> sequence of course doesn't qualify. Neither do mentions of King Kong,
> Marlene Dietrich or Bianca's sexualized Shirley Temple routine. Pynchon
> (and others) may believe that Shirley Temple's movies were pedophile-coded.
> I think it's more a case of  (paraphrasing) "Did the baby smile or does it
> have gas. Which do you want it to be?"
>
> me: In a way, it's a more fascinating time, especially the 1950s. Not so
> much the blacklisting, which he covers in Vineland, but the work-arounds
> directors had to create to indicate that sex had happened.
>
> Robin: I guess "it's too soon to know". For me the Pre-Code era is more
> interesting because of what they did leave in, how much they did "show",
> how much they were taunting would-be censors. One of those anarchist
> interregnums that Pynchon seems to love.
>
> I love pre-code movies. Some of my favorites are Baby Face (1933), Female
> (1933) and Ann Vickers (1933), thought the last one already succumbed to
> censorship, changing an abortion to a miscarriage more from pressure from
> the Catholic Council than from the Hays Code, which started to censor in
> 1934.
>
> Censorship wasn't just sexual. *Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet* (1940) is a
> case in point. The Warner Brothers studio actually daringly allowed a
> single mention of the word "syphilis" late in the movie, but they wouldn't
> let the director highlight Ehrlich's Jewishness, because the US hadn't
> entered the war and they wanted to stay neutral. This was despite the
> film's Jewish star Edward G. Robinson's appeals, and those of the Jewish
> screenwriter Norman Burnside, who said: "There isn't a man or woman alive
> who isn't afraid of syphilis, and let them know that a little kike named
> Ehrlich tamed the scourge. And maybe they can persuade their hoodlum
> friends to keep their fists off Ehrlich's coreligionists."
>
> After the war, when anti-semitism was fair game, the film *Crossfire*
> (1947), which was actually about homophobia, pretended that it was about
> anti-semitism.
>
> The queer-coded workarounds have been well-documented, including the scene
> lampooned in *Hail, Caesar*, which was the "Ain't There Anyone Here For
> Love" swimming pool scene in *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes* (1953).
>
> The all-time greatest, in my opinion, sex work-around was in Phantom Lady
> (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak who learned the craft in the German
> silent film industry of the 1920s. The story is hokey, concerning a nice
> girl from the Midwest who goes undercover to prove her boss innocent of
> murder. Since the film couldn't even imply that she would sleep with jazz
> drummer Elisha Cook, Jr. he simulates a sexual encounter in the amazing
> jazz club sequence. The censors apparently didn't get it.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQQoztfUqI
>
> I think the best place for Pynchon to cover this would have been *The
> Crying of Lot 49*. Where a dissident postal system side-steps the
> government, directors side-stepping censorship would have fit right in.
>
> Laura
>
> On Sun, May 3, 2026 at 4:47 PM Robin Landseadel <
> robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 05/03/2026 9:25 AM PDT Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > "Some great stuff here, Robin. I didn't know that the Pynchon family's
> > fortune was tied in with the early motion picture biz. So Thessalie's
> > comment has a lot more depth. And you make a good case for the titular
> > ticket to be a movie ticket, rather than the transatlantic ticket I
> assumed
> > it was.
> >
> > It's both and more, as usual. The "Ticket" aspect still applies to the
> > P.I. gig. The "Shadow" aspect implies "Noir". The cover is of a very
> > shadowy theater district in downtown Budapest.
> >
> >
> > Is the thesis  talkies ushered in, or at least enabled, the rise of
> > fascism? Just as literacy led to assassination during the Kirghiz Light
> > episode in GR. Or is it a less direct: talkies = Depression = rising
> > fascism? Anyway, something to think about on a re-read."
> >
> > I am concerned with what was happening with the historical and
> present-day
> > Pynchon family at any given time in all of his novels.
> >
> > Here's an example—when Pynchon and Company went down in 1931,
> > it was E. A. Pierce, at the time the biggest brokerage on Wall Street,
> who
> > picked up what was left of Pynchon and Co. E. A. Pierce was later folded
> > into Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated. I remember their
> > TV ads, back around 1964. "Warpe, Wistful, Kubitschek and McMingus"
> scans a
> > lot like that oft repeated company name. Pierce Inverarity had a
> > whitewashed bust of Jay Gould, Oedipa wondered if that was how he died,
> > crushed by the only ikon in the house. One could easily pass over that
> > reference. Jay Gould was infamous as the most unscrupulous figure in the
> > history of large-scaled finance. He came before the notably unscrupulous
> > Rockefellers became one of the primary arbiters of global finance,
> pushing
> > for big oil. According to Charles Hollander, the Rockefellers (Nouveau
> > Riche) squeezed out the Morgans (Old Money) by stock market manipulations
> > such as these. Pynchon & Co. was collateral damage—or maybe not. They
> were
> > a big fish in a big pond, after all, and when they went down, everybody
> got
> > soaked by the splash.
> >
> > What drives me batty is the fact that I can't find a book that covers the
> > subject of Pynchon and Company specifically, knowing that they were
> > important on a number of levels including the development of railroads,
> > electricity, boating, aeronautics and other forward-looking investments.
> > From all the articles I read almost two decades ago I know there is more
> > than enough information to assemble one awesome historical family
> biography
> > out of newspaper clippings, magazine articles and Pynchon and Company
> > publications. But for some reason, this history remains submerged.
> >
> > I'd say Pynchon Family history otherwise comes into play in CoL49, in
> part
> > because we are looking at the estate of the man or corporation that
> bought
> > what was left of Pynchon and company. Tax stamps are collectible, Pynchon
> > and Company had a tax stamp scandal early on, you'd be surprised what
> this
> > sort of a collectible could bring to an auction, and so on. Of course,
> this
> > is all metaphor. Pierce Inverarity is not E. A. Pierce and Company but I
> > posit that Pierce Inverarity is a stand-in for E A. Pierce and Company.
> >
> > This connection to family history goes deeper; American "waste" laws
> > differ from UK waste laws. The law that defines the difference is
> Pynchon v
> > Stearns:
> >
> > Question - Pynchon vs. Stearns 1846
> > <https://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/2007-December/103663.html>
> >
> > One could say, as an historical event, the fall of Pynchon and Company
> was
> > tied to the rise of fascism, but that argument would make sense to me
> > mainly due to the rise of the Rockefellers and everything that went with
> > creating world-wide dependency on oil and the aftereffects of the rise of
> > those interests in global politics. Not so much due to P & C falling
> apart
> > as what developed in its wake.
> >
> > You read the book six times! I struggled to get through it once, but now
> > it might be interesting to read it again, with your perspective in mind.
> >
> > I know we were all expecting some grand finale. And because I initially
> > found the book so flat, at least on my first four times around, that it
> > took real effort to read it. The fourth time around I had the novel on
> the
> > nightstand and would absorb it before going to sleep, around four pages
> at
> > a time. Once that happened, I skimmed though the book looking for
> > references to cinema, remembering that Pynchon and Co. went down in part
> > because so much debt was tied up in Fox Films. Like Thessalie Wayward
> sez .
> > . .
> >
> > Then I gave it one more shot, gazing at all the contents as if they are
> > being presented as a Pre-Code movie, seeing as the contents all seem to
> > belong in a Pre-Code movie and how the references to Pre-Code movies,
> > stars, songs in movies are all pointed and specific, focusing on the
> > exemplars of Pre-Code cinema. I'd go so far as to suggest that Pynchon
> > conceived Shadow Ticket as a movie, explaining the quality of the dialog
> > and how the dialog is typographically laid out, the length and surface
> > complexity of the novel, its, as I wrote before, *mise-en-scène*.
> >
> > I'm a sucker for Pynchon's witchy fortune tellers, all really cute/hot
> > ladies, all of them always right. Thessalie Wayward is no exception.
> >
> > "Thessalie, if you ain't just the spit of that Joan Blondell."
> >
> > "Widely remarked on, and don't change the subject."
> >
> > Note that Thessalie is a region in the north of Greece, notable for its
> > ancient history and mythical status. I know the general region of north
> > Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria as magical places. Remember how Bulgaria is
> > presented in Against the Day? In any case, here is probably Joan
> Blondell's
> > one scene that best demonstrates what an icon of the Pre-Code era Ms.
> > Blondell was/is and what images were on Hicks' mind, no doubt:
> >
> > https://youtu.be/R9Ey-H02KOU?si=ceTLJpkQqiQz-CLs
> >
> > What was the whole motorcycle sequence about? In old movies, motorcycles
> > were often a comical element, no? Thinking of Duck Soup, maybe.
> >
> > Don't know, haven't sussed everything out save that the motorcycle
> > sequence does make for a fine motorized chase, just the thing to end a
> > movie. You can ask PTA.
> >
> > A couple of nights ago I rewatched Hail, Caesar! (2016) and couldn't help
> > but think of Shadow Ticket when the actor played by Channing Tatum
> defects
> > to the Soviet Union via submarine.
> >
> > Good Point!
> >
> >
> > The film is marred, in my opinion, by poor editing (script and footage),
> > but it has some comic elements, such as the Marxist kidnappers and the
> > overtly queer-coded dance number, that seem as if they could have come
> from
> > a Pynchon novel.
> >
> > The editing scene surely belongs.
> >
> > https://youtu.be/Rxix0rZuuY0?si=sv4vWqaSiEQsuZmb
> >
> >
> > Pynchon hasn't specifically written about filmmaking in the Hays Code
> era,
> > has he?
> >
> > Have you heard of a little pamphlet called Gravity's Rainbow?
> >
> > In a way, it's a more fascinating time, especially the 1950s. Not so much
> > the blacklisting, which he covers in Vineland, but the work-arounds
> > directors had to create to indicate that sex had happened.
> >
> > I guess "it's too soon to know". For me the Pre-Code era is more
> > interesting because of what they did leave in, how much they did "show",
> > how much they were taunting would-be censors. One of those anarchist
> > interregnums that Pynchon seems to love.
> >
> >
> > On a side rant, I think the Coen brothers would have been much better
> > suited than PTA as Pynchon's official adaptors.
> >
> > I'd love to see the Michelangelo Antonioni version of CoL 49, but that
> > ship has sailed.
> >
> > I like Inherent Vice, the movie. It's got enough confusion to require at
> > least three viewings. Martin Short as Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd was perfect.
> > Haven't seen OBAA yet, kinda dreading it as so much of what I love about
> > Vineland are the period specifics.
> >
> > In any case, my sense now is that Shadow Ticket is the necessary prequel
> > to Gravity's Rainbow and very much in that spirit. The research is there,
> > the relation is clear. There's an awful lot about movies in GR and it's
> > clear that I need to re-read it in light of Shadow Ticket.
> >
> > Like the young girl sez, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!"
> >
> >
> > Laura
> >
> >
> --
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>