By Jan Garden Castro

We fly over snow–covered mountains, huts
snow–heaped, then tuck inside Orin’s. She tends
the fire, a motherless girl, her three sons, village
matters. Children call her a witch with 33 teeth!
At 69, she knocks out her own teeth, pretends she’s weak.

Grasshoppers mate, snakes eat rats whole, rice grows in poor
soil.
When her husband disgraced the family, Orin’s eldest, 15,
killed him.
Young son smells bad, copulates with a dog; Orin finds an old
widow
for him. She exposes a family stealing food — the village men
bury
them alive — including the pregnant wife of the middle son.

Now the hardest part. Near 70, Orin readies to go
to Narayama, a long journey up, up, and three mountains
away.
Elder son leaves his mother on her prayer mat among
the bones. Vultures circle. Snow begins to fall.

— Film by Shõhei Imamura, 1983, Palme d’Or, Cannes.
— Set c. 1810, Japan, after story “Narayama bushikô,” 1958

By James Reidel

. . . no power on the earth could keep the smear off
Rosemary — the paint was scarcely dry on the Arbuckle case.

He kept shaving, kept pretending that “Fatty” wasn’t aware of he moonfaced Maid played by himself. He watched both cranking away in his mind’s eye, watching himself naked in the moviola and pausing over intertitle, CATCH OF THE DAY! Then comes the jump cut to the Maid, who tries to bashfully hide behind a tall stack of Turkish towels, batting her eyes, putting her finger to her lip in that famous “Fatty” way. HEY, THROW ME ONE, WILL YA! When he / she does, it’s a dish towel that “Fatty” snatches and tries to cover his girth in vain — across his belly, across his chest, his rear, his flanks, before he thinks: A FIG LEAF! Now the camera pans on a now tiny towel embroidered with ST. FRANCIS HOTEL. Jump cut to the Maid getting a good laugh in and her intertitle: NOW THAT’S A ‘SHORT’! Then it’s “Fatty’s” turn to get back. He snaps the towel at the Maid — one, two, three — until it magically reaches her butt as she hightails it into the hotel bedroom and stumbles headlong over the rail at the foot of a brass bed. Now “Fatty” brings the house down. Now he’s wearing a great big towel wrapped around his waist. He stalks toward the Maid, one bare foot after another, like he was a boy again, rope–dancing for pennies. There’s his famous smile! He’s putting his finger to his lips again — telling everyone in their seats to keep quiet. He tiptoes up through the hotel room, right behind the Maid. Then, another jump cut to “Fatty” dressed as the Maid, an iris shot opening on a pair of oversized knickers — frilly, garters, parted legs kicking helplessly in the air. A bull’s–eye inked right on the film! — that’s what he sees still shaving his cheek with one eye shut, getting a bead, as the real maid whispers an apology, curtseys, and leaves him alone again. He puts the straight razor down on the pedestal sink. The gag comes. “Fatty” takes off the towel like a toreador, and snaps it once more at the Maid — once, twice, and abracadabra — and turns her into a girl giving the hero a teasing, million–dollar smile over a bared shoulder.

By Amy Barone

She loved to croon, especially when sad.
Smile, whose music Charlie Chaplin wrote
and the theme song for his film Modern Times,
remained an all–time favorite.

Another personal hit, My Funny Valentine,
I found sad, until I discovered
jazz and Chet Baker.
She deserved a better shot at love.

But she romanced life, found beauty elsewhere.
The Shadow of Your Smile, so appropriate,
as her smile sparkled. It follows me everywhere.

By Amy Barone

I worked across from Hotel Pennsylvania one year,
in a zone of methadone clinics and vagrants hanging on corners.

Far from its glorious start in 1919, the year of my dad’s birth,
when big bands jammed at Café Rouge and the Madhattan Room
in the world’s largest hotel.

Silent film stars Clara Bow and Nancy Carroll bathed in
champagne
and William Faulkner wrote one of his novels there.

Up to the pandemic of 2020, the famed hotel attracted tourists
and visitors,
as well as canines from the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
nearby.

From early 2022 through fall, 2023, current owners tore down
the building,
its massive front colonnade of Indiana limestone. No one came to
its rescue —
not the Landmarks Commission or the tax man.

A month later, I phoned the hotel, dialing the iconic number
made famous in a song by Glenn Miller and his orchestra in 1940
and the 1954 film The Glenn Miller Story.

The longest city number continuously in use still worked.