I just finished reading an excellent new non-fiction book called The Beautiful Cigar Girl, by Daniel Stashower. Subtitled “Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder,” it’s primarily set in 1840s New York and New Jersey, and recounts the life and death of Mary Rogers, who was one of the first celebrities famous just for “being herself.”

In the late 1830s, Mary worked behind the counter of a popular tobacco emporium, and became the object of many a man’s fancy, and probably more than a few women’s envy or admiration. She was reportedly not only very beautiful, but personable and modest. Poems and novels were based on her both during her life and after her death. She left the cigar girl job in 1838, and went to work helping her mother run a boardinghouse in lower Manhattan (actually, most of Manhattan was “lower” in those days, most everything uptown being almost farmland). In 1841, Mary was found floating in the Hudson River, battered and strangled. The search for the culprit was unsuccessful, but the crime lead to several reforms important to the progress of the city, like the establishment of a regular police force. The death of Mary Rogers also had tragic consequences for some of the men who knew and loved her.

But what gives the story its special piquancy as related in The Beautiful Cigar Girl is that Edgar Allan Poe got involved in the saga by writing one of his early tales of detection carefully based on the case. Although set in Paris, Poe’s 1842 story “The Mystery of Marie Roget” tried not only to give a plausible explanation of how Mary Rogers died in New York, but also to show how the wildly biased city newspapers of the time cast a long shadow on the investigations of the disorganized and under-financed police of that era. The Beautiful Cigar Girl is in fact also a solid look at the life of Poe, that most irascible and tormented of geniuses, as well as a detailed evocation of early nineteenth century New York in its literary and judicial politics.

Even though the case of Mary Rogers was never officially solved, between the deductions of Poe and the analysis of author Daniel Stashower, the reader gets a pretty good idea of probably how and why Mary Rogers died. The Beautiful Cigar Girl is a fine piece of true crime journalism as well as social history. In handling its complex research materials, it's written with an elegance and clarity that takes you back in time to old New York.

Another day at my freelance gig in New Jersey. I was working on a creative problem and got so into it, was trying to achieve a kind of perfection that wasn’t possible, that I almost felt as if I were losing my perspective. I felt like Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn--trying to reach that one elusive note with his trumpet. Fortunately, I pulled back and told myself I could adequately solve the problem next week after giving myself a little perspective.

I enjoy getting into my work but I was aiming for too much, I guess. But damn, I was feeling inspired.

When I left the office and got on the bus to New York and subway back to midtown Manhattan, I pulled out my copy of the latest issue of Filmfax, Oct/Dec. 2006 #112, one of the several movie buff mags I enjoy. I began reading a very good interview with director Richard Fleischer, who just recently passed away. I get the impression from most film histories that he’s regarded not so much as an artist but more of a skilled journeyman, but I've enjoyed a lot of his films multiple times over the years and I say, "Artist, smartist, he was a damn fine moviemaker." Or storyteller, as he calls himself in this Filmfax interview. His discussions of filmcraft both in this Filmfax interview with John McCarty and in his autobiography Just Tell Me When To Cry are some of the most articulate and down-to-earth I’ve ever read. He worked with many major stars and had some vivid stories to tell. Check out some of Fleischer's powerful films like Trapped, The Narrow Margin (the 1952 version, not the 1990 remake), The Vikings, Violent Saturday, and Compulsion.

I love reading interviews; the immediacy of a good Q&A can make a long bus and subway ride a little less lonesome. Filmfax is a fine magazine and regularly covers a lot of obscure ground when it comes to movies and pop culture.

Are strippers winning?

As my economically inspired avoidance of stripclubs continues, due to my recent heavy loss of income as a freelance worker, I have tried to make do in other ways for my necessary daily rations of beauty--everything from having a beer at Times Square’s Hawaiian Tropic Zone restaurant, which is full of comely bikini-clad waitresses, to just girl-watching around Columbus Circle. And although I am squeaking by on a tighter budget because I’m not handing my money over to dancers, my psyche does seem to be bearing the scars of this lifestyle change...

I find myself getting so tense sometimes, and impatient too, over the littlest things.

A hollow feeling pervades me, as if part of me was scooped out...the nightlife-loving part of me, the Sir Cranky of the Royal Order of the Dollar in the Garter.

I watch DVDs at home or go to the movies at the multiplex, and I enjoy them, but lately I feel ever more acutely the two-dimensionality of these entertainments...it’s nice to watch the lovely stars of the flicks I enjoy, but I guess I need to interact with stars in my own personal firmament...

Yes, strippers like Lily or Angela or Nicole or Misty or Daisy, all those whom I’ve written about here in the last fourteen months, are luminaries in the Hollywood of my own mind...

And I feel like their leading man when I'm in the clubs...not the supporting player I often feel like in the day-to-day world of New York City...where an ordinary man is dwarfed by everything from the skyscrapers to the limousines...

When I go to a stripclub, I am not just a star in my personal epic ("The name is Cranky...Sir Cranky"), but also a collaborator with the dancers in the "writing and directing" of The Cranky Story, you might say.

So...

Even though I’m not sitting stageside lately and slipping bills in their g-strings, or handing over twenties for lapdances, are strippers winning the battle in the end?

Tenaciously they wait in my subconscious for the day (or evening) when I can’t take it any longer, and head over to a club...

Do DVDs really have a chance?

If I had to choose, could I live in a world without DVDs, or a world without strippers?

Or maybe it’s not so friggin' cosmic as I’m trying to make it, so damn dramatic, and it’s merely a case of strippers just being the kind of women I most prefer erotically, and what I’m really missing is simply their company on a regular basis.

Perhaps I may have to FORCE myself to go out one of these nights...perhaps I have been overdoing my financial vigilance. Maybe an evening out once in awhile would be enough...

“It’s a process!” as the jargon goes. Feeling my way. Seeing what my emotional traffic will bear, as an advice columnist might helpfully jot.

Perhaps my Inner Doctor is saying, “Take two strippers, Cranky, and call me in the morning!”

Last night I had dinner with my writer-artist friend ZP, who looks like a tall Kafka. We ate in a coffee shop on 34th Street, and the parade of beautiful girls in the place was truly something to behold. I think a lot of the young ladies had been shopping at the various retail stores that line the street, and were grabbing some chow before heading back to Long Island or New Jersey via the trains at Penn Station.

There is something to be said for the visual appeal of ultra-materialistic young women with big hair who talk a lot on their cellphones and who feel compelled to don every trendy style of clothing. From their boots (a hot item this season) to their snug jeans to their tight sweaters with plunging necklines that revealed both lacy bras and warm cleavage, these comely lasses reminded Sir Cranky that it is not absolutely necessary that he go to a stripclub to get a girlie show. No, the strippers and their garters are facing some fierce competition from the free show on the streets and coffee shops these days. I would say that the girls we espied last night had some of the prettiest faces I've seen in a good long spell, and they had bodies to match.

One of the gals at the next booth, a fluffy redhead, had the most inviting looking breasts, barely concealed by her sweater's shameless decolletage; and she rested her bosom against the table when she tucked into her French onion soup. It took a samurai-like discipline for me not to look over every thirty seconds or so. Instead, with manly stoicism I focused on eating my burger deluxe even though the girl's ba-ba-boom seemed to be beaming lightning bolts toward my brain as if using unholy magnetism to swivel my noggin so I would gaze with total submission upon her sumptuousness.

The food might only have been so-so, but the scenery was ooh-la-la!

I got on the subway yesterday to take a short trip out of Manhattan to see a friend's new apartment. It's on the edge of downtown Brooklyn, between the Fulton Mall shopping district and the stores and restaurants on Atlantic Avenue and Smith Streets. Her apartment is pleasantly fixed up and quite large, although the street is seedy and must be lonely at night. I can see why she wanted the apartment--she gets five rooms for the same price for what in Manhattan (or other sections of Brooklyn, for that matter) she'd only get a studio--but besides the dreariness of the street, she also has to put up with construction that started a few weeks ago outside her bedroom window, as a twenty-five story apartment building goes up. Still, sitting in her place chatting, I realized yet again that the big problem with living in New York when you don't have a lot of money is that you basically have to live in a variation of a cubicle, rather than a home. I've lived in studios most of my adult life, with only two yearlong respites in one-bedrooms. When I was in my friend's apartment, moving between the rooms, I remembered that to me, a sense of "home" really requires more than two rooms.

We went to the famous restaurant Junior's while I was visiting, and I had a very delicious but extremely heavy lunch--brisket of beef on two thick potato pancakes, with gravy and apple sauce. I didn't feeling like eating again for the rest of the day, although when I was back in Manhattan at home around ten p.m. I finally got hungry and put away a few Mallomars.

I was reading a book last night and had no intention of watching a movie, but as I got up to put the Mallomars back in the refrigerator I accidentally knocked into a small stool which was folded up against the wall. It fell against my tv table and to my alarm I thought the stool hit the edge of my VCR. To make the sure the VCR was okay, I picked up a videotape from a pile I recently unearthed during one of my periodic fits of housecleaning the stacks of clutter in my place. The movie was Strange Fascination, a 1952 melodrama starring Hugo Haas and Cleo Moore. I got this tape from someone who recorded it off a television showing.

Hugo Haas (1901-1968) was a Czech leading actor who emigrated to the U.S. in the 30s to escape the Hitler machine. He became a supporting character in Hollywood films, and with the money he made doing that, he wrote, produced, and directed his own B-movies in the 50s. The scripts were often about a middle-aged man who falls for a younger woman, to his eventual disappointment. Just like a certain blogger named Sir Cranky...

In Strange Fascination Haas plays a fiftyish European concert pianist who is financially sponsored by a fortyish wealthy American woman (Mona Barrie), who helps him set up a concert tour in the U.S. He meets a trashy blond twentyish nightclub dancer (Cleo Moore) and impulsively marries her, which sours the relationship with his sponsor at the same time that a catastrophic flood (!!) sabotages his concert tour. He's left penniless because he spent too much money on his young wife's clothes, and he finds it difficult to get more gigs. His jealousy about Cleo's attractiveness to other men eventually works together with their age difference and increasing poverty to make the marriage a failure, and he tries to hurt his hands to collect insurance on them! They were insured expensively because of his piano career. All he succeeds in doing is losing Cleo. In the last scene, he ends up playing one-handed piano in a Salvation Army hall. But the ending is strangely upbeat. Even though he's lost almost everything, his sponsor is willing to forgive and help him again; it's clear that she's in love with him, and she certainly is a better match being more "age appropriate," as we might say today. Still, Cleo Moore was a dish, and it's easy to understand why Hugo's character fell for her. As the movie draws to a finish, the homeless guys at the Salvation Army applaud his playing and once again bring a smile to Hugo's face.

You know, Strange Fascination wasn't really a "good" movie, because its outcome was obvious and the twists and turns of the plot were predictable; but even though I had only intended to watch a few minutes of it, I found myself riveted for the whole eighty minute running time. I like these femme fatale stories, and it was actually a nice change of pace that Cleo's blond hussy wasn't really fatale, but just a bad match for a much older man. That made it more realistic and less melodramatic. And even though Cleo would be regarded by today's starlet standards as a bit "chunky," there was a down-to-earth quality about her that was quite appealing. There's one nice scene in the film where she's cooking dinner for Hugo, and she looks very sexy in her tight sweater and long skirt. I read on the Web that her memorabilia is quite popular among the aficionados of "cult" actresses, and I certainly have a few pinups of her myself. She died in 1973 at age 49 of a heart attack.

The cool movie bio site Brian's Drive-In Theater has a shot of a lobby card for Strange Fascination, so just click on the link below for a peek at Cleo in the film. The lobby card shows her flirting with barflys while Hugo, who was making a little extra cash playing Vienna waltzes in the background, glares at her.

Brian'sDrive-InTheater