West by Southwest Ernie Bulow

UNCLE LIVELY GOES TO THE MOVIES

THE LAST FLYING JENNY VISITS SANTA FE

“Flying Jenny” passed through Taos in 1896 and was somehow abandoned in a Penasco barn until it was discovered in the thirties by a Lion named Ernie Martinez. He gave the magnificent sum of $90 for it and then donated it to the club. The Taos Lions restored it in time for the 1939 Fiesta. They called it Tio Vivo, and it turns out that similar small carousels in Spanish towns go by the same name; translates as “Uncle Lively.” different source claims it was built in Taos in 1882. Pretty old no matter which date is correct, if either of these. Given its age, it probably comes as no surprise that it was hand-cranked because electricity wasn’t available at the time. Flying Jenny was the collective name for small, handmade (or homemade) merry-go-rounds. The horses went around and around, but not up and down.

Physically it was quite small and had no floor. The canvas roof and the carousel animals were suspended from a central pillar, held up by braces. The original hand-carved ponies have been replaced, but the carousel has appeared at every Taos Fiesta for almost eighty years.

Tio Vivo was not only featured in a 1947 movie, he contributed the title. “Ride the Pink Horse” was a film noir (dark and gritty) based on a 1946 novel by Dorothy B. Hughes which has pretty much been in print ever since. The action takes place in Santa Fe, combining Fiesta and the burning of Zozobra. Dorothy Hughes was a New Mexico girl, and the Hughes house is just north of the plaza. The film has the usual gaffs and glitches, but thanks to Hughes, it is fairly true to the town, which was still pretty small in 1947. I passed through Santa Fe three times in the late forties, and it was a fun bump in the road. My folks bought a small pot from Maria Martinez, but my grandma dropped it and it shattered into

Santa Fe was a pieces. Though Dorothy Hughes was a long-hick town. He time resident of Santa Fe, she had didn’t like hick a little fun with it. On the first page of the book, the main towns. character, Lucky Gagin, gets off a bus and finds the mass of party-goers filling the town. He thinks, “A hick town. He didn’t like hick towns.” Robert Montgomery isn’t quite nasty enough for his role. He is not the hero. Film Noirs don’t have heroes. Stepping from his ride, he jumps the queue (who would do that?) and grabs his bag which upsets the luggage handler to which Gagin responds, “The b… was a greaser, a spic; he needed his face shoved in.” You get the tone of both the book and the film. Gagin finds the town of “San Pablo” booked solid as he wanders through the revelers. At the merry-go-round, he runs into a teen-aged girl from a local pueblo named Pila (Why not Pilar?). In one of those movie glitches, she takes him to La Fonda to find a room, when the town is sold out. There she gives him an improbable lucky charm. In true Hollywood style, the charm is a little MOVIE STILL WITH THE NOIR FLAVOR, tourist kachina doll. SHADOWS AND TENSION Wanda Hendrix

RIDE THE PINK HORSE MOVIE POSTER PILA GIVES HER NEW FRIEND A GOOD LUCK CHARM

Ernie’s Selfie

West by Southwest

by Ernie Bulow

ZOZOBRA GAGIN, PILA AND PANCHO IN FRONT OF THE REAL TIO VIVO

does a nice job of making the girl charming and young. Very young. That theme in the book gets a little uncomfortable when they seem to have something going on.

He finally finds a room with Pancho, the rough character who operates the small carousel. Thomas Gomez transcends his stereotypical role as the goodhearted Mexican. So much so, he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

From this point on, the audience needs to pay attention to make sense of the plot, but with Gagin, Pila, and Pancho, it’s all good. Gagin is looking for a gangster named Frank Hugo who killed his pal Shorty. An FBI agent tries to talk Gagin out of his revenge mission. At first Gagin seems content

to blackmail Hugo for thirty thousand bucks. FRED CLARK AS GANSTER But Hugo’s Girl FRANK HUGO Friday, Marjorie, tries to get him to up the ante. She gets Gagin into an alley where he is jumped by two thugs, one of whom stabs him. By the time the police get there, they find one man dead and the other with a broken arm. Hugo and his bunch find Gagin—and Pila, of course—and beat him up again. Then they beat up Pila for fun. This is the Film Noir touch. The FBI guy shows up, disarms the bad guys, and breaks Hugo’s hearing aid. Wow! One reviewer found an uncanny resemblance between Hugo and Zozobra. I can see that. The next day the Fed talks Gagin into letting his revenge go. When Gagin sees Pila before he leaves town, he discovers that the semi-outcast girl is now the center of attention, so there was at least one happy ending. The film actually softens many of the characters and plot elements. As one writer put it, the movie makes the story “less sordid.” I wanted to watch it again, but none of the usual platforms had it. Don’t pass up the chance to either read the book or watch the movie—or both.