Sometimes in These titles mean nothing.

Anita Scudder has a new name now. She’s remarried and we can hope and assume she is happy. We assume she is a decent person because she married our hero and after they were divorced she didn’t seem to make his life more difficult than it was. She raised the sons on Long Island - in Synnoset or some such town. She would send them to the city on the train to go to ball games or visit museums. She felt better about it after he quit drinking. She accepted the money orders for random and irregular child support, no doubt assuming, this time it’s her assumption not our own, that Matt was doing the best he could.

He’s always done the best he could. He was a cop after all, a cop who drank too much. A cop who didn’t have the best luck. She’d been attracted to him because he was a cop. He carried a gun, he had confidence, his role in society implied strength and probity. Is probity a word? Anita didn’t know. She should have used a word she knew.

Matt always meant well. He’d loved her. They had tried. But it’s just as well they aren’t together anymore. It was him who left, she occasionally assured herself. She would probably still be putting up with him if he hadn’t. Still life was simpler, often easier, without him. She didn’t have to worry as much. She didn’t know what time he came home anymore. She didn’t know how drunk he was. She didn’t even know if he was still managing to stay away from the booze after he had quit. She hoped so. For his sake, for her sons’ sake, for her own peace of mind.

Fiction says it’s hard to be a cop’s wife. You worry about him getting hurt, getting killed, getting in trouble. There are so many kinds of trouble for a cop to get into. More kinds than your everyday truck driver or accountant. Not that those lives are easy either. There’s always plenty to keep a man or his wife awake at night. Anita’s next husband won’t be a cop. He might not be a better husband but at least no one will be writing books about him.

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Imagine the young Kim Novak in her first credited movie in 1954. It was called “Pushover” and Fred McMurray was a cop in a trenchcoat. Imagine your arms full of young Kim Novak in a mink coat smelling of expensive perfume. The senses reel.

“Pushover” starts with a completely silent bank robbery. Best one you’ll see in some time.

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Sometimes there is just too much middle of the night.

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Another movie - this one is Canadian made in 2012 with the great Marcia Gay Hardin.

“If I Were You’, and the young actress has a speciALity. With or without wink.

Is that all you can do?
Pretty much.

This one has a great first scene too.

He was 46 and she was 21.

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I wonder what kind of speciALity Kim had.

The coats deserved their own credits.

Last updated January 19, 2022