User Reviews

This is one of the "Pete Smith Specialties" from Grandpa's (or great-grandpa's) time. These were "shorts" (TAKE A CUE lasts a little more than nine minutes) that were played in movie theaters BEFORE the REAL show started. (Today, the multiplex runs paid advertising instead, raking in obscene profits from its captive audiences to go with the truckloads of cash it makes off its exorbitant concessions prices.) Pete Smith is the narrator of his pieces, which are usually about subjects he can rip apart with his snide comments. TAKE A CUE is a case in point. It features a defective pool table on which the six pockets have been inadvertently omitted by the manufacturer. An old geezer called "Peterson" here pretends to invent a new game called "billiards," in which a single player sees how many times he can bounce the cue ball off the "cushions" or sides of the missing-pockets pool table. He contorts his body to make all kinds of "trick shots," in which the main trick seems to be him not falling over on his face. A young slacker named "Homer" is supposed to be providing the comic relief, as if Peterson and "billiards" are not comical enough by themselves. Interestingly, Homer is played by Doodles Weaver, whom most will recognize as the "Rustic" in TOPPER and the Fisherman in Hitchcock's THE BIRDS.

Last night I had the opportunity to watch TAKE A CUE a second time. Though I still could not see any pockets on "Professor" Peterson's pool table, I DID notice that Peterson himself is bald as a billiard ball. I also learned yesterday that that other famous Yankee of Old Tyme Days, CITIZEN "Rosebud" KANE, not only started the American wars at the turn of the 1900s to profiteer from acquiring millions of acres of spoils-of-war tree forests, BUT ALSO used his string of disinformation papers to sell a gullible public on the dangers of "REEFER MADNESS"--which had NOTHING TO DO WITH DRUGS, but was simply his way--as a legally protected American One Percenter--to destroy the existing far cheaper and much higher quality source of paper: President George Washington's cash crop, hemp. Thus William Randolph Hearst (grand-daddy of actress\SLA terrorist Patty), aka Citizen Kane, 1)got millions slaughtered in his phony-baloney wars, 2)got "blood money" in the form of vast forests (otherwise known as the World's Lungs), 3)doubled the price of paper while halving its shelf life by 4)criminalizing the humble hemp plant, and 5)started Global Warming along the Track of No Return--most likely dooming the Future of Humanity for the sake of his sled! TAKE A CUE on that!