Day 1 - Saturday, ruled by Saturn: Obstacles and Blockades
Card: Queen of Spades - Lauren Bacall
As a young model, cast in
To Have And To Have Not because of her looks, Lauren Bacall was catapulted to fame at an early age. On the set of that film she met Humphrey Bogart, 25 years her senior, and the two fell in love. He was married at the time to the intensely jealous Mayo Methot (
cf. The King of Spades) so their relationship was fitful and clandestine. While hiding their romance, Bacall was also hiding her Jewishness from the film's writer and director, Howard Hawks, an outspoken anti-semite. Eventually, the fighting got so bad with Methot and the not-fighting got so good with Bacall that Bogart plucked up the courage to divorce the former and marry the latter. This, along with Bacall's Jewish background, reminds me of my current partner and the circumstances of our getting together.
Not to be too Oedipal, but Lauren Bacall has long reminded me of my mother when she was a young woman. Bacall's real name - and the name she went by with friends - was Betty, my mother's name. Bacall's name in
To Have And To Have Not was Slim, and - not to put too fine a point on it - my mother, around the time she was carrying me, suffered from anorexia. Bogart, concerned that his young bride, if away from the home filming love scenes, would fall for some handsome actor, requested Bacall be more of a housewife than a Hollywood actress - a role Betty Bacall happily accepted. After 12 years and 2 children together, Bogart succumbed to esophageal cancer and Betty - who had never really lived on her own - found herself in a rebound relationship with Frank Sinatra. When Sinatra proved himself a coward and a cad, Bacall befriended and later married Jason Robards, a man who in many ways resembled Bogart. As the resemblance was only skin deep - seeing double the result of constant inebriation - Bacall divorced Robards and stayed single the remainder of her life.
A queen's position and worldly power is highly contingent on her king. Betty Bacall's rise to Hollywood royalty recalls to mind England's first commoner queen, Edward IV's wife Elizabeth. Her daughter, Elizabeth, was the grandmother of Elizabeth I, the queen who remained single. Bogart's
obstacles - personal and professional - evaporated just as he met Bacall; Bacall's began after Bogard died. Here, on the Queen of Spades card, pages ripped from gossip columns form a bandage for Bacall's head - her crown as it were. She had won the jackpot before even placing a bet, and after her king died she had to learn the hard way not to rely on men, that she was better alone.
I will just note that the smoke which haunts this card - as it does the King of Spades card - has been haunting me these last couple of months... Maybe I need to set up a
blockade against it?
Day 2 - Sunday, ruled by the Sun: Inspiration and Goals
Card: 2 of Batons - Double Indemnity
Yesterday, when I mentioned being plagued by smoke lately, I tried to think of which cards prominently displayed cigarettes and this card came to mind. Less than a week ago, I watched the first 20 minutes of this film with my parents. I was intrigued by the wax cylinder Fred MacMurray used to record his recounted story to Edward G. Robinson; a couple days later my father and I saw one in a museum where we had gone for an event.
Frankly, I don't know why or how anyone could find Fred MacMurray in the least bit interesting. My father claims he played in a band, but as far as I can gather Fred played saxophone briefly while in college and, as unappealing as that sounds, it was probably the sexiest thing he ever did. Eventually, Fred found his real niche - in Disneyland as Flubber, staunchly supporting the Republican party.
Double Indemnity is one of the first real Film Noirs - a highly debatable genre, and one of a certain cache such that all kinds of terrible films attempt to categorize themselves as Noirs simply to increase their cred. Real Noir reflects a realism resulting from the trauma of WWII and its aftermath on Americans. Ironic, then, that it takes many of its visual cues from German Expressionist cinema. The film's writer and director, Billy Wilder, left Berlin after the rise of the Nazis. During HUAC, he co-created the Committee for the First Amendment and, along with John Huston, was one of only two dissenting votes against taking an oath of allegiance imposed on the Screen Directors Guild by anti-communists. Here, on
Double Indemnity, Wilder worked with Raymond Chandler, the pulp fiction writer whose hard-core alcoholism led Wilder to write and direct his next film,
The Lost Weekend (
cf. the 7 of Batons).
Barbara Stanwyk's blonde wig - chosen because it underscored her character's sleazy phoniness - dominates the top of the card like fire; the bottom half is the black of soot and char. Her stony white face and hand - with vibrant red lips and fingernails - parallel her burning cigarette. She is a death mask, vacant and false. The whole film is a bad
dream in which everyone is stupid and a creep - from Stanwyck's insipid stepdaughter to Edward G. Robinson's insurance adjuster, ludicrously loyal to a firm and profession bent on cheating people of their policies. The
goal of the film's anti-heroes is greed, pure and simple, with a kind of lust on MacMurray's part which is hard to credit, or stomach. Like the valuelessneff of these goals, I'm sensing the suggestion that a game I'm playing won't be worth the candle.
Day 3 - Monday, ruled by the Moon: Dreams and Fears
Card: Ace of Batons
The first ace to be pulled, this is the first card of Batons and of the GAHT deck. The Batons suit is affiliated with 2 golden age of Hollywood studios, Paramount and Universal. At the time, these 2 were the oldest surviving studios, and both struggled financially. It was ultimately Paramount that the Justice Department took to court for overseeing an illegal monopoly which, when the studio lost, meant the disintegration of the entire Studio System [cf. The Tower card]. Universal, meanwhile, cornered (with an emphasis on
corn) the horror film market by producing such films as
Frankenstein, Dracula, and
The Mummy. When they tried to make a major prestige picture [Show Boat - 6 of Batons] it bankrupted them and Universal went into receivership.
Although almost laughable today, the effect Universal's monster films had - especially on children's psyches - is easy to underestimate. I watched many of these films myself as a boy, subterraneously drawn to fear-induced thrills, but also by a curiosity and personal recognition in the plight of the monsters. A beautiful film which works in these ideas about such films' influence on children and their fantastical inner-life is Victor Erice's dreamy
Spirit of the Beehive.
There is a raw creativity at work in this card, embodied of course by the Frankenstein monster who has been brought back to life from the dead. This beginning, then, is a somewhat ironic beginning. This card is also something of a symbol for the art of film which, being created, exists forever - undead as it were - while the people who participated in its making and life all around keeps changing. A comment, then, on the artifact aspect of art. As a basis for creativity, this card also warns against the trap of repetition and capitalizing on previous success with artless formula. Consider Bela Lugosi, who thought himself a great actor but who was quickly stereotyped as Dracula and could never break free from the role. He became addicted to morphine and methadone and ended his career playing a parody of himself in Ed Wood's
Plan 9 From Outer Space, the worst film ever made.
On a personal level, I feel a little undead myself, after last night's revelries.
Day 4 - Tuesday, ruled by Mars: Conflicts and Challenges
Card: 8 of Coin - Dinner At EIght
The 8 of Coin card is one of elevation, making strides, self-promotion, and undertaking a long hard climb - even if it is only social climbing. Based on a hit Broadway play, the film was an attempt by MGM to add some sophistication to the movie-going experience. MGM was a studio which prided itself on its own glamour and its stable of top-notch stars. Here, in a storyline which sees a cross-section of elite society preparing for the eponymous dinner, Hollywood's most elegant studio had in
DInner At Eight the opportunity to flaunt its pretensions to tastefulness and culture while showcasing a sampling of its actors.
I first saw this film when a friend from Denmark was staying with me. Of a day, he would work in one corner of the room translating texts, while I would work in my art studio, out in the yard, and around the house. One day, he packed up his papers and informed me we were to sit and watch
Dinner At Eight on TCM - we were both fans not only of old films but George S. Kaufman, a biography of whom my friend was in the process of reading. An early sound picture,
DInner At Eight is creeky and awkward at times, and not as good as it could've been or thought itself, but also better than I had feared. Many of its thematic concerns remain germane today - wealth and status versus value and integrity, out-dated modes of tradition versus the crass crudity of the modern, and the vicissitudes of fortune. One nice conceit of the film is it ends just as the dinner at eight begins.
The real star of the
Dinner At Eight, especially for viewers today, is Jean Harlow. This was one of a handful of films which catapulted her to stardom. When it comes to today's allocations, this card - being about a group of disparate characters thrust together - is all about
conflict. It is, of course, the kind of conflict that leads to personal growth through existential struggle. Unlike the coming card - the 9 of Coin, wherein Joan Crawford lords herself over her co-stars' floating heads - the disembodied faces of Jean Harlow's co-stars ascend in an orderly fashion above her. One way or another, they have gotten ahead. Nevertheless, Harlow, considered little more than a lowly harlot, is the one front and center, effervescent and alive. In this is a sad irony, as she died at age 26 from a complication of illnesses which - although she had a private doctor - went completely misdiagnosed.
On a personal level, I see this card representing some of the
challenges I have been facing of late, both artistically and how that dovetails with and stays relevant to everyday reality, and practical projects on the ground here - from building a music studio this past summer to upgrading a garage into a decent living space for my paramour. And, further, although she is distinctly unlike Jean Harlow, I see something of my partner in Harlow's figure here, as her presence when she moves here in the new year will displace the balance between myself and my parents (who also live on the same property). In Harlow's hand she holds a mask, taken perhaps from one of the frozen juggle of faces above or from her own smiling countenance. Just above the red masquerade mask, there is the silhouette of an eighth face - is it Harlow's, broken free? or another's, still to join the ranks, as yet unknown?
Day 5 - Wednesday, ruled by Mercury: Interactions and Change
Card: The Lovers VI
This is a card all about
Interactions. Carole Lombard had been married to William Powell, but they were ill-suited. Powell was known on film as the husband of Myrna Loy, appearing as a married couple so often many people believed they were happily married in real life. The central image here of them in a champagne glass with Clark Gable is from their first film together,
Manhattan Melodrama. Gable had been married to an older fellow actor and mentor figure who helped him become "Clark Gable", but he divorced her when he became famous and married the vivacious Carole Lombard. Powell was a staid, stay-at-home-at-night-and-read-a-book kind of husband, but Clark Gable was a drinker, a roustabout, and a lothario. Rumour has it that when news of his wife's death came over the radio, Gable was in
flagrante delicto with Lana Turner - or one of her understudies.
A splash of Thanatos dampens some of the Eros on this card. Lombard hovers above, as if an angel after her airplane crash, something cut-off and unattainable. Indeed, try as Gable might with relationships subsequent to her death, he couldn't find again the magic he'd had with Lombard. Nor, as a result, any kind of solace. Powell meantime, wary of another relationship with a young actress, although he loved her and she him, deferred Jean Harlow's desire to marry and settle down. Harlow was starring in a film with Clark Gable at the time she became seriously ill from a combination of maladies, the complications of which went misdiagnosed and led to her early demise at age 26. As above so below... except that, unlike Lombard's ethereal visage, we have a supine Harlow - either provocatively come-hither or fallen to the ground, ready to be trampled underfoot and forgotten.
As with many of the readings these past weeks, there has been repeated indication that
change, for me, is afoot. There are fundamental physical changes going on with regard to new structures and living spaces being built, but there is also the implicit change of dynamic coming between my relationship with my parents and friends, my relationship with my lover, her relationship with them, and my relationship with myself. Deeper, there is a sea change in my psyche, a very long time coming indeed, in the plane crash and acute nephritis of my superannuated but stubborn relationship paradigm.
It's somewhat disconcerting to see Harlow's splain body at the foot of this card after her buoyant center stage appearance yesterday. Again, there is an ambiguity - she may be the seductive lover, and/or she may be an over-looked victim. It may be worth noting that each of the other 4 characters are Court cards in the Golden Age of Hollywood Tarot.
Day 6 - Thursday, ruled by Jupiter: Power and Influences
Card: Knave of Batons - W.C. Fields
W.C. Fields is an odd character, a barely-contained mess of contradictions. Ostensibly, he was a cowardly dipsomaniac who indulged in boondoggling and, at the same time, was a send-up of the male ego and its foibles. His wrote his own films, which often had a disjointed,
ad hoc feel to them, yet Fields was a great admirer of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Twain. From another time in American history, he began in vaudeville as an eccentric juggler; because of his need to maintain focus for his act, he never touched alcohol. He invented a way of muttering imprecations which stopped just short of cursing. He crafted a character both offensive and likable. On screen, he hated children and dogs, whereas in real life he was merely indifferent to them - when a neighbor's child accidentally drowned in a pond on his property, he was greatly grieved.
These ramshackle conflations of character colour how I see this card today, with its allocations of
Power and
Influence. This knave strikes me as a composite of my father and myself, a minor offering and a blackening eye. My father, who has been overweight his entire life, trained himself to be light on his feet. A born engineer, he always knew innately how things fit together and is a past master of the artful dodge and making do with whatever's at hand. As he's gotten older,his ability to make most things he put his mind to work has been usurped by a headstrong fumbling and an absent-mindedness. Batons are the suit of Fire, and my father - whose birthday is 3 days away - is a Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter. As mutable Fire, his proclivity to simply move from one thing to another seemingly unaffected has both impressed me as a healthy detachment and distressed me as phlegmatic superficiality.
The aspects of Fields I feel akin to are his dislike of children and dogs, his weakness for drink, and his love of literature. Contrary to his public persona, Fields was a highly principled man - he wouldn't, for instance, tolerate racism in his company. As a Water sign myself, I think of the child that drowned in Field's pond, and how Water tends to dowse Fire and evaporate as steam. Although his most well-known persona on film is as an older man, Fields always had a childlike quality about him - a quality he shares with my father.
Here, on this Court card, a battered Fields holds a bouquet suggesting the battle to stay a child at heart, and the simple gift it is if one can accept it. These are the poppies and posies I am asked to internalize - to drop all the intellectual, emotional, and societal demands and see and feel like a kid again. And have, while I'm at it, a little generosity of heart.
Day 7 - Friday, ruled by Venus: Love and Attraction
Card: 3 of Coin - Grand Hotel
The first thing I thought when i pulled this card - and probably the first and only thing anyone remembers about this film - is the famous line by Garbo: "I want to be alone."
Grand Hotel is something of a sister film to Tuesday's card,
Dinner At Eight. It was a showcase for a number of MGM's actors, and its high melodrama imparted an air of class to the studio. As anyone who has been following my daily readings knows, over the summer I built a music studio and currently I'm in the process of transforming a garage into a place for my partner to live - with my parents in the main house on the property, my residence here could be seen as a poor man's Grand Hotel.
Oddly, although it won Best Picture, none of
Grand Hotel's stars were even nominated for an Oscar. Essentially, they all played versions of the characters they would go on to famously play elsewhere - Garbo the moody diva, John Barrymore the dashing rogue fallen on hard times, Wallace Beery the bullish figurehead of male of power, Lionel Barrymore a sentimental and pathetic everyman, and Joan Crawford as a working-class girl with beauty, pluck, and an uncertain future. This technique, of gathering together a cross-section of people together in a specific location, came to be known as The Grand Hotel Theme, and much of the film's success is owed to the oversight of its producer, Irving Thalberg. Called The Boy-Wonder, Thalberg was treated like a son by studio mogul Louis B. Mayer as he propelled the fledgling MGM into top spot in Hollywood. Born with a weak heart, Thalberg nevertheless over-worked himself and died of a heart attack at age 37.
One of the baked-in themes of the Coin suit is home and family. The setting of course for
Grand Hotel intentionally plays with this idea. The card's subtext sees Thalberg, married to an actress and acting the role of Mayer's adopted son, making MGM successful not only creatively and financially, but in a familial sense. As much as Thalberg was an inveterate workaholic and loved his job, there is the suggestion here that too much emphasis on work is unhealthy and ultimately detrimental not only to the individual involved but to the family as a whole. That which we
love and are
attracted to gives us succor and satisfaction, but too much single-mindedness and not enough sharing of these pleasures may be detrimental and ultimately wasteful.
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And what about those who just want to have a Deck of the Week, Card of the Day reading? They can just jump in and leave the planetary lore away. 
) and I also had a fish related epiphany at dinner last Friday. I'd share it but I think it wouldn't be interesting here. Just believe me when I say it was life-affirming and life changing and was directly related to fish. 
