Perelman Tonight: "Move over, Asia" -- Part 5 of "The Swiss Family Perelman"

Illustrations by Al Hirschfeld

The Insurograph: A mechanism similar to a jukebox,
vending insurance at a quarter a throw

The social life of the [movie] industry . . . had changed little in two years. It still consisted of an endless round of buffets full of people one had met the previous evening, all of them exactly one day older. Dinner-party conversation in a manufacturing center like Lowell, Nashua, or Wilmington usually deals with shoes, blankets, or smokeless powder, relieved with gossip about the foreman of the bleaching room niggling up to the stockroom babes. In Beverly Hills it dealt with previews, credits, and the boudoir escapades of any couple who had failed to attend that evening.

-- from the conclusion of "Low Bridge -- Everybody Down"

by Ken

Last night we left the bound-for-the-Orient Perelman clan visiting SJP's despised old stomping ground, Hollywood, most recently visited two years earlier on his round-the-world trip (documented in Westward, Ha!). However, in tonight's installment we're reminded that this is 1949, meaning that we're in the early phase of one of the unhappiest chapters in the movie industry's history: its trial by, and capitulation to, the red-baiting witch hunts.


FOR THE CONCLUSION OF "LOW BRIDGE --
EVERYBODY DOWN," CLICK HERE

COMING UP IN DWT LATE NIGHT:

We'll catch up with our Siam-bound travelers in future "Perelman Tonight" installments.

In tomorrow night's "Sunday Classics" preview we begin preparing for a special conjunction of artist (conductor Bruno Walter) and repertory (Wagner's Siegfried Idyll).

Come Sunday night, I'm thinking it might be a good time for some more Will Cuppy -- say, from The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody.

THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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