I Love a Solution

Those were the days when it was possible to say that The Admiral Was A Lady, Mother Wore Tights, Father Was A Fullback , and God Is My Co-Pilot , when everything from Daniel And The Devil to Hell And High Water by way of Pandora And The Flying Dutchman could be given to The Girl From Jones Beach, The Fuller Brush Girl, The Good Humor Man, The Lemon Drop Kid, The Barefoot Mailman, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend, The Wac From Walla Walla, The President's Lady , and recycled into The Strip, The Sunny Side Of The Street, The Halls Of Montezuma, The Hills Of Home, Fort Apache, Mysterious Island , or My Blue Heaven , meanwhile assuring you that Here Comes Trouble, The Best Things In Life Are Free, You're Not So Tough, It's A Wonderful Life, You Can Beat The A-Bomb, My World Dies Screaming, It's A Big Country, There's No Business Like Show Business , and anyway, She's Working Her Way Through College .

Titles were so important. When Stanley had to fire the Tuscumbian cashier for incorrectly reporting the number of tickets sold and pocketing the difference, the movie playing then was To Catch A Thief . And what about the problems the Shoals cashier had when Phffft! was showing, and people telephoned to ask what movie was playing?

Titles kept telling people to do things in those days (as briefly and boldly as possible, like Stanley describing baby doll)—to Wake Up And Dream, Hit The Ice, Walk A Crooked Mile, Always Leave Them Laughing, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Watch The Birdie, Hold That Line, Walk East On Beacon, Bring Your Smile Along, Excuse My Dust, Ride The Man Down , and Come Fill The Cup . Aggressively, they'd insist, in turn, that you Rock Around The Clock, Don't Knock The Rock, Rock All Night , and Rock Around The World ; ambiguously and ungrammatically, they would propose that you Cry, The Beloved Country; Love Me Tender ; and Kiss Me, Deadly . (Why not Rock, The Crooked Mile? or Love Me, Deadly? ) They made life pretty easy by saying that all you had to do was Make Mine Music or Ride, Ryder, Ride or Ride , Vaquero! or Take Me Out To The Ball Game or Come To The Stable or Love Me Or Leave Me .

So what if just one of them, on a white-hot summer day or summer night, had whispered Please Murder Me to Elmo Johnson, as one of the black porters put that title up on the marquee—offering Elmo a Dark Venture as sauce to go with it—a complementary title, as cool to the touch as the Princess air-conditioning system, or the beckoning draft from an open

refrigerator—inviting him in to curl up with the lettuce and enjoy soothing relief, a new way to beat the heat, and a long, untroubled sleep? Could his own Conquistador have listened, and understood? I know that it's presumptuous, perhaps even obscene, to speculate about the unknowable—the focus of this entire chapter—but what if these titles on the marquee and in the ad in the paper, on the one-sheets and the three-sheets, the words themselves, said more to Elmo than the movies possibly could—because they left more empty, pliable spaces for his mind to shape and fill? If looks could kill, could that have been the way?