RSS Dragonclaw

I have painted . . . a sailing ship! 

The severed dragon claw anchor for which the ship is named. 

You can fit a lot of miniatures on this ship. Also, a lifeboat. Or rowboat.

A nice day to relax on the deck. 

Nothing will befall the ship when it's manned by this crew! 

Coconut Long Shots

Somehow, I must hack into Jeff's computer to learn what prompt and settings he used to successfully coax Stable Diffusion into concussing Gilligan with a coconut. While strangely idyllic, I must nonetheless consider these results as ignoble failures. 

Island Visitor Tokens

 

Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and Irving, AKA The Mosquitoes. 

Eva Grubb, Erika Tiffany Smith, Duke Williams, and Boris Balkinoff.

Evil Gilligan (Russian spy), Evil Mr. Howell (greedy duplicate), George Barkley (contest winner), and Ghost (Russian spy). 

The island's gorilla, Herbert Hecuba, Igor Balkinoff, Igor the cosmonaut, and Ivan the cosmonaut. 

Lord Beasley Waterford, the jungle boy, Jonathan Kinkaid, and Jackson Farrell.

Tongo, Rodriguez, Ramoo, and Norbert Wiley. 

The XR-1000 drone, Wrongway Feldman, and the NASA Mars Orbital Probe (MOP). 

Castaway Tokens

If I ever finish my homebrew Gilligan's Island roleplaying game and actually convince some people to play it, I'll need some tokens to represent the original Castaways, since the player characters (cast in the role of new shipwreck survivors) will probably run across these folks at some point. I found some publicity stills and screen captures of the characters and then used this online tool to make the token, which will work with Roll20 and other virtual tabletop systems. 

Tomorrow, I'll post tokens of some of the more memorable island visitors...

Some Thoughts on Bright Victory

 

In Mark Robson's Bright Victory (1951), Sergeant Larry Nevins (Arthur Kennedy) is blinded by a Nazi sniper and returns home to adjust to an entirely new way of living. Kennedy is great in the role, believably bitter in the first act, but growing in confidence as he learns how to navigate without sight. 

Of course there's a family waiting at home, and his girl, Chris Paterson (Julie Adams). But romantic complications arise during Larry's rehabilitation, when he strikes up a friendship with the beautiful and compassionate Judy Greene (Peggy Dow). He also forms a close relationship with another blinded solider, Joe Morgan (James Edwards), who happens to be black. These intersecting relationships - along with, in the second and third acts, his parents, Judy's family, and Chris' family - inform Larry's journey through blindness, his shifting ambitions, and his growth as a human being. 

I was ready for Nevins to have to choose between Peggy and Chris, and that particular love triangle plays out as you might expect--but it's not pat, and for part of the film I thought my expectations might have been subverted. More interesting is the relationship between Nevins and Joe Morgan during rehabilitation; both men were raised Southern, and, well, Nevins was raised with some racist ideology, and he unthinkingly uses the n-word while palling around with Joe--not knowing, of course, Joe's race. This predictably ruins the friendship, and I was, frankly, shocked not only by the use of the slur, but the frank and honest reaction to it and even Larry's insistence that he didn't do anything wrong. It takes the rest of the film for Larry's guilt and embarrassment, and the fact that he misses Joe, to percolate, and when he's finally reunited with his parents, the film is just as frank in showing how he became racist--via his parents, of course, revealed through some offhand comments from his mother, which somewhat sours the family reunion. 

And yet, this touchy subject matter is handled well, with Larry getting know know his parents better, his parents - or at least, his father - recognizing that the world is changing or at least needs to change. And it's not just about the racism; his parents try to hide it, but they're not exactly delighted that their son has come home blind. There's a lot of talk in the film's first act about how love will overcome everything, but Robson's direction, the screenplay, and the performances demonstrate that none of this is easy for anyone involved. 

In the end, Larry and Joe make amends and Larry and Peggy get together, with Larry going off to law school to begin the next chapter of his life. Yes, it's a happy ending, but it feels earned. 

Oh, Rock Hudson appears in the opening minutes of the film as a sadly doomed soldier, felled during the same attack that blinded Larry Nevins. Even with just a few lines, Hudson's charisma and presence shine through. He's very natural even in this bit part. 

And as a fan of Gilligan's Island, it was lovely to see Jim Backus in a solid supporting role as Peggy's brother-in-law and supportive friend to Larry. It's always a thrill seeing one of the Castaways in their earlier roles, before the island typecast them forever. Hmmm--typecastaways? 

One final thought--how lucky was Arthur Kennedy to have Julie Adams and Peggy Dow play his love interests? Both women are stunningly beautiful, inside and out. Must have been something.