Rant #2,429: Got To Get You Into My Life

Well, where do I stand with my quest to find out where I stand with the Department of Labor?

I don't know ... third base.

Yes, it has become a real "Who's On First" scenario, me trying to find out the facts and others telling me different stories, or admitting to me that they don't know at all what I should do.

I have my local legislator telling me that I am in a portal, should be prepared to get a call from the Department of Labor, and that he has no idea what I should do.

I had the Nassau County Department of Labor call me, and they told me that they no longer have jurisdiction over those unemployed in their own county, as things during the pandemic have moved over entirely to Albany ... and the woman said she could not counsel me, could not tell me whether to reapply or not, deferring everything to Albany, who will not speak to you on the phone and will not call you back under any circumstance (they keep on telling you to call back another time).

And then I have another citizen who is unemployed telling me I should do nothing, the extra benefit weeks will kick in, even though the actual web site tells me differently, yet in other places on the site tells me the same thing.

All this leads up to nothing, more agita for me to chew on and to get an ulcer on, and we shall see what we shall see. It might just reach a point that I chuck it all in and retire already, because who needs this anguish and confusion in their lives?

So in the meantime, what do I do?

Do the same thing I have been doing--still looking for a job and still recording everything as per the contract I signed with the New York State Department of Labor months ago--and that leads me to try to relax a little bit by watching some movies.

I did that this past weekend. One of the films I watched was so god-awful bad that I won't talk about it here, but then I found a film to stream that I had been looking for off and on for a couple of years and boy, does it play it in the current election year we have before us, even though it was released in 1964!

Although it went under a number of incendiary names when it was released, the film is best known as "The Candidate," and in a kind of sleazy way, it portrays a story that could be pulled from today's headlines.

No, this is not Trump vs. Biden, or even Johnson vs. Goldwater, but it is still buoyant all these years later, and a lot of fun to watch with more than 50 years of hindsight to chew on.

The film was quite notorious in its time, because of its cast and supposed lewd scenes that were supposedly in the full version of the movie. The version I saw had none of that, and was maybe a PG version at best.

"The Candidate" was based on a novel written by Frank Moceri and was directed by Robert Angus. It looks at the political campaign of Frank Carlton, who is running for an important Congressional seat.

The problem is, he is not only running for office, but he is running by the seat of his pants, as he not only eyes political power, but also pretty girls.

Through his secretary--a blond bombshell who pulls no punches in the matter of sexual mores of that time or any time--he meets another woman, a statuesque British lovely who seems to have leaped out of the pages of Playboy Magazine.

Carlton falls madly in love with her, but his various dalliances with women with supposedly questionable credentials pummels him into a Congressional hearing on these matters.

The side story is that his campaign manager, also lusting for power, follows his boss' route, getting involved with questionable women--including Carlton's aforementioned secretary. He also has an affair with a floozy who becomes pregnant and has an abortion.

The ensuing ballyhoo leads to the downfall of Carlton and his campaign manager, and the women they were involved with manage to not go down with them, to a certain degree.

Yes, this is sleaze to the max, but somehow, the film intrigues you, is interesting how they pussy-foot around certain subjects while going whole hog on others, and the 81-minute film kind of hits the mark most of the time, even though much of the dialogue is cliche-ridden to a hilt.

And yes, the female stars are nice to look at in a real 1960s way, led off by a duo of sex starlets of the time who made their own personal news back in the day.

The congressional candidate's secretary, Christine Ashley, is played by Mamie Van Doren, who chews up the scenery better than anyone in the movie. She has the most cliched lines to say, but her sex appeal cuts through any eye rolling you might do when she speaks her lines. You really cannot take your eyes off of her during the entire film.

Playing Carlton's paramour is June Wilkinson, who was known as "The Body" during those years and one look at her shows you why she wore that monicker so well. She fits the bill from top to bottom, and her British accent simply accentuates what seemingly is the point of her existence.

The campaign manager is played by Eric Mason, and he looks sleaze and is sleaze in this movie. He jumps around from bed to bed, and both his sexual mores and his success are so tied into his boss that when his boss fails, he does, too.

And who plays Frank Carlton, the politician who has both eyes for an elevated congressional seat and for the pretty ladies?

Why, it is Ted Knight--yes, that Ted Knight, who you thought brought the ultimate of chutzpah to his later role of Ted Baxter in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

And yes, there is a lot of Frank Carlton in Ted Baxter, and if you want to see what a good actor Knight was, just don't base it on the MTM show. Watch this film and see how he took every cliche in the book about politics and sex and makes it all so believable.

Knight had a very interesting career prior to the Ted Baxter role. He played numerous villains and bad guys in films and TV shows such as "Get Smart" and "The Munsters." But he rarely played anyone nice, and was really typecast in his roles as a bad guy, making his choice as Ted Baxter--a numb, nimble minded dope with an incredible ego--an incredible choice for the MTM braintrust. They took a chance with the character, it worked, and viewers loved the role to a degree that Knight was able to morph himself into just the opposite typecast--a nice, maybe simpleton type of guy that you loved to love--for the remainder of his career.

Anyway, in this film, he gets to do wretched things, but you kind of feel sorry for him, because he is caught up in a whirlwind that he cannot possibly control. He craves power, he craves curvaceous women, and in his life, the two go hand in hand.

This is a film that I highly recommend, if for nothing else than to see Knight in one of his best non-MTM roles.

I saw it on the Tubi movie service, but beware, if you choose to view it through that service, you are going to have to sit through a number of commercials, many of which come in the middle of the film.

But if you can get through that annoyance, "The Candidate" is a good time waster, sort of like putting your head in a cement mixer and coming out smelling like roses.

I highly recommend it.