I got an early start for my birthday morning by watching Howard Hawks's 1935 film Barbary Coast. It starred Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson, Joel McCrea, and Walter Brennen. There was no great logic to this particular selection. Mainly, I'm still feeding off of the Criterion Channel's Howard Hawks collection. It's OK, and how could you ever go wrong with a Howard Hawks movie? I didn't know that Howard Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana, although, like most Hoosiers who amounted to anything, he bolted pretty quickly.
Oh, and apropos of nothing, I just finished a re-read (for the first time in almost fifty years) of Booth Tarkinton's (a Hoosier who never left the state) The Magnificent Ambersons. What a great novel. It's so odd to think that Tarkinton won the Pulitzer twice (one of only four writers to do so) but is essentially forgotten today. If not for the Indiana connection I guess I wouldn't remember him either, which is a pity because he was a truly great writer.
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