I pledge allegiance to the flicker and glow
Of the silver screen in black and white,
To the scratches dancing through the reels,
To cigarette burns in the corner of the frame,
To the hum of the projector sounding like summer bees
In some downtown theatre that no longer stands.
I pledge myself to the old palaces of dreams,
To velvet curtains and sticky floors,
To ushers with flashlights,
To popcorn that tasted faintly of cardboard,
To Saturday matinees where cowboys galloped forever
Across deserts painted on canvas.
Old cowboys, forts and shootouts,
Black for bad and white for good,
With spinning canvas backgrounds
And cactus cutouts made of wood.
The desert sat behind them
Fifty yards away at most.
The heroes didn’t ride horses —
They sat in folding chairs and boastfully smoked
While makeup girls powdered their noses
And stuntmen broke their backs in the dust.
A painted sunset turned upon a spindle
Through valleys, hills, and streams,
While the hero rode a deck chair horse
And the director yelled and screamed.
Cardboard cactus leaned sideways in the wind,
Paper-mâché boulders rolled downhill,
And avalanches came apart in flakes of painted paper
To thunderous applause from kids in the front row.
And we believed every second of it.
We believed the white hats would win.
We believed the sheriff would come riding.
We believed the train whistle in the dark meant trouble.
We believed Roy Rogers could sing away sorrow
And Gene Autry could stop a range war with a guitar.
I salute the men who waddled through custard pies,
Chaplin with his cane twirling against despair,
Keaton staring down catastrophe without blinking,
Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock above the street.
Ben Turpin squinting at the universe sideways,
Laurel and Hardy destroying pianos and plumbing alike,
Abbott and Costello arguing logic into madness,
The Three Stooges poking holes in civilization one eye at a time.
I pledge devotion to Groucho’s insults,
To Chico’s piano tricks,
To Harpo’s bicycle horn and silent grin,
That impossible yellow wig glowing like moonlight
In worlds that only existed between reels.
I honor the voices and visions
Of John Ford finding poetry in Monument Valley,
Frank Capra finding goodness in ordinary people,
Billy Wilder sharpening dialogue like a switchblade,
Preston Sturges turning chaos into symphonies,
Howard Hawks teaching cool men how to talk fast,
Hitchcock making terror from shadows and staircases.
And I honor the writers too,
Those poor exhausted souls in smoke-filled rooms
Hammering miracles into typewriters
At three cents a word.
Ben Hecht, Dorothy Parker, Robert Riskin,
Mankiewicz with a bottle nearby and genius close behind.
I honor Bogart beneath the trench coat brim,
Cagney exploding like dynamite in a fedora,
Bette Davis staring down the world without surrender,
Barbara Stanwyck tougher than half the cowboys,
Jimmy Stewart stumbling toward decency,
Cary Grant outrunning airplanes in polished shoes,
Peter Lorre smiling nervously from dark corners,
Edward G. Robinson snarling over grapefruit and crime.
And the monsters — bless the monsters.
Karloff walking slowly beneath the laboratory lightning,
Lugosi spreading his cape like midnight itself,
Lon Chaney becoming a hundred haunted men,
Vincent Price inviting us into beautiful nightmares
With a voice dipped in candle wax and graveyard dust.
I believe in rain made from hoses.
In thunder shaken from sheets of metal.
In castles built from plywood.
In spaceships hung on visible wires.
In oceans painted onto glass.
In wolves that were obviously German Shepherds.
In saloons where every swinging door squeaked exactly the same.
I believe in special effects done by desperate geniuses
Using glue, mirrors, smoke, fishing line,
And whatever happened to be lying around the studio lot.
I believe a story matters more than spectacle.
That a line of dialogue can outlive an explosion.
That one look between two actors
Can carry more weight than an army of computers.
I reject the polished emptiness
Of worlds too perfect to breathe in.
Give me scratches on the film.
Give me missed cues and wobbling scenery.
Give me painted stars on black velvet skies.
Give me actors who knew how to speak
Instead of merely surviving the noise.
Because somewhere in all that fakery
Was something strangely true.
The white hats beat the black hats.
The hero got the girl.
The background on the spindle kept spinning,
Watch it whirl.
A celluloid adventure,
Cowboys nowhere close to what they were —
But for one shining hour in the darkness,
They were exactly what we needed them to be.
And should the modern world forget these treasures,
I shall remember them still.
The slapstick comics.
The detectives in foggy alleys.
The dancing girls descending staircases.
The lonely monsters.
The noble sheriffs.
The newspapermen yelling into telephones.
The lovers kissing while orchestras swelled beneath them.
I will remember the old theatres,
The smell of dust and warm projectors,
The thrill when the lights went down
And the curtains slowly opened like royalty entering the room.
And somewhere beyond the beam of light,
Beyond the spinning reels and painted deserts,
Beyond the cardboard cactus and paper rocks,
A cowboy still rides across the screen in black and white,
Tipping his hat toward eternity.
Watch the next show for a nickel.
And don’t forget your spurs.
May 23
May 23, 2026 at 1:19 PM UTC
I pledge allegiance to the flicker and glow
Of the silver screen in black and white,
To the scratches dancing through the reels,
To cigarette burns in the corner of the frame,
To the hum of the projector sounding like summer bees
In some downtown theatre that no longer stands.
I pledge myself to the old palaces of dreams,
To velvet curtains and sticky floors,
To ushers with flashlights,
To popcorn that tasted faintly of cardboard,
To Saturday matinees where cowboys galloped forever
Across deserts painted on canvas.
Old cowboys, forts and shootouts,
Black for bad and white for good,
With spinning canvas backgrounds
And cactus cutouts made of wood.
The desert sat behind them
Fifty yards away at most.
The heroes didn’t ride horses —
They sat in folding chairs and boastfully smoked
While makeup girls powdered their noses
And stuntmen broke their backs in the dust.
A painted sunset turned upon a spindle
Through valleys, hills, and streams,
While the hero rode a deck chair horse
And the director yelled and screamed.
Cardboard cactus leaned sideways in the wind,
Paper-mâché boulders rolled downhill,
And avalanches came apart in flakes of painted paper
To thunderous applause from kids in the front row.
And we believed every second of it.
We believed the white hats would win.
We believed the sheriff would come riding.
We believed the train whistle in the dark meant trouble.
We believed Roy Rogers could sing away sorrow
And Gene Autry could stop a range war with a guitar.
I salute the men who waddled through custard pies,
Chaplin with his cane twirling against despair,
Keaton staring down catastrophe without blinking,
Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock above the street.
Ben Turpin squinting at the universe sideways,
Laurel and Hardy destroying pianos and plumbing alike,
Abbott and Costello arguing logic into madness,
The Three Stooges poking holes in civilization one eye at a time.
I pledge devotion to Groucho’s insults,
To Chico’s piano tricks,
To Harpo’s bicycle horn and silent grin,
That impossible yellow wig glowing like moonlight
In worlds that only existed between reels.
I honor the voices and visions
Of John Ford finding poetry in Monument Valley,
Frank Capra finding goodness in ordinary people,
Billy Wilder sharpening dialogue like a switchblade,
Preston Sturges turning chaos into symphonies,
Howard Hawks teaching cool men how to talk fast,
Hitchcock making terror from shadows and staircases.
And I honor the writers too,
Those poor exhausted souls in smoke-filled rooms
Hammering miracles into typewriters
At three cents a word.
Ben Hecht, Dorothy Parker, Robert Riskin,
Mankiewicz with a bottle nearby and genius close behind.
I honor Bogart beneath the trench coat brim,
Cagney exploding like dynamite in a fedora,
Bette Davis staring down the world without surrender,
Barbara Stanwyck tougher than half the cowboys,
Jimmy Stewart stumbling toward decency,
Cary Grant outrunning airplanes in polished shoes,
Peter Lorre smiling nervously from dark corners,
Edward G. Robinson snarling over grapefruit and crime.
And the monsters — bless the monsters.
Karloff walking slowly beneath the laboratory lightning,
Lugosi spreading his cape like midnight itself,
Lon Chaney becoming a hundred haunted men,
Vincent Price inviting us into beautiful nightmares
With a voice dipped in candle wax and graveyard dust.
I believe in rain made from hoses.
In thunder shaken from sheets of metal.
In castles built from plywood.
In spaceships hung on visible wires.
In oceans painted onto glass.
In wolves that were obviously German Shepherds.
In saloons where every swinging door squeaked exactly the same.
I believe in special effects done by desperate geniuses
Using glue, mirrors, smoke, fishing line,
And whatever happened to be lying around the studio lot.
I believe a story matters more than spectacle.
That a line of dialogue can outlive an explosion.
That one look between two actors
Can carry more weight than an army of computers.
I reject the polished emptiness
Of worlds too perfect to breathe in.
Give me scratches on the film.
Give me missed cues and wobbling scenery.
Give me painted stars on black velvet skies.
Give me actors who knew how to speak
Instead of merely surviving the noise.
Because somewhere in all that fakery
Was something strangely true.
The white hats beat the black hats.
The hero got the girl.
The background on the spindle kept spinning,
Watch it whirl.
A celluloid adventure,
Cowboys nowhere close to what they were —
But for one shining hour in the darkness,
They were exactly what we needed them to be.
And should the modern world forget these treasures,
I shall remember them still.
The slapstick comics.
The detectives in foggy alleys.
The dancing girls descending staircases.
The lonely monsters.
The noble sheriffs.
The newspapermen yelling into telephones.
The lovers kissing while orchestras swelled beneath them.
I will remember the old theatres,
The smell of dust and warm projectors,
The thrill when the lights went down
And the curtains slowly opened like royalty entering the room.
And somewhere beyond the beam of light,
Beyond the spinning reels and painted deserts,
Beyond the cardboard cactus and paper rocks,
A cowboy still rides across the screen in black and white,
Tipping his hat toward eternity.
Watch the next show for a nickel.
And don’t forget your spurs.
For those who read my Hollywood Roll Call, celluloid cowboys and old Hollywood, I merged them with unfinished pieces sitting dormant for years. I tried to respect the magic of the movies prior to the computer generated films of today. This is was 14 years in edit... LoL
