Nightmare Alley

 When I was a kid I saw Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley. I do not think I have seen it in over ,40 years. It gave me a shock back then and it shocks me still. I did not know it was based on s novel until the other day when Crime Reads published Nick Tosches's Introduction.

It was in this movie that I first heard the word geek. Tosches explains its meaning (much different from how my crackhead friends used the word; their meaning is closer to geck) and goes straight to the horror.

The word “geek” (derived from “geck,” a word for a fool, simpleton, or dupe, in use since from at least the early sixteenth through the nineteenth century) was generally unknown in its carnival sense of a “wild man” who bites the heads off live chickens or snakes, until Gresham introduced it to the general public in Nightmare Alley. In November 1947 the popular Nat “King” Cole Trio made a record called “The Geek.”

A new movie version with Bradley Cooper is being advertised on TV. I doubt it will top the Power movie. That was in black and white.  The best horror movies are in b & w. It is the shadows, I think.

sch