Remembering Paul Oppenheimer

[“At WEJB/NSU, we don’t just do murder; we do prostitution, too! See Louise Brooks, in her breakout role (before Pandora’s Box!), Margarete Böhme, Rudolf Leonhardt, and G.W. Pabst’s Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl, 1929), with Subtitles, Complete, Free, and Without Commercial Interruptions, at the WEJB/NSU Theater!”]

By RM
friday, january 3, 2025 at 1:02:00 p.m. est

Was that the Jerry Carlson-hosted show that ran saturday nights at 9 p.m.? He was awful-looking, but he did show a lot of offbeat “art house”-type movies that were hard to see at that time! Much appreciated in the days before everything was available on cable tv or home video.

-RM


N.S.: I looked him up, and indeed it was Jerry Carlson. Apparently, he’s still around. Unfortunately, his guest is no more. That was Paul Oppenheimer (1940-2022), who was talking about evil, on June 21, 2014, in regards to the Weimar German movie world (e.g., Dr. Mabuse, Louise Brooks’ silents, etc.).

This guy Oppenheimer was so brilliant and dynamic and, though he seemed much younger, was actually in his seventies. He was into the concept of evil.

The conversation was so one-sided that it made me think of one of those boxing pictures, where the hero is supposed to take a dive against an inferior opponent, but he has to physically carry the mook a certain number of rounds, say Julie Garfinkle in Body and Soul (1947), or Rob Ryan in The Set-Up (1949).

I sat down and ordered several of his books on June 24, 2014. They arrived and promptly disappeared. I found them a few years later, in my chief of research’s bookcase.

When I went to the CUNY Grad Center, I was searching for guys like Oppenheimer, but I didn’t find him until almost 30 years after I’d left disgusted.