Tawdry Audrey

Here's brassy and blonde Audrey Totter
Post grad of film's crime alma mater
She stayed after class
for dishing the sass
and starring on noir police blotter



The title of Audrey Totter's first film, Main Street After Dark (1945), seemed to signal that the actress had arrived just in time for film noir. Her films include The Postman Always Rings Twice (46), The Lady in the Lake (47), The Unsuspected (47), The High Wall (47), Alias Nick Beal (49), The Set-Up (49), and Tension (50).
Image source: Starlet Showcase and Dvd Beaver.

Five Card Thud

The robot was counting the deck
Its memory banks were hi-tech
It won ev'ry chip
Do 'bots take a personal check?

Art for a 1959 Galaxy cover by Wood. To see the full cover and many more Wood illustrations for Galaxy, click here. Wally Wood Week is folding its hand.

Guess What's Coming for Dinner?

Her husband would act like a jerk
bring friends, unannounced, home from work
One night the surprise
had multiple eyes,
disliked the hors d'oeuvre, went berserk!

Wally Wood art for Galaxy magazine, 1959. Find more Wood at Golden Age Comic Book Stories. Click on image to enlarge.

It's Crater Than You Think

The miners survey a new moon
Its surface with space rock is strewn
Their job is to dig
a gash that's so big
a huge lunar Pac-Man is hewn

Art by Wally Wood for Galaxy, 1958. See more at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Apartment 2D

Their marriage (too boring to mention)
was lacking both passion and tension
Decidedly flat
their life was old hat
A home that was lacking dimension

Hey, my first architecture gag. Wally Wood art for Galaxy, 1959. See Golden Age Comic Book Stories for lots more where this came from.

Erect Dialing

A fellow had called the wrong number
and woken a gal from her slumber
A red blooded male
he looked through her veil
and told her that he was in lumber

Art by Wally Wood for Galaxy Magazine, 1958. Source: Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Embraceable Rue

They kiss and they both feel a blast
yet somehow they know it won't last
A nagging foreboding
that love is eroding
Perhaps it's the ghost from her past

Art by Wallace Wood for Galaxy Magazine, 1958. Found at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Height Slight

They scoffed when they read his report
and laughed at him just for the sport
Looked down on by all
the fellow felt small
a midget who just came up short

Wallace Wood illustration for Galaxy Magazine, 1958. Source: Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Weight For It

So nervous from running so late
he gasped when he saw his blind date
The guy wasn't picky
but this girl was icky
and looked as if she never ate

Illustration by Wallace Wood for Galaxy Magazine, 1958. Source: GACBS, of course.

Why, Robot?

That buzzing...inside...frontal lobe...
insisting...that I...must disrobe
Cylindrical saws...
those cold metal claws...
It's time for... my >choke< anal probe!

Wally Wood illustration for Galaxy magazine, 1958. Found at Golden Age Comic Book Stories. Click image to enlarge.

The Men-talist

I'm finding it hard to explain
I think that I'm going insane
He's dumpy, a nerd,
but somehow I'm stirred
and can't get him out of my brain

I guess it's Wally Wood Week at Limerwrecks. Image: Illustration for Galaxy magazine by Wally Wood, 1958. Source: Golden Age Comic Book Stories. Click to enlarge image.

Hate Days a Week

On Saturday night we expressed

the violent urge we'd suppressed

All week it was mounting

Six days, but who's counting?

It's Sunday, today we can rest

Lee Marvin and Silvia Sidney in Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955).

Deco Chamber

Through ill-gotten gains Gordon Gekko
collected a lot of Art Deco
The market then crashed
the Deco was cashed
and vacant, his penthouse has echo

Too bad he didn't get a government bailout. I've heard they're making a sequel. Photo: Michael Douglas as trader Gordon Gekko, in Wall Street. Source: Ronald Grant Archive

No Exit Strategy

One lives and then one must depart
And living sets each man apart
But man has to weather
his living together--
or so said the late Jean-Paul Sartre

Sarte's play No Exit contains the famous line "Hell is other people." (In French, "l'enfer, c'est les autres")

Yvonne De Carload

This guy liked his girls ala carte
First a dame, then a skirt, now a tart
But when the Don Juan
Laid eyes on Yvonne,
De Carlo laid down on his heart.

Actress Yvonne De Carlo lays down on the job.
Here's wishing you all a very happy Valentine's Day.

Chord Floored

Dear Marilyn grooves on a tune

Like crazy, the chick starts to swoon

The platter she plays

might be Wardell Gray's

God help us, the wax is Pat Boone

Photo: Starlet Showcase

Gray Turning Blues

His blues cure a gray rainy day
So easy, he blows you away
His sax won The Chase
with dizzying grace
A genius at play, Wardell Gray

Today is the birthday of the late tenor sax giant Wardell Gray. His breakout recording was The Chase, a tenor battle with Dexter Gordon, recreating an after-hours jam session. You can hear Gray swinging easy on Sweet and Lovely and Lover Man on Youtube, here. Or not. Apparently Youtube took down those videos. I'm sure you can find Gray's recordings somewhere, like at a record store. Do they still have those?

The Salivation Army

A miser retiring in Dover
assumed he'd be living in clover
Before he could spit
senility hit
His drool-cup doth now runneth over

Palette Cleanser

An artist--a beatnik Van Gogh--
builds robot to work on his show
When Botnik takes snooze
a battle ensues
It's man v. machine, but po-mo


View the trailer for Botnik, by Chicago's Calabash Animation, here.
Glossary: For those not in the know, Po-Mo = Post-Modern.

Furry Worry

When posed on a rug that is fur
one shouldn't be smoking like her
Just flicking an ash
could lead to a flash
and third degree burns you'd incur

Lizabeth Scott in Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947).
Source: Matthew C. Hoffman's Film Noir photos.

Gas Who's Coming to Dinner

When we sit at the table to eat
we are hit with a whiff, sickly sweet
This vile scent medley
is silent but deadly
and emitted from father's big seat

El-ahrairah


A mister romanced his bambino
with seven course dinner and vino
Digesting legumes
there rose noxious fumes
And so, for dessert they had Beano

Surly Hack

Unholy Matriphony

She's kidnapped and locked in a room
an identity forced to assume
And though she's denied
that she is his bride
a maniac claims he's her groom


George Macready and Dame May Whitty attempt identity theft in My Name is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945). Here is writer Suzi Doll's take on Julia Ross at Movie Morlocks. And here's our limerick remembrance of actress Nina Foch.

The Transparent Trap

I'm tired of being ignored
passed by by the visible horde
Their looking right through me
is making me gloomy
I'll see a psychiatry ward

Claude Rains loses his mind as the The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933).

So-So Sorry

Forgive me, I'm so impolite

I squeezed the darn trigger too tight
But now, when I read,
you'll have to concede,
my husband will not block the light

Norm and Surly

Sweaty and Veronica

Some hair hanging over an eye
stirs thoughts in the head of a guy
Will brushing it back
just get me a smack?
Or will the young lady comply?


Read our previous limerick on the lovely Veronica Lake, here. Bottom
photo: Matthew C. Hoffman's Film Noir: Through a Lens Darkly

Straw Pole

This gal has some stuff she should strut
Instead she just leans on a hut
She's been there an hour
it's either willpower
or else there's a stick up her butt

Payton's Place

Miss Barbara Payton was bad
The best bad a date ever had
A platinum blonde
to whom men respond
Around her her mates played the cad


Barbara Payton tempts Tony Wright in Bad Blonde (Reginald Le Borg, 1958). Read a review of the film as well as a bit of Payton's tragic biography at Noir of the Week. Photos: HollywoodPinup.com, La boîte à Puces.

3-D or Not 3-D

Through stereoscopic invention
the cinema added dimension
But gimmicky flicks
chock-full of film tricks
were lacking artistic pretension

Read an earlier 3-D limerick here. We found the above poster at DaveKehr.com. Dave's N.Y. Times article on the fascinating history and possible future of 3-D films can be found here.

Late Date

He's lined up a dinner at eight
It seems he's got death on his plate
And though his last meal
is quite a big deal
tonight he will have to be late



Gerald Mohr stars in A Date With Death (Harold Daniels, 1959), which was presented in subliminal-message-laden Psycho-Rama. There's more Mohr, here.

J.D. Salinger, R.I.P.

A recluse who wouldn't reply
has left without saying goodbye
His epitaph blurb
reads Do not disturb
discouraging those who would pry

Rebel Without Applause

Rebelling like teenagers should
he feels that he's misunderstood
His Mom wears the pants
and Dad is a Nance
So what? He gets Natalie wood!



James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). Pics: Doctor Macro. Dedicated to those critics without a clue, Pete Fitzgerald and Brian Buniak. Thanks to Walt Hitman for the assist.