Pages 448-456

This page-by-page annotation is organized by sections, as delineated by the seven squares (sprockets) which separate each section. The page numbers for this page-by-page annotation are for the original Viking edition (760 pages). Editions by other publishers vary in pagination — the newer Penguin editions are 776 pages; the Bantam edition is 886 pages.

Contributors: Please use a 760-page edition (either the original Viking edition with the orange cover or the Penguin USA edition with the blue cover and rocket diagram — there are plenty on Ebay for around $10) or search the Google edition for the correct page number. Readers: To calculate the Bantam edition use this formula: Bantam page # x 1.165. Before p.50 it's about a page earlier; as you get later in the book, add a page.

Finally, profound thanks to Prof. Don Larsson for providing the foundation for this page-by-page annotation.

Page 448

448.23-24 like American cowboy actor Henry Fonda
Contrary to Weisenburger, Fonda did not appear "almost exclusively" in Westerns before The Grapes of Wrath in 1940. He did appear in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), but that film is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and is not a Western as such. He played Frank James in Jesse James (1939) but did not make The Return of Frank James until 1940. Other Fonda roles in the 1930s included crime dramas (You Only Live Once), comedies (The Male Animal, The Lady Eve), historical dramas (Drums along the Mohawk), and biographical films (Young Mr. Lincoln). The description of Albert Speer "leaning akimbo against the wall" bears an anachronistic resemblance to Fonda as Wyatt Earp in some scenes of John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946). (As a side note, both The Return of Frank James and You Only Live Once were directed by Fritz Lang, after he had fled Nazi Germany to America.)

Page 449

Buffalo Bayou

Buffalo Bayou is in Houston, Texas. Part of it was dredged and cleared over the years to create the Houston Ship Channel.

Page 454

454.01 in the Pentagon
The world’s largest office building was completed in 1943.

Page 455

455.35 "Sporri" and "Hawasch"
Doctor Mabuse’s two assistants in Lang’s 1922 film.