Another Old Movie Blog

I'll be speaking at the Chicopee Historical Society, meeting at the Chicopee Public Library, Front Street, Chicopee, Massachusetts on Thursday, May 16th with a PowerPoint presentation about topics from my recently published States of Mind: New England. That book will be available for sale at this event.

Danger Lights - 1930 - National Train Day

2013-05-09T07:09:00.000-04:00

“Danger Lights” (1930) is an offbeat amalgam of an Arthurian love triangle and a nuts-and-bolts industrial film. Never before, or again, I suppose, has a gritty steam locomotive or grimy rail yard lit up the silver screen with such erotic passion.

This Saturday, May 11, 2013, marks Amtrak's National Train Day here in the U.S., and this is our annual tribute to the iron horse in the movies.

To be sure, the train is the star in this show, but it’s supporting players, mere mortals, round out the cast nicely. Louis Wolheim plays the manager of a Midwest train yard, a great bear of a man who barks orders, beats up hoboes, but with a gentle side he shows to those in trouble. Unless they’re hoboes.

Robert Armstrong, who we love in “King Kong” (1933) here, and I think last saw in “Dive Bomber” (1941), plays a smart-aleck ex-engineer down on his luck, currently riding the rails with the hoboes. He’s a feisty troublemaker, but Mr. Wolheim, after punching Mr. Armstrong’s lights out, gives him a job in these early Depression days, and puts him on the road to redemption. And romance with his girl.

Wolheim’s girl is the much younger Jean Arthur, fresh-faced and lovely as the doting daughter of a railroad man who can no longer work because of an injury. Louis Wolheim took them in and looked after them when Jean was a growing girl, and now that she’s grown, he intends to marry her. Until Robert Armstrong complicates matters.

Frank Sheridan is Jean’s da, who is more in love with his benefactor Wolheim than is shy and diffident Jean. Mr. Sheridan praises Wolheim to the skies, constantly hammers into Jean what they owe to him, and practically prostitutes his daughter for the sake of paying an old debt.

Hugh Herbert has a small but memorable role as a hobo with delusions of grandeur.

We start the movie with a shot of the engine face-on, barreling towards us. Many shots have us placed on top of the locomotive or on the coal car facing forward, looking over the locomotive to the track ahead of us as if we are riding the shoulders of a great beast. We enjoy the sensation of movement in this film, the thrill of a fast ride, over narrow trestles placed across deep river gorges, snaking around hillsides and cutting through winding valleys. It reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s poem, I like to see it lap the miles:

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.

The movie was shot on location in the upper Midwest, much of it at Miles City, Montana, and also in Chicago.

Louis Wolheim was about 50 when this film was released (he died the following year), and was known for his beat-up mug that got bashed in when he played college football. The story has it that Lionel Barrymore helped him out and advised him to try theater, that his ugly mug—or rather, his face would be his fortune, as they say. He was a success on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape among other hits, and when Hollywood called, this urbane, multilingual former college math teacher made a career of playing Neanderthal palookas.

It’s an interesting aspect of old movies that the real age of the actors is often ignored, as it is in the case of Jean Arthur, who here plays a much younger woman. In real life, she was 29 years old with already probably 50 or 60 silent films under her belt. Robert Armstrong is 40 in real life, hardly the up-and-coming hotshot youth he’s playing. However, Wolheim’s age, in real life 21 years older than Jean, is brought to our attention and is used truthfully and most poignantly in scenes where we see her discomfort at being pressured into a love match with man to whom she is very grateful, but does not love.

Jean Arthur, far from the sassy roles that would be her trademark in the coming decade, here delicately plays a troubled woman caught in painful dilemma. She is passive, but no less gutsy for being quiet about it, and she grabs our attention for her very stillness in scenes where Wolheim is blustering, Armstrong is chewing the scenery, and Sheridan is making with the silent movie techniques of agony expressed in a claw-like hand clench. She is the still waters running deep.

Wolheim’s character is presented to us in ways that keep us off balance. First, he is a work-obsessed tyrant in the rail yard, “We got to keep the trains moving. That’s our religion.” He clobbers people who are slow to do what he tells them. We may grow tired of Papa Sheridan’s constant praising Wolheim to Herculean status, particularly as we see Jean beaten down by that praise, flinching with guilt because she doesn’t love him. Wolheim’s tenderness comes out when comforting a fellow railroad man whose wife has just died. It’s a fine scene, and though we may suffer for Jean, we cannot deny that Wolheim is a good man. A man everyone looks up to, but whose own love for Jean, though certainly genuine, is expressed with all the passion of patting a dog on the head.

But Wolheim unwittingly keeps putting Robert Armstrong and Jean Arthur together. He sends Jean down to the roundhouse with a message for Armstrong, where she meets him for the first time. A lovely shot where Armstrong watches her walk away, delicately stepping across tracks, from the darkness of the roundhouse to the light-filled rail yard.

Wolheim invites Armstrong to dinner at the house he shares with Jean and her father, and there is a meet cute with Jean bringing the squalling Armstrong a towel when he has soap in his eyes. Wolheim is unable to take Jean to a company picnic, so he directs Armstrong to do it. Finally, at the house party where he announces his upcoming wedding to Jean (Jean looks surprised and slightly sick), Wolheim pushes Armstrong to dance with her.

Robert Armstrong and Jean Arthur begin to fall for each other, but knowing the arrangement with Wolheim, each is careful not to express their love, both feel guilty, both owing something to Wolheim, and both miserable.

That the railroad is part of their forbidden courtship, used as a kind of metaphor to illustrate their passion, is fascinating. At the company picnic, a nighttime affair, Jean and Armstrong watch breathlessly, awed, in the crowd as two locomotives have a kind of tug of war demonstration to see which is the more powerful. Plumes of steam huff from the engines and sparks light up the night.

When he walks her home, they take a route through the countryside that brings them across a narrow train trestle perched high above a gorge. The breeze billows her dress as they walk, stepping gingerly over the railroad ties. It is a leisurely, adventuresome stroll, testing each other’s company. Then, horror at a moment’s notice, they hear an approaching train whistle and see a light piercing the tunnel ahead of them. Armstrong pulls Jean to the side where there is a outcropping platform for just such emergencies. The train barrels past them, inches away, and the wake of night air whips Jean’s dress and her hair. Mr. Armstrong’s hair stays nicely put, but then that is what a gallon of Brilliantine will do.

The power, the rumble of the train makes the trestle shake beneath their feet, and they suddenly, passionately kiss. Such is the orgasmic excitement when a speeding train passes within 18 inches of you. So it would seem.

When the train has passed and all is quiet, Armstrong pulls away from her and walks quickly away, leaving her there, bewildered and breathless. We see he feels like a heel.

These scenes, by the way, are all location shooting. The realism is stunning in an era where we are used to seeing more storybook-type controlled environments.

Another great romantic train shot is when Armstrong, at the controls of a train, glances out the window. We see from our vantage point on the roof of the locomotive, that it slides by a few old houses built near the tracks. (As Emily Dickinson might say: "And, supercilious, peer in shanties by the sides of roads...") One is the house where Jean and her father live. Next, we are inside the house, and Jean is silhouetted against the open windows facing the track. Again, the train creates a breeze, even from this distance, sifts through her hair and, quietly captivated, she watches the train slide by. Armstrong blows his whistle, like a mating call.

By the way, he’s pulling a dynamometer car, which is a maintenance car used for measuring a locomotive’s power and speed, etc., and it’s been noted on IMDb and Wikipedia that this is likely the only film in existence of a dynamometer car for a steam locomotive of this era.

If you’re not as thrilled by that as I am, I don’t want to talk to you.

Mr. Armstrong and Miss Arthur eventually get around to spilling their guts and telling each other how much in love they are, but in the most miserable and guilty fashion. (They are both half-lying across her bed when this scene takes place, a little pre-Code teasing.)

When a track washout pulls Wolheim away from their engagement party, Armstrong and Jean decide to run away.

It’s raining, pouring, like a Capra movie (only the director here is George B. Seitz and I love how beautifully he films this movie). Jean and Armstrong, pummeled by the torrent, trudge along the tracks (apparently it never occurs to them to walk on a sidewalk), their raincoats shiny in the warning lights along the track. Danger Lights.

Armstrong gets his foot caught in a rail switch, and wouldn’t you know it? A train is coming.

There’s a few frantic moments, and then Wolheim catches up to them. Jean’s da discovered their hanky-panky and squeals to Wolheim, who has arrived with the intention of killing Armstrong. No need of course, the oncoming train will do that in a matter of moments.

But as we said previously, Wolheim is really a good guy underneath, and he wrestles Armstrong out of the way in time, only to be hit by the train himself. Or rather, the dummy dressed to look like him is graphically plowed over.

If you’re not squeamish about that, then you’re surely not squeamish about spoilers. It’s a little late for that anyway.

However, I’ll spare you the ending, except to say that it involves a high-speed mission of mercy to get Wolheim to the medical specialists in Chicago in time. Armstrong drives the train, and we get a breakneck ride ourselves. It’s a real treat to find ourselves tearing all over the Milwaukee Road until we at last pull into the yard at Chicago, and even get a few nice interior shots of Union Station.

I’ve been to Union Station in Chicago. It’s swell.

It you want to see how the operation turns out, “Danger Lights” is now in the public domain and offered here as a free download on the InternetArchive website.

Let me end with a reminder that train travel is the most economic and environmentally friendly way to move people across this great nation of ours. Make your next trip by train. Maybe Robert Armstrong will be at the controls.

For more information on National Train Day, have a look at this website.

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I'll be speaking at the Chicopee Historical Society, meeting at the Chicopee Public Library, Chicopee, Massachusetts on Thursday, May 16th with a PowerPoint presentation about topics from my recently published States of Mind: New England. That book will be available for sale at this event. Also available in paperback here from CreateSpace.

Happy Cartoonists Day

2013-05-05T11:51:00.000-04:00

Happy Cartoonists Day to my twin brother, John.

Have at look at his collection of 'toons, Arte Acher's Falling Circus here.

Mary Astor's Life on Film

2013-05-03T06:20:00.000-04:00

Mary Astor wrote one of the best “movie star” autobiographies when she spoke intimately of the film industry and the studio system, but with a surprisingly analytical and objective voice. Mary Astor – A Life on Film (NY: Delacorte Press, 1971) presents a world that no longer exists, revealed through the sharp eyes of an intelligent woman with a gift for writing that is rare among biographies and autobiographies of Hollywood’s great players.

Today we turn the blog over to Miss Astor.

On transitioning from silent to sound film:

“There was much talk about ‘talking pictures,’ and most people thought that it would be a loss to an art form. It was felt that instead of being more realistic, it would be a sort of two-dimensions…Theatre had sound, and color and three dimensions, and true reality. Actors from the theater had difficulty in the movies—it was a real translation—and a movie-trained actor rarely made it in the theater. There was a little something called sustaining a scene which a film actor was never called upon to do. His acting was done in bits and pieces…But soon we were to be supplied with that most expressive organ of emotion: the larynx.” (pp. 62-63)

“For while we did not have to adhere as strictly to the words of a script, the words were there, and had to be learned and spoken. Sometimes when a scene was going well and a pair of actors were in step we would add something or take a different tack. Today it’s called improvisation.” (p.74)

The movies had sound now, but because they had sound, the “sound stages” had to be kept quiet during filming.

“I can remember I had difficulty adjusting to the deathly silence after I started making sound pictures; it was disconcerting, a hollow void. That pleasant murmur, the director’s voice saying little helpful things, ‘fine, now you hear footsteps—and freeze!” (p. 74)

On being isolated in Hollywood while the Depression destroyed lives just outside the studio walls:

“The national situation was tragic, but it wasn’t our tragedy. It was something that was happening ‘out there’ and wasn’t it awful, but did you read Variety today? People stood in line at the employment agencies but they also stood in line at the theaters.” (p.81)

“These were the years called by the extravagant name of the Golden Years, maybe because nobody ever had it so good as the movie-makers. In our fortress of films we were safe from dust bowls and grinding poverty, breadlines and alphabet agencies.” (p. 109)

On the peculiar subliminal tossing away of one’s personal past when a star was born:

“It was as though actors’ lives began the day they got their first check for acting, and to speak of parents and peers, of schools, of activities in other lines of business would decrease the actors, lessen them as individuals. Even their beginnings were spoken of as discoveries rather than as strivings on their part. They might have had hard times, small parts, done a little starving; but it was never spoken of as growth, of learning, of becoming. They had always been there, fully developed, just waiting for the spotlight to pick them up and reveal their talent.” (p.81)

On her MGM mother roles:

“I was in my late thirties, and so it played hell with my image of myself. And my femme fatale image of the Diary days [she refers to the famous scandal of her diary made public and nearly destroyed her career] went right down the Culver City drain.” (p. 171)

On the creativity of acting:

“I could form my boundaries in the air, the proscenium, the limits wherein I could move—and they were felt as though I could reach out and touch them.” (p.115)

In “Thousands Cheer (1943)”:

“I played the mother of Kathryn Grayson, a very lovely girl with a fine coloratura soprano. She was quite fascinating in her total concentration on music. Often we stood together in front of the camera waiting for the lighting to be set, saying nothing. Kitty would have a vague, lost look on her face and I’d whisper, ‘Sing Kitty Cat!’ and out it would pour—the song she’d been singing in her mind—no beginning, no hesitation, just another breath, the middle of an aria, perhaps. It was like squeezing a Mama doll.” (p.173)

On modern film (of the late 1960s and early 1970s):

“…no one longed for innovation, for change, more than I did, for I was often up to my knees in dreck. What troubles me is the direction that the changes and innovations have taken. For they are just as drecklich and boring in their own way.” (p. 187)

“I admire the young film-makers for they try new things, new concepts, but I think they are just as much in danger of getting trapped in clichés as at any time in film-making history. Audiences will get just as tired of people wrestling in bed as they did of Tom Mix kissing his horse.” (pp 186-187)

“We need identification that can purge but not lower one’s spirit…This is not accomplished by shotgun stimulation. Multiple action, strobe lighting, flashing, psychedelic color, split second subliminal outs. It’s exciting, yes, but very tiring…Linear action can accomplish much more. It can build interest and tension, and then resolve that tension by something satisfying or thought-provoking.” (p. 92).

“To ‘tell it like it is’ is an impertinence, because it just isn’t, not everywhere. Therefore, it become propagandizing.” (p. 93)

“I watch the new ones, the new breed, and when they do something great and fine, I’m proud. And when they do things that are blatantly bad, I am ashamed. But I can’t disinherit them, for no matter how much they may feel that it is a whole new thing, it isn’t really. It is a continuation. For what they have today was built upon the great and fine and blatantly bad jobs we did—we old movie-makers.” (p. 219)

We've mentioned other quotes from this book in this previous post on Golden Age Perspectives of Film Sex and Violence. This marvelous book is currently out of print, but check your library. Her previous book, My Story-An Autobiography was published in 1959 and covers more about her personal life. She also wrote several novels.

It is in A Life on Film where she leaves us with the remark most quoted: “There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor?”

This post is my contribution to the Mary Astor Blogathon, sponsored by Tales of the Easily Distracted, and Silver Screenings. Please have a look at the other blogs participating in this fun event to pay tribute to a wonderful actress and a remarkable lady.

Deanna Durbin 1921-2013

2013-05-01T08:15:00.002-04:00

A really great performer always leaves the audience wanting more.

I'll Be Seeing You - (Again)

2013-04-25T07:11:00.001-04:00

I sometimes like to watch Christmas movies when it’s not Christmas. I’m speaking of classic films, of course, because as we’ve mentioned before, Christmas is usually only part of the setting in these films, the background. It is hardly ever the single theme of the movie. When watching a classic film with a Christmas setting, it is usually a cozy, sentimental experience, and we are never left—as we often are in modern-day Christmas movies—feeling as if the yuletide is being shoved in our face with all the subtlety of being smacked with a custard pie.

Cozy, sentimental, yes, but also classic films in a Christmas setting usually have a dramatic edginess to them that heightens our emotions and makes the sentimental denouement all the more powerful. What’s at stake is not the tiresome Best Christmas Ever that so many modern stories are concerned with, but rather the retribution for the crime committed, the redemption of a shattered, sinful human…and sometimes you can toss in the angst of World War II.

We have all of that in “I’ll Be Seeing You” (1944). We’ve covered this move here in this post at length, but seeing the movie recently again on TCM, a few more thoughts occurred that I wanted to bore you with.

The extra insight we get from watching a movie like “I’ll Be Seeing You” when it’s not Christmas was first brought home to me many years ago. The first time I’d seen the movie was, actually, during one Christmas when I was a teenager, but the next viewing was several years later, on a hot summer day. Nothing Christmassy about it. I can recall having to run some errands, though the only thing I remember clearly is going to the bank. I delayed leaving the house because the movie had me in its clutches. I think I stood in front of the TV with my car keys in my hand for the longest time, unable to pull away. I remembered seeing it before, but now that years had passed, and it was a hot summer day and there was no tinsel anywhere—I was no longer focused on the Christmas week/New Year’s events of the movie, and settled in on the wonderful everyday detail of this really underrated film.

William Dieterle directs, and his inclusion into the movie of such mundane images as the jigsaw puzzle father Tom Tully has set up in the living room, the claustrophobic room at the YMCA, the family around the table, the exuberant New Year’s Eve party, the getting ready to go out to the party, the baking, the housecleaning. The way the actors fit into these settings is strikingly meaningful and neatly done.

Our attention is drawn to the jigsaw puzzle because Joseph Cotten stoops to pick up a piece that has fallen on the floor, something so common when we make jigsaw puzzles. The pieces are always trying to escape. Picking up a piece is also a metaphor of sorts, if you want to stretch it that far.

We experience the prison cell of a room at the Y when Cotten enters and we see his heavy steps, his waning strength sapped by indecision, his helpless anxiety when he enters. The room becomes all the worse for his reactions. Later, of course, the horrific panic attack and the room almost becomes alive with terror.

I love the clutter of the house, the tchotchkes on the mantle, that extra chest of drawers in the upstairs hall. Shirley Temple’s room with the tennis rack and pennants on the walls. (Though I am puzzled by the closet in the living room entryway. Look at the set, where the windows on either side are placed, and the outside of the house. It doesn’t seem as if a closet should fit into that wall there.)

I love the ornaments on the pine tree in the front yard. We are given so much to look at in this movie.

The movie is almost a hybrid cross between William Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943). In “Best Years,” we have the troubled veterans returning to a society that is too much for them to handle, a world that has passed them by, just as it as Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten in this movie. The taxi ride Ginger Rogers takes from the train station to her uncle and aunt’s house is similar to the cab ride of the three vets. We see her view from the back seat, the cozy, cottage-like house out the cab window, a paperboy tossing a newspaper over the white picket fence. Homey, idyllic, and greeted warmly by Spring Byington. Everything should be wonderful from now on, but it isn’t.

Like a Hitchcock movie, all is not what it seems. There is a restless, even sinister undercurrent here, and it takes a while for us to sort it out. What I really love is that though we learn that Ginger Rogers on furlough from prison where she is serving a sentence for manslaughter, and that Joseph Cotten is on furlough from the psychiatric ward of a veterans hospital, they are not stereotypes of a convict and a mental patient. We learn to like and accept them before we know anything about them, and we must weigh our agreeable first impression with an unsettling second glance.

Miss Rogers, who gives a really fine, nuanced, understated performance, is pensive, and really the only one in complete control of her emotions and philosophies. She has had plenty of time to think in jail, about herself and about life in general. She is deeply troubled, but she has both feet on the ground, so much so that angst-ridden Mr. Cotten quickly comes to lean on her emotionally and she provides the foundation for his recovery.

The “nice” middle-class family has some interesting Hitchcockian foibles. For instance, when Spring Byington relates that life is full of accepting “second-best” choices, we may conclude a dismal life or at least a dismal marriage between her and Tom Tully. It takes several scenes more for us to realize the first impression we have of her is incomplete, and that her character and her life is many-layered.

Tom Tully first presents as a kind of stuffy, pontificating, self-congratulatory mental lightweight. His first meeting with a clearly embarrassed Ginger Rogers is awkward as they sort out their roles: the repentant, grateful niece, and the benefactor who reminds her he paid for her lawyer. When he grandly announces that they should talk no more about it, as if he is waving off all she owes him, we might expect him to keeping reminding her about her imprisonment and his kindness to her, but he doesn’t. Tom Tully turns out to be a nice guy, a little stuffy, but genuinely concerned, just a drug-store owner set in his ways. Again, first impressions prove false. I love his hesitation as he winds up his prayer, as if reviewing a mental list of people for whom he must pray. Then caps it with a satisfied, "Amen."

Shirley Temple, whose morbid curiosity over her elder cousin’s imprisonment leads her to make one indelicate remark after another, but gradually demonstrates she’s only putting her foot in her mouth through ignorance and immaturity. She's not the Bad Seed after all, she's just a teenager.

Forgiveness is strangely sometimes harder to do over the little things than the big things. We find ourselves learning to shrug off the insensitivities of this crew in order to see how really fine they are, just as Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten must shrug off a thousand little pinpricks life is going to mete out to them if they are to really move forward.

And I love the shot of Spring Byington and Shirley Temple putting the ornaments back into the box, as if demonstrating that we can even move on after Christmas, that the holiday can be managed sanely, without overwhelming us. Also because I have a decades-old ornament box just like that. Kind of beat up now, but I wouldn’t part with it. It’s older than me and deserves my respect.

When the movie ended and I finally left for the bank, the story—as a really good movie will do—came with me on the ride. The hopeful, happy ending leads only to more questions—as a really good movie will do. How long will the war be over before Ginger Rogers gets out of prison and Joseph Cotten is released from the hospital?

Do they marry right away, and will they live in the same town as their new adopted family that Spring Byington, Tom Tully, and Shirley Temple represent?

Scenarios fill the mind like jigsaw puzzle pieces. A post-war job. What kind of a job? Children. More family meals around that table on visits and holidays? Do they help look after Spring Byington and Tom Tully in their dotage?

Does the mundane and “second best” form a protective blanket around the troubled couple at last?

Annette Funicello

2013-04-08T15:45:00.001-04:00

Annette Funicello passed away today after a very long struggle with MS. Monday used to be Fun with Music Day on The Mickey Mouse Club. Bless her for leaving us with some treasured pleasant memories.

Appearing at Author Fair, Springfield, Mass.

2013-04-04T07:21:00.000-04:00

I'll be appearing with a number of other local authors at the Author Fair at the Springfield City Library, Springfield, Massachusetts on Saturday, April 6th. This will be a meet-and-greet event with the public, and a selection of my books will be available for sale.

Here's the website for more info.

The French Line - 1954

2013-03-21T06:37:00.000-04:00

The French Line (1954) pairs Jane Russell and Gilbert Roland on a transatlantic voyage. He’s a playboy Frenchman, she’s a wealthy Texan incognito trying to find somebody who’ll love her for herself and not her money.

There were other, more tawdry taglines to this Howard Hughes-produced film, originally shown in theaters in 3-D to more fully capture Jane’s most publicized attributes. To her credit, her likeably good-old-gal charm rises above the costumes and dance routines designed to keep her bra size the main focus.

I had been meaning to cover this one sometime or other, but was spurred to move it up in the queue from the recent mention in the excellent TCM interview of Kim Novak, noting that this was her film debut. She’s a chorus girl, and if you blink, you miss her. She's on the left in this shot.

Other bit roles by actors who never quite reached Miss Novak’s fame include Charles Smith, who shows up as a reporter. We’ve met him before in Dive Bomber here, and TheShop Around the Corner here.

Kasey Rogers, who you’ll remember best as Louise Tate on TV’s Bewitched shows up as Jane Russell’s newly-married pal, whose marital bliss leaves Jane envious.

Our old pal Arthur Hunnicutt, who we saw here at a prospector galoot in Split Second, shows up as an oil wildcatting galoot, and Jane’s guardian. He’s a loveable old cuss, but a bit too loud. HE SHOUTS EVERY LINE.

Craig Stevens has a minor role as Jane’s swell guy fiancé who breaks off the wedding because he’s too intimated by her money. A pal reminds Jane, “You’ve been a corporation since you were three.”

This is Jane’s tale of woe. Men are either attracted by her money, or overwhelmed by it.

Miss Russell sheds her Texas blue jeans and boots, and heads to New York to meet her buddy, fashion designer Mary McCarty, and heads with her to Paris. McCarty’s on business to take her new line to a fashion show, and Jane pretends to be one of her models.

It’s a pleasure to see Mary McCarty in a comic relief role. She pulls out a bottle of booze from her desk drawer and offers it to Jane, “Tea, darling?” She’s probably more well known to theatre buffs, including a featured role in “Follies” in 1971, and a Tony nomination for “Anna Christie” in 1977.

Bess Flowers plays one of the sales ladies in her shop. Go Bess!

The film is famous for getting into trouble with the Breen Office and with the Catholic National Legion of Decency. It’s been cut and censored here and there, and the version you might see on TCM is considered the edited version. One uncensored excerpt of Jane’s “Lookin’ forTrouble” number is here on YouTube.

The songs are mostly cute. Jane bebops in a duet with her maid, Theresa Harris, with several peek-a-boo moments as she’s bathing. Unfortunately, there’s no duet with Gilbert Roland, and there should be.

He’s my favorite part of the movie. We’d noted his virile charm here in We Were Strangers. Mr. Roland’s charming manner and smooth, rich baritone are really quite beautiful in “Wait Till You See Paris”, which he croons to Jane on shipboard—one of those movie moonlit nights, with couples gazing at the water over the ship’s rail.

“With a Kiss” is a kick-your-heels-up number he performs in a hotel room full of female fans, but my favorite is “Comment Allez Vous,” which is a sweet, waltz-time melody he croons with lullaby softness to a couple of kids fighting over a toy music box. It’s really a lovely song, and he could have used it just as capably to seduce Jane as to quiet a couple of noisy kids.

The ship they’re sailing on is the Liberté, (French Line, of course), which had a busy year in 1954, as I think that was the same ship Audrey Hepburn took to France in Sabrina, which we covered here.

As long as we’re on the subject of Audrey Hepburn, their trip to Paris to attend a fashion show reminds one of Miss Hepburn’s voyage to Paris for the same purpose in Funny Face (1957).

Also, there’s a shot in The French Line at the fashion show where a couple of guys toss rolls of fabric right at the camera, just like Kay Thompson did so famously in Funny Face. I think Kay did it better. She had a good arm, and lots of pizzazz.

There’s a subplot involving mistaken identities, and a bit where Mr. Roland attempts to cure Jane’s “mal de mer” with a mixture of stout and champagne, which he says will also cure asthma and chicken pox.

A frothy film, that could have been better with closer attention to the romance between the easy-going playboy and the reluctant heiress, but still worth it if only to swoon over Gilbert Roland.

A photo of a sticker I noticed once on an old suitcase....

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This will be the last blog post for a few weeks. See you in April.

Willie the Kid - 1952

2013-03-14T08:05:00.000-04:00

“Willie the Kid” (1952) is a masterpiece, and one of my favorite cartoons. It’s a kind of brilliant animated haiku, a snapshot of childhood and suburbia and the 1950s, so well-caught in the UPA studio style of limited animation.

It tells the story of some little kids who playact a typical Western scenario they might have seen on any number of B-movie or TV oaters. The wonderful thing is that this Western story is superimposed on a suburban neighborhood. We meet Willie, the cowboy hero, as he sits down to breakfast. His father reads the newspaper, his mother nags his father to cut the lawn, and the neighbor boy Roger stops by. I love how the mother knows it’s Roger before she opens the door. Roger must come over every day at this time.

When Willie and Roger leave the house to play outside, outside become the wild West. Dogs are their horses. Roger becomes the affable but less intelligent sidekick.

We have our villain, and we have our ingénue who must be saved from him, but Lillybelle has more moxie than a lot of B-move gals. She insists on continuing her murdered father’s stagecoach line (a child’s toy wagon pulled by a dog), shouting with gusto, “Someday my stage line will be looked upon as an important contribution to the West!”

Later when the villain accosts her, she beats him repeatedly with her parasol, theatrically wailing, “Oh, if I were only a man!”

The houses and backyard fences morph into rocks and buttes, but occasionally, reality breaks in on even the most intense imagination, and we see Willie’s dad talking over the fence with a neighbor. In a minute, Dad becomes a cactus when the kids’ power of concentration returns.

At one point, Willie is having trouble reading the map to the bad guys’ secret hiding place, and he hollers for Mama, who pokes her head out of the side of the canyon. It’s really the kitchen window.

The kids and the grownups tolerate each other, but their worlds rarely collide. For the most part they ignore each other, and I wonder if that, in 1952, isn’t the most prescient observation on the future relationship between the Baby Boomers and their folks in a couple of decades to come.

The voices are done by Marvin Miller, Marian Richman, and Martha Wentworth, all old hands at radio and B-movies. Robert Cannon directed. One of the animators was Bill Melendez, who later went on to a successful partnership with Snoopy.

“Willie the Kid” can be seen in “The Jolly FrolicsCollection” on DVD here from TCM. This is a fabulous collection of cartoons from the intelligent, stylistic and very arty UPA studio. Mister Magoo, you may recall, came out of this studio, and so did Gerald McBoing Boing, who I love so much because he breaks my heart. The original Madeline cartoon is also part of the collection.

Film Stars on Stage - La Jolla Playhouse

2013-03-07T08:06:00.000-05:00

I love the names across the top of this typical summer stock playbill. We old movie buffs will recognize the names of Dorothy McGuire, Jane Wyatt, Mel Ferrer, Mildred Natwick—but here we find them in a different setting. Not the end credits of a film, but each of them “above the title,” as it were, on a small-town summer stock program. Appearing not in a film noir or “weeper,” but the English classic, “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde. The play is produced in the town’s high school auditorium, a couple of hours south of Los Angeles. Time: 1949. See here for production photos.

The La Jolla Playhouse was founded by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, and Mel Ferrer as an outlet to their passion for the stage, and their regret at being so imprisoned by film studio contracts that they were not allowed to perform on Broadway between films.

Starting a theatre company is always chancy, walking a financial tightrope and needing to find community support and audience as much as backers with money. It was not always easy for the La Jolla Playhouse, founded in 1947. The three producers juggled things for some years, aided by Miss McGuire’s husband, John Swope (whose own interest in theatre harkened back to the days of the University Players where he was pals with Henry Fonda and James Stewart—see this previous post on my blog Tragedy and Comedy in New England.)

The group disbanded in 1964, but was revived in 1983, and continues to produce quality theatre, with some famous names appearing at its new playhouse. Have a look here for what’s doing at the La Jolla Playhouse these days.

The lure of the stage is very strong for serious actors who are passionate about the workshop atmosphere, about improving their skills, and the thrill of the flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experience that isn’t found in the controlled environment of film. It was for Gregory Peck, who worked on the planning for this theatre company while he was shooting “Gentlemen’s Agreement” (1947).

Author Gary Fishgall in Gregory Peck-A Biography (NY:Scribner, 2002) pp. 125-126, notes that the cast rehearsed a play for a week, it ran for a week opening on Tuesday and closing on Sunday. There were additional matinees on Wednesday and Saturday. Sets were “struck” on Monday and the new set moved into the high school auditorium. On Monday evening, the actors got their first dress rehearsal on stage for the opening the next night. It was that hectic. Since they were only being paid $55 per week plus hotel accommodation and two meals a day, as noted in Gregory Peck-A Charmed Life by Lynn Haney (NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003, p. 157), we can only assume it was a very rewarding experience for these film actors who were normally paid thousands and thousands of dollars per year.

The La Jolla Playhouse put on 10 shows each summer. The first one was “Night Must Fall” with Dame May Whitty, who re-created her film role. (See this previous post on the movie.) She had played the same role on the London stage and on Broadway. Apparently this high school auditorium gig wasn’t too beneath her. That’s an actress.

Others who performed with this fledging group, escaping their film shackles if only for a week, include Eve Arden, Una O’Connor, Robert Walker, Patricia Neal, Vincent Price, Joan Bennett, Charlton Heston, Laraine Day, Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones (the group also received considerable financial support from David O. Selznick). Leon Ames trod the boards of La Jolla High School, June Lockhart, Wendell Corey, Craig Stevens, Teresa Wright, Raymond Massey, Mary Wickes, Marsha Hunt, Beulah Bondi, Pat O’Brien, Richard Egan, Fay Wray, Groucho Marx, Allen Jenkins, David Niven, Jan Sterling, Olivia de Havilland, Kent Smith, and of course, the three founders: Mel Ferrer, Gregory Peck, and Dorothy McGuire. There are lots more, and you can read the casts and productions here at the La Jolla Playhouse production history page.

According to the Mel Ferrer website, which also has some interesting facts and photos on the La Jolla Playhouse, co-starring for “The Voice of the Turtle” was a New York stage actress named Vivian Vance. In the audience that evening was lady named Lucille Ball (stars not only appeared on stage at La Jolla, they made a grand audience as well), and she was so impressed with Miss Vance’s work, she invited her to become her sidekick on a new TV show she was about to produce with her husband, Desi Arnaz. The show was “I Love Lucy,” and Ethel Mertz was born.

The neat thing about these old theatre programs is the actor bios. Ellen Corby notes she spent 12 years in Hollywood as a script girl before making her first film. Teresa Wright notes she got her first big break on Broadway as Dorothy McGuire’s understudy in “Our Town.” La Jolla produced the show with Ann Blyth, Millard Mitchell and Beulah Bondi.

The bios frequently discuss the actor’s stage history first; later on at the end of the paragraph they’ll note, ah, yes, they made some films as well. As if the latter was only to pass the time between stage engagements.

Stage work allowed them to stretch different acting muscles. It allowed them to play against type: film heroes got to be stage villains, and minor film character actors got to be stars.

Look on this playbill. Florence Bates, perennial movie busybody, is right up at the top, a star in “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Her cast bio in the program relates her interesting journey as the first female lawyer in the state of Texas, to antique shop owner, to investor in Mexican oil wells, to helping her husband run a bakery. (More on Florence Bates in this previous post.) On a whim once, when she was already well on in life, she auditioned for a part at the famed Pasadena Playhouse (where so many young film stars were discovered), and got the part, though she had no experience. Alfred Hitchcock discovered her shortly thereafter, and by time of this appearance on stage in La Jolla in 1950 she had appeared in some 60 films.

But she wanted to be on stage again. The communal experience shared by actors and technical staff and audience is unique to the theatre because it is live and simultaneous, and in the moment. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, if forever remembered.

Even by someone stumbling across 60-year-old playbills from a small-town summer stock theater—who can only imagine.

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As of a couple days ago, Another Old Movie Blog has reached its 6th anniversary. Thank you all for the pleasure of your company.

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Hollywood Commandos - 1997

2013-02-28T07:04:00.000-05:00

“Hollywood Commandos” (1997) is a made-for-television documentary that classic film buffs, as well as students of World War II history, should see. It tells the story of one Army Air Corps unit that profoundly altered the training of troops, how the war was to be fought, and documented the entire military experience of World War II from recruitment, to technology, to combat action, to the grisly discovery of Hitler’s concentration camps and the apocalyptic scenes after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its home base of operations—Hollywood.

This Army Air Corp unit was called the First Motion Picture Unit, or FMPU. Though the motion picture industry made many contributions to the war effort—in battle and home front pictures to boost morale, in welcoming servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen, and in the promotion of bond selling—FMPU was the motion picture industry’s greatest and most valuable participation. We know that many film actors put their careers on hold to join the military during those years, but the FMPU was as if the industry itself put on a uniform.

We discussed “Resisting Enemy Interrogation” (1944) here last week as part of the Fabulous Films of the 1940s blogathon. That film was produced by FMPU.

FMPU had its start when the Warner Bros. studio, a step ahead of the other studios to openly denounce the fascist powers of Europe and acknowledge the coming storm, produced a series of shorts about the different armed services. Army Air Corps General “Hap” Arnold contacted studio head Jack Warner and asked for a recruitment film. As we mentioned in last week’s post, when the US entered the war we were far behind our enemies in combat strength and had a lot of catching up to do.

Jack Warner was made a Lieutenant Colonel (the unit would later be commanded by famed movie stunt pilot Col. Paul Mantz), and he, along with writer/producer (later Colonel) Owen Crump, launched production on “Winning Your Wings”. James Stewart, who was already in the Army Air Corps as a pilot, was pulled off duty to star and narrate this film. It was made in 18 days and rushed out to theaters and college campuses.

It is reported that over 150,000 enlistees into the Army Air Corps can be traced directly to seeing this movie.

So the race began to catch up to the enemy, both in recruitment and in training, and FMPU was established in June 1942. The unit soon moved to the old Hal Roach studio. Where Laurel and Hardy bungled their way through odd jobs, and the Our Gang kids messily marched through childhood, the new 18^th Air Force Base Unit churned out training films, recruitment and morale films, and trained combat photographers.

Many Hollywood technicians were called into this unit: writers, directors, cameramen, carpenters, makeup men. Most of the actors were starting their careers and were for the most part, unknown. This was useful in depicting the trainees as average guys with whom their Army Air Corps audience could identify. Stars tended to take away attention from the lesson. Captain Ronald Reagan was the personnel officer for this unit, and appeared in a few films, including “Recognition of the Japanese Zero Fighter”. In this, he plays a trainee who mistakenly fires at an American plane piloted by Craig Stevens, who is understandably grumpy about it. This film was made because several friendly fire incidents needed to be addressed early in the war.

For the most part, Captain Reagan’s participation in these films was as a narrator. Craig Stevens also appears as a pilot trainee in “How to Fly the B-26 Airplane” (1944). Don Porter is his instructor. It’s not as good a story as “Resisting Enemy Interrogation”, but if you can stick out watching it, you will most certainly know how to fly a B-26 airplane.

“Hollywood Commandos” is a terrific documentary that gives a glimpse into the making of these films. Loaded with archival footage, there are also several interviews, with Owen Crump, with writers, directors, technicians, actors including Ronald Reagan, DeForest Kelly (whom we may most remember as Dr. "Bones" McCoy on the "Star Trek" TV series), and also Craig Stevens in what must have been his last appearance on film before his death a few years after this documentary was made. Many anecdotes are told, some quite funny.

Stevens comically relates his dread of appearing in “Three Cadets” which dramatized the dangers of venereal disease and the protocol for treatment. Lt. (later Capt.) William Orr, the father of the writer/director/producer of this documentary, had a famous role “Three Cadets”, and he tells a funny story about it.

Other actors in this unit who later became more well-known include Arthur Kennedy, Van Heflin, George Reeves, and George Montgomery.

Some of the actors in this unit who were already started or well along in their careers include Alan Ladd, William Holden, Ronald Reagan, of course, and Clark Gable was attached to the unit briefly and flew on combat missions to film documentary footage.

“Hollywood Commandos” has a fascinating segment on a top-secret project to create a huge scale model of Japan, all detail done by hand, and film a virtual “fly over” to educate flight crews who would be sent on missions over Japan.

There are dramatic segments on the “Learn and Live” and “Ditch and Live” films that instruct flights crews on how to survive a crash. These lessons were the forerunners of the US military’s later survival schools.

Some of the training was done through animation, and much voiceover work was volunteered by the great Mel Blanc.

“Hollywood Commandos” points out in a chilling sequence that, as it was said at the time, the first shots of the war came not from a cannon or gun, but from a camera—and we see German director Leni Riefenstahl’s jaw-dropping Hitler spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies, “Triumph of the Will” (1935). Film was now a weapon of war, and who mastered the art of filmmaking in terms of gathering and disseminating information would win the war.

FMPU, and other film units of the various branches of the military, played a huge role in our victory.

It is poignant that Gregory Orr, the son of a member of this unit, created this documentary as a tribute to this mostly forgotten aspect of Hollywood history. Likewise, it is poignant that Ron Reagan, the son of another member, Ronald Reagan, narrates.

I was able to see this film by special arrangement with Mr. Orr, but the rights to this documentary are owned by AMC, and unfortunately, they have not released it either on VHS or DVD. It should be available to younger generations to see and learn about the immense value the film industry had to the generation that fought World War II.

Maybe you can help. I would ask readers of this blog to contact the AMC network here: amccustomerservice@amcnetworks.com and request that they either broadcast “Hollywood Commandos” again, or make it available for sale as a DVD.

I leave you with one more film, and I urge you to watch it. It’s not long, only about nine minutes, but here Ronald Reagan narrates “Wings for This Man” (1945). It is about the Tuskegee Airmen, first unit of African-American pilots and flight crews in the Army Air Corps. We may sometimes dismiss wartime films under the umbrella label of “propaganda”, but that label does a disservice to this film and any film that enlightens us on what we are, and more importantly, what we should be.

For more information on the First Motion Picture Unit, have a look here, and here.

Resisting Enemy Interrogation - 1944

2013-02-21T07:27:00.000-05:00

“Resisting Enemy Interrogation” (1944) is an intriguing film partly because of what it accomplishes, and partly because of what it represents. It was a training film made by the Army Air Corps, but tells a story so skillfully that it was nominated for an Academy Award for best feature-length documentary. Some well-known Hollywood stars appear in it, and some unknowns who later became stars.

This post is part of the Fabulous Films of the 1940s Blogathon hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association. Please visit the other blogs listed here at the CMBA website for more great films of the Forties.

“Resisting Enemy Interrogation” is a short film, only just over an hour, that shows a bomber crew being captured by the Germans. The film begins with the narrator, Lloyd Nolan, who will also appear later on in the film as a US debriefing officer. Nolan drones the comfortable opening words, “Tired of it all, gentlemen?”

The camera pans on a pleasant pastoral scene, but an undercurrent of tension soon begins to filter through and we are brought to an interrogation camp in this idyllic countryside where the men of this crew, and us by proxy, will be put through a very serious test. How much will they reveal to the enemy?

The film was made by the US Army Air Corps First Motion Picture Unit (or FMPU). We’ll discuss more about this unique unit of World War II American forces next week. Hundreds of films were made by this unit, some were for raising morale, some were meant for recruitment, but most were like “Resisting Enemy Interrogation”, training films.

One of the marvels of US participation in World War II was our country’s speedy production of war materials (we had a lot of ground to make up when our enemies had spent a generation preparing for war), and also our speedy preparation of fighting troops. We took hundreds of thousands of civilians with no military experience and en mass turned them into warriors. Urgency and survival compelled us to act quickly. One of the best tools for doing this turned out to be film.

The young people who became our fighting forces were the first generation to have grown up watching movies. What better device to teach them? This was a new tactic for teaching, not only for the military, and would lead to the use of multi-media in education ever afterward.

“Resisting Enemy Interrogation” was not just a series of do’s and don’ts. It had a story, and what may be surprising to the audience is that the Germans here are not presented as bombastic, evil, stupid stereotypes. They are the tricky enemy, to be sure, with no good intent. But we look over their shoulders watching their efforts to deceive the Americans; we spend as much time observing their viewpoint as their captives'. Their calm sleuthing is set against the Americans’ anxiety. It makes for a fascinating story.

As the American crew is led to their captivity, they are warned by co-pilot Don Porter, “We will not talk.” He reminds them they are to provide to the enemy only their name, rank, and serial number. As the movie unfolds, we see the many devious ways the Germans have of extracting more information from them—using trickery, kindness, intimidation, and even using simple small talk as a way of furthering how much information they acquire.

The German head of command, played by Carl Esmond, whom you may have seen in dozens of films and TV, is a clever, mannered chap who is teaching a new officer (and us) about interrogation. He remarks, “Just as there is no such thing as an innocent question, there is no such thing as a valueless statement.”

Anything the American men say can be useful to the enemy. One by one, through the course of this film, we see how they are tricked. If we found ourselves in the same situation we might be fooled in the very same way. It all seems so innocent.

Like many of FMPU’s films, this had a cast largely of unknowns, some of whom would later become more familiar to us. Don Porter plays an officer in the downed bomber crew, easy going, and genuinely surprised to be given a nice room and treated royally by his captors. Later in the film when Commandant Esmond primes the pump by dropping hints that he already knows all about the bomber’s mission, Porter shrugs, figures, oh, well, if it’s common knowledge—and spills facts.

Kent Smith plays a German officer who was raised in the US, and so with his knowledge and his comfortable camaraderie with the American boys, tricks them into trusting him.

Hans Twardowski has minor role as a German Red Cross representative, also out to trick the men into filling out Red Cross forms that ask too much information. You may remember him from “Casablanca” as a Nazi soldier.

James Seay plays the bomber crew Captain, most stalwart of the group, yet even he slips up and gives information he has no idea he’s giving.

Arthur Kennedy is a standout in the film as a cocky crewmember who thinks he’s going to outwit the Germans by giving them false info, but they are onto him and twist his words so that they find out the truth. Kennedy gives a raw performance as man who is clearly rattled by these mind games.

It’s interesting to watch the Germans cleverly sort out the mystery of where the downed bomber came from, and where it was going. By putting together small bits of information the men have unwittingly given them in unguarded moments, the Germans discover where the next raid of American bombers is likely to come from and where their next target is to be.

When that next bomber mission occurs, the Nazis are waiting for them. They shoot down most of the squadron of planes. The footage, simulated obviously, of the American planes being shot down is not what that first generation of boys who grew up on movies would have ever expected to see. It is brutal, with planes on fire, with machinegun fire ripping through crews, and images of blood spurting from the heads and faces of pilots and gunners. The lesson about not talking is driven home graphically.

Only a few crews from this mission limp home. They are debriefed by Lloyd Nolan, and bewildered over how the mission could have failed so badly.

Rand Brooks has a small part as an American back at the base, who grimly makes the accusation, “Somebody talked!”

George O’Hanlon, whom you might remember from a bunch of “Joe McDoakes” shorts also appears back at the base. Mel Torme has a bit part as a pilot, though I confess I didn’t spot him.

Craig Stevens plays a returning pilot back at the base as well, interrogated by Lloyd Nolan after the disastrous mission. Nolan, in that wonderfully edgy, serious tone that makes you pay attention to him no matter how quietly he is speaking, calms the men and tells them that the only information they are ever to give is their name, rank, and serial number. Above all, don’t talk.

Then he looks right into the camera, right at us. “Don’t talk. Don’t talk. Don’t talk.”

We may never talk again.

The FMPU was comprised of men from all the different Hollywood studios. Some of them were not actually in the Army Air Corps, like Nolan, and like occasional guest actor Guy Kibbee. The others who were, ranged from actors, writers, directors, cameramen, many of whom served their entire hitch here in Hollywood, and others who went on combat missions photographing the war, or to serve in other units. More on that next week.

I’m not certain at this time the military rank of the men who performed in this film or many other FMPU training films. I do believe Arthur Kennedy was a sergeant. I believe Craig Stevens was a corporal. Sgt. David Rose, incidentally, composed the music score for this film.

The AMC channel broadcast a documentary in 1997 made by Gregory Orr Productions called
“Hollywood Commandos”, about the First Motion Picture Unit, and we’ll be discussing that next Thursday.

“Resisting Enemy Interrogation”, now in the public domain, can be watched here on YouTube.

Kissing Booth Answers

2013-02-18T07:36:00.000-05:00

We had some very good guesses. Our kissing couples are:

A: An aggressive Jane Wyman and a totally surprised Leon Ames in “Let’s Do it Again” (1953), which we discussed here.

B: Alexis Smith has been trying to get Franchot Tone to notice her in “Here Comes the Groom” (1952), discussed here. She finally succeeds.

C: One of my favorite movie kisses. Mary Wickes shows her approval of Bing Crosby in “White Christmas” (1954).

D: Richard Barthlemess gives one of the most tender, sweet screen kisses to faithful friend Aline MacMahon in “Heroes for Sale” (1933), discussed here.

E: Dan Dailey kisses Cyd Charisse for luck in “Meet Me in Las Vegas” (1956).

F: Jane Russell and Victor Mature in a flashback of better days in “Las Vegas Story” (1952).

G: Lovely Lillian Gish and dashing Conrad Nagel in “One Romantic Night” or “The Swan” (1930),which we discussed here.

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Come back Thursday for the CMBA Fabulous Films of the 1940s Blogathon and “Resisting Enemy Interrogation” (1944).

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My twin brother John and I just published a children's picture book. Bob the Bear Likes to Run is the story of a bear named Bob who likes to run.

Picture book, pre-K. Bob the Bear loves to run, but when his friend enters him in a race, Bob faces a bewildering world of competition. When he trips on his shoelace and falls, he is more worried about disappointing his friend than losing the race. Both friends learn in this warm and gentle story that winning isn’t everything and there’s always a next time to try again.

Now available as an eBook through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Smashwords. Other eBook outlets and print version to follow.

Valentine's Day Kissing Booth

2013-02-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day... join us here in the kissing booth. Who's doing all this kissing, and from what movie? Answers on Monday.

Coming Up in February...

2013-02-07T07:18:00.000-05:00

This is to announce what’s happening here in February. First, the Classic Movie Blog Association is running its “Fabulous Films of the 1940s” blogathon from February 17^th through 22^nd. Visit the CMBA blog here for a roster of all the great bloggers participating and the films they’ve chosen to explore this exciting decade in film.

My pick is “Resisting Enemy Interrogation” (1944), which will be posted Thursday, February 21^st. If you haven’t heard of the film, don’t worry, it’s probably just because you’re a civilian. This was made by the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps as a training film for troops and was never shown to the general public. However, unlike a lot of rather dry training films, this one is a smash, one of the most intriguing and dramatic films to come out of the war, despite its simple lesson of giving only your name, rank, and serial number. Nobody actually “stars” in this training movie, but you’ll see a lot of young men who later became familiar faces: Arthur Kennedy, Craig Stevens, Don Porter, and Mel Torme. Rand Brooks and Kent Smith already had made a foothold on their film careers. Lloyd Nolan, the only “veteran” so to speak, of the group, is our narrator and debriefing officer.

You may recall (or not) that some months ago I put out an APB on the TV documentary “Hollywood Commandos” (1997) about this First Motion Picture Unit (or FMPU). With special thanks to Moira Finnie of The Skeins, I was able to contact Mr. Gregory Orr, the producer of this documentary, who (though the film is not currently available for sale), kindly provided me with a copy. The following week, February 28^th, I’ll be discussing "Hollywood Commandos" and the FMPU in more detail as a follow-up to “Resisting Enemy Interrogation.”

I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week with a Valentine’s Day kissing booth. But don’t get any ideas.

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Coming up: I'll be speaking at the Westfield Athenaeum, Westfield, Massachusetts on Tuesday, March 12th in celebration of Women's History Month. I'll be drawing from essays in my recently published States of Mind: New England. This, and some of my novels, will be available for sale at this event.

I'll be appearing with a number of other local authors at the Author Fair at the Springfield City Library, Springfield, Massachusetts on Saturday, April 6th. This will be a meet-and-greet event with the public, and a selection of my books will be available for sale.

I'll be speaking at the Chicopee Historical Society, meeting at the Chicopee Public Library on Thursday, May 16th with a PowerPoint presentation about topics from my recently published States of Mind: New England. That book will be available for sale at this event.

The Woman in White - 1948

2013-01-31T07:58:00.000-05:00

“The Woman in White” (1948) is an example of how Hollywood can “borrow” a classic novel, change things around, slap together “locations” on a soundstage and back lot, even alter the ending, and still, sometimes, get it right. This movie is a winner because of its engaging cast, and a director who employs film noir techniques on a Victorian mystery.

How the movie succeeds is probably because this is one of the few times where that old bemused studio system arrogance that altered the plots of classic novels as often as it changed the names of its contract players actually came up with a plot that works for this movie. This is not to say that the movie is the ultimate version of this story, written by Wilkie Collins in 1859—it does not strictly adhere to the plot—but I will say that no filmed version of this story I have seen, including two BBC miniseries (and nobody dramatizes their literature like the British), are better. All take liberties with plot and characterization. This movie, I think more closely follows the spirit, certainly energy, of the book.

Long post. I hope you brought an overnight bag.

The film, directed by Peter Godfrey, employs an economy of script and cinematography to capture the essence of the story. If there was one thing Old Hollywood did well, it was atmosphere.

The novel was a smash in its day. It was at the forefront of the rise of the sensation novel, and one of the first to use a character, or in this case, two characters, to follow logical detection to solve the mystery. Or mysteries. There are several. According to Matthew Sweet, who wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classic version published in 2009,

“The progress of the plot became a dinner-table topic and bets were struck on the outcome of this or that situation. Collins received letters from single men demanding to know the identity of the original for his heroine Marian Halcombe, and if she would accept their hand in marriage…The future Prime Minister William Gladstone cancelled a theatre engagement in order to continue reading it...Prince Albert was a great admirer, and sent a copy to the royal family’s most trusted adviser, Baron Stockmar.” (p. xv)

The book is very long and the subplots are intricately entwined. A modern reader might be surprised to discover that a book written in 1859 could have such a “modern” feel in pacing, but it really is a quick read if only because you can’t put it down. A charming approach the author uses to create intimacy with the reader is to break up the book into separate first-person narratives with many different characters each taking a turn at bat and giving their perspective on what is happening.

We know that Marian Halcombe is intelligent, loyal, and forthright, speaks her mind, because of her impressions as she relates them. We know others regard her with admiration because they say so. We know Walter Hartright is the hero because he tells us he suspects the ladies are in danger and he wants to help them. We don’t entirely know who the villains are at first, but slowly we begin to realize from the testimony of others that some people are not to be trusted.

The movie similarly sets us up right away on the characters of Marian, played by Alexis Smith; and Walter, played by Gig Young. We know right off the bat they are to be trusted, because both director and novelist know we have to come to the table trusting somebody. We experience the mystery through them. I like Gig Young in the role. He’s stalwart and transparent, and we need to see him as the Rock of Gibraltar.

In the book, Marian is described as tall and graceful, but with an unattractive face. Some critics may fault the film or at least smile at it because Alexis Smith was not unattractive. However, the previously mentioned BBC offerings featured actresses in the role who were also attractive, so it seems a moot point among directors to regard that bit of information on Marian as unimportant. And so it is.

Miss Smith is warm and natural in her role, speaks her accent with a greater ease than the other Americans, enjoyed good reviews, but this was one of the last films she made for Warner Brothers, having finally worked her way to star billing.

Walter Hartright is called to the mansion of Frederick Fairlie to teach his nieces to draw. In the book, the young women are half-sisters, who share a mother. Their parents are all deceased and Laura, the younger, is Fairlie’s ward. Laura, through her father, is the heiress of a great fortune. Marian, who is a few years older, has only a small income. They are inseparable and devoted to each other. Marian tells Walter at the beginning that neither she nor Laura can do without the other, so he must please both of them. In the end, he does.

In the movie, Marian and Laura are cousins. I’m not sure what necessitated this particular change in script, but the novel deals with Laura’s father having an illegitimate child, and maybe this was too close a relationship to make the censors happy. Beats me. That child is Anne, who in this movie becomes yet another cousin. She is a near lookalike to Laura. So, in this movie both Anne and Laura are played by Eleanor Parker.

I won’t go play-by-play from here on in, but what the movie does change from the novel is a skillful paring down of a very long story to under two hours of film. The movie should be taken separately from the novel as its own creation, and will be best appreciated as such.

For instance, and here is a big fat spoiler—in the movie, Walter falls in love with Laura, but later circumstances change and he falls in love with Marian. In the novel, Walter falls in love with Laura and marries her. In this case, I prefer the movie version. Laura is a weaker character and by the end of the novel, quite emotionally and physically dependent on Marian and Walter to take care of her. She draws our sympathy, but does not seem like she should be an object of passion. Marian, however, has been at Walter’s side through thick and thin, helping him and facing danger. He tells us how much he admires her, and other characters in the story do, too. One villain in particular is infatuated with her. It seems more logical that Walter would be, too. The author’s only reason for Walter’s romantic disinterest in Marian seems to be that she’s ugly.

Eleanor Parker, one of Hollywood's most gifted actresses, is quite good in the dual roles of Laura and Anne. Laura is charming, lighthearted, and unaffected. Anne, who has just escaped from an asylum, is tense, with a wandering mind and an overly emotional response to others. There may be a bit of scenery chewing here, but Anne’s at the edge and sometimes all an actress can do is go to the edge with her.

John Abbott plays Frederick Fairlie, plays him so well you wonder why he didn’t star in films instead of just play bit parts or uncredited walk-ons. Frederick is a self-absorbed fop, dramatically fussing about his nerves and comically displaying a disinterest in everything but himself. Mr. Abbott is spot-on and terrific in this role. He’s hysterical. It’s like this guy knew he was given the role of his life. He takes the baton and runs with it.

Poor Curt Bois, who I think gets one line in the film, is his bullied servant. With a slackened stance and hangdog look, he seems to be channeling Buster Keaton in a couple scenes, and makes the most of his part.

John Emery is Sir Percival, who is engaged to marry Laura. He’s charming one minute, and a villain the next. He’s out for her money.

The best for last. Sydney Greenstreet. It’s as if Wilkie Collins had Sydney Greenstreet in mind when he wrote the complicated character Count Fosco. A brilliant man of self indulgence, who plays human beings like chess pieces, and is so wicked that writes his own rules. And usually gets away with it.

We know early on Mr. Greenstreet must be wicked, because the director gives us a hint at the very beginning of the movie. Gig Young is walking in the twilight mist of the English countryside of the back lot. He meets Anne, learns a bit of her story, learns she is running away, and then she bolts as a carriage approaches. A man asks if Young has seen an escapee from the asylum. Inside the carriage where Gig Young can’t see him, is Sydney Greenstreet with a scowl on his face. He looks mean.

We next see Greenstreet when he pops through the French windows from the terrace as Mr. Young is welcomed to the mansion by Alexis Smith. She is delighted to see Mr. Greenstreet, and treats him like a fond and funny uncle. It's as if he is a different person. So, we see from the start his character is duplicitous.

We are quickly fed the plot in bite-size chunks—about asylums (there will be more than one escape before the movie is through), about inheritance, and getting robbed of one’s inheritance, and how to foil the bad guys.

Alexis, by virtue of her being the older girl and because John Abbott can’t be bothered, takes responsibility for the younger Laura. When she senses Gig Young falling for Laura, she warns him that Laura’s already engaged and he has to knock it off. We see, though he does not, that Alexis is falling in love with him. A few nice very light touches by the director indicate her desire. In one scene, he questions Mr. Greenstreet's motives, and she tells him not to overstep his bounds.

The camera is on her as she turns her back to him and proceeds to leave the room, but she thinks the better of it, softens, and turns to address him again.

The camera shows us he has already turned his back to her and is walking out to the terrace to be with Laura. Camera cuts back to Alexis, who looks like a despondent wallflower at a country dance. We can imagine she has been in this situation before.

In another scene he plans to leave the estate because Laura is going to marry John Emery. He kisses Alexis’ hand and she leans over him slightly as his head is bowed. She lingers as if she will touch him or say something, but doesn’t. These are great clues that will make their union logical at the end, except we get no clues from Gig Young. The director doesn’t set up any scenes with his reactions to her. His later declaration of love for her seems a surprise, to us as well as her.

The director gives us some other shots though, that are splendid, uniting the 1940s with the 1850s in a neat way. Lots of ground-to-ceiling film noir shots that show menacing figures, a few shadows on the wall.

There’s a spiffy scene shot from the ceiling to the floor through the crystal jungle of a chandelier. It is morning, and a few characters leave the room through a door, closing it behind them.

Then, instantly it is night, the chandelier is lit, the door opens, and another character walks through. It is a seamless showing of the passage of time.

On another occasion, Gig Young and Eleanor Parker are spied on through a telescope, and the camera takes a view of them through the telescope that looks like an iris shot from a silent movie. Then it opens up, and we are no longer watching them from a distance; we are right behind them. We could touch them.

I also really like the score of this movie. Max Steiner is credited, but some of the English country ballad flourishes sound authentic to me, and I wonder if he adapted some traditional music?

Laura, who has now married Sir Percival, may be in great danger. We suspect this when Alexis, who has spent a few months with relatives in the country while Laura and Sir Percival are in Europe on their honeymoon, returns to silly John Abbott’s mansion to wait for them. Hey, none of the servants are familiar! They’re all new! Including marvelous Anita Sharp-Bolster, who we discussed here in this previous post. That woman, with her stupendous profile, could play scary/funny like nobody.

Alexis is given a different room on the other side of the mansion! Away from Laura!

Alexis confronts John Abbott about this. He attempts a tantrum, but his blood sugar level is too low.

Alexis discovers that Sydney Greenstreet is living here now with his wife, played by Agnes Moorehead. She is an enigma, and takes the character from the novel to a different, more intense, level. We may puzzle at Greenstreet’s hold over her, that allows him to taunt and manipulate her, but still waters run deep. There’s a lot more going on here. We will soon see she’s not just a wax figure under her husband’s thumb. Miss Moorehead does so much with a small role, it's like she conducting a master class in acting.

When the honeymooners return, Laura is a changed person—haughty, gaudily bejeweled and attempting to smoke at the dinner table. (GAD!) She has not replied to Alexis’ letters to her during their separation.

Back in her room that night, Alexis writes her fears in her diary that Laura is lost to her. This is about the only scene, except for some beginning narration by Gig Young, that tries to imitate the novel in first-person perspective, but that’s hard to keep up in a movie.

Later Laura sneaks into Alexis’ room, tells her she has to act out a part because she’s in danger. Alexis gets to do some girl power stunts when she climbs out on a ledge in a storm to eavesdrop (quite literally under the eaves) on the plans of the bad guys.

She returns to her room and we see her figure in a shadow on the wall as she is changing from a rain-soaked nightgown to a dry one. Then the curtains part, and it’s Sydney Greenstreet! He thinks she knows too much. He’s also attracted to her.

There’s a nifty exchange between them when she asks, “Was it necessary to hide there and shame me as well?”

He responds with that gravely-voiced huff, “I was only too happy to discover at last something as flawless in form as it is in spirit.” It took me several viewings of this movie to realize that meant he’d been watching her undress. Yes, I am that obtuse.

There’s nothing quite so charming as Victorian lechery.

And, funny enough, just before this a scene where we hear John Emery muttering his frustration and he appears, if I’ve heard right, to use the word “bugger”. Obviously, to us in the US this is just a funny sounding oath, but in British English it’s a vulgarity. It may have lost quite a bit of its punch through the decades and no longer so offensive, but at the time story is set, it was quite vulgar and author Wilkie Collins never used it. I guess those minding the store didn’t know that.

Actor and screenwriter 1, Production Code 0.

Because Anne and Laura are played by the same actress, we do have one Patty Duke Show scene where they’re together, but it’s not overdone. I don’t think we ever mistake one for the other because they behave differently, and Anne’s makeup, with her dark circles under her hollow eyes indicates she is sickly. But others mistake them, and I won’t tell you what happens because of it. So there.

Mr. Greenstreet gloats over Alexis when she refuses his offer to be his mistress, predicting she will return of her own accord. She does, when she thinks Laura’s in too big a jam and Walter unable to help. She offers herself to the big guy if he lets Laura go.

Alexis Smith appeared with Sydney Greenstreet in “Conflict”(1945) discussed here, and she enjoyed working with him. On “The Woman in White”, her husband in real life, Craig Stevens, was quoted in The Women of Warner Brothers by David Bubbeo (McFarland and Co., Inc.: Jefferson, NC, 2002) “Alexis was mesmerized by Sydney Greenstreet…He memorized the entire script. He knew everyone else’s role. She just thought he was fascinating to be around.”

In the novel, Marian describes Fosco as a man, “who devours pastry as I have never yet seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding-schools…” In a nutshell we have Fosco’s love of food, and Marian’s witty sense of humor.

In another passage, she tries to get Laura to leave her cruel husband, “Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace—they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship—they take us body and soul to themselves and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return? Let me go, Laura—I’m mad when I think of it!”

Doesn’t sound very Victorian, does it? The book also has an astounding subplot of murder by a 19^th century style Italian Mafia.

Watch the movie and enjoy it for all it is, which is plenty. But treat yourself to the book as well. Hollywood exploited popular literature and classic literature, but also introduced a fair number of its audience to these books for the first time. A lovely co-dependence. Like Marian and Laura.

Parrish - 1961

2013-01-24T07:01:00.000-05:00

“Parrish” (1961) proves that Hollywood can fabricate a lush soap opera story anywhere, under any conditions. All you need is beautiful leads, nasty villains, and a Big Idea that the characters can exploit and then be destroyed by, or overcome.

This movie has an incongruous edge to it because probably most people not familiar with the Connecticut River Valley of western New England know that tobacco growing was a huge part of our agriculture here at one time, going back to the 1600s. It was a very important crop, and a big engine in our economy. Less so today. For those of us living in the Connecticut River Valley, it is incongruous that Hollywood would turn it into a place of greedy land barons, nubile female field hands of questionable virtue, and Troy Donahue.

Long post. Get a sandwich.

The Connecticut River Valley is my home, and so this movie has special significance for me just because so much of it was filmed on location, and the sites are familiar to me. I had family and friends who worked on tobacco farms, and one friend in particular, now sadly no longer with us, claimed he made his film debut in “Parrish”. He was just a teenage kid working on the farm where the final scenes of the movie were shot. He recalled that he and a bunch of other kids were pulled from work and told to race across the fields and cheer for Troy Donahue. Lots of locals were in the movie. I’m afraid I don’t recognize him in the long shots of running kids, and I doubt he could have recognized himself, but it gives me a warm feeling to know he was there.

In my neck of the woods, this is what barns look like. Tobacco barns and curing sheds stand sentinel on the valley floor, fewer than there once were, but ghosts of former times.

Sunderland, Mass., photo by JT Lynch

Troy Donahue, who always looked good in red, travels with his mother, Claudette Colbert, from Boston to the tobacco farm of Dean Jagger just north of Hartford, Connecticut. Mr. Jagger is a gentleman farmer, whose family farm, and its lovely Georgian house, has been here for ages. His daughter, however, is no lady, played by Diane McBain with an industrial strength pout.

Miss Colbert is hired to help with Miss McBain’s coming out, in debutante-speak, and be a steadying influence for the rebellious young motherless woman.

Donahue and Miss Colbert are seen first crossing a river on a ferry. They are supposed to be in the Boston area, but this is clearly the ferry across the Connecticut River down by East Haddam. You can even see the Gillette Castle across the river in the distance on the bluff in the photo below. Have a look here for photos of the ferry crossing site on my essay about the Gillette Castle here on my New England Travels blog. And here is another post on the other ferry on the Connecticut River joining Rocky Hill and Glastonbury. It is the oldest river ferry in the US.

They fly from Boston to Hartford, which cracks me up. (Look at it on a map. They’re an inch and a half away from each other.) I imagine the director thought that this would give him an opportunity to show the massive white tents of the Shade tobacco fields to their best advantage, and give the plane’s pilot a chance to narrate the view, thereby giving the audience a brief intro on the location and story background.

This movie is based on the novel, Parrish, by Mildred Savage. It was her first of three novels and became a best seller. I know she is a Connecticut native (and died only a couple years ago), but I don’t know what her connection was to the tobacco growers of the Connecticut River Valley. Her book is rich in detail about the process of growing tobacco, about the economic realities, and labor problems, and history of this unique agriculture. This area is one of the few places in the world able to produce quality Shade tobacco, which is used for the outer wrapper of cigars. How a Wellesley-educated girl knew about the nuts and bolts of this world is something I have yet to learn, but I’d love to know more about her experience.

The book, like the novel, is largely a coming of age story about a young man named Parrish who must strike out on his own and deal with what he sees are the challenges and hypocrisies of life. In a New York Times article by Eugene Archer (June 5, 1960), Mildred Savage, who visited the filming location stated, “I wanted to show an affirmative hero who may be confused because of his youth and sex troubles but is still masculine, unaffected, and optimistic—able to get ahead on his own two feet. The idea of setting the story in this tobacco industry came last. It seemed sensible to put a vigorous healthy young man to work in the soil.”

Her description pretty much defines Troy Donahue for us. Never a great actor, but here he’s awkward, sincere, bewildered—just what he should be. I find him very touching in the scene where he defends his decision to escort Connie Stevens, pregnant by the loutish son of the tobacco baron Karl Malden, to a harvest fair.

“If some person needs a little bit of kindness, that’s no good. That’s immoral. That’s a disgrace to the great world we live in.” The baritone ripple of indignation is boyishly brave, and if he seems naïve, it’s because he’s supposed to be.

But other aspects of Mildred Savage’s book are not brought out in the movie. For instance, there is the young character who talks of unfair labor practices and unions. There is another character named Tom Holden, who in the movie is played by Hayden Rorke in a brief scene. He is at the party celebrating Karl Malden’s marriage to Claudette Colbert, and he defends her against the disparaging remarks of Malden’s son, played by Hampton Fancher. Rorke’s defense is gallant and gentlemanly, but that’s all we get from Tom Holden.

In the book, he is a mouthpiece for progressive ideals. His family has been raising tobacco for generations here. He tells Judd Raike, the character played by Karl Malden, who is a newcomer to the Valley and new money, “It never bothers me to pay a good foreman a good wage...He’s worth it.”

But Raike, who is Snidley Whiplash, responds, “A man…is worth exactly as much as his nearest replacement.”

His son, wanting to impress him, echoes his father, “It’s a crime what labor’s getting an hour these days. Common labor.”

We don’t get these issues in the movie, and it only flirts with other issues about conformity and the hypocrisy of society. We also don’t get as close a look at Mr. Fancher’s browbeaten wife, who figures more prominently in the novel. We get more about the Jamaican workers in the novel. In the movie they are seen from a distance.

Parrish likes the Connie Stevens character and her family (her brother-in-law in the movie is played by our old pal, Dub Taylor with delightful aplomb) because they are unfettered by social rules and self-consciousness. They are easy and hail-fellow-well-met. Connie is a tramp. It is possible this is what Troy likes best about her.

In a scene that squeezes out every drop of eroticism you can get in a bottle of calamine lotion, Connie dabs Troy’s back gently with the lotion to soothe his tobacco poisoning rash.

(When she shows him his room in her family’s ramshackle house, we hear the musical intro to “A Summer Place”, but director Delmer Daves coyly saves us from the rest of the song.)

Later, after the birth of her child out of wedlock, a fact that infuriates and shocks the locals, Parrish is compassionate and understanding. However, what finally disappoints him is when Connie and her family accept a bribe from the absent father, for letting him remain anonymous. He will not help raise the child nor contribute to its support, and not acknowledge his relationship to the child. That’s okay with Connie and the gang, because they’ve got a new refrigerator and a TV set. It’s like they’ve won the lottery.

Parrish sees that even these independent common folk have a price and can be bought, and that’s when he takes a step back from them. It’s in the book, but not the movie.

Another thing that comes out more clearly in the book is the similar duplicity and opportunism of Parrish’s mother. Claudette Colbert plays her like a ladylike member of the garden club, smooth talking and demure, and so she is in the book as well, but she’s also gently manipulative, of Parrish, of her employer played by Dean Jagger in the movie, and eventually of her husband.

She marries Judd Raike, played by Mr. Malden in the movie, because he’s filthy stinking rich. She wants more than anything for Parrish to get ahead in life, and she sees he’s too cussed stubborn and independent to care about getting ahead, at least on her terms. She has perceived that Judd’s sons are no-account fools, and that Judd will need an heir to take over his tobacco kingdom one day. She sets her sights on the job for her boy. Claudette has a brief scene where she stands up to her husband’s nasty remarks about her son, but that never happens in the book. She’s just as phony as Connie Stevens and her family. Just on a larger scale.

As far as I know, there were never any tobacco barons in the Connecticut River Valley. Most farms were small, family owned, and other farms were larger commercial farms owned by faceless corporations. One guy gobbling up other farms like taking pieces on a chess board is as good a catalyst to tell the story of Parrish’s coming of age as any. A story needs conflict, and especially conflict of a personal nature, conflict with a face. That is the purpose in the novel for the character of Judd Raike, and he is as fiendish a guy as you will ever encounter between the covers of a book.

The author deftly depicts him as a man so clever, so moody, so tricky in his passive-aggressive challenges to his family and employees that he is actually one of the most vivid, most real people in the story. He’s a bit frightening.

In the movie, however, Malden is given a script that shows only Raike’s anger, and none of his subtle machinations. Malden has the thankless task of being nothing but an enraged cartoon of a man. The character, and the actor, deserve better. I suspect this was the director’s shorthand, like the plane flight over the valley.

Critic Bosley Crowther in the New York Times (May 5, 1961), is unusually accurate and eloquent in his wry review.

“Who would have ever imagined that growing tobacco in Connecticut would be as socially involved and emotionally exhausting as it is made to appear…”

Who, indeed?

He calls it a “status-conscious story”, where the locations and people are “over-dressed and artificial…They are all more or less absurd extensions of some kind of slicked-up social image or cliché.”

Well played, Bosley.

I suppose the biggest acting challenge, and most successfully done, was by Sharon Hugueny, who plays Karl Malden’s daughter. She ages from her early teens to her early 20s in this movie, and proves to be the most sensible person in it.

I have a soft spot for Dean Jagger in his quiet, stubborn role as mentor to Troy Donahue.

Other faces to pick out are Hope Summers, who played Hattie for a while on “The Rifleman”, and Madeleine Sherwood, a lusty young field hand, who did lots and lots of TV and played Mother Superior on The Flying Nun. I still think of her as Mother Superior and the field hand with the bare midriff shocked my delicate sensibilities.

Carroll O’Connor is the fire chief, and wouldn’t you know it? Bess Flowers is a party guest. You can’t put out a plate of hors d'oeuvres without her showing up.

We get a shot of Mystic Seaport, and Troy and Claudette strolling on the whaler Charles W. Morgan. More on Mystic here at my New England Travels blog, with the whaler in the background of these photos. I, too, have strolled the deck of the Charles W. Morgan and took the wheel, pretending to be Captain Ahab. Well, pretending to be Gregory Peck pretending to be Captain Ahab.

I’m not sure where the hotel on the shore is supposed to be. Old Saybrook, I think, or Madison? Maybe somebody can clear that up for me. I wonder if it could be someplace they shot in California. Also the church where two weddings take place, somewhere in the Valley. What church is that?

We also get a brief glimpse of the submarine base at New London, which family and friends of mine have passed through as well. About the only place I haven’t a connection with in this movie is the scene where Parrish, aboard the nuclear sub USS Nautilus, spears the ice at the North Pole.

The Nautilus is still down in New London, on display for visitors, and I may feature that on New England Travels sometime or other.

In the novel, to get away from his troubles, Parrish joins the Navy, but since the book is set in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he is sent to the waters around Korea and he and his mates fear what might happen if the Korean War involves them.

The movie strips us of that conflict and instead makes Parrish’s naval service a footnote, but still a fun peek at popular culture of the early 1960s.

There are grand parties, and grand tantrums, but most appealing are the scenes that focus on smaller images that become intimate: the young shoots of tobacco growing; we watch them climb and reach their full height. The fields in all seasons, the muddy spring, the fallow autumn, the snow, the lush summer. Dean Jaggers’ colonial furniture in his farmhouse, against the rich colors of the walls compared to the modern furniture, the pastels in Karl Malden’s showy Hartford mansion.

Those red sweaters of Troy’s.

And the final shot where Troy and Sharon Hugueny sew up a gap in the tent over his tobacco field. We see an aerial shot, with just their two heads poking out of a massive field of white cloth. They look like the USS Nautilus surfacing at the North Pole.

“Parrish” is not a great movie, but it is valuable if only for the scenes it preserves of my backyard. The histrionic soap stuff I can live without. But give me shots of my ain countrie, and I’m happy.

Have a look here at Moira Finnie’s post at The Skeins on “Parrish”, which I love, especially for remarks like this:

“As filmmakers sought to push the envelope on what was acceptable fare for general cinematic consumption, movie audiences were shifting dramatically from a substantially adult market to one that had the maturity of the average prurient thirteen year old. This movie reflects that trend.”

This is perhaps the greatest flaw in this film and other Troy Donahue flicks of the period (I’m looking at you “A Summer Place” and “Susan Slade”). It shucks the social relevance of the novel for the frothy, the shallow, and the gloss. That's what sells...if you're selling to a thirteen-year old. Or someone with the mind of one.

For more on tobacco growing in the Connecticut River Valley, including the remarks of Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked on a tobacco farm here when he was 15 years old, have a look here at my New England Travels blog this week.

*************************************

Come back next Thursday for "The Woman in White" (1948) with Sydney Greenstreet, Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, and Gig Young. A Victorian mystery based on the classic novel by Wilkie Collins. Rich in atmosphere, unlike "Parrish", the evocative locations in this movie are all backlot and soundstage. But you'd swear you were there. See you next week.

Previews of coming attractions...

2013-01-17T07:36:00.000-05:00

And…we’re back. I apologize for the longer than usual break in proceedings, but this is just to let you know that Another Old Movie Blog will return next Thursday, January 24^th.

For the next two weeks we’ll take on a couple movies in which setting is primary to the telling of the story, and both based on novels. We’ll see how they adhere to the novel plot, how they stray, and how effectively they depict their settings.

First up: “Parrish” (1961), which was filmed on location in Connecticut and offers us a lush look with a soap opera-type story about tobacco growing in the Connecticut River Valley.
Starring Troy Donahue in a stunning array of red sweaters and windbreakers, he is ably supported by Connie Stevens leading the bevy of females chasing him, along with Claudette Colbert as his mom, and Karl Malden as the boss/stepfather from hell. I’ve been wanting to cover this one for some time because it’s set and filmed in my backyard, and many of the filming locations are familiar to me.

Photo Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum

I’ll be tying this in with a post next Tuesday, the 22^nd on my New England Travels blog about commercial tobacco growing in this area. Many people hereabout have been involved with or touched by tobacco growing in some way, including some of my family and friends. One famous person who spent some time as a field worker in tobacco here was a young Martin Luther King, Jr., and we’ll look at Dr. King’s thoughts on the subject from his autobiography, and a letter he wrote home. I hope you can join us next week on both blogs.

On the following Thursday, it’s a very different setting in “The Woman in White” (1948), a Victorian suspense story based on the famous novel by Wilkie Collins and shot with an irresistible nod to film noir. It stars Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, Gig Young, and Sydney Greenstreet in one of his best roles. How this film straddles the exceptional novel and how it deviates is fascinating.

“Parrish” illustrates its setting by filming on location. “The Woman in White” is entirely a product of the studio and back lot.

For the foreseeable future, I’ll be posting only once per week on Thursdays, but more often as schedule permits or blogathons dictate.

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Classic Films and the American Conscience, my eBook collection of essays from Another Old Movie Blog is now also available from Barnes&Noble.com for your Nook, and continues to be sold on Amazon.

See you next week.

Peace Be With You

2012-12-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

A very Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and a Happy New Year to all. In appreciation for the pleasure of your company this past year, I’m offering my eBook collection of essays from this blog, “Classic Films and the American Conscience”here from Amazon for free Christmas Day through the 27^th. This will be the last time this book is offered free; in the new year it will be available not only through Amazon but also through Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Apple, Sony, Diesel, Kobo, and Smashwords.

I’m going to take a couple weeks off to tend to some other business, but I’ll be back in late January for another year of exploring and otherwise obsessively picking apart the carcasses of old movies. I hope you can join me.

This is going to be a difficult Christmas for many who have suffered tragedy and loss this year; and for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, December will never ever be the same.

A few weeks ago I blogged about “Cry Havoc” a movie which takes place in the Philippines during World War II. I was reminded by many images through that film of my father.

My father entered the Army in December 1942 and missed Christmas at home that year. He had a wife and a new baby. He was sent to the Pacific Theater of operations and island-hopped with all the rest of the gang, and Christmas of 1943 passed by, and then Christmas 1944.

There were no telephone calls home, no emails, only letters and tiny “V-Mail” notes that took weeks to get home. He sent Christmas messages home in early November, hoping they would make it in time.

In the summer of 1945 he was in the Philippines, and endured horrific experiences he did not like to talk much about. He also got malaria, which stayed in his bloodstream so that he continued to suffer a bout of it after he got home. There were other injuries and wounds, but good news came when the Japanese surrendered, which was totally unexpected for regular GIs like my dad, who were convinced they’d be spending 1946, 1947, and 1948 still fighting the war.

Now that peace was declared, his only enemy was time. He wanted to get back home for Christmas 1945.

He had earned enough points to be rotated home. Several weeks on a troop ship. He passed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which was the last thing he saw of the US when he left. Now that he saw it again, he really believed he was home.

A few days being processed, and more days on the train because he lived on the other side of the continent. After being in the jungle for three years, winter in the US was a shock, and his first telegram home contains the line, “COLD COUNTRY.”

Leave it to a New Englander to squeeze in a comment about the weather in his first telegram to his wife.

Finally he arrived at Ft. Devens in the eastern part of Massachusetts, and a few more days of the mustering out process. Medical exam, paperwork, ribbons and commendations, a clean uniform to home in, and finally a “ruptured duck” lapel pin to wear.

But he lived in the western part of the state, so it was another train ride. He sat in the station in Boston, waiting for his connecting train, and ate at a lunch counter. The man behind the counter gestured to his ribbons and said, “You’re money’s no good here, son. You’ve done enough,” and wouldn’t let him pay.

Decades later, my father still felt grateful, humbled, and embarrassed by the moment.

When the train pulled into the station, his wife and daughter were there on the platform. His daughter wasn’t a baby anymore, but a little kid running around. She had been told many times that the man in the portrait photo at home in the uniform was Daddy. She got mixed up and thought anybody in uniform was Daddy and had to be told over and over again that, no, that’s not Daddy.

Finally her mother points to a tall, handsome guy stepping off the train and says, “There’s your Daddy.” I’m thinking my sister, with all the wisdom of a small child thought, “Yeah, right. Tell me another one. I’m not falling for that again.”

It was January 1946. He failed to get home for Christmas.

In his last telegram he wrote “SORRY ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS.” A real man sometimes apologizes for what isn’t even his fault.

My father was in his early 20s when he left. He had fired weapons in war, but the experience did not make a man of him. He was man because he had a family and took responsibility for them. Responsibility is what made him a man, and he knew it. He was good marksman, but he looked down on people who needed guns to make them feel manly, or make them feel safe. It was a crutch for cowards, he thought.

I was tempted to use as a graphic an ad here published by an assault weapons manufacturer that inferred that manhood would be achieved by ownership of their product. However, I refuse to print any words or images on this blog that are obscene. That image and the message behind it are obscene.

My parents lost four Christmases, and the years ahead would not be easy. As anybody knows, happy endings are only for movies. But they accepted what they could not change, and tried to be resilient, and change what they could.

The people of Newtown must accept what they cannot change.

The rest of us must change what we can.

Now.

Peace be with you.

Lady in the Lake - 1947

2012-12-20T07:53:00.000-05:00

“Lady in the Lake” (1947) uses playful images of Christmas in that clever brand of sarcasm used by only the best private eyes. And Robert Montgomery.

This is our second installment of A Very Gumshoe Christmas, and we take up where “Alias Boston Blackie” on Monday left off…from B-movie to classic noir. The loner detective grows up, and grows cynical. Christmas throws us off the trail from the start, but never Philip Marlowe.

There will be no plot spoilers, just a few impressions of an unusual and daring film.

“Lady in the Lake” is famous foremost for its unique first-person camera view, and for discussions back and forth by fans for decades on how effective it is or isn’t. Obviously, the camera has some limitations—for one, it does not accurately imitate the peripheral vision of the human eye. Some scenes may seem slow or unintentionally comical to the modern viewer as the actors play directly to the camera. But this wild experimentation is exactly what deserves our respect in an industry where “copycat” is the usual art form and risks are rare.

Robert Montgomery, who we last saw here in “Night Must Fall”(1937) makes his official directorial debut with this movie, and also stars. However, as he is playing the lead, detective Philip Marlowe, we see all the action from his viewpoint, but only see him a few times in the course of the film when he happens to look in a mirror.

On another occasion, his shadow on a wall as he is talking with Audrey Totter is his stand-in.

This may make the film frustrating for Robert Montgomery fans who want to see him (the film was not a box office hit in part for this reason), but true fans of Mr. Montgomery should appreciate his ingenuity in crafting this film.

Audrey Totter, who we last saw here in “Tension” (1949), plays a complex role of a magazine editor who hires Montgomery to find the missing wife of her publisher boss, played by Leon Ames. Miss Totter should have gotten some kind of prize for playing probably 99 percent of her work in this movie directly to the camera. That is a workout, and she is a lot of fun to watch; at turns scowling, flirting, pleading, and seducing. (Today is Miss Totter's 94th or 95th birthday - not sure of the year of birth. According to IMDb website she is residing at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in California. A very happy birthday to a terrific and fondly remembered actress.)

Lloyd Nolan is excellent as a tough cop. He’s great in whatever he does, and I actually would have loved to have seen him take the lead and play Marlowe in this movie. His down-and-dirty growl of a voice.

Tom Tully is the world-weary police chief. Jayne Meadows is a standout as a mercurial, almost manic, woman who knows a lot more than she lets on.

Dick Simmons is a smooth and deceptively friendly gigolo. You can tell he's a gigolo by the striped jersey.

There are some lines tossed around that would make for a great movie no matter how it was filmed. Audrey Totter, whose magazines are of the sensationalist pulp variety, complains to an underling that a new magazine cover design needs more gore. "Not enough gore."

Montgomery, recovering from being slugged by the Southern “gentleman” Dick Simmons remarks, “At least he had the decency to hit me above the Mason-Dixon line.”

And Lloyd Nolan’s remark, “How does it feel dying in the middle of someone else’s dirty love affair?” I love that line.

Despite the restriction of actors playing directly to the camera, there are flashes of remarkable electricity to their performances, moments akin to a stage actor’s reactions. Some of their responses and facial actions look almost improvisational.

Because we are the camera’s eye, we see everything Montgomery sees. Some of this gimmick is playful and funny, as when Montgomery’s leering glance follows Totter’s curvaceous secretary around the room, and with a sharp, somewhat jealous interjection by Totter, our attention is swiftly brought back to the mollified Miss Totter behind her desk.

Sometimes the gimmick is quite eerie, as when we discover bullet holes in a glass shower door, we approach and open the door, and our gaze rests upon bullet-gouged porcelain tiles in the shower stall, falling down upon the naked corpse crumpled on the floor.

Or when Montgomery, injured after a car wreck, crawls (and so do we), hand over hand, across a road to a phone booth that seems a mile away.

We are stared at. We are flirted with. We are punched in the face. We kiss Audrey Totter. She serves us a highball. We notice a hundred different clues, and sometimes, as when Montgomery lifts a phone receiver to his mouth and talks, we look at nothing, like at the corner of a table, just as we would absently look at nothing while we are concentrating on a voice in our ear.

All this would be enough to make a fun and very different movie, but set during Christmastime, the director uses images of Christmas in a very cavalier and smart aleck way.

We begin with the opening credits, which are title cards designed to look like Christmas cards. Images of Wise Men, and holly, Santa, poinsettia, all the iconic graphics and over them, a medley of Christmas carols in uplifting choral arrangements that may make us think we are about to watch a heartwarming tale of love and repentance. In a way, maybe, but it’s a crooked road to repentance.

As the credits finish and the Christmas carols end, the last title card reveals a handgun. We were had. Trust nobody.

We start three days before Christmas. Robert Montgomery takes on a missing person job, that soon turns into a murder investigation. All along the journey, though he is a man without family and evidently has no Christmas plans, the yuletide follows close on his heels, a shadow of irony.

We knock on doors and are faced with Christmas wreaths. He remarks to the gigolo Simmons, “I like your tan. It’s very Christmassy.”

We intrude upon an office Christmas party, where a reserved and gentlemanly Leon Ames hands out gifts to his employees.

In a scene with Audrey Totter, Montgomery confronts her with conflicting evidence. He demands she own up to secrets, and when he has found a gun that was used to murder, he hands it to her gift-wrapped as a gruesome present. She plays the scene framed close to a desktop Christmas tree. Christmas stays in the tense scene like a mocking clown.

Leon Ames takes him aside and want to hire him, too. He nervously picks at the tinsel on the branch of a Christmas tree that juts out from the side of the frame. Christmas is pushy, demands attention and will not be left out.

When we are arrested and interrogated by Tom Tully, Mr. Tully is interrupted by a phone call from home. It is his little daughter, who wants Daddy to come home and help her put up her stocking. With quick, wary glances to us, he indulgently listens to his daughter’s prattle, even helping her through her recitation of “T’was the Night Before Christmas.” It is offbeat, funny, and very surreal.

I like the scene where, trying to escape Lloyd Nolan hovering in the police station hall, we duck into the press room and find a “journalist” lying on the table, speaking “pillow talk” into the phone to his lady friend, a Racing Form by his head.

After a beating, a car wreck, and a belly full of people lying to him, Montgomery is saved by Audrey Totter, who responds to his emergency call and brings him, unconscious, to her apartment. She gives him a Christmas present: a robe she had bought for another man. Like earlier false clues that went nowhere, even the gift to him is not a gift to him. Marlowe’s world is made up of lies.

On Christmas Day, they listen to “A Christmas Carol” on the radio, which was an annual event back in the day, though it doesn’t sound like Lionel Barrymore, and we blow streams of cigarette smoke as we regard Audrey Totter lying contentedly on the living room couch, her eyes drinking us in, across from where we are sitting.

When the program ends, she snaps off the radio and resumes, as if picking up in mid-sentence, the tale of her hardscrabble life. Only Scrooge could have interrupted her. She asks Montgomery what he did last Christmas Eve. He spent it in a bar. She spent it in a nightclub. This Christmas is an improvement, or should be if they weren't so depressed. Christmas offers redemption, but you have to trust it. These two lonely people have some serious trust issues.

I was a bit surprised at the can of pork and beans on the kitchen counter. I would have thought Audrey Totter was decidedly not a pork and beans person.

Montgomery has one task left, and, spying his quarry window-shopping at a Christmas-decorated window, we have a final, very dramatic scene leading to the conclusion of the case. The movie, like detective Philip Marlowe, is flawed, but has guts. Teasing us with Christmas images in an otherwise grim movie is an irresistibly smartass thing to do.

Alias Boston Blackie - 1942

2012-12-17T07:46:00.000-05:00

“Alias Boston Blackie” (1942) is the third in this series of 14 B-movies starring Chester Morris. This one adds a yuletide flavor to the fast-paced action, though there is no peace on earth until the bad guys are rounded up.

This week we look at A Very Gumshoe Christmas. Thursday we’ll discuss “Lady in the Lake” (1947). Because both films are mysteries, there’ll be no plot spoilers. That’s my Christmas present to you. Instead, we’ll have a look at how both movies use symbols of Christmas.

Boston Blackie originated as a popular pulp novel series, then to silents, and then to this long series of B-movies begun in the 1940s starring Mr. Morris, who got his start on stage, had some success on Broadway, and later on did lots and lots of TV guest roles. His film career started off well in features, but then he slipped into the B-movie morass and never quite got out of it. He is a lively, rugged, and glib Boston Blackie, a former jewel thief and safecracker who is now on the side of good.

George E. Stone plays The Runt, his right-hand man and valet, also a former crook. You may recognize him from his role as Andy, Warner Baxter’s right-hand man in “42^nd Street” (1933).

It’s Christmas. We come upon Blackie in a cozy scene, first spied through the windows, trimming his very large tree. You have to have a shot of a tree through the window. Sometimes I go outside at night to look at my lighted tree through the window. In Hollywoodland, all rooms are about 20 feet high, and so of course, Christmas trees are always 20 feet high.

You see him here delicately flopping handfuls of what some of my relatives would call “the really good tinsel, with lead in it, so it hung right.”

First, a few presents. Then the story.

Boston Blackie and The Runt are off to prison tonight, but only as a good deed. They are taking a vaudeville troupe to perform for the convicts on Christmas Eve.

One of chorus girls, played by Adele Mara, has a brother in the Big House, and she’s worried about him. He keeps threatening to break out and go after the two mugs who sold him out. He claims he was framed and is innocent.

Her brother, played by Larry Parks, who you may remember from his much more famous later role in “The Al Jolson Story” (1946) used to be a vaudeville acrobat. This comes in handy when he jumps a clown, puts on his clown suit and makeup, performs some really neat acrobatics for the audience of mugs, and sneaks out of prison on the same bus as the vaudeville troupe. It’s not easy, because the dogged Inspector is along, played by Richard Lane. The inspector is always hounding Blackie, though their relationship is equally friendly as it is adversarial.

Blackie tells him, “Every morning when I shave I expect to find you in my tube of soap. And when I come to something hard in the turkey stuffing tomorrow, I’ll look for your head.”

Keep an eye out for a young Lloyd Bridges, who is the bus driver.

Blackie suspects something’s up. Hmm, there’s something familiar about that clown. He knows for sure when Larry Parks, after a very sloppy fight, steals his clothes. Blackie is left in his unmentionables. You know Christmas is starting out badly when a very angry clown takes your suit.

A fun movie, with clever shell games and with lots of twists and turns. Literally, when the final chase sequence begins in the hunt to find the two mugs Larry Parks wants to kill for framing him. Boston Blackie, the Runt, and Adele Mara steal a motorcycle and sidecar, and eventually a black and funereal-looking ambulance, crash through some obligatory fruit stands and nearly drive over a sidewalk Santa.

Santa is a reminder-on-the-run that it’s Christmas Day. We also have a neat little tree in the lobby of Adele Mara’s hotel, and a cozy little tabletop tree in the police station. Just warms your heart, doesn’t it?

But none can compare to the magnificent evergreen towering over the furniture and the party guests, which include the Inspector (good will toward men, after all), at Boston Blackie’s party.

Even tough guys celebrate Christmas. We’ll see more of that in the innovative manner Christmas images are used in the unusual “Lady in the Lake” on Thursday.

Never Wave at a WAC - 1953

2012-12-13T06:19:00.001-05:00

“Never Wave at a WAC” (1953) is an improbable confection, more slapstick than sentiment, but in its way shows a military haven for women that is more promising and more egalitarian than the civilian world. This message is a happy by-product, for most of the film is really just a fun comedy with no pretensions, except those espoused by a delightfully over-the-top Rosalind Russell.

This is our fourth and final film in our series on women in the military. Have a look here for “KeepYour Powder Dry” (1945), “Cry Havoc” (1943), and “Skirts Ahoy” (1952) which we covered Monday.

Miss Russell plays a glittering Washington society hostess, hobnobbing with the hoi polloi and dropping more names per second than there are in the phone book. Charles Dingle, who I always associate with his splendid role in “The Little Foxes” (1941), plays her father, who is a Senator.

We begin at a party in their home. Roz descends the staircase like Auntie Mame, and the movie could be subtitled “Auntie Mame Gets Drafted”. She’s fluttery and fabulous, impervious to any standards but her own. She’s stunning in her gown, with her tall, willowy figure, one of the few grand ladies of Hollywood’s heyday to be equally comfortable in messy physical comedy, which comes later in the movie.

The funniest parts of the film come at the beginning, when we see her in a brisk montage of scenes where she is called upon to fulfill her typical Washington hostess duties, donating an ambulance to the Red Cross, dedicating a water fountain on the Mall. She glances up at the White House, and sees President Harry Truman in the window, waving at her. She tilts her head becomingly and blows him a kiss. She knows everybody.

By the way, the shots of D.C. in 1953 are pretty neat. Look at the White House without a fence. The filmmakers must have gotten permission to shoot at the national monuments, denied the crew of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) which we discussed here.

Everybody is “Darling” and everybody is air-kissed, and she is breezy, effective, able to juggle a million things at once, including pausing mid-conversation to pose for a photo, which she does with comic regularity. Her world is shallow, and she is perfectly at home here.

But our Roz is not without her discontent. Her new beau, an Army officer played by William Ching, is being sent to Paris, along with her rival for his affections played by Hillary Brooke. Miss Brooke arrives at the party in a WAC uniform, crowing that she, too, has been assigned to Paris.

The party becomes a bust when Roz’s ex-husband, the affable, but too down to earth to be worthy of her chic, Paul Douglas, arrives to retrieve some of his belongings. Somewhere amid the shouting and the breaking of glass, we learn that they had an impetuous honeymoon camping on an island. The Robinson Crusoe setting, and their love, made her think he was dashing, instead of just a sloppy scientist, and made him think she was a spirited, can-do girl and not a phony, shallow social climber.

They were both right and both wrong, and it takes a battle over basic training to make them see that.

Papa Charles Dingle thinks Roz should be brought down a peg, and tricks his daughter into joining the WAC, saying he will arrange a commission for her so she can be with her fiancé in Paris. The idea of captain’s bars from Tiffany’s and a Hattie Carnegie-designed tailored uniform is what appeals to her. She joins, unwittingly, as a private and finds herself among women who have no idea how important she is, nor do they seem to care.

Except for one, a very sweet ex-model and stripper from New York, played by Marie Wilson. I inevitably see her as Irma in the radio show “My Friend Irma”, with that distinctive cute voice. She has escaped from her seedy world, as she really is a nice girl, and wearing not much but fruit in strategic places on her body was upsetting to her. She seeks the safety of the WAC, where unfortunately she continues to be pursued by a most persistent wolf, a happy-go-lucky sergeant played by Leif Erikson.

I really like Norma Busse in a small role as the sergeant interviewing Marie Wilson. She is patient, and diligent, soft-spoken, and awkwardly ferrets out Marie’s talents and interests to find a spot for her in the WAC that will match her abilities. Marie wants to be a spy. Sgt. Busse is quite comically delicate, both in her surprise, and in her doggedly trying to find a job for this square peg.

Louise Beavers has a very small role as part of Rosalind Russell’s household staff, Regis Toomey shows up briefly as a guest, and Bess Flowers is at the party somewhere, probably dumping hors d'oeuvres into her purse. You can’t take her anywhere, even if she’s everywhere.

The most auspicious cameo goes to General of the Army Omar Bradley. I don’t know how he was persuaded into appearing in this film. The movie was produced by Rosalind Russell’s husband, Frederick Brisson. Maybe he had the General on speed dial.

Paul Douglas, the ever-reliable everyman of the 1950s, is also actually in the Army, as a scientist working on perfecting protective clothing. Jealous over Roz’s plans with her new beau, he arranges for her to be one of his “volunteers” for his special arctic gear tests.

We find Roz in a deep freeze chamber marching halfway across an imaginary Alaska, and enduring the rigors of obstacle courses until the very funny, blithe and whimsical, la-de-dah demeanor she entered the Army with becomes sullen, sour, and suspicious. The transformation is understandable, but it’s as if we’re watching two people and we’ve lost track of who they are.

Though this film is really along the lines of screwball comedy, it actually shows Rosalind Russell engaging in physical challenges, even weapons firing — activities which were absent from the other films we’ve seen in this series.

We follow Roz as she begins with a physical examination, including a funny bit where she sits on the exam table, smoking, while the doctor tells her to inhale and exhale.

However, reminiscent of “Keep Your Power Dry”, we follow Roz as she silently drives by panties drying on a wash line outside the ladies’ barracks. Apparently eight years later, there is still some curiosity about WAC unmentionables.

The ladies undergo swimming classes, like in “Skirts Ahoy”. Like Esther Williams, Roz denounces the suits in preference to her own, saying, “I’m allergic to Army wool.” It’s cute that she shows up at the pool with an armful of magazines, thinking she is going to lounge.

We also have a dance party scene, where Marie Wilson gets engaged to her favorite wolf, and Roz serves refreshments.

Unlike the physical training for the ladies in the other movies, which was challenging but ultimately character-building, Roz’s extreme training under the sadistic eye of her jealous ex-husband is only demoralizing. It is not until the end of the film she realizes she had made good here, and that Paul Douglas is the man for her. We also, as in “Keep Your Powder Dry” and “Skirts Ahoy”, have a board of inquiry scene, but Roz, despite a gallant defense by a contrite Paul Douglas is booted out of the WAC.

Improbably, but with a charming nod to screwball comedy, she escapes from her beau’s car and leaps into a passing truck with new WAC recruits in it. She wants to join again, and hopes that, since Paul Douglas is going to be sent to Korea to work on his experiments, that she might be sent there, too.

Unlike “Skirts Ahoy” we acknowledge the existence of a conflict in Korea and that it might pose some danger to Paul Douglas. Also unlike “Skirts Ahoy”, we see a parade of female military personnel marching in desegregated units.

In this series we’ve seen what amounts to “message films”, even the comedies, because women in the military were new and a conservative public usually eschews the new. The message of military experience, even a career, being beneficial both to women and society is filtered through some stereotypes of women’s abilities that serving in the military was supposed to smash. It’s a vicious circle, but one that women, for the most part, have been able to climb out of through decades of service to our country.

I think one of the most inspiring screen messages promoting society’s acceptance of women in the military comes not through these movies, but from a different, perhaps unlikely, source. This is the movie “Since You Went Away” (1944), covered here, which dramatizes the American home front.

Claudette Colbert is flattered when Joseph Cotten paints a picture of her dressed in a WAVES uniform for a Navy Department recruiting poster. Well, she’s flattered until she realizes it’s a cheesecake pose.

Her teenage daughter, played by Jennifer Jones, strolls with her boyfriend, played by Robert Walker, and puts his overseas cap on her head. She says thoughtfully, “If I were three or four years older I could be a WAVE.”

Walker displays no sense of shock or disapproval, bemusement or condescension, only nods, “Yeah, or a WAC.”

These are supposed to be nice, Middle Class Americans, church-going and righteously avoiding the black market, and do not hoard SPAM. If they act as though women in the military are no big deal, then it must be a swell thing.

But my favorite moment is when, in the crowded train station, we observe a little girl making friendly conversation with an Army MP.

“My mommy’s a sergeant!”

That, as they say, makes it official.

Thanks for joining me on this quick-march through women in the military in World War II and the Korean War-era films.

At ease.

Come back next week when we get ready for A Very Gumshoe Christmas.

Skirts Ahoy - 1952

2012-12-10T06:59:00.000-05:00

“Skirts Ahoy” (1952), just the title tells us we’re in for a bit of frothy fun on the waves. Or with WAVES, but this musical lightweight still deceptively carries a few undercurrents (pun intended) of serious reflection on its era.

Esther Williams, Joan Evans, and Vivian Blaine play a kind of female version of “On the Town”, which, though that featured three sailors in a musical, had nothing to do with the Navy. The girls get a scene of being on the razzle in Chicago looking for dates just as the boys were looking for a good time in New York City. Though their adventure ends with Esther Williams punching out some WACs for hitting on her guy (off camera of course), it begins, unpromisingly, with a visit to a tearoom.

Such is the difference in exploring women’s experiences in the military as opposed to men. The barroom brawl (even an off-camera one) was meant to be parody. The tearoom was meant to show what nice WAVES did on leave.

The ladies begin as civilians, and as was typical of the early 1950s, begin as prospective brides or bride wanna-bes. Joan Evans, who had a very brief career, most of it on television, is a bride left at the altar by a runaway groom. Her funny little brother suggests she join the Foreign Legion to forget. She settles on the WAVES.

Esther Williams is in the opposite predicament. She’s the one doing the jilting, escaping from her wedding ceremony in her bridal gown to seek a solution to her restless spirit. Of the three, she takes to the Navy life with the best attitude.

Vivian Blaine, in between her Broadway smash “Guys and Dolls” and her film appearance in the same roll in the 1954 film of the same name, continues to play a variation on Miss Adelaide here. She’s a sweet, dumb blonde with an adenoidal voice, who works in a dress shop, dismayed to find her boyfriend has just joined the Navy. It does not seem to occur to her that he might want to get away from her.

In the back room of this dress shop are seamstresses bent over sewing machines. Pleased to see one of them is Kathleen Freeman, one of my favorite bit actresses, who, dubious about Vivian’s attachment to the guy, delivers the line in Brooklynese, “Please don’t take it personally, but you’re a schmo.”

Off they all go to the Great Lakes Training Center, where we don’t really see much training. I like the bugler who wakes them up, in a bathrobe and pin curls with the hoarse caterwauling, “Hit the deck!”

Lovely Margalo Gillmore, more known for her stage work than film career, plays the female officer in charge, more a den mother figure than a boss. She says things like, “There, there, my dear,” and calls them children.

The five DeMarco Sisters have also joined the WAVES, and they get to exhibit their very close harmony singing on a couple occasions.

The ladies tell us they are tired from marching, though we don’t see much of it. We do, however, get to watch some of their training in swimming. Being an Esther Williams movie, you know she’s never going to be far from a pool. We may smile at our first glimpse of her in the water, looking askance at a pair of inflatable water wings — because, in order to stay with her buddies, she has not told her superiors that she’s already swum in several other movies and had been a member of the 1940 US Olympic Swim Team.

Later on she gets to do her thing without any restraint; first with two small children, Russell and Kathy Tongay, who are clearly Aquaman’s kids. I confess, though, I am uncomfortable with long scenes shot underwater. I find myself holding my breath.

When I regain consciousness, lying on the floor, staring up at the underside of the coffee table, I realize I’ve been watching too many Esther Williams movies.

I think her best swimming partner is the inflatable pool toy. He’s a charming companion. She drops her skirt and swims in her skivvies in this scene. I think her nighttime swim with the pool toy is the most romantic and erotic scene she ever did. I laugh as I type this. But it’s true.

Her cutest number is non-swimming, but still all wet. She sings a camp show number called “What Makes a Wave?” A whole lotta water, we are told, is what makes a wave, and she and her backup singers get slapped in the face with wet mops, squirted with water pistols, and at one point, Esther gets a bucket of water dumped on her while she’s singing.

I don’t know how she felt about this scene, but she really looks like she’s having a lot of fun. I’d like to know how many takes it took to get the final version. We see her great comedic timing in this movie; unlike her swimming films, she is not presented as a kind of mythic goddess.

This film may invariably be called “dated”, and of course, it is. However, I can’t think why anyone would dismiss this movie (or any for that matter) because it is dated. Being dated is what tells us more about an era than a movie that is so-called “timeless”.

We move, startlingly, from prospective brides to shy Joan Evans (who was only about 17 or 18 here) telling off her returning fiancé with a remarkable speech of self-empowerment, “You didn’t make a fool of me when you left me at the altar. I was a fool for being there in the first place!”

He later joins the Navy to follow her.

Esther “picks up” Barry Sullivan in a bar (whom she does not know is the camp doctor, because he is out of uniform) and we have a cute scene of role reversal where she picks the food, the wine, and defends his honor against a trio of unladylike WACs. We last saw Barry Sullivan in "Tension" (1949). She will spend the rest of the film pursing him, but he rejects her. He sees from her file that she only wants something if she can’t have it, then changes her mind once she’s got it. At the end of the movie when he confronts her with this, she acknowledges she is assertive and, instead of bending to his will, admits she will never change.

We leave it to Margalo Gillmore, at the final graduation speech to drag us back into the sexual stereotypes of the 1950s by congratulating the women that they have learned to grow beyond the typical cattiness of their sex, that they have proved that women are not “the natural enemies of each other.” Real life women already knew that; it’s the movies that stereotyped them.

Other scenes in this movie only raise tantalizing questions. For instance, at the USO dance, a platoon of drill team members performs close-order marching in a very jazzy and precise routine. Drill teams such as this have long been a part of the military, where competitions are held among them. This unit, however, is made up entirely of African-American women. One wonders why we are being shown an all-black unit in a military that was desegregated by President Harry Truman’s Executive Order in 1948? It is true that it took a few years for all units to be desegregated; it didn’t happen all at once. Were there still all-black units in the WAVES in 1952?

These women, by the way, were not real WAVES, despite their proficiency at close order drill. They were dancers and actresses, and according to IMDb, one of them was Juanita Moore, best known for “Imitation of Life” (1959), who we last saw here in “Witness to Murder” (1954); and Arte Young, who had a role in the “The Bronze Buckaroo” (1939) which we mentioned here in our tribute to Herb Jeffries.

Billy Eckstine’s appearance here as a nightclub singer is likely due more to his great popularity at the time than any erstwhile intention to film this movie with a racially diverse cast. Musician, bandleader and singer, Mr. Eckstine was the first African-American singer of romantic ballads to find success among the general public. Nevertheless I could not help but notice he did not look at any white female patron in the nightclub where he sang. Usually a singer throws out a line or two to his audience, to involve them in the song. He looks blankly forward, not interacting with his all-white audience. Who told him not to, I wonder?

We also have, in this hodgepodge of images, a scene where Keenan Wynn, as an announcer, and Debbie Reynolds and Bobby Van, all portraying themselves, sing and dance at the USO show.

And when Esther goes to the movies, we see on the marquee of the theater “The Great Caruso” is playing. A little cross-publicity never hurt any studio.

WAVES stands for Women’s Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service, disbanded when women were integrated into the Navy in the early 1970s.

In all this, we get very little of what it’s like for women in the Navy in 1952. The Korean War is going full-tilt, but it’s not mentioned. Women were not allowed in combat areas or aboard combat ships anyway, so it’s not likely their overseas assignments would take them anywhere near danger.

We are given no messages to convince us that women have a place in the military, such as we saw in “Keep Your Powder Dry” or “Cry Havoc”, though Barry Sullivan does admonish Esther Williams about behaving badly in public, “People are still prejudiced about women in the service, as you know…”

But we have the feeling that who could complain about women in the military when it seems like the girls are having such a good time at this college sorority/summer camp/ debutante cotillion in uniform?

Leaving their half-eaten lollipops around for poor “Pops” the plumber to dislodge from the swimming pool pump.

By the way, we have an Innocent Southern Gal in this one too, but amusingly, she is referred to only and never seen.

Esther, as she relates in her autobiography, did have a lasting impact on the WAVES. She spurned their ugly and impractical swimwear and demonstrated to the Secretary of the Navy a modern latex version that offered greater comfort and support. The Navy ordered 50,000 suits.

Come back Thursday for our final look at women in the service with Rosalind Russell’s manic turn as a WAC in “Never Wave at a WAC” (1953).

Cry Havoc - 1943

2012-12-06T05:48:00.000-05:00

“Cry Havoc” (1943) transports us to a strange world. We cling to what little seems familiar, and are forced to either bravely face the terrifying unknown, or just close our eyes to it, waiting to submit to it when it catches up with us. A compelling stage play/film, it teeters between the rigid spatial boundaries of theatre, and the anything-is-possible artifice of Hollywood. Most unusual, we are given a glimpse at world where the courage and fortitude of women are honored, and men are largely absent or helpless victims dependent on the women.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and we continue our four-part look at women in the armed services, begun here Mondaywith “Keep Your Powder Dry” (1945). Where that film shows us the sorority atmosphere of basic training for the new Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in the clean and orderly world of stateside army posts, “Cry Havoc” drops us in the maelstrom of the Philippines during the Japanese invasion.

Even the title card means business. I won’t go play by play, but there’ll be some spoilers.

Only two of the women here are military. Fay Bainter and Margaret Sullavan play Army nurses. The rest of the ladies are refugees, most Americans, two British, and one Filipina, from towns farther north who were evacuated to the last American stronghold on Bataan. They become volunteers at the jungle hospital.

It’s a varied lineup. Marsha Hunt as the head volunteer with hospital experience to show them the ropes. Ella Raines is a glamour girl, Ann Sothern is a smart-mouthed dame down on her luck who loves to give the others a hard time. Joan Blondell is the sassy ex-stripper with the heart of gold.

We have the usual innocent Southern Gal played by Diana Lewis, with the most adorable dimples. She reminds me of Judy Holliday. Wife of William Powell, it was her last film before she retired from acting.

Two sweet, gently bred British sisters played by Heather Angel and Dorothy Morris, both students of art and music seem more suited to a rose garden than this hell on earth.

Connie Gilchrist is on board as the camp cook, dishing out sympathy and lots of rice.

Young Robert Mitchum has a brief spot as a wounded soldier, but the men are the little seen in this film.

However, it’s worth noting that among the men they treat in the camp hospital are several Filipino soldiers. The most intriguing male is one we don’t see, except in a distance shot. He is the lieutenant in charge of the communications shack. We see his name painted roughly on his crude office door in the hut where the women relay radio messages. Ann Sothern is interested and visits him in his lair, but learns she has competition for his affections from Margaret Sullavan.

It’s not really Sullavan’s film, despite the top billing and the character of central importance that she plays — the head nurse in charge of the women. Her screen time is intermittent; we spend a lot of time on the back stories and interactions between the other women. However, Margaret Sullavan captures our attention, and our understanding, every time she pops her head in the room.

Miss Sullavan brings her long stage training with her; you can see she does not play to the camera, rather she plays off her other scene partners. That’s a trait among stage-trained actors. Also, because she is stage-trained, she uses her whole body to express herself, whereas screen actors of the time with no stage experience tended to emote more with the face, which was sort of a technical requirement, and style then, anyway.

She did not make many films, as she really preferred the theatre, but what a great thing it is watch her move from patient to patient when we first see her. Slumping, slouching, no rigid graceful posing from her. Nothing seems choreographed. Her movement is completely natural and appears unrehearsed. A quick, impatient glance at a chart, a darting glance around the hospital hut. When she smiles briefly at a patient or a fellow worker, it is a flash, a sparkling nanosecond of some self-deprecating mirth that tells us there is a great deal of charm and a possibly a goofy sense of fun buried in this overworked, intensely focused woman.

We would never know she is dying of malignant malaria.

As we mentioned in the previous post, “Cry Havoc” has many similarities with “So Proudly We Hail”, but Sullavan is a far more stressed leader than the always-elegant Claudette Colbert, and her charges are far more ill-equipped to this life of service.

Though we have scenes of soldiers lying in the dirt by the hospital tent awaiting treatment, and huts in the background ablaze from the latest bombing run by the Japanese, most of the movie takes place in the underground bunker that serves as the women’s dorm. Crude bunk beds around a common table, a few lanterns hanging from the log roof. We can sense the dankness and chill in this room, even in the heat of the jungle.

The women have their personal struggles to overcome: the need to conquer fear, the need to feel useful, the need to give back, the need to prove themselves. Ann Sothern comes the farthest in her character development. She starts out as rather sullen and bitter, ever spoiling for an argument. A poignant scene where she must collect the personal belongings of deceased patients and catalogue them for shipment back to their families in the States helps to knock the chip off her shoulder a little. She is not completely converted to a mensch until the very end when she and Sullavan face some hard truths.

The younger British girl gets to give “The Speech” about why we are fighting, in a soft-spoken, cultured voice that is notable for its matter of factness in someone who seems to have had such a sheltered life. She talks of the survival of the free people of the world, and her words may echo in our heads when she is lost during a bombing raid. She is found, days later, half crazed in a tangle of dead bodies.

Her anguished older sister can hardly bear the heartache, but amazingly rebounds with a warrior’s enthusiasm when she grabs an anti-aircraft gun from a wounded soldier and shoots down an enemy plane (off camera). She glows when she describes her deed to the others, like she’s won a carnival prize. If this were an English foxhunt back home, we might say she had been “blooded”. No one ceremoniously smears blood on her forehead, but it seems as if someone should.

Just as in “Keep Your Powder Dry” we have another scene of water nymphs bathing in the river. No Cokes to drink here; just strafing from the enemy that results in the murder of one the girls.

We get “The Speech” again at the end of the film, this time a hard-as-nails version from Ann Sothern, who uses a map of the Pacific as a visual aid for her show-and-tell. No dewy words of inspiration this time. The ladies, by now, understand full well that the only way to win the war is to make the enemy work twice as hard for every inch of ground. “A delaying action,” Claudette Colbert put it in “So Proudly We Hail,” but here the reality is put more bluntly. The Japanese are getting closer and closer to their position, and there is no longer any hope of escape, or of reinforcements to wage battle. They are starving, the hospital is overrun with wounded and malaria cases, and General MacArthur left for Australia. The ladies will be killed or taken prisoner in a matter of days. The most noble sacrifice they can make for the war effort is to just wait for it.

Earlier Miss Sullavan gave them the chance to escape to Corregidor (not much of an escape it would prove to be anyway), but they all refused. As Joan Blondell replies, “A man died in my arms tonight, and now I wouldn’t leave if I knew it was my last day on earth.”

Sullavan remarks to Fay Bainter, “They’re Americans. They believe in happy endings.”

Miss Bainter responds quietly, “I’m an American. I don’t.” She is the picture of a career nurse, an officer in the Army who has seen too much to believe in miracles, but carries on with thoughtful, gentle stoicism.

The Japanese invasion of their camp is dramatically effective, the more so because we do not see caricatured villains. We see nothing; we only hear single rifle shots, snipers in camp. The ladies, gathered in their underground quarters, perk their ears and listen. They know what it is. Then a sudden burst or two of machinegun fire, and they know the enemy is “mopping up” outside. Then a shout, an order for them to identify themselves and come out.

That the movie ends with the slow procession of tired, dirty females, arms raised, quietly submitting to a fate they’ve been imagining for the last hour and a half is a tribute to all the times this actually occurred in war zones all over the world, to women all over the world. I suppose we can’t blame Hollywood for throwing in a few strains of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as former enemies and romantic rivals Ann Sothern and Margaret Sullavan walk out together. Most of the film has been fairly schmaltz-free.

Another scene admirable for its restraint — when the male lieutenant is killed, and we have already been told that he is really Margaret Sullavan’s husband, she quietly enters his crude office and we see his world without him in it. Maps, documents, radio equipment — and his officer’s cap left on a shelf. Sullavan, a picture of stunned grief and stillness, regards his cap. It represents him in this matriarchal jungle world where men are hardly seen.

There could have been a greater dramatic exploitation of the story of these women, and would be if this were filmed today — however, that’s one of the elements of this movie that makes it refreshing. But it was not the director’s forbearance keeping the movie from showing more fear, more vulnerability, more skin, more torture, more rape. It was the studio’s delicacy in fearing to offend the public.

What we do see are a group of women we never really get to know well, but we know enough. Sullavan is an intriguing mystery. The others are too weary and too wary of attachment with death hovering in the bush to get to know each other that well. We settle for a few common gripes, and a few helpless tears. We never really get to know what happens to them when they leave the bunker at gunpoint.

Maybe it’s better that way.

Though we are presented these women as flawed but ultimately grand girls representing the best of civilized democratic nations — most of them American, we are not given the same idealistic message we see in so many other war films of the period. Instead, we are haunted by what we see, and if that’s not a reason to buy war bonds, I don’t know what is.

Also refreshingly absent are condescending platitudes about women taking only gender-appropriate roles in the war. These kids may have arrived in summer frocks with Panama hats or picture hats with floppy brims, but they slip into over-sized coveralls and spend the rest of the film with their hair tied back and a constant grimy film of perspiration on their faces. No crisp uniforms for them, they look like garage mechanics.

The well-trained WACs of “Keep Your Powder Dry” only wore such outfits when they were fixing the general’s car on the post. Even if they serve overseas, will likely never find themselves close enough to the battle lines to be overrun by the enemy.

Both films, along with “So Proudly We Hail”, for any flaws we see at the distance of more than six decades, lend dignity to their varied representations of women in war. Next week, we’ll take two films made in the early 1950s, “Never Wave at WAC” (1953) and “Skirts Ahoy” (1952). Though the Korean War was going on at the time, these films do not present a serious discussion of women serving their country, but rather take a lighter tone. The first is a comedy, the second a musical. We might never know we were at war.