Skeins of Thought

The Letter (1940): A Lie Is As Good As the Truth...

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:43:00 +0000

Just in time for a Turner Classic Movies' broadcast of The Letter (1940) early Sunday morning at 12:00 AM (ET) on January 22nd, 2012, a guest contributor to this blog has come along to rekindle our fascination with this compelling W. Somerset Maugham story of the power of obsessive love, duplicitous motives, and racism in colonial Malaysia during British control of the region.

The guest author, CineMaven aka Theresa Brown, is a filmmaker and a longtime member of the TCM Message Boards (and a striking figure in one of TCM's distinctive interstitials called "My Retrospective: A Fan's Memories"). In the paean below, she shares her thoughts about one of her all-time favorite films, the 1940 Warner Brothers classic, The Letter, directed by William Wyler. The second American version of the Maugham story was adapted by Howard Koch, and the movie received seven nominations for Academy Awards.* It won none of them, but has earned a spot in the heart of every classic film aficionado for its marvelous synthesis of mood, story, performance, and craftsmanship that still lingers in our collective memory, no matter how familiar it has become. In 2009, Theresa even had the opportunity to introduce this W. Somerset Maugham adaptation on-air, with Turner Classic Movie's Robert Osborne, when she was chosen as one of fifteen guest programmers to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of TCM.

Regardless of whether you have seen The Letter (1940) only once or many times, I think that Theresa's passionate, amusing and observant insights into this movie may make you a fan of her unique voice as well as this cherished product of the studio era. I hope that regular readers enjoy this personal take on a fine film, and thank you so much, Cine! ~ Moira

A LIE IS AS GOOD AS THE TRUTH...IF YOU CAN GET SOMEONE TO WRITE
IT IN A LETTER.

by Guest Blogger, CineMaven

“THE LETTER.” I’ve had many viewings of this classic film since I was a teenager. But there was something about seeing it this time, that made me see the movie differently. The Letter (1940) keeps me bone-straight in my seat as I watch the slow peeling of a woman scorned; from the cry of self-defense...to...the release of the confession. Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie is layered and peeled like an onion. But don’t cry for her. It’s a movie about watching a murderer. Is there any need for a spoiler alert here? I’m pretty sure EVERYONE has (or SHOULD have) seen this great classic.

In this movie, Leslie is fawned over during her plight after being arrested for the murder of a man who’s tried to rape her. The colonial cop (Bruce Lester) who questions her is enamored, her husband (Herbert Marshall, naturally) is protective; even the jail matron says: “It’s a different place since Mrs. Crosbie’s been here...it’s a shame she has to stay here atoll.” Uh....she murdered someone folks, albeit in self-defense. Western Caucasian privilege??? I daresay. During Leslie’s statement of events, she (Bette Davis) does sound veddy veddy stiff-upper-lipped and actressy (guess that’s why I luv her); she uses pregnant pauses for effect. The only person NOT falling all over himself for her is her lawyer. He is attorney Howard Joyce, played by James Stephenson. He has a rather cold, and hard look; like a handsome, taller version of Ronald Colman. Here’s a leading man worthy of acting opposite the Warner Queen. He stands toe-to-toe with her. As her lawyer, Joyce asks questions that casts doubt on the veracity of her story. He talks to the arresting officer and asks him if attacking a woman sounds like the dead man’s m.o. since he seemed to be a ladies’ man.

Joyce even says to Leslie: “When I was looking at Hammond’s body...it seemed to me that some of the shots were fired after he was lying on the ground.” There’s just enough questioning to give us pause. There’s no doubt that the privilege of race & class gets you perks. A car’s headlights and Max Steiner’s music introduces us to Mrs. Hammond (played by the great Gale Sondergaard), the dead man’s Eurasian wife.

Above: Gale Sondergaard as Mrs. Hammond

She’s dressed in black...somber, stately, handsome, elegant. You get a whiff of what the plantation crowd thought of the inter-racial marriage between one of their own (Hammond) and Sondergaard’s character when you hear Leslie’s lawyer say: “Strange that Hammond was able to keep his life so hidden; that gambling house he owned and especially the Eurasian woman. I think it was finding out about her that turned opinion so completely against him.” Leslie’s description of Mrs. Hammond is none too flattering: “Horrible! She was all covered with gold chains and bracelets and spangles. Her face like a mask.” But that’s to be expected. After all, what mistress compliments the wifely rival?

William Wyler gives Sondergaard the close-up camera shot of her career, (IMHO). Wyler has his cinematographer Tony Gaudio place his camera below, looking up at her as she closes her dark eyes brimming with tears at seeing her husband’s dead body. And Max Steiner’s music for her is great...heart-aching, quite sympathetic. Yep...it’s the 1940’s folks and in case you need a little help knowing how to feel, Maxie’s here to help us. And I LOVE IT.

Above: Victor Sen-Yung as Ong Chi Seng

How are Asians treated in this film? Aaaah...if only it were 2012 and NOT seventy odd years ago. The Asian clark , Ong (portrayed by Victor Sen-Yung who, if I’m not mistaken played Hop Sing on tv’s “Bonanza”) plays his role in a bit of a subservient manner (ever-smiling, walking in small, quick mincing steps to keep up with the big Lawyer Man). I love that Ong KNOWS he’s holding ALL the cards. He is soft -spoken while sticking the dagger in oh so gently and deferentially into his boss' guts. I’m wondering something. I wonder what the role would’ve looked like had Keye Luke played it. I always thought he was much more of a hepcat, i.e. his role in the Charlie Chan/Dr. Kildare series. I also muse about what the great Anna May Wong would have brought to the role of Mrs. Hammond. I wondered what the film would feel like if Hollywood had allowed an Asian actor to just play the role like their normal selves. There’s a slight touch of comic relief exhibited by character actor Willie Fung. Boy, does he ever have a cackling laugh. He could rival Dracula’s Renfield. Truth be told, he’s not really comic relief. In fact, it is he who is laughing at the crazy Westerners, and his laughing releases just a smidgen of tension in the letter exchange scene. But who am I kidding...it’s Bette Davis who owns this film.

It’s Bette Davis whose performance is riveting and makes me watch this over and over and over again. At first, her Leslie comes off veddy arch, veddy proper and wounded; veddy mannered and actress-y. But slowly she reveals her true self and the truth of events. She acts a bit coquettish during her visit with her lawyer. Being in jail has been a bit of a vacation for her, she says. (HUH??) She fiddles with a flower on her blouse as she speaks to her attorney. She has a self-assured answer for everything until her lawyer brings up...this...letter. It’s all in those Bette Davis eyes. She needs time to remember (read lie). She unflinchingly, unwaveringly says: “Howard I swear to you, I did not write this letter.” Well...a lie is as good as the truth if you can get someone to believe it. She makes total eye contact, defiantly; she needs him to believe her. She squeezes her handkerchief for subtle emphasis. If anything, this movie teaches you one thing: you can lie to your husband...you can lie to your Priest/Pastor/ Minister or Rabbi. But you’d BETTER NOT lie to your lawyer. Her lawyer reads the letter. Steiner’s music underscores the words Leslie has written:

“Robert will be away for the night. I absolutely MUST see you. I’m desperate and if you don’t come I won’t answer for the consequences. Don’t drive up.”

Below: The confrontation between client (Bette Davis) and counsel (James Stephenson):

So? On the face of it...big deal. When Joyce starts hammering at her about how the trial can go against her favor, she falls into a dead faint; the typical ploy of a movie heroine trying to avoid the truth and stall for time. Look at the tactics Leslie uses to wheedle out of this: she mentions how all of this will affect her husband. After her faint, she’s laying on the prison hospital table; we don’t see her face at all. The camera's behind her. But her hand leans against the wall...and it’s her hand that does the acting. Funny how I never noticed that the first twenty years I’ve seen this film:

Leslie: “I’m afraid I’ve made rather a mess of things.”
Howard: “I’m sorry.”
Leslie: “For Robert, not for me. You’ve distrusted me from the
beginning.”
Howard: “It’s neither here nor there, Leslie.”
Leslie: “Who’s got the letter?”
THE MUSIC STOPS
Howard: “Hammond’s wife.”
Leslie: “Oh.”

MUSIC BEGINS AGAIN

Leslie: “Are you going to let them hang me?”
Howard: “What do you mean by that Leslie?”
Leslie: “You could get the letter.”

I tell you, watch her hands...listen to the music...soft & seductive. The music stops and starts. She starts to spin the web to ensnare her lawyer. Since she can’t out and out seduce him, she plays on his sense of loyalty; uses the “Husband-Card.” She also uses a good dose of guilt: “Poor Robert, he doesn’t deserve it. He’s never hurt anyone in his life. He’s so good and simple and kind and he trusts me so. I mean everything, EVERYTHING in the world to him. This will ruin his life.”

The lawyer decides to betray himself because he DOES have feelings for Leslie...subtle and unspoken. But Leslie needs to stick the knife into his ethics just that much more. Why. Because this is what lethal ladies do: “You won’t have to show Bob the letter, will you? And after the trial?...but if he loses his trust in me, he loses everything.” She ups the ante. And I think he knows he’s being had but good. She’s leaning against the wall, looks so vulnerable. She’s baited the hook with his friendship for Bob (Herbert Marshall) and landed a whale of a fish. “I don’t want you to tell me anything but what’s needed to save your neck,” he says a touch contemptuously. The Lawyer sells the Hubby on the idea of paying for this incriminating letter.
He’s cool, calm and collected; very matter-of-fact in his approach. Joyce has sold his ethics and his friend down the river in one fell swoop. And when Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall) buys the letter (and the lie) Joyce wipes his brow--WHEW!! in silent relief.

Above: "I don't think it's right...but I think it's expedient," Attorney Howard Joyce (James Stephenson) tells his client's concerned husband (Herbert Marshall) as he convinces him to buy "the letter" from Hammond's Asian widow.

I love the moment where the Lawyer and the bartender talk at crosspurposes. “Too bad rubber won’t grow in a civilized climate,” says the bartender, thinking it’s the heat that’s making the lawyer sweat. FADE OUT. We know why Joyce is sweating. He’s got a secret from his friend. And he’s broken the law, somberly jeopardizing his career for Leslie. The guilt is torturing him. He looks snazzy in his white dinner jacket, his gaze at her is cold and hard in their forever interrupted “moments.” Leslie spins her web as intricate as her lace needlepoint work.

Oh goody, THE BIG SCENE: where Wife and Mistress meet. Aaah, that’s always good for fireworks a la “The Women”. Leslie in white lace, looks positively virginal as she goes before the Altar of the Wife. The chimes start...the proprietor smokes his hash. Leslie, Joyce and Ong wait with baited breath as though waiting for “The Thing” to burst through the door. Howard takes a deep breath. Leslie looks innocent. Mrs. Hammond (Gale Sondergaard) walks up to the beaded curtain. The camera dollies towards the curtains that the Widow stands behind. She hesitates and then parts the beaded curtain and walks through. Wonderfully dramatic. There’s the soft tinkle of chimes prevalent throughout the scene. The camera again is in the position of looking up at her. (Great camera movement).

Below: Mrs. Hammond (Gale Sondergaard) confronts Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis):

She towers over the camera and looks down. She looks down at us. I’m telling you, Sondergaard does-not-blink! Wyler’s camera sets up Sondergaard in a very powerful position. The music echoes the chimes. The store proprietor giggles. Mrs. Hammond makes Leslie walk over to her to GET the letter. Mrs. Hammond pulls out the Letter and Leslie steps forward (into her key light, of course). Mrs. Hammond drops the Letter to the floor. She's the only person who's ever made Bette Davis drop to her knees. (...And I’m not counting “Jezebel”). When Leslie bends down and picks up the letter, the camera drops down with Leslie...we drop down with Leslie and humble ourselves before the black widow. She’s probably suffered racist slings and arrows from ‘the ruling class.’ Now it’s she who makes them crawl. When Bette bends down to retrieve the letter, Mrs. Hammond takes a deliberate step back. So much is said with that one step; Leslie is not worth Mrs. Hammond wiping her shoes on her. It is my favorite scene of all the movies I’ve ever seen. The music is a combination of both ladies’ themes (all the while Steiner’s musical chimes under-score everything) intermingling everything.

And listen, Leslie does not back down either. She, too, is unblinking. And she will do WHATEVER it takes to get back this incriminating piece of evidence. She is a survivor. She faces the wife of the man she had been having a torrid affair with AND killed. Could YOU do it? I couldn't. And ONLY Bette Davis can take her medicine like a man! (Wait...let me include Stanwyck in that too).

At the trial, Joyce’s summation about truth and justice sticks in his craw like a dagger. (And he’s got so many daggers in him, already). He pushes through, but has lost a bit of his soul in defense of his client. But any good lawyer worth his salt defends his client...even when he KNOWS she is guilty; even if he’s falling in love with her. The verdict: Not Guilty, of course.

The plot ups its ante a bit more. Robert, the Husband, wants to put this all behind them. And what man wouldn’t. D’ya think he thinks about packing it all in and going back to the States to get a desk job? Nooooooooooo. He wants to work another plantation with his money. Only thing is, their lawyer used up Robert’s entire funds for Leslie’s defense. And that crafty wily Mrs. Hammond picked the exact amount of money for that letter, that would deplete Robert’s bank account. When it’s revealed what his money was spent for, Davis hides no more. She’s honest...exposed...naked. It’s her one honest moment in the film. Steiner’s music is a low bass somber drum beat: “I was in love with Jeff Hammond. Been in love for years. We use to meet each other constantly once or twice a week. Not a soul had the smallest suspicion. Every time I met him I hated myself and yet I lived for the moment when I’d see him again. It was horrible. Never an hour when I was at peace, when I wasn’t reproaching myself. I was like a person who was sick with some loath-some disease and doesn’t want to get well. Even my agony was a kind of joy...Then I heard about that, that native woman. I couldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t believe it. At last I saw her. Saw her walking in the village with those hideous spangles, that chalky painted face, those eyes like a cobra’s eyes. But I couldn’t give him up...At last he turned on me. He told me he was sick and tired of me. That it was true about that other woman. That she was the only one that had ever meant anything to him. That he was glad that I knew because now I’d leave him alone. When he got up to go and I knew if he’d left I’d never see him again, so I seized the revolver and fired...there’s no excuse for me. I don’t deserve to live.”

To say the girl had it baaaad, might be an understatement! Her confession serves as a release/relief for her and a salvo to Robert’s ego...his idea of her...his idea of his life WITH her. Where do you go from there? She’s laid herself bare. He is stripped of any illusions of her. And what about Joyce? Her lawyer has feelings for her too. This couldn’t have been easy for him to hear either.

JOYCE: “He’s going to forgive you.”
LESLIE: “Yes. He’s going to forgive me.”

Friends come out to celebrate Leslie’s acquittal and perhaps even celebrate their own acquittal for being justified in their racism. It won’t work between Leslie and Robert. Part of the reason it won’t work is the Production Code could not let an adultering murderer live. And also, I think part of it is, being forgiven is probably the worst sin of all for Leslie. I’m thinking: how can she do honor to the memory of her lover by having her husband’s forgiveness and this ALL put under the rug and start anew (...with more rubber) as though nothing ever happened; as though she never was in love. Hmmm. It’s not that Robert has stopped loving Leslie. It’s just that this poor sap’s love will NEVER be enough. With the world at her feet...with freedom in her hands...with her welcome back into the community, (poor poor Leslie), ONLY Bette Davis could be honest enough...true to herself enough to throw it all away. Perhaps it was Leslie’s one selfless act to help Robert get over her, by sending him off hating her.

Above: Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall) tries to reconcile with his wife, Leslie (Bette Davis).

“With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.”

Her fate is sealed. We know how this will end.

I love this film. The entire cast plays their archetypes wonderfully. I love watching Gale Sondergaard- regal, silent, deadly but most of all I love watching Bette Davis weave and crochet her way to her doom under the moonlit Malaysian nite. I wonder if Ong was able to hang his own shingle somewhere?

* The Academy Award nominations for The Letter (1940) were as follows:

Best Picture: Warner Bros.

Best Director: William Wyler

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Bette Davis

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: James Stephenson

Best Cinematography, Black-and-White: Tony Gaudio

Best Music, Original Score: Max Steiner

Best Film Editing: Warren Low

`````````````````

What?? Nothing for Gale Sondergaard?

The Letter (1940) is readily available on DVD and is broadcast on TCM periodically. The trailer for this film, redolent of the suffocating tropical intrigue in this story and suffused with Max Steiner's intensely dramatic score, is posted below:

The Christmas Album: Eve Arden

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Our tour through Christmas past in La-La Land finds us in a rather unexpected spot in 1950. We think we know the woman above, though her true domesticated side was rarely given an outing in her film work. Those roles often found her playing everyone's favorite smart aleck--not a doting maternal figure. The trio in front of the holiday-themed hearth (complete with a Grandma Moses original) are found in the cozy, hilltop home of Eve Arden. They include Ms. Arden with her daughters Constance (left), and Liza (right), whom the actress adopted in the late '40s--on her own--as her eight year marriage to businessman Ned Bergen wound down. In reality, moments such as this were a more important part of Arden's life away from the cameras--as were the girls' eventual brothers Duncan and Douglas--especially after her 33 year marriage to fellow actor Brooks West began in 1951. Behind the scenes, she appears to have lived a richer emotional life, marked by creativity, long friendships, deep loves, and real laughs while maintaining a unique niche in filmdom--prompting one frustrated producer to remark that the "trouble with Eve Arden is that she's got the whole field to herself."

Reflecting on her priorities, Arden remarked that "I've worked with a lot of great glamorous girls in movies and the theater. And I'll admit, I've often thought it would be wonderful to be a femme fatale. But then I'd always come back to thinking that if they only had what I've had - a family, real love, an anchor - they would have been so much happier during all the hours when the marquees and the floodlights are dark."

That tall drink of water pictured above spent more than a few decades brightening the screen in 60+ movies, merely raising an eyebrow or slinging her sotto voce wisecracks over her shoulder in movies that were good, bad, and indifferent. While she rarely wrote her own lines, they truly belonged to her once she gave them her authoritative comic spin. Who else but Eve Arden could we imagine tossing off the observation in Mildred Pierce (1945) that "Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young"? When an erstwhile beau in another story asked if she had missed him when he was away, her character replied "No, I can always go to the zoo when you're away," without missing the implication or a beat. When faced with a dearth of male companionship, only Eve's skillful line reading could find a way to make the remark, "You know, I think I'll adopt a baby. A boy, about 21," sound funny, poignant, and yet naughty enough to deftly hint at the yearning and real loneliness inside that flippant wisecrack. Her characters may have been written too often in only one dimension, but her talent made them flesh and blood and welcome company.

Born Eunice Quedens in Mill Valley, California in 1908, the actress began honing her way with a withering look, a quip, and a level-headed approach to life during her childhood and early apprenticeship as an actress. The early divorce of her parents and absence of her father meant that Eve had grown up surrounded by hard-working, accomplished and beautiful women, led by her mother, who was a creative milliner and independent spirit. Fate had cast her early in life in the role of an only child who filled up the empty spaces in her heart and answered unspoken questions with her imaginative theatrical efforts long before stepping on a stage. At 7 years of age, the budding thespian was encouraged by her suffragette mother and aunt to pursue her muse. Little Eunice went on to win Women's Christian Temperance Union contest for her Italian dialect reading of "No Kicka My Dog," (no doubt this episode was highly incorrect, politically, though wouldn't it be fun to have seen her do this?) The girl also triumphed during a reading of a prologue for a production of "Snow White" staged by the Outdoor Girl Club in Mill Valley. After high school, she put off college (what would Miss Brooks say to that!), as Arden learned her trade with stock companies beginning at 16, and shared a stage with a very young Tyrone Power at the Pasadena Playhouse in the aptly named "Lo and Behold" in the early '30s. Spotted by producer Lee Shubert there, the actress was a bit of a smash in two revivals of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway (A lovelorn Bob Hope introduced the Vernon Duke-Ira Gershwin standard, "I Can't Get Started With You" singing it to Ms. Arden in the 1936 version of the Follies show). The sight of a jar of Elizabeth Arden cold cream and a character named "Eve" in a novel she was reading supposedly inspired her name change, after it was suggested that her true name had, well, a bit too many awkward syllables for someone seeking a place on a theater or movie marquee.

Her first big cinematic impression came while making snarky and accurate remarks about the theatrical life in Stage Door (1937), much of it ad libbed at the behest of director Gregory La Cava. Arden's adroitly aimed verbal arrows were all delivered with a white cat draped around her neck in that film. Eve actually liked the cat, named "Henry," until discovering that he earned more than she for the movie role.

As a very chic but sharp-tongued dame, at 5'8" with naturally reddish blonde hair and green eyes, Eve Arden's allure and superior intelligence were inevitably overlooked in the movies by leading men such as Clark Gable, though the simpatico pair almost pursued something further off the set--especially one time when Eve found herself being gently but ardently propositioned by the actor while making Comrade X (1940). (Common sense led her to say "No, thanks," but the two remained fond friends).

On screen, she occasionally landed a reluctant Otto Kruger (Cover Girl), a distracted Tom Conway (One Touch of Venus), or dueled verbally with a slippery Jack Carson (Mildred Pierce, My Dream Is Yours). It always puzzled some of us that more of these bright boys rarely acknowledged her appeal--or were they daunted by her honest tongue and her astute insights? In other roles Eve was the truth-telling pal of the heroine, guiding (and sometimes needling) magnetic but somewhat clueless leading ladies like Joan Crawford (Dancing Lady, Mildred Pierce, Goodbye My Fancy), Barbara Stanwyck (My Reputation), Ann Sheridan (The Doughgirls, The Unfaithful), and even Doris Day (My Dream Is Yours, Tea For Two). While Ms. Day's cast-iron innocence evoked much droll eye-rolling from the expressive character actress, Arden's implicitly non-virginal presence ensured entertaining moments amid the flossiness of the plot.

Eve also came to represent a possible alternative in life for female audience members who could not imagine themselves as one of those impossibly glamorous leading ladies. Later, people discovered Arden at center stage in the highly popular radio, television show and movie, Our Miss Brooks, when she played a put-upon, but mildly man-hungry high school teacher who was clearly brighter than just about everyone, but hampered a bit by her inherent niceness. Much later, a new generation discovered her again in the series The Mothers-In-Law, and as the harried principal in Grease (1978) and Grease 2 (1982).

Never at a loss for words, the actress created off-center characters who were too often doomed to singleton status while sporting a great wardrobe, (Eve later confessed that some movies, such as The Arnelo Affair (1947), were chosen only because of the chance to wear duds designed by Irene) and she often found her character's shifts odd, especially after script tinkering sought to build up her welcome presence, (In The Unfaithful (1947), her character goes from divorced harridan to vicious gossip to sincere, consoling cousin in less than 109 minutes--but the Travilla clothes were to die for!) Her characters usually had substantial career success for the time, often as advertising and publishing execs, and, of course, as blisteringly efficient right-hand gals. Still, most of them seemed to have had an emotionally impoverished or simply unknown private life.

Above: (Left to right) Husband and father Brooks West, children Liza, Duncan, Douglas, and Constance West with their mother, Eve Arden. (Douglas and Constance are seated on Molly B., the family's donkey).

Fortunately, that last bit of fate was not true-to-life for the actress, who became the mother of four, and the loving wife of her husband, Texas-born Brooks West, who had an extensive theatrical career and worked with his wife most notably as the DA in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). After buying a working ranch in Hidden Valley, California, the family moved there after their outspoken daughter, Liza, placed a request for "some flat ground" at the top of her Christmas list, explaining that her desire to ride her bike near her home was frustrated by her mother's admonition to never cycle around the circuitous roads near their hilly home in Beverly Hills. The solution was West Haven, a spread that had been previously owned by Ronald Colman and Benita Hume, forty miles away from LA's studios, where Arden and her husband reportedly observed the Christmas season by tying sleigh bells around the neck of their animals with bright red ribbon to share good cheer with all creatures, even those beyond the human inhabitants..

Soon, it gave her brood room to grow, and also became a refuge (at least for a time) for various animals as her fame grew to its height during the Our Miss Brooks years on television. Beset by reporters and columnists searching for copy about the newsworthy star, Eve confessed in 1957 that it was common practice on their farm to name their livestock after fellow celebrities.

"Those poor Gabor sisters," Eve mused one summer within earshot of a reporter, "It's so hot these days--and they have all that fur on them." Asked to expand on this cryptic remark, she explained that "Zsa Zsa, Eva and Magda Gabor are the names of our best sheep. And we had to shoot Marilyn Monroe. She was such a lovely heifer, too." The reason why the prize golden Hereford version of MM met this unfortunate fate? "She swallowed some baling wire, I think," was Arden's confession, ingesting far more than metal than she could carry in her three stomachs.

In addition to these starry names doled out among the family's menagerie, another lovely golden heifer was named after Monroe co-star, Jane Russell [Russell appears to have been the only actress who reportedly found this singular honor amusing, even flattering, strangely enough]. Yet another particularly lovely half-Angus, half-Hereford heifer was black "with a lovely white blaze down her face and unbelievable black eyelashes--Liz Taylor, of course. We named them because of their lush beauty, but," Eve confessed in her autobiography, "were embarrassed when several movie gossip columns picked it up."

Rounding out the star power extended to West Haven's residents were a trio of roosters, who were named after noted playboys Aly Khan, Porfirio Rubirosa, and Elvis Presley, respectively. Due to an excess of strutting and crowing, and a few exhausted-looking hens, the newly rural couple soon found homes for all but one of the creatures. Clearly, that gift for seeing the irreverently funny side of life never left Eve Arden--just as enjoyment of her continued celluloid presence never wanes in classic film. Regrets seem to have been few for the actress, who could shift so nimbly from riotous comedy (especially in 1944's frantic The Doughgirls, one of my favorite guilty pleasures, made delightful by Eve's warrior queen, Natalia Moskoroff, a sharp-shooting Soviet Sergeant and hero of the people) to the far too little known dramatic role as a bigoted, middle-aged wife that she played with such eloquent restraint in William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960).

Btw, in the spirit of the season, I can't resist sharing this example of imaginative entrepeneurship posted some time ago on the delightful blog, Six Martinis and the Seventh Art:

For more posts in The Christmas Album on this blog, please click here.

Sources:

Arden, Eve, Three Phases of Eve: An Autobiography, St. Martin's Press, 1985.
Carroll, Harrison, "Behind the Scenes in Hollywood: Christmas Spirit," Warsaw Times-Union, December 20, 1955.
Thomas, Bob, "Arden Closes Book on '3 Phases of Eve,'" The Palm Beach Post, May 29, 1985.
Wilson, Earl, "Eve Arden Shot Marilyn Monroe," The St. Petersburg Times, August 10, 1957.

The TCM Movie Morlocks Post -- A Toast to Robert Cornthwaite

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:59:00 +0000

My favorite mad scientist may just be Dr. Arthur Carrington, the hopelessly naive (but very dressy) ascot-, turtleneck-, and blazer-wearing trailblazer in The Thing From Another World (1951). Every time I see this movie set in a military and scientific observation station in the frozen North, I always wonder where this man's parka could be. Did he forget to pack it in a moment of absent-mindedness while in the lower 48? As played by character actor Robert Cornthwaite (seen above, with his head in a script), he is the embodiment of polished intellectual curiosity without a shred of common sense.

As far as I'm concerned, you can keep the other actors in this movie, (even George Fenneman, shortly before he became Groucho Marx's game show flunky and that big galoot lumbering around in disguise long before Gunsmoke premiered on television)--the star of this film is the rather epicene Doc Carrington, played to a fare-thee-well by the unsung Cornthwaite, a small man with a receding hairline, a sneaky wit, and a cold mien that suits this part perfectly. The authoritative actor, seething with a bookish hauteur, appears to have created a colorful backstory for his character--the erudite man of science, disheartened (and maybe bored out of his skull) is becoming increasingly unable to cope with the psychological demands of his daily grind after months penned up inside the bleak, fetid atmosphere of this frostbitten outpost where he languishes in the company of a passel of Air Force yahoos, a few doddering biologists, and some malleable underlings. The bottled-up, almost terminally frustrated Carrington appears to be a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as eventually becomes clear throughout the nimbly staged 87 minute movie. He's also quite a hoot....More on the Movie Morlocks blog at TCM

TCM Remembers

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:25:00 +0000

Turner Classic Movies puts together one of their very best features each December in honor of those filmmakers in front of and behind the camera who have passed away in the previous twelve months, and 2011 includes many visually eloquent moments in tribute to those who have died.

Since many readers have asked me how they can see certain years, I thought it might be helpful to compile those that are currently available online via youtube and other sites. Since videos seem to disappear and re-appear on youtube from time to time, I thought that putting these videos in one spot here on this blog might be helpful to those who enjoy them. Below are the video tributes from 2003-2011. Many of the beautifully done TCM Remembers spots for deceased individual filmmakers who have died in the last decade are available for viewing on youtube here. The original video is playing all this month on TCM between films and can be seen on their website as well.

Requiescat in Pace to all of those included and especially those who may have been overlooked.

TCM Remembers 2011:

The song that plays throughout this video is "Before You Go" by OK Sweetheart, with the lilting voice of Erin Austin evoking so much yearning and affection for those who have gone before us.

Earlier TCM Remembers Tributes Below...

TCM Remembers 2003:

TCM Remembers 2004:

TCM Remembers 2005:

TCM Remembers 2006:

TCM Remembers 2007:

TCM Remembers 2008:

TCM Remembers 2009:

TCM Remembers 2010:

The accompanying song for the 2010 tribute is "Headlights," written and performed by Sophie Hunger. Felt a definite pang when they showed Jean Simmons, John Forsythe and many of the other familiar faces and those who worked behind the scenes.

(Please note: No infringement of copyright of any images or videos is intended on this blog. If anything needs to be amended or removed, please contact me and I will be glad to comply.)

The Christmas Album: Boris Karloff and Ginger Rogers

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Diving into the social whirl to begin our 2011 tour through Christmas Past, Hollywood-style, we find ourselves sharing a moment with a courtly monster and a glowing chorine in December, 1932. Perhaps it was a contrivance of some publicity agent, but Boris Karloff and Ginger Rogers actually seem a bit enthralled with each other's company at this party in one of the darkest years of the Great Depression. Despite the grim economic news, things looked fairly rosy for these two hardworking if very different thespians. In darkened theaters for the next decades, both would bring their own unique comfort and joy to audiences longing to elude reality's blues.

A potent blend of common kewpie doll and bewitching fallen angel, Ginger, at 21, was already a veteran on stage and screen, after officially entering show biz when she won a Charleston contest at a mere 14. Texas-born Rogers, dressed above in a satin number with the curious gap in the sleeves, had sparkled in 1929's Top Speed, a musical confection that was first served to Broadway audiences on Christmas Day, when people still thought the stock market slump would turn around any day now. The following year in Girl Crazy, the warmth in Rogers' bubbly young voice was a balm for the listeners' soul, when the Gershwins chose her to introduce the achingly lovely But Not For Me, among other, now classic tunes. Appearing to critical and popular acclaim within the first ten minutes of the show, Rogers left the chorus behind for good, and even held her own onstage with that formidable musical steamroller, Ethel Merman. By 1929 Ginger began appearing in shorts and films and had already performed in 16 movies prior to being named one of WAMPAS Baby Stars of Tomorrow at the end of 1932.*

As I write this, I am watching Rogers and Astaire "dancing cheek to cheek" in Top Hat (1935) proving, once again, that they were a transcendent combination. On the December night of this party that brought her together with Boris for a moment or two, perhaps, no one quite expected Ginger, who was the wisecracking girl who made "Cigarette me, big boy" a catch phrase of the early '30s, to ever partner so elegantly with Fred Astaire, with whom she would glide through ten musicals, beginning with Flying Down to Rio in 1933. Then-film critic Graham Greene, in a back-handed compliment in his review of Follow the Fleet (1936), compared Fred Astaire to Mickey Mouse, since he believed that Fred and the antic Disney creation shared a "touch of pathos, the sense of a courageous and impromptu intelligence, [and] a capacity for getting into awkward situations..." However, when examining Rogers as a fitting partner to Astaire in Greene's cartoonish simile, he concluded that "...Miss Ginger Rogers will never quite attain Minnie's significance (she is too brazen and self-sufficing for the part)." The novelist-turned-film critic's impish remark missed something important in Ginger's often sharply drawn characters. When she stopped speaking--and rejecting Fred repeatedly in their films until the last reel--her pining romantic heart was unfurled on the dance floor--where movement and grace, in tandem with her partner, made all the world's trivial surroundings fall away, as the artificial and material world faded from view.

However, those justly celebrated films were complemented by some Ginger's more expressive and accomplished non-musical films including the justly famous ones: Stage Door (1937), Kitty Foyle (1940), The Major and the Minor (1942), as well as the less well known smaller films, (my favorites) such as The Primrose Path (1940), Storm Warning (1951), and I'll Be Seeing You (1944). I'd especially recommend the latter, which features one of the most touching depictions of a poignant Christmas season this side of It's A Wonderful Life--and a non-saccharine story line that still seems relevant today. Life away from the camera may have been a bit complicated for Rogers in part thanks to a stagemother--her greatest supporter, but one wonders how often Ginger's ties to her complicated five marriages. The generations that have followed neither know nor care about these details. These things of the moment all fall away when every few years, people seem to rediscover the graceful form, sassy humor, and real talent of Ginger Rogers all over again.

Looking back from the perspective of 1975, Rogers, who had kept working as long as she could, made a remark that might have been a reflection of this December event.

"The '30s were such a pretty time. I know it was a bad time for an awful lot of people, but not for me. I remember the whole atmosphere, the ambiance of the '30s with a glow because success was knocking at my door. I got to California in '32, just in time to do Gold Diggers of 1933, where I sang We're In the Money. It was a whole new life for me. I was excited about it. It was happy and beautiful and gay and interesting. I was surrounded by marvelous people, all the top people of our industry."

Today, the thought of Boris Karloff at Yuletide usually brings forth memories of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but in 1932, the forty-five year old actor may have been cherishing the moment after a decades-long struggle to find a spot in show business. Just a year before, Karloff had signed a contract with Universal and by December, 1932 was earning a princely $750 a week. The international success garnered after playing Frankenstein (1931) may be the reason most people knew his name, but The Criminal Code (1931), the Howard Hawks film starring Walter Huston, marked the struggling actor's real step out of the shadows--after 81 movies and almost a quarter century as an actor.

A man whose friends fondly remembered him awash in tears at the sound of a Christmas carol, the season was always something special to Boris. In another holiday season in another century, a nine-year-old better known as William Henry Pratt, the youngest of seven brothers and one stepsister, began his theatrical journey. In December of 1896 in a drafty parish hall in the London Borough of Enfield, the actor who became Boris Karloff portrayed his first role, a Demon King, wearing a black skull cap and tights for a Christmas pageant based on the Cinderella fairy tale.

This debut "launched" him, according to the actor, "on a long and happy life of being a monster" giving him, he said, "the fire" to pursue his lifework. The youngest of seven brothers and one stepsister who had planned a life in the foreign service for their baby brother left England for Canada shortly after leaving the University of London at about 24 years of age. He would not see his family again for 25 years, but returned to visit them as a world famous star. There he worked at manual labor whenever he was between jobs in touring stock companies, one of which eventually landed him on the West Coast. Beginning as an extra, Karloff is estimated to have appeared in 81 movies between 1919 and 1931, beginning as part of a crowd scene in a Pearl White film, The Lightning Raider.

In 1932 alone, the former William Henry Pratt had 8 films released, including The Mummy, Scarface, The Mask of Fu Manchu and The Old Dark House and the previous breakthrough year Perhaps that seemed like a lighter work load to him, since in 1931, he had appeared on screens in 12 movies, including two excellent character roles in The Criminal Code (a part that he had also played on stage) and in Five Star Final as well as that movie about the guys with the bolts in his neck. Many of these roles avoided the macabre and supernatural, but utilized his tall, beetle-browed, sinister presence and sometimes his mellifluous speaking voice in and gifted skills as a pantomimist). Most of his film roles, however, appeared to have been the exact opposite of his truly gentle nature--though surely something inside drove him to invest his many parts with some potent blend of the unknowable and the shockingly recognizable. Modestly, he once tried to tell an interviewer that he knew better than to resent his curious success:

"You could heave a brick out of the window and hit ten actors who could play my parts. I just happened to be on the right corner at the right time.

One always hears of actors complaining of being typed - if he's young, he's typed as a juvenile; if he's handsome, he's typed as a leading man. I was lucky. Whereas bootmakers have to spend millions to establish a trademark, I was handed a trademark free of charge. When an actor gets in a position to select his own roles, he's in big trouble, for he never knows what he can do best. I'm sure I'd be damn good as little Lord Fauntleroy, but who would pay ten cents to see it?"

We look back on Boris Karloff and Ginger Rogers as incredibly electric icons of the movies in which they shared their matchless presence with the audience. At the time when they soared, sometimes stumbled (see Boris' Mr. Wong movies and Ginger's Magnificent Doll sometime for evidence) and persevered for decades longer than many of their contemporaries, perhaps people occasionally took their presence for granted. For Boris, most of his films were mediocre or worse, and a few were exceptionally fine stories that we now call classic. As writer Ray Bradbury once put it, "We knew [Boris] would never hurt us, but only try to instruct us to the real ways of the world that is often nightmare...we had our long conversation with the man, didn't we? Starting when most of us were nine or ten and going right on up to [the year of his last film] when he made his last call, left his neat card, bowed, put on his hat and left...We all knew him, didn't we?"

Santa Claus, as interpreted by Mr. Pratt.

For those of us who have only met these two disparate figures flickering in black and white on the television screen as they showed us something sublime, here's a holiday toast to them--and our thanks.

*WAMPAS was the acronym for the Western Associated Motion Picture Advertisers who named promising newcomers in the film community from 1922 to 1934. In the year that Rogers earned the honorific, the other young performers in her company included some forgotten young ladies, but some whose name and screen work still resonate. They were Lona Andre, Lillian Bond, Mary Carlisle, June Clyde, Patricia Ellis, Ruth Hall, Eleanor Holm, Evalyn Knapp, Dorothy Layton, Boots Mallory, Toshia Mori, Ginger Rogers, Marian Shockley, Gloria Stuart, and Dorothy Wilson. Each is introduced in this video, hosted by football great turned actor Johnny Mack Brown and artist Will Pogany. (I love the way that Johnny Mack Brown asks to see one young lady's "pro-feel" in his aw-shucks accent):

Sources:

Gottlieb, Robert, Reading Dance: A Gathering of Memoirs, Reportage, Criticism, Profiles, Interviews, and Some Uncategorizable Extras, Pantheon, 2008.

Lindsay, Cynthia, Dear Boris: The Life of William Henry Pratt a.k.a. Boris Karloff, Limelight Edition, 1995.

Nollen, Scott Allen, Boris Karloff: A Critical Account of His Screen, Stage, Radio, Television, and Recording Work, McFarland, 1991.

Rogers, Ginger, My Story, HarperCollins, 2008.

Please click here for more samples of the annual Christmas Album entries on this blog.

Robert Osborne Taking a Break

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 22:16:00 +0000

Turner Classic Movies has posted the announcement below on the Main Page of TCM.com, their Member's forum, and on Facebook.

Robert Osborne

"Beginning today, Robert Osborne plans to take a short break from his TCM hosting duties for minor surgery, followed by a vacation. Osborne, who recently signed a multi-year agreement with TCM, plans to return to the network in three months and will also attend the first TCM Classic Cruise in December. He will continue to appear on TCM as part of several features, including the Guest Programmer series, The Essentials and Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film. Many of Osborne's hosting duties will be handled on a temporary basis by a number of special guests and friends of the network, including Robert Wagner (week of July 11), Jane Powell (week of July 18) and Tippi Hedren (week of July 25). Other guest hosts will be announced in the coming weeks."

I join the thousands of people who will miss Robert Osborne's personal warmth and love of films on the network during his recovery, and sincerely hope that his time away allows him to fully heal and to return to share his insights into classic movies with all of us again after a vacation. Have fun, Bob. You deserve it.

Update! Robert Osborne is returning on December 1, 2011!! After some delay in his reappearance as the host of TCM's evening and The Essentials programming, the welcome news is that Mr. O.'s familiar and welcome presence will again grace Turner Classic Movies. Look for the countdown dates until his return in the sidebar. Better yet, enjoy R.O.'s relaxed and rested announcement in the following video:

Thanksgiving: The Tony Sarg Years Recaptured on Film

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving. I hope that this holiday finds you warm, safe, and able to reflect on all the blessings, large and small, seen and unseen, that surround us throughout our lives. In the last year, perhaps our vision of those gifts has been dimmed by this world's many distractions and troubles. If that is the case for you, please accept this post as an encouragement today and in the days to come to see life with a somewhat lighter heart.

As regular readers of this blog may recall, puppeteer, filmmaker, author and artist Tony Sarg has fascinated me for many years. Sarg, whose mother was British and father was German, brought his unfettered imagination to the mechanized displays in the holiday windows of the Macy's Department Store in Manhattan, beginning in the '20s. Later his development of large-scale floating balloons led to his innovative creative contributions for that company's annual Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City between 1935 and 1941.

In the following newsreel footage, covering much of the Sarg years, many of his looming creations can be seen, along with the animated throngs of onlookers and parade participants who are captured on film as they reveled in the day and the wondrous sights before them. Those strange and fascinating floating figures include a few Disney characters (in their early forms), a "Red Indian" described by the British narrator in an unconscious if casually condescending manner, and hardworking paraders trying to fulfill the sometimes Herculean task of keeping their part of the parade in step.

Near the end of this second newsreel, President Franklin Roosevelt joshes a bit as he hosts a holiday feast. The last video of the three from 1941 seems charged with a certain poignancy, coming as it did literally days before America was plunged into war on Dec. 7, 1941. It also marked the last year that Tony Sarg's playfulness translated into an exhilarating spectacle, since he would die the following year at 62.

The last clip is also silent but is nonetheless interesting because it appears to be a home movie and gives a "street level view" of the event. The sometimes jerky camera movement and the unaware expressiveness of the people on the screen only made the moment more affecting for me. Seeing a young policeman trying to maintain order and yet still glimpse the parade, a gaggle of excited children unable to stand still as they watch the parade, and formally dressed men and women straining to catch all the sights, I couldn't help feeling that the transitory nature of this very human occasion almost dwarfs the giant figures passing by. What were the lives of these people like? What happened to each of them? Do any of them still remember that day?

Unanswerable but compelling questions, I suppose. In any case, enjoy, and thank you for stopping by:

More on Tony Sarg can be seen here in this earlier post detailing his life and work.

Directed By John Ford: A Conversation with April Lane

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:38:00 +0000

When he was asked about his own cinematic influences, the protean filmmaker Orson Welles famously replied, "I prefer the old masters; by which I mean: John Ford, John Ford and John Ford."

Today, if you go to your local library or a book store, you'll see an astonishing number of biographies of movie stars (a few are even worth reading), as well as some scholarly tomes and biographies devoted to the people behind the camera--especially John Ford, the director whose creative life spanned the silent and sound era, crafted an imaginary but powerful vision of Ireland, and shaped our idea of American history on film.* Surprisingly, as Ford devotee April Lane discovered, in the online world, there was no website devoted exclusively to the work, life, and ongoing events and influence generated by John Ford. Being a logical young woman, and one blessed (or is it vexed?) by her love of all things Fordian, she has created www.directedbyjohnford.com, a glorious, newborn site replete with images, info, and updates about the work and life of this filmmaker.

Who the heck is April Lane and what made her so enthralled with John Ford? I have gotten to know April over the last few years online and through her sparkling appearance as one of the thoughtful and enthusiastic TCM Guest Hosts in celebration of the network's 15th anniversary in 2009. She has impressed me as a strong and insightful individual, with a background in the performing arts and an eye for nuanced detail that goes far beyond the ordinary viewer.

April Lane

When spying one of April's new posts on the internet at various classic film message boards (especially at TCM and the SSO), her words are among those I try to read first since I know that her engaging style and take on things can provoke me to look at the familiar in a new way and introduce to me to new films and filmmakers. April's bright, informative and beautifully written messages reflect an intelligence and passionate understanding of the studio era individuals whose storytelling grace still resonates today. Whether she is writing about quiet men such as Gary Cooper and Robert Ryan, (two favorite topics), the underrated director Henry Hathaway's blend of the bucolic and the gritty, or our shared admiration for filmmaker Delmer Daves, this sophisticated lady never fails to entertain me with her queries, comments, and insights. Prior to encountering this cineaste, I had never encountered anyone who has nurtured such an interest and encyclopedic knowledge about the American Western. Now--fortunately for us--we can revel in the films, and often contradictory life of John Ford via the creativity of April's website.

M: April, thank you for consenting to answer a few questions about your new website. How long have you been working on this site and what was the most challenging aspect of this process technically and aesthetically?

April Lane: Moira, thank you for taking an interest, I'm very flattered. I've been working on the site for about two years now. The biggest challenge is the technical side, I'm no "techie" or computer-friendly person at all, so it has been like learning a foreign language. I have been going at it by trial-and-error, mostly error.

A Screen Shot of DirectedByJohnFord.com

M: Could you please explain why you chose to focus on Ford?

April: He's my favorite director and I thought since I couldn't find one single site devoted to Ford...why not? I feel pretty impudent to have done it. Happily, fools are given special place in Ford's cinematic world. :)

M: I have a feeling that far from thinking you were "impudent," Ford might have been understandably flattered--though he probably wouldn't let you know it! April, in beginning to construct your site, I noticed how much care you took to include links to other sources about Ford. Do you hope that www.directedbyjohnford.com becomes a kind of clearing house for information and discussion of Fordian topics?

A.: Yes that's my hope. I would like it to be one, central source where fans and students/researchers alike can go and get the most complete and accurate information on the director.

M: Do you think that your site might help people to look more carefully at certain of his films?

A.: I hope so. I believe you have to see his films more than once to really get the most out of them. They work on a purely entertainment level, of course, but it's with the closer look that they yield up their treasures.

M: Are there some themes that you find recur throughout Ford's long career?

A.: Several off the top of my head: the lone person who helps mediate or save others, who sacrifices for another. Intolerance is another theme. He often shows the basic need for community and family but also how those very things can tear a person apart. Then, too, Ford seemed interested in how and why people remember what they do. Out of that comes the whole fact vs. legend tussle, etc.

M: Excellent points, April. I find Ford's acknowledgment of that duality within most of us that you described to be one of his richest themes, informing his character's nostalgia, regrets and resignation when coping with memories of love and war. Is it the universality of those themes that cause Ford's Westerns seem to outshine his other movies in most people's minds?

A.: There are many reasons. It's convenient to slap on a label. Hitch was the "master of suspense", "I'm John Ford, I make westerns..." Maybe the director himself should takes some credit or blame for that. He defended the western as a genre at a time it was not taken as seriously as it is now by many critics. Further, there were times in his career when the only projects he could get financed were westerns. Keep in mind, there was a period from 1926 to 1939 where he made not one movie in the western genre and none of his Oscars were for westerns.

A key scene of violence in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

M: How do you regard Ford's approach to violence and war? Is it the force that animates all his characters?

A.: I'd say [the depiction of violence] is fairly complex. He seemed to hold within him the not unnatural conflict of a man with a traditional sense of duty vs. a sensitive and feeling artist. His war documentaries are interesting to me purely because they're geared to promote an emotional response from the viewer, giving "the unknown soldier" a face and the value of a human identity. And while his military characters unquestionably serve and sacrifice, pictures like They Were Expendable or The Horse Soldiers reinforce the loss and emotional costs above all...not to mention they depict skirmishes that are scarcely "victorious", making them something much more interesting than simplistic battle narratives. Ford also didn't he shy from depicting a myopic commander who costs the lives of most of the men under him in Fort Apache, made just three years after the war. He clearly wasn't anti-war, but he wasn't a war-monger, either.

Above: The memorial scene in the decidedly elegiac They Were Expendable.

M: Does Ford's approach to violence change substantially over time?

A.: He generally placed more emphasis on the reaction or result than on the act of violence. For instance, the source of the sniper shots that take down the men of The Lost Patrol are kept a mystery for the most part. It's the terror instilled that's the focus. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, violent acts forcefully take center stage but it is in what has been built on the violence that the heart of the story lies.

Above: The isolated soldiers in The Lost Patrol, facing an invisible enemy and their own limitations.

M: Do you remember the first John Ford movie that you were aware of consciously?

A.: Probably Mogambo, a movie I’ve always loved and feel is unjustly relegated to "studio entertainment" fare, but I admit that for years I thought of it only as a Gable-Gardner-Kelly film. It took a while for me to grow up enough to become aware of what made John Ford movies different, including those that seemed to be mere "assignments" to keep working.

M: How do you think that Ford has influenced those who succeeded him? Has the awe in which the director is sometimes held made people more familiar with his movies in depth?

A.: It's hard for me to answer the first part of your question, beyond acknowledging directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Coppola and Clint Eastwood have talked a good deal about Ford's movies and I do think that they have kept his name out there. It also seems whenever a new western gets made, they compare it to Ford. However, I think Ford also suffers to this day from over simplification, and is one of the most polarizing directors of the classic era. Many still fail to see the artistry in his work, beyond a few of the obvious titles.

M: Which individuals do you think influenced Ford's POV and the development of his skills as a filmmaker?

A.: As a filmmaker, his brother Frank, first and foremost. Much of what is credited to other directors was attempted by Frank, first. Travels Ford made in the 1920s, especially one to Europe and the UFA studios in Germany where he got to see F.W. Murnau at work were crucial. You’ll see the impact of Murnau's influence right up until 7 Women (Ford's last film, made in 1966).

Francis Ford and F. W. Murnau, two individual influences on John Ford's visual and storytelling style.

A.: As for point of view, his roots as an Irish immigrant’s son are probably the strongest influence of all. He started out an Irish Catholic with an instinct and understanding of common people, augmented by his travels and probing curiosity about people that lasted throughout his life. That’s why you’ll find an evenhandedness toward people of all cultures in Ford’s films. His depiction of German village life [in Four Sons] is not much different from Will Rogers' small town USA [in films such as Judge Priest and Doctor Bull].

Above: A transcendent moment from How Green Was My Valley (1941).

M: If you met someone who had never seen a John Ford movie (yeah, it is hard to believe, but we'd be surprised), are there 3-5 essential Fords you might recommend viewing? What makes each of them significant to understanding Ford?

A.: I’d probably recommend My Darling Clementine, Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Quiet Man, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath and if I can squeeze one more in, Pilgrimage.

Above: A figure in a Murnauesque landscape from Ford's Pilgrimage (1933).

M: Which movies of his are your favorites and why?

A.: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), My Darling Clementine (1946), The Searchers (1946), Mogambo (1953), 3 Bad Men (1926), The Horse Soldiers (1959), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and the Will Rogers films [Doctor Bull (1933), Judge Priest (1934), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)] are all great favorites. Mostly, I respond to the emotion in the films.

Above: Some of the "Fordian 'fools' and innocents" who appeared in many films as good guys, bad guys and quirky characters include (clockwise from the top): Victor McLaglen, John Qualen, Thomas Mitchell, Boris Karloff, Grant Withers, Edward Brophy and James Gleason (with Spencer Tracy), Lee Marvin with Strother Martin, Hank Worden, Francis Ford (the director's brother), John Carradine, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Donald Meek, and Alan Mowbray. Please click on collage to see close-up version.

A.: [I am especially drawn to Ford's] understanding for those who are marginalized, particularly via the supporting characters, the Fordian "fools" and innocents, and his amazing ability to show two opposing truths at once about family, community or any number things that are usually considered unequivocal. He was a complete artist, though his artistry is often hiding in plain sight.

Above: John Wayne, Woody Strode and James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

M: What myth about John Ford would you like to dispel?

A.: That his movies are simplistic, that they are concerned with idealizations of the past, etc. Or that he does not show any depth of understanding about women. Upon close examination, these impressions fall apart.

M: What obscure John Ford film would you most like more people to know about and what qualities have made it stand out for you?

A feature from Screenland Magazine about this 1926 John Ford film ( courtesy of SilentsAreGolden.com)

A.: While not exactly obscure, his last western before Stagecoach, the silent 3 Bad Men (1926) tends to be overshadowed by his earlier epic The Iron Horse. Yet I think 3 Bad Men would probably find a great many fans if it were seen more frequently. It's got scale, its pace is energetic, and the central narrative is emotionally powerful. Tom Santschi's "Bull Stanley" is like a bridge character between the Harry Carey good-bad man and the dominant presence of John Wayne to come.

M: Is there any well known John Ford film that you feel is overrated or doesn't stand up to the test of time?

A.: Those films that get the most attention deserve it in my opinion, but as for the "test of time", I'm dubious about that test and its relevance to a world that today values transience over the timeless. Ford has often gone in and out of style. His films seemed old fashioned to many critics when they were made, for the same misapprehensions as many today suffer under. Ford rarely concerned himself with being in step with anyone besides himself.

M: Which screenwriters do you think were most successful in working with Ford?

A.: His fruitful partnerships with Dudley Nichols (formerly of the NY Post) in the 'thirties and Frank Nugent (formerly with the NY Times) after the war attest to his comfort at working with skilled writers, with his input of course.

M: How would you characterize Ford's approach to storytelling?

Above: An eloquent silent moment in The Wings of Eagles (1956) as John Wayne silently watches Maureen O'Hara in the story of a troubled marriage inspired by Ford's collaborator, "Spig" Wead.

A.: He was a master at quickly establishing the inner and outer realities of characters in little “vignettes” that allowed him to get the business of the actual story up and running quickly. Emotions revealed by action and gesture, feelings both immediate and reflective, were, I'd say, the engine that drove his narratives. His movies feel like they move to the gate of their protagonists and the actors who inhabit the spaces within his frames.

Above: John Ford working with young Roddy McDowall and screenwriter Philip Dunne on the set of How Green Was My Valley (1941).

M: Did he stick to the script, storyboard or plan shots carefully for most of his career?

A.: He did extensive preparation before a film, working closely with the writer. For example he often instructing them to create detailed “biographies” for his characters which made them more three dimensional. Ford in his prime generally had the entire film in his head by the time he came to the set. It was then up to the team he worked with to know how to get what he wanted with as little explanation as possible. This is one reason why he liked working with the same technicians over and over.

M: Do you think that starting in silent films affected his sound era movies?

April Lane: Absolutely. He was always primarily a visual director. In fact, his dialogue is characteristically “expressionistic”. But the quiet, non-verbal moments in his films where people just look at one another, these are the scenes that stay with you and bespeak an abiding confidence in the power of what the eye sees.

Above: Victor McLaglen in The Informer (1935), one of Ford's most expressionistic films of the sound era.

M: Some people believe that John Ford's films are about wars, explorations, men and men's problems. A few others think that they are really grounded in his perception of women. How do you think he saw the sexes?

A.: You can see how he felt about the primal need of men and women for each other in film after film by how he documents the impact of their loss: the most sad, lonely or damaged characters will be those without a woman, whether wife, lover or mother. And women who’ve lost their men are often shown in a state of suspended animation, waiting for someone who will never return. Holding onto something that belonged to their lost love or son. Again, with almost no dialogue, he could depict yearning and loss, the sharpest pangs being between men and women. I don't know but that this need of men and women for each other is more strongly depicted in Ford's films than those by any other director.

Above: Some of the women of John Ford films (clockwise, beginning at left): Anna Lee,Shirley Temple, Katharine Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Madge Bellamy (with George O'Brien), Claire Trevor and Louise Platt, Constance Towers, Olive Carey, Sara Allgood, Mildred Natwick (with John Wayne), Vera Miles, Billie Burke, Maureen O'Hara, Jane Darwell, Henrietta Crosman.

M: What was the John Ford Stock Company really like and who do you regard as members?

A.: I’d highly recommend anyone who wants the real scoop on that to read Harry Carey, Jr.’s candid memoir, Company of Heroes. My impression is that it was like one big, emotionally charged family with an admittedly difficult, contrarian and fascinating artist at its head.

M: Which member of that "stock company" do you think deserves a second look?

A.: Of those front-and-center, Harry Carey, who is in many respects the kind of man Ford probably most wished to be like and the man Ford told John Wayne to emulate and not in a merely superficial way, for he told him “make people look upon you as a friend.” It’s a pity we have so few of their collaborations from the silent era to enjoy and study.

M: Do you think that John Wayne "learned everything he knew" from Ford, as I once heard him say in an interview?

A.: Wayne shows just how smart and appreciative he was to say that. His movies without Ford in the 60s and 70s contain many explicit references to Ford films, like so many tips of the hat. But Wayne also worked long and hard in the business, learning every aspect of it and that’s purely to his own credit.

M: How would you characterize the Ford-Wayne relationship over time?

Above: Wayne and Ford deep in conversation (perhaps during the filming of Rio Grande).

A.: Oh, most definitely father and son. Reading correspondence between them, seeing Wayne in later interviews, especially those where he’s in Ford’s company, it’s plain as day he was the "son" who sought very much to please his “dad”. Ford’s relationship with his own son not being ideal, I’m sure he needed Wayne as much as Wayne needed him.

Above: John Ford playing cards with cronies, including three actors he molded, taught and bedeviled--John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Ward Bond. Fonda's collaboration with the mercurial director ended during the tumultuous filming of Mister Roberts (1955).

M: How do you think that the films that Ford made with Henry Fonda differed from those with John Wayne? Why was one actor more malleable than the other?

Above: Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946). Fonda appeared in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Fugitive (1947), Fort Apache (1948), and Mister Roberts (1955) under Ford's direction.

A.: Fonda's characters seem to reflect the humanist ideas of many of the Fox films of the period. His combination of a lithe, still frame and reflective intellect gave his films with Ford a quieter dynamic. Wayne's physical presence had raw power, conveyed authority but also warmth and a tactile responsiveness that made the films register immediately with a very tangible emotion.

Of course Wayne was much younger and inexperienced when he came into Ford's orbit, but his temperment was also quite different to Henry Fonda's. Given Fonda's own degree of pride and rigidity, it's a little surprising the rupture with Ford happened as late as 1955's Mister Roberts. Wayne would roll with the punches, not taking things so personal and that's key to getting along with difficult personalities anywhere.

M: In your research about Ford, what surprised you the most?

A.: The number of really long-term relationships, professional and personal, he maintained. So much has been repeated ad nauseum of his conflicts and abusiveness…and I’m not mitigating their truth…that I expected to learn he had several marriages and died without a friend in the world. Far from the truth.

M: Is there one outstanding theme that you have noticed in all his movies?

A.: Maybe the most common theme is the need we all have to belong to a family, for the fellowship and protection of a community, and how in time, those very institutions can become calcified, intolerant or indifferent, driving out the individual. It's a push-and-pull that goes on in life at every level and most of Ford's films seem to offer some variation on it.

M: I'm so glad that you pointed out the central role of family in the director's work. Whether biological or socially based in Ford's work, people in his movies are haunted by their memories of family, community and the past while struggling to stay together in the face of danger, economic disaster or separation. While he never turned his back on the hope he cherished for this idealized idea, Ford also seems to have painted some very realistic portraits of strained marriages, repressive relationships, and loneliness within the institutions that foster bonds of any kind without giving up on the possibility that the messy emotional ties that are forged, strained, and inevitably dissolve over time are often what make life worth living.

Families of all kinds in John Ford films (clockwise from top left): Debbie (Natalie Wood) is brought back home by her Uncle Ethan (John Wayne) in The Searchers, The cavalrymen of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The mother (Margaret Mann) surrounded by spectral children in Four Sons, The crew of the Glencairn in The Long Voyage Home, The Joads of The Grapes of Wrath, and the Morgans in How Green Was My Valley.

M: How do you regard the last few films of John Ford? Are there any that surprised you after The Searchers, which is generally regarded as the director's masterpiece?

A.: I think his last, 7 Women (1966) is quite remarkable especially when you consider he was 72 when he made it. Ford sketches for us woman's fear of masculine violence as well as the familiar theme of intolerance cloaked by religious fervor. Then he presents us with a mediating heroine whose skills as a doctor, collective intelligence and experience that make her fit to serve and sacrifice for the others are the qualities that ultimately make her an outsider in their spectacularly insular little world. Stylistically, the movie feels more like the carefully staged UFA-Expressionist melodramas than anything being made (at least on our shores) in Hollywood at the time.

M: Do you think that Ford's belief in God changed as he grew older?

A.: In my reading I've found less direct insight on his religious views than any other aspect of his life, yet his beliefs, both individual and Catholic, are tangibly present in his films from the time he gained artistic control until his last completed project, 7 Women (1966). Judging by the work, he never lost his faith in God but as for those professing faith, he would continue to show the tragedy that ensues when religious fervor causes them to cut themselves off from others, from those they claim to minister to. Compare Boris Karloff in The Lost Patrol, Arthur Shields and his brethren in How Green Was My Valley, Henry Fonda as The Fugitive priest, and Margaret Leighton in 7 Women.

Above: Henry Fonda as a troubled priest in John Ford's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, The Fugitive (1947), set during the Mexican Revolution. Respectfully if unenthusiastically reviewed the beautifully filmed if lugubrious drama may be Ford's most explicit testament of his Roman Catholicism. It was not financially successful in the U.S.

M: When you were examining Ford's work and life in detail, did you learn anything that touched you unexpectedly about his life and work?

A.: In his life, it touched me to read about the many people he helped through hard times anonymously, this on top of the hundreds of people who knew they could count on him to give them work when the going was tough. In his movies, I wasn’t expecting so much love for human beings, especially the most frail, in frame after frame. Why didn’t I see/feel it before? I guess I was surprised by myself and my own reactions, and I like a director that can do that.

M: Thank you, April, for sharing your insights, understanding and knowledge of this daunting and engaging director's career--and for establishing a clearing house online for all things John Ford, bringing together the scholarly and the appreciative in your lively and entertaining manner. I hope that readers who are intrigued by this conversation with Ms. Lane will soon visit her website, Directed by John Ford and--of course--seek out the man's films, many of which can be seen on cable. A list of upcoming broadcasts of Ford films on American television can be seen here.

And thank you, Mr. Ford!

________________

Past posts on this blog related to John Ford's world can be seen here.
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*Some of the best books on John Ford's life and craft are below:

Searching For John Ford : A Life (St. Martin's Press) by Joseph McBride

Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (The Johns Hopkins University Press) by Scott Eyman

John Ford: The Man and His Films (University of California Press) by Tag Gallagher

John Ford (University of California Press) by Peter Bogdanovich

Looking at Zinnemann by Guest Blogger, Kingrat

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:32:00 +0000

This week I have asked my insightful friend Kingrat to share his thoughts on a director whose diverse career seems to warrant more appreciation than he normally receives--despite his remarkable fifty year career when he brought to each film a distinctive realism and an unfashionable concern with the spiritual yearnings underlying the turmoil of the 20th century. King's crisply worded and discerning posts regularly appear on the Silver Screen Oasis and Turner Classic Movies Forum. Anyone who has enjoyed reading his astute comments there knows that his use of language, his keen sense of humor, and love of film shines through all his posts. Thanks, Kingrat! - Moira

Fred Zinnemann in his prime

When Moira kindly invited me to write an article for her blog, I immediately thought of a director she and I both hold in high regard: Fred Zinnemann. Specifically, I'd like to share some evolving thoughts about his approach to directing and his accomplishment.

My main area of interest in film is from the beginning of sound until the collapse of the studio system in the late 1960s. During the last three years I've become even more interested in the classic era, thanks to TCM and websites like the Silver Screen Oasis and the Turner Classic Movies forum where I can learn and exchange ideas with other film lovers. Attending the two TCM film festivals has also been a golden opportunity.

A starting point for thinking about Zinnemann: To a greater extent than most of his contemporaries, Zinnemann is international. He has filmed on location on four continents. Although he was able to escape the Nazis, both his parents died in a concentration camp. Is it surprising that several of his films concern World War II and its aftermath, or that moral choice comes to the foreground in most of his films?

For someone who's never seen a Fred Zinnemann film, I'd recommend Act of Violence (1948), The Nun's Story (1959), and The Sundowners (1961), perhaps in that order, saving the better-known High Noon (1952) and From Here to Eternity (1954) until later. Curiously, although Act of Violence, The Nun's Story and The Sundowners are all stylishly directed, each of the three is in a very different style. That doesn't bother me, though it may be puzzling or disturbing to others. What's essential, I think, is that Zinnemann's vision—his authenticity, even—doesn't depend on a particular style. For him, style is an expressive tool, a means to an end, not a means in itself.

This is quite different from the multiplicity of styles of Robert Wise. To my mind, Wise carefully effaces himself, the better to craft his film in the given genre. Zinnemann isn't much interested in genre, and though he's not insistent, he's far from self-effacing.

Zinnemann first dealt with the problems of World War II and moral choice in The Seventh Cross (1944), the noirish study of a concentration camp escapee Wandering through a disquieting Germany. In retrospect, this fine film seems a preparation for Act of Violence, which plunges us into the world of a noir nightmare, of chiaroscuro, of strong perpendiculars and harsh diagonals. Although as an American soldier, Van Heflin has been a prisoner of the Nazis, after the war he has found a secure middle-class life, married to Janet Leigh. However, a fellow prisoner (Robert Ryan) turns up who threatens to destroy Heflin's world. The situation proves different from how we first imagine it, and Heflin tries to escape his nemesis by plunging into a seedy underworld where he is befriended by a pathetic prostitute (Mary Astor, brilliant). Shot after shot from this film, photographed for Zinnemann by MGM stalwart Robert Surtees, who would also film the director's strikingly different Oklahoma! in 1955, could be framed and hung in a museum. For example, check out the scene in the stairwell where Heflin reveals the secrets of his past to his wife.

Van Heflin unburdens his soul to Janet Leigh in a setting divided by a plethora of sharp angles in the brilliantly done film noir, Act of Violence (1948)

Rarely has a director made two films in the same year which are as radically different in style as Act of Violence (1948) and The Search (1948) which was actually made in Europe before Act of Violence. Although I believe Act of Violence is the richer film, Zinnemann seems equally comfortable with neorealism of The Search (1947).

Ivan Jandl as the lost boy in postwar Germany in the neorealistic The Search (1948).

With its location shooting in the ruins of Germany and its concern with the problems of those dispossessed by the war, The Search approaches neorealism. Compare this shot with the noirish chiaroscuro of Act of Violence.

If Zinnemann's visual skill has been underrated—and, after all—the beach scene in From Here to Eternity is one of the most famous images in film—that's partly because he doesn't underline and italicize his best effects. Consider the first time Burt Lancaster sees Deborah Kerr. This isn't love at first sight; that's for Montgomery Clift and Donna Reed, and Zinnemann deliberately draws a contrast. It's a long shot with the military buildings in the background. On a left diagonal we see Deborah Kerr, who's been to see her officer husband. In the right corner Lancaster hears from the staff sergeant about her bad reputation. Kerr remains completely unaware of the men. She's too far away for Lancaster to get a good look. The distance between them, and between the reputation and the woman, is represented spatially in the shot. Look also at this remarkable shot in another scene of Lancaster where he is seen with the desk light and the picture of Kerr on her husband's desk.

Burt Lancaster conveys his awareness of Deborah Kerr's distant allure in From Here to Eternity (1953).

In symphonic music some conductors emphasize the individual details; others are more attuned to the “long line” of the piece. Almost every choice Zinnemann makes in The Nun's Story stresses the long line, just as the Reverend Mother thinks nothing of keeping Sister Luke out of the Congo for a year, where she could do good, because the extra year will benefit her spiritually. Each piece of the film is related to every other piece of the film.

The mutual attraction between Dr. Fortunati (Peter Finch) and Sister Luke (Audrey Hepburn) is never voiced, yet couldn't be stronger. The Reverend Mother Emmanuel (Edith Evans) never says that she sees Sister Luke as a potential leader of the order, let alone that she feels Sister Luke is her spiritual daughter, yet that impression is strongly conveyed. Zinnemann doesn't tell us what to think about convent life, the Catholic Church, the existence of God, Sister Luke's vocation, or her ultimate decision to leave the convent. He presents all these matters as objectively as possible.

Zinnemann's choices of framing and cutting reflect the ethos he is trying to convey. For instance, consider the parting scene, photographed by cinematographer Franz Planer, when Sister Luke must leave the Congo, never to return. Dr. Fortunati is present outside the train.

Audrey Hepburn as Sister Luke leaving the Congo in The Nun's Story (1959).

Then we cut to Dr. Fortunati walking away. The obvious choice is to hold until he walks completely out of the frame. (Zinnemann will save this effect for the very end of the film, when Sister Luke walks back into the secular world). Instead, the cut comes when Fortunati has at least two more steps in the frame. Sister Luke looks at him, but doesn't keep her eyes on him until he is out of sight, remaining true to the discipline she has learned as a nun.

The final, eloquently silent scene in The Nun's Story (1959).

David Lean has spoken admiringly of Zinnemann's “narrative juggernaut.” This is true of both Act of Violence (under 90 minutes) and The Nun's Story (over 150 minutes, and not one of them wasted). However, The Sundowners has something of the relaxed pacing and leisurely pacing of a John Ford film, appropriate to this tale of a family which travels through Australia by caravan, making camp at sundown each day. Paddy Carmody (Robert Mitchum) loves this drifting existence, though his wife Ida (Deborah Kerr) dreams of a real home. The Peter Ustinov/Glynis Johns subplot, complete with comic bar fight, is straight out of Ford, with Glynis Johns giving perhaps the broadest performance in any Zinnemann film. As amusing as this is, the greatness of the film rests in the Mitchum/Kerr relationship, with their unsolvable conflict almost healed by their deep sexual connection. After each crisis, the couple re-establishes a balance. The scene the morning after Ida has slapped Paddy in front of his co-workers is particularly nice, with Mitchum catching Paddy's hesitancy in wondering how much things have changed and his relief that not much will. The heart of the film is the rather shocking moment when Ida tells her son not to make her choose between him and his father, because she'll choose his father.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film has no dialogue. In fact, Isobel Lennart, the original scriptwriter, was upset that Zinnemann cut so many pages of her dialogue. Kerr waits in the caravan, parked near a train station. Inside the train is a pretty woman with pretty clothes. With each passing moment Kerr becomes angrier and sadder at the contrast with her own life. Here's a clip:

Thinking about the influence of Ford on The Sundowners led me to consider Zinnemann's attitude toward institutions. What could be more remote from Zinnemann's sensibility than the glorification of the cavalry on the Western frontier as an institution in Ford's cavalry trilogy, unless it would be the outsider eager to be proven worthy of the in-group, as in Howard Hawks films like Only Angels Have Wings (1939)? Still more foreign, perhaps, is the anti-establishment sentiment as a badge of honor in the films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From Here to Eternity is no recruiting poster for the military. This is an institution in which a sadist like Fatso (Ernest Borgnine) can operate or a timeserver like Captain Holmes (Deborah Kerr's on-screen husband, played by Philip Ober) can flourish. However, the characters who have our approval, Lancaster and Clift, are devoted to it, even though it separates each man from the woman he loves. All in all, the military as an institution seems neutral, which is exactly the approach Zinnemann brings to his portrayal of the Catholic Church in The Nun's Story.

I hope these hints and suggestions will encourage people to explore or rediscover Zinnemann's work. If you'd like to read some useful critical articles on this topic, try Robert Keser's excellent overview
at the Senses of Cinema website, or the book-length collection of articles found in The Films of Fred Zinnemann edited by Frank Nolletti (SUNY Press, 1999). And Moira, thanks for letting me hold forth about one of my passions.

Life is a Voyage

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:46:00 +0000

Let's pretend.

Most of us cannot even think about taking a cruise to Europe, much less around the world. Even the upcoming cruise offered by TCM is out-of-reach for most of us. Still, we can revisit the past glories of the Golden Age of Cruising. And we won't have to worry about rough seas or grazing too long at the endless buffet tables on today's ships.

With apologies to the poetess Miss Wilcox, may I suggest that between now and this December we "go sailing away from here/To the beautiful land of the Past" to visit a brief era when taking your time to get where you were going was not looked at as an inconvenience. Let's pretend you are a cub reporter, dispatched to dockside to get the picture and a few words from the famous who have just docked. Hmmm, let's see who among the celebrated, the notorious and the lucky are shipping out today...Let's christen this voyage with an appropriate poem...

F. Scott Fitzgerald with his daughter "Scottie" during one of the Fitzgeralds many voyages across the Atlantic ocean.

Thousand-and-First-Ship by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the fall of sixteen
In the cool of the afternoon
I saw Helena
Under a white moon—
I heard Helena
In a haunted doze
Say: “I know a gay place
Nobody knows.”
Her voice promised
She’d live with me there
She’d bring me everything—
I needn’t care:
Patches to mend my clothes
When they were torn
Sunshine from Maryland,
Where I was born.
My kind of weather,
As wild as wild,
And a funny book
I wanted as a child;
Sugar and, you know,
Reason and ryhme,
And water like water
I had one time.
There’d be an orchestra
Bingo! Bango!
Playing for us
To dance the tango,
And people would clap
When we arose,
At her sweet face
And my new clothes
But more than all this
Was the promise she made
That nothing, nothing,
Ever would fade—
Nothing would fade
Winter or fall,
Nothing would fade,
Practically nothing at all.
Helena went off
And married another,
She may be dead
Or some man’s mother.
I have no grief left
But I’d like to know
If she took him
Where she promised we’d go.

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Above: Magician Harry Houdini greeting his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on board the SS Adriatic in 1922 in New York harbor. The unlikely friends shared a common interest in spiritualism with Houdini the master magician and escape artist unmasking many of them in his lifetime, and Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, spent much of his later years trying to mend his broken heart over the son he had lost in WWI. Eager to find any glimmer of truth among the hucksters and grifters, the two men may have been friends when they met on deck. Later, in a seance at the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City, Houdini's late mother was invited to join Doyle and Houdini through the medium present--who happened to be the wife of the famed writer. Speaking and writing in perfect English during "the visit" with Houdini's mother, the showman later publicly rejected the words spoken on behalf of his mother's spirit, explaining, that "[M]y sainted mother could not write English and spoke broken English.” His public repudiation of the séance ruptured his friendship with Doyle. Within a few years, both men died, neither having converted the other.

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A natty Victor McLaglen striking a pose for the cameramen as he sails for Europe in 1937. At the age of 50 the year before, the former boxer had won the Academy Award as Best Actor for his work in The Informer (1935).

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A dour Joseph Conrad on the SS Tuscania pauses for a picture as the ship steams into the port of New York in 1923. William Butler Yeats (who might have been a tad jealous) described him in this period as a 'smiling public man' when, visiting the United States in 1923, he made the cover of Time magazine, oversaw a collected edition of his work and hoped for the Nobel Prize. Perhaps Mr. Conrad is mentally composing the letter to his friend that he wrote in this period: "Life knows us not and we do not know life - we don't even know our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth, and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow."

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Constance Bennett leaving for Europe with her husband, Marquis Henri de la Falaise, on board the steamer, SS Deltfdyk in February, 1932. Unemployment in the United States at the time was officially 23.2 %--unofficially it was closer to 30%. No wonder people wanted to see someone having some fun in the papers of the day.

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More shipping news next week...see you on the promenade deck!

Ruthless (1948)

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:02:00 +0000

An old friend of Horace Vendig (Zachary Scott), the financial magnate whose story is told in Ruthless (1948), arrives at a gala party late, explaining that to his host that he took a mistaken route when looking for the house of his childhood companion. Miffed that his boyhood chum wasn't there from the beginning as the leonine capitalist announced that he was giving millions to charity, Vendig, played with studied ambiguity by Zachary Scott, asks, "Isn't taking the wrong road one of those mistakes that happens when you want it to, subconsciously?"

This question is examined in an oblique way in Ruthless (1948), avoiding the simplistic Freudian analysis so prevalent in American movies of the period, but nevertheless implying that the past has a way of intruding on the present even when we can't see it there. Exploring the nature of success, Ruthless, which is filled with flashbacks, some expressionistic touches, and a remarkably polished look to the film, can be seen as a critique of capitalism, class consciousness or as a character sketch of American types in the first half of the 20th century. The film gave director Edgar Ulmer (Black Cat, Detour), a chance to make an A picture for Eagle Lion in the late '40s and to explore the duality in his characters while working with some first rate actors, including Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn (in a dual role, yet!), Lucille Bremer and Sydney Greenstreet.

The latter two actors are simply outstanding in his movie. The beautiful dancer, Lucille Bremer, in what may be her best dramatic part before she retired from films to marry later in 1948, shows flashes of youthful Bette Davis-like vulnerability and volatility. She is well matched by the much older Greenstreet, who gives a spectacular performance as Bremer's husband, a Southern utilities baron whose lust for his young wife (Bremer) proves to be his undoing. When these two actors are alone on screen, the complex electricity between the two of them is unexpected and startlingly human. They seem to relish each other's company in their scenes, with each of them enacting characters who go from a kind of erotic self-satisfaction to ruined grandeur as their characters' age over the course of the story.

Lucille Bremer and Sydney Greenstreet as a compelling if strange married pair in Ruthless (1948).

Their games-playing and the private dialogue that seems to exist unspoken between people actually touches on something central in this movie, which demonstrates the ways that individuals play different roles in everyday life in so many ways that it finally becomes impossible to tell the authentic self from the mask a person dons to fulfill some goal.

The performances all echo this, particularly that of Diana Lynn's innocent but knowing character of Martha Burnside, who senses the falseness of her fiance's emotions for her, but who plays along with the pretense of young love, hoping that her emotional ardor will compensate for his emptiness. As played by Zachary Scott, an actor whose surface glibness proved to be a blessing and a curse during his Hollywood career, the character of Vendig becomes more sympathetic as he grows more ruthless, since the actor is able to express his own puzzlement over his tangled emotions, which he keeps trying to unravel through outward actions that look like success, but hint at some deep-rooted unhappiness with himself.

Above: Zachary Scott in an introspective moment in Ruthless (1948) with Diana Lynn.

While Ruthless has often been compared to Citizen Kane in its detailed depiction of the rise and fall of an American businessman, the outlines of the story are similar to Welles' masterwork though they lack his visual and dramatic consistency, sureness and verve. Based on a novel by Dayton Stoddart and a screenplay Alvah Bessie, S.K. Lauren and Gordon Kahn, this movie could easily be interpreted as an anti-capitalist critique, but the beautiful cinematography by Bert Glennon, and the often subtle nuances of character make us sympathize with Zachary Scott's relentless drive to the top of the financial heap, even though he is revealed as a master manipulator of people and an unethical tycoon in business. While the film often threatens to become bogged down in the minutiae of financial details, it is the haunted quality hinted at in Scott's character that piques one's interest in the story.

After introducing the adult characters at the party, the film really begins with a long flashback to the story of Horace Woodruff Vendig (Robert J. Anderson as a youth, Zachary Scott as a man), a boy whose n'er do well father (Raymond Burr, effectively seedy in his one scene) neglects him and whose socially conscious mother (Joyce Arling) is physically and emotionally abusive toward the boy, until one night when he seeks the safety of the Burnsides, a well-to-do family whose kindness toward him has given him hope.

They take him in, allowing him to live in their carriage house and finish school until he is a young man. At that time, his childhood friend (Louis Hayward, looking wan) returns from college for a visit, calling on the girl he intends to marry, Martha Burnside, played by Diana Lynn. Wondering why Martha hasn't made her feelings clearer to him in her letters, Hayward asks his friend Horace to intercede with the girl. When he does, Martha confesses her love for Horace instead, an unexpected but felicitous event, which he readily accepts. Their subsequent engagement leads her generous father (Dennis Hoey, for once escaping from the "dumb cop" hell he had been confined to in the casting offices of Hollywood) to finance his education at Harvard. Even Hayward's character refuses to bear a grudge toward Horace.

A youthful Horace Vendig (Zachary Scott) discussing their engagement with Martha Burnside (Diana Lynn).

Eventually, at Harvard and beyond, Horace's mastery of social poses, intelligence and business acumen gain him the admiration of a host of influential people, including the saucy yet patrician and avidly lustful Martha Vickers, who soon leads him astray--straight to a Wall Street career. Zachary Scott breaks off from Lynn's Martha Burnside character in a beautifully played scene in which Horace seems to be aware for the first time of his own dual nature. As the movie progresses, he leads others to their ruin, accumulating power and money himself. Finally, he invites his oldest friends (Louis Hayward, whose character is really too passive), who brings a young woman who looks remarkably like Martha Burnside, (also played by Diana Lynn, though this time she is more sure of herself as a person) enemies (Greenstreet and Bremer) and various business toadies to his Xanadu-like home where he announces that he is setting up a Peace Institute, endowing it with $25 million and sailing away on his yacht to parts unknown. The ending, which I won't spoil for you, is melodramatic, but apt.

Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn and Zachary Scott in Ruthless (1948).

Long unavailable on DVD and rarely broadcast, this film, which has been seen in archival screenings is now streaming online at Netflix in a beautiful print and on DVD, found here. One other thing: unlike The Great Gatsby (1948) and other Hollywood films that fail to use period details to build up a story's atmosphere, this film does an excellent job of recreating the hair and clothing of the '20s for both men and women. Zachary Scott and Louis Hayward, both in their '30s at the time of this production, do the best they can to convey teenage and early adulthood in their roles, but it does stretch credibility at times.

MacKenna's Gold (1969): A Fool and His Money

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:24:00 +0000

MacKenna's Gold (1969) is a stunning western pictorially and as a celebration of excessive waste. The film, wallowing in the new-found freedoms in film as the Production Code was finally abandoned, reflects the cynicism of the late sixties, though it is set in 1874. Released in the same year as The Wild Bunch and True Grit, the first part of the film is visually glorious, with scenes filmed in the deserts around Medford, Oregon, Kenab, Utah, Canyon de Chelly and Glen Canyon, Arizona, all spectacular settings chosen carefully by the director J. Lee Thompson and his production designer, Geoffrey Drake. If only the visual breadth of the film had been matched by a more incisive analysis of the frontier mentality and the limits of civilized behavior in the face of violence and greed.

Even on a Hi-Def television in a Wide Screen format, one can only imagine how this movie must have looked to movie-goers in a theatre in '69 during its first run. Shot in color with a 70mm lens for Cinerama by cinematographer Joseph MacDonald (Pickup on South Street, Bigger Than Life), the movie was the last film of MacDonald's career. Originally intended for reserved seat roadshow engagements, a nervous Columbia Studios cut the film down to two hours from its original three and dumped it in regular theaters after losing faith in the movie. A relatively simple story was overblown, told with a then-enormous budget of $14.5 million and lasting longer than it should have, even after drastic editing.

According to IMDb, "a handful of scenes were filmed in 35mm anamorphic and then optically blown up with disastrous results. The blown-up scenes are exceedingly grainy and have bad color." There were also several scenes with matte paintings inserted in the last third of the movie representing vast landscapes that had been photographed beautifully for the earlier scenes in the movie.

Made by the same team that produced The Guns of Navarone: Director J. Lee Thompson, (who had made far better movies, Ice Cold in Alex, Tiger Bay, I Aim at the Stars when he was working on a much smaller scale in his native Britain), Producer-Writer Carl Foreman, and star Gregory Peck, this movie was turned down by Steve McQueen. Peck initially said no to the script as well, but relented later, perhaps in gratitude to Thompson and Foreman. Peck may also have wanted the work since his career momentum was not good in that period after making the poorly received (but much better western) The Stalking Moon and just before Peck pretended to be an erudite James Bond in Red China in the listless The Chairman. Greg should have listened to his visceral instincts regarding this movie.

In MacKenna's Gold (1969), Gregory Peck played MacKenna, who is a marshal in a Southwestern town of Hadleyburg (a possible reference to Mark Twain's humorous if pointed story "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"). While traveling through the desert MacKenna encounters an ancient Apache Indian played by Italian actor Eduardo Ciannelli, who looks like a leathery fruit roll-up left in the sun too long, Ciannelli, playing Prairie Dog, tries to kill Peck, fearing that the man is after his map to the legendary Canyon d'Oro, a hidden spot in the desert (sometimes known as The Lost Adams Diggings), where the gold can be seen in streaks up the walls of the canyon seven to ten feet wide. Traditionally guarded by the Apache, who believed that the Spirits will enable the tribe to remain strong and free as long as the gold is untouched, the present day Apaches have lost faith in that belief, and wish to use the gold to buy guns to fight the white man. The whites have been searching for this legendary spot for years, especially since one white man, Adams, is said to have visited the canyon with the Apache, and paid for the privilege with his eyes at the hands of the Apaches.

After Prairie Dog dies of the wounds sustained in a firefight with MacKenna, the marshal, who scoffs at the map that he finds in the Indian's belongings, burns the pictogram map. As he is burying the old man, a motley gang of cutthroats, led by MacKenna's slightly crazy old friend, a Mexican bandit named Colorado (Omar Sharif), jump the lawman, whose life is only saved after he agrees to lead them to the canyon, as outlined on the map, (apparently, Greg has a photographic memory). Their hegira takes the people through the desert to the gold, as they encounter people infected with gold fever, meeting and discarding them after various double crosses and ambushes.

There is also one episode in the story set in an unlikely pool with fresh water in the middle of the desert. This sequence allows the male portion of the audience to enjoy the sight of a lanky Indian maiden (Julie Newmar) swimming in the buff, augmented by one discreet glimpse of Mr. Sharif with his guard down, so to speak. Gregory Peck and Camilla Sparv take a dip with their clothes on--which seems rather odd, especially since it makes them vulnerable to attack from a brooding Hesh-Ke, who really knows how to nurse a grudge.Despite this interlude, most of the action involves fights and deals that are struck among the travelers in this often beautiful looking but ludicrous movie.

In the denouement, the filmmakers threw in some trippy special effects that defy the laws of physics when the rising sun moves across the landscape very rapidly, creating long shadows in the morning instead of the afternoon. The first glimpse of the gold by the searchers allows the boys in the photo lab to present some cheap effects seemingly inspired by Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. When the tired gold hunters finally stumble upon the riches-laden canyon with renegade Apaches and Cavalry on their tails, there is even a pseudo-mystical earthquake (apparently the gods were not pleased with this movie) which tilts the film toward Krakatoa, East of Java (1969) territory. Big effects do not a coherent story make, as you can discern from this brief clip:

The cast is remarkably good. If only they had a better story to tell:

~Gregory Peck as a town marshal with a shady past. Peck's character is slightly racy since he has been known to play poker, likes an occasional sip of whiskey, and may have dallied with an Indian maiden in the past. Peck is one of the few characters one can root for in this movie, though even he seems ambivalent. Much later, the actor looked back on this film and said, "MacKenna's Gold was a terrible Western, just wretched."
Surveying the big budget movies that would become the last gasp of Old Hollywood style moviemaking, Peck dismissed them, pointing out that "They aim to buy their way into public favor, overpaying stars and featuring important players in small roles."

~Omar Sharif as Juan Colorado, a Mexican bandit with some serious delusions of grandeur. I suspect that Omar--or perhaps his agent--was trying to see if his Anglo-American stardom might have legs. It didn't, though Sharif's exuberant performance and accent (which really doesn't sound Spanish) is better than his character's illogical behavior, restraining his murderous impulses at several points, only to come unhinged just as his fevered dream of gold is within reach. He also has the whitest teeth in the movie, which ought to count for something.

~Keenan Wynn as a grinning bandito with almost no lines, but who leers, mugs, swigs hooch and dances with Omar at the drop of a sombrero. Maybe Wynn has been in the sun (or the movie business) for too long?

~Telly Savalas as a renegade Cavalry sergeant who has a bad case of gold fever. Leading a squad of his men into an ambush of the Hadleyburg delegation, he betrays his oath and wipes out the great actors in one scene after they had only a few lines). The U.S. Cavalry in the American Southwest must have been particularly hard up for commanding figures to have allowed this ruthless character to slip through the screening process. Telly would soon go on to greater glory in Kojak in the next decade

~Some of the most distinguished actors of their generation appear in ridiculously miniscule parts, not worth their time, though I hope they were well-paid: Eli Wallach as a gambler who is cheerfully corrupt, Raymond Massey (channeling his loopy John Brown character) , Lee J. Cobb (looking filled with self-disgust), Anthony Quayle (once again, a blustering Englishman), Burgess Meredith (fiddling with his glasses just like in The Twilight Zone), and Edward G. Robinson as a blind man whose eyes have been burned out by the Apaches. Unfortunately, we get a lurid closeup of these eyes for a few seconds of screen time. None of these good and great actors gets more than a few lines--except for Eddie, who milks his lines for everything he can!

~Ted Cassidy (yes, it's Lurch from The Addams Family) as Hachita, the tallest Apache ever, comes along with the Mexican bandits as a killing machine. His motives seem obscure, if non-existent. Apparently, his brooding presence as a mercenary Indian is sufficient, and the screenplay does not even hint at how his life path brought him to this spot.

~Julie Newmar as Hesh-Ke, an Apache amazon who is part of Colorado's gang, has a wicked temper and a smoking bod. Hesh-Ke was apparently involved with MacKenna in his younger, wilder days and she appears to harbor a grudge and a yen for the man, depending on her mood. One person she does not care for is the hostage Inga (Camilla Sparv). A survivor, it seems that Hesh-Ke's future will not necessarily be enhanced by gold, though when she is compared to an elderly Indian woman, her flinch at the thought indicates that her still waters may run deep. Too bad she doesn't have more than a few grunts in this script.

[I have a crackpot theory that Ted Cassidy and Julie Newmar really wandered into this movie from another set where they were playing aliens from another planet, since they have an otherworldly quality that is inexplicable but palpable. ]

~Camilla Sparv as Inga, the willowy hostage whose grey eye shadow never smudges and whose glistening blonde hair never seems to need a wash. The beautiful Swedish actress could not have been more naturally elegant in her minimalist wardrobe, though her acting style was almost indiscernible as she mimicked the expressiveness of the petrified trees that dot the landscape in this film.

~David Garfield (left) credited here as John Garfield, Jr., appeared as Eddie Robinson's seeing eye boy. The poor kid (who did not look like his father in this scene) doesn't have much to do except be attentive and then play dead. Mr. Garfield appeared in a handful of movies around this time, and eventually went on to a career as a film editor until his untimely death at only 51 in 1994.

~Victor Jory narrates the sprawling story, playing up the old codger in his voice, though his speech neither enhances nor unifies the story adequately.

I haven't even mentioned the song "Old Turkey Buzzard" which is the theme sung by José Feliciano for this movie. MacKenna's Gold boasts so many talented if ill-used people. Two of them are Mr. Feliciano and the composer Quincy Jones, whose score for the film is more noisy than melodious or a complement to the action.

Below is the film's trailer:

MacKenna's Gold is available on DVD, has appeared on TCM in the past and is currently scheduled to be shown on the Encore Western Channel in August at the following times (all times shown are EDT):

Sunday, August 7th
9:50am
11:20pm

Friday, August 12th
9:30am

Thursday, August 25th
10:50am

Tuesday, August 30th
11:00am
11:45pm

An earlier blog posting about Kings of the Sun (1963), another J. Lee Thompson film, can be seen here.

Sources:
Chibnail, Steve, J. Lee Thompson, (British Film Makers Series), Manchester University Press ND, 2000
Molyneaux, Gerard, Gregory Peck: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995

A Carleton Carpenter Double Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:05:00 +0000

TCM is offering a Carleton Carpenter Double Feature on July 10th in celebration of the actor's 85th birthday.

In his early years in Hollywood, Carpenter, a 6'3" string bean with experience in drama and musicals on stage, made his mark as an actor who sang "Abba Dabba Honeymoon" with Debbie Reynolds in Two Weeks With Love (1950) and for asking Spencer Tracy's frustrated mixologist in Father of the Bride (1950) for a coke. The films being shown this Sunday on TCM featured him in the lead. Only 24 years old when he arrived as a contract player at MGM, Carleton Carpenter never quite became the second Robert Walker that the studio seemed to be grooming him as during his years there, but he had his own quirky appeal that transcended some of his lesser films. His professional skills also enabled him to be an effective supporting cast member in dramatic films such as Vengeance Valley (1951), Take the High Ground (1953) and The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951), (the latter under the direction of Robert Siodmak in one of his last American films). It was unfortunate that his arrival in Hollywood coincided with the decline of the studio system and as the greatest era of movie musicals was waning, since his talent never quite received an ideal showcase despite his evident talent. The B movies being shown tomorrow were the only two chances the rail thin talent had to take center stage, though he remained active in Hollywood for much of the decade, appearing in such memorable programs as The Shirley Temple Theatre (as "Tom, the Piper's Son"!) and The Rifleman.

Carleton Carpenter and Jan Sterling looking at a Sky Full of Moon (1952).

Sky Full of Moon (1952) July 10 @9:00AM (ET): This one's kind of cute, telling the story of an innocent cowboy who finds himself suddenly rich in Las Vegas, with Jan Sterling as a gold digger who is interested in him. Directed by Norman Foster, the story peters out near the end, though Carpenter is likable, and the setting in the less glamorous side of LV is interesting.

Usually associated with rather heavy dramas, Jan Sterling brings a note of realism to the story and she doesn't pull any punches in crafting her tough as leather character, who can't quite fathom how naive Carpenter's cowpoke appears to be. Elaine Stewart, the late beauty and MGM contract player who made a splash as the dress extra temptress in The Bad and The Beautiful (1951), is on hand to mock and fleece the Candide-like cowboy, along with good character actors Keenan Wynn and Douglas Dumbrille. Familiar Western figure Sheb Woolley appears as a balladeer and former cowboy star and politician Rex Bell plays himself in this B movie, part of which was filmed in Vegas, when that city's face wore less glitter and the stakes were not quite as high.

It is Carpenter's quiet charm as Kansas-born Harley "Tumbleweed" William that beguiles in this movie, as his character--who is never quite as dumb as others think--comes to terms with the people he encounters, believing girls who say they are dancers, and hoping to share his good fortune with the people he encounters.

The trailer for Sky Full of Moon is below:

Fearless Fagan (1952) July 10 @10:30AM (ET) was directed by Stanley Donen out of a sense of contractual obligation more than enthusiasm when he was trying to get a foothold in the movies independently of Gene Kelly. The premise of this movie sounds like a rejected Francis the Talking Mule script, though the plot, centered on a serviceman who brings his pet lion with him into the Army, was actually based on a factual Life Magazine story.

Reportedly, neither Janet Leigh nor Donen felt enthusiastic about the movie, but it still plays as a sprightly fairy tale thanks to the cast, and the inclusion of one musical moment with a song by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane (from the musical, Best Foot Forward (1943) never quite lifts the story. As Donen reflected years later, paraphrasing Stanley Kubrick (a much more selective director), "You can never get divorced from a picture."

Carpenter sharing the screen with "Fagan."

Donen's competence and cooperative attitude, Leigh's pert beauty, and the gently amusing Carpenter rise above the material, while the ubiquitous Keenan Wynn appears to be gruffly resentful of his casting in this film in each of his scenes (the man did deserve better after a decade in movies). Behind the scenes, the atmosphere on the set appears to have been a bit tense. The real-life soldier who took his lion with him when he was drafted was hired to double Carpenter with his lion. However, during filming, "the real Floyd Humeston" refused "to work with his own lion." The young man and his lion, the real Fagan were both released from their contract. MGM replaced the lion with another, more adolescent king of beasts. "The second one was so young," Carleton Carpenter recalled, "that his mane had to be added, like a toupee. A lot of times it went askew." Post-production on Fearless Fagan was a bit more lengthy than expected since dialogue spoken by Carpenter each time he shared a scene with the lion had to be dubbed later. "As we shot," he explained, "everyone was always yelling at the lion from off-camera, waving chickens, aiming guns at him. It was terrifying. Then every time I got up and walked away, he'd sink his teeth in me." Asked if the film had left any long term impression on the actor, Carleton divulged that "I had scars on my buns for months."

Despite the problems of the movie's creators, people who have seen this seem to be genuinely fond of this comedy, based on the comments on the TCMb, which gave Carpenter his first leading role during his contract player years at MGM studios.

Can't get enough of a guy who seems to be the spiritual son of Jack Haley's Tin Man and Ray Bolger's Scarecrow? Cinema Misfits, a compendium of all things cinematic old and new, features a two part podcast interview with Carleton Carpenter, including selected samples of of the veteran actor's singing voice. He sounds like a very nice guy, choosing desert island flicks, his memories of Flo Ziegfeld, Beulah Bondi, Louis de Rochemont, his love of character actors such as Louis Jean Heydt, singing with Judy Garland, his own interest in songwriting, among other topics he touches on.

The Vermont-born actor recalled his first film, an uncharacteristically somber story that was set in New Hampshire, the groundbreaking racial drama, Lost Boundaries (1949). The movie, which starred Mel Ferrer and Beatrice Pearson, concerned a real life doctor who overcame "the color line" by keeping his own race to himself. After seeing himself on screen for the first time, Carpenter said he loathed himself on sight, and drank a half a bottle of vodka to ease the agony of his first encounter with his own image. You can see this good film, based on fact, beginning here.

It is only touched on briefly in the podcast, but Carpenter was also a prolific novelist, writing seven mysteries, which include one called Dead Head, (set in the theater), Only Her Hairdresser Knew, Cat Got Your Tongue, and Games Murderers Play. I haven't had a chance to read them but according to one reviewer, they are fun for "the bitchy humor [more] than the convoluted plots," though Carpenter also wrote for Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen mystery magazines in the 1980s. He also wrote a musical with a friend, called "Dear Boy," based on Oliver Twist, which they hoped to have Cyril Ritchard star in as Fagin.

In recent years, Carleton Carpenter has occasionally made appearances in cabarets, and an occasional stage play but he has primarily made his home in the Hudson Valley region of New York, where he is a cherished member of the community.

Sources:

Gilvey, John Anthony, Before the Parade Passes By, Macmillan, 2005
Griffin, Mark, A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli, Da Capo Press, 2010.
Silverman, Stephen M., Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and His Movies, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996.

Joan Blondell: The Summer Under the Stars Blogathon for 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:44:00 +0000

Consider this your engraved invitation to the TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon, which will honor the inimitable talent of Joan Blondell from Thursday, August 18 - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at the Movie Morlocks (the official blog of TCM).

This year's SUtS blogathon is set for the week leading up to the lady's special day, when a 24-hour marathon of Joan Blondell's films will be aired on Turner Classic Movies. Each Morlock will look at a different aspect of the actress, focusing on a movie(s), a medium, a character or key moments in her long career. You can see the posts related to this topic by the individual bloggers here, beginning on Aug. 18th:

http://moviemorlocks.com/

From wisecracking good time girl to sassy veteran star, Miss Blondell's considerable talent and likability carried her through six decades on screen. Consistently under-rated, her presence in films--including several rarely seen Pre-Code productions--will be spotlighted this August as TCM doffs its hat to the lady and her work as part of the network's Summer Under the Stars month-long event.

A few of the less well known but "don't-miss" flicks I'd recommend that day are below. (Sorry kids, but I can't report that reels of the legendary Convention City (1933) have been unearthed...but we live in hope):

Sinner's Holiday (1930-John G. Adolfi), in which Joanie and her friend James Cagney share the screen for the first time in their cinematic debut. Al Jolson (who never met Cagney) had purchased the rights to the Broadway version of this film, called Penny Arcade on stage after seeing the duo in the play. Jolson insisted that Cagney and Blondell must be signed for the Warner Brothers film, which the studio did reluctantly, at first. The film's early talkie staginess has an antique appeal. The story shows only flashes of Cagney fire (with a Mother fixation) and Blondell is the embodiment of a living kewpie doll, a role that she would perfect and deepen on screen in the coming years.

Big City Blues (1932-Mervyn LeRoy), in which a 26-year-old Blondell plays the worldly but maternal "older woman" to the boyish Eric Linden's hayseed, just arrived in The Big Apple. A certain Mr. H. Bogart played a small, uncharacteristically muted role as (surprise!) a small time Broadway actor in this brisk programmer too.

Lawyer Man (1933-William Dieterle) with William Powell as a glib attorney (Is there any other kind in Warner Brothers' movies? Bill even speaks Yiddish in this one) and Blondell as his ever-loyal secretary, (if only he'd notice her).

He Was Her Man (1934-Lloyd Bacon) marks the last time that Joan Blondell and James Cagney appeared on screen together after six movies. As a somewhat peppy crime-romance story it contains some surprisingly somber moments, as well as racy ones, as the characters played by the pair search for a way out of the lives they have both embarked on in this Depression-era tale. Not the best of their screen partnerships (unlike the superbly entertaining Footlight Parade and Blonde Crazy), but Joan has sensitive moments that would not be seen again in her acting for a decade and Cagney is Cagney---or is he, since he has one of the worst mustaches in film history in this movie?)

Stand-In (1937-Tay Garnett) features a very droll Leslie Howard as a Wall Street efficiency expert, newly arrived in Hollywood to straighten out the labor and management affairs of a dream factory. It's a good thing that Joan's "old hand" at studio politics is around to advise and beguile him. The satire also features a sophisticated performance from that Bogart guy again. This time he plays a film director who's a two-fisted drinker (who ever heard of such a thing?).

Below is a complete list of the lineup scheduled for August 24th:

Joan Blondell Day on August 24th during Summer Under the Stars:
(Please note: All times shown are EDT. Scheduled films may be subject to change)

6:00 AM    The Reckless Hour (’31)
7:15 AM    Big City Blues (’32)
8:30 AM    Central Park (’32)
9:30 AM    Lawyer Man (’33)
10:45 AM    Traveling Saleslady (’35)
12:00 PM    Colleen (’36)
1:30 PM    We’re in the Money (’35)
2:45 PM    Gold Diggers of 1933 (’33)
4:30 PM    Footlight Parade (’33)
6:30 PM    He Was Her Man (’34)
8:00 PM    Sinners’ Holiday (’30)
9:15 PM    Dames (’34)
11:00 PM    Stand-In (’37)
12:45 AM    Cry “Havoc” (’43)
2:30 AM    Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (’57)
4:15 AM    Kona Coast (’68)

Happy Fourth of July 2011!

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:58:00 +0000

To our friends here and abroad, many wishes for a joyous day of freedom on the Fourth of July.

Before we settle down with Joe E. Brown, Fred Keating, Glenda Farrell, James Cagney, and Pat O'Brien for a holiday barbecue at the O'Brien household, perhaps you'd enjoy a little game. (Say, didn't Fred Keating look a lot like Jack LaRue?)

To celebrate our classic American film roots, I offer the following thumbnail images below for your enjoyment--and occasional puzzlement, as you wonder how they came up with some of these cockamamie ideas for publicity stills and the circumstances when they were taken. (Since a few of these people on display are a wee bit obscure, I've added an asterisk next to them with info below about their background).

See if you can match the numbered image below to the names listed correctly (please click on the thumbnail to see the larger version of the images). No points for the two most obvious stars shown (hint: they were married).

I'll post the correct answers on Thursday of this week.

Have fun!:

1.) 2.) 3.)
4.) 5.) 6.)
7.) 8.) 9.)
10.) 11.) 12.)
13.) 14.) 15.)
16.) 17.) 18.)
19.) 20.) 21.)

As promised, here are the answers to the above quiz:

Betty Hutton ____4______

Elizabeth Taylor ___9_______

Mary Pickford ___2_______

Adelle August* ____11______

Cyd Charisse ____7______

Cyd Chrisse (yes, she appears twice) _______17___

Ann Miller ___6_______

Ann Miller (yes, she appears twice too) ____19______

Ann Rutherford ____8______

Madge Evans ___14_______

Mary Martin ___21_______

Ava Gardner ____5______

Dorothy Arnold** ___16_______

Clara Bow ____10______

Jinx Falkenberg*** ___18_______

Ella Raines ____13______

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. _1_________

Gloria Grahame ____12______

Joan Crawford ____20______

Virginia Dale****___15_______

Colleen Moore___3____

*Adelle August (1934-2004) was the former Miss Washington 1952, whose beauty took her to Hollywood, where she appeared in several Columbia movies in the '50s, (most of them uncredited). These included Women's Prison (1955), My Sister Eileen (1955), and 5 Against the House (1955). Her decade in Hollywood ended when Ms. August wed Leonard G. Rogers, a wealthy tobacco man.

**Dorothy Arnold (1917-1984) was an actress for two decades in Hollywood, but her most famous performance was off-screen as Joe DiMaggio's first wife (well before Marilyn) and the mother of his son, Joseph III, which kept the lady busy for all of the '40s and most of the '50s. Ms. Arnold can be seen in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), Lizzie (1957) and Fräulein (1958).

***Jinx Falkenberg (1919-2003), who is forgotten now, was one of the most famous women in America in her day--though she was actually raised in Chile. She began her film career in the mid-'30s in that country, but came to frothy prominence in the U.S. as a Goldwyn Girl in Strike Me Pink (1936), appeared with Joan Davis in Two Latins from Manhattan (1941). Her real prominence came from her ubiquitous presence in print ads, on radio and later television, which peaked around the time that her brother Bob Falkenburg became the 1948 Wimbledon Tennis Champion.

**** Virginia Dale (1917-1994), who appeared with Gable in Idiot's Delight (1939), co-starred with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1941), was a Miss California in 1937, never quite broke through after some featured roles at Paramount. Ms. Dale appeared in many '50s television shows (Highway Patrol, Code 3, The Adventures of Kit Carson), and eventually left the business. She did return to show business in the '80s, appearing in mini-series such as North and South and Bare Essence.

The Dorothy McGuire Birthday on TCM

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:38:00 +0000

The birth of actress Dorothy McGuire on June 14th, 1916 in Omaha, Nebraska is being celebrated with the lineup below on TCM this Tuesday.

If I had to pick only one film out of these to see, I might recommend Till the End of Time (1946), since it remains a largely unsung gem, is only available on VHS and a Region 2 DVD, and is overshadowed by the more polished The Best Years of Our Lives released in the same year. This drama, capturing the painful transition from war to peace among a trio of servicemen, played by Guy Madison, Robert Mitchum and Bill Williams, features an excellent performance from McGuire, who plays a restless and wary war widow with a refreshing honesty. Her intelligent characterization of the older Pat Ruscomb simmers with tender longing, a dash of desire, and some understandable anger. Few other actresses could have conveyed such a blend of contradictory emotions with more skill.

You can see previous posts on this blog related to Dorothy McGuire and her films here.

Tuesday, June 14th Schedule of Dorothy McGuire Movies on TCM:

6:30 AM
The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
A scarred veteran and a homely woman are transformed by love.
Dir: John Cromwell Cast: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Herbert Marshall.
BW-92 mins, TV-G, CC,

8:30 AM
Till The End Of Time (1946)
A returning World War II veteran falls for a troubled war widow.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk Cast: Dorothy McGuire, Guy Madison, Robert Mitchum.
BW-105 mins, TV-G, CC,

10:30 AM
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
A peaceful Quaker family's sanctity is tested during the Civil War.
Dir: William Wyler Cast: Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Marjorie Main.
BW-138 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format

1:00 PM
A Summer Place (1959)
An adulterous couple discovers that their children are sexually involved.
Dir: Delmer Daves Cast: Richard Egan, Dorothy McGuire, Sandra Dee.
C-130 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

3:15 PM
Susan Slade (1961)
A pregnant teen allows her mother to pass the baby off as her own.
Dir: Delmer Daves Cast: Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, Dorothy McGuire.
C-116 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

Race and Hollywood: Arab Images on Film July, 2011 on TCM

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Wed, 25 May 2011 18:30:00 +0000

From the TCM Press Room comes news that July, 2011 will feature an examination of Race & Hollywood: Arab Images in Cinema.

Turner Classic Movies has annually examined the changing racial attitudes reflected in film. In years past shifting images and perspectives toward African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians have proved to be rich and varied topics for discovery in cinematic history. This year the network will be examining how Arabic people have been depicted in movies from the silent era to the present day. Undoubtedly, this event could not be more timely given recent ongoing events around the world. The following is the press release describing this venture, followed by the complete schedule of movies exploring this theme that are currently slated to be shown on TCM in July:

Release Date: 5/23/2011

TCM Explores Depictions of Arabs in Cinema in Latest Installment of Acclaimed Race & Hollywood Initiative

Author Jack G. Shaheen to Join TCM Host Robert Osborne for Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film, Airing Tuesday and Thursday Nights in July Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is preparing to launch Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film, a month-long movie event that focuses on the diverse portrayals of Arabs in cinema. Tuesday and Thursday nights in July, TCM host Robert Osborne will be joined by internationally acclaimed professor, author and Middle East media consultant Dr. Jack G. Shaheen to introduce a wide range of films and provide extensive insight into Hollywood’s ever-changing attitude toward Arab people.

TCM’sRace & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film is the sixth installment of TCM’s far-reaching and culturally significant Race & Hollywood project, an ongoing exploration of cinematic portrayals of different racial and cultural groups. Each Tuesday and Thursday evening in July will focus on a different topic, including early films, epic stories, depictions of Arab sheiks and Arab women, Arabs portrayed as villains or the subject of ridicule and movies that provide an even-handed look at Arab culture. The series will close on Thursday, July 28, with a night of films made outside Hollywood.

Among the notable works featured in the Arab Images on Film collection are 14 TCM premieres, including the award-winning Gulf War action drama Three Kings (1999), starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube; the romantic comedy-adventure Jewel of the Nile (1985), starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas; the Libya-set dramas Lion of the Desert (1981), starring Anthony Quinn; The Black Tent (1956), with Donald Sinden; the adventure films Tarzan the Fearless (1933), with Buster Crabbe; and the silent classic The Sheik (1921), starring Rudolph Valentino. The July lineup will also include David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Kismet (1944), The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and several animated shorts featuring Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Popeye and other famous characters. A full schedule is included below.

“TCM is committed not only to preserving and celebrating classic films but also to digging deeper into the events and attitudes that have shaped how Hollywood depicts the world around us,” Osborne said. “With Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film, we’re setting out to track the history of Hollywood’s relationship with Arabs in cinema and how it has evolved to where it is today. We hope this series provides a thought-provoking look at a very timely and important topic.”

In his book Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Dr. Shaheen writes, “When colleagues ask whether today’s reel Arabs are more stereotypical than yesteryear’s, I can’t say the celluloid Arab has changed. He is what he has always been – the cultural ‘other.’ Arabs have too often been viewed as backward, barbaric and dangerously different through Hollywood’s distorted lens. Unfortunately, these stereotypes are now deeply ingrained in American cinema.”

As Shaheen points out, not all cinematic portrayals of Arabs are negative. “While it is true that some filmmakers have vilified the Arabs, others have not,” he writes. “Some contested harmful stereotypes, displaying positive images – that is, casting an Arab as a regular person…to paraphrase an Arab proverb, Eed wahdehm a fiha tza’if, one hand alone cannot clap. Believe me, by working together, we will shatter the stereotype.”

Dr. Shaheen is the world’s foremost authority on images of Arabs and Muslims in American popular culture. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and, most recently, Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11, which was named Book of the Year by ForeWord magazine. Shaheen is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with New York University and a former news consultant on Middle Eastern affairs for CBS News. He regularly appears on national programs such as Nightline, Good Morning America, 48 Hours and The Today Show. Shaheen regularly serves as a consultant with television and motion picture companies, including Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Hanna-Barbera and Showtime. He also consulted on the George Clooney films Three Kings (1999) and Syriana (2005).

Past editions of TCM’s Race and Hollywood film series explored how Hollywood has portrayed such groups as African-Americans (2006), Asians (2008), Latinos (2009) and Native Americans (2010). In addition, TCM examined Hollywood’s depiction of gay characters and themes in 2007.

Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film
Full Schedule

The following is a complete schedule of TCM’s Race & Hollywood: Arab Images on Film. Films in bold are making their TCM debut. All times shown are Eastern.

Tuesday, July 5 – Early Images
8 p.m.    The Sea Hawk (1924)
10:30 p.m.    The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
1 a.m.    The Sheik (1921)
2:30 a.m.    Tarzan the Fearless (1933)
3:45 a.m.    The Lost Patrol (1934)

Thursday, July 7 – Arabs as Villains
8 p.m.    Adventure in Iraq (1943)
9:30 p.m.    Action in Arabia (1944)
11 p.m.    Sirocco (1951)
1 a.m.    Trunk to Cairo (1966)
3:30 a.m.    Sinbad the Sailor (1947)

Tuesday, July 12 – Epics
8 p.m.    Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
12 a.m.    Lion of the Desert (1981)
3 a.m.    The Four Feathers (1939)
5 a.m.    Young Winston (1972)

Thursday, July 14 – Arabs as a Subject of Ridicule
8 p.m.    Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937) and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1937)
10 p.m.    Road to Morocco (1942) and Sahara Hare (1955)
11:45 p.m.    Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) and Mummy’s Dummies (1948)
1:45 a.m.    Arabian Tights (1933)and Little Beau Porky (1964)
2:30 a.m.    The Sad Sack (1957)and Hare-Abian Nights (1966)
4:30 a.m.    Bowery to Baghdad (1955)

Tuesday, July 19 – Arab Maidens
8 p.m.    Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
10:15 p.m.    Dream Wife (1953)
12:15 a.m.    Kismet (1944)
2:30 a.m.    Chandu the Magician (1932)
3:45 a.m.    The Desert Song (1955)

Thursday, July 21 – Arabs as Sheiks
8 p.m.    Drums of Africa (1963)
10 p.m.    Harum Scarum (1965)
12 a.m.    Jewel of the Nile (1985)
2 a.m.    Son of the Sheik (1926)
3:30 a.m.    The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Tuesday, July 26 – Even-Handed Portrayals
8 p.m.    Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
10 p.m.    The Black Tent (1956)
12 a.m.    Three Kings (1999)
1:30 a.m.    King Richard and the Crusaders (1954)
3:30 a.m.    Sahara (1943)
5:15 a.m.    Bataan (1943)

Thursday, July 28 – Images from Outside Hollywood
8 p.m.    Princess Tam Tam (1935)
9:30 p.m.    The Band’s Visit (1907)
11:15 p.m.    Rana’s Wedding (1903)
1 a.m.    Battle of Algiers (1966)
3:15 a.m.    Taste of Cherry (1997)

Schedule subject to change.

Faces in the Crowd: Odette Myrtil

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:46:00 +0000

Around the Skeins there are no real small timers, just actors whose uniquely reliable presence in movies has led to their being overlooked, sometimes despite their years of experience and the verisimilitude they brought to their supporting roles. One of the performers who brought a wealth of experience to her many appearances in films of the studio era was Odette Myrtil (1898-1978).

Mme. Myrtil may not have been a star, but she showed up in over two dozen movies directed by such venerable talents as William Wyler, Preston Sturges, Alfred Hitchcock, Jules Dassin, and George Cukor. One reason that those filmmakers chose to use her was that she could lend a trace of her sophistication to American films, and provide an intriguing contrast to the heroines she so often helped, tempted, and guided through their personal dramas. Few classic movie fans probably know her name today, even if her intelligent, angular face is familiar. Based on what little I've learned about this industrious woman, she would probably have accepted her relative obscurity with equanimity. As she told a reporter in the '30s, using a once sprightly term that now seems fraught with socio-political meaning, "I have had my ups and downs, but my downs have always been so gay."

In her own time she was a favorite on stage, screen and cabaret stages on two continents for many decades. She often appeared in studio era films as the quintessential pragmatic Frenchwoman. Later an exasperated Odette explained to interviewers with a sigh that, contrary to American assumptions, she did not say "zis" or "zat" when speaking of "this" or "that," and she "had never heard a Frenchwoman say 'Oh, la, la' in [her] entire life," though it seemed to be news to screenwriters. Though her sometimes cliched roles in movies would often require her to sound like Pepe Le Pew's sister, Myrtil's English was actually very lightly accented, (and her English pronunciation was good enough to be heard on radio in Britain and the America for decades, beginning in the '20s).

On screen, she was a mature figure who usually clucked her approval or disapproval in acknowledgement of life's injustices, or when evaluating the suitability (or lack of it) of a particular hat--depending on the client--as she did when outfitting Claudette Colbert in The Palm Beach Story (1942). Myrtil often expressed a philosophical empathy with those she cared for, but could, when the part called for it, deliver a chilly professionalism to others. Her characters parlayed their innate sense of style and organizational talent into careers as shopkeepers, couturiers, boarding house landladies, sympathetic souls and chic, recherche ladies.

In Dodsworth (1936), as the Parisian sophisticate Renée De Penable, Odette shared Ruth Chatterton's disdain for her husband's warm-hearted provincialism and encouraged the American matron's budding taste in aristocratic gigolos. In Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940), Myrtil played the proprietress of the House of Delphine Detaille, the efficient yet maternal designer who was there for Ginger Rogers when her employee had her baby all alone. In Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Myrtil's landlady tried to keep the Irish stew out of the reach of the non-paying Cohans in her theatrical boarding house--changing her tune once Jimmy Cagney's blustering George M. arrived with an inflated story of success. Odette was the unlucky dressmaker who tried to give ski-instructor Greta Garbo some hauteur in the ill-fated Two-Faced Woman (1941), which turned out to be Garbo's swan song.

As Madame Barthold in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).

In The Last Time I Saw Paris (1952), the veteran performer sang in the style of chanteuse Edith Piaf, giving a cafe scene a Gallic flair (even though most of it was filmed on the MGM lot). When given a chance, the actress could give her worldly characters a saltiness that implied a richer life than was explained in the script, as she did when playing Madame Heger in Warner Brothers' largely fictitious account of the Bronte sisters' lives in Devotion (1946). As the weary wife of the lubricious Belgian schoolmaster (Victor Francen) who enticed the naïve Brontes into a flirtation that was not as innocent as it seemed, Myrtil made me realize how tiresome the adolescent antics of her husband and his charges were to a woman who had long ago ceased to find such endless games amusing.

In the romantic drama Reunion in France (1942), directed by Jules Dassin at MGM, the story of France's fall to the Nazis in 1940 is drawn in sometimes sharply accurate detail, while at other times opting for typically glossy Hollywood derring-do, courtesy of John Wayne, opposite Joan Crawford, who was nearing the end of her long tenure at Metro. In this film Odette Myrtil plays a French couturier who is contemptuous of her aristocratic client, a member of the monied classes, Michele de la Becque (Joan Crawford). Mlle. de la Becque begins the story as a superficial and oblivious heiress who is miffed that her gentleman friend (Philip Dorn) is unable to leave for Biarritz with her since he is distracted by his responsibilities as chairman of the Committee of Industrial Coordination, vainly trying to marshal French industry to oppose the coming invasion from Germany.

In a scene that is meant to encapsulate the self-absorption of the French upper classes, Crawford arrives at her luxurious home where she has kept a designer (Odette), a model (Ann Ayers) and a seamstress (Margaret Laurence) waiting for hours. Wondering aloud, Myrtil is heard to mutter,"Why is it she never seems to find enough time in which to do absolutely nothing?" When the haughty socialite becomes vexed by the inferior quality of fabric available for her finery in wartime, Myrtil observes that "Mademoiselle seems annoyed at the war."

Above: As Mme. Montanot in Reunion in France (1942).

When Crawford leaves, the model asks, "Who does she think she is? Who do they all think they are?" The designer responds in one of her patented asides, "The glory that was France." As the film progressed, Crawford and Myrtil's characters become allies once Mademoiselle de la Brecque learns what the defeat of France means to her.

One reason that Odette Myrtil consistently played career women in the dress trade so well was that she herself was a designer off-camera as well. Apprenticed in the theater at a time when many players were responsible for providing their own costume for a show and with her native French talent for stylish dress, Odette began to advise and make clothes for others between engagements on stage, screen, in such tony establishments as New York's Rainbow Room and--when economy demanded it--in one night stands on the vaudeville circuit.

A chic Odette Myrtil in a modish photo from the 1920s.

To ensure a steady income not dependent on the vagaries of filmdom, the performer became a garment designer from 1930 to 1936 (when she won a plum role in William Wyler's Dodsworth). "Between engagements," as show folk were likely to put it, she earned her bread in Beverly Hills making glad rags for film executive's wives, mistresses and actresses, and occasionally making individual costumes for actresses in particular roles.

Her label was simply "Odette" and she eventually branched out to design clothing for films, employing 35 seamstresses in her studio, making her creations to be worn worn in stage shows and in Tomorrow, the World (1944), Brewster's Millions (1945), Manhandled (1949), and 711 Ocean Drive (1950), among other movies. When you see Odette Myrtil in a almost any film, chances were often good that she wore a creation that she had fashioned herself--even though a studio designer was credited with the costumes for a picture.

This actress was always a worldly wise woman in her film roles, as she appears to have been in life as well, though according to interviews, her private joys were earthier than those of her fashion-conscious characters, tending toward country pleasures, involving dogs, farming and cooking in between moments in the limelight in New York, Paris, London and Hollywood.

Odette Myrtil was a Parisian-born actress, singer, violinist whose theatrical parents (whose last name was either Belza or Quignard, according to conflicting sources). As a toddler, Odette traveled throughout Europe with her touring parents, inevitably finding her way on stage as she grew older. By the age of 13 she had appeared on the stage of the Olympia Theater in Paris, playing the violin and singing to considerable popular and critical acclaim.

A very young Odette Myrtil with her violin

From the age of 14, the musically gifted girl studied music with the then famed "king of the violin," Eugène Ysaÿe, but as a young woman in World War I, she used her talent as a performer to elicit "sympathy from the German conquerors of Belgium." When entertaining French audiences, her music hall roots emerged as she "sang and played 'La Marseillaise' so that," as she described it, "people cheered and were ready to fight the Boches."

Myrtil's success in cabarets and theaters in France and Britain soon led her to work on both sides of the Atlantic, beginning in 1914 when the sixteen-year-old was engaged for two editions of the famed Ziegfeld Follies in New York. As one of the stellar attractions, she was also invited to perform for New York's social elite in Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic on the rooftop of the New Amsterdam Theatre along with performers such as Will Rogers and The Dolly Sisters in 1915. American magazines such as The Theatre, which celebrated the performing arts, featured her regularly in their pages, picturing the seventeen-year-old in the image below and rhapsodizing about the intensely talented performer's adroit fingering of the violin, her robust singing voice and elegant grace as a dancer. (Strangely, other than Fannie Brice, who appeared in the last of the fanciful movies about the Follies, when Hollywood made three tributes to the Ziegfeld Follies tradition in the studio era, The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), and Ziegfeld Follies (1945), no one seemed terribly interested in featuring those show business veterans who had been in these shows and were still active in the theater and film in these stories).

An illustration from a story in Theatre Magazine about Odette Myrtil in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1915.

Soon Odette returned to London where she appeared for the next decade in cabarets, and in the legendary intimate, small scale and exceptionally popular revues put together by the French-born impresario André Charlot, where she shared the stage with Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan, among others. During this same period, Myrtil met and married fellow performer Bob Adams (1876-1948), an American singer and songwriter who, as part of "The Two Bobs," (the other Bob was one Bob Alden) had helped to popularize ragtime music in Britain prior to 1912, scoring with music hall audiences and early recordings of such songs as "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

In 1917, Odette and Bob Adams became the parents of Roger Adams (d. 1999), who would go on to a successful career as a composer, music and dance arranger for fifteen Broadway musicals between 1946 and 1968, (including many Bob Fosse shows). Among the well-remembered musicals Myrtil's son worked on during his career were The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Redhead, Once Upon a Mattress and Mame. Though it appears that Myrtil was married to Adams for just eight years, she eventually Myrtil went on to marry again. (Bob Adams passed away in 1948).

Above: Odette at age 18 in The Bing Boys Are Back in 1916, one of the biggest London hits of the WWI era, (the others were The Maid of the Mountains and Chu Chin Chow)

Sometime between the teens and the forties, Odette became the wife of a busy British actor, writer and director, Stanley Logan. The multi-faceted Logan pursued an active career split between the stage and screen in America until his death in 1953, directing a few movies (notably The Falcon's Brother in which Tom Conway took over the role created on screen by George Sanders) and appearing in supporting parts in many roles (Three Strangers, That Forsyte Woman, The Prisoner of Zenda). Her film career, augmented by the money she was able to earn as a cabaret performer and as a dress designer was not really as important to her as it might have been.

When Hollywood producers came to call on her in the late 1920s with contract offers for her to appear in talkies, she had been in one hit after another in operettas and musical revues on Broadway, including one show called White Lilacs in which she played George Sand to a boyish Chopin to great acclaim--with one critic commenting on "the 'virility' of her enacting the part of the seductive older woman." In now forgotten stage musicals such as The Red Mill, Countess Maritza and The Cat and the Fiddle the performer was allowed to display her specialties, blending skilled musicianship with an engaging down-to-earth stage manner singing Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern melodies. The composer Jerome Kern was so enchanted with Odette that he wrote the musical The Cat and the Fiddle with her talents specifically in mind. During this period, Myrtil was also known for her devotion not to the stage--but to her twenty dogs she kept on her Long Island farm, where she invested every penny and spent as much time as possible cultivating--even though she admitted it was costly.

Odette in costume (of her own making, most likely) in The Fighting Kentuckian (1949).

Odette remained unconvinced about Hollywood's interest in her and regarded many movies as aiming too low. "It seems strange," she told a reporter at the time, "that the producers believe that the talkies should go down to the level of the least intelligent members of an audience, rather than up to the standards of a better class of patrons. Why should pictures be made for adults who have the brains of a 10-year-old child? It is insulting to the rest of us."

Odette Myrtil, knitting in her spare time in the 1940s.

By the time that she was persuaded to shift her base of operations to Hollywood, Odette had developed a philosophical distance from her career. When a reporter asked about her acting ambitions in 1947, she gave a shrug of her green-suited shoulders. "I took seven tests for the role of Pilar in 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Let us face it--I looked like Odette Myrtil in every one of them, and nothing like a Spanish peasant woman named Pilar. So Katina Paxinou played the role and won an Academy Award for it." she isn't such a great shakes trying to subordinate her distinctive features and Gallic gestures into another character. "It takes me days to get into another role," she once explained. "And it is the triumph of the director over nature."

Eventually, after several more small triumphs on stage, including replacing Juanita Hall in the part of Bloody Mary in the original New York company of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, Myrtil, was finally able to build her nest in the countryside she loved so much. In the late 1950s, the actress found a cozy berth in the country in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In the town of New Hope, Odette first took over management of the Playhouse Inn, near the famous Bucks County Playhouse where Broadway shows tried out, and high quality theatrical productions had flourished since the 1930s, attracting famous actors and their well-heeled audiences to the spot, not far from Philadelphia and New York. Bringing her flair for food and fashion to play, Odette featured jazz and dancing nightly, creating a bistro atmosphere in the dining room, which was decorated with Mme. Myrtil's memorabilia from a lifetime of performing. Sometimes Odette even introduced her patrons to new and different performers, including Nina Simone in 1957, the unique and sometimes eccentric singer, who found herself surprisingly at home in the night spot.

By the early '60s, she felt confident enough to open a restaurant called Chez Odette on the banks of the Delaware river that catered to the wealthy arts community that flocked to her door in New Hope. Visitors could sit outside in the Spring and Summer at her River Road restaurant, enjoying the music and the atmosphere redolent with the aroma of escargots and onion soup. Odette became such a popular resident of New Hope that in 1965 supporters organized a campaign was launched to persuade Odette to run for mayor of township. According to sources, this effort was "supported by fans across the country and colleagues in the radio and television industry...until a Pennsylvania State Liquor Control Board ruling" restricted any "mayor of any borough [from holding] a liquor license" while serving in office at the same time.

Despite her preoccupation with her restaurant business, Myrtil found the energy to appear in revivals of South Pacific in 1960, singing "Bali Hai" once again as Bloody Mary with Howard Keel and Carol Lawrence in the leads. She even appeared off-Broadway in a theater devoted to a revival of the Grand Guignol production style in New York with Sylvia Miles and William Windom. As her career wound down Mme. Myrtil eventually donated her rare 1738 French Boirin violin to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

Odette Myrtil "in retirement" at her restaurant in the 1970s

Hollywood and New York friends such as Lauritz Melchior, Walter Slezak, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre had urged her for years to share her skills with the world. With this new venture, Myrtil provided authentic French cuisine in a country setting at a time when such fare was only rarely found outside of large, cosmopolitan cities. Inevitably, when the spirit moved her, Odette herself was reported to have come out of the kitchen to sing and play her violin for audiences deep into the night.

In 1975, three years before Odette Myrtil's death at the age of 80, she had sold the restaurant, which reportedly still stands with her name on it, though it has been closed since a flood in 2006.* Maybe somewhere Odette is living the good life, with no more one night stands, endless runs in musicals or in films that never really fulfilled her potential as a musical performer. Maybe she's just enjoying the quiet of the country with those twenty dogs she loved so much on her farm. Below is an early recording of a song sung by Odette Myrtil in 1919 called "Chong - He Came From Hong Kong." Like her, it's a bit silly and charming, and sung with a certain off-hand artistry:

Upcoming films on Turner Classics Movie channel featuring Odette Myrtil may be found here.

A complete filmography of Odette Myrtil appearances can be seen here.

Sources:

Adams, Marjory, Odette Myrtil Loves Stage, But Also Likes to Design Clothes, Daily Boston Globe, Mar 30, 1947.
Cohadas, Nadine, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone, Random House, 2010.
Friends of the Delaware Canal, The Place to Be, (PDF format)
James A. Michener Art Museum: Bucks County Artists/Odette Myrtil
Leese, Elizabeth, Costume Design in the Movies: An Illustrated Guide to the Work of 157 Great Designers, Courier Dover Publications, 1991.
Stage Types Untrue to Life, Daily Boston Globe, July 20, 1930.
The Theatre, Volumes 21-22, Meyer Bros. & Co., 1915.

Odette Myrtil at the top of her stylish form.

---------------------------------

* Sold by Odette Myrtil and her son Roger Adams in 1973, and closed since a flood in 2006, in the years after their family association with the restaurant had ended, Chez Odette became the site in 1983 of a tragic accident when newscaster Jessica Savitch, Martin Fischbein, a vice-president of the New York Post, and Savitch's dog were all killed near the eatery when their car went into a nearby canal.

CMBA Blogathon Movies of 1939: We Are Not Alone (1939)

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:12:00 +0000

[The following is the Skeins' contribution to the Classic Movies Blog Association's Classic Films of 1939 Blogathon, which runs from May 15th to May 17th. The inspiration behind this blogathon came from ClassicBecky of ClassicBecky's Brain Food and Page of My Love of Old Hollywood. For a list of the participants and all the movies to be reviewed, the CMBA has a list available here.]

"We must love one another or die..." ~ September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden

Seven decades since 1939, the glow from the films released that year still inspires admiration. As the world faced the advent of World War II in September, audiences flocked to see the Romances, Gangsters, Westerns, Adventures, Musicals and Comedies that dominated the screen in a series of imaginative and masterful movies such as Love Affair, Stagecoach, Gunga Din, The Wizard of Oz, and Ninotchka, among others. With such a surfeit of creativity to choose from in these beautifully crafted films, dominated by the overwhelming Gone With the Wind, how could a small movie about the events in one fictional family compete with all that glamour?

We Are Not Alone was a Warner Brothers film that slipped into theaters two days after Thanksgiving and just three weeks before the blockbuster GWTW opened in New York. Not surprisingly, it was lost in the shuffle, despite opening at the high profile Radio City Music Hall, though I'm not sure if that cavernous theater was the ideal locale for such an intimate story. Today this little-known, flawed, but engrossing movie still awaits re-discovery by audiences. Not available on VHS or DVD commercially, this film is occasionally broadcast on TCM. In order to examine We Are Not Alone, plot details will be discussed below, so please expect some spoilers.

Above: Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone (1939).

Based on a book by James Hilton, (Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Random Harvest), We Are Not Alone was a thoughtful story set in 1914 in a small English village. The central character was a gentle, introspective doctor, David Newcombe, played by Paul Muni, an actor who was regarded by studio head Jack Warner as a temperamental, demanding contract player, but whose talent was undeniable. The actor was the first choice for the role of the doctor, whose circumstances were partially inspired by the notorious Dr. Crippen case, though We Are Not Alone was not essentially a whodunit.

Muni's doctor is a vaguely whimsical figure, pedaling around his parochial world, almost another "Mr. Chips," a man whose life seems to be happening to him while he woolgathers. Between patients, who include an inebriated lower class crone and his own wife, he proceeds dreamily, going about his business on his bicycle and amusing his beloved son and playing his violin in his spare time. His air of vagueness becomes most acute when he interacts with his taller, more assertive wife, who dictates to her family while quoting her Archdeacon brother's pronouncements as though they were gospel. The tenderness in Newcombe blooms in the presence of his son, and when he encounters a lost girl in need of protection.

Muni's character endures a tense domestic life that becomes more complex when he treats a waifish young Austrian dancer appearing with a third rate troupe in a regional theater. Leni Krafft (Jane Bryan), who has attempted suicide after falling and hurting herself, exudes a forlorn but infectious gaiety, responding warmly to any kindness extended to her. Touched by her lonely situation, the doctor tries to coax her back to life by offering her a position as a governess to his young son, Gerald (Raymond Severn). The boy's life has been overshadowed by his domineering mother, Jessica (Flora Robson), whose continual criticism of the sensitive boy has left the under-sized child high-strung and nervous. Young Gerald responds instinctively to the playful, sweet-tempered girl and the change in his father since she came to stay in their home.

Above: Jane Bryan with Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone (1939).

Unfortunately, for all, the young woman's presence in her household aggravates her naturally suspicious nature. When Jessica Newcombe learns of Leni's theatrical background, her sense of propriety is offended. She prepares to send her son to stay with a relative, an Archdeacon in the church, until Leni is "removed from the household." In an ironic twist, as the anxious boy learns that he will be separated from his new friend and his understanding father, he knocks over a bottle of his mother's aspirin by accident, smashing it. Afraid that he will be chided for his clumsiness when his mother discovers his mistake, the overwrought child transfers the spilled pills into another bottle, unaware that it already contains strong sleeping pills.

Above: Jane Bryan and Flora Robson in We Are Not Alone (1939).

Ultimately, when war between Britain and Germany is declared in July, 1914, the Austrian girl faces imprisonment as an enemy alien since she is a native of one of the Central Powers countries. The doctor, appalled to see people he has known all his life suddenly turning on their neighbors of Germanic descent, hastily tries to take Leni to a train that would carry her to a boat going away from English shores, but they are eventually intercepted by the police. Tragically, Jessica Newcombe, when suffering from a headache, has taken the pills in the bottle. Thanks in part to prejudice against the Austrian girl whipped up by wartime hatred, the doctor and the governess are accused of conducting an affair and murdering his wife so that they can be together. The film, which takes its time building to this pivotal moment, avoids sentimental melodrama throughout the sometimes talky script. All the characters are remarkably articulate, though they are not always aware of their real feelings, an aspect of the film underpinned by the effective restraint of each member of the cast.

This restraint is especially welcome in the beautifully nuanced, understated work of Paul Muni in this film, since he is sometimes an actor who could fall into a hamminess that makes him difficult to watch for modern viewers. The actor, whose reputation in the '30s and '40s classified him as one of the few seriously respected figures in movies, wears a mustache for his role of the provincial doctor, but in large part he is much more effective here without any of the cumbersome makeup he donned in other roles. The sometimes fustian manner that Muni adopted when playing great men of science, letters and history such as Pasteur, Zola and Juarez is also happily absent, as the actor gives one of his most direct, naturalistic performances playing a man whose self-discovery undoes him even as he frees himself from all the pettiness he has lived with for so long. Muni, who would leave Warner Brothers after making this movie, was one of the few actors in that period who had script approval. This role was one he would always cite as his favorite part in films.

When producer Henry Blanke first presented the notoriously picky Muni with the script in its draft state, the actor dismissed the treatment with the comment, "It's chicken shit," as he returned it with disgust. After allowing James Hilton, who had recently signed a three year contract with the studio, to go to work on the screenplay with veteran scenarist Milton Krims, Muni was heartened by the results, commenting "Ah! Now--chicken salad!" Ultimately, the literate script that was translated to film could be interpreted on several levels: as a personal tragedy or as an allegory for the situation that society faced in 1939, just as it did in 1914.

Above: James Hilton at work on the script for We Are Not Alone (1939).

The casting of the other roles in the story was fraught with behind-the-scenes machinations and studio politics. Muni's Dr. Newcombe lives with his domineering, rigidly pious and deeply unhappy wife, Jessica, who was played by the British character actress Flora Robson, a relatively new face in Hollywood, though she was a veteran of stage and screen, having trained for the theatre from the age of 5. Her part as Mrs. Newcombe required her to play a repellent character--but one whose caustic manner and judgmental attitudes reveal the woman's depth of pain, which comes out of her unconscious understanding that she is essentially unlovable.

Above: Flora Robson as Jessica Newcombe in We Are Not Alone (1939).

The brilliant character actress, who would be offered a seven year contract by Warner Brothers that she would refuse, had appeared in British films, gracing several prestigious Alexander Korda films such as Fire Over England, playing a fiery and intelligent Elizabeth I, as she would later do in Warner's The Sea Hawk as part of a three picture deal with the studio. Incredibly, Robson eventually played George Raft's mother in the crime flick, Invisible Stripes, as part of this agreement, even though she was one year younger than Raft. "I'm the sort who never looked young," she explained, "and it was quite obvious I would not be successful until I was past 30." (She was 36 and 37 during the filming of Invisible Stripes and We Are Not Alone).

With her plain features and wolfish blue eyes that could easily change from tenderness to venomous, Robson understood that she was not to be a star in films, though she found more leading and supporting roles on stage, which gave her more scope and satisfaction. "The people in Hollywood," she discovered, "find it very difficult to understand the English actor's off-hand attitude towards the film industry." While she was eager to return to Britain, the dearth of theater offers she encountered there led her to consider work in the film capital again, leading to this film. The actress was also actively pursuing stage roles, and made her critically hailed Broadway debut in Ladies in Retirement* in 1940, shortly after completing filming of We Are Not Alone.

Above: Flora Robson & Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone (1936).

Her previous American film role had been in the well-received Wuthering Heights (1939), playing the part of the housekeeper, Ellen. It is her voice that narrates the story, blending her character's compassion and insight into Heathcliff and Cathy's tormented lives into the film's narrative. That experience, which she described as "not pleasant," impressed her with the status consciousness and stratification dividing leading and supporting players as well as the crews in Hollywood. Most distressing of all, when trying to enter the Goldwyn lot when scheduled to film, Robson had been refused entry more than once by guards who assumed that the ordinary looking woman in front of him was a "gatecrasher." Just prior to accepting the role of Paul Muni's wife in We Are Not Alone, Robson had turned down an offer to play Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) due to her desire to avoid being typecast as a domestic in the future. The actress would regret her choice ultimately, since, as she recalled, "Mr. Hitchcock never called again." While she regretted that missed opportunity, Flora cited Muni as her favorite co-star on film, (she named Robert Donat as her finest partner on stage).

In her role as Muni's spouse, Robson's Jessica demonstrates her most destructive behavior with her son, whose natural ebullience was repressed by her at every turn, sometimes aided by a suspicious maid, played by the reliably pesky Una O'Connor, who regards Dr. Newcombe as an annoyance more than an employer and whose gossip about him and Leni alienates the community from their doctor. O'Connor's character of Susan, full of indignation once war is declared, is exhilarated as she flings a brick through the window of a kindly German baker's shop, dropping her insolent veneer of servility, as she joins the townspeople in an incomprehensible hatred toward people she doesn't really know. She helps to convict the doctor and Leni in the court of public opinion before their trial begins. The Newcombes, who had shared a house but not their innermost lives, had maintained an increasingly desolate marriage defined by guilt and propriety. Their small son, Gerald (Raymond Severn), whose timid nature seems to reflect their underlying distress, remains the sole source of happiness for Newcombe, who refuses to have his boy called to appear in his trial for murder in an effort to shield him from the situation he finds himself faced with despite his innocence.

Paul Muni with Raymond Severn in We Are Not Alone (1939).

The casting of 21-year-old Jane Bryan in the role of the tragic dancer who finds herself in a seedy theater appearing with a third rate troupe was also opportune, though the young Warner Brothers contract player was not the first choice of anyone directly involved in this production. Originally slated as a vehicle for Davis, the role of Leni Krafft proved inconvenient for the busy Davis--who was actually a bit mature for the part. The casting notices in the newspapers then named the accomplished actress and mitteleuropean Elisabeth Bergner as a shoe-in for the part, followed by Broadway sensation Julie Haydon, and finally the German-born Dolly Haas. The actress is remembered today primarily for her portrayal of a murderer's intimidated spouse in I Confess (1953), as well as the wife of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, though she had a long career on stage and was internationally known for her European films at the time of this production.

Jane Bryan in We Are Not Alone (1939).

The petite Miss Haas, whose innocent, gamine charm as a performer had enhanced numerous German films and some British productions seemed an ideal choice for the part of the vulnerable Viennese girl. After living in Hollywood for three years without working after leaving Europe to escape Nazism, the actress had been under contract to everyone from Harry Cohn to Ernst Lubitsch, living in a kind of creative limbo while waiting for a project--any project--to come to fruition. Approved by Warner Brothers, Haas actually played the role of Leni for two weeks, though the emotional demands of the part reportedly led to a nervous breakdown.** In a bind at this stage, and searching for a quick study who could hold her own opposite Muni while affecting an Austrian accent; it was Bette Davis who recommended her friend and cast mate from four films (Marked Woman, Kid Galahad, The Sisters and The Old Maid). When asked one time if she believed that the neophyte Jane Bryan could handle an emotional role, Davis was quoted as saying that "Last time I played with her, I had to hide her face in a pillow to keep her from stealing my scenes."

Jane Bryan with Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone (1939).

Fortunately for Bryan, she was also sensitively directed by Goulding, allowing her to give a shimmering performance, expressing her character's fears, warmth and deepening emotions throughout the film with her lithe movements and gentle voice. During the production, Bryan grew in the part that earned her notices that described her contribution to the film as "a surprise and a delight." Her character gradually becomes the center of the Newcombe home as she appears to warm herself before the affection she receives from Gerald and Newcombe. In her later scenes, during the murder trial that she and the doctor endure, you can see her shrinking back into herself as the case is built against her and her employer. When the Crown Counsel (Henry Daniell, who is superb and merciless as the prosecutor), bellows at Muni in the dock, "Do you or do you not love Leni Krafft?" every word seems like a blow to her trembling spirit. Yet, when Newcombe pauses, repeating "Do I...love Leni?" you realize that this is the first moment he and Leni have faced this unspoken fact. His face reflects his sudden realization. He appears to have had an inner weight lifted, and his face becoming suffused with emotion as he answers, "Why...I hadn't thought of it...but of course I love her." It is a remarkably moving yet simple moment as he finally understands his previously inarticulate feeling for Leni, tacitly shared between them as he damns them both further by telling the essential truth.

Paul Muni being cross-examined by Henry Daniell in We Are Not Alone (1939).

While Muni received little recognition for his subtlety and quiet power in this part, Jane Bryan's work was noted by several critics at the time. One review described her "Leni (who could have been overplayed so easily) not as a trouper but as Leni herself. She is charming and heartbreaking." The fresh-faced Bryan (who was born Jane O'Brien and was irked when the studio changed it), had appeared in 18 films since 1936, usually playing a naive ingenue. Not particularly beautiful but very appealing and wholesome, she was blessed with an expressive face as well as an indefinable presence that made her stand-out from a sea of other young actresses. Jane Bryan won the National Board of Review acting award for this film. According to reports in the press at the time, however, her most cherished review came from Noël Coward, who had never met her formally. Seeing the young woman walking on a street in Los Angeles, Coward reportedly stopped her to tell her that she was "the best young movie actress working today."

Jane Bryan off-camera in 1939.

Despite the critical recognition and a studio buildup in high gear, during 1939, Jane was increasingly doubtful about what path she should take in the future after falling in love with industrialist Justin Dart. When her mentor Bette Davis was informed of the young woman's dilemma, she firmly advised the shy, reticent and self-critical girl to marry and forget the movies as a pursuit. Jane Bryan became Mrs. Dart on December 31, 1939, abandoning her career on the screen. Warner Brothers, in a particularly graceless moment toward an erstwhile employee who was breaking her contract, issued a statement to the press that the union would not last. They remained together for the next 45 years, parting when Dart died in 1984. Bryan never really looked back, describing her life as "one of adventure", though she disliked public speaking. "I am very shy. I think the shyness is caused by my being inarticulate. And I'm plagued by a lack of self-confidence." Despite her diffidence, Bryan did later describe something of her experiences while making this movie. Filming, which had begun in July, 1939, extended into September. By that time, the cast, featuring several English subjects, kept a radio just off the set in order to follow unfolding events following the German invasion of Poland on Sept. 1st, 1939. "There was a very tense atmosphere on the set, Jane recalled. "We'd finish doing a scene that was set at the start of the First World War, then, after [Goulding] called "Cut!," go over to the radio and listen to the current war news from Europe, which paralleled the film we were doing."

When We Are Not Alone was acquired by Warner's shortly after publication of the novel in 1937, newspapers first announced that the film would be directed by Michael Curtiz, though Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel, The Razor's Edge, Nightmare Alley) was eventually given the task to direct, in the same year that he oversaw Dark Victory and The Old Maid, both with the reigning doyenne of the screen, Bette Davis. Strangely, today people often refer to these and other movies such as The Dawn Patrol (1938) crafted by Eddie Goulding as "a Bette Davis picture," or an "Errol Flynn movie," with little notice taken of this seamless craftsman. Given the sometimes less than perfect scripts he was given to direct, his professionalism and talent for tastefully crafting potentially sentimental or melodramatic material into hauntingly effective films proved invaluable throughout his career.

Paul Muni with Alan Napier in We Are Not Alone (1939).

As Goulding's biographer, Matthew Kennedy pointed out, We Are Not Alone is close to the filmmaker's best work as he "spun an amazing tapestry of war, bigotry, circumstantial evidence, parent-child love, romantic love, and the honorable commitment to work and family, " into a dark-edged film with a remarkably somber conclusion for a studio-made film. While the pair of would-be lovers stoically face their condemnation to the gallows, despite their innocence, the world outside prepares for further pursuit of the war, when organized hatred will sacrifice more innocents. When they meet last, Newcombe tenderly tells Leni, who is as resigned to her fate as he is, to remain hopeful that they will someday be released, that "Death is not the worst thing we have to face, only the last."

The impact of this movie resonated for me long after seeing this film. When reading the lines below from British-born poet W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939,"*** the language seemed to echo this film's somber message, written to mark the start of another world war: "Faces along the bar/ Cling to their average day/ The lights must never go out, /The music must always play, /All the conventions conspire/ To make this fort assume/ The furniture of home; /Lest we should see where we are, /Lost in a haunted wood, /Children afraid of the night /Who have never been happy or good."

The Trailer for We Are Not Alone:

* Edward Percy and Reginald Denham's Broadway hit, Ladies in Retirement ran from March to August in 1940, earning Flora Robson stellar reviews for her portrayal of a woman who murders her employer to ensure that her mentally disturbed sisters kept a roof over their heads. The actress, who hoped to be considered for the film when the rights were purchased by Columbia Pictures, was reportedly crushed when her role was taken by a youthful powerhouse, Ida Lupino, who was brilliant in the part.

**Dolly Haas recovered from her breakdown, going on to a long theatrical career with only occasional film and television appearances. A good account of her career and private life can be found here.

***The full text of Auden's "September 1, 1939" can be seen here.

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An earlier post found here on this blog reviews the film adaptation of James Hilton's Knight Without Armour (1937).

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Sources:

Babington, Bruce, British Stars and Stardom: from Alma Taylor to Sean Connery, Manchester University Press, 2001.
Cinema: The New Pictures, Time Magazine, Dec. 4, 1939.
Jane Bryan Obituary, The Independent, May 22, 2009.
Kennedy, Matthew, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
Movies: Jane Bryan, Life Magazine, Nov. 27, 1939.
Nugent, Frank S., Paul Muni and Jane Bryan in We Are Not Alone, The New York Times, Dec. 1, 1939.
Nissen, Axil, Actresses of a Certain Character, McFarland, 2006.
Sellmer, Robert, Super Druggist Dart, Life Magazine, Aug. 5, 1946.

The Classic Movies of 1939 Blogathon: May 15th -17th, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Next week a blogathon sponsored by The Classic Movie Blog Association kicks off on Sunday, May 15th and will run through Tuesday, May 17th. This event will celebrate the exceptionally interesting classic movies that premiered in 1939 as the studio system reached its zenith. These flicks blended the highest technical achievements with considerable artistry and storytelling skill, (and an undeniable amount of show biz pizzazz)--and those chosen by participating bloggers are not all American-made! The complete list of the movies that will be featured in the blogathon can be seen here.

I chose the less well known We Are Not Alone (1939) to examine next week. Directed by Edmund Goulding and based on a James Hilton novel, the movie starred Paul Muni, Flora Robson, and Jane Bryan. This nearly forgotten film received good reviews such as critic Frank Nugent's description of the movie as "a film of rare tenderness and beauty, compassionate and grave, possessed above all of the quality of serenity" in The New York Times. Unfortunately, the movie's contemplative tone was overwhelmed by the plethora of larger-scale films in that exceptional year, and it did not find a larger audience. I hope that you will enjoy rediscovering We Are Not Alone with me.

I look forward to reading the posts of all my fellow bloggers!

The TCM Classic Cruise

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:17:00 +0000

TCM has announced that the first TCM Classic Cruise will run from Dec. 8-12, 2011. It will be a four-day/four-night event aboard the Celebrity Millennium and will sail from Miami to Key West and Cozumel. The ship holds 2,000 passengers in 1,017 staterooms, 80% of which feature an ocean view. Pre-sale begins May 9 and runs through May 19. Cabins go on sale publicly May 20. Prices for interior cabins start at $795, which also includes meals, entertainment, and onboard activities.

The TCM Classic Cruise will include live appearances by Hollywood legends, as well as exclusive events with Robert Osborne and TCM weekend daytime host Ben Mankiewicz. In addition to the ocean liner’s amenities, travelers will be treated to a wide variety of movie-themed events, from screenings and panel discussions to trivia contests and parties.“After the enormous success of the TCM Classic Film Festival and our Road to Hollywood tour, the TCM Classic Cruise will once again demonstrate that TCM is more than just a network; it’s a community,” said Dennis Adamovich, senior vice president of brand and digital activation/general manager of festivals for TCM, TBS and TNT.

To see more about this event, the website www.tcmclassiccruise.com features more information and details on booking a reservation. Here's the itinerary as of today:

Thursday, Dec 8, 2011 - Depart Miami, FL (approx. @ 4:30pm)
Friday, Dec 9, 2011 - Key West, Florida (7:00am - 1:30pm)
Saturday, Dec 10, 2011 - Cozumel, Mexico (11:30am - 8:30pm)
Sunday, Dec 11, 2011 - Day at Sea
Monday, Dec 12, 2011 - Arrive Miami, FL (approx. @ 7:00am ET)

Even if most of us can only enjoy this trip vicariously, this blog will post updates as they become available. I hope that anyone going will post a comment here too. Bon Voyage, friends!

Jackie Cooper: "America's Boy"

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:35:00 +0000

Please Note: In Tribute to Jackie Cooper, on Friday, May 13th TCM will broadcast nine of the actor’s films, which are listed here.

Jackie Cooper, who was an Oscar nominee for Best Actor in a Leading Role when he was only nine, died on May 3rd at the age of 88. His shy smile, seemingly artless candor, and innate ability to suggest an overwhelmed child’s desire to make everything all right in the world continues to make those who stumble on his films smile in recognition.

If your most vivid mental image of Jackie Cooper is still as one of the ragamuffins in Hal Roach’s The Little Rascals, or the boy pleading with The Champ (1931-King Vidor) to rise again, or the privileged child befriending a kid from Shantytown in his Oscar-nominated performance in Skippy (1931-Norman Taurog), that’s understandable. Despite the fact that his early performances are eight decades in the past, his wonderfully natural portrayal of boys on film are still painfully fresh and have an evergreen realism at their core. In the darkest years of the Great Depression audiences felt a connection to that innocent, lion-hearted kid on screen whose life wasn’t going any more smoothly than their own. I like Shirley Temple, Jane Withers, and Freddie Bartholomew very much. I’ve been astounded by Mickey Rooney’s seemingly boundless talent. Yet to me, Jackie Cooper was one of most natural child actors, even though he had a different, understandably complex perspective on his own work. “I wasn’t great,” he claimed. “The directors were great. I was just a kid who did what he was told. And what I wasn’t told to do was done for me.”

His son, Russell Cooper, commented that his father “was a fascinating guy who really did everything, from all different aspects of the business. You can’t really say that about many people.” Looking back at Cooper‘s long life, when he acted in over a hundred movies, plays and television shows, and directed and produced over 250 TV projects, it seems that he may have done everything but sweep up the stage–and, as an apparently down-to-earth person–he probably did that at least a few times.

Much of Cooper‘s acting has a similar, recognizable quality, as he personified a kind of ragged moxie laced with a guileless intensity. Even when the stories were schmaltzy, he was not. As he grew up, and seemed likely to succumb to the neglect and adulation that early fame often breeds, he eventually approached his later problems with a similar ingenuousness as he struggled to become an adult in real ways. As he later pointed out about his childhood career, “I was trained to be a professional, not to be a person.”...More on the TCM Movie Morlocks

Happy Mother's Day 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Sun, 08 May 2011 19:10:00 +0000

I think of my own mother today, gone from earth 25 years ago this week but with me always, in every breath I take. All I have to see are the wild violets growing in the long grass in Spring and she comes back to me, as I recall all the small bouquets she accepted from my grubby little hands. Murmuring how violets were her favorite flower, she placed them delicately in a small vase. If she had time, a round tray would come down from its spot on the counter, and her pocket mirror would be placed on it as a reflecting pond, with the violets next to that. My job would be fetching some soft green moss from the base of the back yard trees to place around the mirror, adding leafy twigs for trees and the fences we would arrange on the edges of the tray, ultimately creating a magical miniature garden. It's funny what you remember.

Not all of us can be a mother, but we are all the sons and daughters of someone who cared enough about us to give us life. I hope that today reminds you of something you have loved about your mother. Pass that love along, won't you? The world could use some of it very badly. Here's a lovely video of mothers on film with music from Connee Boswell, singing (what else?) "Mommy."

The mothers above were played by Irene Dunne, Maureen O'Hara, Claudette Colbert, Norma Shearer, Myrna Loy, Marlene Dietrich, Greer Garson, Carole Lombard, Shirley Temple, Natalie Wood, Judy Holliday, Joan Fontaine, Katharine Hepburn Spring Byington, Sara Allgood, May Robson, Deborah Kerr, Ginger Rogers, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Bette Davis, Arlene Francis, June Allyson, Jean Arthur, Jennifer Jones, and Joan Crawford.

The Arthur Lyons' Film Noir Festival 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Moira Finnie) — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:06:00 +0000

Above: A disturbing scene from Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), which festival-goers can watch in the company of Norman Lloyd, one of the movie's stars.

The peripatetic film historian Alan K. Rode sends word that the Arthur Lyons' Film Noir Festival from May 12th -May 15th is coming around again. If you're like me, and can't possibly attend except in spirit, just seeing this year's slate of rare and beloved films makes me long for a ticket to Palm Springs, CA--or at least gives me a good idea for a film festival on the DVD player--if I could just find copies of the rarer titles. It sounds like a wonderful line-up once again, with such individuals as Stefanie Powers, Norman Lloyd, Barrie Chase, Jeanne Cooper, Julie Adams and Diane Baker in attendance to speak about the classic movies that are being rediscovered by many of us.

The festival is named after its founder, mystery writer and film historian Arthur Lyons, whose book, Death on the Cheap: The Lost B-Movies of Film Noir (Da Capo), remains an inspiration for all those who are intrigued by movies on the dark side, especially those neglected films waiting to be re-discovered.

I would really love to see some of the festival's scheduled films detailed below, especially Crashout (What a cast! William Bendix to Arthur Kennedy), The Underworld Story (Dan Duryea & Herbert Marshall rock) and Loophole (What? Barry Sullivan plays another skunk? How can that be?)

99 River Street and The Damned Don't Cry are films I have posted about before on this site, but seeing them on the big screen would be a treat and a half, especially since both feature visually stunning black and white cinematography by Franz Planer and Ted McCord, respectively.

Here's the skinny on the scheduled events in Palm Springs according to their website:

OPENING NIGHT:

May 12: Thursday

7:30 PM Experiment in Terror (1962), 123 min., Dir: Blake Edwards.
A bank teller (Lee Remick) and her sister (Stefanie Powers) are terrorized by a murderous extortionist as F.B.I. agent Glenn Ford races against time to identify and apprehend the killer. This ominous nail-biter, filmed on location in San Francisco by pantheon director Blake Edwards, is highlighted by a memorable Henry Mancini musical score and Ross Martin’s unforgettably creepy performance. Superb late-term noir that has achieved classic status.

Guest appearance by actress Stefanie Powers

May 13: Friday
10:00 am:
The Underworld Story (1950), 90 min., Director: Cy Enfield.

Noir icon Dan Duryea stars as a bottom-feeding reporter who cleverly manipulates his new editor (Gale Storm), an ominous crime lord (Howard Da Silva), and a crusading D.A. (Michael O’Shea) when a newspaper magnate’s (Herbert Marshall) daughter-in law turns up dead. This obscure gem, beautifully lensed by the legendary Stanley Cortez, was one of the first post WWII movies to address racism and big media hypocrisy. Rarely seen; don’t miss it!

1:00 PM:
Six Bridges to Cross (1955), 96 min, Dir: Joseph Pevney.
This frequently overlooked film is a brilliant saga about the career of a professional criminal (Tony Curtis) with his relationship with a Boston policeman (George Nader) and his wife (Julie Adams) providing the dramatic backdrop. Factually based on the infamous Brinks armored car robbery and filmed on location in Boston, this engrossing picture features one of the best-ever performances by the late, great Tony Curtis and includes the film debut of Sal Mineo.

Guest appearance by actress Julie Adams

4:00 PM: A Kiss Before Dying, (1956), 94 min, Dir: Gerd Oswald.
Robert Wagner stars as a psychotic college student whose malevolence turns murderous when his scheme to marry an heiress (Joanne Woodward) goes awry. Beautiful Cinemascope production based on Ira Levin’s novel boasts an all-star supporting cast (Mary Astor, Jeffrey Hunter, and Virginia Leith) and is highlighted by one of Wagner’s finest performances.

Special video introduction by actor/writer Robert Wagner

7:30 PM:
Cape Fear (1962), 105 min., Dir: J. Lee Thompson.
Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is a successful small-town lawyer and family man until Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) a man he helped send to prison arrives in town and begins a war of nerves. Harassment quickly turns deadly as Bowden realizes he is dealing with a clever psychopath who uses the law and all means necessary to exact a twisted revenge on Bowden, his wife (Polly Bergen) and daughter (Lori Martin). Gripping, original filmed version of the John D. McDonald novel is carried by Mitchum’s powerhouse performance, superb original music by the great Bernard Herrmann and a brilliant supporting cast including Barrie Chase, Martin Balsam, Telly Savalas and Jack Kruschen.

Special Screening Guest: Actress/Dancer Barrie Chase

May 14: Saturday
10:00 am: 99 River Street (1953), 83 min., Dir: Phil Karlson.

Heavyweight boxer John Payne is reduced to driving a cab after losing his title shot. Then he discovers his disdainful wife is two-timing him with a gangster and it looks like he might be counted out for good! Non-stop, bare-knuckled action set entirely at night with singular performances by Payne, Evelyn Keyes with a stellar supporting cast. An essential film noir courtesy of action maestro Phil Karlson!

My past review of 99 River Street can be seen here.

1:00 PM:
Plunder Road (1957,) 72 min., Dir: Hubert Cornfield.
NOT ON DVD! In the dark tradition of The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, this stellar caper film features a brilliant ensemble cast (Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris and Elisha Cook Jr.) stealing a gigantic cache of gold bullion from a train and attempting a nerve-wracking escape back to Los Angeles. Almost never screened theatrically with the only known 35mm print provided courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive!

Guest appearance by actress Jeanne Cooper

4:00 PM:
Loophole (1954), 80 min., Dir: Harold Schuster. NOT ON DVD!
A con man filches $50,000 from bank teller Barry Sullivan who ends up accused of the theft. His wife (Dorothy Malone) and the cops give Sullivan the benefit of the doubt, but Charles McGraw, in one of his signature roles as a ruthless insurance investigator, relentlessly pursues a confession by any means necessary! This new 35mm print was funded by The Film Noir Foundation and is enlivened by extensive location photography of Los Angeles, Hollywood and Malibu.

7:30 PM:
Mirage (1965), 109 min., Dir: Edward Dmytryk.
Gregory Peck is on the run from mysterious assassins after being stricken by film noir’s commonest malady: amnesia. Diane Baker and Walter Matthau assist in sorting out the mayhem in this nail-biting thriller filmed on location in New York City by renowned film noir director (Murder My Sweet, Cornered, Crossfire, The Sniper) Edward Dmytryk.

Guest appearance by actress Diane Baker.

May 15: Sunday
10:00 am:
Crashout (1955), 89 min., Dir: Lewis R. Foster. NOT ON DVD!
A desperate group of escaped convicts (Arthur Kennedy, Luther Adler, Marshal Thompson, Gene Evans and William Talman) stick by a wounded William Bendix only after he promises to share the stashed payroll from his last bank robbery. The murderous assemblage embarks on a deadly odyssey in pursuit of the money, attempting to elude the police while terrorizing innocent people and double-crossing each other. Brilliantly cast and uncompromisingly violent for its day, this robust film can only be enjoyed at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival!

1:00 PM:
Saboteur (1942) 108 min., Dir: Alfred Hitchcock.
Classic World War II yarn of falsely accused munitions worker (Robert Cummings) embarking on a suspenseful cross-country odyssey to prove his innocence while foiling a Nazi sabotage ring. An eclectic supporting cast (Priscilla Lane, Norman Lloyd and Otto Kruger) and groundbreaking camera work add heft to one of the best films ever made by the Master of Suspense.

Guest appearance by actor/producer Norman Lloyd

4:00 PM:
The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), 103 min., Dir: Vincent Sherman.
The signature Joan Crawford film noir! This “rags-to mink stole” saga is ostensibly based on the life of Bugsy Siegel moll Virginia Hill but it is also emulates the authentic story of Crawford herself. Joan alternately loves and discards Kent Smith, David Brian and Steve Cochran as she connives her way to the top of a national crime syndicate. Filmed on location in Palm Springs!!

My past review of The Damned Don't Cry (1950) can be seen here.