Sunday, December 18, 2011

 

Centennial Tributes: Jules Dassin Part II


By Edward Copeland
As we dive into the second half of this tribute to Jules Dassin, we're on an uphill climb artistically and a downhill slide personally as we talk about when he made his best films, including two out-and-out masterpieces, and when the witch-hunting politicians froze him out of movie work by getting Hollywood to blacklist him because of his youthful flirtation with communism. Never mind that he resigned from the Communist Party soon after joining when Stalin signed his 1939 pact with Hitler, once a commie, always a commie, right? At least that was the attitude then. We haven't reached that point yet. First, following making the great Brute Force, Dassin re-teams with producer Mark Hellinger for The Naked City, a landmark because it was the first sound film to shoot entirely in New York. Henry Hathaway had filmed some scenes of 1945's The House on 92nd Street on the streets of New York, but not the entire movie. Another film had shot partly on the streets of New York, but The Naked City became the first movie to film its entire production there. If you started here accidentally and missed Part I, click here.

Hellinger's role in The Naked City extended beyond producing — he also narrated the film which, to me at least, turns out to be a demerit at times. In his 1948 New York Times review, Bosley Crowther, mixed on the movie overall, referred to the narration as "a virtual Hellinger column on film." Not all the narration is cringeworthy (Two examples: "How many things this sky has seen that man has done to man"; "Milk! Isn't there anything else for ulcers except for milk?") Some come off fine such as when Hellinger notes, "There's a pulse to a city that never stops beating." When the narration grates the most are the times when it sounds like a talkative moviegoer asking their companion annoying questions such as, "Is Henderson the murderer? Did a taxicab take him to the Pennsylvania Railroad Station? Who is Henderson? Where does he live? Who knows him?" The movie itself starts with an overhead shot of the city skyline as Hellinger waxes on about the city as the daytime shots turn into nighttime images and he tells us, "This is the city when it's silent or asleep, as if it ever really is." After his narration introduces us to various inhabitants of the city who work nights, he also shows us people resting at home or out on the town (cleverly introducing people who will be major characters later without pointing that out) "And while some people work and most sleep, others are at the close of an evening of relaxation — " We see a night club getting ready to close and its attendees departing before the camera switches to a young woman's apartment where we see her being murdered by two men. "And still another — is at the close of her life." The killers try to fake her death as a bathtub drowning and we see the movie's destination at last. After some more wandering around the city the next morning (including one killer getting drunk and nervous about the crime and his co-conspirator offing him and dumping his body in the river), once the dead woman's maid discovers her body, they show a particularly nice sequence of the chain of calls through switchboard operators going from hospital to a police precinct to the medical examiner before finally ending up at the homicide squad.

The Naked City follows the investigation of that young lady's murder in an almost documentary style. Originally, Hellinger intended to use Homicide as the title but then decided to borrow The Naked City from the books of photographs by famous crime scene photographer Weegee, whose life was fictionalized in the 1992 film The Public Eye starring Joe Pesci, because he wanted the movie to have the feel of Weegee's photos. Playing the men leading the investigation were Barry Fitzgerald as Det. Lt. Dan Muldoon, the veteran with two decades of experience, and Don Taylor as Det. Jimmy Halloran, the greenhorn who'd only been working homicide for three months. Muldoon always has to explain to Halloran the right way to solve a case such as the one they are in, giving Fitzgerald the chance to say things like "That's the way you run a case, lad — step by step" and sound even more Irish than usual as he does it. When they determine that the murder had to be committed by two people, Muldoon pins it on "Joseph P. MacGillicuddy," his version of John Doe. Since The Naked City strives for realism, one thing sticks out that I tend not to notice in other pre-1966 police movies or TV shows: There were no such things as Miranda rights so you never hear anyone told, "You have the right to remain silent, etc." The fine cast also includes Howard Duff, reuniting with Dassin from Brute Force, as a compulsive liar who was involved with both the dead woman and her best friend (Dorothy Hart). If you look closely, the film overflows with familiar faces in brief, mostly uncredited roles including Paul Ford, John Marley, Arthur O'Connell, David Opatoshu and, making their film debuts, Kathleen Freeman, James Gregory and John Randolph. There also is a very funny scene where Halloran seeks information from a sidewalk store clerk selling soda on the whereabouts of the suspected killer and the vendor is played by the comic great Molly Picon. However, the film's true star is New York.


While The Naked City gets lumped into the noir category, personally I don't think it belongs there. While The Naked City turns out mostly fine, the film doesn't approach the greatness of Brute Force or Dassin's films that follow. What makes The Naked City stand out from other films has little to do with its story or acting, but its landmark use of New York — and I mean the real New York, not Toronto. Dassin employed several tricks to film on the streets without crowds getting in the way because word always leaked as to where they would be shooting. In one of the Criterion interviews, he tells of a fake portable newsstand they had to conceal the camera as well as a flower delivery van with a mirror on the side that they could see out of but outsiders couldn't see in. They also employed jugglers to distract onlookers so they wouldn't disrupt shooting.


On the DVD interview, Dassin said his favorite method was to place this guy a bit down the street from where they were shooting, have him climb up a pole, wave a flag and give patriotic speeches. While he mesmerized crowds, the film crew got their work done. Some of that location shooting still amazes. Taylor as Halloran does most of the running throughout the city, on and off subways and buses, past landmarks still familar today and, most especially, the climactic foot chase after the killer that leads to awesome shots on the Williamsburg Bridge. The movie ended up winning the Oscar for best black & white cinematography for William H. Daniels and best film editing for Paul Weatherwax. Now, Dassin contended that elements of the films that put more of an emphasis on class differences within the city and other social issues were cut from the film before release. In many interviews, he said that by the time filming had been completed, rumor already had begun to swirl that he might be called before HUAC to testify about his former membership in the Communist Party. He also didn't believe Hellinger would make those cuts, mainly because Universal didn't want to release The Naked City because they didn't know how to market it. However, Hellinger's contract with the studio had a clause requiring them to release it — and a good thing that it did because three months before The Naked City finally did reach theaters, Hellinger died of a heart attack at 44, another reason Dassin doubted the cuts were his. To paraphrase the film's famous closing line of Hellinger narration, "There are eight million stories from the Hollywood blacklist. This just leads to a much bigger one."

Before Dassin found a new home in Hollywood, he finally got that chance to direct some theater again, staging two Broadway productions in 1948. First, he directed the original play Joy to the World by Allan Scott, the screenwriter of six Astaire-Rogers musicals including Top Hat and Swing Time as well as other films. The comedy takes aim at Hollywood and the difficulty one has maintaining his integrity in the movie business. The play, which ran from March 18 to July 3 at the Plymouth Theatre, also has a strong plea for intellectual freedom and against censorship. Produced by John Houseman, its cast included Morris Carnovsky, who would appear in Dassin's next film and on the blacklist, being named by both Elia Kazan and Sterling Hayden; Bert Freed, TV's first Columbo; and Marsha Hunt, who starred in two of Dassin's MGM films — The Affairs of Martha and A Letter to Evie. The second production was the musical Magdalena which ran from Sept. 20 through Dec. 4. The songs were by lyricists Robert Wright and George Forrest and composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It was John Raitt's first show following Carousel and choreographed by the most influential yet least-known dance master Jack Cole, subject of an in-development musical project with its eye on Broadway today. One of his two assistant choreographers on Magdalena was Gwen Verdon.

When Dassin headed back west, Darryl F. Zanuck and 20th Century Fox came calling, seeking to sign him to direct A.I. Bezzerides' adaptation of his own novel Thieves' Market, renamed Thieves' Highway. Before that project got rolling, Dassin received an urgent phone call from Zanuck with a very important question: "Are you now or were you ever familiar with the fundamentals of playing baseball?" Dassin told him yes. In an interview recorded in New York in 2000 and on the Criterion Collection DVD of Rififi, shared this fun little anecdote. It seems that the MGM vs. Fox baseball game was coming up the following weekend and Fox was short a player and Zanuck wanted to see if Dassin could be the one. According to Dassin, he turned out to be the MVP of the game as Fox beat MGM, which apparently was an unusual occurrence. Dassin's agent called him in a rush, wanting to know if Dassin had signed the contract for Thieves' Highway yet. Dassin told him that he had. The agent told him that was too bad — after his performance in the ballgame, he could have negotiated him a higher salary for the film.

While The Naked City didn't really seem like noir to me, Thieves' Highway most definitely does, though it's noir in a setting I never imagined before — crooks run amok among those who sell fresh fruit and vegetables. Richard Conte stars as Nick "Nico" Garcos, a veteran who traveled the world following the war and brings home gifts from everywhere to his proud Greek family. His father Yanko (Morris Carnovsky) is even joyfully singing a Greek song when his boy shows up unannounced, surprising him. (Interesting that as important as Greece will become in Dassin's life later that it's a distinct element of this film.) While the mood overflows with happiness in the Garcos house, Nick discovers that things haven't gone well during his absence when one of his presents turns out to be a special pair of shoes for his father and he urges him to try them on. There's a problem — Yanko can't wear shoes anymore. He rolls away from the table to reveal to his son that he no longer has legs. His father tells him the story about how he had a huge load of the season's first crop of juicy tomatoes and one of the biggest produce dealers on the San Francisco market Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb) had agreed to buy them but as he asked for his money, Figlia insisted they have a drink to celebrate first. That drink turned into more drinks and the next thing Yanko knew, he was on the side of the road under his wrecked truck minus his legs. Figlia claims he paid him and someone must have taken the money from the truck. To make matters worse, since he couldn't use the truck anymore, he sold it and the man he sold it to has stiffed him on payment as well. While Nick's mom (Tamara Shayne) tries to calm things down and argues that perhaps Figlia told the truth, Nick can tell that Figlia was lying and his dad never got paid. First though, he's getting the truck back.

When he finds Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell), the man who bought the truck, Nick demands the keys to the truck or the money. Kinney complains that he can't pay right now because the truck has been giving him fits but he needs it to pick up a load of golden delicious apples. Nick makes a deal that he'll be his partner to pick up the apples and take them to San Francisco for the sale. The one hitch — Kinney already had a deal set with two guys Slob and Pete (Jack Oakie, Joseph Penney) so Kinney has to make up a story about how he can't make the run. The men go away disappointed — but they also tail him and see that he's lying and make it a point to harass them. If Mitchell looks familiar, he's probably best known for his role three years later as movie exec R.F. Simpson in Singin' in the Rain. Mitchell's career was cut short. A heavy smoker, lung cancer claimed his life at the age of 50 in 1953. Another interesting tale that comes out of the Dassin interviews on DVD is that Oakie, the longtime comic actor who scored an Oscar nod for his Mussolini spoof in Chaplin's The Great Dictator, was completely deaf when he made Thieves' Highway, something that Dassin didn't realize for weeks because Oakie was so good at picking up cues from other actors and never missed his mark or messed up a take. After Kinney and Nick team up, the first portion of the film concentrates on the long haul to San Francisco after they pick up the apples with Nick driving the decrepit truck, Kinney following in another and Slob and Pete harassing them along the way. As Dassin said, the enemy for these men is fatigue and drivers employed many tricks to stay wake on the roads at night.

After a near disaster, Kinney decides it's best if he and Nick switch trucks, letting him, the more experienced driver, try to hold it together while Nick takes the better rig with the first half of the load on to San Francisco. As in The Naked City, Dassin breaks some ground here by doing some amazing location shooting in San Francisco's market area with crowded streets and lots of activity. When we arrive there, that's when Cobb appears playing the most diabolical produce salesman in the history of film. Cobb's centennial was Dec. 8, but I got so backed up with other projects I wasn't able to do a proper salute to this towering actor. In the 2005 interview on the DVD, Dassin said that Cobb truly "enjoyed his villainy." During the work on this piece, I uncovered more and more names of actors and directors who named names before HUAC that I had never known about before. I mentioned Sterling Hayden earlier, which was news to me. I also didn't know about Cobb. It's odd how all the ire and bile aimed at people who did name names seemed to be reserved for Elia Kazan. In Cobb's case, the pressure on the actor when he was called to testify before HUAC had nearly brought his wife to a nervous breakdown so Cobb felt compelled to name names to preserve his wife's sanity. Regardless, that doesn't take away from the fact that Cobb was a great actor and not just anyone can turn a produce dealer into a plausible bad guy. Conte matches him well as the good guy without turning Nick into a bland opponent. When things heat up between Nick and Figlia and Figlia suggests they go off to his office, one man comments that Figlia will "eat that kid alive." A buyer named Midge who's seeking golden delicious apples and is played by Hope Emerson, who will be a memorable villain herself the following year as the women's prison matron in Caged, responds, "I'll take odds on the kid." One of Figlia's deceptive tricks against Nick involves utilizing a local hooker named Rica (played by Valentina Cortese, best known for her Oscar-nominated turn in Truffaut's Day for Night, in only her second English-language film and her first shot in the U.S, though her last name is spelled Cortesa). Rica keeps Nick occupied while his truck, which is stuck in front of Figlia’s stand because of flat tires, gets raided and has its apples sold off by Figlia. In the 2005 interview, Dassin told of how Zanuck was a very hands-on producer. Since Rica would inevitably turn out to be the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold who would end up aiding Nick, Zanuck insisted that they write in a part of "a bourgeois fiancée who betrays Nick" to justify the hero falling for the hooker. Barbara Lawrence played that role, Polly Faber.


In addition to Thieves' Highway's noirish elements, which basically get segregated to San Francisco once Nick arrives and Figlia and Rica join the film, the movie's other half covers Kinney's treacherous drive in the truck that's barely holding together. Dassin builds genuine suspense in these scenes, aided by Alfred Newman's score. His journey isn't helped by the constant taunting by Slob and Pete, but as he steers the truck through curvy, mountainous highways, the sequences seem to foreshadow what would come several years later in Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear. When the drive finally goes fatally wrong, the truck crashes and rolls down an embankment, apples going everywhere. Even Slob and Pete rush down, but it's too late as the truck bursts into flames. "From that angle, apples rolling down the hill into the camera. I said to myself, 'That's a good shot.' I think that's one of the shots I've enjoyed most in films I've made," Dassin said in 2005. One thing in Thieves' Highway that didn't particularly please Dassin was that Zanuck shot an entirely new ending that he didn't know about because he already was in London prepping Night and the City. When Nick finally gets his physical revenge on Figlia, Zanuck's ending added police coming in to make the point that people "shouldn't take the law into their own hands." However, given what Zanuck did for Dassin overall when the witchhunters came calling, he couldn't complain that much. When the shit really started to hit the fan, it didn't sound as if Zanuck was someone who would be as helpful as he was during Dassin's crisis. In 1949, word came down that HUAC was going to call Dassin to testify and Zanuck and other Fox executives had a meeting about "the problem." In the 2004 L.A. County Museum of Art interview, Dassin said that Zanuck told him, "He was going to step on my neck because I was a dirty red."

"I used to say to Darryl, 'Darryl, your ambition
is to be a nice guy, but you can't make it.'" — Jules Dassin

As Dassin went on to tell in that 2004 interview, after Zanuck's "threat," he was surprised to find the producer at his front door — not something you'd expect from someone at Zanuck's level. He informed Dassin that he was flying to London the next day and handed him the novel Night and the City by Gerald Kersh. Dassin told Zanuck he couldn't rush off on a moment's notice like that — he had family problems. Zanuck disagreed with the director, saying that he also had family needs and this could end up being the last film he ever made. Zanuck advised him to get shooting on the film as fast as he could and to do the most expensive scenes first so the studio wouldn't have an excuse to shut the production down. Dassin followed Zanuck's advice and was in London readying the shoot when he learned that he'd been called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Zanuck informed the panel that he was abroad and got his scheduled hearing postponed. When Dassin was about two weeks away from the start of shooting on the film, Zanuck called. He asked Dassin if he agreed that he owed him one. Yes, he did owe him, Dassin said in the 2004 interview. Zanuck requested a favor — he wanted Dassin to cast Gene Tierney in a role. Dassin was confused, since there wasn't a role in the movie that she could really play, but Zanuck explained that a love affair had just ended very badly for the actress and she was almost suicidal. When she got in those states, Zanuck said, the only thing that snaps her out of it is work. Quickly, the role of Mary Bristol was written into the script of Night and the City and Tierney joined Richard Widmark and the rest of the talented cast in one of the two best films Dassin ever made. Kersh, the author of the novel the film was based on, did not agree. Dassin never admitted it until an interview in 2005, but Zanuck had encouraged him to everything in such a rush, he never read the book. Many years later, when he did, he could see why Kersh got mad — Night and the City the movie had no resemblance to Night and the City the novel whatsoever.

I haven't read the novel but if the godawful 1992 film with the same title starring Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange hewed closer to its narrative, I'm glad that I haven't. If, on the other hand, the 1992 Night and the City just provides more evidence that nine times out of 10, when you try to remake a classic film, you only end up with the celluloid equivalent of diarrhea, Kersh should be grateful he died in 1968. I actually saw the disaster of a remake before I ever saw the original and once I saw the original, I couldn't believe that they were supposed to have come from the same source material. When ranking Dassin's films, I'm always torn between Night and the City and Rififi as to which I think is the greatest. Preparing for this tribute, I watched the films on consecutive nights. It's such a close call, but for today anyway, I give Rififi the slight edge. However, that doesn't mean I love Night and the City any less. What a script. What a cast. Every detail done to perfection. "Night and the city. The night is tonight, tomorrow night or any night. The city is London." Those are the words that open the film then we see Widmark's Harry Fabian running like hell through a square — and running will be what he's doing for a lot of the movie when he doesn't slow down long enough to try to make his Greco-Roman wrestling scheme work or to make time for Mary or listen to offers from the likes of Francis L. Sullivan's Philip Nosseross, a nightclub owner who resembles a more genial Jabba the Hutt, or his wife Helen (the wonderful Googie Withers, who just passed away in July), who wants her own action and to escape her husband.

When Night and the City opened in 1950, it depended where you lived what music accompanied Fabian's film-opening sprint. Britain, still recovering from the damage of World War II, had laws in place to ensure that it kept a certain amount of the profits of films made there and provide workers jobs as well. As a result, there were two versions of Night and the City, and Dassin wasn't allowed to participate in the editing of either one — one because he wasn't British, the other because when he returned to the United States, he was banned from the 20th Century Fox lot. The British cut runs longer, adding some more character scenes, and contains a moodier score by Benjamin Frankel, who would go on to score John Huston's Night of the Iguana and Ken Annakin's Battle of the Bulge. The American cut, which Dassin says he prefers, has music composed by the great and prolific Franz Waxman, who composed many scores for Hitchcock including Rear Window as well as Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd., and previously wrote the music for Dassin's Reunion in France. Waxman uses a variety of styles throughout Night and the City, parts with a jazz tinge, other moments matching the kinetic nature of various chase sequences. I've not seen the entire British version to know how it works, but I know that Nick De Maggio edited the American cut superbly. He also edited Thieves' Highway and would go on to cut another classic Widmark noir, Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street. Max Greene was responsible for the great cinematography. Some of the greatest movies seem as if they come into existence by accident. When you consider what a rush job Night and the City was, how Dassin didn't even read the book (though presumably the credited screenwriter Jo Eisinger had), how a role for Gene Tierney had to be created out of thin air and shoehorned into the story at the last minute, how a lot of the roles had to be cast with British actors by law and Dassin didn't know any (one of his casting directors turned out to be Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and that Zanuck, who liked to meddle with his directors' pictures, didn't reshoot anything or change the editing when he really could have since Dassin was barred from the editing room because of the blacklist, it's a fucking miracle how brilliantly Night and the City turned out. Some things are just fucking meant to be. Even with the character of the huge old Greco-Roman wrestler Gregorious. Dassin drew a picture of a wrestler he'd seen once and said that's how he envisioned the person they got to play the part. Someone recognized the drawing as Stanislaus Zbyszko, but thought he was dead. Another person knew that Zbyszko actually was not only alive but had a farm in Missouri. They contacted him and he ended up playing the part of Gregorious. At a moment of professional and personal crisis for Jules Dassin, the stars truly aligned when it came to Night and the City.

The ensemble does the best job at selling the movie, foremost Widmark as the smooth yet smarmy Fabian. You can see how some people buy into his dreams just as you easily as others see right through him. As Mary's friend Adam (Hugh Marlowe) so accurately describes him, "Harry's an artist without an art." Tierney does fine given that she's playing a role that really has no reason for being there. Herbert Lom manages to be both frightening and unctuous as a crooked wrestling promoter who still has concerns about his father, Gregorious (Zbyszko) when Fabian manages to bring him into the machinations. Above them all though are Sullivan and Withers as Philip and Helen, the husband and wife who don't quite know how they got together but can't figure out a way to split up. When Helen makes plans to pin her exit on Fabian's scheme, Philip warns, "You don't know what you're getting into." Helen knows deep down, but she doesn't care. "I know what I'm getting out of," she tells him. Night and the City, despite the turmoil going on on the outside, is by far the best film Dassin had made until that point. Some good ones will still come, but now he'll face the toughest time of the blacklist.

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Friday, May 27, 2011

 

Centennial Tributes: Vincent Price


By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Over at my usual stomping grounds at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, I’ve been known to jokingly refer to the time I spent living in Morgantown, W.Va. (1992-2000) as “my years in exile” — and one of my fondest memories during that period occurred when my co-workers at the company that saw fit to employ me decided to have an impromptu lunch at an Italian restaurant located in nearby Westover, a small burg just across the Monongahela River from Mo-town, better known as home to West Virginia University (Or as I have been known to call it — using a gag I swiped from Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman — “a stadium with a college attached”). The eatery was known as Rose’s, and I’d heartily recommend that you stop by for a nosh sometime when you’re in the area were it not for the awful fact that it closed its doors about five years back.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure — when it comes to Italian cuisine, it’s not my first choice on the menu…I’m more of a cheeseburger-and-onion rings kind of guy. But when I followed my co-workers into the restaurant I had a feeling the food was going to be first-rate (and it was…so much so that I went back on repeat occasions with a friend of mine from high school) because on one of the walls near the entrance was an article from the local newspaper that talked up the place…and mentioned that Rose’s (and her cooking in particular) was a favorite of actor Vincent Price, who made it a point to stop by whenever he was in the area. Price, known for his distinguished accomplishments on stage, screen, television, radio — just about any facet of show business you can name, as a matter of fact — also enjoyed a reputation as a gourmet cook…so if Rose’s fare had his seal of approval I certainly wasn’t going to argue. I know, it’s sort of odd that I would remember something like this but seeing as how the man christened Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was born 100 years ago on this date I guess I’m resorting to this “degree of separation” to pay tribute to one of my favorite actors on his “Vincentennial.”

Vincent Price was born a century ago in St. Louis, Mo., this date and to his dying day remained one of that city’s favorite sons…with good reason, of course. Truth be told, if Price had never set foot upon the stage his future would have been pretty secure; his father, Vincent, Sr., was president of the National Candy Company and his grandfather (also named Vincent) was the inventor of “Dr. Price’s Baking Powder” — the first cream of tartar baking powder. As a son of privilege, Vincent attended both St. Louis Country Day School and Yale University, where he developed his lifelong interest in art history and the fine arts. In the 1930s, he also began to acquire an interest in the theater and began appearing in stage productions in 1935. His big stage success came a year later, playing opposite Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina — a production that the superstitious actor believed brought him such good fortune that he named his first daughter “Victoria” (aided by the fact that her mother was raised in Victoria, British Columbia). Though he would eventually devote most of his time in show business to making movies, Price never completely abandoned his stage roots — among his triumphs in later years was a successful one-man production entitled Diversions and Delights in which he played the part of legendary author/playwright Oscar Wilde.

On the silver screen, Vincent made his debut in the 1938 film Service de Luxe — a movie he wasn’t particularly fond of, but it paved the way to future appearances in more prestigious films such as Michael Curtiz's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex starring Bette Davis, Erroll Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (1939), The House of the Seven Gables (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Eve of St. Mark and Wilson (both in 1944). In fact, 1944 was a big year for the actor for he also appeared in The Keys of the Kingdom and a movie I’ve long considered one of his signature roles (and is the personal favorite of daughter Victoria), Otto Preminger's film noir classic Laura. As the rakish scoundrel Shelby Carpenter, Price gave an amazing performance as a cad who lies as easily as taking a breath but whose courtly Southern manner and charm (“I can afford a blemish on my character but not on my clothes”) made him more a figure to be pitied than scorned. Price would later make two additional movies with Laura co-star Gene Tierney, Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946), and he began to develop a reputation for screen villainy with choice parts in films such as The Web (1947), The Three Musketeers (1948), The Bribe (1949) and The Baron of Arizona (1950).

Playing the part of the Duke of Clarence in 1939’s Tower of London — a horror movie that co-starred Boris Karloff, a thesp with whom Price would work with time and time again — offered Vincent an indication of the direction his career would later take as a horror icon…and a year later, appeared as the titular undetectable character of The Invisible Man Returns. (Price would also play the unseen individual in a joke cameo near the end of the 1948 comedy classic Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.) His active participation in the horror genre reached full swing in 1953 with another unforgettable turn in the 3-D horror romp House of Wax, and Price followed that with such vehicles as The Mad Magician (1954), The Fly (1958) (and the 1959 sequel, Return of the Fly), The Bat (1959) and two movies he made for schlockmeister William Castle —
House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler (both 1959). The actor would occasionally get high profile gigs in movies such as The Ten Commandments and While the City Sleeps (both 1956), but by the 1960s, horror had a new name in Vincent Price, who would make many of his most memorable films during that decade…the ones that endlessly captivated me as a child watching “Chiller Theater” on Saturday nights while my parents were out for the evening.

Price starred in several films directed by “King of the B’s” Roger Corman that were heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, beginning in 1960 with House of Usher. Classic examples of the horror movie genre followed in the same vein, including Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). These movies serve to remind film buffs that, despite his B-movie pedigree, Corman was capable of turning out incredible work (particularly Pendulum and Red Death) but they also saddled its star with a reputation for “hamminess” that he simultaneously embraced and rejected. An example of Price capitalizing on this status is undoubtedly his starring turn in 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes (a role he reprised in the sequel, 1972’s Dr. Phibes Rises Again) but Vincent demonstrated that he could reign in his hambone tendencies with an understated performance in Witchfinder General (1968; aka Conqueror Worm). As religious fanatic/evil madman Matthew Hopkins, Price could have pulled out all the stops but wisely chose not to do so…and for many fans (myself included), General ranks with some of the finest work Vincent ever did onscreen.

There are those who believe that Price agreed to undertake a starring role in Theater of Blood (1973) — a film in which a Shakespearean actor takes revenge on the critics who denied him recognition — as an answer to all those naysayers who time and time again dismissed him as a big slice of ham but Price enjoyed himself in this movie because it allowed him to indulge in another of his passions, performing the words of the Immortal Bard himself. (Needless to say, Blood was one of Price’s particular movie favorites.) Vincent’s involvement in films began to peter out around 1975 (mostly because the kind of horror movies he specialized in were on the wane) but by that time he was already making frequent guest appearances in shows on TV, including memorable turns in episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, F Troop, Get Smart, Night Gallery, The Brady Bunch, Columbo, Ellery Queen and The Bionic Woman. His best-known TV gig is probably that of his multiple appearances as the villainous Egghead on Batman, a program on which he started a legendary food fight by lobbing hen fruit at stars Adam West and Burt Ward. He also was a frequent panelist on the boob tube game show Hollywood Squares and a fixture on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where he was in high demand as a raconteur telling tales of both show business and the culinary and art worlds.

I mentioned Price’s expertise in gourmet cooking in the first two paragraphs of this essay; it was such a lifelong passion of the actor’s that he authored several cookbooks (including one with second wife Mary Grant, A Treasury of Great Recipes) and hosted a TV show entitled Cooking Price-Wise. But Price also excelled as an authority on art, having graduated from Yale with a degree in such and founding the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery at East Los Angeles College in the 1960s…kick-started by a donation of some 90 pieces from his personal collection to the school in 1951. Today, the gallery contains some 2,000 works, estimated at more than $5 million, and remains a testament to Price’s legacy. Price’s celebrity status was put to maximum use in merchandising not only art (Sears and Roebuck successfully touted art works under the banner of “The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art”) but books (a series of mystery and detective novels offered in a mail-order book club), games (he was the spokesman for several board games put out by Milton Bradley), recordings (his one-of-a-kind sinister voice can be heard on albums by Alice Cooper…and most famously, Michael Jackson), theme parks and commercial products like Polaroid and Tilex.

In the 1980s, Vincent Price continued to maintain a presence on television and in film; beginning in 1981 he appeared weekly on public television stations as the host of Mystery! (a series he relinquished in 1989 due to failing health) and continued to appear in the occasional movie such as The Great Mouse Detective (1986; he supplied the voice of “Professor Ratigan”) and The Whales of August (1987), which gave him a wonderful showcase alongside such old pros as Bette Davis, Lillian Gish and Ann Sothern. And though it wasn’t his last project in the business it can be said that his final moment of celluloid glory was an appearance (unfortunately curtailed due to his precarious health) as the inventor of Edward Scissorhands (1990). Price had worked with director Tim Burton previously, narrating the memorable short Vincent (1982)…about a little boy who, appropriately, wants to be just like Vincent Price. Years devoted to “coffin nails” finally caught up with Price, however, and he succumbed to lung cancer in October 1993.

At We Are Movie Geeks, the proprietors of that website came up with a Top Ten list of the film performances they felt represent the crème de la crème of Price’s career…and while I certainly agree with the majority of their choices (I especially enjoyed that they included his — if you’ll pardon the pun — priceless comedic turn in 1950’s Champagne for Caesar…though I would have moved Laura up the list some) they left off one of my personal favorites (they explain, however, that all of the movies on the list will be shown at the ten-day Vincentennial celebration currently underway from May 19-28): 1951’s His Kind of Woman. Robert Mitchum is the star of this spoof of he-man heroic adventures (doing his patented sleepy-eyed lug schtick) and Jane Russell plays his love interest…but Price walks off with the film as (what else?) a hammy actor who comes to Big Bad Bob’s rescue when Mitchum is kidnapped by thugs working for deposed mobster Raymond Burr, who plans to croak Bob and use his identity to get back into the country. Price’s antics are falling-down funny in this one: I love his facial reactions as he watches an assembled crowd watch one of his movies (in which he engages in some swashbuckling derring-do) and such memorable lines of dialogue (spoken to rally volunteers who will help Price’s character save Mitchum) as “Survivors will all be given parts in my next picture.”

Victoria Price once commented that her father had so much fun making both Woman and Caesar, and the proof is in the pudding — but then I can’t imagine there ever being a time in the actor’s life when he didn’t have fun and make the most of his brief stay here on Earth. Chef, art collector, gardener, opera devotee, author and an exemplary performer in nearly all worlds of show business — Vincent Price was one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century. And as far as this fan goes, he is so terribly missed to this day.


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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

 

When Mildred first met the masses


By Edward Copeland
In anticipation of Todd Haynes' new HBO miniseries adaptation of Mildred Pierce, which premieres Sunday and hews more closely to James M. Cain's original novel than Michael Curtiz's 1945 film did, I felt that it was worth re-visiting the first film take on the story since I've always loved it, before I start the process of comparing it to the new version.

Curtiz's film starts off with a bang or, more literally, three bangs as we hear three gunshots and Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) hits the floor dead, the revolver that did him in tossed at his body, We see someone hastily exit the house and speed away. The next thing we see is Mildred Pierce Beragon herself (Oscar winner Joan Crawford), draped in her fur coat, wandering the pier past the restaurant that once was her own. She walks further down staring at the choppy waters below, looking as if she's considering taking a leap over the side until a beat cop (Garry Owen) notices what she seems to be up to and urges her to stop, telling her that if she jumps in then he'll have to jump in after her and he's not particularly in the mood for getting wet. Eventually the officer's jawing convinces Mildred to move along and she heads back. Wally Fay (the underrated and largely forgotten Jack Carson) knocks on the window of the restaurant and invites Mildred in for a free drink, saying it's the least he can do since buying her out of the place was the best investment he's ever made, so Mildred, still obviously preoccupied, agrees to sit for a drink. As he always has (since childhood apparently), Wally puts the moves on Mildred, but she brushes him off. As they are finishing their drink, Mildred suggests that they go to the beachhouse for a nightcap and Wally's all for it, seeing it as an opportunity to make his long-lingering dreams come true. They get in Wally's car and drive up to the house as Mildred unlocks the door, Wally asks where Monte is or if he has suddenly become broadminded.

Once inside, Wally finds a darkened house and heads straight to the bar to start preparing drinks for the two of them. Mildred still seems distracted. She finally pulls herself together and says she's going to go change clothes. Wally, who is quite the chatterbox, asks her to keep the door open so he can keep talking to her. "Something about the sound of my own voice just fascinates me," he tells her. She says she will, but as Wally prattles on, he notices the sound of her door closing. He goes to check it out. It's locked. He tries to get her attention but gets no answer. He checks the others doors but finds they are all locked — and then he stumbles across Monte's dead body.

Not thrilled that Mildred had tricked him into a locked beachhouse with the corpse of her murdered husband, Wally uses a chair to break a window and scramble down the side of the house — just as the police arrive. He doesn't make any effort to get away after they fire shots at him, at first assuming he's a burglar, but as one officer watches Wally while the other checks out the house Wally tells him that there's a stiff inside. The other cop returns and the policeman watching Wally tells his partner, "Say, he says there's a dead guy in the house." "You never saw deader," the other cop replies. Meanwhile, Mildred returns to her house where not only is her daughter Veda (Oscar nominee Ann Blyth) awaiting her but so are two detectives, who ask her to come with them. Once they get outside the residence, they tell her they didn't want to break the news in front of her daughter but her husband has been found murdered. They take her to the police station where, as her old friend and manager of her restaurant, Ida Corwin (the delightful Oscar-nominated Eve Arden) says, it looks like a class reunion. Present are Ida, Wally and Mildred's first husband Bert (Bruce Bennett) as well as Mildred. The remainder of Mildred Pierce unfolds in flashback to lead up to those shots someone pumped into Mildred's second husband Monty when Mildred objects when the police pin the crime on Bert.

I've seen Mildred Pierce probably about five or six times in my lifetime, including this week's viewing, and I've always liked it a lot even if I've never found it to be a perfect movie. All the previous times I watched it I came with zero knowledge of the Cain novel upon which it was based and I had not watched a new miniseries that stuck closer to Cain's original story. I did my best to view the 1945 film the way I had before and while I still like the 1945 Mildred Pierce a lot, it just pales when you know what they did to Cain's story and how much of an improvement the HBO miniseries turns out to be, but I swore this post would concentrate on Curtiz's film and not get into the comparison game. (That post comes Friday).

The one thing that always has bothered me about Mildred Pierce is that while it's mostly well acted, Joan Crawford's Oscar-winning turn as the title character actually turns out to be one of the least-interesting characters in the movie. I have only seen three of the five best actress nominees that year and Crawford deserved it over Ingrid Bergman for The Bells of St. Mary's, but I haven't seen Greer Garson in The Valley of Decision or Jennifer Jones in Love Letters to make judgments on them. I can say decisively though that of the three I have seen, it's not close — Gene Tierney deserved the prize for Leave Her to Heaven. Crawford's Mildred shows very little range, whether she's raging at a cheating spouse, losing her restaurant or a dying young daughter or her constant attempts to please her evil incarnate of a daughter named Veda. It's even more apparent when you put her in scenes with the likes of Arden, Carson, Blyth and, to a lesser extent, Scott, because they all wipe her off the screen.

Though it's structured as a noirish murder mystery, once Mildred Pierce goes into its flashback mode telling her story, the crime is mostly an afterthought as the film charts her rise and fall as a successful restaurateur, ruined by her need to give her grasping high maintenance daughter Veda everything Veda thinks the world owes her and the added burden of paying the bills of her second husband (Scott), once a rich, well-known playboy but now basically her gigolo. As Monte tells Mildred when she asks him what he does for a living, "I loaf, in a decorative and highly charming manner." Mildred finally does dump him for awhile, but in her neverending quest to keep Veda near, goes to the extreme of marrying him, hope his lifestyle, albeit a fake one, will lure the snobbish and superficial spawn back into her graces. Since Mildred is supposed to be talking to a police detective in her effort to convince him that Bert didn't kill Monte, we often hear her in voiceover, but it comes in so infrequently, that it's sometimes jarring.

The film glides along so well because it's been placed in the hands of one of Hollywood's best workman directors in Curtiz whose best film remains the incomparable Casablanca but also helmed movies as diverse as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels With Dirty Faces, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Young Man With a Horn and White Christmas. He's really telling a story that's a melodrama, not a murder mystery. The other weakness Curtiz faces is the casting of Bruce Bennett as Mildred's first husband Bert. Bennett's acting not only is stiff, his character has to be portrayed as one of the most upstanding individuals that ever left his family for another woman.

The key to making it work are his supporting players and the dialogue, some of which comes from the Cain novel but a lot of the best lines whose credit goes to named screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, uncredited writers William Faulkner and Catherine Turney and improvs and ad libs from the cast themselves. Arden, who plays Ida who meets Mildred as a diner manager who hires her as a waitress and later becomes Mildred's business partner gets the bulk of the movie's best lines. When Monte says he's always tried to avoid work, Ida quips, "You were probably frightened by a callus at an early age." When Mildred complains about what she's going to do about Veda, Ida responds, "Personally, Veda's got me convinced that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young."

In the end, Mildred Pierce is not a movie trying to determine who killed someone but a story of a woman who builds a successful life for herself but ruins it with her unhealthy attachment to a spoiled, resentful shrew of an offspring. The 1945 film remains enjoyable, but it doesn't tell the true story that James M. Cain wrote, but that version will premiere Sunday. I'll tell you more about it Friday.


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Wednesday, June 09, 2010

 

“If you ain't got socks you can't pull 'em up, can you?”


(Warning: possible spoilers contained within)
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
On a list of moviedom’s most pathetic losers, Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) would surely have to rank at or near the top. A small-time hustler with big dreams…and nothing for collateral, Harry swipes money from his girlfriend Mary Bristol’s (Gene Tierney) purse, stays away for days on end and causes her endless worry with his get-rich-quick schemes. He’s a liar, a swindler, and a man who exercises extremely bad judgment—many of his confederates and associates are not only as bent as he is, they’d sell him out for a pocketful of change. Harry Fabian is a man who’s living on borrowed time…and the sands in the hourglass are slowly running out.

He’s also the sympathetic — yes, hard to believe — protagonist of director Jules Dassin’s classic film noir, Night and the City (1950)…which premiered on American movie screens 60 years ago on this date…after first being seen in “the city” of the film’s title, London, in April of that same year.

As Night opens, Harry Fabian is running through the streets of London, being chased by an unknown assailant — and this won’t be the last time we’ll witness Fabian in constant motion, either. He finds temporary respite in the apartment of his girlfriend Mary, who urges him to grow up because he’s “always running…always in a sweat.” Harry’s much more ambitious — he wants to give Mary a “life of ease and plenty,” adding: “I just want to be somebody.” But it’s just not in the cards for our man Fabian — who must resort to taking money from Mary in order to pay off the individual who’s waiting for him outside.

Mary’s subsistence depends on her job at a third-rate dive called The Silver Fox, which is run by the sebaceous and physically repulsive Philip Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan) and his wife Helen (Googie Withers). Mary’s job is “getting drunks drunker,” while Harry functions as the club’s “tout,” luring unsuspecting American tourists into the joint. One night at a wrestling match, Harry makes the acquaintance of Gregorius the Great (Stanislaus Zbyszko) — who is also the father of Hermes Kristo (Herbert Lom), the mobster who controls all of the wrestling venues in London. Gregorius is disgusted by the sort of wrestling sponsored by his son (he prefers the classic Greco-Roman style of brawling) — and by one wrestler, The Strangler (Mike Mazurki), in particular…so Fabian gets the idea to take up the mantle of promoting Greco-Roman wrestling on his own despite the knowledge that Kristo won’t take too kindly to someone muscling in on his racket. But with the support of Gregorius — Kristo will be helpless to do anything about it.

Harry appeals to Nosseross to invest in his venture, but Philip laughs at the idea, assured that Harry can never raise the £400 he’ll need to get it off the ground. In fact, Helen challenges Harry to come up with half the money, vowing that her husband will make good on the other half. After a quick whip-round of his “friends,” Harry is completely “skint” — but Helen offers to front him 200 quid with the proviso that he obtain for her a nightclub license so that she can start her own place and escape from Phil’s greasy clutches. When Fabian shows Nosseross the 200, Phil makes good on his promise…but he immediately suspects that Helen is funding Harry’s half and that ol’ green-eyed monster begins plans for an extended stay.

Kristo learns of Harry’s new enterprise and pays Fabian a visit with his mouthpiece (Aubrey Dexter) in tow…but with the confidence that Kristo can’t lay a finger on him since he’s got his father Gregorius’ support, Harry orders him out of his gymnasium. It’s up to the cuckolded Nosseross to put the kibosh on Harry’s plans—after a meeting with Kristo, Phil tells Harry he’s dissolving their partnership…using as his excuse the argument that wrestling fans in London simply won’t support Greco-Roman wrestling. Fabian will have to arrange a match between The Strangler and Gregorius’ young protégé, Nikolas (Ken Richmond), over Gregorius’ objections…so he cleverly provokes The Strangler into a fight with Nikolas, and convinces Gregorius that the two men will have to settle their differences in the wrestling ring. Gregorius agrees.

Fabian returns to Nosseross with the news that his Nikolas vs. The Strangler bout has become a reality…but he’s still not getting the picture. Phil, determined to stick a shiv into Harry’s back, won’t give Harry the money he needs to close the deal with The Strangler’s manager (Charles Farrell). “You’ve got it all,” he remarks to a sweaty Harry, “but you’re a dead man, Harry Fabian…a dead man.” Desperate, Fabian then resorts to ransacking Mary’s apartment for the money. Stunned by her boyfriend’s betrayal, a clearly shaken Mary can only say: “You’re killing me…you’re killing me and yourself.” Harry returns to the gym with 200 quid but by that time a drunken Strangler has goading Nikolas into settling their differences right now, the box office be damned. In their tussle, Strangler ends up breaking Nikolas’ wrist…and Gregorius steps in to avenge his protégé’s honor. Gregorius, using Greco-Roman tactics, bests The Strangler…but the bout has left him in a weakened condition, and he expires in Kristo’s arms. Kristo then puts the word out: a thousand dollars will be rewarded to the individual who places a now turned-rabbit Harry into his custody.

Scripted by Jo Swerling (with contributions from Austin Dempster and William E. Watts), who adapted Gerald Kersh’s novel of the same name, Night and the City is one of the most underrated of film noirs — a textbook example of how a man’s life can go spiraling out of control by simply grabbing for something that’s out of his reach. It would be the last American film directed by Dassin (until 1968’s Up Tight!) before he was forced to flee the country in light of the Hollywood blacklist, and while that may have been France’s gain (Dassin would later go on to direct classics like Du rififi chez les hommes [1955] and Topkapi [1964]) it was a sorry day for the U.S. cinema — Dassin had helmed several classics of the noir style: Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948), Thieves' Highway (1949). Like the characters in Force, Night’s Harry Fabian is just marking time until his execution — he likes to brag that he’s got where he is with “brains and guts”…but he’s only half-right. He’s definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a lot of his lot in life can also be chalked up to just miserable luck.

As proof that everything Fabian touches turns to shit, consider the circumstances surrounding his nemesis Nosseross’ wife Helen. Helen is revolted by the sight of her husband, and is just counting the days when she’ll be able to give him the big kiss-off and strike out on her own. Harry’s going to be her meal ticket to a better existence — she fronts him the funds he needs to get “Fabian Promotions” out of the gate and only asks that he use his connections around London to get her that precious club license. But hustlin’ Harry double-crosses his “angel” by having a pal forge a license…which he hands off to the unsuspecting Helen. Armed with her certificate of freedom, she says fare-thee-well to Phil—who’s devastated that she’s leaving but knows she’ll be back. “And I’ll want to take you back,” Phil says sorrowfully as Helen slams the door shut. Sure enough, Helen discovers to her horror that Harry’s license isn’t on the up-and-up…and comes crawling back to her husband, only to find him stone cold dead. A cackling flower lady (Ada Reeve) then delivers the final blow: Phil’s left everything to her in his last will and testament.

London at first glance doesn’t seem like the “proper” setting for a noir, but despite the offbeat locale, the city’s cobblestone streets and waterfront provide the perfect backdrop for this dark tale of a man’s ultimate appointment with fate; in one scene, Fabian hides in a shot tower—and the mechanical noises in the background sound just like a clock ticking precious moments of his life away. We’re witness to a seedier side of London—not country estates with lush, green lawns but dingy gymnasiums that stink of b.o. and sweat and sleazy juke joints where working girls ply “gentlemen” with drinks. And in the middle of it all is Harry, running around like a rat trapped in a maze—and getting that “deer in the headlights” look when a car suddenly comes into a view and flashes its brights at our out-of-breath protagonist.

The casting in this film is first-rate: old pros like Sullivan and Withers lend squalid authenticity to their roles, Lom is a memorably menacing villain, and Zbyszko and Mazurki (a noir icon since Murder, My Sweet [1944] are hulkingly massive — their grudge match is one of the most memorable scenes in the history of noir. Tierney has a largely thankless role, but the real detriment here is Hugh Marlowe as her Greek chorus confidant; his character seems forced and totally unnecessary — his presence only serves to provide a false “happy ending” for Tierney’s character. (I’ve not read the original book so I don’t know if Marlowe’s character was actually in there from the get-go or whether he was fictionalized — but I don’t feel so bad about not reading the source material because Dassin himself didn’t thumb through it until after the film was completed.) And then there’s Widmark — as sweaty as Edmond O’Brien on a good day, with traces of that maniacal giggle he made famous in Kiss of Death (1947). His Harry Fabian is the kind of guy that’ll make you do a check of all your pockets should you accidentally bump into him — but compared to his acquaintances in the film (who know the golden rule that “money talks and bullshit walks”), he’s a positive prince; his last-ditch attempt to make certain his girl Mary comes out ahead in the final run may be desperate — but nevertheless is redemption in the eyes of the viewer.

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Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. blogs at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear — and his admiration for Richard Widmark (“the king of the cinematic rat bastards”) knows no bounds; he strongly believes that Night and the City’s Harry Fabian may very well be the actor’s finest moment onscreen.


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Saturday, February 27, 2010

 

Centennial Tributes: Joan Bennett


By Josh R
The more one sees of Joan Bennett, the more there is to like — that is, if one is willing to undertake a cineaste’s version of a search-and-recovery effort. Of the major credits discussed in this piece, only a handful are readily available for viewing — most notably three of the four films she made for Fritz Lang, the German auteur who saw past her nondescript prettiness and found something both unique and uniquely unsettling simmering beneath her unperturbed ingénue’s countenance. The roles on which her reputation was based were atypical of American cinema of the 1940s. Her best work came for European directors, in films that were decidedly European in character, while her depiction of unvarnished feminine carnality was markedly different from anything Hollywood had attempted since the pre-Code era (and it should be noted that not even Harlow or Stanwyck in their pre-Code days can match the coarseness of Scarlet Street's ‘Lazy Legs’ — but more on that to follow).

Fittingly, she wound up plying her trade more often than not on the margins of the commercial filmmaking establishment, if not altogether outside of it; there is no other leading lady of the 1940s whose resume can boast outings for Lang, Renoir and Ophuls. The films she made for the latter pair, as well as the fourth she did for Lang, remain stubbornly out of reach, consigned to the scrap heap of films deemed unworthy of release on video or DVD. If Joan Bennett’s career is one that has been sadly overlooked, with but a fraction of its treasures assigned their rightful value, the impression created by the remaining pieces testifies to an uncommonly adventurous and challenging body of work, at once both singular in character and aching for rediscovery.

In life, as on film, she proceeded to the beat of her own drummer, and her personal history was not without its share of incident and scandal. She was the younger sister of the platinum-haired Constance Bennett, a top box office attraction of the early 1930s — it took several years and a change of hair color for Joan to emerge from her sibling’s shadow. By 16, she was married to a millionaire; by 18, a divorced single mother with a few silent film credits under her belt. She was Katharine Hepburn’s petulant pre-adolescent sister in Cukor’s adaptation of Little Women. Quite literally, there was more to Joan Bennett than this and other early roles revealed — flouncy blonde ringlets and masses of ruffles could only partially disguise the fact that she was noticeably pregnant at the time of the film’s shooting. She made a lot of costume pictures and minor melodramas and was serviceably winsome, even though at times she seemed to be struggling to suppress a yawn — romantic ingénue roles did nothing to test her, and by the end of the decade, her boredom was becoming increasingly evident.

If she had staked her claim to semi-stardom as an innocuous, diffident little blonde, raising her naturally husky voice several octaves to a strained helium-induced squeak so as not to seem abrasive, it didn’t take Joan Bennett too long to wise up, get practical and allow caution to fall by the wayside. When her second husband left her for the raven-haired exotic Hedy Lamarr, she dispensed with both the peroxide and the inhibitions, reinventing herself as a worldly brunette with enough sexual swagger to put any other screen siren, French or otherwise, in her place. The transformation literally occurred onscreen — in the opening scenes of 1938’s Trade Winds, she is a guileless, flaxen-haired debutante draped in ermine and demurely playing Chopin on the piano. Ten minutes into the film, she has shot a man in cold blood, eluded capture by the police by driving her roadster into San Francisco Bay and resurfaced on a Shanghai steamer with a forged passport, a survivalist mentality, and hair the identical shade of her ex-husband’s new paramour. Even her makeup was reminiscent of Lamarr’s, in a manner that could hardly be chalked up to coincidence; at the time, her defiant response to being jilted, in the form of a thinly veiled swipe at her romantic rival, was regarded as one of Hollywood’s better inside jokes.

She made a brave try for the coveted role of Scarlett O’Hara, and impressed David O. Selznick enough to have briefly been considered a leading contender for the assignment. Without the backing of a major studio, her opportunities were limited; nevertheless, she landed a plum role in Lang’s 1941 noirish chase film Man Hunt, as a cockney streetwalker trying to help Walter Pidgeon evade capture by Nazi pursuers. It was a fruitful collaboration from the start; the affecting blend of toughness and vulnerability Lang was able to extract from his new muse was enough to convince Bennett that she had found her champion. With her third husband, producer Walter Wanger, she and Lang formed a production company. 1944’s The Woman in the Window played almost like the flip side of Preminger’s Laura — a variation on the same theme, but observed in a much more fatalistic vein and without any concessions to conventional sentimentality. Edward G. Robinson’s buttoned-down psychology professor becomes enamored of a portrait of Bennett he sees in a gallery window; once he encounters the model in the flesh, he is drawn into a web of murder, blackmail and treachery that sends his life into a tailspin. In contrast to Tierney’s goddess figure, Bennett’s equally enigmatic Alice Reed is both angel and demon rolled into one — temptation personified, she leads men to their doom without even having any obvious designs on doing so.

The theme of temptation was revisited by Robinson, Bennett and Lang — Man, Woman and The Devil, if you will — to even more stunning effect in 1945’s Scarlet Street. Adapted from Renoir’s La Chienne (once again, the European influence at work), the film observes a masochistic weakling who falls prey to the machinations of a particularly slovenly specimen of femme fatale, of a strain that would make Double Indemnity's Phyllis Dietrichson seem downright genteel by comparison. Indeed, Bennett’s Kitty March — nicknamed ‘Lazy Legs’ by the smarmy, abusive pimp she dotes upon — had the dubious distinction of being the most graceless, classless and altogether vulgar piece of cheap fluff ever to make an appearance in high-grade film noir (due in no small part to the influence of Scarlet Street, she wouldn’t be the last.) Lolling about her filthy walk-up in a tacky negligee, scattering candy wrappers and cigarette butts on the floor while waiting for her worthless boyfriend to materialize for rough sex and even rougher treatment, Lazy Legs is indolent to the point of inactivity; lack of ambition would be her most salient characteristic if not for her total lack of sensitivity or scruple. Stretching her whisky-soaked alto into a slatternly drawl, Bennett embellished the role with subversive flashes of humor; seductive and repellent at the same time, Lazy Legs is all the more alluring for her lack of any appealing trait beyond her beauty. It amounted to a revelatory performance, in a film not only startling for its stylistic brilliance, but for its unmistakably sadomasochistic undertones (of her unsuspecting quarry, who treats her with affection bordering on reverence, Kitty asserts that “If he were mean or vicious or if he balled me out or something, I’d like him better.”)

If Scarlet Street marked Bennett’s crowning achievement, it wouldn’t be the actress’s last successful foray into the realm of film noir. Based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, The Macomber Affair cast Gregory Peck as a typically Hemingway-esque great white hunter/rugged individualist hired to lead a wealthy American couple on a Kenyan safari, only to find that he has been drawn into an elaborate game of recrimination and cruelty. An unsettling examination of passion and betrayal told against the backdrop of the African wild, Zoltan Korda’s vastly underrated film furnished its leading lady with a role of even greater emotional complexity than the Lang films had; Margaret Macomber’s cool, patrician exterior masks long-held resentments and deeply destructive impulses, neither of which can be prevented from bubbling to the surface in an isolated wilderness where the rules of civilization no longer apply. Just as the character cannot fully comprehend how she allowed herself to be trapped in a dysfunctional marriage of convenience built on lies, her efforts to avoid being poisoned by years of accommodation and denial have ended in futility. Even as the film moves to its inevitable conclusion, Margaret’s motives remain clouded in ambiguity — we’re never really sure how many of her actions are intentional, and to what extent she’s simply at the mercy of her own subconscious. It was another striking, unusual performance that deserved — and still deserves — a wider audience than it ultimately received.

The Macomber Affair, like Trade Winds, is among the aforementioned films not to be found on VHS or DVD. Renoir’s The Woman on the Beach was butchered on the cutting room floor by anxious studio executives, and occasionally appears in its bastardized form on television (sadly, not soon enough for the writing of this piece). Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door is cited by film historians as one of her better vehicles; given Bennett’s track record with Lang, such assertions can be readily believed, even if circumstance requires they must be accepted on faith.

The postwar era marked a shift in values — once the boys were back and Ike was in, many of the no-good dames of the 1940s were expected to shove their trashy heels to the back of the closet and forsake their wayward ways. Implausible as it may seem, a scant five years after Lazy Legs had vamped her way to infamy, Bennett found herself at the side of Spencer Tracy, embodying the values of bland suburban matronhood and fussing over Elizabeth Taylor’s trousseau in Father of the Bride. The film was profitable enough to merit a sequel, Father’s Little Dividend — to say that Bennett was wasted in these films would qualify as an understatement. After that flush of mainstream success, her career fell by the wayside; once the temptress had been domesticated, no one thought to inquire just what kind of a wild life Ellie had led prior to becoming Mrs. Stanley Banks — worse still, no one seemed to be particularly interested. In real life, the reverse may have proved to be the case; in 1951, Walter Wanger shot his wife’s agent, asserting that the latter “was breaking up my home”, and was briefly imprisoned. The ensuing scandal did his wife’s career no favors, and she worked sparingly in films for the remainder of career. She found renewed life on television in the gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows, earning an Emmy nomination for her efforts, and with a supporting role in Dario Argento's cult classic Suspiria.

In a day and age when film buffs and writers speak at length about glory deferred — Jeff Bridges is frequently cited as one of our most underrated actors — a case can be made for Joan Bennett as one of the more egregiously overlooked talents in the annals of film history. Academy Award nominations are often judged to be the barometer of career success; Bridges, it must be said, has been honored on five such occasions (and if people are still referring to him as underrated now, I suspect they won’t be after next Sunday night). Joan Bennett never received an Oscar nomination; but then, her best film work was ahead of its time. Sadder still is the realization that time has yet to catch up with her. Had she received a nomination or two, it’s tempting to wonder whether or not she’d enjoy a higher profile than she does now. ‘Lazy Legs’ stands as one of the more daring film noir performances of its era; her other efforts testify to the fact that she was more than a one-hit wonder. With or without the recognition she deserved, it must be asserted that she made an indelible mark on the American cinema. For whatever reason, The American Cinema has yet to recognize her true worth.


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