Friday, April 20, 2012
And you can charm the critics and have nothing to eat
When you get right down to it, everything that happens up to Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) accidentally missing Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and giving Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) the pie in the face, serves as exposition for the remainder of Singin' in the Rain. (If the credits had been delayed until this point, it would have put Raising Arizona's opening to shame 35 years in advance.) That could be a huge detriment to a film, but here it grows a mighty oak from which the biggest laughs, the greatest songs and the most memorable dance numbers spread forth. As Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer, "You ain't heard nothin' yet" only in Singin' in the Rain, you ain't seen nothin' yet either. In many musicals — either those produced exclusively for the movies back in their heyday right up to new ones premiering on stages today — the musical numbers usually exceed the books in quality (a quite common problem throughout the career of Stephen Sondheim, whose many scores rank among the greatest in musical theater history but often come shackled to lackluster or problematic scripts). Singin' in the Rain doesn't suffer that kind of problem because Betty Comden & Adolph Green's screenplay never slows down long enough to take a breath, let alone allow writing weaknesses to interfere with the glory of what Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen cook up with the Freed/Brown songbook. The next scene we see following R.F.'s party shows Guy arriving on the Monumental Pictures lot three weeks later, ready to commence shooting on the next Lockwood & Lamont silent spectacular The Duelling Cavalier (and yes, they spell Duelling with two l's in the film), another romantic, swashbuckling epic set during the French Revolution.
Don spots Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) reading Variety and chatting with an actor in full costume for a jungle feature being filmed. Cosmo fills them in about The Jazz Singer being "an all-time smash in its first week." The other actor continues to be a sound movie naysayer, predicting, "And an all-time flop in the second." Lockwood's mind obviously rests elsewhere, so the news doesn't capture his attention. He only mentions that he's back reporting for duty and walks off with Cosmo, ducking to avoid ruining a shot in a Western filming next to the jungle picture. Don tells Cosmo that he now can refer to him as Count
Pierre de Bataille, alias the Duelling Cavalier. "Why don't you release the last one under the new title? You know — if you've seen one, you've seen them all," Cosmo jokes, but Don gets serious and asks him why he said that. When Cosmo inquires what riled him, Lockwood explains that Kathy said that to him. Cosmo expresses surprise that the girl remains on Don's mind and assures him that he didn't get her fired from her job at the Cocoanut Grove. Cosmo suggests that Don's preoccupation stems from the fact that she was the “first dame that hasn’t fallen for your line since you were four.” Cosmo, intent on cheering his buddy up, gives him his version of "the show must go on" speech, leading to O'Connor's solo number. During the preparations of Singin' in the Rain, Donen noted that there wasn't really a suitable solo number for O'Connor to perform and asked Arthur Freed if perhaps he and Nacio Herb Brown could write a new song for him. Freed agreed and inquired what kind of tune they needed. Donen suggested something along the lines of Cole Porter's "Be a Clown" which Kelly and Judy Garland performed in 1948's The Pirate, which Garland's husband at the time, Vincente Minnelli, directed and Freed produced. When Freed returned with "Make 'Em Laugh," everyone's jaws dropped. Musically, the song nearly matched "Be a Clown" note for note. Here are the two clips. First, O'Connor's energetic and delightful rendition of "Make 'Em Laugh" (The four-pack-a-day smoker sang, danced and performed acrobatically so enthusiastically, it sent him to bed for three days of rest, or perhaps hospitalization, afterward. To make matters worse, the footage got destroyed and he had to re-create the routine once back at work.) and then Kelly and Garland's number from The Pirate."None of us had the nerve to say, 'Arthur, this song is too close. You can't do that.' So we used it. Arthur brought Irving Berlin down on the stage when we were shooting 'Make 'Em Laugh,'" Donen said in a documentary on the fabled Freed Unit on MGM included on the 50th anniversary DVD. "Obviously, Berlin knew 'Be a Clown'…and as the song went on his head got lower and lower and lower and after about eight bars, he said to Freed, accusingly, 'Who wrote that song?' Arthur said, 'That's enough, Irving. We don't need to hear anymore. The guys and I, we all got together and we wrote the song. Come on, Irving.' And that was the easing out without admitting he had somewhat borrowed some of it." You would think that with music that so obviously mirrored Porter's earlier song, Porter would have filed a lawsuit, but he didn't. The prevailing conventional wisdom, such as written by Cecil Adams, theorizes that Porter "was still grateful to Freed for giving him the assignment for The Pirate at a time when Porter's career was suffering from two consecutive Broadway flops." Partially plagiarized or not, "Make 'Em Laugh" was one of only two songs in Singin' in the Rain written specifically for the film. The other, "Moses Supposes," stands out as the sole tune in the movie not written by Freed & Brown, instead composed of lyrics by Comden & Green and music by Roger Edens, the associate producer of the film and, according to Comden in the same documentary, "the backbone of the Freed Unit in every department." Green added that "(Edens) was the original trainer and overseer of Judy Garland." Edens also added a little something special to the film's most famous song. More on that later.
Stolen music or not, if O'Connor's bit weren't enough to tickle your funny bone, what comes next may well be my personal favorite nonmusical scene of the movie. Director Roscoe Dexter (Douglas Fowley) calls for his stars to come to the set to begin shooting The Duelling Cavalier. Lina exits her trailer in full 19th-century regalia, complaining about the period garb she wears. “This wig weighs a ton. Who would ever wear something like this?” she asks. Everyone used to wear them, Roscoe assures her. “Then everyone was a dope,” Lina declares. Don arrives, continuing to be crestfallen about Kathy — and even dim Lina detects what's bugging him. Lockwood expresses guilt about her firing when Lina admits that they weren't going to can her until she called and insisted. Before Don can throttle his co-star, Roscoe steps in to explain that in the scene about to film he needs to remember that he's madly in love with her. The moviemaking scenes in general but this one in particular pays off with some of the film's comedic highlights and makes me wonder if in the days of silent filmmaking, something similar ever occurred since no microphones picked up their words. It echoes the film's opening, when Don told the
fans and radio listeners one thing while moviegoers saw the truth. This dialogue, delivered calmly, goes on while the two go through the motions of Don as Count Pierre de Bataille trying to seduce the maiden of the French aristocracy. DON: Why you rattlesnake you, you got that poor kid fired.
LINA: That’s not all I’m gonna do if I ever get my hands on her.
DON: I’ve never heard of anything so low. What did you do it for?
LINA: Because you liked her. I could tell.
DON: So that’s it. Believe me — I don’t like her half as much as I hate you, you reptile.
LINA: Sticks and stones may break my bones.
DON: I’d like to break every bone in your body.
LINA: You and who else, you big lummox?
After Roscoe calls cut, Lina tries to insist that Don couldn't kiss her like that and "not mean it just a teensy bit!" Don glares at her. "Meet the greatest actor in the world! I'd rather kiss a tarantula." She thinks he's lying. He requests a tarantula. Before the quarreling can
continue, R.F. (Millard Mitchell) storms onto the set. It seems that he reads Variety also. He announces the closing of the studio for a few weeks — to reconfigure it for sound filmmaking. The sensation of The Jazz Singer has changed everything. "I told you these talking pictures would be a menace," R.F. shouts, conveniently forgetting his own history. He tells Roscoe and Don that movie theaters already have started adding sound equipment and they can't risk being left behind. The Duelling Cavalier now will be a talking picture. "Talking pictures, that means I'm out of a job. At last I can start suffering and write that symphony," Cosmo sighs. "You're not out of job, we're putting you in as head of our new music department," R.F. informs the pianist. "Oh, thanks, R.F.! At last I can stop suffering and write that symphony," Cosmo gladly accepts. Don expresses worry, saying that they don't know anything about this talking picture business. It doesn't bother R.F. It's the same
thing — just add talking. "Don, it'll be a sensation! Lamont and Lockwood: they talk!" Simpson proclaims. Then, from across the set, a voice adds, "Well of course we talk. Don't everybody?" Uh-oh. You think the P.R. flaks at Monumental Pictures feared Lina speaking in public or on the radio — now what would they do when a collision between that voice and the masses couldn't be avoided. Diction coaches sounded like the best short-term solution. In the meantime, the studio dived into the lavish musical business — so lavish that Singin' in the Rain was considered one of the more expensive films made in that era at $2,540,800 (with $157,250 spent on Walter Plunkett's costumes alone). Compare that to The Godfather's budget of $6.5 million 20 years later. Using the Labor Department's Inflation Calculator, the Singin' in the Rain budget would be worth $22,416,892.06 today, but only $3,957,784.62 when The Godfather filmed. One look at the complete production number for "Beautiful Girl" (with Jimmy Thompson singing the song) and you see where much of that costume budget went. Sondheim cites Brown & Freed as one of the songwriting teams whose style he mimicked in his pastiche numbers in Follies. Follies even contains a song called "Beautiful Girls," but it sounds nothing like the Freed & Brown song. The "Beautiful Girl" sequence does contain an important plot point though since Cosmo spots Kathy in the chorus and rushes off to tell Don and R.F. likes her as well and decides to hire her to play the younger sister of Zelda Zanders (Rita Moreno) in her movie (slightly humorous since only four months separated her and Debbie Reynolds in real life).As you no doubt noticed by now, movies that mean a lot to me such as Singin' in the Rain do start me prattling on like the grade school student I described in the first half of this piece. When you combine that with the accumulated knowledge I've gathered over the several decades since and new goodies I've picked up from commentaries, my impulses push me to regurgitate it all and ignore the writer inside
me who yells, "Enough already! People stopped reading this before you even created the second page. You wonder why so few leave comments?" (I also must ask why I'm getting wordier the older I get. I love films such as Goodfellas and The Rules of the Game even more, but I kept their tributes to a page.) Prompting and provoking my worst traits in this regard happens to be the colossal collection of embeddable clips from Singin' in the Rain that YouTube contains. Admittedly, not every musical number exists in a pristine presentation — and the 17-minute "Broadway Melody" ballet sequence only gets represented by two clips of the Cyd Charisse portions of the epic dance piece — but YouTube even has examples of some of the hysterical dialogue scenes. The movie contains so much that I want to share it all. Granted, ruining twists in it wouldn't be the same as it would be in other films where the plot turns contain some significance, but in other ways, it would be worse here. I've seen films such as Fight Club where I've gone in knowing the twist and loved them anyway. You can't untell a joke. As much as I might want you to hear Gene Kelly sing "You Are My Lucky Star," I can't show you that clip because if you haven't seen the movie — well, dammit, you should and you should see him sing it in context. As far as all those backstage, insider details that I could toss your way, I'm going to let some slide. Otherwise, I'd never finish this tribute.I feel I must share one particular number because it doesn't earn the kudos that the more widely seen musical sequences such as "Make 'Em Laugh," "Good Mornin'," "Moses Supposes" and, of course, the title song, do. When Don learns that Cosmo has found Kathy — and on the Monumental lot, of all places — Lockwood doesn't waste any time clearing the air between them and making his true feelings known. However, there is a hitch. Just as Don the actor lacks experience with dialogue, Don the man also stumbles when it comes to putting his thoughts into words. In this sequence, you see a very subtle theme that lurks beneath the film's surface. It isn't just the transition from silent films to sound ones but about the love of language in general and using the proper words. To feel more comfortable, Don takes Kathy on to an empty soundstage to sing his feelings to her. Originally, film historian Rudy Behlmer said on the DVD commentary, they planned for Kelly to sing the song while taking Reynolds on a tour of changing backdrops such as London, Paris and a jungle. Instead, they settled on the empty soundstage and it may be one of the best decisions since not going with Howard Keel as a silent Western star for the lead. Harold Rosson's use of Technicolor on the sparse set makes for one of the loveliest scenes in the film.
I praised her extensively in the first half of this tribute, but I can't allow Jean Hagen's brilliance as Lina Lamont to receive mention in part one alone, especially when a fun bit of Singin' in the Rain trivia makes the actress's work all the more impressive. First though, let us backtrack to more of the funniest moments of the movie (which all inevitably involve Lina) as we see a brief snippet of her session with diction coach Phoebe Dinsmore, played by the wonderful character actress Kathleen Freeman, who died just two weeks after lending her
voice to the commentary track. At the time, Freeman appeared in her Tony-nominated role in the Broadway musical version of The Full Monty but her credits were so extensive, you had to have seen her in something. Perhaps as Fred Ward's gun-toting mom in The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. Second, as Roscoe films Lina and she drives the director insane because she can't grasp the concept of speaking where they've placed the microphone. That leads to one of Lina's best one-liners in the entire film. As you might expect if you haven't seen the film (again, what the hell are you waiting for?), the premiere of the sound version of The Duelling Cavalier turns into a big bust. Actually — and fortunately for Monumental Pictures — the showing merely was a preview, not the opening to the public. Cosmo, during an all-night session of bemoaning the death of Don's career with Don and Kathy, comes up with the idea of turning The Duelling Cavalier into a musical — until they recall a problem known as Lina Lamont. "Lina. She can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance. A triple threat," Cosmo comments. They then get the bright idea — which Kathy agrees to do and R.F. backs as long as Lina doesn't know Kathy provides the voice — to have Kathy dub all of Lina's singing and dialogue. One of the songs in the re-titled Dancing Cavalier is a short number called "Would You?" They construct the sequence quite nicely, beginning with Kathy recording the song then cutting to squeaky-voiced Lina doing the same. We switch to seeing Lina in color lip-synching to Kathy as they film the scene until it slowly turns to black-and-white and R.F. gives his approval in the screening room. The scene from the movie:Later, Don and Kathy have a scene where Kathy dubs Lina's dialogue in her love scenes with Don and the two confess their true feelings for one another. Now, why does any of this involve a bit behind-the-scenes True Hollywood-style craziness? Because, for whatever reason, Donen and Kelly didn't think that Reynolds' voice resonated strongly enough in "Would You?" During the other songs in the movie that she performs (admittedly none were solos), the singing voice does indeed belong to Reynolds, but they didn't think she worked here so in the scene where Debbie Reynolds portrays Kathy Selden dubbing Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont's singing, Reynolds herself had her voice dubbed by Betty Noyes, somewhat of a mystery dubber whose few other verified credits include singing the Oscar-nominated "Baby Mine" in Dumbo, though since Dumbo was born when Walt ran the show, no voices received credit. It gets stranger. The powers-that-be also ruled that Reynolds speaking voice didn't sound right to replace Lina's dialogue. Instead, Jean Hagen used her natural voice to dub herself doing the Lina voice for the scene. Follow all that? By the way, if you are curious, the take of "Would You?" using Reynolds' singing exists here.
Seventeen minutes of a "Broadway Melody Ballet" never had been planned for inclusion in Singin' in the Rain and, truth be told, as much as I love the film and admire the sequence itself, it sticks out like a sore thumb. For all of the sequence's extolling of that "Broadway Rhythm," this segment is the only part of Singin' in the Rain where its rhythm breaks down and the fault lies entirely with the success of
An American in Paris, which Oscar or no Oscar for best picture, I've never liked the film that much (except for Oscar Levant). For best picture, it defeated A Place in the Sun and A Streetcar Named Desire. Those eligible but not nominated for the top prize included An Ace in the Hole, The African Queen, Alice in Wonderland, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Detective Story, The River, The Steel Helmet and my personal choice, Strangers on a Train. However, An American in Paris had a ballet in it so Freed, Donen and Kelly figured that they better put one in Singin' in the Rain no matter how incongruous it would be. The original idea of a Broadway-type number that would have included O'Connor and other cast members got tossed as production shut down on the film for four months. The delay put the kibosh on any chance of O'Connor taking part in the finale anyway since, though Rain was an MGM production, Universal had loaned him to them. "They preempted me at Universal. We finished the picture. It took us about nine months, if I recall correctly, then Gene was gone about four months…and (Universal) had other plans for me. They wanted me to work with the jackass again," O'Connor said, referring to his film series with Francis the Talking Mule. "So I went back and worked for them. That's the reason I'm not in the finale." Behlmer said in the commentary that an early draft ended with everyone showing up to the premiere of the movie Broadway Rhythm and Don and Kathy were married as were Cosmo and Lina, if you can believe that.
"What originally was going to be a relatively simple number budgeted at $80,000 came in at more than $600,000 because of the extension of it and elaborateness and the fact they had Cyd Charisse who had just had a baby and had to get back in shape," Behlmer said as he talked of how Kelly and Donen kept expanding the size, scale and time of the "Broadway Melody" sequence. While I do enjoy this sequence, it plays as if someone spliced it into the film from another picture by accident. On top of that, the early part, where Don plays an eager would-be hoofer going door to door in New York trying to find an agent bears a slight resemblance to the movie's beginning depicting the early struggles that he and Cosmo had. His character in the "Broadway Rhythm" fantasy even eventually ends up in vaudeville. The notion that he tries to sell to R.F. about why The Dancing Cavalier needs this sequence doesn't quite hold water either, but they try to explain that away in two parts, giving half the idea to Cosmo who suggests to get modern numbers in make the movie be about a hoofer who reads A Tale of Two Cities while backstage waiting for his call when he gets hit in the head with a sandbag and imagines all the French Revolution stuff. That doesn't quite mesh with the 17-minute sequence that Don describes to R.F., so it's understandable that he says, "He can't quite visualize it. He'll have to see it on film." (Reportedly, that phrase often came out of Arthur Freed's mouth but he didn't catch the joke they made at his expense. Cyd Charisse puts on some damn sexy dance moves though as a gangster's moll with a Louise Brooks hairdo (a gangster who does a George Raft coin flip). I also enjoy the finish of the sequence when Kelly rises above all the lit Broadway theater signs and it practically looks three-dimensional. Here's the first encounter with Charisse for you to enjoy. What a great place to hang your hat, eh?
When they first planned what arguably became the most famous musical number in film history, "Singin' in the Rain" was going to be a trio. After the disastrous preview of The Duelling Cavalier, Don, Kathy and Cosmo together, in that "at some point things just got so
off-the-charts bad, it just got funny" spirit, would splash out the title tune. One night, an idea struck Gene Kelly and he phoned Arthur Freed and told him that he wanted to do it as a solo. Freed inquired as to what Kelly had in mind, but he didn't really have an answer except that he'd be singing and dancing in the rain. Sounds easy enough, but a lot of work went into that memorable little scene. First, as most film buffs know and I'm sure I've mentioned in relation to other movies, it's damn hard to get rain to show up on film. In the case of Singin' in the Rain, the mixed milk in with the water so the downpour showed up better. As always in these situations, the lighting had to be adjusted correctly so that not only did the rain show up, but so did your principal figure and backgrounds. The milk-water mixture had an unintended side effect as well: It shrank Kelly's wool suit the wetter it got and this scene took days of filming. That's right, days, which required covering the street sets of MGM's back lot with black tarp to make it appear as if it were night outside. To make matters worse, Kelly wasn't at his best. Illness had caught up with the workaholic who filmed parts of the scene with a temperature of 103 degrees.
The streets on the MGM back lot didn't come ready made with puddles. Those had to be built — or I guess broken would be the more proper term. "The puddles in the street were all faults we built because that is where he was going to be at that particular moment. We chipped out the pavement and the sidewalk and made puddles for him to splash in," Donen said in the Freed Unit documentary. While the crew may have deconstructed puddles for Kelly to splash in, they couldn't control the water pressure when the clock hit the right time of the day. "As people got home around 5 o'clock, they would start watering their yards because the hot sun had been beating down and the water pressure would suddenly drop enormously. We used a lot of water raining that whole street and when we tried to turn on our water, we'd just get a drip around 5 or 5:15 in the afternoon," Donen said. One matter that did stay in their control were transitions, something that film historian Rudy Behlmer said mattered a lot to both Donen and Kelly. Immediately preceding the "Singin' in the Rain" number was when he dropped Kathy off at her place after the all-night session that came up with the musical idea and she gives him a chaste kiss goodnight (or good morning, to be accurate) which prompts his elation. Donen and Kelly still sought some way to get from the doorway to the song and that's the other Roger Edens contribution I alluded to earlier. Edens added the little vocal vamp at the beginning that wasn't in the original version of the Freed & Brown song. "Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo/Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo/Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo/Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo…I'm singin' in the rain" They added the dancin' as well. You wouldn't think a string of sounds or nonsense words could make that big a difference, but can you imagine that number without them? They might as well be a magic spell.
How can anyone watch that and not have their spirits lifted immensely? That song has survived being placed in a horror context in A Clockwork Orange, yet it still makes me smile. Even though Singin' in the Rain regularly tops lists of superlatives now, few awards came its way in 1952. Donald O'Connor won a Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy and Betty Comden & Adolph Green won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Written American Musical. (How about that for a very specific category?) Green said on the commentary track that he thinks he knows why the film didn't get the kudos then that it received in the years since. "It never won any big awards because, maybe for the simple reason, I think maybe, that it was funny. It didn't seek significance because people were laughing and doing odd things." Let's hear it for people laughing and doing odd things, especially when they did it as well as they did in Singin' in the Rain.
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Labels: 50s, Awards, Cole Porter, Comden and Green, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Disney, Documentary, Donen, Garland, Gene Kelly, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oscars, Raft, Silents, Sondheim
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Sunday, March 04, 2012
"Buddy, no sax before a fight, remember."
By Edward Copeland
Since the first episode of Police Squad! remains the only flawless one, that's the only one I felt I needed to cover in a lot of detail. When we got to its second act, the first time they used the gag, it read ACT II: YANKEES ONE. I already showed you a photo from my favorite, from the second episode. (If you got here first and missed it, click here.) The remaining jokes for the other four episodes were:
Where Act II begins in "A Substantial Gift/The Broken Promise" ends up being hysterically funny, not so much for the scene itself but because one of those reactionary watchdog groups used it, combined with the rest of that episode of Police Squad!, as one of the most violent episodes of a TV series at that time.
Taking the information that Olson gave him about the discrepancies between Sally Decker's story and Olson's ballistics tests, Drebin returns to the credit union to test possible bullet trajectories — using real guns, real bullets and real people. Leslie Nielsen's deadpan narration works great again as he weighs theories in his mind, not noticing the increasing pile of corpses around him. The National Coalition Against Television Violence cited in May 1982 Police Squad! alongside such shows as The Fall Guy, The Greatest American Hero, Strike Force, T.J. Hooker and The Dukes of Hazzard as "the most violent programs," with ABC the worst network, showing "an average of 10 violent acts an
hour." I couldn't find a report on the average times an hour a coalition member had to adjust the stick shoved up their ass for more comfortable seating or if their sense of humor ever was located. Drebin eventually gets a tip about one of Sally's old boyfriends who works at "one of those all-night wicker places." He eventually finds out about Sally's dental bills and visits her dentist, Dr. Zubatsky (Terrence Beasor), who Frank shoves against the wall, his mouth full of toothpaste so he's foaming at the mouth and Zubatsky getting Drebin to insist, "I am not an animal. I am a human being," in reference to David Lynch's The Elephant Man. If any problems exist through all the episodes of Police Squad! today, it's that the series used many very time-specific references that will be lost on many over time. When Frank and Sally have their showdown, he unmasks her multiple identities, taking off a series of wigs, before they have a shoot-out behind benches just a couple feet apart, one of many gags that would be recycled in the movies, something ZAZ freely admit in the commentaries. Once Hocken shows up to help Frank apprehend Sally (complete with other officers and a police car conveniently marked "POLICE CAR" on the hood), he asks him how he figured it out. Drebin tells his captain it was a little hunch back at the office. Hocken says he thought so and that's why he brought that little hunchback with him which, of course, leads literally to a short, hunchbacked man arriving to shake Drebin's hand.
I skipped out of order a bit because I wanted to devote a fair amount of space to the second recurring character introduced in the premiere. William Duell, the fine film, TV and theater character actor who died in December at the age of 88, should be recognizable to
just about everyone for something. The last feature he appeared in was 2003's How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. His first film was an uncredited appearance in The Hustler. His most famous film roles probably remain the congressional custodian in the 1972 screen adaptation of the musical 1776 and Sefelt, one of the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. On TV, his last appearances were on Ed. On Broadway, he appeared frequently, including playing the same 1776 role when the musical premiered and replacing the original actor playing Caesar Rodney when 1776 was revived in the 1990s. I got to see Duell play Erronius in the 1996 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Nathan Lane. On Police Squad!, Duell played Johnny the shoeshine boy who everyone went to for answers to their questions — and I do mean everyone. It always would start with Frank seeking a tip, as in that first episode. "What's the word
on the street, Johnny?" Frank asks. "I don't know. I hear a lot of things. Pick a topic," Johnny replies. Some variation on that would be how every conversation with Johnny would begin, followed by the person in Johnny's shoeshine chair slipping him some cash. "You're barking up the wrong tree with this Ralph Twice. He's a decent family man and makes a good living. Wasn't his fault he got fired from the tire company, but who could predict Brazil would cut off the rubber supply? They're nationalizing the industry in two weeks so he would have gotten his job back anyway," Johnny informs Frank. Yes, this shoeshine man seemed to know what was going on everywhere and leads Drebin toward Sally. After Frank leaves, someone else would always step into Johnny's
chair. In the first episode, it was a priest wanting to know if there really is life after death. "Are you talking existential being or anthropomorphic deity?" Johnny asks. Because the episodes aired out of order, the next two should have been the heart surgeon and the fireman but instead after the heart surgeon the celebrity parade began. First to sit in Johnny's chair was Tommy LaSorda, the legendary manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers seeking advice as to whether he needed to add another pitcher. Johnny explains the rigors of a season can punish a four-man rotation and he needs a left-handed swingman to fill out his long relief spot. He slips LaSorda some names and then adds, "You wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't given up Tommy John." In the next episode, Dr. Joyce Brothers turns up wanting advice about what to tell her female patients about the Cinderella Complex. They aired the fireman after that and in the last episode, Dick Clark steps up to ask Johnny about this new form of music some of the kids talk about called ska. He also requests more of that secret formula youth cream. The Johnny scenes were the one recurring bit that always worked and it's a shame that they didn't bring Duell back for the pseudo-tipster scene they had in the first Naked Gun movie.
While the Zuckers and Abrahams served as executive producers on all six episodes, they didn't write or direct any of the other five Police Squad! installments, though according to the commentaries, they kept a presence on the set to make sure their comic style held. With that in mind, they tended to hire dramatic directors over TV comedy directors because the TV comedy directors would have their own ideas about humor that didn't necessarily jell with the ZAZ wackiness. That's why they selected directors such as Georg Stanford Brown, who helmed episodes of Hill Street Blues, Roots: The Next Generation, Family and Charlie's Angels, among others; Paul Krasny, who directed episodes of Quincy M.E., CHiPs, Mannix and Mission: Impossible; and Reza Badiyi who directed episodes of Hawaii Five-O, The Rockford Files, Mannix and Mission: Impossible, though Badiyi did start by directing comedies, specifically Get Smart and The Doris Day Show. The only director who got the chance to helm Police Squad! twice happens to be Joe Dante, who prior to his work on Police Squad! had made Piranha! and The Howling. In the second of the two episodes that Dante directed, the final episode "Dead Men Don't Laugh"/"Testimony of Evil," he even got to include one of his trademarks — cult actor Dick Miller. ZAZ had to keep a watchful eye anyway to make certain that the humor stuck close to their style. One of the trio admits on the second commentary that news of the cancellation almost came as a relief. "If we're gonna work this hard, we might as well do a feature," one of the commentary voices says he thought at the time. I can imagine. When I rewatched the first episode, I laughed nearly nonstop from beginning to end but in each of the subsequent five episodes, the laughs became more sporadic. How Police Squad! could be maintained on a weekly basis for 22 episodes a year for multiple seasons would seem to be an impossibility for that format.
Of the writers who worked on the staff of Police Squad!, one, in a way, became the fourth member of ZAZ. Prior to his work on Police Squad!, Pat Proft wrote for The Carol Burnett Show, Mel Brooks' original Robin Hood spoof, the TV show When Things Were Rotten and even the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. (See — that was intended as a spoof.) On Police Squad!, Proft received story credit for "Rendezvous at Big Gulch"/"Terror in the Neighborhood" and wrote "A Bird in the Hand"/"The Butler Did It." When ZAZ finally decided to
revive Police Squad! as The Naked Gun movie, which only David Zucker directed, Proft wrote the screenplay with ZAZ. (One person who couldn't have been more thrilled by the news of the Police Squad! movie was Leslie Nielsen, who had reverted to straight roles and was on the set of the Barbra Streisand drama Nuts when ZAZ contacted him about bringing Frank back.) On the sequels, Proft and David Zucker alone scripted the films. Proft also wrote Hot Shots! with Abrahams, who directed that film solo. Outside ZAZ-related projects, Proft co-wrote Bachelor Party, Police Academy and Real Genius. The other familiar name hired on the writing stuff was actor/comedian Robert Wuhl, who co-wrote both episodes that Dante directed and recorded his own commentary. He first met ZAZ when he was one of the many comics, including David Letterman, auditioning for Robert Hays' Ted Stryker role in Airplane!. The brothers and Abrahams later caught Wuhl's act at The Improv and invited him to write for Police Squad! "It was such a short period of time. We were only together for six episodes and we were gone," Wuhl says, explaining why he doesn't recall much in his commentary, which was recorded in 2006, 24 years after his time on the show. It did convince Wuhl that network television wasn't for him and the only other time he wrote for network TV was an episode of Sledge Hammer!, a series that definitely owes its beginnings to Police Squad! Wuhl did go on to create and star in Arli$$ for seven years on HBO. Insert your own joke about whether or not cable television is a place for Wuhl either.
Before I forget, I should note the last of the recurring characters on the show, Officer Norberg, portrayed by Peter Lupus, who played Willy Armitage on Mission: Impossible from 1966-73. The joke always has been that when they made The Naked Gun movies, they changed his race, but technically the two officers don't have to be the same character since the role O.J. played was named Nordberg, not Norberg. Of course, Mr. Olson's last name switched between Olsen and Olson, so consistency wasn't a paramount concern, at least that's what Capt. Sgt. Det. Lt. Drebin told me. Lupus' Norberg certainly came off as being as dumb as O.J.'s Nordberg, but the TV show didn't have any running gag about him being constantly injured as Nordberg would be in the films. On the commentaries, ZAZ and Weiss briefly discuss the decision to hire Simpson for the movie with one of the four voices saying that Lupus "didn't seem violent enough for the part, so we cast O.J." One of the remaining three admits not having seen O.J. since the wrap party for the third Naked Gun movie "when I sold him a set of knives." Lupus did get some fun moments in the series even though he didn't show up until the third installment, such as when they ask him to "put a tap on the phone," or when they want him to test suspected drugs to see if they are real and he gets high as a kite and grooves to The Mills Brothers' "Glow Worm." Perhaps his crowning achievement remains in the freeze frame when he comes in while everyone else has frozen in place and Norberg keeps changing his mind about what position to take.
In the first half of this post, I mentioned how the then-president of ABC blamed the failure of Police Squad! on the fact that you had to watch it. Thirty years later, I don't believe attention spans have grown longer, but with the expanded universe of television, you can find the influence of Police Squad! in the most unexpected places. Not just in an obvious show such as the already-mentioned Sledge Hammer!, which audiences still weren't ready for in 1986, or the not-so-obvious "It's Garry Shandling's Show." that debuted the same year but petered out, though it lasted four seasons. The most obvious direct descendant, at least in terms of having to watch to catch those sight gags, is The Simpsons, though the animated series has characters with more depth and dimensions than Police Squad! That close attention to detail can be found outside the comic realm though as well. The Wire wasn't tossing sight gags in the background, but some minor bit in an early episode of a season often came back later and you had to watch closely. That has applied to many of the recent cable dramas such as Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire. They demand more of their viewers and it ultimately makes the viewing experience more rewarding. You wouldn't think of Frank Drebin paving the way for Walter White but, in a way, I think he did.
I grabbed so many screenshots and wrote down so many gags, I can't possibly squeeze them all into this piece, but Police Squad! should be watched anyway. Nielsen blamed the size of television screens as another reason for the series' failure, which might be true, but one unfortunate development that happened to the ZAZ style of comedy was that it eventually lost that magic deadpan touch. Nielsen and other cast members reacted far too often to the chaos around them and it lessened the humor quotient. Nielsen's work (as well as old pros such as Robert Stack and Peter Graves) wowed in Airplane! and he maintained that in Police Squad!, but when The Naked Gun movies came about, Drebin became more about being silly and accidentally catching the crooks. I missed the Frank who could go undercover as a boxing manager in "Ring of Fear"/"A Dangerous Assignment" and have this straight-faced, fast-paced conversation with boxer Buddy Briggs (Patrick St. Esprit).
DREBIN: Buddy, I'm here to help you. Do you think you can beat the champ?
BUDDY: I can take him blindfolded.
DREBIN: What if he's not blindfolded?
BUDDY: I can still beat him.
I regret to say that improved technology actually has ruined one of the best, most subtle jokes that Police Squad! ever pulled off. Anyone
who grew up with 1970s television probably recalls what an imperfect device color TV sets were even then. Often, you'd have to fiddle with the color and tint dials to try to get rid of inexplicable fuzziness. In that second episode, which I was watching on an old color TV set (forget the brand), Frank's suit kept driving me up the wall with fuzzy blue and green lines. I went up to the set to attempt to adjust it, but then I noticed that only Frank's suit had the problem. The rest of the screen was fine. Those clever people had designed a suit coat for him made up of subtle bands of blue and green to make viewers go nuts. Unfortunately, taking screenshots of the image of the suit from a DVD doesn't do justice to that inferior technology. That episode also had some other nice ones such as when Buddy shadowboxes and knocks his shadow out. When an earlier fighter (Thomas Rosales Jr.) managed by the crooked Cooper (Floyd Levine) is told that Martin (Rudy Solari), the man fixing the fight, will give the sign when he's supposed to take a dive, Martin signals a scuba diver in the back row who falls backward followed by a splash of water. When the undercover Frank gets in a poker game with Cooper to win Buddy's contract, he comments that the game was "as crooked as Cooper's smile" and we see that one of the players holds the Official Rules card in his hand. It also has a great freeze-frame epilogue where they bring Martin in. When he realizes that no one else is moving, he unlocks his handcuffs and tries to get out of the squad room.
The other episodes did have priceless moments as well. In "The Butler Did It"/"A Bird in the Hand," there was an overabundance of sight gags. A young heiress named Terri (Lilibet Stern) celebrates her birthday but she gets kidnapped when visiting the family's Chinese Garden with her fiancé Kingsley (Ken Michelman). The ransom note is tied to a window and
thrown into a rock garden. We see the typical shot of Frank driving his car except we soon realize that he's in the back seat and someone short must be driving because Frank scratches his nose while the hand stays on the steering wheel and later the driver hands the CB over the seat to Frank. Hocken decides to check a glove compartment which is, of course, filled with gloves. The kidnapper, the butler Thames (Byron Webster), holds a gun to Terri's head so Drebin tells him that "two can play at that game" and grabs a bystander and puts his gun to her hand, one of many gags that ZAZ freely admit to recycling later. Hocken asks Frank to cover him so he can sneak behind the butler so, yes, he throws a blanket over him. The final one before the epilogue is after the butler gets apprehended and Hocken announces that "the black and white is here." I'll let that photo speak for itself. This episode aired out of order. In each epilogue, they list all the criminals that have been sent to Statesville Prison and they mention a crook whose episode hadn't aired, presumably because ABC was eager to get those celebrities on to see Johnny.
Other sight gags and repeated jokes prevail, but returning to Police Squad!, what stands out above all else remains the incredible performance of Leslie Nielsen. It went beyond his deadpan delivery. In the last episode, "Testimony of Evil"/"Dead Men Don't Laugh," Drebin goes undercover as a nightclub entertainer and Nielsen performs an extended bit as a standup where we only hear punchlines such as "He looked up at her and said, 'Lady, I don't think I can take 60 more of those," and the crowd eats it up. He then segues into a medley of Judy Garland songs. He's awful of course, but it's a riot. That episode also has a great scene where a ventriloquist and his dummy pull a gun on Frank and the owner because he wasn't allowed to audition. Frank overpowers them — but he punches the doll first. The boss (Claudette Nevins), part of his investigation into a drug ring, commends him for taking such a chance. In great straight-faced delivery, Frank tells her, "You take a chance getting up in the morning, crossing the street or sticking your face in a fan." I've accumulated a lot of the gags and photos of them to share, but I should retire this tribute at some point. From the beginning, I planned to end this tribute with a YouTube assemblage of all six Epilogues and freeze frames the show employed. What other way could I?
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Labels: 80s, Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, D. Zucker, Garland, HBO, J. Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Joe Dante, Letterman, Lynch, Mel Brooks, Nielsen, Star Wars, Streisand, The Simpsons, The Wire, TV Tribute
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Jules Dassin Part I
By Edward Copeland
With a name like Jules Dassin and some of his most classic films made in France, Turkey, Italy and Greece and mostly filmed in French with some Italian, Greek, Turkish and Russian thrown in, it's easy to assume that the great director himself hailed from Europe, probably France. In actuality, when Dassin was born 100 years ago today, that event occurred in Middletown, Conn., and he grew up in Harlem, N.Y., and went to school in The Bronx. Dassin was quintessentially American — until after working in the theater and making 11 features
for or distributed by Hollywood studios, Dassin was one of those unfortunate artists who received the most un-American of treatments from the first round of Communist witch-hunting by the House Un-American Activities Committee (before Joe McCarthy really made blacklisting a phenomenon) and Dassin couldn't work in the U.S. so he headed to Europe where he made one of the greatest heist films ever. Eventually, he did come back to the U.S. from time to time, but his later films lacked the punch of either his early studio work or his movies made in exile. That exile also introduced him to the woman who became his second wife and the great love of his life — Melina Mercouri. So, though eventually he returned to the U.S. to make some films and direct a Broadway musical based on the couple's most famous film collaboration, Never on Sunday, Greece became his adopted home — until he and Mercouri were booted from there by a military coup led by dictators who felt they were agitators. Eventually, they were able to return to Greece as well, staying together until Mercouri's death in 1994 at the age of 73. However, Dassin lived a much longer and vibrant life, almost making it to his own centennial. He only died a little more than three years ago at the age of 96. In some of his early work in Hollywood, he directed some classic examples of film noir that also boasted elements of social consciousness, something he maintained in real life right up until the end as seen in one of the best discoveries I found preparing this piece: an interview conducted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2004 when he was 93 or 94 that Criterion included on The Naked City DVD. The invaluable Criterion Collection also includes interviews from other years with Dassin, the most recent being 2005, on DVDs of his various films, leaving us a great resource on the man, his films and the blacklist. As was the case with many directors, Dassin's first foray into the creative arts began as a theater actor, in Dassin's case working with The Yiddish Theater called ARTEF (acronym for the Arbeter Teater Farband or Worker’s Theatrical Alliance) in New York in the mid-1930s after studying acting at the Civic Repertory Theatre Company begun by Eva Le Gallienne. It was during this time that he joined the Communist Party, though he quit in 1939 when Stalin signed the Soviet Union's nonaggression pact with Hitler. “You grow up in Harlem where there’s trouble getting fed and keeping families warm, and live very close to Fifth Avenue, which is elegant,” he told The Guardian newspaper in a 2002 interview. “You fret, you get ideas, seeing a lot of poverty around you, and it’s a very natural process.”
Around the same time, he quit the party. Dassin decided to take his career in another direction — both literally and geographically. He headed to Hollywood where he was hired by RKO to a six-month apprentice director contract at $250 a week where Dassin got to assist directors at work but didn't actually do much in the way of hands-on participation. At least that was the way Dassin described it in the 2004 L.A. County museum interview on The Naked City DVD. One director working on the lot at the time that Dassin who Dassin was assigned to and who particularly fascinated Dassin with his technique was Alfred Hitchcock, who was making Mr. & Mrs. Smith at the time. As Dassin tells it, his awestruck gazing at Hitch at work became very noticeable — so much so that after each take Hitchcock would turn to find Dassin and ask him if the take was OK. As the RKO contract neared its end, the studio informed Dassin that he was being let go. Fortunately, MGM hired Dassin and gave him his first film assignment making shorts. Dassin said his farewells to his friends at RKO — even working up the nerve to say goodbye to Hitchcock, who already had heard that Dassin would be making his first film. Hitchcock gave Dassin these words of advice: "Don't ever make a picture with children, animals or Charles Laughton." Of course, Dassin would end up doing films with all three.
At MGM, he made short documentaries about Arthur Rubinstein and Marian Andersen. He then made a short adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart." Frustrated with his progress, Dassin was able to get his short of the Poe story screened theatrically and that prompted MGM to sign him to a seven-year contract. In that 2004 interview, Dassin didn't express much affection for his time at MGM, equating the contract to being a slave. While he was tied to them for seven years and had to make what they told him to make, they had the option of dumping him every six months. Dassin had tried to get time off to direct a play on Broadway, but MGM wouldn't even let him do that. (He had directed one play that ran a month in 1940 called Medicine Show.) Of the seven features and the Poe short (I have no idea if the other shorts still exist) that he made at MGM, I've only managed to see the short and two of the features. While none come close to what Dassin made later of the ones I saw, they weren't complete embarrassments.
This 20-minute adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story proves to be quite a stylish film debut for Jules Dassin. The short opens with a biblical quote, specifically Romans II.15: "The law is written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness." It stars Joseph
Schildkraut, the second person to ever win an Oscar for best supporting actor playing Captain Dreyfus in 1937's The Life of Emile Zola, as the young man who finally snaps at the abuse inflicted upon him by his tyrannical boss and kills the old man (Roman Bohnen). Dassin really pulls out the attention-getting stops: Focusing on Schildkraut's ear from the short's beginning before the killing even takes place. The boss slaps him on it and he threatens to quit, but the boss tells him he's too much of a coward to do that. He's worked for the old man since he was 14 and he's almost 30 now. Murder will out and the young killer slowly goes mad as he becomes convinced that he still hears the boss's beating heart below the floorboards where he hid his body. In his limited amount of time, Dassin creates a very atmospheric tale, helped immeasurably by cinematographer Paul Vogel, who later won an Oscar for his black & white photography in Battleground. The short's only negative is a somewhat obvious and overbearing musical score by Sol Kaplan. For some reason, The Tell-Tale Heart is included as a bonus feature on the Shadow of The Thin Man DVD in The Thin Man series box set. Didn't get to see this one which starred Conrad Veidt (best known as Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca) as identical twins: one a stamp collector and rare bookshop owner, the other a ruthless Nazi. On one of the many interviews included on Criterion DVDs, Dassin said of Veidt on the French TV program Ciné Parade in 1972, "At the time, he was the big European star. He was a big actor with a personality to match." When Veidt realized he would be directed by a first-timer, he objected. Dassin sought advice and one of the crew suggested setting up dolly tracks so when Veidt returned to the set, he asked what they were for and Dassin explained that they were doing a shot that started back at one point and then zoomed up to him for a close-up. Veidt thought it sounded great and was satisfied after that.
Dassin's next film was a comedy I also haven't seen, so here's the IMDb summary by Les Adams, though I've added performers' names. "The town gossips are reporting that a household servant in exclusive Rocky Point is writing an expose of the colony. Mrs. Sophia Sommerfield (Spring Byington) is convinced it can't be either one of her maids, Martha Lindstrom (Marsha Hunt) or Mrs. McKessic (Marjorie Main), although, unknown to Sophia, she is totally unaware that her son, Jeff (Richard Carlson), is married to Martha."
Of Dassin's MGM features, this Joan Crawford vehicle happens to be the earliest one I've seen. Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Reunion in France opens telling us it's May 9, 1940, in Paris and then adds these words: The Ninth Night of the Ninth Month Too Uneventful to Be Taken Seriously and Too Far Away to Worry About. Crawford plays Michele de la Becque, a Parisian society figure with a high-profile
beau Robert Cortot (Philip Dorn), trying to pretend that the Nazi threat isn't knocking on France's door. As Michele heads off on a train trip, an announcement at the station tells everyone to get into shelters. When Michele returns, she finds that the Nazis have not only occupied Paris — they've taken over her house as their headquarters as well, leaving her servants' quarters for use as her new home. More disturbing, she finds that Robert seems awfully cozy with the Nazi high command. Meanwhile, she stumbles across American pilot Pat Talbot working with the British (John Wayne) and hides him out, even though he's out to stop Cortot from supplying the Nazis with war machinery he's producing. It does lead to one nice dialogue exchange between Michele and Pat where Pat speaks negatively about Michele's love. "You hardly know Cortot," Michele tells Pat, defending her boyfriend's character. "I hardly know Hitler either," Pat replies. The story unfolds in a by-the-numbers fashion, but Dassin does add some nice touches. Old TV sitcom fans will spot Natalie Schafer aka Lovey on Gilligan's Island as the top Nazi's wife. On his appearance on Ciné Parade, Dassin told the interviewer about working with a huge star like Crawford and the star system in general in that era. "To explain the attitude of the time, I was young and I seemed even younger,"
Dassin told the interviewer in 1972. "While shooting the first scene, at a certain point I said, 'Cut.' An icy silence fell over the set. She (Joan Crawford) turned as if to say, 'Who dared to say cut?' Immediately, the assistant director shouted, 'Why all this noise?' She said to me, 'Never say cut to Joan Crawford. Never.' I said, 'But it wasn't any good.' She said, 'What?' I said, 'It wasn't any good,'" the director shared with the audience. Two minutes later, Dassin found himself in Louis B. Mayer's office. "It's over," Mayer told him. "I thought I'd been fired on my very first scene, but no, she'd invited me to dinner. Joan Crawford. At her house. That was quite something," Dassin said. He went on to elaborate on what dinner at Joan Crawford's house was like, including being greeted by her three adopted children who all wore white gloves. Eventually, she asked him about why he had called cut during that scene. "Because the scene wasn't any good," Dassin told her. Crawford asked him if he thought she was a bad actress but he assured her that wasn't the case. "On the contrary. You're good," he told her "So what was wrong?" she asked. "When you're in character, and it's part of you, I love it, but when you act the grand lady, it feels fake," Dassin explained. "Really? I do that," Crawford said with surprise and Dassin confirmed it. "Fine. Let's give it another try tomorrow," Crawford agreed. Dassin got to keep his job as director on the film under the condition that he never say, "Cut." Instead, he and Crawford worked out a hand signal where he would run his finger across his forehead and then she would know.Dassin's next film has been seen so rarely, IMDb doesn't even have a plot synopsis or summary. It's never been released on any home format, but apparently pops up on TCM now and then. I borrowed the first two grafs by Laura at Laura's Miscellaneous Musings to at least get an idea of the movie. "Young Ideas is an MGM "B" movie which starts poorly but builds to an entertaining second half, thanks largely to the talent of its fine cast. Jo (Mary Astor), a best-selling author, is swept off her feet by small-town chemistry professor Michael (Herbert Marshall), much to the dismay of Jo's college-age children Jeff and Susan (Elliott Reid, Susan Peters). Jeff and Susan don't want to leave their home in New York, and Jo's agent Adam (Allyn Joslyn) is also apoplectic. Adam conspires with Jeff and Susan to break up Jo and Michael's marriage."
When I saw The Canterville Ghost, I had no idea that it was directed by the man responsible for films such as Rififi and Night and the City. This fun little trifle teamed the charming Margaret O'Brien, the same year she stole the show in Meet Me in St. Louis as Judy
Garland's little sister, and Charles Laughton, meaning Dassin ignored two-thirds of
Hitchcock's advice on his fifth feature. Based on the Oscar Wilde story, Laughton plays the cowardly ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville, sealed in a wall by his father in the 17th century after running away from a duel and doomed to haunt the halls of his family's castle until some Canterville descendant commits an act of bravery while wearing the family ring. Alas, all subsequent Cantervilles have proved to be cowards as well. The charming young O'Brien plays Lady Jessica de Canterville, the 6-year-old who currently owns the castle, though she lives nearby with an aunt because Sir Simon's ghost scares her. A bunch of American soldiers take refuge in the empty castle and have first-hand experiences with the ghost when young Jessica discovers that one of the fighting men, Cuffy Williams (Robert Young), has the Canterville birthmark. After the little girl overcomes her fear enough to introduce Cuffy to Sir Simon, they decide that perhaps Cuffy is a Canterville and he might lift Sir Simon's curse. The Canterville Ghost isn't a masterpiece by any means, but it's likable enough. Again, I must rely on the plot summary provided by an IMDb user, this time by Kathy Li. Again, I've inserted the performers' names. "Evie's co-workers at the uniform shirt factory, and her almost-fiancée's inability to kiss, inspire Evie (Marsha Hunt) to slip a letter into a size 16½ shirt for some anonymous soldier. It's received by 'Wolf' Larson (John Carroll), who immediately throws it away, but his sensitive, dreaming — and short — buddy John McPherson (Hume Cronyn) snags it, and begins a correspondence with Evie, pretending to be Wolf. But things get complicated when Evie wants to meet her tall, handsome soldier. And even more complicated when Wolf sees Evie and likes what he sees."
Dassin finally finished his MGM contract with this film that IMDb also lacks a synopsis or summary to describe. TCM's website does, but I had to insert the performers' names there as well. "Carrying $500,000 in stolen government certificates, which are stashed in the binding of his favorite cookbook, master confidence artist Ace Connors (John Hodiak) meets with businessman Dwight Chadwick (Lloyd Corrigan) at a posh Beverly Hills hotel to discuss an oil investment deal. Chadwick's sultry friend, Ricki Woodner (Lucille Ball), a confidence artist working a phony art racket, joins the men at their poolside rendezvous and tries to sell Chadwick on some paintings she claims were smuggled out of Europe. Ricki wastes little time in souring Chadwick on his deal with Ace, to which Ace responds by identifying one of her paintings as a fake. Following the meeting, Ace receives word that detectives in New York are closing in on his bond scheme, and that a deal is being made in which he is to serve a five-year sentence in Sing Sing penitentiary in exchange for his voluntary return to New York to face trial. Assigned to escort Ace back to New York is detective Bob Simms (Lloyd Nolan), Ace's inept but persistent nemesis of many years. Ace accepts the terms of the Sing Sing deal after a menacing visit from Fly Feletti (Elisha Cook Jr.), his former partner, who is seeking his share of the half million-dollar bond deal."
With MGM's shackles removed from Dassin, you almost can say that it was at this point that his film career truly began and he began to direct the classic films that earned him his reputation. Mark Hellinger, who had achieved national fame as a New York columnist after starting out as a theater critic before trying his luck in Hollywood, spending several years at Warner Bros., where he worked on films such as They Drive By Night and High Sierra. Frustrated by the lack of social realism in films and being under the thumb of Jack Warner, Hellinger leaped at the opportunity to set himself up as an independent producer at Universal-International. The first film to come out of his new deal was The Killers starring Burt Lancaster. For his second film, he hired Lancaster again to star and Dassin to direct the prison noir Brute Force, Dassin's first great film. It also reunited the director with Cronyn from A Letter to Evie, but though I've only read the description of Cronyn's Evie character, that comedy's John McPherson bears little resemblance to Brute Force's Captain Munsey, head of the prison guards at Westgate Penitentiary and one of the all-time hissable screen villains. The film also had a screenplay by Richard Brooks, who would go on to write and direct films such as The Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry, The Professionals and In Cold Blood. The opening credits for Brute Force show an imaginative flair, first listing Lancaster, Cronyn and Charles Bickford "As The Men Inside." After that, it ticks off the names Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines and Anita Colby "As The Women On The Outside." That hardly accounts for the entire ensemble as the credits announce that Brute Force is "Introducing Howard Duff, 'Radio's Sam Spade' as Soldier."
Though the film was made in 1947, Brute Force maintains a lot of intensity in its scenes today. Early on, there's a scene where inmates use blowtorches to drive another prisoner into a press to his death. Watch Brute Force and try to imagine The Shawshank Redemption being made without it. Granted, there isn't any shower rape in Brute Force and the warden (Roman Bohnen, the old man in Dassin's Tell-Tale Heart short) isn't corrupt as much as ineffective but the guards, led by Cronyn's Munsey are a different story. The overcrowded penitentiary has been facing political pressures from outside over a series of incidents, the most recent being a prisoner's suicide that Munsey provoked, so harsher discipline is demanded, including revoking all privileges, including paroles, and making all the men on the cell block where the suicide took place work on the prison's drain pipe. Of the prison staff, only the alcoholic Doc Walters (Art Smith) argues against a harder line doing any good. "He doesn't know that kindness is actually a weakness and weakness is an infection that makes a man a follower instead of a leader," the evil and ambitious Munsey says in the meeting. "You're worse than the worst inmates in this prison," the doctor tells Munsey.
The suspension of parole hearings even angers the generally genial Gallagher (Bickford), who runs the prison paper, The Westgate News, and is nearing release. Before Gallagher always urged the hot-head de facto inmate leader Joe Collins (Lancaster) to calm his rage, telling
him, "Those gates only open three times. When you come in, when you've served your time, or when you're dead." Gallagher always has served as a peacemaker, even breaking up inmate fights, pissing off Munsey in the process. "I understand you're responsible for settling that little feud over in cell block J. We appreciate your assistance, of course, but…," Munsey tells Gallagher as he passes his table at breakfast. "The boys and I were only trying to help," Gallagher replies. "Gallagher, when are you gonna' remember that you're not back home, running a gang of hoodlums? Let me be the policeman. You just serve your time. And that way we'll both get paid off," Munsey warns him. "Like the good book says to us, Captain, we all get what's coming to us — all of us," Gallagher smiles at the guard. With the crackdown, Gallagher's attitude changes when Joe once again concocts an escape plan. "Look, Gallagher, I know this drum's full of crackpots. One convict's gonna' buy his way out, another knows the governor's cousin. A third guy's even gonna' float out in a homemade balloon. But I'm not buyin' any pipe dreams. It can be done. It's been done before, and it'll be done again. It can be done here — by us," Collins insists. "Collins, if I ever put in with anybody, it'll be with you," Gallagher pledges.
Brooks' dialogue overflows with memorable lines from the talented cast. Brute Force gets around the pure prison scenes when the various inmates share tales of their lives in the outside world, some touching, some funny. One of the best gets told by the inmate Spencer (John Hoyt, who decades later would play the grandfather on the Nell Carter sitcom Gimme a Break). His story becomes a first-person film noir parody within a tough prison noir drama. Spencer talks about the woman he still dreams about named Flossie (Anita Colby) back when he was a gambling fool. He delivers his voiceover monologue in the pitch-perfect style of the genre while the flashbacks play as a pantomime. Here's just the punchline excerpt: "Flossie had looks, brains and all the accessories. She was better than a deck with six aces. I regret to report that she also knew how to handle a gun — my gun…She wanted all the money I'd won and I never refused a lady — especially when she's armed." Spencer also gets one of the film's other most memorable lines when he says, "You know, I was just thinking. An insurance company could go flat broke in this prison." Brute Force really introduced Jules Dassin to the world as a director to watch. The great cast, daring producer and solid screenplay helped make Brute Force a classic, but the pulsating score by Miklos Rozsa, the crisp, stark cinematography by William H. Daniels and Edward Curtiss' film editing all contributed as well. Dassin's earlier works had shown hints of what he could do, but Brute Force was the first film where he could really show his stuff which he'd be able to do even more in his next three American-financed films.
Unfortunately, these would come just as he became a victim of the blacklist and headed to Europe so he could continue to work in film. When I started to delve into Dassin and discovered so many of the DVDS of his best films contained interviews with him, this tribute began to morph into something larger than usual. I hope to keep it two parts and I hope the second part comes today, but to do his life and work justice may end up taking three parts and two days.
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Labels: blacklist, Crawford, Cronyn, Dassin, Documentary, Foreign, Garland, Hitchcock, L. Ball, Lancaster, Laughton, Mankiewicz, Mary Astor, Musicals, Oscars, R. Brooks, Wayne
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