Tuesday, March 06, 2012
“It’ll get a terrific laugh…”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Beginning in the 1930s and continuing well into the mid-'50s on radio (and for a number of years on television afterward), The Jack Benny Program was a “Sunday night at seven” institution for millions of American households. The titular star of the broadcast, a comedian who was practically unique in his insistence on making certain his writing staff received most of the credit for his success, revolutionized humor by, not putting too fine a point on it, becoming the godfather of the modern American situation comedy. His innovations included self-referentially setting the storyline of each week’s show amongst the background of preparing his broadcast, breaking “the fourth wall” and having his “gang” (the program’s supporting characters) get the lion’s share of the laughs poking fun at the star. Above all, Benny masterfully mined humor from pettiness, vanity and miserliness while simultaneous creating a lovable “everyman” that the listening audience couldn’t help but want to hold to its collective bosom.
Benny tried to duplicate his radio and TV success on the silver screen, and though he made a number of entertaining films, the comedian never really was satisfied with the end result. A lot of this had to do with that many of his movies, such as Love Thy Neighbor (1940), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) and The Meanest Man in the World (1943), were little more than slight variations of the character he played on radio; Neighbor and Buck Benny in particular featuring many of the regulars from his show (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Don Wilson, Phil Harris, Dennis Day). On occasion, Jack would get the opportunity to flex his acting muscles in vehicles such as Charley’s Aunt (1941) and George Washington Slept Here (1942) so it shouldn’t be too surprising that Benny considered these movies among his favorites. But Jack — and many others, including myself — always felt his finest hour on film was in a production released to theaters 70 years ago on this date: Ernst Lubitsch’s black comedy classic To Be or Not to Be (1942).
On the eve of the German invasion of Poland in 1939, a Warsaw theater troupe headed up by “that great, great actor” Josef Tura (Benny) rehearses a new anti-Nazi play entitled Gestapo. The troupe’s producer, Dobosh (Charles Halton), is dissatisfied with what he’s watching, arguing that Bronski (Tom Dugan), the actor playing Adolf Hitler, simply ian't convincing as the Fuehrer. In an effort to prove his authenticity, Bronski steps outside to walk among the Warsaw population…and though he gets a few stunned and anxious stares, his cover is blown when a girl timidly asks for his (Bronski’s) autograph.
Later that evening, as the troupe performs Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Josef’s wife Maria (Carole Lombard) entertains a young Polish pilot named Stanislav Sobinski (Robert Stack) in her dressing room. Sobinski is very much in love with Maria, and has been signaled to pay her a nocturnal visit at the moment when husband Josef starts Hamlet’s famed “To be or not to be” soliloquy (naturally, Josef is dismayed when he spots the young airman leaving in the middle of his performance). Maria loves her husband very much but doesn’t dismiss having an innocent flirtation with Stanislav…an “affair” that ends with the news that Germany has invaded Poland and World War II is underway.
Under the thumb of Nazi terror, Warsaw has been reduced to rubble (the theater has been closed and the troupe thrown out of work due to a curfew and other restrictions) but a vibrant Polish underground is determined to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. In England, Sobinski and his fellow pilots spend an evening of singing and revelry in the company of a Polish resistance leader, Professor Alexander Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who generously offers to get word to the pilots’ families. Stanislav tells Siletsky that while his own family is safely out of Poland, he would like the professor to deliver a message to Maria: “To be or not to be.” But he is troubled by the fact that Siletsky — who claims to be a lifelong resident of Warsaw — is unfamiliar with Maria Tura, and after the professor starts off for Poland, Sobinski relates the incident to his superiors (Halliwell Hobbes, Miles Mander). Both men, having realized that the information on the pilots’ families would be vital to the Nazis even if Siletsky weren’t a spy, instruct Sobinski to fly to Warsaw immediately and stop the professor.
Shot down over Warsaw, Stanislav sends Maria to rendezvous with his contact, a bookseller, while he recuperates after nearly being shot by Nazi soldiers. Josef returns home and finds the young pilot in his bed (and wearing his pajamas), is naturally curious as to what Stanislav is doing there. He receives a hurried (and incomplete) explanation from Maria, who arrives in time to tell the two men that she was picked up by Nazi soldiers and taken to Siletsky’s hotel. Siletsky arrived in Warsaw before Sobinski, and after having delivered the pilot’s message, approaches Maria about joining the Nazi cause. Despite being confused by the events, Josef realizes that he needs to stop Siletsky (by killing him) before the professor delivers the information to the Nazi command: he may be angry about being cuckolded, but he still ia a patriot at heart.
Maria returns to the professor’s hotel, where she pretends to seduce Siletsky…but they are interrupted by a member of the theater troupe (George Lynn) disguised as a Nazi officer. The faux officer informs Siletsky he has an appointment with the head of the Gestapo — who also is a fake: it’s Josef in disguise. His mission is to wrest the information on the Polish underground away from Siletsky and then dispose of him…but learns during the course of their conversation that the professor has a duplicate copy of the information in a trunk back at his hotel. Stanislav and the theater group frantically try to think of a plan to obtain that extra copy but before they can formulate anything Siletsky concludes that he’s been duped by Tura. In his escape attempt from the theater, he is killed by Sobinski.
Josef must now impersonate Siletsky — and returning to the hotel, he attempts to destroy the duplicate information but is interrupted by the arrival of another Nazi officer. Captain Schulz (Henry Victor), adjutant of the Gestapo head Tura impersonated earlier, takes Tura-as-Siletsky to Colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Ruman), the genuine article. Josef is able to do some fast thinking to avoid spilling any information (identifying men who already have been shot as resistance leaders), and during this conversation he learns that Hitler himself will be visiting Warsaw the next day.
The body of the real Professor Siletsky is found in the theater the next morning…which is unfortunate for Josef, as he still is continuing his impersonation. Arriving at Ehrhardt’s office, he is ushered into a room and asked to wait until Ehrhardt has finished an appointment with two other officers. Inside the room is the corpse of Siletsky, but Tura manages to shave off the dead man’s beard and attach a false one…thus making Ehrhardt and his men think the deceased professor actually was an impostor. But when several theater members, led by hammy actor Rawitch (Lionel Atwill) in disguise, burst in and blow Tura’s cover in order to spirit Josef away from his captors, Tura and company realize it will only be a matter of time before they are rounded up by the Germans.
To escape out of Poland, Josef and his actors concoct a diversion, with Bronski in the part of Hitler and his friend Greenberg (Felix Bressart) as a defiant Jew who interrupts the Fuehrer’s appearance at the theater; the theater company and Stanislav then steal the Nazis’ transportation and head for the airport, stopping off at Maria’s just in time to rescue her from the advances of an amorous Ehrhardt. Our heroes are successful in their flight from Warsaw and land safely in Scotland, where that evening, Josef and his fellow thespians put on a production of Hamlet…and all goes well until “To be or not to be…”
The director of To Be or Not to Be, Ernst Lubitsch, was admired and respected by his peers, critics and audiences both when he was making films and long after his death in 1948. Lubitsch specialized in urbane romantic comedies that reeked of elegance and sophistication with just a touch of the risqué (daring but never smutty) that artfully avoided any complications with the Motion Picture Code, and earned his directorial style the nickname “the Lubitsch touch.” Lubitsch didn’t take a writing credit on To Be (the honor goes to Edwin Justus Mayer, based on a story by Melchior Lengel) but he devised the character of Josef Tura with Jack in mind, joking that every comedian’s dream is “to play Hamlet.” Benny would later reminisce about the experience in saying he worked well with Lubitsch because the director told him to forget everything about acting (“which wasn’t too difficult,” he cracked) and just follow his lead as Ernst acted out every gesture and vocal inflection for Benny’s benefit. “He was a lousy actor, but a great director,” was Jack’s final verdict.
What’s wonderful about watching Benny play Tura is that both the character and Jack’s radio persona share some similarities: the vanity, the hamminess (whenever Jack would do a spoof of a current movie on his show he always made sure he got the largest role) and that lovable schlemiel that resides in a world where everything terrible seems to happen to him. And yet there are differences: Tura is way out of his league playing spy, but he’s able to screw up his courage and risk certain death to help Sobinski (the man playing around with his wife) stop a dangerous man who threatens the lives of the people of Warsaw. He’s ready to fight on behalf of his country, and demonstrates tremendous courage in doing so.
The part of Maria Tura was originally conceived as a comeback role for actress Miriam Hopkins — Hopkins had worked with Lubitsch before in the vehicles Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Design for Living (1933), and in the pre-production stages of To Be or Not to Be was anxious to let the director lift her career out of its slump. But Hopkins didn’t want to work with Benny, and so her departure attracted the interest of Carole Lombard…who, despite resistance from Lombard's husband, Clark Gable, wanted very much to work with Lubitsch (and she’d also get to work alongside Robert Stack, who had been a friend of hers for many years since he was a teenager). After completing the film, Lombard would later tell friends that it was the most satisfying experience of her career…and the proof is up on the screen. Her performance as Maria is positively luminous; she simultaneously gives the character both a playful and ethereal quality — a woman deeply in love with her husband and yet naughty enough to stray a little from the fold when opportunity presents itself. Benny had nothing but the utmost affection for his co-star, whom he really got to know during their time on the movie — he later told friends: “She was one of the few gals you could love as a woman, and treasure as a friend.”
Sustaining Benny and Lombard is an outstanding “troupe” of supporting performers that include Stack, Bressart, Atwill, Ridges, Ruman and Dugan — none of these amazing actors hit a false note in their portrayals, and deliver Lubitsch and Mayer’s sparkling dialogue to perfection. Critics at the time of To Be's release lambasted Lubitsch for allowing the heroes to be nothing but a disparate group of actors…but I think it’s a brilliant concept: Josef and his friends are the only ones with ego enough to pull one over on the arrogant Nazis. And that screenplay! So many quotable passages of delicious double entendres that exemplify “the Lubitsch touch”:
MARIA: It's becoming ridiculous the way you grab attention. Whenever I start to tell a story, you finish it. If I go on a diet, you lose the weight. If I have a cold, you cough. And if we should ever have a baby, I'm not so sure I'd be the mother.
JOSEF: I'm satisfied to be the father.
MARIA: Tell me about yourself.
SOBINSKI: Well, there isn't much to tell. I just fly a bomber.
MARIA: Oh, how perfectly thrilling!
SOBINSKI: I don't know about it being thrilling. But it's quite a bomber. You might not believe it, but I can drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes.
MARIA: Really?
SOBINSKI: Does that interest you?
MARIA: It certainly does.
SOBINSKI: You see, sir, the other night Professor Siletsky was addressing us at the camp, and I mentioned the name of Maria Tura…and he never heard of her.
ARMSTONG: Neither have I.
SOBINSKI: Oh, but, he's supposed to be a Pole who lived in Warsaw and she's the most famous actress in Warsaw.
ARMSTONG: Now, look here, young man, there are lots of people who're not interested in the theater. As a matter of fact, there's only one actress I ever heard of…and I certainly hope I'll never hear from her again.
JOSEF: It's unbelievable! Unbelievable! I come home to find a man in the same boat with me and my wife says to me, "What does it matter?"
SOBINSKI: But, Mr. Tura, it's the zero hour!
MARIA: You certainly don't want me to waste a lot of time giving you a long explanation.
JOSEF: No, but I think a husband is entitled to an inkling.
JOSEF: Her husband is that great, great Polish actor, Josef Tura. You've probably heard of him.
EHRHARDT: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact I saw him on the stage when I was in Warsaw once before the war.
JOSEF: Really?
EHRHARDT: What he did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland.
That last line caused a little bit of concern among critics, who steadfastly argued that poking fun at a serious situation made Lubitsch guilty of cinematic high crimes and misdemeanors. My favorite line from To Be or Not to Be is one that doesn’t seem particularly funny at first hearing (in fact, it might make some viewers wince): posing as Ehrhardt, Josef responds to flattery from Professor Siletsky with the phrase “So they call me ‘Concentration Camp’ Ehrhardt…?” But as Josef desperately tries to stall for time while Sobinski and the rest of the actors dope out a way to retrieve vital documents from the spy’s hotel room, he begins to nervously repeat the phrase over and over again until it almost becomes a mantra…and it makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it.
With all these elements — solid script, first-rate cast, great director — you’d naturally assume that To Be or Not to Be cleaned up at the box office, correct? Well, it didn’t. Lubitsch’s WW2 satire had the misfortune of being released during World War II, and theatergoers didn’t particularly warm to a film that poked deadpan fun at such a serious conflict. With hindsight, we can see the brilliance of the movie — Lubitsch’s film has witty moments, to be sure, but it also contains sequences of nail-biting suspense (witness Sobinski’s arrival in Warsaw after temporarily escaping his Nazi pursuers, not to mention the tense scenes where Maria is literally being held prisoner in Siletsky’s hotel room). The director’s intention was to satirize both the Nazis and their ideology, but as George S. Kaufman famously observed, “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.” The moviegoing public simply wasn’t ready for a daring film that was able to find humor in a situation that seemed devoid of same — and a prime example of this sort of patron was Jack’s father, Mayer Kubelsky. Kubelsky went to see To Be or Not to Be…and horrified that his son was not only wearing an SS uniform but giving out with a “Heil Hitler!” in the opening scenes; he stormed out of the theater and refused to speak to his Jack. (When Jack finally convinced his father that his character was merely performing in an anti-Nazi play in the movie’s opening and that he was really the film’s hero, Mayer went back to see the movie again and again…and again. Like his famous son, it would become his favorite.)
But theatergoers also found it impossible to laugh when the movie’s female star, Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash about two months before the film’s premiere (she was on a World War II bond rally tour with her mother, Bess Peters, and Otto Winkler, husband Clark Gable’s press agent). Co-star Benny was devastated by Lombard’s untimely death, and refused to do his regularly scheduled program that following Sunday, substituting an all-musical half-hour. Because the actress had a line in the film — “What can happen in a plane?” — in response to Stack’s invitation to take a spin in the wild blue with him, the line was cut before the movie’s premiere (it since has been restored).
To Be or Not to Be ranks only behind Twentieth Century (1934) as my favorite Carole Lombard film, but it’s certainly my favorite of Jack Benny’s cinematic output; Jack never got another opportunity to extend his thespic range and after The Horn Blows at Midnight in 1945 (a film that he and his writers lampooned in endless jokes on his radio/TV show despite the fact that it wasn’t that bad) he limited his screen appearances to brief cameos such as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and A Guide for the Married Man (1967). (He had planned to return to movies with a substantial part in The Sunshine Boys, but upon his death in 1974 his role was given to his lifelong friend George Burns). To Be is also my favorite Lubitsch film; a work of such maturity and pitch-perfect hilarity that I want to warn you: do not make the same mistake I did in watching the 1983 remake before seeing the Lubitsch version. (In all honesty, I didn’t have a choice — the Lubitsch film rarely got shown in those halcyon days before TCM). The more recent version with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, heartfelt tribute though it may have been, is much too broad and slapsticky in its burlesque approach (it’s almost like watching a stage play)…and most assuredly lacks the subtlety of “the Lubitsch touch.”
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Labels: 40s, Bancroft, Gable, Jack Benny, Lombard, Lubitsch, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, Remakes, Shakespeare
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Friday, December 02, 2011
“I’m going to show you what yum-yum is…”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
One of the regrettable stigmas about Academy Awards is that they are more often than not handed out to serious performances — portrayals in comedy films are criminally overlooked. There are exceptions, of course: Clark Gable’s triumph in It Happened One Night and James Stewart’s trophy for The Philadelphia Story while on the distaff side you have Claudette Colbert (also for Night) and Judy Holliday’s winning turn in Born Yesterday. (I’m sure there are others — these just came off the top of my head.) You’ll also find a lot of comedic accomplishments in the supporting actor and actress categories, presumably because of the old trope about “second bananas” and “comic relief.” But, as a general rule, comedy need not apply: Oscar-winning performances are defined by big, serious showcases (often with noble or suffering characters) that a certain master thespian might describe as “ACTING!”
In February 1942, Gary Cooper was handed one of his two competitive Oscar statuettes (he also would win an honorary Academy Award in 1961) for Sergeant York — a dramatization of the real-life story of Alvin C. York, the most decorated American soldier of World War I. I’ve always felt that the reason Coop was “decorated” with such a statuette was due to the movie’s enormous popularity (it was the highest grossing film of 1941) and while he gives a solid, dependable performance, I’ve always been partial to his comedic showcase from another film released that same year. In fact, it premiered in theaters 70 years ago on this date, five days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ball of Fire, once described by one of its screenwriters, Billy Wilder, as a “silly picture,” nevertheless features a masterful comic turn by an actor whose limited thespic abilities often disappeared through the magic of a movie screen.
In Ball of Fire, Cooper plays Professor Bertram Potts, one of eight lexicographers living in a New York residence and working on an encyclopedia project funded by the daughter (Mary Field) of Daniel S. Totten, inventor of the electric toaster. Potts and his colleagues have been hard at work on their encyclopedia for nine years, and it looks as if construction will continue for another three — much to the dismay of Miss Totten, who will have to pay for the “overruns” out of her own pocket. An encounter with a garbage man (Allen Jenkins) demonstrates why there is still so much to do — the sanitation engineer’s creative use of slang demonstrates to Potts (the group’s grammarian) that his own article for the encyclopedia is hopelessly outdated, and that he will have to research the modern vernacular by visiting “the streets, the slums, the theatrical and allied professions.” He encounters several people — a newsboy, a college student, a pool hall bum — and asks for their help in preparing his treatise on slang.
Later at a nightclub, Potts makes the acquaintance of Katherine “Sugarpuss” O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), a sultry chanteuse whom he also wants to participate in his discussions, but she is markedly cool to his proposal. She later changes her mind and turns up at the doorstep of the encyclopedia men, but only because she has been advised by a pair of hoodlums, Duke Pastrami (Dan Duryea) and Asthma Anderson (Ralph Peters), to “take it on the lam”; both men are in the employ of mobster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), who’s being questioned by the district attorney about his complicity in a gangland murder, and who would like nothing better than to hear Sugarpuss’ side of the story. The professors’ think tank will provide a perfect hideout, even though O’Shea’s breezy insouciance has a disruptive influence on their daily routine, much to the chagrin of their stern housekeeper Miss Bragg (Kathleen Howard). Bragg’s ultimatum to Potts that Sugarpuss leave or she will results in a confrontation between “Pottsy” and Sugarpuss — and when Potts confesses a rather strong attraction to the nightclub singer she uses that revelation to her advantage, reciprocating similar feelings and demonstrating to her would-be paramour the definition of “yum-yum” by kissing him.
Potts’ infatuation goes full speed ahead to the purchase of an engagement ring and proposes to Sugarpuss — even though he’s got a rival in gangster Lilac, who entertains similar notions (mostly for convenience's sake, insuring that a wife can’t testify against her husband). When Joe learns of Potts’ intentions, he persuades Sugarpuss to play along — that way she’s guaranteed safe passage out of New York (under the watchful eye of the authorities) and can join Lilac in neighboring New Jersey, where they’ll tie the knot. A mishap with the professors’ automobile en route necessitates a stopover in a small Joisey town, where at an inn O’Shea learns (through a mix-up in bungalow door numbers) that Potts is deadly serious about his passion for her. She begins to see the bashful goof in an entirely different light, but before she can act on this, Lilac and his goons show up, spelling out the story for Potts and the other professors before collecting Sugarpuss and continuing on their way.
Back home in New York, Potts is determined to put the sordid chapter behind him until it is pointed out that in returning his engagement ring, O’Shea has slipped him the rock she received from Lilac. To add insult to injury, Miss Totten arrives with her assistant Larsen (Charles Lane) to announce that due to the unfavorable newspaper publicity generated by Potts’ misadventures she is canceling the encyclopedia project — and that's interrupted by the arrival of Pastrami and Asthma, who have been ordered by Lilac to “rub out” the group unless Sugarpuss agrees to marry Joe. Elated that Sugarpuss and Joe still aren't attached, Potts and the others are able to subdue the two hit men with brains (not brawn) and ride to O’Shea’s rescue (thanks to their garbage man pal’s truck) to save her from her nasty fate. “Pottsy” and Sugarpuss will live happy ever after, thanks to his expert application of “yum-yum” as the movie concludes.
Scripted by Wilder and Charles Brackett, Ball of Fire’s opening titles also credit Wilder and Thomas Monroe with the film’s “original story” — which is a teensy bit of a stretch, insomuch as Wilder cribbed the idea from the classic fairy tale of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” (Wilder got the idea while he was still living in Germany, and even when director Howard Hawks picked up on the reference Billy warned him that he wouldn’t get a shared credit.) Granted, there are eight “dwarfs” as the film begins (they’re even shown marching through a NYC park as if they should be singing “Heigh Ho”) but that’s because the character of Bertram Potts is technically “Prince Charming” — so the personages of Professors Gurkakoff (Oscar Homolka), Jerome (Henry Travers), Magenbruch (S.Z “Cuddles” Sakall), Robinson (Tully Marshall), Quintana (Leonid Kinskey), Oddly (Richard Haydn) and Peagram (Aubrey Mather) fill in for Doc, Sneezy, Dopey, etc. A publicity photo of the seven character actors was even taken in front of a poster for the Disney film and the film is advertised prominently on a marquee in a scene where Cooper’s Potts talks with a wiseacre newsboy (Tommy Ryan) outside a theater.
Producer Samuel Goldwyn commissioned Wilder and Brackett to write the vehicle for Coop because he was disappointed that the films he made with Cooper (such as The Real Glory and The Westerner) rarely did as well at the box office as those films in which the actor was lent out to other studios. So the film was tailor-made for Coop’s “Longfellow Deeds”-type persona, but finding a suitable leading lady took some additional time. Ginger Rogers was the first choice, but she wasn’t interested and Carole Lombard said “no way” as well; both Betty Field and Lucille Ball were tested for the part and while Ball appeared to have the inside track, Barbara Stanwyck ultimately won the role when Cooper suggested her, having worked with her in that same year’s Meet John Doe. Coop also was reunited with his York director Hawks, whom Goldwyn wasn't particularly fond of (Hawks wound up with a $100,000 payday for the film) but tolerated because of the director’s admiration for the script. It was familiar territory for Howie, in that he had helmed a similar film about a stuffy professor brought down to earth in 1938’s Bringing Up Baby (and he would later revisit the premise in both Fire’s 1948 remake, A Song is Born, and Monkey Business in 1952.)
Being a Goldwyn production, the producer naturally pulled out all the stops and obtained the services of many of Hollywood’s master craftsmen (and women): Gregg Toland was cinematographer, Perry Ferguson the art director, and Edith Head designed that drop-dead gorgeous gown that Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss wears in her nightclub act. One of the highlights of Ball of Fire is Babs’ rendition (though Martha Tilton dubbed her vocals) of “Drum Boogie,” backed by Gene Krupa and his Orchestra; Gene later obliges with an encore of the number accompanied by matchbox sticks and a matchbox. Even though Stanwyck’s voice is not her own, she’s able to reach back to her “Ruby Stevens” chorus gal days and do some impressive dance moves with those fabulous Stanwyck gams.
I’ve never considered myself a Barbara Stanwyck fanatic but Ball of Fire is my all-time favorite of her films; her finely modulated performance as the alternately hard-boiled and tender Sugarpuss was nominated for a best actress trophy and to be honest, I think she was robbed. (Stanwyck wasn’t as lucky in the Oscar sweepstakes as her male co-star — she was nominated on four separate occasions but had to make do with an honorary statuette in 1982.) Babs’ background as a one-time Ziegfeld gal makes her portrayal of O’Shea authentic, and her personal, genuine affability (She was one of the most well-liked movie actresses in the history of Hollywood) invests an unshakable admiration into the character, something that I don’t think would have resulted if the brassier Ginger Rogers has been cast in the part. (I like how David Thomson described Babs in this movie as “saucy, naughty and as quick as a shortstop.”) We’re just as captivated by Sugarpuss’ charms as the seven professors (and of course, “Pottsy”); the scene where she teaches the men to conga is utterly beguiling, and like her fairy tale counterpart Snow White, she brings a great deal of sunshine and a sense of fun to their existence in what one of the profs calls “the mausoleum.”
The chemistry between Stanwyck and Cooper’s characters is one of the best in any screwball comedy. What always has fascinated me about Cooper is that while his acting range may have seemed limited to a casual observer, he had a certain captivation that always came across in his screen performances. Coop was generally most comfortable in Westerns, but even though he was a little flummoxed by Wilder and Brackett’s rapid-fire, intellectual dialogue he’s most convincing as the scholar who’s spent his entire existence isolated from the world. His Bertram Potts is a sweetly naïve “big kid” much like Cooper’s Longfellow Deeds (but far less dangerous, I think) and watching Sugarpuss coax him out of his shell is a delight from start to finish. She’s his fast track to his ultimate sexual awakening (particularly when he tells her that being around her requires him to apply cold water to the back of his neck), which culminates with his understanding of what constitutes “yum-yum” and his tacit admission: “Make no mistake, I shall regret the absence of your keen mind…unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body.” But once Potts is brought up to speed on the language of love, he’s every bit as potent to O’Shea (who finds herself falling out of love with the despicable Lilac); she must also depend on the cold water treatment herself when things get steamy. At that point in their relationship, she knows there’s no turning back: “I love him because he's the kind of guy who gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk, and I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. I love him because he doesn't know how to kiss…the jerk…” (By the time the movie calls it a wrap, however, her “Crabapple Annie” has that last part well in hand.)
Ball of Fire boasts a positively splendid supporting cast — particularly the vets who essay Potts’ encyclopedia colleagues, who transcend the usual stereotypes of movie intellectuals being dry as dirt by exhibiting a real playfulness (one of my favorite scenes in the film is when Potts and the “dwarves” listen to Oddly’s recollection of his marriage, which breaks out in a lovely rendition of “Genevieve”). Fire was Thrilling Days of Yesteryear fave Dan Duryea’s second feature film appearance and I like to think that if he had had a few more films under his belt, he could have played Joe Lilac (Duryea’s best bit in Fire is when he imitates Cooper’s thumb-licking-and-rubbing-it-on-the-sight tic from Sergeant York, cracking “I saw me a picture last week”) but Dana Andrews does very well in the part, supplementing the escapist comedy nature of the film with the proper menace (Andrews’ phone conversation with Cooper as Stanwyck’s “Daddy” is hysterical but it works because Dana plays it perfectly straight). I got a particular kick out of seeing a couple of other TDOY favorites in Elisha Cook, Jr. (as a waiter who tells Potts that Sugarpuss is “root, zoot and cute…and solid to boot”) and serial/B-Western stalwart Addison Richards as the D.A. determined to bring the hammer down on Lilac.
In addition to Stanwyck’s acting nomination, Ball of Fire also received nods for best scoring of a dramatic (!) picture and best sound recording…with the final nomination going to Monroe and Wilder’s “original story.” It was the movie on which Wilder decided he wanted to do more behind the camera than just provide the words; his directing ambition was encouraged fully by Hawks, who allowed Billy to study and pick up some pointers during the film’s production. The movie is an odd one in Wilder’s oeuvre because it’s devoid of the frank, pungent cynicism prevalent in many of the writer-director’s works, but as Wilder himself observed: “It was a silly picture. But so were audiences in those days.” Hey…if enjoying the entertaining exhilaration that Ball of Fire provides with each passing year makes me silly, then I guess nobody’s perfect.
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Labels: 40s, Cooper, Disney, Gable, Ginger Rogers, Hawks, J. Stewart, L. Ball, Lombard, Oscars, Stanwyck, Wilder
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Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Games With Human Beings as Objects
By Eddie Selover
The opening of My Man Godfrey constitutes a little movie in itself — a perfectly balanced mixture of satire, wit, anger, and glamour that may be the greatest single scene in 1930s cinema. It starts with the credits, which are integral to its meaning. We see the Manhattan skyline at night, and to a fanfare the names of the cast and crew light up in neon signs that flash on and off, reflected in the East River below. The camera pans across buildings that slowly become less grand, more industrial, more forgotten and squalid, and finally it comes to rest at the city dump underneath the end of the Queensboro Bridge. The brash music subsides into the first few plaintive notes of the Depression anthem “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The camera moves in and we see a lonely shanty, a hobo tending a fire, a dog sniffing through the trash. A dump truck backs up and adds more garbage to the pile, a cascade of cans and rubbish that glitter like diamonds in the moonlight. And then we see him. The hobo tending the fire, we discover, is William Powell.
Even today, 75 years after the movie’s premiere, it’s a bit of a shock to see this actor playing a bum. Powell, the epitome of class, the man about town who wore clothes beautifully, smoked and drank cocktails with peerless elegance, and spoke with impeccable clipped diction. With one twitch of his pencil-line moustache,
William Powell could register infinite degrees of skepticism and wry sophistication. And here he is, bearded and shabby, speaking in a low, hushed, defeated tone of voice. He trades a few bitter observations with another bum as a couple of snazzy cars pull up at the edge of the dump. Three well-dressed people rush out: two women and a man. The women are sisters, played by raven-haired Gail Patrick and blonde Carole Lombard. The darker one, Patrick, gets to Powell first. How’d you like to make five dollars? she asks. Powell doesn’t quite get it. Brusquely, she offers the money again and tells him all he has to do for it is go with her to the Waldorf Ritz hotel where she’ll show him off to some people. She’s on a scavenger hunt and her next item is a Forgotten Man — the evocative, accusatory Depression-era term for a homeless person. Do you want the money or don’t you? she snaps at him. That’s enough. He advances on her with barely controlled aggression, his voice quiet but vibrating with resentment. She falls back and lands on her ass, then runs off in fear with her escort. Powell, still furious, strides in the other direction and runs smack into the blonde.
Her name is Irene, she tells him, and that was her sister Cornelia and she’s always wanted to do what he just did — push Cornelia into a pile of ashes. He offers to push her in too, and now she’s the one to decline the offer, but not angrily. She’s a ditz, rattling off disconnected observations and thoughts a mile a minute. The moonlight illuminating her fluffy head of hair and shimmering satin gown, she’s like an angel come to rest on the dump. Powell’s irritation turns to curiosity. Would you mind telling me just what a scavenger hunt is? he asks. She takes a deep breath. “Well, a scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you try to find something you want and in a scavenger hunt you try to find something you don’t want.” Like a Forgotten Man, he says. “That’s right, and the one who wins gets a prize, only there really isn’t any prize, it’s just the honor of winning, because all the money goes to charity, that is if there’s any money left over, but then there never is.”
With this and her other long screwball speeches in this movie, Lombard plays a subtle trick, her voice trailing off at the end as her character becomes vaguely aware that something is wrong. It isn’t that she’s dumb. She’s infantile. She has grown up in a bubble, insulated from the world by her wealth. Ease and luxury have stunted and stupefied her. Confronted with Powell’s steady gaze, her voice begins to wobble and her scattered attention focuses on him, like a baby seeing its parent and calming down. So they sit and talk, the rich girl and the bum becoming interested in each other. It even makes her philosophical. “You know,” she says, “I’ve decided I don’t want to play any more games with human beings as objects. It’s kind of sordid when you think of it, I mean when you think it over.”
This little quip goes by in a flash, but it’s amazing when you think of it. I mean when you think it over. Like the whole scene, it expresses a bristling sense of moral outrage. The Forgotten Men come out of the shadows after Powell threatens to punch Cornelia’s top-hatted escort, asking if he needs any help. They’re a little society, watching out for each other, keeping their dignity despite being literally at the bottom of the heap. In an era and an industry in which conservative values dominated (don’t they always?), here is a full-throated cry of humanism and populism. The movie makes us vaguely, uncomfortably aware that we’re tourists, just like the three rich people. We’re drawn to Powell by his toughness, his intelligence, and his irony, but we’re also a little appalled. He looks like shit. He lives on a garbage heap. How did he get here? And how can he — and we — get out?
The rest of the movie is the answer to those questions, and it’s not an entirely satisfying answer. Lombard takes Powell back to the scavenger hunt, wins the prize, and hires him to be her family’s butler in their Park
Avenue mansion. It’s a screwball comedy out of P.G. Wodehouse: the level-headed servant civilizes the house full of wacky rich people, and the boy and girl fall in love. Although the rich are satirized and vilified, and the value of good honest work is celebrated, the movie can’t sustain the brilliance of its beginning. It’s well acted by a team of expert farceurs including Eugene Pallette, Alice Brady, and Mischa Auer. It looks great, with its sleek art deco sets and sparkling cinematography by Ted Tetzlaff. And it sounds great, with its flow of wisecracks by Marx Brothers writer Morrie Ryskind, but in the attempt to create a box-office romance, something goes awry with the plot. We learn that Godfrey, Powell’s character, is actually from a wealthy family himself, but a broken love affair left him devastated and he fell into poverty and homelessness because he didn’t care what happened.This is a major letdown — we’re supposed to be soothed by this reassurance that Powell is “respectable,” but in fact we were much more on his side when he was a bitter bum of ambiguous origins. The romance between Godfrey and Irene works only because Powell and Lombard, real life ex-spouses and good friends, have genuine chemistry. Unlike most comedies of its era, in this movie the man is much smarter than the woman, and just like in real life, that’s not very romantic or particularly funny. On Park Avenue, the movie is pleasant and enjoyably proficient, but back on the city dump it was, briefly, extraordinary.
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Labels: 30s, Lombard, Marx Brothers, Movie Tributes, William Powell
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Thursday, July 07, 2011
"If You Want to See the Girl Next Door, Go Next Door"
By Eddie Selover
More than anything else, it was a book that turned me into a movie buff: David Shipman’s The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years. This was the first comprehensive set of star biographies, and in those pre-video days of the early '70s, it told tantalizing tales of films I had no hope of seeing unless they turned up on the late show. Shipman wrote marvelously about many actors and actresses, but maybe too well — his opinions had a way of soaking in. The actors he cared about (Judy Garland, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Deanna Durbin) got love letters, while those he didn’t were pretty much excoriated.
Joan Crawford was one of the latter. The entry on Crawford starts with a putdown by Humphrey Bogart, and Shipman goes on to call her “not much of an actress…as tough as old boots” and to conclude that “she achieved little…her repertory of gestures and expressions was severely limited…(her shoulders) were always so much more eloquent than her face.” And that’s just the introduction. His survey of her career is peppered with words like “artificial,” “heavy,” “monotonous” and “hysterical.” So even before I’d seen most of her work, I was a bit prejudiced against Crawford.
When I finally did, she made it hard to disagree. Her appearance, for one thing. Increasingly through her career, she covered her face in grotesque Kabuki makeup — huge outsized lips, big Groucho eyebrows, piles of dead-looking hair. Her body language was stiff and somewhat mannish, and she did throw her shoulders around a lot. She was especially fond of squaring them off when confronting some hapless male — often a weakling such as Van Heflin, Zachary Scott or Wendell Corey. Although, to be fair, she made most men look weak, even big macho guys such as Jeff Chandler, Jack Palance or Sterling Hayden. When she turned her huge, furious, reproachful eyes on them, they all seemed to shrivel. So did I. If a movie star is someone you idly daydream about making out with, Miss Crawford did not do it for me.
Maybe I just needed to grow up, because sometime in my 40s, I started to change my mind. By then I’d seen some of her best work: Possessed, Grand Hotel, The Women, Strange Cargo, Mildred Pierce. Of course, in these movies she had vivid co-stars and wasn’t the whole show; I still didn’t think she was a very good actress, or even particularly attractive.
What finally turned me around was Humoresque. It’s a big, thundering '40s soap opera about a struggling young violin prodigy from the New York ghetto (John Garfield) who is taken up socially, artistically and sexually by a rich older married woman. This role is a field day for Crawford, who gets to fling diamond-hard insults (written by Clifford Odets), ride a horse passionately, have an orgasm during a violin concerto, smash martini glasses against the paneling of swanky bars, and walk into the surf in full evening wear. Ridiculous. And yet she’s gorgeous to look at and completely persuasive as an actor. At every moment, she makes you aware that this is a woman who doesn’t like herself, whose loveless marriage for money has left her bitter and empty. Her awakening from cynicism into love, and her desperate awareness that it’s come too late to help her, is finally quite heartbreaking.She was a hard woman, no doubt about it. She had a terrible childhood — abandoned by her father, carted around the slums of El Paso by her impoverished mother, learning much too early that men were a meal ticket and what the price of that ticket was. She was rumored to have made a stag film, to have been a stripper and a hooker. When she arrived in Hollywood in her early 20s, one observer remembered her as “an obvious strumpet.” Show people can be terrible snobs and the unconcealed disdain of her colleagues must have marked her deeply. Her whole life seems to have been an effort to scour off the dirt of West Texas and make a lady of herself. More than most performers, she kept reinventing herself and assuming new identities. Born Lucille LeSueur, she became Billie Cassin and then Joan Arden before the studio ran a contest to come up with Joan Crawford. She often spoke of how the movie industry educated her about virtually everything. When you watch her, you can feel the untold hours of effort she has put into her appearance, her diction, and her carriage, to covering up her dark, freckled skin. Much of her falseness comes from this fierce determination to be someone else — someone better.
But it’s also where her power comes from. For example, in Strange Cargo, she plays a prostitute in everything but name (the Production Code was in full force). Although she was at the height of her stardom,
and working with Clark Gable in his first movie after Gone With the Wind, she gives absolutely no quarter. Whatever her own experiences, she makes a mighty convincing whore — cold and hardened on the surface, bitter and hurt underneath, and deeply wounded and desperate at the core. She has a great moment where she tries to pretty herself up a little bit after days of crawling through the jungle, and Gable laughs at her in the cruelest and most disrespectful way. She maintains her toughness with him, but lets you see the immensity of her shame and self-loathing. She handles the character’s eventual transformation into a sweet and hopeful woman very subtly and convincingly as well. At no point does she signal that she’s a big star, or a lady pretending. She doesn’t ask for sympathy — she earns it.Crawford didn’t act in many comedies, and when she did she was often grimly unfunny (They All Kissed the Bride, a misogynistic screwball farce intended for Carole Lombard, is Exhibit A). She did have a sense of humor, but it was too black and caustic to work in the frothy nonsense of her era. However, just once she was awesomely funny: in The Women, playing a comic version of her own tough persona. She plays Crystal Allen (a wonderful name for a hard, glittering woman). In her first scene, she’s on the phone with her married lover, who is trying to cancel his date with her to be with his family. On the phone, she’s a parody of a sweet innocent young thing. But fending off the interjections and insults of her disbelieving co-workers, she’s matter-of-factly rapacious and cynical. When she finally gets him to cancel on his wife and come to her place instead, she does a silent little shoulder-shaking fist pump of victory…the kind of moment that makes you fall in love with a performer. “How do you like that guy?” she snaps, and then spitting out the last word: “He wanted to stand me up for his wife!”
And, of course, there’s Mildred Pierce, her famous Academy Award-winning role. Earlier this year, in HBO’s epic miniseries, Kate Winslet played Mildred exactly as written by James M. Cain — a mixture of likable and dislikable qualities. Mildred is plucky, determined, indomitable and cunning but also naïve, clueless, misguided and weak. This is not the woman Joan Crawford played. Her Mildred may be determined, but she has only the noblest intentions. The drama of the movie is the series of betrayals and humiliations Mildred undergoes at the hands of virtually everyone she trusts. Many commentators over the years have pointed out the obvious irony of Crawford, the abusive mom-from-hell of Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest, winning an Oscar for playing an over-indulgent mother whose only sin is loving and spoiling her daughter to excess. But clearly it was more complicated than that — Joan and Christina’s relationship seems to have been a pitched battle of wills that extended beyond the grave. Something many of us can relate to, in fact.
But Joan Crawford didn’t want complexity. Life, as she knew better than most, is a messy, dirty, terrifying business. Her response was to envision something better, and go after it with laser-like intensity. In 1931’s
Possessed (the first of two movies she made with this title), she plays a poor girl in a working class town who can’t reconcile herself to marriage to a cloddish boyfriend and a life of drudgery. One evening, a train pulls into town. She stands there in her cheap dress, looking at the train windows as they pass slowly by, revealing a series of elegant tableaux: rich passengers dressing up, dancing, drinking cocktails, being attended to by servants. Her longing is palpable. She’s still years away from becoming the implacable survivor staring down the world. She’s young and full of hope, and you’re with her all the way when the train stops and she impulsively hops on board, leaving her squalid life behind.Of course, we don’t leave ourselves or our demons behind when we try to move onward and upward — that’s only in the movies. Shipman’s book includes a famous put-down of Crawford’s unnuanced acting by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote screenplays for her during the '30s. He missed the larger truth about her, the larger performance that her life was all about. He’d have recognized her if he’d looked more deeply, because in her unwavering faith that beauty, money, and class can erase all the compromises necessary to achieve them, Joan Crawford was as quintessentially American as Jay Gatsby.
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Labels: Bogart, Crawford, Fitzgerald, Gable, Garbo, Garland, Hayden, HBO, Keaton, Lombard, Oscars, Van Hefiin, Winslet
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011
It's easy to make fun of somebody if you don't care how much you hurt them
By Edward Copeland
In the early years of the Academy Awards, repeat winners happened not only frequently but often soon after previous wins, sometimes even consecutively. For example, Frank Capra took home the directing prize three times, winning every other year from 1934 through 1938, starting with the great It Happened One Night and ending with You Can't Take It With You. The second Oscar between the two came for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which marks its 75th anniversary today, and was the only film of the three not to also win best picture. More importantly, the movie proved to be the wonderful Jean Arthur's breakthrough.
Now Capra has a reputation as the corniest of filmmakers, a reputation I believe is a bit unfair when you look at the darkness in some of his films such as It's a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or especially at the more unusual titles in his filmography such as The Miracle Woman or The Bitter Tea of General Yen, both starring Barbara Stanwyck. Of the films that do lead to that reputation though, Mr. Deeds might be one that's near the head of that pack. Not that Mr. Deeds isn't a good film, even if it isn't up to the level of the best Capras such as It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith and Wonderful Life, but it still holds up today as a fairly solid entertainment, if it's a tad overlong.
The story begins as we see a car take an explosive plunge off a mountain road followed by a newspaper headline announcing the death of financier Matthew Semple in Italy. In New York, his attorneys,
led by John Cedar (Douglas Dumbrille), has a team of investigators including press agent Cornelius Cobb (the delightful Lionel Stander, known to generations decades later as Max on the '70s TV show Hart to Hart), scouring the world for Semple's heir. This part seems a little confusing because apparently Semple left a will that named his heir and though there are other relatives he disdained (Jameson Thomas, Mayo Methot), it would seem all they had to do was find him, even if Matthew Semple himself had never met him. Finally, they connect the dots and identify him as one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), resident of Mandrake Falls, Vt. Soon, Cedar, Cobb and the crew are en route to meet the new rich man. Cedar, head of his firm Cedar, Cedar, Cedar and Buddington, finds himself particularly anxious to get a feeling for Deeds because he hopes to woo power of attorney from him to use part of the fortune he's inherited to help pay off some of the firm's debts.
When the New Yorkers arrive in Mandrake Falls, they soon realize they aren't in Manhattan anymore. The station agent (Spencer Charters) turns out to be a very friendly chap, but people in Mandrake Falls have a tendency to be so literal that it takes awhile to get out of them the information you seek. Cedar's party get him to admit he knows Longfellow Deeds and that Deeds is very friendly and will talk to anybody but it takes about the third try, thanks to Cobb, to ask the correct question and ask if the man could take them to where Deeds resides, to which the station agent wonders why they didn't just say that in the first place. Of course, being literal, the man takes them to Deeds' home, but he also knew they wouldn't find Deeds there then because they didn't ask specifically to be taken to Deeds and are greeted only by his housekeeper (Emma Deems). They ask her if Deeds might be married, but she tells them no, he's waiting to rescue a lady in distress. Fortunately, the wait to meet Deeds
himself isn't too terribly long and Longfellow Deeds finally walks in the door (and grabs his tuba, seemingly out of habit). Cedar explains to him that Matthew Semple has left him his fortune and wonders if he knows how he's related. Deeds says that his mother's maiden name was Semple and he thinks he might have been his uncle. He then learns the amount: $20 million. That's quite a lot, he says. "It'll do in a pinch," Cobb says. Out of curiosity, they ask Deeds what he does and he informs them that he writes poems for postcards for special occasions such as Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, etc. They tell him they need him to go back to New York with them to make all the arrangements, but Deeds already makes noises about how he doesn't need all that money and he'll probably give it away. Cobb asks the housekeeper what she thinks about her boss getting $20 million, but she's more concerned about how many people are staying for lunch. Deeds recommends they stay, just to try her orange layer cake.
Mandrake Falls gives their newly wealthy son a huge sendoff — so big that the New York delegation loses Deeds and the train already has arrived. Finally they spot him. It seems he's playing his tuba with the band for the last time. When he gets on the train, he looks rather forlorn, but Cedar tries to reassure that he has nothing to worry about in regard to the fortune. Deeds tells him it's not the money that he's fretting about — he just hopes the band can find another tuba player. While Deeds is en route to New York, the wife of the other Semple henpecks her sniveling husband to do whatever possible to get what's rightfully theirs, even if Matthew Semple hated his guts. The size of Semple's mansion leaves Deeds in awe, though Cedar and the rest keep him so occupied, he fears he won't get to see sites such as Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty, which he really wants to since he is in New York. Once he is in town, the newspapers salivate at the chance to cover this new millionaire and MacWade (George Bancroft), the editor of one newspaper, gathers his best reporters
in his office to tell them they have to get to the bottom of this Longfellow Deeds and make him a sensation. Among the reporters listening to the pitch is MacWade's shining star, Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Bennett (Jean Arthur), who spends most of the scene playing with a string which I think could be a yo-yo, but couldn't tell for sure. She promises him a front page story if as a reward she receives a raise and a month of paid vacation. MacWade agrees and Louise, known as Babe to her fellow reporters, takes the assignment, having been clued in to the idea that Deeds longs to find a woman in distress. Back at the mansion, Cedar continues to try to get Deeds to hire him as do many others. Deeds seems puzzled as to why so many people offer to work for him for nothing. One lawyer named Hallor (Charles Lane) does seek something, though Cedar tries to get him thrown out. He tells Deeds he represents Matthew Semple's common-law wife and that a child is involved and that entitles her to a third of the estate. Deeds thinks that's reasonable and adds up to about $7 million — until Hallor says he's willing to settle for $1 million. That convinces Deeds that if he's willing to take that much less than he's owed, he must be a fraud and physically tosses him out. Cedar tells him that's why he needs to hire him — to protect him from people like that, but Deeds says he hasn't decided if he's hiring him yet.
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town wasn't just the breakthrough role for the delightful Jean Arthur, who hadn't made much of an impression before that, it also was a lucky break that she got the role in the first place. Originally, Capra wanted Carole Lombard to play the part but at the last minute, Lombard opted to make My Man Godfrey instead. In fact, Mr. Deeds being made when it was was an accident as well. Capra had planned for Lost Horizon to be his next film, but Ronald Colman had other commitments, so he moved Mr. Deeds up. Thank goodness for fate because what a less rich cinematic world we'd have if Arthur hadn't received that break and been able to delight us as much as she would. Her character Babe assumes the false identity of Mary Dawson and after Deeds sneaks out (having to lock his bodyguards in a room) she fakes a fainting spell in front of the mansion so Longfellow can come to the rescue. He takes her to a restaurant where writers and poets supposedly congregate, unaware she has photographers tailing them.
The poet in Deeds keeps looking for fellow writers and the waiter directs him to a table full of them, all of whom seem intent on making fun of him and Deeds knows they are doing it. In particular, one of his favorite poets, Brookfield (Eddie Kane), seems intent on trying to treat Longfellow as a rube. "I think your poems are swell Mr. Brookfield, but I'm disappointed by you," Deeds tells him, to no apparent effect. "I know I must look funny to you, but maybe if you went to Mandrake Falls, you'd look funny to us, only nobody would laugh at ya and make you feel ridiculous." He also tells him that if it weren't Miss Dawson being present, he'd bump their heads together, but she says she doesn't mind and Deeds proceeds to pummel the poets, only he misses one. Morrow (a hilarious bit by Walter Catlett) comes to him begging for a hit on the chin. "What a magnificent displacement of smugness. You've added 10 years to my life," a very drunken Morrow tells Deeds and proceeds to tell him all the things he should show him in the world, constantly
starting to tip backward and having Deeds pull him back upright by his tie. "You hop aboard my magic carpet and I'll show you sights that you've never seen before," Morrow tells him, suggesting they go on a binge and Deeds, who has never touched alcohol in his life, agrees. Needless to say, it gives Babe one helluva story for the paper, where she christens him Cinderella Man and tells of him feeding doughnuts to a horse and when asked why, Deeds saying he was seeing how many the horse would eat before asking for coffee. When he wakes up with a hangover the next morning, his butler Walter (Raymond Walburn) tells him he had quite a bender, but Deeds denies it, saying that Morrow said they were only going on a binge, they never got to a bender. He asks him to get Mary's number out of his pants, but Walter says he can't because he came home without pants. Deeds finds that unbelievable: If he was running around the streets without pants, the police would have picked him up. Walter informs him that it was the police who brought him home. Cornelius brings him the paper, telling him he can't go around punching people like he did at the restaurant. "Sometimes it's the only solution," Deeds insists.
Eventually, with Cedar getting nowhere getting his hands on Deeds' money, he decides to represent the other relatives and try to get Longfellow declared insane, especially after a down-on-his-luck farmer (John Wray) comes into the mansion with a gun and then breaks down and it gives Deeds the idea to give away his fortune to people who apply for farm land and tend to it with equipment he buys for them and, if they produce, they own it after three years. Meanwhile, Cornelius learns Babe's true identity AFTER Deeds has proposed and she's begun to feel so guilty, she's quit her job because she's fallen for him. It's really the back half where the sentimentality overwhelms the comedy, but it's still good and you do get the Faulkner sisters (Margaret McWade, Margaret Seddon) to come from Mandrake Falls to testify that Deeds always has been "pixilated," but then who among us isn't pixilated?
Cooper does have some good moments, but he's stiff as he often is in just about any film he made, though it did earn him his first Oscar nomination, but with Arthur and the great comic supporting cast, especially Stander, it doesn't interfere. Probably his most timely speech comes in his sanity hearing when he asks why should he be considered crazy if he'd rather see the money go to be people who need it. "It's like I'm out in a big boat, and I see one fellow in a rowboat who's tired of rowing and wants a free ride, and another fellow who's drowning. Who would you expect me to rescue? Mr. Cedar — who's just tired of rowing and wants a free ride? Or those men out there who are drowning? Any 10-year-old child will give you the answer to that," Deeds tells the judge. Sounds like an accurate depiction of today's corporate and wealthy-favored government to me. Capra's pacing lags at time, but he does have some nice directing touches, my favorite being when Deeds is institutionalized and Cornelius urges him to fight. Capra films the entire scene in darkness with the actor silhouetted and begins it with a nice zoom.
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a lesser Capra, but it remains worthwhile even if he lays its message of the value of honesty, sincerity and decency on a bit too heavily.
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Labels: 30s, Capra, Cooper, Jean Arthur, Lombard, Movie Tributes, Oscars, R. Colman, Stanwyck
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Sunday, February 20, 2011
Words Get in the Way
By VenetianBlond
Alfred Hitchcock directed a screwball comedy. Yes, it takes a moment to sink in. Although Hitch infused all of his films with touches of humor, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, released this day 75 years ago, was his only full-on comedic effort. Some sources indicate that he only did it as a favor to his good friend Carole Lombard, who starred with Robert Montgomery. Another angle has it that he pursued the project at RKO on his own. Whatever the reason, the film stands out not for its laughs but for its singularity.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith have a unique way of solving their marital problems. After a tiff, they remain sequestered in their bedroom for days until they kiss and make up. During one of their post-argument breakfasts, Ann asks her husband if he would marry her all over again. Contrary to centuries of battle-of-the-sexes wisdom, David decides to be honest, and says no. It’s not that he does not love Ann, it’s more that being single is just more fun than being married. Not long thereafter, a representative from the county in which they were married comes to tell them that due to a redistricting snafu, it wasn’t legal. Ann takes the opportunity to trim the deadwood, and David spends the rest of the film trying to win her back.
Hitchcock’s Rebecca had won the best picture Oscar in 1940, and he followed up Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Suspicion. The parts of the comedy that work best are the ones least script dependent — those that show the director in full control of the film through the images. When Ann and David decide to go to one of their favorite restaurants from early in their relationship, they find it greatly changed into a dive. They convince the proprietor to set a table outside, like it used to be, but they find themselves surrounded by staring street urchins. Ann suggests they stare back, to teach the children a lesson. One cut later, Ann and David are back inside. Another scene has the separated Ann and David each with other people at a club. David’s date is not as attractive as the woman sitting on his other side, so he pretends to chat up the beautiful woman by moving his mouth without making a sound. Unfortunately for David, Ann notices the ruse, and so does the beautiful woman’s date. Not only does David come off as rude, he looks like a total lunatic.
Norman Krasna, the screenwriter, manages to get in a few zingers, like when David goes to find Ann at her new job and tells the floor manager, “I’m looking for something in ladies’ lingerie.” Unfortunately though, audiences had already been introduced to His Girl Friday the previous year (What a year in film, 1940!) and Mr. and Mrs. Smith suffers by comparison. It takes a full half hour to even get to the inciting incident and longer than that to unleash the mayhem.
Although Lombard had already been dubbed “The Queen of Screwball Comedy,” she cannot rise above the script she was given because the role gives her little to do other than be angry at David. To make an unfair comparison, Barbara Stanwyck would blow audiences’ hair back with a good script in The Lady Eve one month later. Montgomery fares slightly better. For example, worried about the food in the now shady restaurant, he states, “I’d give five dollars to see that cat take a sip of that soup.” The nebbish county worker, played by Charles Halton, who travels to New York to give the Smiths their bad news (and return their $2 marriage license fee) fares best of all, but he only has one scene.
If some films are “too much of a muchness,” Mr. and Mrs Smith is “not enough of an enoughness.” Not the exemplar of a genre, not a showcase for any standout performance, not the director’s best work, it’s only interesting because it’s Alfred Hitchcock’s one screwball comedy. Even so, Hitch has a way of getting the individual moment right. David is locked out by Ann and forced to retreat to his men’s club for the night. Later we see how bad the situation has become when a room key at the club’s front desk has “David Smith” typed above it. In the hands of a master, sometimes the words get in the way.
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Labels: 40s, Hitchcock, Lombard, Movie Tributes, Stanwyck
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Monday, March 01, 2010
Centennial Tributes: David Niven
By Liz Hunt
It’s easy to celebrate the late actor David Niven’s life.
Today, Niven would have been 100. Had he lived, the Oscar-, British Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning actor probably would have been a dapper, urbane gent with wavy white hair, a pencil-thin moustache and, as always, be 100 percent British.
He died July 29, 1983, at his home in Chateau-d’Oex, Switzerland, after a battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). He is buried there.
His 112 movies include best picture winner Around the World in 80 Days, the film that won him the Oscar, Separate Tables, The Guns of Navarone, the 007 farce Casino Royale and the original Pink Panther.
He was known for his gentle, self-deprecating manner, his light-hand with comedy, his depth as a dramatic actor, his friendships with screen stars Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Roger Moore, and his charming wit — whether aimed at Errol Flynn or a streaker dashing behind him during the 1974 Oscar ceremony.
James David Graham Niven was born in London in 1910. For years, his biography said he was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland, because he thought it sounded more romantic than London.
His father was Scottish, a British military officer who died at Gallipoli on Aug. 21, 1915. He was a landowner who left his wife Henrietta with four children, David, Max, Joyce and Grizel.
Niven’s wit emerged early. He said as a child he felt superior to others because when reciting the Lord’s Prayer in church, he thought it was written “Our Father, who art a Niven…”
When his mother remarried, Niven attended several boarding schools. He hated them, and his grades showed it, but his soldier father’s reputation helped him get into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He left there as a second lieutenant. He was asked where he wanted to serve and he wrote he’d be fine anywhere but the Highland Light Infantry, which was where he was posted. He later transferred to the Rifle Brigade. During his service, he was posted to Malta and charmed a number of highly placed people with his devil-may-care attitude and his dashing looks, a precursor of many of his future film roles.
After his military service, Niven took a number of odd jobs, including by his account, a gunnery instructor for Cuban revolutionaries. He arrived in Hollywood in the early 1930s had bit parts in films such as There Goes the Bride, Eyes of Fate and Cleopatra.
Samuel Goldwyn took an interest in the engaging young man in 1935, adding him to a group of attractive young contract players. He had several small roles for Goldwyn and was loaned to 20th Century Fox for the 1936 Thank You, Jeeves!
It was then he started making friends with fellow actors Flynn and several other British actors in Hollywood, and also made quite a splash with the ladies of the film world.
He had a few supporting roles and carried a few movies before 1939, when he returned to Britain to reenlist in the army’s Rifle Brigade. He left World War II to make two movies to rally British morale, Spitfire and The Way Ahead. Fellow actor Peter Ustinov served as his valet in the army.
Niven married Primula Rollo in 1940 and they had two children. Despite his fighting for six years, he came in second in the 1945 Popularity Poll of British film stars. When he returned to Hollywood, he was made a Legionnaire of the Order of Merit, the highest American order a non-American can earn. It was presented to Niven by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
His first major post-war film was working with Powell and Pressburger in Stairway to Heaven (known as A Matter of Life and Death in the U.K.) about a British aviator who after surviving a certain death must argue for his life before a celestial court.
His life changed when his wife died in an accident during a dinner party at Tyrone Power’s home in 1946. During a game of hide and seek, she opened a door and walked in, thinking it was a closet. It was the basement, and she fell downstairs, landed on concrete and died.
It was a low point in his life. In a 2009 biography of the actor, David Niven: The Man Behind the Balloon by Michael Munn, the author recalls an interview with Niven when he remembered one moment he toyed with suicide. The story was reported in U.S. tabloid the Globe and says that after his first wife died, he decided to shoot himself.
In that report, Niven said, “I took a gun and put the barrel in my mouth and with barely a thought for my children, which was unforgiveable, I pulled the trigger. And the bloody thing didn’t fire.” The act shocked Niven, and while he never knew why the gun didn’t fire, he knew he would live to take care of his children. Gable, who had dealt with the accidental death of his wife Carole Lombard, was able to help Niven with his loss as well.
In 1947, he made The Bishop’s Wife with Loretta Young and Cary Grant, now a holiday classic. He played the title role (the bishop, not the wife). Niven said Grant was a great actor because he pursued perfection in himself.
His comments about friend Flynn were more pointed. “You can count on Errol Flynn, he’ll always let you down.
“Flynn was a magnificent specimen of the rampant male. Outrageously good looking, he was a great natural athlete who played tennis with Donald Budge and boxed with ‘Mushy’ Calahan. The extras, among who I had many friends, disliked him intensely.”
Niven married Hjodis Genberg in early 1948. They adopted two children, (one was his by a Swedish model) and they were married until his death.
After his contract with Goldwyn ended in 1949, Niven could only get small roles, and he joined Dick Powell, Charles Boyer and Ida Lupino to form the television production company “Four Star.” In Four Star Playhouse’s 33 episodes between 1952 and 1956, Niven was able to play the strong dramatic roles he had wanted. While working with “Four Star,” Niven met Blake Edwards, who would hire him years later for another famous role.
For the rest of his career, he switched between big and small screens with ease. He enjoyed the meatier dramatic roles, but the public liked his lighter-hearted roles better.
Twice in the 1950s he teamed with director Otto Preminger, once in the then-controversial 1953 The Moon Is Blue where he and William Holden competed for the affections of "virgin" Maggie McNamara and again in 1958's Bonjour Tristesse where he played a widower whose scheming daughter (Jean Seberg) tried to thwart any potential romantic interests, especially Deborah Kerr.
His luck in film changed forever in 1956, when he played globetrotter Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, his most successful film and 1956's Oscar winner for best picture. His biggest break came when Laurence Olivier dropped out of Separate Tables. Scheduled for a 1958 release, Niven was tapped to play an elderly and disgraced British military man. He played down his part, saying, “They gave me very good lines and then cut to Deborah Kerr while I was saying them.” His modesty wasn’t necessary. He took home an Oscar, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award for best actor for his reading of Major Angus Pollock.
Hollywood’s recognition of Niven as a serious actor made him a highly paid professional in films and television throughout the 1960s. It was then that Niven began his long flirtation with British super spy James Bond. Ian Fleming recommended that Niven play Bond in Dr. No in 1962. Sadly, producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli thought Niven too old for the part. Niven was not totally ignored. In the Bond novel You Only Live Twice, Fleming refers to Niven and a pet bird in the story is named after the actor. Three years after the book was released, Niven played Bond in the spy send-up, 1967’s Casino Royale, a Fleming Bond novel to which Broccoli didn't own the rights.
Niven wasn’t only an actor. During breaks, he wrote two autobiographies, The Moon’s a Balloon in 1972, and Bring on the Empty Horses in 1975. His novels include Round the Ragged Rocks and Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly, both published posthumously.
In 1976, he joined a great ensemble of actors including Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith and Peter Falk among others in Neil Simon's spoof of both film and literary detectives in Murder By Death, giving Niven a chance to play a variation on William Powell's Nick Charles from The Thin Man films. Two years later, he got to reunite with his war-time valet when he and Ustinov co-starred in the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile.
Niven created one of his more lasting characters, the suave jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton for Edwards’ skewed heist picture that brought Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, 1964's The Pink Panther. The movie spawned multiple sequels and Niven reprised Lytton in two, 1982’s Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther in 1983.
The public was not aware that Niven had been diagnosed with ALS early in the 1980s. By the time filming began on the final two films, Niven could physically appear, but his speech was slurred. Impressionist Rich Little was brought in to do Niven’s lines.
Niven underplayed his strengths with gentle humor, which made him popular on television shows and for witty quotes for newspapers.
“I’ve been lucky enough to win an Oscar and write a best seller — my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre,” he said. “The only way that’s going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentleman’s lavatory.”
As a naked man ran behind him at the 1974 Oscars, very calmly he said, “Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?”
Finally, some thoughts on acting current performers might keep in mind.
“This isn’t work. It’s fun. The whole thing is fun. I hear actors say, ‘I have to go to work tomorrow.’ Nonsense. Work is eight hours in a coal mine or a government office,” he explained. “Getting up in the morning and putting on a funny moustache and dressing up and showing off in front of the grown-ups, that’s play, and for which we’re beautifully overpaid. I’ve always felt that way. After all, how many people in the world are doing things they like to do?”
One final thought for the man who would have been 100 years old. It’s something he never had to worry happening to him.
“Actors don’t retire. They just get offered fewer roles.”
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Labels: Archers, Blake Edwards, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Erroll Flynn, Falk, Gable, Guinness, Holden, Ian Fleming, Lombard, Lupino, Maggie Smith, Neil Simon, Niven, Olivier, Oscars, Preminger, Sellers, William Powell
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