Festive cheer 3

O HENRY’S FULL HOUSE – This 1952 20th Century Fox compendium of 5 O Henry stories has never surfaced anywhere during my years here in England, so when I saw it on Amazon I just had to get it, and its quite nice if nothing very special. Odd for a film about one writer’s work it is introduced by another: the much better known John Steinbeck (whom I had not seen on film before) who links the stories. It has that early ‘50s Fox look and a lot of those young Fox players of the time, but the most interesting sequence is a practically wordless one of hobo Charles Laughton trying to get back into jail for the winter – Marilyn Monroe appears for maybe a minute as the streetwalker he insults, and its just great seeing them together.
Oddly enough the story directed by Howard Hawks works least of all and is rather bizarre - but Fox stalwarts Henry Hathaway, Jean Negulseco, Henrys Koster and King direct the other episodes: cop Dale Robertson having to arrest old school pal Richard Widmark (guying his tough guy image) is a lively diversion; poor newly weds Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger trying to afford Christmas presents is nicely touching; and sisters Anne Baxter and Jean Peters play in an amusing anecdote with Gregory Ratoff.
Its a nice little diversion for this time of year. 

Fun out west with Anne, Jeff, Rory, Randolph & Angela

I have not seen the 1942 western THE SPOILERS - but it should be fun, with John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich and Randolph Scott heading this western set in Alaska in those gold-rush days. It was remade though in 1955, with a more 50s cast: Jeff Chandler, Anne Baxter and Rory Calhoun, with some grizzled veterans like Wallace Ford and John McIntyre. 

Like Wayne's 1960 comedy western by Henry Hathaway NORTH TO ALASKA we are back in those muddy streets of Nome, Alaska, where everyone is looking for gold or trying to get their hands on others' claims. 

Anne is vamping in high style, and some eye-popping costumes, as saloon owner Cherry Malotte, the guys are merely adequate around her scheming minx, Cue lots of fighting in the mud, and much amusement as Jeff and Rory demolish the saloon bar during their extended fight at the climax. She seems to be having as much fun as she does in her next, Cecil's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Below: the 1942 trio.

A lot of Randolph Scott's westerns are being aired here just now too, usually those lean Budd Boetticher revenge dramas with Randolph as a man alone seeking those who did him wrong, as in BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, COMMANCE STATION, THE TALL T, SIX MEN FROM NOW etc 
One I had not seen before is A LAWLESS STREET from 1955 - usual story, he is the weary Sheriff of a lawless town, who wants to hand in his badge. The interest in this run of the mill one is that Angela L|ansbury plays his ex-wife who returns to town as a singer and dancer and does a rather risque musical number. Rest assured Randolph and Angela ride off in a wagon once he has dished out justice to the lawbreakers .... a pleasant timewaster then, as indeed is THE SPOILERS, I imagine Marlene and Wayne would be fun too, with Randy too of course. 

Joan and sudden fear somewhere in the night ...

A 1950s Joan Crawford movie I had not seen: 1952's SUDDEN FEAR begins well but limp to an unstisfactory ending ..... I actually like Joan Crawford's 1950s output more than that of her main rival Bette Davis, who after the enormous success of 1950's ALL ABOUT EVE was soon back in routine programmers; well so was Joan of course but they were more fun that Bette's: TORCH SONG in 1953, JOHNNY GUITAR in '54 (the first film I saw, aged 8 as per reports on that, see label) and those campy lurid items like QUEEN BEE, FEMALE ON THE BEACH, AUTUMN LEAVES, THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO up to her cameo in 1959 "as Amanda Farrow in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING - Bette too was cameo-ing in 1959 (two of them, a scene or two with Alec Guinness in THE SCAPEGOAT and coming on for the last five minutes as Catherine The Great in the otherwise turgid costumer JOHN PAUL JONES, hardly seen now. Of course 1962's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BAY JANE? got them back in the limelight again ...). But back to Joan in 1952.where Woman's Picture meets Film Noir:

Actor Lester Blaine has all but landed the lead in Myra Hudson's new play when Myra vetoes him because, to her, he doesn't look like a "romantic leading man." On the train from New York to San Francisco, Blaine sets out to prove Myra wrong...by romancing her. Is he sincere, or does he have a dark ulterior motive? The answer brings on a game of cat and mouse; but who's the cat and who's the mouse? 

Myra is an essential Crawford role, the middle-aged wealthy woman looking for love and thinking she has found it. Palance is ideal with his odd looks, and add in Gloria Grahame at her bitchiest .... 

It plays like a delicious antique now: those early Dictaphone machines where Myra overhears the plot against her, her odd wardrobe of buttoned-up tops and showing her legs and nylons and high-heels as well as those long white gloves both ladies wear. The plot though as she counterplots against her attackers could have ended better ....... cue large close-ups of Joan agonising, suffering, suffering, suffering, yearning as she conveys the fear and rage at the duplicity of others ...... Directed by David Miller, but those empty streets of San Francisco do not look realistic. 

Now back a decade for another Noir thriller: Mankiewicz's SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT from 1941, his second feature as director. 
My friend Leon describes it thus:

Somewhere In the Night dates from 1946, the same year Mank's second directorial effort Dragonwyck was released and it's well up to snuff. A lot of 'amnesiac' films are, by definition, forgettable, but not this one. Mank assembled as tasty a supporting cast as had ever been shoehorned into one film ranging from Whit Bissell through Harry Morgan, Jeff Corey to the standout Josephine Hutchinson. Leading from the front are the slightly wooden John Hodiak - marriage to Ann Baxter didn't improve his acting -, newcomer Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan and Richard Conte and Mank keeps the balls spinning in the air leaving little time for awkward questions - like why would Conte - who'd got away with murder for three years, introduce Hodiak to a detective friend (Nolan) knowing that Hodiak was trying to get to to bottom of the very murder for which he, Conte, was responsible. This the kind of movie, popular at the time, in which a protagonist who is possibly a murderer is befriended by a girl/woman who's never met him before - for example Alad Ladd and Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia and/or in which a street-wise gal like Guild here, has to have the expressions 'private eye' and 'shamus' explained to her. None of this detracts from an enjoyable ride and it's one to add to your Blockbuster shopping list.
Leon was quite right, its a zippy intriguing little meller, essential for anyone keen on 1940s noir and Mankiewicz's style. Pleased I found it. 

John Hodiak (1914-1955) was an interesting guy, of Polish descent he was one of the second-tier actors who came to prominence during the early Forties - like Dana Andrews - when the big hitters were away during the war. He only lived to be 41 though, and had some big hits at the time, and even married Anne Baxter for several years (right). I saw him again the other day in Hitch's LIFEBOAT with Tallulah, and he is the male lead in the entertaining THE HARVEY GIRLS with Judy in 1946. We particularly like his DESERT FURY here, from 1947, one of the great camp Hollywood movies, where he and Wendall Corey are an intriguing pair, plus Lizabeth Scott and Mary Astor playing her mother, and a young Burt Lancaster - its a delirious 1940s concoction as per my review (Hodiak label). 

Coming up: A '60s Kim Novak double-bill, and then its off to THE RITZ in THE GAY METROPOLIS.

All About Eve, once again

"Just because a man knows all the lines in ALL ABOUT EVE ....."

Lots of Oscar winners are on view again, so nice to return to Joseph Mankiewicz's 1950 double award winner (script and direction, among its six wins out of 11 nominations). It s not actually very cinematic at all as the camera just sits and records all that marvellous dialogue played by a cast at the top of their game, and one newcomer obviously going places , with those brilliant dressing room and party scenes. More on Mank and the others at labels. and I have just ordered that book I somehow didn't get around to: "All About All About Eve"!

The quotes alone are stupendous, IMDb only has 88 of them listed - and we won't include Margo's comment about seat belts !

Anne Baxter (after that comedy western A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK forgotten now apart from that Marilyn was in it too) and George Sanders (after another biblical, the enjoyable SAMSON & DELILAH) must have relished gettng their teeth into dialogue like this (while Bette had one of her most iconic roles after her years at Warners). 
Addison: Ah, Eve.

Eve: Good evening, Mr. DeWitt.

Margo: I'd no idea you two knew each other.

Addison: This must be at long last our formal introduction. Until now we've only met in passing.

Miss Caswell: That's how you met me... in passing.

Addison: What do you take me for?

Eve: I don't know that I take you for anything.

Addison: Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?

Eve: I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what.

Addison: Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.

Eve:I never intended you to be.

Addison:Yes you did, and you still do.

Eve: I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...

Addison: It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.

Eve: Champion to champion.

Addison: Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.

Eve: Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?

Addison:Very well - plainly and distinctly - though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.

Eve: What do you mean by that?

Addison:: More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.

Eve:What have you got to do with it?

Addison: Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.

Eve: Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!

Addison: What a dull cliché.

Eve: Belong to you - why, that sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama!

Addison: So does the history of the world for the past twenty years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this. Frankly, I'd hoped that somehow you would have known, that you would have taken it for granted that you and I...

Eve:: Taken it for granted that you and I...[laughs]

Addison: [slaps her] Now, remember, as long as you live, never to laugh at me - at anything or anyone else, but never at me.

Eve: [walks to the door and opens it] Get out!

Addison:You're too short for that gesture. Besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.

Addison: That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that in itself is probably the reason: You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also our contempt for humanity and inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.

Margo: And this is my dear friend and companion, Miss Bridie Coonan.
Birdie: Oh brother.

Birdie: What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.

Birdie: Voila!
Margo: That French ventriloquist taught you a lot, didn't he?
Birdie: There was nothing he did not know.

Margo: Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.

Margo: I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.

Margo: I detest cheap sentiment.

Lloyd Richards: The atmosphere is very MacBeth-ish... what has, or is about to, happen?

Margo: Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.

Eve: I'd like to hear it.

Margo: Some snowy night, in front of the fire.

Margo: Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.

Bill: I'll get it.

Bill [to Eve]: What'll you have?

Margo: A milkshake?

Eve: A martini, very dry, please.

Margo: She's a girl of so many interests.

Bill: It's a pretty rare quality these days.

Margo: She's a girl of so many rare qualities.

Bill: So she seems.

Margo: So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities, so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young. So young and so fair...

Karen: I'm sorry, Margo.

Margo: What for? It isn't as though you personally drained the gas tank yourself.

There's tons more of course, but otherwise we would be quoting the whole movie! 

ALL ABOUT EVE remains a magnificent comedy drama with all that bitchy theatre talk, providing three great roles with about equal screen time: the curdled cocktail that is Margo, duplicitious Eve and decent Karen - and wisecracking Birdie too (though we don't see her once the action moves away from Margo's duplex - Mankiewicz later regretted that). Mankiewicz scored too the previous year with his A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (with another three great female roles, plus Thelma again), which we like just as much here - see Mank label - and he also did NO WAY OUT that year. He and Billy Wilder certainly wrote the best dialogue (Wilder with his collaborators Charles Brackett and I.A.L. Diamond - but thats another story.) as Billy's SOME LIKE IT HOT ties with EVE for the best script ever, with SUNSET BOULEVARD and DOUBLE INDEMNITY hot on their heels. I loved ONE, TWO, THREE as well and KISS ME STUPID was certainly a lot of fun! 

All About Eve cast photo !

How come I never saw this shot before ? Pity Thelma was not included ....

Summer views: more summer madness ...

We reviewed A SUMMER PLACE and SUMMER AND SMOKE here last year (see Troy Donahue, Geraldine Page labels), but here are two more 'summer' titles: SUMMER OF THE 17TH DOLL and THE GREENGAGE SUMMER ... which feature several favourites of ours, like Anne Baxter, Angela Lansbury and Susannah York, not to mention Danielle Darrieux and a young Jane Asher ! (more on these at labels). 

SUMMER OF THE 17TH DOLL (or SEASON OF PASSION, hopefully to make it sound more risque - and as the poster says 'not suitable for children'!) is a raucous 1959 comedy/drama about two Australian sugarcane cutters spend their annual five-month vacations in Sydney with their mistresses.        

This is oddly amusing now, its a daft premise that John Mills and Ernest Borgnine spend 7 months of the year labouring cutting sugar cane in remote Australia and then hit Sydney for the remaining 5 months, with their regular gals. This has got on for 16 years, but Mills' girl has had enough and married someone else. So this, 17th summer, a new gal is required. 

One does not quite see Angela Lansbury as a party girl, but she starts off as a fastidious widow, who soon starts to let her hair down. Anne Baxter though is saddled with Borgnine .... it was filmed in Australia (where Baxter had moved to for some years, during a marriage, which caused a hiatus in her career (detailed in her memoir "Intermission" - on her return she was accepting smaller parts as in CIMARRON and WALK ON THE WILD SIDE).  It is from a play (by Ray Lawler) and directed by Leslie Norman (father of tv critic Philip). The title refers to the dolls Baxter's character collects, one for each summer ... 

THE GREENGAGE SUMMER, 1961 - also provocatively described as "Adult Entertainment".
Pauline Kael in her splendid essay on ‘Movies on TV’ makes the point about how watching old movies allows us to see the career trajectory of actors’ careers as we see them young and old and in between with their hits and misses through the decades all jumbled up on tv. 

Susannah York died in 2011 aged 72, but here she is young and radiant in her first major film in 1961. THE GREENGAGE SUMMER from Rumer Godden’s novel (she also wrote BLACK NARCISSUS among others) is a delight from Lewis Gilbert, and also seems to be known as LOSS OF INNOCENCE – maybe for those who do not know what greengages are! 

This is what I wrote about it, some years ago on here: 

THE GREENGAGE SUMMER – this 1961 film from a Rumer Godden novel ("Loss of Innocence") is rarely seen now, but is an engaging drama by Ronald Neame, with Kenneth More and Danielle Darrieux as the adults, and a trio of youngsters left on their own at Darrieux’s hotel in a lush part of France while their mother is ill in hospital. Teenager Susannah York becomes involved with the mysterious (is he a jewel thief?) More who is involved with Darrieux who also seems to be involved with her (female) hotel partner. Young Jane Asher is terrific as York’s younger sister, and its intriguingly resolved. York is engaging here in her first role after her debut in TUNES OF GLORY.
I actually saw some greengages in the stores when shopping yesterday, will have to try some again this season - like gooseberries, they are not in season for long ...

Summer movie posters

Some enjoyable summer romps - or Trash Movie Heaven. 
You can find more about these at the labels .....

 

Glynis & Ty in THE CHAPMAN REPORT

Franco in A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY

Hollywood ! - an occasional series ...

For all you people out there in the dark: That astounding Buster Keaton stunt in STEAMBOAT BILL JR, and a few Norma Desmond and Margo Channing moments from SUNSET BOULEVARD and ALL ABOUT EVE, both 1950 at the dawn of THAT decade (as like PSYCHO, L'AVVENTURA, LA DOLCE VITA and THE APARTMENT ushered in the '60s), Billy Wilder's and Joseph Mankiewicz's tributes, curdled cocktails both, to the movies and the theatre - Bette and Gloria should have jointly won the Best Actress Oscar, and both movies replay endless re-viewings ...

"Fasten your seatbelts ..."

Both films of course were turned into musicals, successful at the time - several productions of the Andrew Lloyd Webber SUNSET, Norma is a great role for ageing divas (though not it seems for Dunaway, whom The Lord dismissed).  EVE became APPLAUSE, which seems dreadfully dated now with that '70s look and Bacall was, frankly, miscast. I saw the '73 London production, and seeing a recording of it recently was GRIM! - as per post on it (Bacall label).

Czarina Tallulah - or Catherine was Great !

Back to the 1940s for a delirious treat: Tallulah Bankhead as Catherine The Great in a 1945 Ernest Lubitsch comedy! - so expect a dash of sly and subversive naughtiness, which is a perfect fit for Bankhead. There’s just something in her personality that’s so suited to the genre, but this might be the only comedic film she ever made. There is the heavy hand of Otto Preminger though as director, though the ill Lubitsch produced it.

A ROYAL SCANDAL is amusing, silly, and fun, with Bankhead at her best. It may though be a tad too talky, we have to wait almost 15 minutes for Tallulah to appear. We know her best now for her dramataics in Hitch's LIFEBOAT in 1944, and that silly 60s shocker: FANATIC or DIE DIE MY DARLING - I have not seen any of her earlier '30s ones like that one with Cooper and Laughton (THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP). She is perfectly marvellous as Catherine The Great - witty, and making the most of those lines and her suggestive looks at that rather dim solider who becomes her latest fancy as she dresses him up in finery to the chagrin of his fiance, Anne Baxter. Anne and the Empress have a deliciously funny scene too, and Charles Coburn is on hand as Catherine's wily fox of a chancellor. Then there is Vincent Price being very camp as the French Ambassador ... I also like those other Lubitch items like Garbo in NINOTCHKA, Lombard in TO BE OR NOT TO BE, her last in 1942, and Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (Margaret Sullavan label), classics all.

Tallulah of course was one of the legends of the theatre and one can see why here.  Her television apperances are also amusing and those stories about her are legend. I particularly like the one where a groggy houseguest is woken by the butler proferring a large vodka, Tallulah sweeps by and says "Better drink it dahling, there won't be any more served until after breakfast."

The leading man though is one William Eythe, new to me, and its saddening reading about him. He died aged 38 in 1957 of acute hepatitis.  He was the type of leading man 20th Century Fox liked, good-looking in that Tyrone Power/John Payne way ... he had several leading roles at the time, but as he was known to be gay, his career fizzled out.  He looks good here crammed into those hussar uniforms.

We have of course to compare Tallulah's empress with those other Catherines: most notably Dietrich in Von Sternberg's THE SCARLET EMPRESS, one of my particular top 10 favourites, from 1934. Here she is with John Lodge - love those outfits!

Bette Davis also played Catherine in the last 5 minutes of that rather turgid 1959 costume drama JOHN PAUL JONES, and Viveca Lindfors made a splendid empress in THE TEMPEST in 1958, that Silvana Mangano-Dino De Laurentiis mini-epic I like a lot.  Tallulah though is something else ....(Jeanne Moreau though was dreadful in the dreadfully unfunny comedy GREAT CATHERINE with O'Toole, in '68).

and Viveca ...

Bette as Catherine

Next 40s treat: Negulesco's ROADHOUSE that delicious noir with Ida Lupino.