Those "hostesses" in wartime Hawaii ...

First, that electric moment when club "hostess" Donna Reed catches the attention of Montgomery Clift in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, Zinnemann's classic from 1953. Donna - an actress who did not impinge on me much elsewhere, is terrific here as Lorene, and has that great scene at the climax where she and Deborah Kerr are on that ship going back to America.

Then there is Jane Russell as Mamie Stover, a harboiled dame and the chief "hostess" in Agnes Moorehead's bar/brothel in Fox's 1956 THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER, one of our favourite Trash Classics here ..... Agnes goes blonde here and Jane is as ever easy on the eye and absolutely terrific as her tough dame buys up cheap land in Hawaii as the Japanese arrive ...

War weekend 1: From Here To Eternity

A recent weekend had a spate of war movies on tv, some of which I had not seen in decades, and proved fascinating again now.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, 1953 – I had not seen this in years, it had almost become a cliché of the Hollywood war movie. Sitting down and watching it from the start, particularly after seeing PEARL HARBOUR again a few days earlier, proved to be totally enthralling, as Zinnemann aided by Daniel Taradash’s screenplay from James Jones’ vast novel, fashions a complex movie with a tight-script aided by that tremendous cast. 

There was a recent short-lived new musical based on the book in London recently which even put back some of the gay material they could not use in 1953, but that could not save it, even with Sir Tim Rice's score.

Little moments here fascinate – those first looks between Monty Clift and Donna Reed, that entertainer at the Congress Club, or those smouldering intense scenes between Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. The brutality of the army is shown as Prewitt (Clift - heart-stoppingly beautiful here in his prime) refuses to box and Maggio (Sinatra) falls foul of brutal Fatso Judson (Borgnine). Those girls toiling at the Congress Club include weary Joan Shawlee and Jean Willes. Mickey Shaughnessy and William Ober also excel. Pearl Harbour when it comes is quick and gripping and its soon that last scene on the ship as Kerr and Reed leave Hawaii. 

Donna Reed’s classy Lorene isn’t as brassy as Jane Russell in THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER (also covering prostitution in those Hawaii years, Jane Russell label) while Kerr is simply a revelation here. 

Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOUR from 2001 is so inferior in every way to Zinnemann’s classic that one need barely mention it. I just watched again for the main sequence, where the special effects come into their own, while the 3 pretty people grapple with some puerile romantic triangle and then get their revenge on Japan !   
Carl Foreman's all-star 1963 THE VICTORS (a riposte to THE GREAT ESCAPE or THE LONGEST DAY?) was meant to be shown this afternoon, but for some reason was pulled from the tv schedules. At least we have seen it several times and commented on it here - War label.

Roman revels

Two more Ruth Roman movies from that busy year for her, 1951 - when she also played the female lead in Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, probably her best remembered film. Ruth, as I have mentioned here before - see label - was a tough gal, who did lots of melodramas and routine actioners (ok, B-movies) in the '50s and into the '60s, having began in the '40s - she is in Bette's BEYOND THE FOREST, and thanks to my IMDb pal Jerry for a mid-'40s serial she is in: JUNGLE QUEEN - I am saving that one for "some snowy night in front of the fire" and I am the lookout for her 1955 take on Shakespeare: JOE MACBETH (with her as the mobster's Lady Macbeth), which I remember seeing as a kid.  Ruth should have been as big a name as those other tough gals like Susan Hayward, or Barbara Stanwyck - Ruth could have played a lot of Stanwyck '50s roles like CLASH BY NIGHT or BLOWING WILD (she is the good girl in that, while Barbara is the bad wife, they have a nice scene together), or even some of Joan Crawford's roles, or Lizabeth Scott's or Jan Sterling's, and of course we love her in 1966's LOVE HAS MANY FACES where she gives Lana  Turner a run for her money in that delirious soap/trash classic. Ruth (1922-1999) ended up in shows like MURDER SHE WROTE and KNOTS LANDING. 

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY teams bad boy Steve Cochran with cheap dime-a-dance girl Ruth - looking very glam in a brassy blond wig (like Jane Russell's 'hostess' in wartime Hawaii in Trash Classic THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER, Russell label). 

Here is the blurb:

What kind of future awaits a couple with a past? Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran in a film-noir gem.

A man who spent his formative years in prison for murder is released, and struggles to adjust to the outside world and escape his lurid past. He gets involved with a cheap dancehall girl, and when her protector is accidentally killed, they go on the lam together, getting jobs as farm labourers. 
But some fellow workers get wise to them. Steve Cochran conveys the loneliness of his character, freed for killing his brutal father when he was only 13, and now he's still a tentative, gawky pubescent operating inside a man's hulky frame. Lonesome, he visits a 10-cents-a-dance palace and falls for brassy, grasping Ruth Roman. But the sudden shooting of her police-bigwig boyfriend causes the ill-matched couple to hit the road, ending in a California migrant-worker camp. Directed by one Felix Feist.

This conjures up a world of diners, drab rooming houses, people on the move hitching lifts and riding on trains and cheap motels like the Shady Nook where our couple on the run hole up, before they join that settlement of farm workers and make friends and seem to have a whole new life, leaving their sordid pasts behind them. Ruth even lets her hair go natural to black. But Steve's photo turns up in a magazine and the neighbours have to decide whether to turn him in for the reward .... fate however intervenes, but the ending is uplifing as our newly free couple can start all over again. Though surely a good time girl like Ruth would hardly settle for living in a shack and working in the fields ?

Both Cochran and Roman are ideal, he is in his prime here, as magnetic as Brando's WILD ONE in his tee-shirt and jeans, at least Warners didn't insist he shave his chest, like William Holden had to for PICNIC! - he was also good with Anne Baxter (another dame who could be tough when called for) in CARNIVAL STORY in '54, and of course his best known film, as the lead in Antonioni's IL GRIDO in 1957 (review at Cochran/Antonioni labels), and we reviewed his last film MOZAMBIQUE a while back. (He died aged 48 in 1965 while sailing a yacht in the Pacific, a notorious Hollywood bad boy in the Erroll Flynn tradition...).

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE is a more routine meller, directed by the great King Vidor (the '56 WAR AND PEACE, RUBY GENTRY, DUEL IN THE SUN, SOLOMON AND SHEBA etc), with British actor Richard Todd, and sterling support from Mercedes McCambridge firing on all cylinders as usual (as in JOHNNY GUITAR!) and that seedy lothario Zachary Scott (in a similar role here to his in MILDRED PIERCE). This time Ruth is the touring actress recuperating in the desert small town and getting to know Todd who is on reprieve from murdering his wife and facing a re-trial. Mercedes is the possessive woman who was on the jury, so it has all the elements for a romantic murder mystery suspense. 
Is the heroine in danger? - though hard to imagine Ruth not being able to fend for herself. It all plays out nicely, but if only it was as over the top as that other meller set in the desert in lurid colours: 1947's DESERT FURY which had Lizabeth Scott and Mary Astor as well as the young Burt Lancaster and that odd couple of John Hodiak and Wendall Corey, as per my review (Astor label).  

I have now seen a 1987 episode of MURDER SHE WROTE (from Series 4) where Ruth guests as Loretta, the owner of the Beauty Salon (think pink!) in Cabot Cove, where the local ladies - including ageless Julie Adams, Kathryn Grant and Gloria De Haven - get their hair done and gossip.
 Ruth is a joy and obviously in her element presiding over the Salon and dispensing gossip to Jessica .... she did 3 episodes of Lansbury's successful series, I shall now have to see her other two guest spots as well, as Ruth wound up her career here in a good way, in a deliciously entertaining tale. 

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

The Olympic Team sail to Europe ...

Dorothy and friends ...

Yup, its GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES once again, its starting just now - we love Lorelei Lee and her pursuit of diamonds but her pal Dorothy (Jane Russell - love that swaggercoat) has a good eye for beefcake and once she finds out the U.S. Olympic team are on board their ship to "Europe France" she wastes no time in joining them in the gym, the boys though are in strict training .... "Ain't there anyone here for love?" Its another terrific Jack Cole number that fits in perfectly with Howard  Hawks' delirious extravaganza, along with 'Piggy' Beekman and Henry Spofforth III, and Piggy's wife (Norma Varden) and her tiara ...as Lorelei says, she just loves finding new places to wear diamonds.

Trashy delights

Before we return to the art house [a feast of Catherine Deneuve - 6, maybe 8 titles, more Techine, Chabrol, Melville and 2 rare Antonioni's, plus more Gerard Philipe, Ozon and Fassbinder] and more middle-brow entertainment [THE LION IN WINTER, those Troy Donahue movies, and a brace of Glenda Jackson's] how about a look back at some of those trash classics reviewed here? Call them what you will: Bad Movies We Love, The Great Bad Movies, Trash Classics or Guilty Pleasures, there is still a whole lot of fun to be gleaned from re-running crazy flicks like:

MAMBO - 1954 meller set in Italy, where Shelley Winters has the hots for Silvana Mangano, who dances up a storm. Shelley runs into a truck ....

SYLVIA - Carroll Baker is the poetess investigated in this 1965 hoot by George Maharis for sleazy Peter Lawford, cue lots of cameos by Viveca Lindfors, Joanne Dru, Edmond O'Brien, Aldo Ray and a scary drag queen.

LOVE HAS MANY FACES - the best of the Lana melodramas? Lana is glazed in Acaculpo, with beach boy gigolos including Hugh O'Brien in speedos, while Ruth Roman pays for what she wants .....

A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME - Shelley again in this 64 sudser about a famous madam in 20s New York - the gals lounge around in evening dresses and make prostitution look easy

THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER - Jane Russell, sensational, is the hard-boiled gal buying up wartime Hawaii, while Agnes Moorehead is the even more hard-boiled blonde madam running that cat house ..... 1956 treat.

GO NAKED IN THE WORLD - Gina Lollobrigida is another high-living working girl in this 1960 expose - but BUTTERFIELD 8 got all the kudos

THE PRODIGAL - the most hilarious of the biblicals, this 1955 one has Lana in the barely there outfits as the pagan priestess tormenting Edmund Purdom, who wrestles with a stuffed vulture, Lana takes a tumble when the slaves revolt ....

THE SINGING NUN - MGM must have thought another nun film would clean up in 1966 after Julie's success - this though is hilariously awful as Sister Debbie Reynolds plays her guitar and gives up wordly success to look after babies in Africa - see it and hoot.

WHERE LOVE HAS GONE - enjoyable tosh with Susan and Bette snarling at each other in 1964, camp probably doesn't get much better than this, with horrible fashions, no period detail and wooden male leads. More Joe Levine garbage.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - this knows it is trash and all the better for it, THE trash classic? those girls Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke as Neely O'Hara, Sharon Tate, and Susan's Helen Lawson and that catfight in the ladies room ...... we cherish every awful wonderful moment.

A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY - as I say in my review (trash label) "any film that begins with Franco Nero in his underwear tied to a chair while Vanessa Redgrave removes her panties and begins to chew his nipples can't be all bad ...." this 1969 arty euro-drek is well worth a look.

THE LOVE MACHINE - maybe the one I love to hate the most - this 1971 flick is an absolute scream: John Philip Law as the hollow heel, David Hemmings camping it up as the gay photographer (sending up BLOW-UP perhaps), Dyan Cannon yelling "fag" at everyone - more lurid trash from Jacqueline Suzann.



Of course there are also more 'guilty pleasures' I love like WALK ON THE WILD SIDE and THE CARPETBAGGERS - movies which know and wallow in their trashiness, and those delirious sudsers like Anouk's JUSTINE and Susan Hayward's STOLEN HOURS, ADA, BACK STREET, I THANK A FOOL, and Romy's awful MY LOVER MY SON, and Burton's terrible BLUEBEARD, a howler from 1972 ...

and the two I despise: THE OSCAR and the Carroll Baker HARLOW. For me there is nothing to enjoy in these, they are made with such contempt for the audience, and the would-be sleaze is laughable.

Check out the Trash reviews and enjoy at Trash or labels on any of the above: Lana, Shelley, Susan, Debbie, Gina, Silvana, Vanessa, Franco, Anouk, Jean Sorel, Carroll Baker etc ......

Jane Russell RIP

What a gal - one likes her Dorothy in GENTLMEN PREFER BLONDES just as much as Marilyn's Lorelei - and of course there is that number of hers with the Olympic team (choreographed by Jack Cole) "Ain't there anyone here for love?". Whether with Marilyn, Gable, Mitchum or Hope Jane was a swell gal. (Review of THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER at Jane Russell link). She even plays "herself" in the 1964 FATE IS THE HUNTER. Nice to see she had a good innings since those heady '40s days of THE OUTLAW!