Cleopatra out-takes ...

Elizabeth Taylor and veteran actor Finlay Currie on the set of CLEOPATRA. But Finlay wasn't in CLEOPATRA you say - quite right, his part was surgically removed when they were cutting the 6 hour epic down to a more manageable 4 .... pity Finlay didn't make the cut here, he was in so many other epics, from QUO VADIS? to BEN HUR. 

FILMS IN REVIEW is a fascinating little magazine I missed at the time, its good discovering them now, like that 1988 one with a terrific interview with Lee Remick looking back over her career, and this recent acquisition I found on ebay, dated January 1988 with a good feature on CLEOPATRA, going through the original Mankiewicz screenplay for his proposed six hour version, which would be shown in two parts. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox soon put paid to that and the 4-hour version that exists now is as much as we are going to get. 
I don't think there will be any A STAR IS BORN-type restoration here! 

Other deletions, apart from Finlay, included background material on those other characters like Ruffio, Sosigenes, Apollodorus, Octavian, etc. 

I like this particular scene closing the first half, as Cleo sails away, its perfectly written, acted, and scored with that great Alex North score.

Among the supporting players we also like Richard OSullivan (the little boy in DANGEROUS EXILE) as the petulant young Pharoah, Gregoire Alsan as the scheming Pothinus, and Pamela Brown's all-seeing high priestess, and of course we love the opulent sets and costumes, as discussed before, and that great panning shot over the bay of Alexandria as Caesar arrives ....  There is still a lot to enjoy in CLEOPATRA not least Rex as Caesar and as befits a Mankiewicz film, the dialogue is to savour.

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.

The Honeypot, 1967

THE HONEYPOT, filmed in Venice in 1966 and released in 1967, is a choice treat now, an acid comedy by Mankiewicz with  great role for Rex Harrison and three super ladies: Susan Hayward, Capucine and Edie Adams with two rising players on the sidelines: Maggie Smith (already a scene stealer as she proved in THE VIPs and THE PUMPKIN EATER) and Cliff Robertson. Its lensed by ace cameraman Gianni Di Venanzo and looks great. Talky yes, but when Mank is scripting and Rex and Maggie saying the lines bliss is assured. 

Inspired by a performance of his favorite play, Ben Johnson's "Volpone," Cecil Fox (Rex Harrison) devises an intricate plan to trick three of his former mistresses into believing he is dying at his opulent home in Venice. Fox hires William McFly (Cliff Robertson), a man of many trades including being a sometime actor to act as his secretary. Though the women have vast fortunes of their own, Fox depends on their greediness to bring them running. There is Merle McGill (Edie Adams), a Hollywood sex symbol; Princess Dominique (Capucine), who once took a cruise on Fox's yacht; and Lone Star Crockett (Susan Hayward), a Texas hypochondriac who travels with her nurse Sarah (Maggie Smith). 

As Fox and McFly act out their charade, Lone Star states to the other women that she is the only one entitled to the inheritance since she is Fox's common-law wife. Later that night as Sarah and William go out for drinks where Sarah tells of her daily routine of walking Lone Star at 3:00 AM to give her more sleeping pills to get through the night, William then excuses himself to make a phone call and Sarah, tired from her travels slips off to sleep for about an hour. When Lone Star is found dead later that morning from an overdose, Sarah immediately suspects William. Her suspicions are confirmed when she finds the roll of quarters missing from Lone Star’s bag in William’s room. 

She confronts William with her findings and he promptly locks her in her room demanding she keep her mouth shut about the whole situation. Fearing that William will now kill Fox, she uses the dumbwaiter that connects her room to his to pull herself up and warn him. Fox both praises her intellect and her stupidity, leaving Sarah slightly confused but relieved that she has forewarned Fox.

But Fox has one more trick up his sleeve, and Lone Star gets the last word in ..... to say any more would spoil the surprise. 

Harrison, in his fourth outing with Mankiewicz, relishes the witty dialogue, the three woman are all up to their usual level, though we do not see too much of Hayward as Lone Star. Her husband back in Georgia USA died during the shoot, and old pal Mank may have released her early so she could return home ... Capucine displays her usual haughly elegance and glamour as the impoverished princess, and Edie is as amusing as she was in LOVER COME BACK or LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER. 
Maggie of course compels all the attention whenever she is on, particularly her scenes with Rex.   Its all probably a bit too talky and high-faluting for some, but certainly a treat if one is in the mood and ready to spend time with these fascinating people .... 
Susan went on to give us her Helen Lawson later that year in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, but thats another post. Maggie of course later played nurse/companion to Bette Davis in DEATH ON THE NILE in 1978 where both were very droll. Mank had one more hit in store: SLEUTH in 1972. We love him of course for LETTER TO 3 WIVES, ALL ABOUT EVE, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, CLEOPATRA, THE GHOST & MRS MUIR etc, as per reviews, at label. Its a good late role for Rex too, after his Caesar for Mank in CLEOPATRA, THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE and MY FAIR LADY - unless one counts DR DOLITTLE or, heaven forbid, STAIRCASE! 

Cleo & Alex revisited

I always enjoy settling down to watch CLEOPATRA again - particularly if recording it from widescreen HD television, so one can zip past an occasional dull bit. Ditto Robert Rossen's 1956 ALEXANDER THE GREAT - a more turgid telling of the Alexander story than Oliver Stone's 2004 dazzling magnum opus which I like a lot - check posts on ALEXANDER at Colin Farrell label.

CLEOPATRA got a bad press at the time and was considered a turkey for a long time, but its a fascinating movie -- the first half at any rate as Rex Harrison is a dynamic Caesar and there are impressive set pieces - that great panning shot over Alexandra as Caesar arrives (Stone must have hommaged this in his ALEXANDER as he also shows us Alexandra where the aged Ptolomy is dictating his memoirs), and all those early scenes with Taylor and Harrison and of course that entry into Rome! 20th Century Fox certainly lavished care and attention and money on the sets and costumes and crowd scenes - all those people were really there. Taylor is impressive with that make-up and all those costume changes (a great wardrobe by Irene Sharaff, like that contrasting blue and red she wears when seeing Caesar's assassination in the flames, with high priestess Pamela Brown) and I love the score by Alex North - my best friend had the soundtrack album so we used to play it a lot. Leon Shamroy's cinematography captures the opulence of the sets.
I like that closing scene to the first half too as Cleo sails away and the music swells up. Her barge entering Tarsus in the second half is a wow too .... but here Burton rants and Taylor gets shrill ("I asked it of Julius Caesar, I DEMAND it of you"..), then the final scenes in the tomb are marvellous. I first saw this on its general release, maybe in '64 or '65, and those close-ups of Taylor on the big screen as the asp bites are someone one remembers .... Legend has it that Mankiewiz was writing the script by night and shooting during the day, after the film relocated to Italy and the famous scandal erupted. The dvd and blu-ray packages are good too, packed with all those features and documentaries including footage of Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd, initially cast, and Joan Collins' screen test as Cleo ...... it would not have been the same. 
CLEOPATRA remains impressive and a lot of fun, without the cachet of  Kubrick's SPARTACUS or Mann's EL CID or FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, or those other great epics of the time like Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or Visconti's THE LEOPARD. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 1956, is another movie I remember fondly, first seeing it as a kid at a Sunday matinee, some great images linger: Danielle Darrieux as Alexander's mother Olympias on the battlements as the troops depart, and that great moment with the dying Darius (Harry Andrews) abandoned after the battle. A blond Burton does his best, and again there is a good cast including Claire Bloom, Peter Cushing, Andrews and Stanley Baker. Here are a cache of lobby cards:  

From that era, we also like Robert Wise's HELEN OF TROY, Fleischer's THE VIKINGS , Cecil's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, LeRoy's QUO VADIS and of course Wyler's BEN HUR, and I will add in SOLOMON AND SHEBA too ! Then there' those Steve Reeves movies ..... 

Margo's breakfast .....

Having squeezed some real oranges this morning to make fresh juice, I flashbacked to Margo Channng's breakfast in ALL ABOUT EVE (I mentioned it a few years ago, but lets remind ourselves):

Birdie enters with Margo's breakfast on a tray  A glass of orange juice sitting in a bowl of ice - perhaps fresh chilled orange juice was not available in supermarkets 65 years ago? One can just picture Birdie squeezing the oranges every morning and the ice in the bowl keeps it cold without diluting it. Margo then has a coffee and a cigarette ....

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! 

5 Fingers, 1952

Here's a civilised treat for a rainy afternoon .... Take some people we like - James Mason, Danielle Darrieux - and a writer/director at the top of his game: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (or Mank) and put them to film a true story, full of exciting twists and turns:

In neutral Turkey during WWII, the ambitious and extremely efficient valet for the British ambassador tires of being a servant and forms a plan to promote himself to rich gentleman of leisure. His employer has many secret documents; he will photograph them, and with the help of a refugee Countess, sell them to the Nazis. When he makes a lot of money, he will retire to South America with the Countess as his wife.

That busy actor Michael Rennie is fine as the intrepid British counter intelligence agent and John Weingraf as the German Ambassador to Turkey also score. Bernard Herrmann does the music score and script is by Michael Wilson. No wonder Hitch wanted Mason for NORTH BY NORTHWEST after seeing him here as Diello the suave perfect valet who is not what he seems. Danelle's mercenary Countess has a great line to a German underling:  "I wish you wouldn't look at me as if you had some source of income other than your salary." Mank had the Award-winning hits ALL ABOUT EVE and A LETTER TO THREE WIVES under his belt, with several more to come - I liked his 1950 rare race thriller NO WAY OUT a while back (Mank label) and must see his Cary Grant starrer PEOPLE WILL TALK from this early 50s era soon too. 

Coming up after my trip to Ireland - 4 Jane Fonda items, from IMDB pal Jerry last week: Not seen her first, TALL STORY, or that 1962 Tennessee Willliams comedy PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT; and not seen Vadim's hilariously awful THE GAME IS OVER from 1966 since then - and then there's Godard's TOUT VA BIEN from 1972 when Jane was in revolutionary mode .... will I like all or any of them ?

All About Eve cast photo !

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

A favourite '40s scene: A Letter to 3 Wives

I have written here before about A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (see Darnell, Mankiewicz labels), maybe my favourite Joseph L. Mankiewicz film, even more so than ALL ABOUT EVE, and an enduring 1940s classic (which Mank wrote and made in 1949, a year before EVE - winning Oscars both years for directing and writing, his 1950 NO WAY OUT is also a terrific discovery). 

A LETTER TO THREE WIVES is of course the story of the three society ladies, cut off from the telephone for the day as they are away on that boat on a school trip, each wondering which of their husbands has run off with town vamp Addie Ross, who has kindly sent them a letter just as they were leaving ... 
cue flashbacks on each marrage, done in Mank's best style as we savour all that dialogue and witty situations, and of course its that 1940s dreamworld personified, where they are all comfortably off with large, roomy houses, those big estate cars and domestic help for when entertaining - cue Thelma Ritter as Sadie in the maid's outfit.

So we have new girl Jeanne Crain back from the forces, and coping with small town society and the local country club - this is the least interesting story, but the main one is a doozy, as Lora Mae (Lnda Darnell) from the wrong side of town (dig the family house next to the rail-line where everything rattles when trains go by) sets her sights at local rich guy 
Porter Hollingsway (Paul Douglas) and marvel at how she reels him in, with that ladder in her stockings and holding out until that New Year's Eve when he gives in, and calls and asks her to marry him. Her mother Connie Gilchrist indeed cries "Bingo"! But she and Porter end up resenting each other, until Addie Ross comes along and chooses a husband ..

Thelma's Sadie

The scene I want to focus on is when the other wife, smart radio writer Ann Sothern, who earns more than her teacher husband Kirk Douglas, has a dinner party to which she invites her radio boss Mrs Manleigh (Florence Bates - as deliciously nasty as her Mrs Van Hopper in REBECCA), an ignorant, bossy snob, with her docile husband. Sadie - a friend of Lora Mae's mother - is hired to help, cue much amusement as Sadie announces dinner is ready, and Mrs Manleigh picks up on Lora Mae's chat with the hired help ..... Mankiewicz's script hones in on the power of radio - it would be television in a few years - and how people listen to it. Sadie has the radio on all the time, so Mrs Manleigh thinks she is being "saturated" and "penetrated" by the advertisements. Lora Mae dryly retorts that she has seen Sadie saturated quite a lot .... (Thelma Ritter scores here, as she does next year as Birdie in Mank's ALL ABOUT EVE.)

Then everything has to stop for Mrs Manleigh's radio show, which goes on and on, after she breaking the classical record which Addie had sent to Kirk, who finally sees red and lets Mrs Manleigh have it. Ann too has had enough and refuses to do Mrs Manleigh's edits until Monday.  She too worries on that day out, if is it her husband who has run off with mantrap Addie Ross. 
We never see Addie, but she is voiced by Celeste Holm.

Events are resolved as they all gather again at the country club, and Porter reveals that it was him who ran off with Addie, but changed his mind. Lora Mae can now divorce him and take him to the cleaners. "You big gorilla" she says as they now know they love each other ..... Bliss, sheer bliss .... Its a treat one can watch any time.  There was a later tv remake, but who would bother with that.

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).