This post
is part of the CMBA Gene Kelly
Blogathon, running from August 20 through August 25, 2012.
We of Team Bartilucci have joined forces for another double-feature in the CMBA's salute to the one and only Gene Kelly! We hope you'll enjoy our mad yet lovable ramblings!
We of Team Bartilucci have joined forces for another double-feature in the CMBA's salute to the one and only Gene Kelly! We hope you'll enjoy our mad yet lovable ramblings!
Dorian’s Pick: The Devil Makes Three (1952)
With so many
of us writing about Gene Kelly’s musicals for the titular CMBA Blogathon, I thought it would be an interesting
change of pace to focus on one of Kelly’s action-adventure films. Mine has a
Salzburg Connection, though it doesn’t have a Helen MacInnes plot (that would
be the bailiwick of our friend and fellow blogger Yvette
Banek of …in so many words fame)! I chose the 1952
action-drama The Devil Makes Three (TDM3). The title explains a
tenet in Islam: an unmarried boy and a girl should never be alone together.
It’s acceptable to have two boys or two girls in a room, or larger
numbers and permutations. But if a boy and a girl are alone together, it’s said
the devil is the third person in the room. With that in mind, I’d say the real
devil to fear in this moody suspenser is the poverty and desperation which
force hard choices on our protagonists, Captain Jeff Eliot (Kelly, excellent in
a dramatic role); and the vulnerable yet determined Wilhelmina Lehrt (Pier Angeli of Somebody Up There Likes Me; Teresa; and Merry Andrew, who left us
way too soon), or “Willie,” as Jeff affectionately nicknames her.
But you know what really piqued my interest in TDM3? Two words: Snowmobile
Nazis! How’s that for a high concept?
 |
| Disney on Ice is nowhere near as badass as these snowbound Wild Ones on Ice! |
Set in 1947
just after the war, we viewers get a catch-up prologue from Colonel James Terry
(Richard Rober of The Well; Father’s Little Dividend; The Tall Target),
with our story being “a composite of case histories taken from the Munich
headquarters file, Criminal Investigation Division Corps of Military Police,
United States Army.” Over footage of the notorious Braunes Haus that housed the Nazis, Col. Terry
dryly notes, “There isn’t even a ‘For Sale’ sign on the lot where the Braunes
Haus once stood.”
After this prologue, the action begins! Around the Christmas holidays, a
woman (Charlotte Fleming) drives on an icy road, skidding. She stops, hurries
into a phone booth, and speaks urgently—only to have her phone call cut off
permanently when two motorcycle cops pull up and shoot her dead in a hail of
bullets! Yikes! Talk about Hell on wheels! The only clue is a
business card with the insignia “Silhouette.”
 |
| I see a little Silhouette of a club! (Scaramouche! Scaramouche!) |
Meanwhile,
our hero Jeff has just left the U.S. to return to Germany (instead of vice-versa as one would expect). Jeff has been writing to the Lehrt
family and sending them gifts since he returned to the States, and he’s brought
all the trimmings of an old-fashioned Christmas to thank the Lehrts for saving
his life during the war. But when he drives to the address he knew, he finds
the place practically in ruins, with a German family that’s definitely not
the Lehrts! The family now living there are strangers to Jeff; they
shamefacedly admit nobody else has lived there for ages, and they’ve been
accepting Jeff’s care packages all this time because otherwise, they’d be
starving in the rubble of what’s left of their ramshackle home. Being a decent
joe despite his frustration and puzzlement, Jeff gives the bombed-out family
the gifts he’d intended to give the Lehrts, then sets out to see what the heck
happened to them.
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| Our hero Captain Jeff Eliot thinks he can see his house from here! |
When Jeff
gets together with Lieutenant Parker (the versatile Richard Egan from Love
Me Tender; Violent Saturday; Pollyanna), he and us viewers get more
background. The Lehrts were a family of musicians and singers, and pretty young
Willie was only 15 the last time Jeff saw her. He’d met the family during the
war, when his outfit was captured in a raid over Innsbrook, then thrown into a
nearby prison camp. Two days later, the Lehrts had managed to hide the injured
Jeff in the family’s cellar. Shortly after New Year’s Day, the family smuggled
him to an area where he’d be able to walk to safety. Parker suggests they check
the Central Registry, where there’s a complete casualty list, even if it means
forgoing his previously planned evening of beer, bratwurst, and knockwurst—now That’s
Entertainment (not to mention friendship)!
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| In Germany, our heroes hope for the best, but expect the wurst! |
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| Is that a bruise under
Willie's eye? Poor girl, she probably wishes she could be marching home! |
Their search
bears fruit. Of all the gin joints in all the world, Jeff and Parker find
Willie (Angeli) at her workplace—none other than Silhouette! It’s full
of beautiful girl singers and tough-looking guys who aren’t exactly gentlemen.
Let’s just say the gals at Silhouette aren’t working there because
it’s their dream job. Willie has grown up into a lovely, doe-eyed young woman
with a bruised psyche. Having been orphaned and living on her own, she’s become
understandably cynical since she last saw Jeff. They talk as they walk among
the bombed-out buildings in the moonlight (almost sounds romantic, in a film noir way):
Willie: “Enjoying the sights, Captain?”
Jeff: “Oh…from the air, it all looks different. You had one idea up
there, and that was to navigate the plane to the aiming point.”
Willie (sarcastically): “You did a good job.”
Another of my favorite TDM3
lines:
Willie: “You will like it here at Silhouette. At midnight, Kris Kringle
comes down the chimney and does a strip-tease.”
Jeff wants to make amends and thank Willie on account of
her late parents having saved his life. He’d like to start by giving Willie the
Christmas holiday with all the trimmings that she’d loved in happier, pre-war,
pre-Nazi days. Since Jeff is doing well at his navigation instructor job in the
States, he wants to go all out to show Willie a happy time, so they’re off to Salzburg for the
holidays! I love Willie’s running gag about “getting a commission” from
businesses around town, like at the car dealership. Ah, but as soon as Jeff and
Willie hit the road, good ol’ Honest Oberlitz (Bum Krüger) scrambles into the
garage, yelling in German, and who should come roaring out but those evil
motorcycle guys, hell-bent for leather and burning rubber! What the heck do
those no-goodniks want from our heroes?
As they drive
on the Autobahn, which Jeff compares favorably to the Pennsylvania Turnpike
(wow, the Autobahn must have been way less crowded in the 1950s!),
Willie gives Jeff a history lesson:
Willie: “The Fuhrer built it. It was supposed
to carry its conquering armies to glory. Now it carries the conquerors. How
does it feel to be a conqueror?”
Jeff: “Most of the guys stationed here
would rather be driving along the Turnpike. We’re not cut out to be
conquerors.”
I must say I
enjoyed TDM3’s touches of wry humor, poking good-natured
fun at the gentler post-war changes at Germans vs. Austrians, such as the
Austrian diner with a juke-box, where the personnel use American slang like
“Adam and Eve on a raft.” I also loved the beautiful locations, with shots of
the locations as pretty as a postcard, especially since this is probably the
closest I’ll ever get to that part of the world!
 |
| I keep expecting to
hear Gene Kelly and the kids singing “I Got Rhythm” in German! |
But things
get serious when Parker discovers that, unbeknownst to Jeff, that German car is
chock full of contraband—specifically, there’s gold under the car’s top
coat! It turns out Willie had to secretly drive contraband across the
Austro-German border, though Willie is having second thoughts after falling in
love with Jeff (can you blame her?), plus the poor phone booth gal killed
earlier in the film was a friend of Willie’s, and she doesn’t want to meet the
same awful fate. What’s more, apparently this dastardly Nacht de Legernogen (sic), described
as “The Last Will and Testament of the Third Reich,” outlines chilling procedures
after the hoped-for defeat. Grr! Nazis—I hate those guys (don't we all?)! Can Willie and
Jeff conquer the bad guys and go on to live happy lives of baseball, hot dogs,
apple pie, Chevrolets, and, for Willie, American citizenship? Although
Kelly doesn’t get any song-and-dance numbers, I found him both tough and tender as the
determined yet caring Jeff, and I thought he and Angeli worked well
together. I was especially moved as Willie did her best to survive with dignity
while being forced into hard choices just to stay alive.
 |
| No mistletoe required! |
TDM3 was filmed on location in Munich and Salzburg, with a
screenplay by Jerry Davis (known for such Warner Bros TV series as 77 Sunset
Strip, Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside Six, Bewitched, and The
Odd Couple, as well as the 1955 horror thriller Cult of the Cobra),
and based on a story by producer Lawrence P. Bachman, known for his 1960s
series of comedy-whodunits based on Dame Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple
mysteries, starting in 1961 with Murder, She Said. That movie series is
dear to Team Bartilucci’s collective heart, especially since it starred the
delightful Dame Margaret Rutherford
(and we all know there’s nothing like a Dame!), as well as Children of the
Damned, the 1964 sequel to the horror classic Village of the Damned.
 | |
| Uh-oh! X doesn’t mark the spot in a good way here! |
 |
| Hurry, Jeff, distract
the villain with a dance number! |
The film was
directed by Andrew Marton, who was no stranger to action films and war films.
His work included The Longest Day; the 1950 version of King Solomon’s
Mines; science-fiction thriller Crack in the World, another Team B. fave; and
the 1964 version of James Jones’ celebrated novel The Thin Red Line. (Terence
Malick’s 1998 version included an all-star cast, including future Oscar-winner
and Team Bartilucci favorite Adrien Brody, but
that’s a story for another time.) The driving rhythm of Bronislau Kaper’s
music (Gaslight; Whistling in the Dark; The Naked Spur) sets an
appropriate pulse-pounding pace as TDM3 moves along. But it’s not
all action movie music by any means. Since the story is set in post-war Munich and Austria
during the Christmas season, there's poignancy and grim reminders of the
aftermath of World War 2. Bombed-out ruins, some of which housed the Nazis
(good riddance, Nazi scum!), sit side-by-side with the new buildings of the
ongoing reconstruction, while ironic reminders of the war appear along with
holiday music such as “Oh, Christmas Tree” (in both English and German). The
New York Times movie reviewer, identified only as H.H.T (the venerable
Howard Thompson, perhaps?) was underwhelmed with Jerry
 |
| “Hi, I’m Claus
Clausen, I’ll be your Otto Preminger for this evening….” |
 |
| Boy, Oberlitz's coffee sure is a knockout! |
Davis’ screenplay for
the post-war adventure drama The Devil Makes Three (TDM3). Oh,
well, can’t please everyone!
Vinnie’s Pick: What A Way
I must confess to bending the rules slightly with this entry. This is
undoubtedly a film that belongs to Shirley MacLaine. Like a housecat who
graciously lets people live in their homes, Shirley allows several leading men
to share the screen with her, and each time she makes them feel comfortable,
like they're the only man in the world. Gene Kelly is the last of them,
but it could be argued that his appearance is the grandest and most over the
top.
Shirley plays Louisa May Foster, a shy, unassuming girl who through no fault of her own, appears to be cursed. For every time she attempts to marry for love, her husbands seem to become bestowed with uncontrollable success. Everything goes their way, they become engrossed in their work, and it ends with them dying in progressively outlandish fashions, leaving her alone, and each time, exponentially wealthier. The film begins with her attempting to give all her money to the IRS in the form of a single check for 250 million dollars. She is met with doubt, and is sent to a psychiatrist (Bob Cummings) to whom she bares her tale of woe.
Louisa is now a wealthy woman, and travels to Paris to start anew. There she meets Larry Flint - not that one, a struggling artist played by Paul Newman. He lives the stereotypical life of an artist, in a loft surrounded by other eccentric creators, including a chimpanzee who's currently more productive than any of them. Larry's medium is a mechanical painting device of his own invention that converts sound to brush strokes. Louisa, happy to find another man who abhors wealth, marries him, and they live the simple life in their paint-stained loft. But she whammies him as well, and when she suggests he play beautiful music for the machine to interpret, it paints a masterpiece. He builds an assembly line of them, and is making money hand over waldo, leaving her alone again, first figuratively, and later literally when the machines turn on him and turn him into their living (for a while) canvas.
Her third try, she goes the opposite direction - Rod Anderson (Robert Mitchum) is even more staggeringly wealthy than she, and they hit it off immediately. During a wild montage of parties and truly spectacular costumes (all created by the equally spectacular Edith Head), Rod is amazed to learn that athough he's been totally ignoring his business, he's actually made MORE money. However, Louisa convinces him to sell everything and live his dream - to move back to a farm like the one he grew up on. They do so, and are blissfully happy...until one morning, Rod accidentally tries to milk their prize bull, Melrose. The moment is understated and only implied, but is truly hilarious - his last words, "Melrose, forGIVE me!", are preceded by a strained and surprised bovine bellow, and followed by him being kicked out the back of the barn.
Her next paramour comes in the form of Pinky Benson (Yes folks, you've been patient - it's Gene Kelly) an earnest but happy where he is song and dance man who performs in a local tavern called the Cauliflower Ear. His act is pure schmaltz - he wears a clown getup, and does a fast hoofer nonsense number in the style of fifties performer Pinky Lee. He's barely noticed by the audience, which is just fine by the owner - a status quo that's lasted fourteen years. Once again, Louisa thinks she's found a man who wants no more out of life than he's already got, and they wed. And it all goes very well. Until...
One of the recurring motifs in the film is Louisa's complimentary comparison of each of her marriages to a different kind of classic film. Her early time with Hopper was like a melodramatic silent film where love conquered all, her time in France like a French impressionistic picture, and the high-rent world of Rod like a series of lavish entrances in a "Lush Budgett" glamour film. Her time with Pinky / Kelly, predictably enough, is portrayed as an over the top musical production. Kelly, at 52 by the time of this film, is still staggeringly light on his feet, and Shirley more than keeps up with him.
Heading out for his birthday party after a performance, Louisa suggests he save time by not applying his makeup, and do the act in his street clothes. He feels a bit shy without his costume, and he sings his number softly, and at half speed. Rather than his clownish (naturally) buck and wing, he does a gentle soft-shoe number. As the raucous restaurant slowly grows silent to pay attention to him, Louisa realizes she's done it a again. Pinky is discovered before they can finish a whip-pan, and Louisa is morosely lounging around a massive Hollywood mansion as Pinky works on a number of films at once. Far from the soft-spoken hoofer she married, Kelly now plays Pinky in full-on parody mode, with a brassy voice and the traditional "My public" mode of the triple-threat mogul.
At his latest premiere, they arrive in an all-pink Rolls, Louisa's head buried in a pink wig, and wrapped head to toe in pink mink. The film, naturally, is a smash. The surging crowd of fans are out of control, and his producers suggest he leave out the back entrance. Just as they're about to leave, he realizes he can't do it to his fans, and pops out from the alley to surprise them. BAD move. They thunder toward him, their advance deftly mixed with shots (and sound effects) of stampeding elephants. He is literally trampled to death by his adoring public.
As the dream sequences get progressively longer, so too her time spent with
each husband, which means that Kelly gets the most time on screen. He gets
to play a good spectrum, from the shy tavern performer, to the lovestruck
husband to the bombastic movie icon. MacLaine is adorable throughout the
film, eternally desperate for love, spending most of her time swathed in the
most astounding finery, alternately covering her entirely, and leaving so little
to the imagination you wonder how brother Warren didn't storm onto the set and
slap all the cameramen. Her high pitched voice sounds like if she were in a comic book, it'd have little musical notes in her word balloons, like Melody from Josie and the Pussycats did.I deliberately tried to keep my summaries of the rest of her paramours brief, as this is a Gene Kelly tribute. But let me assure you, I left out a LOT of detail, and it's all worth a look. The film's been making the rounds on cable, and is pretty easy to catch up with. And well worth doing, as well.
