The Mad Miss Manton: Swing Out, Sisters!

When RKO’s 1938 screwball comedy-mystery The Mad Miss Manton (TMMM) was shown on TCM, our genial host Robert Osborne noted that Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda had made three films together, all comedies: TMMM, The Lady Eve, and You Belong to Me, the latter two released in 1941. Set in then-contemporary New York City (but actually filmed in Burbank, CA in 100-degree heat, according to John M. Miller’s TCM article!), TMMM came first. Director Leigh Jason had also worked with Stanwyck and co-star Hattie McDaniel in The Bride Walks Out (1936), before McDaniel won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Gone With The Wind (1939). 

Stanwyck’s part was originally meant for Katharine Hepburn, but Bringing Up Baby’s bad box office put the kibosh on that, though of course nowadays it’s hailed as a classic. Besides, things worked out fine for Hepburn, as she moved on to her Oscar-nominated performance in The Philadelphia Story (1940), among so many other triumphs. In any case, Stanwyck’s flair for comedy is just right for her role as Melsa Manton, madcap heiress extraordinaire. That’s my favorite kind of heiress, especially if she’d like to plunk a few bucks into my pocket during one of her charity scavenger hunts!

Melsa Manton has The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora Charles beat when it comes to chic yet zany sleuthing, at least when it comes to sheer numbers: she has eight gorgeous debutante girlfriends who are as loyal as they are endearingly kooky, with no-nonsense maid Hilda (McDaniel) shaking her head at these nutty rich folks. For the most part, the girls are happy to help Melsa solve murders, the occasional growled threat or thrown knife notwithstanding. Fun Fact: Melsa and her eight gal pals were no doubt playfully modeled on the northeastern women’s colleges known as “The Seven Sisters:” Barnard; Bryn Mawr; Mount Holyoke; Radcliffe; Smith; Vassar; and Wellesley. Of course, this being a Hollywood movie, another “sister” was added.  That’s Hollywood for you, always making everything bigger and bolder!

We first meet Melsa walking a gaggle of cute little dogs at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m.; is this how our pet-loving heroine makes extra spending money, or does she prefer to take her pets walkies when the neighbors are in bed, unaware Melsa’s pooches are leaving, er, souvenirs?  She notices Rex Realty signs plastered all over the house. Turns out it belongs to Sheila Lane (Leona Maricle, who’d also worked with Stanwyck in My Reputation), the wife of wealthy banker George Lane. Suddenly a car speeds past the site of the new subway. Melsa recognizes local gent Ronnie Belden (William Corson). Unlike the usual stereotype of New Yorkers who mind their own business, Melsa lets her curiosity get the best of her. Her impromptu investigation brings her to the deserted Lane house, where she finds a diamond brooch—and Lane’s bloodied body! As she flees in panic, Melsa drops the brooch. By the time Melsa gets ahold of Lieutenant Mike Brent (Team Bartilucci fave Sam Levene from The Killers; After The Thin Man; Shadow of The Thin Man; Last Embrace), the corpse has gone AWOL.

Don’t worry about the press as long as
they spell your name right!

Lt. Brent and the rest of New York’s Finest are pretty darn peeved, considering that Melsa and her friends have a reputation as merry pranksters. Too bad our heroine happens to be dressed in a Little Bo-Peep costume for an artists’ ball, which doesn’t exactly do wonders for her credibility. Granted, Melsa swears their playful pranks were only meant to draw positive attention for the good causes they work on in the name of their various charities, like running a TB clinic and other helpful, clean-cut activities. Melsa and her pals clearly mean well, but haven’t they ever heard that charity begins at home? Maybe they should stay out of trouble by making lanyards for the poor or something. To add insult to injury, not only do Lt. Brent and his men refuse to investigate, but Peter Ames (Fonda), editor of The Morning Clarion, writes a stern article about Melsa’s hijinks, resulting in much comical slapping. One lawsuit, coming right up! With their reputations on the line, Melsa and the girls become amateur sleuths.  Debutante Roll Call, sound off now! 

1. Frances Mercer as Helen Frayne, the most sensible of Melsa’s gorgeous friends. The daughter of prominent East Coast sportswriter Sid Mercer, the raven-haired beauty was a “Powers Girl” model in New York in her teens back in the 1930s (as were my dear mom and aunt. Wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall with those gals swapping stories). Mercer went on to act and sing on stage, screen, and TV, including the Broadway musicals All the Things you Are; Very Warm for May; and Something for the Boys.
2. Kay Sutton as Gloria Hamilton. This lovely brunette’s screen credits include Carefree; The Saint in New York; Vivacious Lady. Gloria gets a nice punch line when the girls find what may or may not be bodily fluids:
   Dora: “How can that be blood? It’s blue.”
   Gloria: “Maybe he shot Mrs. Astor.”
   
   

   

   Oh, Kay! 

   
   

3. Catherine O’Quinn as ditzy Dora Fenton. I’m almost certain O’Quinn is one of the blonde Goldwyn Girls in Team Bartilucci fave The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). Anyway, she gets some delightful lines here, especially this TMMM bit, which becomes a running gag:
   Melsa: “Helen, you search the upstairs.”
   Helen: “Oh, no, I was never much of an individualist. If the upstairs has to be searched, we’ll search it together.”
   Dora: “Why, that’s Communism!”
4. Whitney Bourne, as Pat James (Blind Alibi; Double Danger; Beauty for the Asking, with Lucille Ball)), who never saw a snack she didn’t like, even at a murder scene! I’m sure Lt. Brent is thrilled to see his crime scene ruined. Hey, Pat, you gonna finish that? Don’t your rich parents feed you at home, you poor little rich girl you?
5. Ann Evers as Lee Wilson (If I Were King; Gunga Din; Casanova Brown).
6. Linda Perry, billed here as Linda Terry. By any name, she plays Myra Frost, Melsa’s flirty friend. Ms. Perry’s credits include They Won’t Forget; The Great Garrick; and the 1937 movie adaptation of the Perry Mason film The Case of the Stuttering Bishop.
7. Vickie Lester (billed as Vicki Lester) as Kit Beverly. Vickie’s star was born in Tom, Dick, and Harry; Tall, Dark, and Handsome; The Great Plane Robbery.
8. Eleanor Hanson as Jane.  (Guess it's one of those one-word names, like Margo or Annabella.) She also appeared in the Western Flaming Frontiers and bit parts such films as The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, and worked again with TMMM co-star Penny Singleton in Blondie Goes to College. Wonder if Singleton and Hansen ever reminisced about making TMMM?

One stiff, hold the mayo!

Before long, the lawsuit takes a back seat, along with a corpse or two, as Peter finds himself falling in love with the spirited Melsa and trying to save her from shady characters like ex-con Edward Norris (Stanley Ridges of Possessed; To Be or Not to Be; Sergeant York), a convicted murderer who’s working on the subway and just might have a score to settle. Even Blondie gets into the act—no, not songbird Debbie Harry, but the original Blondie, Penny Singleton, formerly Dorothy McNulty from After the Thin Man. She’s funny and memorable in this pre-Blondie comedy caper as Frances Gluck, who’s stuck on Norris and tries to convince the girls of his innocence, even trying to pass off the future Blondie Bumstead as an old chum, with hilarious results and a smattering of social commentary.

Kit (talking to Hilda with her mouth full): “Have you another piece of cake, Hilda?”

Hilda: “Yes, I have, but the kitchen’s closed for the night.”

Melsa: “Hilda! Miss Beverly is our guest.”

Hilda: “I didn’t ask her up!”

Helen: “Come the revolution, we’ll stop being exploited by our help.”
Melsa (giving Hilda a wry look): “In my house, the revolution is here!”

Who needs Charlie's Angels
with 8 crimefighting debs?

“Lt. Brent, the good news is we’ve found George Lane’s body. The bad news…er….”

Blondie Beats a Murder Rap!

Lt. Brent saves the day!
Who knew he was a counter spy?

Although Fonda and Stanwyck were great onscreen, Henry Fonda was less than thrilled with his role. He’d been borrowed from Walter Wanger Productions and, as Axel Madsin wrote in his biography Stanwyck, Fonda “...hated his role, hated the script's sneering repartee with his leading lady, and tried his best to ignore everybody.”  Fonda himself later admitted, "I was so mad on this picture; I resented it." Philip G. Epstein’s script from an unpublished Wilson Collison novel was clearly meant as a female star vehicle, and as Miller suggested, “Fonda probably did not appreciate the scenes in which he was beaten up by eight flighty debutantes!” But Fonda got over it, happily co-starring with Stanwyck again in two other hits, as mentioned earlier, and becoming close friends. In fact, Robert Osborne said Fonda admitted to his subsequent wives that he carried a torch for Stanwyck for the rest of his life (and why not?)!

Here's a link to our pal Dawn Sample's great Noir and Chick Flicks blog post from 2011!


http://dawnschickflicks.blogspot.com/2011/05/mad-miss-manton-1938_27.html

I knew those crazy kids would make beautiful music together!

You say you want a revolution?
Hilda's your go-to gal!

Wedding Bell Wackiness Double-Feature: BALL OF FIRE and OSCAR

This post is being published as part of the CMBA Comedy Classics Blogathon from January 22nd to 27th, 2012.

Love is a funny thing, especially in the movies, so Vinnie and I have donned our Team Bartilucci romantic screwball comedy caps to spotlight two of our favorites!

Dorian’s Pick: Ball of Fire (1941)

“Once upon a time — in 1941 to be exact — there lived in a great, tall forest — called New York — eight men who were writing an encyclopedia. They were so wise they knew everything: The depth of the oceans, and what makes a glowworm glow, and what tune Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. But there was one thing about which they knew very little — as you shall see…”


How could I not fall in love with Ball of Fire (BoF)? To borrow a line from Foul Play, it was fate, Fergie — kismet! The star team of Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, reunited from Meet John Doe that same year, was a tantalizing draw, plus I’m a sucker for stories set in my hometown, New York City. But I was also interested in BoF because I like comedies about characters who appreciate wordplay and learning (Pygmalian/My Fair Lady, anyone?). I’ve loved reading, writing, and generally having fun with the English language ever since I learned to read at the age of three (during a family vacation in the Bahamas, but that’s a story for another time). My older siblings used to show me off by having me read passages from The New York Times out loud; granted, I didn’t always understand what all the words meant, but somehow I figured out what they sounded like phonetically. For another thing, on an even more personal note, BoF’s sassy heroine Katherine O’Shea goes by the name “Sugarpuss,” or “Shugie” for short. As luck would have it, our daughter Siobhan’s nickname happens to be “Shugie”!  (For the record, “Shugie” is pronounced like “sugar” ending with “ee” instead of “er.” For those of you who’ve never heard the name “Siobhan,” it’s pronounced “shuh-VON.” Those who pronounce it ‘SIGH-oh-ban’ will be asked to leave the Internet.) Mind you, this was long before we watched and loved BoF; up till then, we had nicknamed Siobhan “Shugie” in honor of Shaggy’s baby sister on the animated TV series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (yet another story for yet another time. We’ve got a million of ’em)! Our Shugie thought the name “Sugarpuss O’Shea” was the most hilarious name she’d ever heard!

Professor Potts digs NYC’s sub(way)culture!

Taking good notes for research is important!

Sweetening the entertainment pot further, other talented people behind BoF included director Howard Hawks; Samuel Goldwyn, producing BoF for RKO; screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, who based their story on Wilder and Thomas Monroe’s From A to Z; and versatile Director of Photography Gregg Toland, who got an Oscar nomination that year for Citizen Kane. To qualify for the 1941 Academy Awards, BoF played a week-long engagement in Los Angeles, then officially opened at the Radio City Music Hall in January 1942. Set in the then-contemporary New York City of 1941, BoF is a breezy comic take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (more about that shortly). In New York City’s Central Park, we meet our hero Professor Bertram Potts (Cooper in lovable naïf mode), the youngest of eight brilliant, endearing professors taking a constitutional in Central Park on the first sunny spring day of the season. Prof. Potts’ colleagues are played by a great cast of beloved character actors: Oskar Homolka (Hitchcock’s Sabotage and the Harry Palmer spy thrillers Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain) as Prof. Gurkakoff; Henry Travers (Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, It’s a Wonderful Life) as Prof. Jerome; S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (Casablanca, Wonder Man) as Prof. Magenbruch; Tully Marshall (Scarface, Grand Hotel) as Prof. Robinson; Leonid Kinskey (Duck Soup and The Man with the Golden Arm, and he’s a Casablanca alumnus, too) as Prof. Quintana; Aubrey Mather as Prof. Peagram (Jane Eyre, The Song of Bernadette); and Prof. Oddly (Team Bartilucci fave Richard Haydn, known for voicing animated characters as well as his supporting roles in live-action films). These men have virtually cloistered themselves in the house they all share at The Daniel S. Totten Foundation. They’re in their ninth year of writing their encyclopedia of slang. Man, these boys need to get out more! More to the point, they need to get their slang encyclopedia finished pronto, because even though Miss Totten (Mary Field from The Dark Corner and Dark Passage — so much dark in such a lighthearted movie!) has a crush on Potts, the Foundation’s lawyer Larsen (veteran character actor Charles Lane, back when he was actually young!) is pressuring our boys to “slap it together” and finish already. Potts firmly replies that “we are not the slapping-together kind…If our work goes slowly, it’s because the world goes so fast.” Well, Potts and company had better hang onto their hats, because their world is about to go a whole lot faster, not to mention funnier! (By the way, there isn’t a real-life toaster inventor named Daniel S. Totten that we know of, though there are electric toasters!) Fun Fact: According to the TCM Web site, Wilder and Brackett picked up authentic slang for the script by visiting the drugstore across the street from Hollywood High School; a burlesque house; and the Hollywood Park racetrack.
 

The happiest fellas in Brainiac Land!

Just as our eight professors aren’t seven height-challenged miners pitted against a wicked witch and a poisoned apple, nor is our heroine a sweet, demure princess. Instead, we have beautiful, brassy nightclub entertainer Sugarpuss O’Shea, a.k.a. Shugie (Stanwyck). She’s introduced to us in smart, snappy style, performing “Drum Boogie” (her singing was dubbed by Martha Tilton, bandleader Tommy Dorsey’s lead singer), accompanied by the great drummer Gene Krupa (as himself)! Seems the D.A. is convinced that Shugie’s gangster beau Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews, before Laura made him a star at 20th Century-Fox) just might have knocked off one of his fellow hoods. Ol’ John Law wants Shugie for questioning, since the D.A. has an incriminating receipt for a pair of pajamas she’d once given him as a gift. With a “subpeeny” nipping at her heels, Sugarpuss goes on the lam, and we don’t mean the Little-Bo-Peep kind! But Lilac’s henchmen Duke Pastrami (Dan Duryea) and Asthma Anderson (Ralph Peters) see the business card from Potts that Shugie had left behind after initially nixing his invitation to join his slang symposium. The thugs get ideas: first, if Lilac marries Shugie, he’ll be safe because as Mrs. Lilac, she wouldn’t be able to testify against him. Second, who’d think to look for Shugie in a quaint old house infested with bookworms? Asthma and Pastrami give Shugie incentive to go along with their scheme by giving her a ring with a diamond almost as big as the one at Yankee Stadium! Potts and his colleagues are plenty book-smart, but something tells me they’ll also be street-smart by the time Shugie gets through with them!

If Shugie’s the new neighborhood Avon Lady, we’ll take one of everything!

BoF’s sprightly plot and snappy patter had me smiling from the start. Cooper and Stanwyck have marvelous chemistry together as Shugie shakes up Potts and Company’s scholarly existence for the better. While the versatile Stanwyck is always awesome in both dramas (such as my own favorite, Double Indemnity) and comedies, I particularly enjoy seeing her funny flag fly in films like BoF and The Lady Eve. It’s a joy to see Stanwyck’s impeccable comic timing in BoF, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s as beautiful as she is hilarious. With Edith Head costuming her, whether Stanwyck is wearing sequins or a simple shirtwaist dress, you can’t take your eyes off her, especially with the confident, panther-like way she walks. I was touched at the sight of “Potsie’s” modest engagement ring above Joe Lilac’s huge rock, undoubtedly the best ring Potts could afford on his academic salary, bless him. His proposal to Shugie touched me even more, especially: “Dust piles on our hearts, and it took you to blow it away.” Shugie finds herself growing increasingly fond of her “eight wise idiots,” and slowly but surely falling in love with Potts and regretting her commitment to Lilac and the con job she agreed to.

Mr. Looper, er, Hooper, lilac’s not really your color!

But the professors climbing out of their ivory tower aren’t the only outstanding supporting character actors in BoF. There’s Will Lee as Benny the Creep, one of Lilac’s henchmen, long before he became the beloved Mr. Hooper on TV’s Sesame Street; Charles Arnt from My Favorite Brunette as Lilac’s lawyer; and Allen Jenkins (his many roles included George Sanders’ sidekick in the Falcon films and the voice of Officer Dibble on Hanna-Barbera’s animated series Top Cat, another Team Bartilucci fave) as a garbage man who enlists the professors’ help in winning a radio quiz show so he can take his sweetie out on the town — but let him tell you in his own words as Potts tries to keep up with all these new-to-him words and phrases:

“We’ll be steppin’, me and the smooch, I mean the dish, I mean the mouse, you know, hit the jiggles for a little rum boogie?...Brother, we’re gonna have some hoy-toy-toy!” In turn, the delighted professors roar, “Hoy-toy-toy!” The garbage man adds, “If you want that one explained, go ask your papa.”

 As Miss Bragg, Kathleen Howard is the very model of an uptight, narrow-minded den mother type who, to slightly paraphrase a line from Witness for the Prosecution, has just had an egg-beater thrown into the wheels of her Victorian household. Miss Bragg may mean well in her stick-up-the-butt way, but I couldn’t help hoping someone would belt her one, so I couldn’t help approving when Shugie did just that — that is, until I read on the TCM Web site that while shooting the fight scene with Howard, Stanwyck accidentally connected too hard with a punch and broke Ms. Howard’s jaw — yikes! Just goes to show sometimes it’s unwise to go too far for your art!

Is this what they mean by “stopping on a dime”?

Of all the lovable professors, the one I found myself most fond of was Richard Haydn’s Prof. Oddly, who gets so into whatever he’s examining that the other professors have to whistle for him like a dog. A widower, Prof. Oddly is the only one of the group who’s been married. When Shugie and the professors set off for New Jersey for the wedding, unaware that Lilac and his goons are setting the boys up, it leads to a funny and truly touching scene as Prof. Oddly suggests fatherly advice to Potsie, sharing his fond remembrances of happy times with his late wife Genevieve and the popular old song by that name, with all the professors poignantly singing along. With the help of a loose room number on the motel room door, it leads beautifully to both comedy and sweet love, though not without bumps along the way. It all ends in our guys dashing (in every sense) in top hats and tails to New Jersey to save the girl and the day in a finale that only our astute octet could have pulled off, and it had me cheering! It’s no wonder that, according to the TCM Web site, BoF ended up being the 25th highest-grossing film of 1942, taking in $2.2 million at the box office (which was serious coin back then). Between the success that year of both BoF and the Oscar-winning Sergeant York (1941), it was a mighty fine year for Gary Cooper, who ranked seventh at the box office for 1941 — no small feat considering all the films available back then, decades before TV and so many other forms of entertainment created competition for fans’ attention. Another Fun Fact: In 1942, Barbara Stanwyck joined her Remember the Night co-star Fred MacMurray for a radio version of BoF broadcast on Lux Radio Theatre in 1942, and of course, they would eventually reunite for Double Indemnity and There’s Always Tomorrow. On a related note, as a fan of Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, I’d like to check out A Song is Born, their musical remake with Hawks, even though I hear it’s not as good as the original. I sympathize; improving on the perfection of BoF is a tall order indeed!

Things that make you go "Yum-yum!"

Nothing perks up symposiums like a conga!

One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind her!

Before Witness for the Prosecution’s Monocle Test, there was Prof. Gurkakoff’s Reflector Test!

Hope is the thing with feathers — perfect for tickle torture!

Vinnie's Pick: Oscar (1991)

To simplify greatly, there are three types of people; those who have never seen Oscar, those who love Oscar, and those who have never forgiven John Landis for Vic Morrow, and refuse to give any of his work since a fair viewing.

It's a comedy, something that star Sylvester ("Stop or My Mom Will Shoot") Stallone is not well known for. Specifically it's a screwball farce, based on a French film from 1967 Director John Landis and his writing team turned it into a period piece, following many of its trappings religiously. It takes place largely in one location, the palatial residence of gangster Angelo "Snaps" Provolone, who has promised his father (a hiLARious cameo by Kirk Douglas) that he'd go straight. On one madcap day as he prepares to invest in a bank and fulfill his promise, he learns that his head accountant "Little" Anthony Rossano (Vincent Spano) is in love with his daughter, Lisa (Marisa Tomei) (except he's not), who is pregnant from another man, the titular Oscar, their chauffeur (except she's not), planned to marry her off to his dialect coach, Dr. Thornton Poole (Tim Curry) who is also in love with her (except he's not), and at random times, 100,000 dollars plays a shell game among three black satchels that make their way about the house.

Snaps, Connie, and Aldo  keep it all in the Family

Landis keeps the film going at a breakneck pace - characters and situations fly in and out of the house at ramming speed, the dialogue is fast and laced with period slang ("Nix the underwear, Doc, it never happened"). With all the questionable characters (and black bags) that come and go, it's no surprise Lt. Toomey (Kurtwood Smith, a guy who's a LOT better at being funny than people realize - we're still all remembering Clarence Boddicker) is sure something's up in the Provolone home. Like so many tributes to past genres, it's as good as you remember 1930s madcap comedies were, but so few actually were. Another recent example is Down With Love, which featured more bedroom comedy tropes per capita than any actual films of the genre.

The meat of the plot is from the French original, the comedy of errors about the people in love and the bags, but Landis added a whole layer of comedy by making it a comedic Prohibition-era period piece. Lots of wordplay comedy, many new characters, and the whole plot about the bankers and Lt. Toomey's insistence that things are not as they appear. And oh, those bags... A classic plot point of comedies, whether used as the McGuffin to get the spies after the wrong guy, or a devious way to hide the diamonds, it's been seen in endless films, in recent years, most famously What's Up Doc?

Lisa and Thornton's budding romance
is by the book!

Both Stallone and Landis surrounded themselves with friends - there's lots of folks in the film who'd worked with one or the other in past films. Peter Reigert and Mark Metcalf return from Animal House, as does scoremeister Elmer Bernstein. As opposed to the tack they took in Animal House, where Bernstein wrote a deliberately serious score that worked perfectly against the on-screen goings on, they went for a patently comedic soundtrack here, based on the opera The Barber of Seville.

A couple of important first major breaks in the film as well - It's Marisa Tomei's first major role, and while she got a Razzie for it, The Wife and I knew right away we'd be hearing from her again, and I don't mean a postcard. One year later she grabbed an ACTUAL Oscar for her role in My Cousin Vinny. Similarly, lovable lunkhead Connie was played to slack-faced perfection by Chazz Palmintieri, who just a year before had played a very different kind of mobster in his self-written one-man play A Bronx Tale. Combining this with similarly comedic gunsel Cheech in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, and he quickly became one of our favorite comedic gangster actors. So when we later saw him in things like The Usual Suspects and the film version of A Bronx Tale, we were blown away by the diametric opposite performances.

"So, boss, which satchel has the secret
Government underwear?"

Tim Curry had just premiered his older, slightly puffier look in the previous year's The Hunt For Red October, and had already shown staggering ability for madcap comedy in another sadly underappreciated film, Clue. His timing here is flawless, his face a wild set of earnest expressions and a perfect upper-class twit of a voice.
But in honesty, the shining jewel of performances is Stallone himself. In later comedic performances like Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, he's more parodying himself, but here he plays a note-perfect comedic gangster in the Damon Runyon tradition. He shares the screen with some heavy hitters, but holds his own expertly. "Snaps" remains exasperated throughout, and some of his best lines are when his emotions get the better of him. As he tries to explain a small part of his day to his wife Sofia (Ornella Muti), including mention of a daughter Theresa, she responds "We don't HAVE a daughter Theresa!", to which he gaspingly replies, "Do you think I don't KNOW that?"

Going to the chapel and they're gonna get married...

Few films got as bad a rap as this one in its time. In those pre-Internet days, it was able to be the number-one film for two weeks before the reviews started making the rounds and and people suddenly were educated as to how bad a film it was. It's gained a big following thanks to video, one it seriously deserves. See it.
Expeditiously.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY: The Secret Life of Walter Neff

When insouciant insurance salesman Walter Huff came over to the Nirdlinger house to renew Mr. N.’s insurance, he wasn’t in, but his wife was. This dame, Phyllis, was no perky housewife; for one thing, she greeted Walter wearing nothing but towels and a come-hither smile. Before you could say “accident insurance,” she was back with a honey of an anklet and Walter in the palm of her hand. So begins James M. Cain’s 1936 Liberty Magazine serial Double Indemnity (DI), in which Walter and Phyllis become adulterous lovers plotting to murder Nirdlinger and scam Walter’s insurance company. The Liberty serial eventually morphed into a best-selling 1943 novel. Even better, in Billy Wilder’s more-than-capable hands, it became a now-classic 1944 film noir, with the leads getting snappy new names: Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson. In fact, with all due respect to Cain, Wilder’s film version improves on the novel in many ways (thank goodness; it’s hard to read a hard-boiled suspense story about a killer named “Nirdlinger” and keep a straight face!). DI became a cinema classic almost in spite of itself, considering that its dark tone and scandalous subject matter freaked out Hollywood so much that it took 9 years to get DI from the printed page to the big screen!

Dick Powell, who was eager to change his then-crooner image, seemed to be the only leading man in Hollywood who was eager to tackle the role of antihero Walter Neff. But Double Indemnity was a Paramount production, and Powell was under contract to RKO at the time, so he had to wait until Murder, My Sweet to repurpose himself as a big-screen tough guy (and one of the best actors to play Raymond Chandler’s private detective Philip Marlowe, in my opinion).  It was Fred MacMurray, then best known for his breezy light comedy roles, who finally had the guts to take the role of insurance salesman-turned-murderer Walter Neff — but even MacMurray needed convincing at first. None of the other in-demand male stars of the period wanted Barbara Stanwyck’s conniving, money-loving, hubby-offing temptress Phyllis Dietrichson to make a chump out of him on screen. Their loss! It was quite a revelation to me when I saw DI for the first time, watching it on TV in my teens. I’d first seen MacMurray’s work back when he was best known to my generation as a wholesome Disney movie star and the lovable dad of TV’s My Three Sons. When I saw him playing underhanded types in DI, The Caine Mutiny, and another Wilder classic, The Apartment, I was both gobsmacked and impressed with MacMurray’s range. As a result, I was all the more disappointed that MacMurray was never even nominated for an Oscar for any of his stellar performances.

Director/co-screenwriter Wilder’s flair with suspense and black humor works perfectly with Cain’s storytelling style; it even improves on the book (which I read years ago). MacMurray and Stanwyck are dynamite in this, one of the most gleefully, unapologetically black-hearted noirs ever made. Their dialogue, especially in the first half of the movie, contains many of my favorite movie lines of all time — and of course, if I start quoting them all, I’ll pretty much be transcribing most of the script! The chemistry between Stanwyck and MacMurray blazes like the Chicago Fire as the wily, spellbinding Phyllis draws Walter into her web. As Richard Schickel points out in one of the two-disc DVD set’s pair of excellent audio commentaries, Stanwyck’s Phyllis is always reacting in the moment; as a result, you’re never sure whether she means a word she says, making her all the more fascinating. (To paraphrase a line from one of Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books: “I wouldn’t believe her if she swore she was lying!”) The words of Dashiell Hammett’s cynical Sam Spade to the equally slippery Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon could also apply to the quicksilver Phyllis: she’s good, awful good! Miklós Rózsa’s brassy yet brooding score accents the suspense perfectly. Edith Head’s costumes strike the right notes, too, despite Phyllis’s tacky fashion sense — but it works because Phyllis has a touch of trash about her that Walter seems to be drawn to, and Stanwyck is always mesmerizing no matter what.

Edward G. Robinson is DI’s crabby yet kind-hearted Voice of Reason in his portrayal of Barton Keyes, the Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company’s ace Claims Manager. As Keyes, Robinson is irresistible, with his zeal for detail, the “little man” in his gut giving him indigestion every time an insurance claim seems fishy, and his gruff affection for Walter. Heck, there’s almost more tenderness between Walter and Keyes than there is between Walter and Phyllis! If you ask me, the biggest crime in DI was the failure to nominate either of the male leads for an Oscar, especially scene-stealing Robinson, though at least the Academy was smart enough not to overlook the mesmerizing Stanwyck. For that matter, Robinson was never nominated for an Oscar for any of his superb performances. He was eventually given one of those special career Oscars, or as we like to call them here at Team Bartilucci H.Q., the “Yikes, He’s So Old He Could Croak Any Minute and He Still Hasn’t Gotten An Oscar? *D-OH!*” award.

Keyes, Keyes, he's our man! If he can't nail 'em, no one can!

DI boasts plenty of wonderful character bits, too; really, there isn’t a bum performance in the bunch! Our household’s DI faves include Fortunio Bonanova as Garlopis, whose phony insurance claim Keyes chews to bits “like a slice of rare roast beef;” and Porter Hall (from The Thin Man, among many others) as Jackson from Medford, Oregon, the jovial train traveler who innocently throws a wrench into the murder plot when he turns up on the train’s Observation Car while Walter pretends to be Phyllis’ injured, crutch-bound hubby. (Speaking of the crutches, is that opening credit sequence with the silhouetted, fedora’d figure on crutches one of the coolest credit sequences of all time, or what?) Any fans of The Thing from Another World who might be reading this shouldn’t blink when Walter lets Lola (the poignant Jean Heather) into his office at one point, or you’ll miss Douglas Spencer (with hair!) as Walter’s associate, Lou Schwartz, coming out at the same time.

Femme fatale Phyllis is so crooked,
even doors open the wrong way when she's around!

If you love the movie, you’ll go gaga over the DVD set’s nifty commentary tracks and extras. Among other things, we learn about the censorship issues in bringing Cain’s juicy, lurid tales to the big screen. For example, there were several European film versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice (including Luchino Visconti’s 1943 version, Ossessione, which works very well in its down-to-earth way) before Hollywood brought it to the big screen with John Garfield and Lana Turner in 1946. We’re also told about the different writing/working styles of Wilder and Raymond Chandler, who’d been hired to help adapt the story when Cain was under contract elsewhere, and Wilder’s then-collaborator Charles Brackett nixed the dark material. The experience became a collaboration made in hell for both Chandler and Wilder. For the record, I wouldn’t be surprised if Chandler was mostly to blame, since there are similar stories about him being just as difficult to work with during Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. (Hitch eventually brought in Ben Hecht’s assistant Czenzi Ormonde to finish/polish the SoaT script when Chandler took a hike.)

"Those dirty double-crossers are stealing our schtick!"

Disc 2 contains the 1973 TV movie remake of Double Indemnity (DI2), which is worth watching at least once, if only to appreciate how much better the original is! Wilder’s 1944 version rocks, but I'm afraid Jack Smight’s TV remake sinks like a stone. This isn’t film noir, it’s film blah! Still, both versions are worth a look for anyone who wants to learn how make a spellbinding film noir, because you learn a lot when you watch them back-to-back:

Samantha Eggar & Richard Crenna in the 1973 version. 

1. Just because your leading lady is pretty, it doesn’t automatically mean she’s irresistible enough to lead men to their doom. As the 1973 edition of femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, Samantha Eggar is very pretty. I’ll admit I liked Eggar’s long, lovely red hair better than Barbara Stanwyck’s trashy blonde wig. As a studio boss reportedly griped during the filming of the original DI, “I hire Barbara Stanwyck, and I get George Washington!” Eggar rocked that Lana Turner-style black turban she wears in the murder scene (and the entire black-and-white ensemble, for that matter). My dear late mom, who could rock a stylish hat and a turban like nobody's business, would have been proud! Nevertheless, Stanwyck exudes such sensual magnetism and charisma in the 1944 version, even that wig doesn’t keep Fred MacMurray from becoming putty in her hands. Eggar has been appealing in other roles, but while she’s undeniably pleasant to look at in DI2, I'm afraid she has all the carnal allure of an impatient English nanny; even Mary Poppins seems sexy and edgy compared to Eggar's performance here. Watching her try to be a sinful siren reminded me of the scenes in 1968’s Star! in which Julie Andrews tries to use her prim-and-proper, nigh-operatic tones to belt out torch songs and splashy Broadway production numbers: it’s not her style, and her discomfort shows. As a rule, discomfort isn’t sexy.

2. It don’t mean a thing if the leads ain’t got that zing.  That brings me to Eggar’s delivery; she always sounds vaguely bored and/or annoyed with Richard Crenna’s Walter Neff. In the original, even when Stanwyck was scolding or angry, somehow she seemed all the more fascinating. Her sultry voice, with just a trace of her native Brooklyn accent (from her lips, it sounded good!), was just as seductive as the rest of her. DI2 might be remembered as more than just a cinematic footnote if Eggar and Crenna had even a fraction of the chemistry that sizzles between Stanwyck and MacMurray; the latter was brilliant as a cynical smart-aleck whose street-smarts go out the window under this devious dame’s influence. It just goes to show that in a story like this, the best acting in the world won’t help if the leads don’t have chemistry and charisma.

3. A little moody atmosphere goes a long way in crime movies.  Despite the remake’s attractive locations, especially the Spanish-style accents in the opulent Dietrichson home (though I’d forgotten how prevalent the colors beige, harvest gold, and avocado green were back in the 1970s, not to mention blocky impressionistic artwork), DI2’s L.A. seems like a duller, less exciting place than DI’s original Los Angeles. The remake’s flat 1970s TV lighting and uninspired camera angles can’t hold a candle to the original’s menacing lighting effects and the great John Seitz’s photography, which looked almost like painting with shadows. Ironically, the 1973 update somehow feels more dated than the 1944 original — and if you listen carefully early on, you’ll realize the first film was actually set in 1938! DI2 does try for a bit of startling imagery here and there, though it’s made of cruder stuff than the sleek imagery of the original. For instance, the scene in which wounded, bleeding Walter tapes a confession for Keyes now opens on a close-up of Walter’s blood-stained cigarettes. Billy Goldenberg’s piano-and-strings music is somber enough, though it certainly won’t make you forget Miklós Rózsa’s powerful, brassy yet tender score for the original.

Kick the habit: Don't smoke bloodstained cigarettes!

Apart from Eggar’s forgettable performance, the good cast helps make DI2 fairly watchable, though far from a must-see except for nit-picky completists like me. As Walter Neff, Richard Crenna makes an amiable dupe who finds himself in over his head, though he doesn’t have MacMurray’s balance of insouciance and intensity (maybe Crenna should’ve worn a fedora :-)). Ironically, Crenna later played the rich husband-turned-murder victim in Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 noir Body Heat. Interesting note for vintage TV fans: when Crenna’s voice is cracking from the pain of his gunshot wounds during his confession-by-dictaphone, he often sounds distractingly like he did as a young man on the 1950s TV show Our Miss Brooks. John Fiedler and his “Piglet” voice suit Jackson-from-Medford delightfully. Lee J. Cobb’s portrayal of Barton Keyes is quite good, but also quite different from Edward G. Robinson’s approach. Unlike the energy and fighting spirit of Robinson’s performance, Cobb’s Keyes seems older and wearier. When he talks about how the “little man inside” upsets his stomach when he senses a phony claim, you really do get the feeling he’s about to throw up any minute! Don’t get me wrong, though; Cobb’s approach is quite effective in the context of the remake, especially since the remake as a whole has a lot less snap, crackle, and pop than the original. No wonder Cobb/Keyes has indigestion; maybe the poor man needs a nice soothing bowl of Rice Krispies. With a script by Steven Bochco and TV crime-show veteran Smight directing (he also did a nice job with theatrical suspensers Harper, Kaleidoscope, and No Way to Treat a Lady), you’d think DI2 would still be worth watching, but despite the occasional gripping moment, this ’70s show is still just polyester while the original is pure silk.

James M. Cain by Rick Geary

   
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