AFTER THE THIN MAN Remix: Mystery Dates!

Hey, everybody, in honor of the Classic Film and TV Cafe Dogathon, I did a sort of re-mix of my 2010 post of After the Thin Man, the sparkling sequel to The Thin Man (1934), with more fun facts about Skippy, the adorable wirehaired fox terrier who played Nick and Nora Charles' beloved pooch Asta in the first two Thin Man films, plus more pictures and rib-tickling GIFs! Every dog has its day during the Dogathon! Click here to give it a look and join the fun! Feel free to leave a comment or two! :-)

THE GLASS KEY: The Littlest Gumshoe

The Glass Key (TGK) gets Team Bartilucci's vote!  Dashiell Hammett, one of my writing heroes, wrote his hard-boiled crime novel in 1931, and like virtually all of Hammett’s novels, TGK became a best-seller and a classic. Hollywood got ahold of it twice: first came the 1935 version starring Edward Arnold, George Raft, Claire Dodd, and Ray Milland; then came the 1942 version starring Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd, and Veronica Lake. I’ve only seen the 1935 version once, and I’m afraid it didn’t really grab me — but the 1942 version is one of my favorite films, so that’s what we’re focusing on this time around!  The film gets off to a snappy start at the campaign headquarters of a city that isn’t identified but brings to (my) mind a cross between Chicago and Baltimore. Paul Madvig (Donlevy), aptly described on my 1989 paperback edition of the novel as “a cheerfully corrupt ward heeler,” breezes through the crowd, leaving both brickbats and bouquets in his wake:

“He’s the head of the voters’ league.”
“He’s the biggest crook in the state.”
“I hear he feeds a thousand people a week.”

A new type of ploy

Paul is against Senator Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen from Hitchcock’s Notorious, and the Father of the Bride movies) and his Reform Party: “If Ralph Henry’s so anxious to reform somebody, why don’t he start on that son of his? He gets in more jams than The Dead End Kids.” A beautiful, petite blonde has been listening. She greets Paul with a resounding slap in the face (pretty impressive, considering she’s wearing gloves! I’ll admit I didn’t think about that until Vinnie pointed it out — that’s how quickly I got into the story). “That’s for talking about decent people,” she snaps. “A little reform wouldn’t do you any harm. As a matter of fact, I think it would do the state good if someone would reform you. Get out of my way, you cheap crook!” Since TGK is a 1942 crime drama and not real life here in 2012, where people sue each other at the drop of a hat (and what charming chapeaux the gals in TGK were wearing that season!), Paul is immediately smitten as he watches the feisty lass storming out. “Hey, what a slugger,” he says, grinning as he rubs his aching jaw and finds out he’s been slapped by Senator Henry’s elegant patrician daughter Janet (Lake). Paul can hardly wait to break the news to his right-hand man and close friend, Ed Beaumont (Ladd): “I just met the swellest dame...she smacked me in the kisser!” Although TGK is set in the early 1940s, I’m hearing a song from another era in my head: “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” On the one hand, I get a kick out of the rollicking way Paul cheerfully bulldozes his way through life, but on the other hand, he’s also an impulsive, hot-headed guy who all too often acts before he thinks. Ed’s usually good at keeping Paul from letting those impulses backfire on him.

Finding Taylor dead in the street curbs Ed’s enthusiasm!

Poor "Snip" fought forlorn, and forlorn won.

Tough politicians need good dental hygiene!

Nurse Frances Gifford  likes Ladd's bedside manner!

But things get complicated. Janet Henry is turning Paul’s head, and he’s sweetened the pot with an eye-popping engagement ring. Paul’s rival Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia from After the Thin Man, My Little Chickadee, Gilda, Touch of Evil) is out for payback after Paul closes Nick’s casino. Nick’s vicious henchmen, Rusty (Eddie Marr from Mr. Moto’s Gamble and Mr. Moto on Danger Island, as well as Disney’s The Reluctant Dragon — in which a young, uncredited, pre-star Alan Ladd played a storyboard artist, while supporting actress Frances Gifford played the voice of the train!), and sadistic cohort Jeff (William Bendix, scary yet darkly funny in Hissable Thug mode a la The Dark Corner), are closing in. The situation only gets worse when Ed finds Janet’s irresponsible brother Taylor (Richard Denning of Creature from the Black Lagoon; No Man of Her Own; the TV series version of Mr. and Mrs. North) dead in the street, his skull apparently fractured by a blunt instrument. Every finger in town seems to be pointing to Paul as the killer. The grieving Janet is angling for Ed to help him find out who killed Taylor, and the reluctant yet undeniable attraction growing between Ed and Janet is stirring things up all the more. Even Paul’s 18-year-old sister Opal, affectionately called “Snip” (Bonita Granville, Oscar-nominee from 1936’s These Three, and heroine of the Nancy Drew movies from the late 1930s! She also went on to be executive producer of the early 1970s Lassie TV series) thinks Paul killed Taylor, making the situation even tougher since Snip was in love with the big dope (even though Taylor kept “borrowing” money from her to pay off Taylor’s gambling debts; boy, she sure can pick ’em!). Then there are those mysterious typed notes about Paul, insinuating that Ed knows more than he’s telling. On top of that, Snip must live an awfully sheltered life with Paul, because she stubbornly insists that all the wild stories Paul’s enemies are printing in the paper surely couldn’t be printed if they weren’t true — sheesh! It’s a good thing Ed is a cool, wily guy who wears a fedora, because he’s got to play detective if he wants to keep Paul out of the electric chair!

After a spat with Paul, Ed throws in with Nick Varna—or does he?  Turns out Ed’s still on Team Paul, gathering evidence, but what a way to make his point! Poor Ed is attacked by a German Shepherd, and Jeff and Rusty hold Ed captive in a marathon beating, mostly from Jeff, who dubs our hero “Little Rubber Ball.” That scene always has me on the edge of my seat; it almost makes the classic slugfest in Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) look like kids playing in a sandbox! Wally Westmore’s makeup effects for the savage beating William Bendix gives Alan Ladd looked convincing enough to make me wince! Heck, it seems like everyone was slaphappy on the Glass Key set at one time or another. Ironically, bad-guy Bendix was a sweetheart in real life, at least with co-stars Ladd and Lake. According to Jeremy Arnold on the TCM Web site, “During the film’s memorable beating scene, Bendix accidentally slugged Ladd in the jaw for real, knocking him out. (The take survives in the finished film.) Bendix felt awful and he burst into tears. When Ladd woke up, he was so touched by Bendix’s reaction that he became friends with the actor and requested him for many of his future films, helping him with his career as best he could.” Lake hit it off with Bendix, too, becoming close friends. “I came to adore the guy,” Lake wrote in her autobiography. “It was a platonic adoration for a marvelous human being.” Then there was another real-life beating on the set, this one during TGK’s opening scene, where Janet Henry had to sock Paul Madvig in the jaw. Lake and Donlevy had previously worked together in I Wanted Wings (1941), and the experience didn’t exactly make them the best of pals, so when Lake did that scene, she actually slugged the guy! She wrote, “I’d learned in my Brooklyn youth to lead with the hip when you throw a punch…Every pound I owned was behind it when it caught his jaw.” When the irate Donlevy confronted her, Lake admitted she didn’t know how to pull her punches.” I’ll give you until the next take to learn,” he said and walked away.

It's raining diminutive detectives!
Might as well stay for dinner!

Brian Donlevy gets top billing in TGK. His career and colorful life could fill a blog, a book, or even a movie of its own, including Donlevy’s war record and valor in battle (14-year-old Donlevy lied about his age to join the Army), as well as his roles in both silent and sound films as well as stage acting. In 1939, Donlevy earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor as sadistic Sgt. Markoff in Beau Geste . His career soared with such box-office hits as The Remarkable Andrew; Nightmare (which I’ve never seen, and want to. Paging TCM!); In Old Chicago; Wake Island; I Wanted Wings; and Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty (read Brandie’s great blog post about it in True Classics!). But we of Team Bartilucci, especially Vinnie, know and love Donlevy best in the movie versions of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass science-fiction novels, directed by Val Guest. Admittedly, Donlevy’s portrayal of scholarly British scientist Dr. Bernard Quatermass goes through some changes, probably to attract us excitable Yanks. Donlevy’s Quatermass is more the two-fisted type in The Quatermass Experiment (a.k.a. The Creeping Unknown) and Quatermass II: Enemy from Space. Vin gets a kick out of these particular flicks; he feels that half the fun of Donlevy’s portrayal is that viewers half-expect Quatermass to just punch out the aliens and save the day!

You'd think Nancy Drew could solve this case!

William Bendix is the spitting image of evil!

Paramount Pictures must have blessed the day that Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake came into their lives! Back in those days, guys with the physical stature of 5-foot-6¼-inch-tall Alan Ladd didn’t always get the girl in real life, much less in movies, plus young Ladd was haunted by his tragic childhood. But talent scout and former actress Sue Carol saw something special in fair-haired, cool yet smoldering Ladd, and under her tutelage, his career began to take root. So did love: she became Mrs. Alan Ladd and stayed that way until his death in January 1964. By comparison, Donlevy practically towered over his co-stars at 5-foot-8!

Before Veronica Lake (born Constance Ockelman in Brooklyn, New York; I love it when my fellow native New Yorkers make good!) became a star as “The Peek-A-Boo” girl, thanks to her long blonde mane and her memorable performances in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941), as well as This Gun for Hire, TGK,  and I Married a Witch (all in 1942), she had bit parts in the late 1930s and early 1940s in films like Sorority House. For the record, my 1995 edition of Halliwell’s Film Guide describes the 1942 movie adaptation of TGK thus: “Nifty remake of the (1935 version) which finds some limited talents in their best form, helped by a plot which keeps one watching.” I agree; to paraphrase our own John Greco of Twenty-Four Frames, nobody could play Alan Ladd like Alan Ladd! Similarly, when Paramount teamed up Ladd with sultry, flaxen-haired, 4-feet-11½-inch tall Veronica Lake, who happened to be pretty darn good at playing Veronica Lake (and looking gorgeous in Edith Head’s costumes), it was the blond leading the blonde, and a new movie star team was born! According to the IMDb, Ladd and Lake made seven movies together: in addition to the films we've already discussed here, Ladd and Lake also appeared together in Star-Spangled Rhythm; 1945’s Duffy’s Tavern and Variety Girl, in which Ladd and Lake played themselves; The Blue Dahlia (1946); and Saigon (1948).

"Bear with me, Ed, all this
intrigue has me easily distracted!"

Screenwriter Jonathan Latimer had adapted Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock for the big screen, in addition to Alias Nick Beal (see the great review over at Jim Lane’s Cinedrome) and the long-running TV series adaptation of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason, among many others. Latimer’s tight, wry adaptation of Hammett’s novel was right on target, with director Stuart Heisler (The Monster and the Girl; Along Came Jones; Smash-Up) ably playing to his stars’ strengths. Victor Young’s score deftly blends sweetness and menace. An uncredited young Dane Clark (also in Wake Island) plays Henry Sloss (his character was “Harry Sloss” in the novel). Clark gets a memorable opening scene: after mouthing off about Janet Henry, Paul throws Sloss through a window and into a fountain! Of the three TGK stars, Donlevy did well for himself, but Ladd and Lake sadly fell on hard times both physically and emotionally as they got older; both died at the age of 50. However, Donlevy continued to have a steady acting career, including his 1952 TV series Dangerous Assignment. According to the IMDb, he retired to Palm Springs, CA until his death from throat cancer in 1972 at the age of 71. However, in his retirement, Donlevy wrote short stories and ended up owning a prosperous California tungsten mine — good for him, I say!

When you work for Paul Madvig, bring water wings!

Having a dish like Janet at his bedside would perk up any guy!

Hold onto your hats: Janet and Ed are playing for keeps!
(Cheer up, Paul, a big politician like you won't have trouble finding a new babe!) 

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.

NIAGARA: Falling for the Wrong Girl Can Be Murder

Niagara (1953) may have been filmed in dazzling Technicolor, but it’s got the black heart of a film noir! Directed by Henry Hathaway from a script by Billy Wilder’s frequent collaborator Charles Brackett (who also produced it), Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen, Niagara is a dark thriller despite the blue skies and white waters of majestic Niagara Falls; even Sol Kaplan’s music has a dark but lush tone, bringing to mind one of my favorite composers, Bernard Hermann. Director of Photography Joe McDonald (The Dark Corner, My Darling Clementine, Mirage) shot the beautiful, bright locations while still making atmospheric, suspenseful use of shadows and light. Even more dazzling is Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest star vehicles; the film’s ads boasted about the film’s two “forces of nature,” Niagara Falls and Marilyn, and they meant it! Monroe is sultry and slippery in one of her last femme fatale roles before Gentlemen Prefer Blondes showed the world Marilyn’s funny side. 20th Century-Fox’s head honcho, Darryl F. Zanuck, wasn’t exactly Marilyn’s biggest fan. In the intro to the most recent TCM airing of Niagara, Robert Osborne reported that Zanuck felt she had no class, and that gals like her were a dime a dozen. What a dope! But the Marilyn Buzz was stronger and louder than Niagara Falls itself, so she got the upper hand; good for her! It helped that co-star Joseph Cotten was fond of her, and he was very kind and patient with Marilyn’s frequent tardiness. More importantly, Cotten recognized Ms. Monroe’s earnest determination to prove she wasn’t some here-today-gone-tomorrow type. Heck, after I learned all this, I was doubly impressed with Marilyn’s powerhouse performance, considering director Hathaway had a reputation as a tough taskmaster (see my blog post about The Dark Corner). Fun Fact: Niagara’s assistant director was Gerd Oswald, who went on to the TV series The Outer Limits.

Dangerous when wet! (Or dry, for that matter!)

Despite the happy cliché of Niagara Falls being a honeymooners’ paradise, Niagara The Movie is moody from the start as edgy George Loomis (Cotten) wanders around the Canadian side of the falls at dawn, feeling insignificant. He’s a war veteran freshly released from an Army hospital, where he was treated for PTSD, or as they called it back then, “battle fatigue.” He’s also got a gorgeous young sexpot wife, Rose (Monroe), so you’d think George’s life isn’t that bad. Ah, but Rose has thorns: a secret lover (Richard Allan, a tasty piece of eye candy) and a plot to kill George and make it look like suicide. In fact, Lover Boy is so secret that we never actually hear his name! For the record, old newspapers I checked on the Internet identified Richard Allan’s character as, variously, “Patrick” and “Ted Patrick.” In any case, George may not be the most stable guy, but I found myself feeling kinda sorry for him. This is why it’s so important to get to know someone before you get married (as Audrey Hepburn learns the hard way in Charade)!

Rose, you naughty girl, don’t smoke in bed! (How does she keep her glossy fire-engine red lipstick from smearing the sheets?)

Fate brings the Loomises together with Polly and Ray Cutler (Jean Peters and Casey Adams, a.k.a. actor/composer Max Showalter from Sixteen Candles, among others). Polly and Ray are at the falls for their late honeymoon, long delayed by eager-beaver Ray’s demanding job as a cereal executive. Ray brings his Winston Churchill book with him (he’s a regular Lance Romance, that Ray), but he promises Polly that “It’ll be as good as a regular honeymoon.” “It should be better,” Polly replies teasingly. “I’ve got my union card now.” They laugh and snuggle, and that’s one of the few happy moments Polly and Ray have together before the Loomises make their honeymoon into a living hell.

Loving a wily vixen like Rose would give any guy a headache!

*SMASH!* "Uh, sorry; can't stand that darn
'I gave my love a cherry' song!"

Things get creepy, starting with small, mild inconveniences, like our lovebirds settling for a cabin with a so-so view because Rose and the unwell George are still in the cabin Polly and Ray were supposed to have. While the Cutlers enjoy their tour of the falls, Polly spies Rose making out with her hunky hottie. At an outdoor party that evening, Polly almost misses a romantic moment watching the falls’ light show with Ray because she’s bandaging George’s hand after he cuts himself breaking Rose’s favorite romantic record in a rage. For her part, Rose just sits there and smirks. (It reminded me of the toga party scene in Animal House when, out of nowhere, John Belushi busts up folkie Stephen Bishop’s guitar, then gives it back to him with a deadpan “Sorry.”) Our sympathetic honeymooners get fed-up as they’re reluctantly pulled deeper into the Loomises’ problems, not realizing wily Rose is setting them up as witnesses to George’s increasingly shaky mental state, all the better to make his eventual death look like suicide. Like that’s not enough, Ray’s ridiculously jolly boss, Mr. Kettering (Don Wilson, from Jack Benny’s various shows) and his wife (Lurene Tuttle from Psycho and oodles of TV shows) show up, eager to sightsee with the Cutlers and schmooze with Ray about giving him a raise because of his prize-winning shredded wheat promotion idea, turning the honeymoon into a busman’s holiday. Oy! 
By now, Polly and Ray have been through the wringer because of those loony Loomises, so even though Ray can be a chucklehead at times, I had to smile and sympathize with him being, to quote the High Noon theme song, “torn ’twixt love and duty,” sincerely wanting to take care of his distraught bride, yet reluctant to nix an opportunity to score a raise that would improve their life together in myriad ways. If the 1953 economy was anything like today’s economy, I can’t blame Polly for agreeing to include face time with the boss as part of their honeymoon itinerary! Peters and Adams make an appealing couple, sweet with a nice touch of insouciant playfulness. The peripatetic Ray clearly means well and loves Polly. Heck, he doesn’t even show any serious lust for the luscious Rose; he just makes good-natured wisecracks about her to Polly, and vice-versa. For that matter, I liked how Polly never acted catty or jealous around Rose. Now that’s self-confidence! As the calculating, manipulative Rose, Monroe smolders like nobody’s business, driving the fellas mad with her careless come-hither air and her curves in, as George grouses, a dress “cut down so low in front, you can see her kneecaps.” Monroe even gets to sing “Kiss” (no, not the Prince song), the lushly romantic tune that Rose and her secret sweetie like so much. It’ll come back to haunt her later, but I don’t want to give away the nifty twists! I’ll only say that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to call the bell tower scene his own. Admittedly, considering Hitchcock’s particular taste in female stars, I imagine Hitch would have picked a cooler, more subtle blonde than our Marilyn, dazzling though she is; I suspect Hitch would have considered Marilyn’s Rose Loomis to be more the Judy Barton type than the Madeleine Elster type . After the bell tower scene, the film almost literally drifts into Perils of Pauline territory, but by then I cared enough about the characters to stick around and see how it all worked out.

"Goody! My evil plan is working beautifully!"

Hot make-up sex with Rose? No wonder George is happy!

Cotten is at once terrifying and heartbreaking as Rose’s emotionally scarred fool for love/lust, a hard-luck guy who can’t seem to get out of his own way. We learn a lot about Rose and George’s relationship in little scenes and throwaway lines, like George admitting to Polly and Ray that he re-enlisted in the Army to show Rose he was still just as capable as any young stud. Then there’s the couple’s short-lived jubilance the day after that literally record-breaking fight. The Loomises laugh and kiss, with Rose under the covers in bed and George on top of her with the blanket between them (this was the 1950s, after all), talking about all the fun they’ll have when they hit Chicago. “Georgie, this is quite a change,” Rose purrs. “What brought this on?” George smiles at her. “You know what.” He gives her a long kiss. “When we have a fight and make up that way, I never want to leave your side.” Ooh, hot make-up sex — a little daring for a mainstream studio film of that era, no? All told, Niagara is good, dark, tawdry fun. By the way, keep an eye out for the uncredited Sean McClory of The Quiet Man fame (and many other movie and TV appearances) as Denis O’Dea’s right-hand man at the police station.

Hi, remember us, Jean Peters and Casey Adams, Marilyn and Joe's co-stars?

Wonder if Rose’s hunky hottie gets style tips from Bruno Antony?

Wonder if Rose gets her style tips from Marlene Dietrich?

What's the matter, Rose? Don't you like that song?

Bells are ringing for me and my MURDER!

"Uh, Georgie, let's not be hasty...c'mon, I'll sing you 'Happy Birthday'!"

"'Rest and relaxation, my foot! Come on, Polly, we're spending our
delayed honeymoon in Disney World! And no shredded wheat, I promise!"

THE BIG SLEEP-OVER! Retooling a Good Bogart Film Into a Great One

This review is part of the Humphrey Bogart blogathon hosted by Meredith. The Blogathon runs from December 23rd through December 25th, 2011. By all means, please leave comments for one and all! :-) 

Thanks to talented blogger Meredith of Forever Classics and her terrific blogathon saluting the one and only Humphrey Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), we have back-to-back Raymond Chandler film adaptation posts here at TotED:  last week’s Lady in the Lake, and now my entry in the Humphrey Bogart Blogathon, in honor of what would have been the great man’s 112th birthday: The Big Sleep (TBS) 

Raymond Chandler by Rick Geary

Ah, Howard Hawks! Was there any genre he couldn’t tackle with what seemed to be the greatest of ease? And with all due respect to Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, Robert Mitchum, and James Garner (I haven’t had a chance to catch up with George Montgomery in The Brasher Doubloon yet), was there ever a more perfect cinematic portrayal of Raymond Chandler’s private investigator hero Philip Marlowe than Humphrey Bogart in TBS? Or a more perfect leading lady for him than Lauren Bacall, playing Vivian Sternwood, who in 1945 happily became Mrs. Bogart for the rest of Bogie’s life? Admittedly, the kind of perfection I mean has nothing to do with such trifles as linear, crystal-clear plotting. (Clarity? We don’t need no stinkin’ clarity!) No, the elements that made the 1946 film version of TBS such a perfect entertainment include Hawks’ zesty direction; the film’s great cast, including those sleek, smart, sassy Hawks women, almost all of whom try to seduce him to one degree or another (I want to be a Howard Hawks kind of woman when I grow up!); and the tangy, moody yet cheeky atmosphere that Hawks and his screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett (as far as I’m concerned, she’s a Hawks kind of woman, too), and Jules Furthman created with sharp dialogue, humor, and suspense. The memorable characters Marlowe meets along the way range from colorful lowlifes to people of integrity staring down corruption and destruction. In my opinion, TBS is one of the most perfect thrillers about decidedly imperfect people in big trouble! 

"Build a greenhouse, reduce your carbon footprint," they said. 
 I shoulda called Nero Wolfe; he knows orchids!

Marlowe knows reading is
fun, manly, and sexy! 

TBS opens with the famous greenhouse scene, where Marlowe meets his wealthy new client, General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), an elderly, ailing, wheelchair-bound widower who describes himself thus: “You are looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life.” General Sternwood wants Marlowe to help him keep an eye on Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), the youngest and wildest of the two beautiful young Sternwood sisters, who’s being blackmailed over gambling debts. While Marlowe is at it, the General also wants him to see if he can find his friend Sean Regan, who Marlowe knew back in their rum-running days in Mexico: “I (Marlowe) was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.” Sternwood has come to regard Sean as the son he never had. Sean, usually the family enforcer, always took care of anyone who tried to make trouble for the Sternwoods. However, Sean apparently drove off about a month ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. It’s clear that Sternwood misses him terribly, which touched my heart and got my suspicions aroused. Marlowe agrees to take the case.

Oh, baby! What guy wouldn't want
to try weaning Carmen Sternwood?

Carmen is the kind of sexy, spoiled flirt who can’t say no, and won’t take no for an answer, either. She’s not shy about approaching men; in fact, Carmen gets to the point pronto when she meets Marlowe, deliberately falling into his arms—lucky for her that Marlowe’s a good catcher! Still, Marlowe makes it clear she’s not his baby as he tells butler Norris (Charles D. Brown, who makes a great straight-faced foil for Marlowe), “You ought to wean her. She’s old enough.” Between Carmen’s bedroom eyes and her gambling debts, is it any wonder she keeps getting herself into more hot water than a tea bag factory? But this time, Carmen gets in a jam it won’t be easy to get out of: Marlowe tails her to the home of book dealer and blackmailer Arthur Gwynn Geiger (the uncredited Theodore Von Eltz), only to find Geiger murdered and Carmen in a dazed, giggling stupor. Even worse, the Asian statue in Geiger’s house has a hidden film camera inside, and somebody’s already made off with the photographic evidence. Soon Marlowe is up to his fedora in colorful and dangerous characters, including gambler/gangster Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), whose wife supposedly ran off with the missing Sean. By all accounts, Mrs. Mars isn’t the kind of wife a guy wants to lose, so what’s up with that? (Fun Fact: According to the TCM Web site, Eddie’s henchmen Sid and Pete were named for Bogart’s frequent co-stars and off-screen pals Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.)

“So, shamus, how’re the Falcons doing this season?”

The strong, spirited, beautiful women in any Hawks film are always worth watching. TBS provides a veritable smorgasbord of fabulous females, all rushing in and out of the story like it was Grand Central Terminal at rush hour! One of my favorites was a young, pre-Oscar (for Written on the Wind) Dorothy Malone, proving guys do make passes at girls who wear glasses, especially when they let their hair down. Then there’s the uncredited but nevertheless captivating Sonia Darrin as Agnes Lowzier, another sulky, gorgeous, dangerous dame who may not get tons of screen time, but what she gets is, as Spencer Tracy would say, “cherce.” Agnes’ fool for love, Harry Jones, is played by Elisha Cook Jr. and he almost steals the show when he puts himself on the line for Agnes. The sacrifice that “Jonesy” makes on Agnes’ behalf really made me feel for the little guy. 

“That does it! No more sleepovers
for you, young lady!”

I’ve always liked General Sternwood, and how he calls a spade a spade (not to be confused with Dashiell Hammett’s detective Sam Spade, another iconic Bogart character). Indeed, I like the way Sternwood and Marlowe get along immediately, with their “insubordination” in common. Like so many parents, Sternwood has trouble keeping his two gorgeous young daughters out of trouble; as Marlowe says, “Both pretty, and both pretty wild.” Still, I’d say that even with her penchant for gambling, Vivian is the soul of sensibility and practicality compared to out-of-control Carmen. This isn’t the first time she’s been blackmailed, either; oy, some kids never learn! To further complicate matters, Marlowe and Vivian are starting to fall for each other. Even so, the clever, loyal Vivian makes it clear to Marlowe that she’ll stop at nothing to protect her sister and father as, separately and together, they work to solve this dizzy, violent, but gleefully entertaining mystery.

That's some bad hat, Baby! No wonder Bacall 
shed the chapeau in the retakes!

Between Vivian and Mrs. Mars, Marlowe's fit to be tied!

Like The Boy Scouts, Marlowe is always prepared!

Love is like an itching on Viv’s knee, and baby, she can’t scratch it!

Here's looking at you, Baby!

"Baby, you're the greatest!"

If you’re a stickler for clear, linear plotting, don’t look for it in TBS, or any other Chandler novel  based on one. Chandler’s strengths are in his witty, sardonic dialogue, his memorable characters, and the moody atmosphere he weaves with words. The ever-versatile Hawks evokes this atmosphere with his great cast and production values, including Max Steiner’s score combining suspense and playfulness, working beautifully with the delightfully insolent banter between Bogart and Bacall. In both TBS and Lady in the Lake (indeed, in almost all Chandler/Marlowe movies to one degree or another), at some point Marlowe gets fed up with the leading lady playing it cagey, and he almost always takes her to task, whereupon she hotly responds with a line like, “People don’t talk to me like that!” I always think of these scenes as “The Taming of the Hottie,” because here as in other Chandler/Marlowe movies, Marlowe and the heroine each give as good as they get. It’s especially fun in TBS with the evenly-matched Marlowe and Vivian. Hawks’ leading ladies always have (or quickly develop) spunk to go with their sexiness and strength! Hawks’ films had a reputation of being fun to make, and TBS was no exception. According to Lauren Bacall in her memoir By Myself, Hawks and company got a memo from studio head Jack Warner: “Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set. This must stop.” No word on whether or not anyone did so (my money’s on “no”)!

Vivian sure can sling those obligatos on "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine"!

Although TBS was actually completed and in the can by March 1945, Warner Bros. sat on it for about a year and a half. Robert Gitt, the Preservation Officer at UCLA Film and Television Archives, explains it all in the DVD’s Special Features. For starters, World War 2 was ending around that time, and movie studios were scrambling to get their remaining war movies into theaters before they started to feel dated; as a result, Warner Bros figured their detective thriller could wait for the nonce. But even more importantly, despite Lauren Bacall’s star-making role in To Have and Have Not, the movie that had brought her and Bogart together, her star was plummeting after her dreadful reviews as an upper-class Brit in the 1945 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Confidential Agent. In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther didn’t sugarcoat poor miscast Bacall’s performance: “The noise she makes in this picture is that of a bubble going ‘poof!’” Ouch!

 

Happily, a knight in executive’s shining armor saved the film and Bacall’s career: Charles K. Feldman, the producer who also brought us 1967’s wild-and-crazy comedy version of Casino Royale. Feldman was Howard Hawks’ production partner, and his confidential advice really turned things around for TBS. In addition to shuffling some scenes and eliminating others, Feldman implemented other suggestions which really made the magic happen for the new-and-improved 1946 version:

1. 1.) Bacall wore a none-too-flattering veil in the 1945 version. What was the costume department thinking? Moviegoers wanted see Bacall’s beautiful kisser, so they ditched that veil and reshot the scene.
   
2. 2.) Hawks shot more scenes between Bogart and Bacall, encouraging their sexy, insolent attitudes. To borrow a line from the TBS trailer, audiences loved seeing That Man Bogart and That Woman Bacall that way!
   
3. 3.) Mrs. Eddie Mars was played by Pat Clark in the 1945 version, but apparently she wasn’t available for re-shoots in 1946. Clark’s footage was scrapped for scrappier Peggy Knudson.

Personally, my perfect version of The Big Sleep would be the 1946 version as is, except that I’d love to put in the D.A. scene from the 1945 version (it’s in the double-sided version of the TBS DVD) to clarify at least that part of the plot! In any case, TBS may not always make sense, but it brims with so much suspense, desire, wit, and riveting personalities that I didn’t mind a bit!

Enjoy the following Big Sleep links from YouTube:

Why, Miss Malone, you’re beautiful!

http://youtu.be/2I_tNbfBZMI

The Big Sleep, Bogart and Bacall and the prank phone call:

http://youtu.be/DwXc4N_10rA

Lauren Bacall sings “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”
http://youtu.be/z11dA7srESo

For more information about the fascinating making of The Big Sleep, check out the TCM Web site:

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/45/The-Big-Sleep/

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to birthday boy Bogart, and Happy Holidays of all kinds to all of you and all you care about from all of us here at Team Bartilucci H.Q.!