MURDER, MY SWEET: Tough Guys Don’t Sing

The hard-boiled 1944 mystery Murder, My Sweet (MMS) forever changed the career of its star Dick Powell (not to be confused with William Powell from my recent After the Thin Man post). Arkansas native Powell began his career as a singer with Charlie Davis’s orchestra before Hollywood grabbed him, eventually steering Powell’s career path from juvenile crooners in such musicals as 42nd Street, Dames, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Flirtation Walk (read Classic Filmboy’s post about it here!) to hard-boiled detectives, ex-cons trying to resume their lives only to find themselves in deeper trouble, and other noble tough guys in such suspense thrillers as Cornered (1945), Johnny O’Clock (1947), Cry Danger, and The Tall Target (both 1951). (Dick Powell did some nifty comedies, too, but that’s a blog post for another time.)

Although Howard Hawks’ film version of The Big Sleep (1946) is still my favorite adaptation of author Raymond Chandler’s novels about the tough yet noble L.A. private detective Philip Marlowe, MMS is a darn close second. How close? Thisclose! I like Powell’s portrayal of Marlowe as a noble and essentially decent man, insouciant yet soulful, and nobody’s fool. In certain ways, it seems to me that in Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of Marlowe in The Big Sleep, he has a better shot at getting the best of the bad guys, as well as getting the girls (especially in a Hawks film!), though his heart eventually belonged to Lauren Bacall’s Vivian Rutledge. In MMS, by contrast, Powell’s Marlowe comes across to me as a likable, determined underdog who keeps on pitching without losing his wry sense of humor.

Dick Powell witnesses film history as Claire Trevor
performs film noir's first facepalm!

When I think about Powell’s metamorphosis from crooner to tough guy, I’m reminded of Mel Brooks’ The Producers, of all things—specifically the scene where Christopher Hewett, as director/choreographer Roger DeBris, complains about the creative rut he’s been in: “Dopey showgirls in gooey gowns! Two-three-KICK-turn, turn-turn-KICK-turn! It’s enough to make you puke.” Well, Powell was equally eager to change his image! Come to think of it, after MMS, he had another hit in Cornered (1945) as a Canadian Royal Air Force veteran, foiling hidden Nazis and avenging the death of his French war bride. But I digress….

Despite the doubts voiced by Powell’s fiancée June Allyson, he was determined to go out for hard-boiled roles. No doubt Powell also realized that at the age of 40, he was a tad long in the tooth to play a juvenile anything. But Powell jumped right in, looking for the right role. For starters, he seemed to be the only leading man in Hollywood eager to tackle the role of antihero Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, bless him! But Double Indemnity was a Paramount production, and Powell was under contract to RKO, so Powell had to wait until MMS to repurpose himself as a big-screen tough guy. It was well worth the wait, as Powell turned out to be one of the finest actors to play Philip Marlowe. Even June Allyson approved of the finished product! (Powell and Allyson wed and had a long, happy marriage until his death in 1963 from complications of the cancer the entire cast eventually suffered after filming The Conquerer. But that, too, is a story for another time.) For more about the fascinating life and times of Dick Powell, click this link to Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings and her awesome birthday salute from last November!

Marlowe goes “grouse-hunting,”
and finds out it’s Moose season!

Director Edward Dmytryk (The Falcon Strikes Back, The Caine Mutiny, Mirage, and more) and Director of Photography Harry J. Wild (Oscar-nominee Army Girl, His Kind of Woman, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) truly captures the moody visuals and emotions. The opening credits are noir all the way, with cops sweating our man Marlowe — not that Marlowe can see them, since his eyes are heavily bandaged, for reasons that will become clear later. Is this what they mean by blind justice? Well, at least with the bandages, Marlowe won’t get smoke in his eyes. The story is told primarily in flashback, but the script by screenwriter John Paxton (who, in addition to MMS, wrote Cornered; Fourteen Hours; The Wild One; Crack-Up; How to Murder a Rich Uncle; and On the Beach) is tight, suspenseful, and brimming with great dialogue that does Chandler’s source material proud.

Guilt’s written all over Lindsay Marriott’s face—and coat!

Marlowe starts out with two clients. The first one is a mountain of a man, Moose Malloy (wrestler-turned-actor Mike Mazurki), fresh out of jail and determined to find his long-missing girl Velma Valento. There’s been an awful lot of water under that bridge since Moose was in the jug, but he’s a persistent guy, to say the least. Marlowe’s second client is Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton, whose films included The Count of Monte Cristo; the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty; The Picture of Dorian Gray—no relation!—and Bride of Frankenstein, playing Percy Shelley!). A foppish fellow, Marriott hires Marlowe to accompany him to a woodsy “petting spot” (complete with a deer for petting, but the critter scrams when danger rears its head) in order to get a valuable trinket belonging to an unspecified lady friend. Instead, Marlowe is knocked unconscious by an unknown party, in classic film noir style:

“I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good—like an amputated leg.”

Our man Marlowe wakes up to find Marriott beaten to death in the car, and a young woman shining a flashlight in his face, asking if he’s all right. Clearly the pretty young interrogator was expecting someone else, because she hightails it outta there but quick! Marlowe wants to get to the bottom of this: “I’d like to know who, besides me, might have killed Marriott. He gave me one hundred dollars to take care of him and I didn’t. I’m just a small businessman in a very messy business, but I like to follow through on a sale.” Soon Marlowe is up to his eyeballs in violence and suspense, wrapped in a case involving:

• A missing jade necklace valuable enough to kill for;
• Kidnapping Marlowe, including drugging him to keep him quiet or make him talk, as needed;
• Lewin Lockridge Grayle (Miles Mander in a poignant performance), the rich, elderly jade expert who really owns the missing jade necklace;
• Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger), a distinguished-looking gent who airily admits, “I am in a very sensitive profession, Mr. Marlowe. I am a quack. Which is to say, I’m ahead of my time in the field of psychic treatment.”
• Romance with two very different women: the wholesomely lovely Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley), and Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor), the hot “big league blonde” stepmother who Ann loathes and Grayle loves practically to the point of obsession.

The coaster is clear!

Every performance is perfect, for my money. Mike Mazurki was one of film noir’s most memorable tough guys, and he and Powell play off against each other well. Ironically, the filmmakers made the already-tall Mazurki look even more intimidating, thanks to the magic of forced perspective. But don’t let Mazurki’s fearsome looks fool you; he was a Manhattan College grad and a witty conversationalist. Compassionate, too: in the 1960s, Mazurki founded the “Cauliflower Alley Club,” a non-profit organization that awarded scholarships and financial assistance to retired or injured wrestlers and their families.

In their TCM Web site articles, Frank Miller & Felicia Feaster noted that Powell wasn’t the only actor to chafe against typecasting in MMS: “Anne Shirley and Claire Trevor both conspired to do a little acting-against-type of their own, and petitioned for the proverbial good girl Anne to play the scheming fatale and for Claire, used to playing molls and floozies, to play the ‘good and dull’ (as Anne put it) nice girl. But to no avail: conventional typecasting was followed and the actresses delivered expected versions of their usual screen personas…As a consolation prize, Shirley demanded that her heiress character at least get to wear a mink coat, a bit of glamour missing from her usual run of working-class characters.” Personally, I thought Shirley and Trevor were perfect in their roles—a classic case of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” What’s wrong with playing to your strengths?

The great supporting cast includes Otto Kruger (Saboteur, Hitler’s Children, Wonder Man) as smooth, sinister quack Jules Amthor, who also has a racket in which pretty boys like the late Mr. Marriott take pretty women like Helen Grayle dancing and driving only to become hold-up victims, not taking lives. But Marriott’s death changes things, as our man Marlowe later explains to Police Lieutenant Randall (Don Douglas):

“Amthor’s a tough cookie. He works some kind of complicated (psychological) routine on gals with broken-down libidos. I think Marriott was his contact man…The jewelry Marriott was supposed to be buying back was a jade necklace belonging to one of Amthor’s patients, worth about one hundred thousand dollars. Marriott might have been crossing up Amthor, I don’t know. Anyway, he fumbled the ball…Amthor figured I must’ve picked it up. He figured wrong; I disappointed him. I didn’t have the jewelry, and I didn’t talk. But he has a little rest home where you learn to talk. It’s operated by a guy who calls himself Dr. Sonderborg. He’s a whiz with a hypo. He’s at 23^rd and Descanso.”

I bet Marlowe wishes he was in that romantic Spellbound door-opening scene instead of
Dr. Sonderborg's House of Horrors! Where’s Ingrid Bergman when you need her?

The nightmare montage in which Marlowe is drugged and tormented is worth the price of admission in itself, with truly compelling imagery courtesy of F/X whiz Vernon L. Walker and Douglas Travers. Interestingly, some of MMS’ imagery brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, which came out sometime around that same year. However, I believe MMS came out first, and I’d go so far as to say it’s markedly more sinister (appropriately so), though I love both films.

At Florian’s, they don’t care what Semisonic sings;
it ain’t closing time until Moose says so!

Chandler’s original 1940 novel was actually titled Farewell, My Lovely, and that was its title in its initial theatrical release in New England and Minneapolis. But to those audiences, Farewell, My Lovely sounded like just another one of those sappy musicals that Powell was trying to leave behind. So it was farewell to the lovely original title, and a hearty hello to the gripping new title. In addition to Powell’s tough new screen image, the resulting smash hit revitalized Powell’s career big-time as he eventually added producer and director to his formidable list of accomplishments.

This particular Chandler tale was filmed three times over the years, and its first version wasn’t even a Philip Marlowe movie! The novel was first adapted into an entry in the Falcon series in 1942, namely The Falcon Takes Over, starring Suave Hall of Famer George Sanders. They plugged the plot of Farewell... into one of Michael Arlen’s Falcon adventures, packing as many of the characters as possible into its 65-minute running time. Heck of a cast, too: Ward Bond as Moose Malloy; Team B. fave Hans Conreid as Lindsay Marriott; and Turhan Bey as Jules Amthor! I’ve only seen it in bits and pieces, and I’d love to catch up with the whole film sometime. MMS was the next version of Chandler’s story. I also loved the third version, Dick Richards’ 1975 remake of Farewell, My Lovely with the great Robert Mitchum at his world-weary, sleepy-eyed best, and Sylvia Miles was deservedly nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Jessie Florian. (I saw it in our local bijou when I was 12; I forget whether I saw it with my mom or my older brother Peter, but to this day I’ve never forgotten the film itself!) Maybe I need to do another blog post sometime comparing all the different versions of the film!

 I dress up, I dress down...

Chandler had sold the MMS movie rights to RKO years before, and he considered it the best film version of his work—high praise indeed, considering the ornery Chandler had been difficult to work with in later years while adapting scripts with Billy Wilder for Witness for the Prosecution and Alfred Hitchcock for Strangers on a Train. Anyway, getting back to Chandler’s good side, he was delighted to note that MMS’ success had helped to make him a best-selling author, even outselling the hard-boiled mysteries of competitor Dashiell Hammett. In fact, Powell played Marlowe again in 1954, this time for a TV adaptation of The Long Goodbye for the anthology series Climax!
 
Many of Powell’s noir films were written and/or produced by New Jersey native Adrian Scott, including the Oscar-nominated drama Crossfire; the aforementioned Cornered; Mr. Lucky; The Boy with Green Hair; and Deadline at Dawn. For a while, it was something of a family affair when Scott married MMS co-star Anne Shirley shortly before MMS was released. Unfortunately, both Scott and Dmytryk were blacklisted as two of the Hollywood 10, which didn’t do the marriage any good. Indeed, Shirley eventually left Scott with a “Dear John” letter. That said, Shirley ended up having a long, happy marriage to screenwriter Charles Lederer, whose many scripts included The Thing from Another World (1951) and Kiss of Death. Although Scott’s blacklisting kept him from working under his own name in Hollywood at that time, he still wrote as a front for the British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood with his second wife, Joan LaCour.

I'll show RKO I can too play slinky film noir dames!

Native New Yorker Anne Shirley had been born Dawn Evelyeen Paris in Manhattan. Little Dawn’s father died while she was still a baby. Money was tight, but Dawn’s photogenic cuteness soon became her family’s bread and butter. At the age of 16 months, the little tyke was working as a photographer's model under various names, particularly “Dawn O’Day.” As she grew into a lovely, wholesome-looking young lady of five-foot-two, auditions began for the 1934 film version of author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved novel Anne of Green Gables (also one of my dear late mom’s favorites). Dawn won the title of spunky, spirited Anne over hundreds of young aspirants, and she officially became Anne Shirley—literally, when she changed her name to that of the beloved character she played. Hey, it worked for future Oscar-winner Gig Young (formerly Byron Barr) in The Gay Sisters (1942)! A few years later, Shirley earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the role of Barbara Stanwyck’s daughter in the classic 1937 tear-jerker Stella Dallas. Shirley’s many other roles included Anne of Windy Poplars, the 1940 sequel to Anne of Green Gables; and The Devil and Daniel Webster, which won an Best Score Oscar for one of my favorite movie music composers, Bernard Herrmann, under the title All That Money Can Buy.

Moose thinks the price of cab rides is un-fare!

Anne Shirley wasn’t the only native New Yorker in the MMS cast: Claire Trevor came from the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Her star rose after her Oscar-nominated performance in Dead End (1937) and John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939).  According to Dawn Sample of Noir and Chick Flicks, Trevor’s Bad Girl With A Heart Of Gold roles eventually earned her the title “Queen of Film Noir,” playing even more dangerous dames in films like Born to Kill (1947). Trevor had been working for years at 20th Century-Fox, but in Robert Osborne’s intro to a TCM broadcast of MMS, he revealed that at the time Trevor was cast in MMS, she was freelancing, making only one or two films a year, including Johnny Angel (1945) and Crack-Up (1946). Trevor was only 5-foot-1 in her stocking feet (again with petite people!), but her powerhouse presence made her bigger than life during her long, award-winning career, which also included her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Key Largo (1948) and her Emmy for the Producers’ Showcase telecast of Dodsworth (1956), as well as another Oscar nomination, this time for The High and the Mighty (1954). Anyone here know if any enterprising casting directors ever put Trevor, Alan Ladd, and/or Veronica Lake in the same movie? Now there’s a flick I’d like to see! But I digress…

In addition to being Dick Powell’s wildly successful transition from All Singing! All Dancing! All Comedy! movie roles, MMS also happened to be the first-ever movie in which Chandler’s iconic Marlowe was portrayed on the silver screen! In fact, according to the TCM Web site, MMS came out even before The Big Sleep, and it’s considered to be the most faithful to both the plot and the spirit of Chandler’s original novel. I wouldn’t be surprised if the success of MMS got my man Howard Hawks thinking “Hey, we could totally do a flick like that!” or words to that effect.

Aw, so romantic! Does that mean love really is blind?

Hey, I'm A 7x7 Link Award Recipient!

To my surprise and delight, friend and fellow blogger Rachel of The Girl with the White Parasol blog fame has kindly included me among the seven recipients of the 7x7 LinkAwards! Thanks, Rachel! Gee, I hope I’m doing this right!

The rules of this award are as follows:

Tell everyone something that no one else knows about:
Well, I don’t know how many of you and/or my fellow bloggers are aware that I was diagnosed as autistic in 1966 when I was three years old, according to the folks at both The Cornerstone School and the Kennedy Child Study Center. How’s that for a conversation starter?  Seriously, at that time, I really was displaying the classic symptoms of autism as they knew it back then. It’s a long story, but if you’re interested, you’re welcome to check out Dr. Gilbert Kliman’s nonfiction book Reflective Network Therapy in the Preschool Classroom (available on Amazon.com). Anyway, as you can see, I got better! :-)

Now to link to one of my posts that I personally think best fits the following categories, as per Rachel’s instructions:

Most Beautiful Piece:
Even though Marilyn Monroe’s femme fatale in my January Niagara post was a beautiful rose with poisonous thorns, I’m putting her in the Beautiful Piece category for “NIAGARA: Falling for the Wrong Girl Can Be Murder” because of her brilliant performance as one of the ultimate Bad Girls of movie history, and because, let’s face it, she’s stunningly beautiful! 

http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2012/01/niagara-falling-for-wrong-girl-can-be.html

 

Most Helpful Piece:
That would be another Team Bartilucci joint, this one from November 1, 2010, as part of the Blogging for Autism day: “Siobhan Maggie Bartilucci in One Million Words or Less.” Our daughter Siobhan is not only the apple of our collective eye, she’s also an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree. Like me, Siobhan (her nickname is Shugie, as you folks might have seen in the Ball of Fire/Oscar blog post) was diagnosed with both ADHD and what eventually came to be known as Asperger’s Syndrome. Happily and luckily, we were blessed in that both of us were deemed to be quite high-functioning, and both of us were able to thrive in mainstream schools. Our family is notorious for our irreverent sense of humor as well as our personal triumph, so if you haven’t already read this post, we hope you’ll find it as entertaining and triumphant as Siobhan is (what can I say, we’re proud of our kid!).
http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2010/11/siobhan-maggie-bartilucci-in-one.html

Most Popular Piece:
Like many of you, I seem to get the most enthusiastic responses from various Blogathons, and the recent CMBA Comedy Classics Blogathon resulted in my—or more accurately, our—most popular post to date, when my dear hubby Vinnie Bartilucci (The Forty-Year-Old Fanboy and Is That Really Desirable?) did one of our Team Bartilucci team-ups to write about Ball of Fire and Oscar as part of a Wedding Day Wackiness double-feature.  Vin is as much fun to write with as he is to live with (not to put the whammy on it! :-)), and this latest team-up was great fun for both of us!

http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2012/01/wedding-bell-wackiness-double-feature.html

By all means, feel free to follow Vinnie’s witty, cheeky blogs, too:

The Forty-Year-Old Fanboy:
http://40yearoldfanboy.blogspot.com/

Is That Really Desirable?
http://itrd.blogspot.com/

Most Controversial Piece:
That would be my short story The Big Sleepybye. Actually, this piece wasn’t as controversial as I feared, but that may simply be the result of my still being quite new to blogging and therefore having very few readers at the time. :-)  The Big Sleepybye is one of my comedic short stories, about a writer with a young child and new baby, and what happens when she tries to focus on a hard-boiled detective story she’s trying to write in the midst of all this Mommy-ing. This appeared in the literary magazine Alternative Motifs in 2006, and I ran it at TotED in September 23, 2010. The “controversial” part is that the story contains comical violence and spurting bodily fluids—no, it’s not blood, but what it is kinda freaked out male readers. I think the gals reading this can take it, though. especially any gal who's given birth. Give it a try and see what you think!

Mystery, suspense, and hilarity ensue at
NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art in
The Big Sleepybye!

http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2010/09/big-sleepybye-by-dorian-tenore.html

Most Surprisingly Successful Piece:
I was pleasantly surprised at the positive things everyone had to say about my May 2011 post “Dorian’s Mother’s Day Smorgasbord: a Four-Course Meal of Fiction, Food,and Fond Memories.” It was a happy hodgepodge of our favorite family photos and anecdotes, with four sections, or “courses,” ranging from stories my late mom and I had always enjoyed, Hollywood haikus, one of our favorite family anecdotes about my mom meeting Marlene Dietrich, and our family recipe for sweet potato waffles! I think it went over well because, hey, everyone has a family, and we all have family stories to pass on to future generations!

http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2011/05/dorians-mothers-day-smorgasbord-four.html

Most Underrated Piece: 
My first TotED piece (aside from my introductory blog post giving y’all my life story) from August 23rd, 2010, “’If I Let You Change Me, Will That Do It?’ New Spins on Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.”It was a playful, tongue-in-cheek rumination about what Scottie Ferguson and Madeleine Elster  (SPOILERS if by some twist of fate you aren’t familiar with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo — but surely nobody here missed the superb A Month of Vertigo with ace blogger The Lady Eve and pals earlier this year?) would do if Scottie and Madeleine-in-Judy-mode decided to try to make a life together.

http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2010/08/if-i-let-you-change-me-will-that-do-it.html

 
Most Pride-Worthy Piece:
Reunited Artists: THE MAN ON LINCOLN'S NOSE and SOMETHING'S GONNA LIVE

In September 2010, I first learned of filmmaker Daniel Raim from his Oscar-nominated short documentary The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2000).  In it, Raim really poured his heart into the titular 40-minute documentary, and I (and other film fans) found it as is as fond and upbeat as it was riveting. It focused on the gentlemen who worked on the classic films of Alfred Hitchcock and so many more, including veteran storyboard artist Harold Michelson, veteran production designer Robert F. Boyle and Al Nozaki, all great friends who’d worked together on these landmark films. This 40-minute documentary is as fond and upbeat as it is riveting. But Raim didn’t stop there: Boyle, Henry Bumstead, and art director Al Nozaki and his comrades shared their stories in Raim’s subsequent 2010 feature-length documentary Something's Gonna Live (2010), combining the men’s insights during their twilight years. I was among the bloggers and other movie fans who helped to spread the word about Something’s Gonna Live, following it through its word-of-mouth triumphs, including a premiere at L.A.’s Laemmle Hall. It was time well-spent, for us and for anyone who loves classic films!

http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2010/09/reunited-artists-man-on-lincolns-nose.html

 I had a heck of a time narrowing all the bloggers down to only seven, but here are the ones that leapt readily to mind:

Seven Blogs for Seven Awesome Bloggers:

Shadows and Satin (from the folks who brought us The Dark Pages!)
http://shadowsandsatin.wordpress.com/

ClassicBecky’s Brain Food
http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com/

…in so many words
http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/

Another Old Movie Blog
http://anotheroldmovieblog.blogspot.com/

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
http://www.thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.com/

My Love of Old Hollywood
http://myloveofoldhollywood.blogspot.com/

True Classics
http://trueclassics.wordpress.com/

Thanks again, Rachel and friends; you guys are the awesome!

 

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.