Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946): Nazis! We Hate Those Guys!

Believe it or not, my first experience with Notorious was when I saw, not Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s intense 1946 romantic thriller, but rather a 1992 made-for-TV retread starring John Shea (Missing) and Jenny Robertson (Bull Durham), because the video rental folks didn’t have the original version at the time!  Really?  Really?!  Please!  I remember my dear late mom and me having a better time fun poking fun at the dull, witless script!  What were they thinking with their silly attempts to “improve” upon it?  It’s like those wackos in H.P. Lovecraft’s supernatural stories about the evil monster Cthulu, whose followers always think the beast will be their best buddy after they summon it, only to be stunned when the monster lays waste to the villains.  It just goes to show that when it comes to classic movies, film fans must accept no substitutes! 

Screenwriter Ben Hecht (Spellbound; His Girl Friday) introduces us viewers to the beautiful but troubled Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman from Casablanca; her Oscar-winners Gaslight and Murder on the Orient Express) has been a party girl and a heavy drinker for some time.  In fact, she’s only been along for the ride in life ever since her father was convicted of treason and collaborating with the enemy.  Since then, Alicia broke family ties with her disgraced father, and made booze her constant companion, aside from partying.  After another one of her parties, Alicia chats up a potential conquest, a handsome stranger.  When Alicia speeds way past the speed limit without the cop him giving him a summons,  she realizes the handsome stranger is a Fed, one T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant, who also worked with Hitchcock on  Suspicion and North by Northwest), and boy, is she furious when she discovers he’s a Fed!  Dev doesn’t let Alicia’s wildcat antics bother him—it’s just lights out for Alicia!  The next morning, she wakes up at Dev’s place with a splitting headache, a glass of milk (always popular in Hitchcock movies), and bittersweet news:  Alicia’s father has died by his own hand.  Even Alicia herself is surprised at her own unexpected sorrow for her late father: “I don’t know why I should feel so bad.  When he told me a few years ago what he was, everything went to pot.  I didn’t care what happened to me.  But now I remember how nice he was he once was, how nice we both were, very nice. It’s a very curious feeling, as if something had happened to me and not to him.  You see, I don’t have to hate him anymore, or myself.”

Make a note of that, Crime-stoppers!

From there, Alicia and Dev work with spymaster Paul Prescott (Louis Calhern of Duck Soup; The Asphalt Jungle) and his Washington colleagues, who send her and Dev to infiltrate the Nazi scum in Rio (by the sea-o)!  Don’t let their suave clothes and good manners fool you—they’re no-goodniks, no matter how sensitive and dashing they look underneath it all!  With Alicia sobering up, both she and Dev succumb to each other’s magnetism and they can’t help falling in love with each other, in spite of the fact that they both have more issues than a Hudson’s News stand!   Dev can be a prickly pear in any case, considering his serious trust issues where women are concerned.  In fact, sometimes Notorious feels like a version of The Lost Weekend with sexier stars!  But when Alicia and Dev do let their hair down, those scenes are among the hottest, most romantic scenes on film; I’m surprised the film stock didn’t simply burst into flames!  Notice how cold Dev acts when Prescott mentions how their main target, Alexander Sebastian (Oscar nominee Claude Rains from The Invisible Man; Casablanca) acts toward Dev when Prescott mentions Alicia’s long-ago “hunger” for Alicia when he was in love with her.  Tsk, tsk, Devlin sure isn’t being very business-like!   What would James Bond say?

Emile freaks out when it seems he’s got the wrong
bottle of wine at dinner.  Maybe he’d prefer a nice Ripple?
Or maybe cement shoes? 

Alicia makes contact with Alex, thanks to the old runaway horse trick, and suave Alex and Alicia pick up where they left off, while Dev acts like a jealous lover instead of the cool spy-type guy he needs to be on this assignment.   It’s amazing any work gets done at all with these two, especially when jealous Alex takes the next big step: marrying Alicia!   Prescott thinks it’s a swell idea; now it’ll be even easier for the new Mrs. Sebastian to keep her eyes and ears on the Nazi scum, to Prescott’s delight and Devlin’s passive-aggressive frustration!   Frankly, Devlin is especially in danger of shooting himself in the foot, perhaps literally!  Someone needs to give those crazy kids a time out, or maybe just a smack in the head!  No doubt it must annoy Dev no end that Alex is so suave and attentive to his lovely new wife.  Too bad Alex is both a Nazi and an insecure older man trying to keep his new bride happy.  Sheesh, where’s Ingrid Bergman in another romantic Hitchcock thriller when you need her:  Dr. Constance Petersen from Spellbound! 

A key moment in the film!

Instead of a honeymoon, our sexy spies throw a party to celebrate the newlyweds, with their old pal Dev keeping their eyes and ears open.  They hit pay dirt when Dev accidentally knocks over a wine bottle that’s actually “vintage sand!”  In fact, it's actually metal ore; that’s one way to perk up a honeymoon, as well as giving Dev and Alicia an opportunity for some romance, by George!  But  jealous Mama Sebastian (the regal, superb Leopoldine Konstantin) has Alicia’s number, and it’s gonna come up snake-eyes unless Dev stops acting like a jealous dolt and saves Alicia so that, as Grant said in North By Northwest: “You and I are going to do a lot of apologizing in private!”

Ingrid Bergman gives one of her very best performances as Alicia, juggling danger and romance in a relationship that’s complicated, to say the least!  Dev can be glacial or sizzlingly romantic at the blink of an eye.  The “Good Guys” essentially force Alicia to prostitute herself by marrying her off to suave Alex.   The hell of it is that Alex, an old friend of her father’s, is far more loving and romantic than Dev, despite his insecurity about his beautiful young wife, especially with Alex’s Mother-in-Law From Hell.  In any case, this sure tosses a monkey wrench into Alicia’s sizzling yet stormy romance with Dev!  It’s one of the most adult movies Hitchcock ever made; despite Bergman and Rains seemingly sleeping in separate beds, this film was quite adult for its era.  It’s not only a crackerjack espionage thriller, but also a moving, disturbing look into the dark recesses of the human heart.

For goodness sakes, hasn’t
Bing Crosby ‘s horse come in yet? 

In Robert A. Harris & Michael S. Lasky’s book The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Citadel Press, 1976), Hitchcock realized he and co-author Ben Hecht  (Spellbound; His Girl Friday), had turned out to be ahead of their time when they decided to make uranium metal ore Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, a.k.a the item that makes our heroes hot and bothered, suspense-wise!  Indeed, Hitchcock used the uranium gambit even before it was used at Hiroshima!  Nobody was supposed to know about its powers, or that it would be used in an atom bomb for the movie.  In fact, producer David O. Selznick thought it was such a preposterous idea that instead of producing Notorious himself, Selznick sold the package to RKO (including Duel in the Sun).  Apparently even having the term “uranium” in the script was scaring the producers!  I was amazed by the visuals of Director of Photography Ted Tetzlaff (My Man Godfrey; The More the Merrier), especially that long shot at the party that ends on the key in Alicia’s hand—wow!

 Can't you fix it for me? For old times' sake? 

Hitchcock’s talented daughter Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell was a triple threat herself, having co-starred in her father’s films;  Stage Fright was her debut); then Strangers on a Train; (for which she deserved an Oscar nomination, if you ask me); Psycho; and many appearances on TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents as she eventually became a producer.  I was lucky enough to interview Pat (if I may be so bold) in 1990 for Video Review, and she explained:  “My father was really able to do all the things he enjoyed doing artistically and technically.   He also used brilliant actors down to the smallest parts, like the Germans—especially Leopoldine Konstantin as Alex Sebastion’s mother…The only problem was that because of the politically sensitive plot about making a bomb out of uranium, my family was followed by the FBI for months.”  How’s that for cinematic realism?

The whole cast is absolutely stellar, including the always-suave Rains, terrific in a complex role that requires him to be believable not only as a suave lover and villain, but also a doting yet jealous and insecure husband of a lovely young wife, as well as being a villain, and having to put up with a domineering mother to boot;  to quote North by Northwest, I'm beginning to think Rains was underpaid!  I think his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination was richly deserved.   (I understand Rains was quite the romantic lover in real life!)   At times, I almost felt sorry for Alex, knowing Alicia was just stringing him along and coping—and even worse, he has to put up with The Mother From Hell, too, always a staple in Hitchcock’s wicked little arsenal!   With a forbidding matron of a mom like Mme. Leopoldine Konstantin as Alex’s mother, it’s no wonder Alex is still under Mama’s thumb despite his suave manners.  I must admit that the first time I watched the climactic love/rescue scene with Alicia and Dev’s “pillow talk,” in which Dev rescues Alicia from an agonizing death from slow poison had seemed a little corny at first.  But when I watched it again after all this time, now with a fresh outlook, I found it touching my heart!  Roy Webb’s swoony score is excellent, yet sometimes I wish I could somehow build a time machine or Way-Back Machine or the like, so that Hitchcock could have met and worked with Bernard Herrmann earlier in his career!

Claude Rains was only 5' 6" tall, a good three inches shorter than Bergman.  They were able to hide the difference when everyone was moving about, and in scenes where they stood next to each other, he just stood on a small platform.  But when he was moving and Ingrid stood still, they had to rely on strategically-placed ramps he'd walk up as he approached.  Watch how much taller he gets as he walks towards the camera here!

 

Steve Martin used footage from Notorious in his comedy Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.  Here's how two scenes from very different parts of the film were stitched into one very differently-toned one!

The Three Faces of The Maltese Falcon, Part 3: The Maltese Falcon, 1941: “The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of”

"In 1539, the Knight Templars of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain,by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels...but pirates seized the galley carrying this token and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day...."

Open your Golden Gate,and get me Rice-A-Roni!

The classic 1941 version of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon was his first film as a writer and director, as well as being the third big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s seminal detective novel about cynical San Francisco private detective Sam Spade, and how he gets embroiled in the quest for the Maltese Falcon, a black statuette that might be worth a fortune—or get the adventurers killed—or maybe both!  The cast is a perfect quartet of crime—and the best, as many film fans agree!  Check out this great Rogue’s Gallery:

*Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade.  Kids sure grow up fast!  Who’d have thought Maud Humphrey’s darling baby boy, born on Christmas Day to a patrician New York City family, would become a Best Actor Oscar-winner particularly known for his roles as tough, complicated men, as well as eventually having a happy marriage with his co-star Lauren Bacall until Bogart’s death from cancer in 1957.

*Mary Astor (one of Team Bartilucci’s favorites) as the alluring but treacherous Brigid O’Shaughnessy.    Fun Fact:  Take a good look at the scene where Joel Cairo is leaving the theater; the movie marquee is for The Great Lie, for which Mary won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar!  More about Mary shortly…

*Jerome Cowan as Miles Archer, Sam Spade’s ill-fated partner.  The busy Cowan was also the District Attorney in Miracle on 34^th Street, as well as Torrid Zone; Mr. Skeffinington; There’s Always a Woman; and many TV appearances.

*Sydney Greenstreet as Kaspar Gutman, a.k.a.“The Fat Man,” whose benevolent chuckles thinly disguise his ruthlessness.   Ironically, despite his great performances with the famous husband and-wife team of Lunt & Fontanne, Greenstreet was a nervous wreck when it was time for his very first scene in the film, despite his many years as a renowned stage actor!  On the Maltese Falcon set, Greenstreet begged his co-star: "Mary, dear, hold my hand.  Tell me I won't make an ass of meself!"  Huston was holding his breath, too!  Luckily, Greenstreet performed his first scene flawlessly, and the renowned stage actor became an in-demand character actor and film star!  Greenstreet was always a trouper despite his chronic illness, the kidney disorder Bright’s Disease, bless him.  (I’m reminded of a gag by another of my favorites, the humorist and screenwriter S.J. Perelman: “I have Bright’s Disease, and he has mine!”  But I digress….)

*Peter Lorre as the exotic and wily Joel Cairo, he of the gardenia scent, among other things. Lorre became a star in Fritz Lang’s searing drama M, and Alfred Hitchcock’s original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. As an in-demand character actor, Lorre’s many roles ranged from dramas to comedies, including Crime & Punishment; All Through the Night; My Favorite Brunette; Casablanca; several pairings with Greenstreet and Lorre, including The Mask of Dimitrios; and The Verdict. Lorre was also the first James Bond villain, playing the evil Le Chiffe in a 1954 TV version of Casino Royale in the series Climax!  (The decidedly un-British Barry Nelson played “Jimmy Bond”!)

Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer Cook, Kaspar Gutman’s weaselly henchman and gunsel (a word of many meanings).  Whether the 5-foot-five Cook was comical, sinister, or poignant, he was always memorable and often a scene-stealer in such films as The Big Sleep; I Wake Up Screaming; The Killing; Electra Glide in Blue; and so much more!  Fun Fact:  Lee Patrick and Elisha Cook Jr. were the only cast members to reprise their original roles in the 1975 comedy spoof/sequel, The Black Bird, which Vinnie will be discussing!

Lee Patrick as Effie Perine, Sam’s trusty secretary and kind yet firm voice of reason.  She too was a multifaceted actress, shining in such hits as Auntie Mame playing bigoted boob Mrs. Upson; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; Dangerously They Live; Caged; Mildred Pierce; and Vertigo.


Gladys George as Iva Archer, Miles Archer's hot but clingy widow, who's hoping to become Mrs. Spade, even though Sam's just not that into her!  Ms. George earned an Oscar nomination for Valiant Is the Word for Carrie.  She was also in Flamingo Road and The Best Years of our Lives.

Meet Miss Wonderly...Or is it LeBlanc?
O’Shaughnessy?! Heck we'd retain her anytime!

The 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon proves the old adage: “The third time’s the charm!”  No wonder John Huston’s taut, wryly cynical take on Hammett’s tale put Huston on the map as a writer/director.  His version has the best of everything in one terrific package: the best private eye thriller; the best Dashiell Hammett movie adaptation; the best remake; and the best nest-of-vipers cast, including the signature Humphrey Bogart role/performance!

Sure, I’ve been a completest when it comes to watching all three versions of The Maltese Falcon for the past few weeks, and it’s been interesting and fun to watch all three versions to compare each of them, but let’s face it, the 1941 version is the best; accept no substitutes!  Once I settled in to watch the DVD (because I never get tired of that, either), I said out loud, “Now this is more like it!”  Even the opening credits are better, with the fabulous Maltese Falcon statue glaring in shadowy profile as Adolph Deutsch’s brassy main title music blares.  Musical director Leo F. Forbstein really nailed it this time, blending suspense, foreboding, and wry wit. The fateful falcon’s background story scrolls up, lending “The Black Bird” a mythical aspect that the previous movie adaptations lacked.  It’s no wonder John Huston’s take on Hammett’s tale put him on the map as a writer/director.  For my money, the 1941 version has the best of everything in one package:  the best private eye thriller; the best remake; the best Dashiell Hammett novel-to-movie adaptation; and the best nest-of-vipers cast, including the signature Humphrey Bogart role/performance!

Cairo tries to eliminate the middleman, the fool!

Granted, I’m biased, but to me, Huston’s powerhouse 1941 cast makes the previous casts look like rejects from high school class productions of the film, and not good ones, either!  That said, don’t confuse those with writer/director Rian Johnson’s fascinating Hammett-influenced high school noir 2005 Brick—but that’s a blog post for another time!  Huston’s actors were born to play these characters.  The cast is perfection; even the great Walter Huston shows up, doing a memorable cameo for his son John as the ill-fated Captain Jacobi!   Huston’s lean, mean pacing and striking visuals come broodingly alive, thanks to Director of Photography Arthur Edeson and his expressionistic images.  Thomas Richards’ editing is right on the mark.  I love the way the overall faithfulness to the novel makes me feel like Huston & Company opened the book and shook it until the characters fell out and started filming!  In the One Magnificent Bird documentary, it’s claimed that Huston and/or his secretary typed the exact dialogue straight from the book into script form.  I can believe it!

Ah, shadows, a classic element of film noir!

As I said earlier, Humphrey Bogart may not look like Hammett’s “blond satan,” but he’s got Sam Spade’s attitude down perfectly.  Besides, he’s Bogart, with all the toughness, charisma, and wry humor that implies.  What’s not to love?  Indeed, The Maltese Falcon was the film that truly made Bogart a full-tilt star at last.  Even if I’d read Hammett’s novel before I saw the 1941 film back in my high school days at dear old St. Catharine Academy in the Bronx, Bogart’s star-making  performance would still be engraved on my brain.  Bogart deftly balances toughness, trickiness, and tenderness, but he never lets his tender side make a sap out of him, unlike Ricardo Cortez’s Sam Spade or Warren William’s Ted Shane, both of whom apparently live to chase skirts, and seem to be trying just a little too hard in my opinion.  Then again, some people might say, “Hey, nice work if you can get it!”  But as far as I’m concerned, Bogart’s performance as Sam shows him to be as sexy as he is tough and wily, with just enough tenderness to show he’s not made of stone.  Women are drawn to Sam out of his sheer charisma and strength of character, not just throwing themselves at them willy-nilly.  Somehow, he doesn’t seem to need to work at it. Now isn’t that more fascinating and appealing than a guy who aggressively pitches woo at dames until they give in out of sheer exhaustion? 

Sardonic Sam tells Miles Archer, "You've got brains. Yes you have."
But not enough for Miles to dodge a bullet! R.I.P!

In an early scene with Brigid, Sam has a line about how all he has to do is stand still and the cops will be swarming all over him.  Substitute “women” for “cops” and the line would still be accurate!  But Mary Astor's career was nearly scuttled twice during her long career, due to public scandal in the mid-1930s.  First of all, Mary, who was still quite young at the time, was sued for support by her greedy parents.  Later, she was unfairly branded an adulterous wife by her vindictive ex-husband during a custody fight over Mary’s daughter—what nerve!  Luckily, Mary was able to turn her lemons into lemonade when her performance in The Maltese Falcon brought her well-deserved accolades!  As the quicksilver Brigid, Mary’s watchful eyes, elegance, and that beseeching throb in (her) voice as she enlists Sam’s aid makes her utterly fascinating.  She's totally believable as an avaricious adventuress with a prim, sweet façade—a woman who would kill a guy as soon as kiss him, and keep him guessing about her intentions until the bitter end!  That’s what made Astor and Bogart such a great team in both The Maltese Falcon and Across The Pacific that year.  In Bogart and Astor’s capable hands, Brigid and Sam are two wily, street-smart people who are onto each other, yet also into each other!   (As I’ve mentioned elsewhere at TotED, Mary Astor looked and sounded remarkably like my late Auntie Joy back in her youth—and if you knew what a stylish, rambunctious pair my late mom and Auntie Joy were, you’d know that’s a big compliment!)  Let’s face it, The Maltese Falcon is another one of those superbly-cast films that doesn’t have a bum performance in the bunch.  By the way, not to sound like a prude, but after the way women fawned over our hero in the first two films, it was refreshing to see Effie being both friendly and professional with Sam.  Sure, there’s warmth between Effie and Sam, but it stops well short of neck-nuzzling and lap-sitting!  

The Hat Squad arrives! Lt. Dundy and Detective Tom Polhaus
visit Sam after Miles' murder, cracking foxy and such!

Even Elisha Cook Jr. shines in his supporting role as Wilmer.  One of my favorites among his scenes is that brilliant scene where Wilmer is on the verge of shooting the cool, calm Sam while Wilmer’s eyes fill with tears of rage as he whispers, “Get on your feet.  I’ve taken all the riding from you I’m gonna take.”  Vinnie and I also love the scene where Wilmer comes to after Sam has punched him out, dread and horror spreading over his face as each of the conspirators stare at him coldly, in another triumph of skillful editing  and Edeson’s photography.  When Wilmer comes to, he knows he’s in big trouble without anyone saying a word!

Huston’s powerhouse cast was born to play these characters.  Between the perfect performances (even the great Walter Huston is memorable in his brief cameo as the dying Captain Jacobi), Huston’s lean, mean pacing and striking visuals (Arthur Edeson’s expressionistic photography and Thomas Richards’ editing work beautifully), and the overall faithfulness to the novel, it’s as if Huston & Company just opened the book and shook it until the characters fell out, then started filming. 

Humphrey Bogart doesn’t match Hammett’s description of Sam Spade as a “blond Satan,” but he’s got Spade’s attitude down perfectly, and besides, he’s Bogart!  What’s not to like? Bogie deftly balances toughness, trickiness, and tenderness, but he never lets his tender side make a sap out of him. I find Bogart’s Spade sexier than skirt-chasing Ricardo Cortez or Warren William in the previous films because the dames are drawn to Bogie because of his sheer charisma and strength of character, as opposed to him aggressively pitching woo at them until they give in from sheer exhaustion.  In an early scene with Brigid, Spade has a line about how all he has to do is stand still and the cops will be swarming all over him; substitute “women” for “cops” and the line would still be accurate!

"Sam, are you sure we can trust Miss O’Shaughnessy?
She keeps asking for Prince Albert in the can!"

Mary Astor’s supposed so-called "shady-lady" past informs her spot-on performance as quicksilver Brigid O’Shaughnessy, but it’s her watchful eyes, elegance, and that beseeching “throb in (her) voice” as she enlists Spade’s aid, making her so fascinating and believable as an avaricious adventuress with a prim, sweet façade—a woman who’d kill a guy as soon as kiss him, and keep him guessing about her intentions until the bitter end.  That’s what made Astor and Bogart such a great team; in their capable hands, Brigid and Spade are two wily, street-smart people who are onto each other as well as into each other.

Every actor in The Maltese Falcon shines, from Bogart and Astor to Ward Bond and Barton MacLane (also Team Bartilucci faves) as Sgt. Polhaus and Lt. Dundy, to to Gladys George as the clingy, vindictive Iva Archer, to the only cast members who reprised their roles in the otherwise so-so 1975 sequel/spoof The Black Bird. Elisha Cook Jr. as gunsel Wilmer Cook and Lee Patrick as Spade’s trusty secretary Effie Perine.  After Spade’s tomcatting with Effie and other babes in the early films, it's kind of refreshing that Effie’s interest in Spade here is a bit more professional than personal.  Sure, there’s warmth between them, but it stops well short of neck-nuzzling and lap-sitting.  

"Hey, Brigid, what do you want to do tonight?"
"I don't know, Sam, what do you want to do tonight?

Still, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre come closest to stealing the show.  As Kasper Gutman, Greenstreet blends menace with avuncularity, his voice a cultured growl.  Greenstreet’s performance is so assured, it’s hard to believe The Maltese Falcon was this veteran stage actor’s first movie job, but it’s easy to see why he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Huston also earned a Best Screenplay Oscar, though Mary Astor wasn't nominated.  Happily, she soon had her own Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Great Lie!   The Maltese Falcon also made Greenstreet an in-demand character actor and one of cinema’s most memorable villains, especially in his team-ups with Peter Lorre.  Lorre’s witty, sly performance as the smoothly effeminate yet ruthless weasel Joel Cairo is a marvelous addition to the rogues’ gallery of lowlifes Lorre played over the course of his long career. After The Maltese Falcon's success, the great cast worked together in various combinations in many movies, including Casablanca.

Brigid: "What else can I buy you with?" SOLD!

  I’ve always wondered what a Maltese Falcon sequel would be like.  Can you imagine a caper film sequel following Gutman and Cairo to Istanbul, with Sam on a case and wily Brigid somehow getting the gang back together for one last caper?

Meet Kaspar Gutman, a man who likes talking with men
who like to talk. But is his talk cheap?

Poor Captain Jacobi!  But at least it gave Walter Huston a swell cameo!

Wilmer has a rude awakening as the rest of the gang gives him the Hairy Eyeball!

Sam: "The stuff dreams are made of." Tom: "Huh?"
(I love that Tom gets the last word, and unwittingly at that!)

The Maltese Falcon has so much memorable dialogue, often laced with sardonic humor, that I’d be virtually transcribing the whole script if I quoted all my fave lines.  Here at Team Bartilucci HQ, we often quote such ...Falcon lines as “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter;” “When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it!” (not that we've ever done so, being gentle folk despite our goofiness) have often been jokingly quoted.  Then there’s Gutman’s deliciously ironic toast with Spade:  “Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”  Plain speaking and clear understanding with this band of greedy, duplicitous cutthroats?!  Good luck!  But it’s fine with us, because the talk’s a joy to listen to; as Gutman continues: “I distrust a closed-mouthed man.  He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says all the wrong things.  Talking is something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.” The Maltese Falcon has one of cinema’s greatest last lines, Spade’s answer when Polhaus asks what the statue is:  “The stuff that dreams are made of.” (To which Polhaus replies, “Huh?”  Good old Ward Bond, getting the last word!)  I also love the climactic scene with all the principal players, especially the dialogue between Spade and Gutman about how to go about getting what they want: “If you kill me, how are you gonna get the bird? And if I know you can't afford to kill me, how are you gonna scare me into giving it to you?”  By the way, Perry Mason fans should keep an eye out for TV’s Perry Mason co-star William Hopper in a brief early role as a reporter!

The bottom line:  The Maltese Falcon is truly “The stuff that dreams are made of”!


(Comments also from TCM’s Scott McGee & Sarah Heiman)

The Three Faces of The Maltese Falcon Part 2: Satan Met a Lady (1936)

Dashiell Hammett’s best-selling mystery novels became even hotter than ever when Hollywood adapted them for the silver screen.  The Maltese Falcon was now reworked into a screwball comedy, Satan Met a Lady (1936), starring Bette Davis and Warren William.  Like they say, if works, milk it for all its worth!  I kind of think of this version as Maltese Falcon 2, Sam Spade’s playful, mischievous sister. Still, I must admit I have a personal soft spot for this particular …Lady, because this film was:

1. The first movie Vinnie and I saw after our daughter Siobhan (“Shugie” to our loved ones) was born in New York City, in 1996.  This also meant that:
2. It was also the first movie I had ever watched on Turner Classic Movies. I think folks were still calling it Turner Classic Movies instead of TCM at the time! 

NYU Medical Center, the Manhattan hospital where Shugie was born, had its own cable TV system, and the channels included TCM (Grease was on, as I recall).  Interestingly, the hospital also happened to have a TV channel where they seemed to constantly run 101 Dalmatians (yes, the original animated Disney version; accept no substitutes!).  A visiting friend quipped that a film about puppies in peril in a plot to kidnap Dalmatian puppies might not be the best film  choice for an anxious new mom…but I digress!
Many people bad-mouth Satan Met a Lady, but I think it’s only because many people don’t seem to realize this version is supposed to be played for laughs!

From the start, I found Satan Met a Lady to be madcap fun, starting with our own Sam Spade manqué Ted Shane (William) , who’s being run out of town almost literally on a rail.  William Dieterle (Portrait of Jennie; The Devil and Daniel Webster) worked from Brown Holmes’ screenplay, but this time they made a few changes to make it more rib-tickling.  This was also where Arthur Edeson practiced for his future stint as The Maltese Falcon’s Director of Photography, as an assistant on Satan Met a Lady.

Fun Fact:  Ricardo Cortez and Warren William each played Perry Mason in the movies (no, not the same movie; see, I told you he was racy!).

Bette Davis as “The Beautiful Valerie Purvis:
“Do you mind very much, Mr. Shane, taking off
your hat in the presence of a lady with a gun?”

But it’s a fresh young *Bette Davis* who gets top billing here as wily Valerie Purvis, or as she’s often described: “The beautiful Valerie Purvis” (any relation to G-Man Melvin Purvis, John Dillinger’s foe?).  Played by the fabulous Ms. Davis, she could be Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s witty, bantering sister.  Satan Met a Lady and The Maltese Falcon have more in common besides being loosely inspired by the same Dashiell Hammett novel: in Satan Met a Lady, our rakish hero is played by Warren William from Three on a Match; the 1930s Perry Mason movies; and Gold Diggers of 1933, among others.  William plays racy detective Ted Shane, a man so racy that the spelling of his name sometimes plays hide-and-seek.   Maybe it’s to keep his creditors at bay!

Shane gives The Lovely Valerie Purvis her gun,
a kiss, and a promise!

They say it’s always five o’clock somewhere, but in…Lady, William always looks and acts like a fun-loving troublemaker no matter what time it is!   Sheesh, Shane’s even more of a tomcat than Ricardo Cortez was in 1931!  William and Davis play off each other most enjoyably as they seek out, not The Maltese Falcon, but rather an ancient ram’s horn rumored to be stuffed with fabulous jewels.  They’re aided and abetted by a rambunctious supporting cast, including:

Will Shane and Travers have to pass the hat
to get the legendary Ram’s Horn? 

*Arthur Treacher* —  I must confess I first knew who Treacher was from his Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips franchise in the 1970s, with its tag line “The Meal You Cannot Make at Home,” as well as seeing him on the big screen at our local bijou in Mary Poppins when I was a kid.  Appropriately enough, in Satan Met a Lady, Treacher plays another character named Travers—what are the odds?  Here, Treacher is transformed from a Peter Lorre type to Travers, a somewhat bumbling English gentleman crook.

*Alison Skipworth* — Often paired with W.C. Fields, Ms. Skipworth began her career on Broadway, and continued in such films as The Devil is a Woman and Dangerous (both in 1935). “Skippy,” as her friends and colleagues called her, essentially gets a sex change here, since her character was originally Kaspar Gutman.  I like Ms. Skipworth’s take on the character, the jolly yet slyly dangerous Madame Barabbas; even her Biblical name is cool!   Shane and Madame Barabbas have something of a friendly-adversary relationship.  I got a kick out of the scene where each of them proved the other each was too clever to let the other one slip them a Mickey Finn.

*Porter Hall*  — The ill-fated Miles Archer and his restless wife Iva in The Maltese Falcon are now Mr. and Mrs. Ames, played briefly but entertainingly by Hall, best known here at Team Bartilucci HQ as Macaulay in The Thin Man, and Jackson, the “Medford Man” in Double Indemnity.   Ames’ hot wife Astrid—soon to be Ames’ widow— is played by lovely big-band singer/actress *Wini Shaw,* popular on stage and screen, including her success on The Ziegfeld Follies and her Broadway triumph in Call Me Madame!

Don’t  let buffoonish  “Kenny-Boy” and his silly beanie fool you,
 he’s a killer!  Would his Auntie Madame Barrabbas lie to you? 

*Maynard  Holmes*  —  Instead of gunsel Wilmer, Madame Barabbas’ sharpshooting right-hand man is her obnoxious, buffoonish, beret-wearing nephew Kenneth, or as his Auntie calls him, “Kenny Boy.”  Hey, at least he loved cats!  Holmes was also in Dead Reckoning; Somewhere in the Night; The Lady from Shanghai (though he unfortunately didn’t get screen credit).

*Marie Wilson*  —   Of all the wacky characters in Satan Met a Lady, my favorite was Marie Wilson  redoing trusty secretary/receptionist Effie Perine as the endearing cutie Miss Murgatroyd, a cheerful blonde uber-ditz.  Her cute little squeak of surprise/distress always cracks me up!  Both her film versions and TV versions of My Friend Irma were smashing successes, in addition to her voice work on the 1970 animated Hanna-Barbera sports comedy Where’s Huddles?

*Olin Howland* was a character actor from the silent era until Howland’s death in 1959.  I myself always enjoyed Howland in his 1930s Perry Mason films, often playing Coroner Wilbur Strong or Dr. Croker.  (Don’t you just love these names?) He was also a scene stealer in THEM! as the drunk offering our heroes to “Make me a Sergeant, charge the booze!”, as well as the ill-fated old man in The Blob.

Zesty quips abound, including:

Valerie:  “Do you mind very much Mr. Shane, taking off your hat in the presence of a lady with a gun?”

Shane, discovering Ames has been murdered: “It’s the first time he ever did anything in an appropriate place.”

Shane (cheerfully) to Miss Murgatroyd when it seems she’ll be out in the cold with no job:  “Have you finished packing all your things?...And all the things that weren’t yours, but that you thought you could use?

Miss Murgatroyd: (flustered): “Yes—um, I mean, I’m all packed.”

The Three Faces of The Maltese Falcon, Part One: The Maltese Falcon, 1931

Hey, I didn’t see this at the Book of the Month Club!

One of my favorite Christmas presents I received from Vinnie is a gift that we both enjoy to this day:  the three-Disc Special Edition DVD set of The Maltese Falcon (TMF for short) I received from him last Christmas!  What a treasure trove!   It contains a stellar print of writer/director John Huston’s classic 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett’s seminal detective novel about cynical private detective Sam Spade’s adventures with the alluring bur treacherous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, alias  Miss Wonderly, alias Miss Leblanc, and a bevy of greedy no-goodniks vying for the titular falcon statue.  But wait, there’s more: this set also includes the first two TMF adaptations, including the first two movie adaptations: an entertaining and informative documentary The Maltese Falcon: One Magnificent Bird; and oodles of fun extras, including Humphrey Bogart’s movie trailers, a “Night at the Movies” compilation, including newsreels, cartoons, trailers, the whole shebang; Warner Bros. movie blooper reels; and even an audio-only TMF radio adaptation starring  two of Team Bartilucci’s favorite actors: Edward G. Robinson as Sam Spade, and Laird Cregar as Casper Gutman!

One Magnificent Bird is chock-full of info about both Hammett and the films—including the fact that the name “Dashiell” is apparently pronounced “Da-SHEEL, at least according to TCM’s beloved Robert Osborne.  I swear, ever since I became a Hammett fan back in my teens, I’d never heard the “Da-SHEEL” pronunciation   before.   Of course, I usually just read Hammett’s name, as opposed to hearing it said out loud, but the few times I did hear the name “Dashiell” pronounced, it was always as “DASH-ell.”  Go figure!  Nit-picks aside, all kind of fascinating folks with lore about Hammett’s life and the creation of his fiction are interviewed in One Magnificent Bird, including, among many others, Hammett‘s granddaughter Julie Rivett; writer/directors Larry Cohen and Peter Bogdanovich; Frank Miller; Henry Rollins; actors James Cromwell and Michael Madsen, presumably interviewed for the documentary because they’ve starred in such hard-boiled crime films as L.A. Confidential and Reservoir Dogs; Eric Lax, Humphrey Bogart’s biographer, who also provides an excellent commentary track for the superb 1941 TMF DVD; and Joe Gores, author of the mystery novel Hammett, filmed in 1982 by Wim Wenders, starring Frederic Forrest (The Conversation) in the title role; and Elisha Cook Jr—Wilmer Cook  in his final role as a cabbie!

Dr. Cairo is no match for our man Sam!
Think he makes house calls? 

In real life, the dark cloud of Hammett’s ill health ironically had the silver lining of turning Hammett into a renowned author.  A resident of San Francisco, Hammett had chronic pulmonary problems, forcing him to retire from his career as a Pinkerton detective, as well as forcing him to live apart from his daughters and his then-wife.  To fill his spare time, Hammett began writing stories and novels inspired by his Pinkerton experiences, including Red Harvest.  This was the uncredited inspiration for the Akira Kurosaka film Yojimbo, as well as being influenced over time by Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing and The Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, who even has a character in the film who looks like Hammett!.  And of course, don’t forget Hammett’s great novels The Thin Man and The Glass Key, among many others, eventually being adapted for the movies!  In any event, when Hammett’s first novel was published, it was a best-seller, with Hammett being favorably compared to Ernest Hemingway’s work!

The first film version of The Maltese Falcon came out in 1931, directed by Roy Del Ruth (Ziegfeld Follies; Born to Dance).  It was known variously as both The Maltese Falcon and Dangerous Female, but for convenience’s sake, let’s call this version Maltese 1.  This 1931 version was reviled by reviewers, but it was a big hit with moviegoers during those Pre-Code days!   Our private eye protagonist Sam Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez.  Born Jacob Kranz in Austria, Cortez came to Hollywood during Rudolph Valentino’s heyday, so the publicity machine turned him into a Latin lover type, albeit without the cliché Latin Lover accent.  Cortez’s films and TV appearances included films  I Am a Thief; Behind Office Doors; The House on 56th Street, among others).  Fun Fact:  Cortez’s brother Stanley Cortez was twice nominated for Oscars as Director of Photography, for The Magnificent Ambersons (1943) and Since You Went Away (1945), as well as an American Society of Cinematographers, USA Lifetime Achievement Award! Screenwriters don’t always agree with the original authors, and Hammett was no exception.  Still, like many writers, they were paid by the word, so they were quite at peace with padding the word-count when necessary.  Hey, writers have to eat, too!  So here’s Hammett’s description of Sam Spade, straight from Chapter 1 of The Maltese Falcon:

Sam sure knows how to reassure
a client, especially pretty ones! 

“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin jutting a v under the more flexible v of his mouth.  His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v.  His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead.  He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.”

Sam doesn’t look much like Humphrey Bogart, does he?  For that matter, neither did Warren William’s character in the second film version, Satan Met A Lady (1936), but we’ll discuss him and that delightful underrated comedy (yes, a comedy!) in our next installment!   In any case, unlike Cortez or William, both of whom concentrate on the Lothario aspect of Spade’s personality, Bogart had Spade’s cynical, wily-yet-basically honorable attitude down perfectly—more about that when I discuss the 1941 version in depth in our upcoming big finale; but I digress!  In Maltese 1, Cortez is all smooth moves and toothy smiles, which he flashes even while he’s trying to speak!  By any chance, did Cortez have a contract with a big toothpaste company?

"Iva" idea Hot Toddy's too clingy for Sam’s liking!  

Anyway, Cortez’s Sam Spade may or may not always get his man, but he sure does get his women!   We first see Spade as a silhouette kissing and fondling a female silhouette behind his glass office door.  When Spade isn’t ravishing his female clients, he’s slyly making time on the side with his secretary, Effie Perine (a playful Una Merkel ); talk about perks in the office!  As if that wasn't enough office drama, Sam's partner's wife Iva (Thelma Todd—“Hot Toddy” herself, in happier times) is still crazy about Sam, but he's tired of the needy Iva getting all clingy on him all the time.  Clearly Sam isn't interested in wedding bells despite Iva's wishes, but no doubt Iva won’t let Sam go without a fight!  Ah, but there's nothing like a murdered partner to change things, and when your partner's bumped off, you're supposed to do something about it, so the sleuthing begins!  No doubt it's also partly because the Hays Office hadn’t completely succeeded in spoiling moviegoers’ naughty film fun!  When Spade isn’t ravishing his female clients, or Iva, or the mysterious Ruth Wonderly (Bebe Daniels from 42nd Street),  he’s kissing office secretary Effie and who knows who else.  It’s a miracle Sam gets any work done at all, but it sure looks like fun.  Lucky for Sam, that little tease Effie likes it and the story’s set in 1931, or Spade would find himself slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit!

I’m always intrigued at the elaborate wording of the credits of films of this era, like “Screen Play and Dialogue by Maude Fulton & Brown Holmes.”  Don’t screenplays automatically have dialogue?  Holmes is also credited with the script for Satan Met a Lady (1936) which I also think of as Maltese 2, and which you'll see sometime next week.  Good thing the writers left the writing to John Huston for the classic 1941 version! Like many early talkies I’ve watched, I found Maltese 1 had a slow pace.  It’s only 78 minutes long, and yet to me, the time seems to crawl by for my 21^st century attention span.  Having said that, I found the 100-minute Maltese 3 1941 version seemed to fly by because I was so caught up in the crackling intrigue and the dazzling performances.  Still, I’m impressed with how closely the 1941 version held, having me spellbound with suspense and snappy dialogue. 

Just how squeaky clean is Miss Wonderly? 

Sometimes it adhered a little bit too closely.  For instance, in the 1931 version of the film, Ruth Wonderly, as Brigid is named in this version, sleeps with Sam.  But while she sleeps, Sam stealthily ransacks the apartment for the Falcon, taking the joint apart in his search.  Yes, it’s true to the novel, but the plodding pace and static camerawork drains the scene of any suspense that this scene might have had; even Cortez seems bored.  By the way, all three versions leave out the scene from the novel with Gutman’s daughter waylaying Spade, as well as my own favorite bit, Sam’s Flitcraft story, but even I realize they’re not truly essential.  Besides, as I've said, I’ve always suspected that Hammett included the Flitcraft story simply to increase his paycheck, since he was being paid by the word.  Hey, Hammett had to eat, too! TCM’s Frank Miller says, “The Maltese Falcon earned solid reviews and did well at the box office, but its shelf life was limited.  Four years after its release, threats of national boycotts of ‘bad movies’ inspired the studios to accept strict Production Code enforcement  under the decidedly tough Joe Breen.”  And what a fascinating cast:  Dwight Frye as “gunsel” Wilmer Cook; Dudley Digges as a more slender, almost more comical Kasper Gutman.  Much of the dialogue in  Maltese 1, is devoted to plot exposition, as opposed to the classic 1941 version’s storytelling style: sleek, economical, more showing, less telling.  While John Huston was a master of dialogue, he also reminded us viewers that film is a visual medium.

Hold onto your hat, Wilmer, they’re selling you out!

Even the establishing shots of San Francisco somehow manage to be slow-paced; the legend “San Francisco”  lingers onscreen so long, I found myself thinking, “All right already, we know it’s San Francisco!”  It didn’t help that the music by the Vitaphone  Orchestra, conducted by the usually capable Leo G. Forbstein, sounded to me like an Italian concerto for hurdy-gurdy and violin; I half-expected a street musician  with a monkey to stroll onscreen.  But then, keep in mind that if I’d been alive in 1931, I’d think this was cutting-edge music, so feel free to take my comments with a hefty helping of salt!
As portrayed by Bebe Daniels (42nd Street), Ruth Wonderly came across to me as more like a miffed flapper than a beguiling, mercurial femme fatale.  Cortez utters the famous line to Daniels about “the throb you get in your voice…” when she begs for Sam’s help, but her so-called throb is barely perceptible.   Indeed, Sam cheerfully mocks Ruth like a he's teasing a bratty little sister; certainly no match for the palpable throb in our beloved Mary Astor’s voice in the 1941 masterpiece!

Joel Cairo gets upgraded to the Eurotrash Dr. Cairo, as played by Otto Matieson (Surrender!; Beau Ideal).  He’s not as memorably colorful as Peter Lorre in the 1941 version, but he’s still just as overdressed and exotic. Dr. Cairo also tends to inexplicably turn up out of nowhere in Sam’s  apartment when Lt. Dundy and Det. Sgt. Polhaus (played here by Robert Elliott and J. Farrell MacDonald) show up, which doesn’t work as well as the 1941 version with Sam, Dr. Cairo, and Ruth; somehow I simply didn’t feel any sense of urgency or suspense.  

Then there’s Dudley Digges as Caspar Gutman, the formidable “Fat Man.”  Digges tries hard, but he comes off as more of a slimmer, sweatier Falstaff than Sydney Greenstreet.  On the positive side, Dwight Frye, Dracula’s Renfield, adds another great supporting role to his repertoire as Wilmer Cook, Gutman’s gunsel in every sense of the term! 

Next time: The 3 Faces of The Maltese Falcon: Satan Met a Lady (1936)