The Confessional: The Chase {1966}

The Chase is one of those films nearly everyone loves to hate. Ridiculed upon its release in spring 1966, the film has been portrayed as a wild look inside a small Texas town on what seems like a typical Saturday night--a fancy dress-up party for the chief industrialist; the drunken near-orgies of the middle age, middle class crowd; secret and not-so-secret affairs of the body and the heart; beatings, misogyny, and racism. Just an average night. The thing that throws the town even further into chaos is the return of one Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford), newly escaped from prison and making his way back to his home town.

On paper the film seemed a sure-fire hit. The story originated as a book and play by Horton Foote. Oscar-winning producer Sam Spiegel (The African Queen; On the Waterfront; Suddenly, Last Summer; Lawrence of Arabia) bought the rights and hired playwright Lillian Hellman to adapt it. Marlon Brando was attached to the project practically from its inception. Brando was in the middle of his generally woeful 1960s period and had signed on for the cut rate of $750,000 (down from the $1 million he received for The Fugitive Kind, Sidney Lumet's 1960 adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending). The Chase cast was diverse, filled with a solid line-up of character actors--E.G. Marshall, Robert Duvall, Janice Rule, Henry Hull, Bruce Cabot, Miriam Hopkins--and young up-and-comers, including Jane Fonda, James Fox, and Robert Redford.

To direct, Spiegel considered some of the biggest names in the business: William Wyler; David Lean, an odd choice, given the material; Elia Kazan, likely due to the casting of Brando; and Fred Zinnemann. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was lined up but wanted Bubber and his wife, Anna, to be black, and Spiegel wouldn't comply. Ultimately, Arthur Penn was given the director's chair. Penn was a good choice. He had had tremendous success with actors (Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke won Oscars for Penn's The Miracle Worker, released in 1962), yet he was still considered a newcomer to the Hollywood establishment. Penn had just completed a rather avant-garde film, Mickey One, with Warren Beatty which failed miserably at the box office and befuddled much of the critical community. Further, in Hollywood, New Yorker Penn was committing the ultimate betrayal--he wouldn't move to the west coast permanently and didn't play by the town's rules. Nevertheless, he hoped The Chase would cement his position as an A-list director.

Screenwriter Lillian Hellman had worked on Broadway with Penn on the hit Toys in the Attic. "We were pretty good friends," says Penn. At this point, though, according to the director, "Lillian was pretty annoying and not really functioning very well." Fortunately, during pre-production, Penn enjoyed Spiegel's company, finding the producer elegant and cultured, and his suggestions on the screenplay helpful: "Sam was pretty good on construction."

Robert Duvall's Edwin Stewart meekly watches wife Emily (Janice Rule)
enjoy a motorcycle while playing to the camera in The Chase

But the screenplay seemed to be the main source of the production's problems. It's also what most critics pointed to as the most weakest aspect of the film. Ivan Moffat (A Place in the Sun, Giant, Bhowani Junction) and even Horton Foote were brought in to improve the story and dialogue, but the movie seemed to be stuck in Peyton Place mode. According to Penn, once filming began, Spiegel was nowhere to be found, though his minions were delivering scene rewrites to the set on a near-daily basis. "Once the film started shooting, there was no exchange between us," Penn stated. Then things went from bad to worse when Spiegel took control in the editing room. Panned by critics except for some in Europe, The Chase had cost $5.6 million. It did not make its money back in initial release.

Director Arthur Penn points out a thing or two to his star, Marlon Brando

I can't quite recall when I first saw The Chase, but I know I was in high school, that terrifically impressionable time. I was taken with it immediately in spite of its soapy elements. If it wasn't for my interest in Marlon Brando at that time, it probably would have taken longer for The Chase to appear on my radar. But as a teenager, I was determined to see all of Brando's films when they showed on television. The Chase was one of the earlier ones, along with The Men, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Wild One, and Guys and Dolls. In The Chase, his Sheriff Calder is low-key, making the nightly rounds of the small Texas town (actually the Warner's backlot in Burbank, California), trying to keep a lid on its citizens' overheated emotions and find escaped convict Bubber before an angry mob does. As mentioned, Robert Redford is Bubber Reeves, the escapee everyone in town is frightened of, fascinated by, or both. Jane Fonda plays Anna, Bubber's wife, who is having an affair with Bubber's best friend, Jake Rogers (James Fox), son of town tycoon, Val Rogers (E.G. Marshall).

Other folks in town include sexy Janice Rule as Emily Stewart, wife of a schlubby Edwin Stewart, played by Robert Duvall; Richard Bradford as town bully Damon Fuller, who is having one of those affairs of the body with Emily Stewart; Henry Hull as a racist landlord; Miriam Hopkins as Bubber's mother; and so on. From just this bit of character detail, you get a fair sense of the soapy, Peyton Place-style elements. As the critics opined, the plot is the main flaw in the film. It's overheated and overly simplistic. The characters are not well written, though there is some good dialogue, mostly spoken by Brando's Calder. A spot-on Clifton James, marvelously doing his good ol' boy routine says to Calder, "The taxes in this town pay your salary to protect the place," to which Brando shoots back, "Well, if anything happens to you, Lem, we'll give you a refund." Lusty Emily's outlook: "Shoot a man for sleeping with someone's wife? That's silly. Half the town'd be wiped out."  

Jane Fonda, torn between two lovers in The Chase: James Fox on the left
and an impossibly young Robert Redford on the right

The Chase has situations that still resonate, including the blatant racism of the town's whites towards all its people of color; the limitations of small-town life; and the unhappy marriages (only Calder and his wife, played by Angie Dickinson, appear to be happily married). The infidelity, anger, drunkenness, and violence still strike a nerve more than fifty years on. One of the film's most brutal--startlingly brutal even today--scenes is when Sheriff Calder is beaten by some of the townspeople, waiting for Bubber's return. That violence peaks (spoilers ahead) with the murder of Bubber, and it looks deliberately staged to evoke the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. While I don't know what audiences of the day thought, today the exploitative style of the scene leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Yet the film is strangely prescient--Trump's MAGA, fifty years before it happened.

Richard Bradford and Janice Rule continue their acquaintance in The Chase

The Internet Movie Database gives The Chase a middling rating, but that's based on only six critics. If you give into it, though, The Chase provides many pleasures, in spite of its obvious faults. Funny that a movie that was a joke in 1966 feels so relevant today.

Sources

Books-
Sam Spiegel by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni
Films of Marlon Brando  by Tony Thomas
Internet-
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Wikipedia
Disc-
Blu Ray courtesy of Twilight Time 

The Mystery of "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke

One of the things I enjoy most about classic cinema is its total artificiality. The majority--like, 90% or more--of the Hollywood films from the 1920s to 1950s were photographed within the boundaries of Hollywood and its neighboring suburbs. Just going to Lone Pine, California, to film 1939's Gunga Din (set in India) was a huge deal in its day. Watching these films gives me a real sense of the craftsmanship and creativity used to overcome obstacles that today would seem ridiculously mundane--a non-issue. With a filmography that stretches from the dawn of Hollywood's silent days as assistant director to luminaries like D.W. Griffith to just after the outbreak of World War II with his last film, Journey for Margaret, Woodbridge Strong (a.k.a., W.S.; a.k.a, Woody) Van Dyke II holds a unique place as one of the most overlooked, underappreciated directors you likely have never heard of in the pantheon of classic Hollywood filmmakers. Van Dyke also holds the distinction of going off on long location film shoots thirty or forty years before it became a common cinematic practice.

Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II a.k.a.,
"One-Take Woody" Van Dyke

Van Dyke's movies ranged from semi-documentaries like Eskimo (1933), which had a film cast and crew shooting in the Arctic to the exotic, erotic White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), filmed on location in Tahiti; the African safari adventure epic, Trader Horn, filmed at least partly in Africa; pre-code classics, Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Night Court; the early disaster epic, San Francisco (1936); Norma Shearer's comeback vehicle, the lavish Marie Antoinette (1938); and five Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy popular operettas, including Naughty Marietta and Rose Marie (1935 and 1936, respectively). If Van Dyke is remembered at all today, it's mostly for his screwball comedies, particularly the films he made with William Powell and Myrna Loy--The Thin Man (1934), its first three sequels, and I Love You Again (1940). Other screwball offerings by Van Dyke are Forsaking All Others (1934) and the woefully underrated It's a Wonderful World (1939) with Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Stewart. Woody even directed an episode in the Andy Hardy series. All of this is to say, that the guy could direct anything and was truly one of Golden Era's most productive directors, helming over sixty movies in less than twenty-five years.

Comedy team supreme William Powell and Myrna Loy as
Nick and Nora Charles in 1934's The Thin Man

Of course the best known of Van Dyke's films has to be The Thin Man and its sequels. Based on the book by ace mystery scribe Dashiell Hammett, the film is probably my favorite Van Dyke, and one I can watch anytime. It's even admired by friends of mine who don't particularly like classic movies. It contains nearly everything a good screwball comedy should: a classic leading man--William Powell playing the suave and hilarious Nick Charles--quick with the one liners and even quicker with a martini shaker--and a beautiful leading lady in Myrna Loy as Nick's wise-cracking wife, Nora, who tries to keep up with Nick drink for drink and can give out with the one liners as good as he can. The cast, the writing, the mise-en-scène create the perfect cocktail of sophisticated comedy. The Thin Man is also a mystery with a murder plot and numerous suspects. But what really matters is the interplay between the two leads (Powell and Loy make marriage look fun), both experts in light comedy. Filmed in a speedy eighteen days, it was one of the first in a long line of what became known as "screwball" comedies. Along with such classics as Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century, Frank Capra's Best Picture Oscar winner, It Happened One Night, The Thin Man helped define the genre that flourished during the Great Depression.

Cheers! Nick and Nora indulge one of their favorite vices in The Thin Man

Van Dyke himself was married in 1909 to Zina Ashford, about whom little is known (Wikipedia says she was an actress). Robert C. Cannom's book, Van Dyke and the Mythical City Hollywood, the only bio written on Van Dyke, states that they met when Van Dyke was working in a lumber camp in Ashford, Washington, a town named after Zina's father, but makes no mention of her acting career. They separated around 1919 but didn't divorce until 1935. Cannom's book doesn't say when the divorce took place, but in 1935 Woody married Ruth Mannix, the niece of MGM studio's general manager and fixer, Eddie Mannix. Ruth and Woody eventually had three children before his death in 1943. Very little beyond generalities is known of Van Dyke's private life. Reportedly he was a devout follower of Christian Science, best known in Hollywood as the faith of Jean Harlow and her mother, and was the rumored reason for Harlow's death in 1937.

So little has been written about Van Dyke that even his working methods are a bit of a mystery. Signed by MGM in 1926, Woody was well known for getting the best from his cast while shooting fast and loose. The eighteen days it took to complete The Thin Man wasn't an exception; rather, more than likely, it was the rule on a Van Dyke set. Believing "everything must be done casually," 1939's It's a Wonderful World must have set a world speed record with its twelve-day shoot. Don't think that Van Dyke's speed-of-sound filming technique sacrificed quality, either. It's a Wonderful World is one of the forgotten gems of screwball comedy. In addition to speed, Van Dyke had a way with performers. William Powell, Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, and others give some of their least affected performances in Van Dyke's films. Even Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were charming when working with "One-Take Woody," the nickname he'd acquired due to his ability to bring in a movie on schedule and under budget. This talent also endeared him to his boss Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

Van Dyke with star Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette

 

1938's Marie Antoinette, which starred Norma Shearer in her first movie after husband and MGM production chief Irving Thalberg's untimely death in 1936 at the age of 37, is a film unlike any other in Van Dyke's filmography. According to Gavin Lambert, original director Sidney Franklin wanted to film in color with a ninety-day schedule. Feeling this extravagant, producer Hunt Stromberg went to MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer and requested a change of director. Mayer was worried that a methodical director like Franklin could drive up an already costly production, and suggested Van Dyke, well known not only for his speed but also his versatility. He was a last-minute replacement. Three days before shooting began Mayer informed Shearer that Van Dyke was the film's new director. The set was, at times, quite a tense atmosphere as differences arose between director and star. At one point, Norma demanded a second take; Van Dyke refused. Norma left the set. Uninterested in a stand-off, Van Dyke did too. He went home, poured a drink, and took his phone off the hook.

The next day, according to Lambert, "Norma listened without complaint to Van Dyke's instructions for the next shot. She nodded, walked proudly toward her mark--then caught her foot in the hoops of her crinoline, overbalanced, and fell flat on the floor of Versailles. A taut, embarrassed silence followed. It was broken by the Queen [Shearer], who kicked her legs in the air and laughed. Everyone joined in, and Van Dyke decided Norma was 'the sweetest damn woman in Hollywood.'" From that point forward, Norma thought Van Dyke was all right too, and they worked well together. Similarly, Van Dyke had his share of run-ins with Jeanette MacDonald on the films they made together. One way or other, though, they always made up and carried on. "We just seemed to think alike," she said.

Van Dyke, his wife Ruth, Jeanette MacDonald,
and Nelson Eddy during the making of Rose Marie

An odd thing about the success Van Dyke had with the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy films is that he wasn't at all musical. But I guess that goes to show one doesn't have to be to make a good musical. While my taste in musicals leans more to the Judy Garland-Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pairings in which dancing is just important as singing, the movies Woody made with MacDonald and Eddy are pretty entertaining. I find Ms. MacDonald quite fetching. Van Dyke also worked with MacDonald on what may be his best achievement--the 1936 blockbuster, San Francisco. Along with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in the first of that pair's three films together (see also Test Pilot and Boom Town), San Francisco is the grandad of disaster epics, with the earthquake of 1906 serving as the centerpiece of the movie. The movie is still impressive today and was MGM's biggest moneymaker ($2.2 million dollars in profit, or $26 million in 2019 dollars) until Gone With the Wind surpassed it.

Myrna Loy, Van Dyke, unidentified woman,
and William Powell on the set of 1936's After The Thin Man

Van Dyke's career continued into the 1940s. With the United States finally entering World War II in late 1941, Woody found himself in uniform, convincing MGM stars Clark Gable, James Stewart, and Robert Taylor to become active in the war effort as well. Van Dyke himself was too old to become actively involved in the war, but that's not what prevented him from seeing action as contemporaries John Ford, Frank Capra, and others did. In 1942 while undergoing his physical examination for active duty, Van Dyke discovered he not only had a weak heart--no doubt due to excessive smoking and drinking--but he also had cancer. Being a Christian Scientist, Van Dyke rejected most forms of medical treatment and care during this time. Despite this setback, Van Dyke remained as busy as ever at MGM, making four features in 1942. The last, Journey for Margaret, unleashed the incredible child star Margaret O'Brien on moviegoers and was one of Metro's biggest hits of the year.

On February 4, 1943, Van Dyke summoned to his house MGM boss Louis B. Mayer along with Howard Strickling, the studio's head of publicity. Mayer told Van Dyke that the studio had any number of films lined up for him when he felt well enough to return. Later, Van Dyke contacted some old friends from the silent days to come over for a round or two of drinks, one last hurrah. According to Robert Cannom's book, Van Dyke called his wife, Ruth, who was at their ranch home, and asked how the children were (they had three by this time, two boys and a girl), then called his mother to assure her he was doing fine. Then he died. This is the mystery. Neither Cannom's book explains how Van Dyke died; nor does Alicia Mayer, Louis B. Mayer's great grandniece, in her blog about Hollywood and it's history; nor do many other books about the stars Van Dyke worked with. Charles Higham, never one to shy from scandal, in his book on Louis B Mayer, Merchant of Dreams, says only that Van Dyke died due to his bad heart and liver. Edward Baron Turk's book about Jeanette MacDonald, Hollywood Diva, states Van Dyke died in his sleep. Only Sharon Rich in her book about MacDonald and Eddy, Sweethearts, says that Van Dyke killed himself with sleeping pills. Why the mystery? Reportedly the suicide angle wasn't mentioned to save the family further grief or scandal. If so, it has to be the one under reported death in Hollywood history. I imagine that folks figured his illness killed him.

W.S. Van Dyke II was one-of-a-kind, and movies and the Hollywood community sorely missed him after he was gone. He made some of the most entertaining movies I've seen, and I re-visit them all the time. Some of my favorites include The Thin Man, After The Thin Man, San Francisco, White Shadows in the South Seas, Forsaking All Others, Marie Antoinette and It's a Wonderful World.

     

Sources:
              Books:
               Claudette Colbert, the Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by William K. Everson
               Hollywood Diva by Edward Baron Turk
               Sweethearts by Sharon Rich
               Norma Shearer by Gavin Lambert
               Van Dyke and the Mythical City of Hollywood by Robert C. Cannom
               Merchant of Dreams by Charles Higham
               Mayer and Thalberg by Samuel Marx

               Films: Turner Classic Movies
     
               Internet: Wikipedia

               Photos: Google Images