The Boy Genius in Hollywood

Orson Welles is widely acknowledged as the great genius of American cinema, the wunderkind, the magician of the movies. From his screen debut in the great cinematic game-changer, Citizen Kane, until his death 44 years later, he was also considered one of the movies' biggest failures. His success with Kane, at the tender age of 25, doomed him to something he could never surpass, no matter how hard he tried or how close he came.

Welles, with pipe, overseeing every detail. His brilliant director of photography, Gregg Toland is at lower right, in scarf.

Welles came to Hollywood in July 1939, barely 24 years old, and already hailed as the "Boy Wonder" of stage and radio. His radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds in October 1938 bought his ticket to Hollywood - a carte blanche contract from RKO Radio Pictures that even the best filmmakers in town could not get. It instantly made him the envy of everyone. After spending nearly a year in town, starting and discarding projects, including an adaptation of Joesph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (later the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now); a thriller called Smiler With a Knife; and the life of Christ, the pressure began to build. He found his project, though, after teaming up with writer  Herman J. Mankiewicz on a script titled American.

Welles began shooting the American script, renamed Citizen Kane, in July 1940, and finished four months later. With his first film, Welles continued the luck that had been part of his career, both in theater and radio. A big part of this luck was the teaming of Welles with Gregg Toland, widely thought to be the best cameraman in the movies at the time. Besides Toland, Welles was surrounded by a cracker jack production team: art direction by Perry Ferguson, editing by Robert Wise, musical score by Bernard Herrmann. Together, they created one of the best (if not the best), most influential films ever made.

After the notorious press and release of Kane, Welles embarked on an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, the story of a proud, rich Midwestern family that falls on hard times. The film's production coincided with the United States' entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. As a result, Ambersons - already a difficult film to sell - became something of an anachronism. Though the Ambersons budget was approximately that of Kane, Welles went over by about $100,000, bringing the total to nearly a million dollars, a significant amount for the time and, especially, for RKO, which seemed always on the brink of disaster.

America's involvement in World War II brought a change to the mindset of the nation's weekly moviegoers. Suddenly, American movie theaters were flooded with patriotic war films; criticism of the American way of life, in the past or the present, was not particularly welcome. When Ambersons  previewed in the spring of 1942, the audience reaction was less than enthusiastic. The final cut ran 131 minutes when most films ran well under two hours. To the RKO executives, the previews indicated cuts were imperative. But Welles was thousands of miles away shooting a film for RKO in Brazil, commissioned by the United States Government (and instigated by Nelson Rockefeller) to help foster the Good Neighbor Policy with South America. Try as he might, Welles had a difficult time relaying via phone calls and telegrams his editing instructions to Robert Wise. Consequently, RKO brass made massive cuts and re-shot some scenes. Overall, about 40 minutes were cut, re-edited, and/or re-filmed, taking the final release print down to 88 minutes. 

George and Uncle Jack Amberson say goodbye at the train station. This may be my favorite scene from the film.

In spite of the studio's cuts, the Amberson family's reversal of fortune is presented in an elegiac, melancholy way, reflecting the loss of a calmer, slower way of life. It is tempting to compare Ambersons to Welles own life, with their poignant parallels: George was Welles' own first name; Joseph Cotton's inventor character was modeled somewhat on Welles' own inventor father; the Midwestern atmosphere was familiar to Welles who was born in Wisconsin; and perhaps most telling of all - the film's townspeople wish to see the young George get his comeuppance, as many in Hollywood wished for Welles. Overall, I think The Magnificent Ambersons is well worth watching - and re-watching. As I get older, I can appreciate its nostalgic tone - the mournful passing of time and the longing for a past remembered.

After the Ambersons debacle, filming halted on the Brazilian project, now called It's All True. With $1.2 million already spent, RKO cut off Welles' funds. When he returned to the US, Welles and his entire staff had been dismissed from RKO. "[T]he studio destroyed Ambersons," he said, "which, in effect, destroyed me." Orson Welles never had complete control of a Hollywood production again.

Orson in The Lady From Shanghai. Note the sign on the right. Shortly after the film was released in 1948, Welles would flee to Europe for reasons never really explained.

For the next several years Welles could not get a film directing job; however, he did stay busy, acting in movies like Jane Eyre, as the brooding Mr. Rochester, with Joan Fontaine; alongside Claudette Colbert in the weepy Tomorrow Is Forever; and doing a guest star cameo in the wartime extravaganza, Follow the Boys, performing a magic show with an assist from pal Marlene Dietrich.

In 1946, Welles was finally allowed to make the thriller, The Stranger, with stars Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. An early producing effort by Sam Spiegel (still under his pseudonym S.P. Eagle), many call it the worst film Welles directed. It's certainly the most conventional, though there is much to like, including the always welcome presence of Robinson as a Nazi hunter in hot pursuit of Welles' Nazi-on-the-lam college professor and a nice atmosphere of college life in a small New England town. Such was his reputation for profligate spending that he made it a priority with The Stranger to stay on budget and deliver a film the masses could enjoy. I suppose in that regard the film was successful.

It was also at this point in his life and career that Welles cultivated the habit of performing in one or more productions to pay for his directing projects, though it started out in kind of reverse fashion. 1946 found Welles back on Broadway for the first time since 1941's Native Son with a colossal adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, a musical with words and music by Cole Porter. The show ran over budget, and in a desperate bid for cash, Welles asked Columbia Pictures studio head, Harry Cohn, for a loan. In return, Welles agreed to write, produce, direct, and star in The Lady From Shanghai, an adaptation of a pulpy book called If I Die Before I Wake. Cohn gave his approval and Around the World proceeded to draw big crowds. Due to its tremendous cost, however, it closed less than three months after its opening and lost money.

The Lady From Shanghai paired Welles with his estranged wife, Rita Hayworth. The couple married in 1943 and had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1944, but by 1946 the union was more or less kaput. Hayworth was Columbia Pictures' biggest asset, so naturally Harry Cohn lavished a big budget on the film. What Cohn didn't know - or count on - was Welles subversive ways. He cut Hayworth's famed hair and dyed it blonde. On top of that, her character was the film's femme fatale. Welles' rough cut ran 155 minutes. Cohn blanched and cut it in half to a more audience friendly 86 minutes. It didn't matter though. The Lady From Shanghai - like Orson and Rita's wedded bliss - was doomed to fail. With all its off-camera intrigue - along with the Welles/Hayworth drama, the schooner charted for the ocean scenes was Errol Flynn's Zaca, and he and second wife Nora accompanied the cast and crew from California to Mexico and back  - the production history would undoubtedly make for a great making-of book or in-depth documentary.

The marvelous Italian poster from the noir classic.

Though his marriage to Rita Hayworth couldn't be saved, Welles thought he could rescue his faltering career with a film of Shakespeare's Macbeth. And why not? Welles' own voodoo Macbeth, produced for Broadway back in 1937, was already legendary. Though a significant amount for B-movie studio Republic Pictures (well known mostly for its westerns), Welles' film of Macbeth had a comparatively modest budget of $800,000. Released the same year as Olivier's boffo rendering of Hamlet (1948's Best Picture) Welles' Macbeth, filmed in 23 days, was another box office and critical disappointment.

Giving up on Hollywood, Welles moved to Europe where he starred in a series of films and directed two. His most prominent acting role was as the nefarious Harry Lime in 1949's The Third Man. Co-produced by David O. Selznick and Alexander Korda, The Third Man became an international smash hit, the kind Welles dreamed of for years. Had Welles taken a percentage, which was offered, instead of up-front money, he could have been solvent for many years. But needing immediate funding to keep his latest Shakespeare adaptation, Othello, afloat, Welles chose money up front. (No one ever said great artists were good businessmen.)

Welles in Italy, early 1950s

Besides Othello, Welles directed just one other film during his sojourn in Europe. 1955's Mr. Arkadin, a bizarre film even by Welles standards, is about a rich man who hires someone to conduct an inquiry into his life. Although Othello won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (though that honor mattered little in the late 1940s), Mr. Arkadin was a total bust when it snuck ("released" is too strong a term to describe the film's US debut) into the US in 1962. In spite of an expert cast, including the the lush Patricia Medina, it is my choice for the worst film Orson Welles directed.

Touch of Evil brought Orson Welles back to the kingdom he'd abdicated in 1948, but it almost didn't happen. In pre-production, Universal Pictures had signed Welles to portray racist, corrupt cop, Hank Quinlan, and shortly after that approached Charlton Heston to star as good American cop, Mitch Holt. Heston told the studio execs that he would be very interested if Welles was the director. The studio offered the film to Welles, who accepted and proceeded to re-write the script, changing the setting from San Diego to a fictional Mexican border town (read: Tijuana), making Heston's character a Mexican named Miguel Vargas rather than an American named Mitch Holt, and reversing the nationality of his wife, Susan, from Mexican to American. The plot deals with a prominent American big shot and his stripper companion getting blown up by an unseen bomber. The opening tracking shot is legendary - the opening of Robert Altman's The Player references it while imitating it - and is one of several Welles touches that distinguish this B-grade thriller and raise it to the level of art.

Dietrich, Leigh, Heston, and Welles. When Dietrich showed up unannounced to view the daily rushes, studio execs sat up; they didn't know she was in it. When contacted, Dietrich said if they didn't use her in publicity, she'd work for minimum, but if they publicized her appearance, they could "talk to [her] agent." They did.

Touch of Evil has more than its share of sleazy images and grotesque characters: Marlene Dietrich's  gypsy/madam/fortune teller, Tanya; Akim Tamiroff's Joe Grandi; Val de Vargas' gang leader, Pancho; Dennis Weaver's nerdy motel night manager; and Mercedes McCambridge's androgynous, greasy gang member, who, in the film's most unsettling scene, asks Pancho, to "[l]et me stay. I wanna watch," when the gang break into Suzie's motel room. Despite all these bravura moments, it's the dialogue and the characters of Quinlan and Tanya that still resonate.

Welles' films are filled with quiet moments of pathos, like the farewell scene at the train station in Magnificent Ambersons and in Citizen Kane when Kane first meets Susan Alexander and tells her about his "sentimental journey" to go to the "western Manhattan warehouse in search of my youth." In Touch of Evil, Tanya is a person from Quinlan's past, possibly a former lover who knew him before the weight and corruption took over his life. In one memorable scene Quinlan asks her to "read my fortune to me," and Tanya replies, "You haven't got one. Your future's all used up." Similarly, Welles'  future in Hollywood was all used up too. Though Touch of Evil finished on time and budget, Welles never completed another film in Hollywood.

Today, Touch of Evil is a touchstone of noir perversity and audacity. All of Orson Welles' films had a look-ma-no-hands presentation, the opposite of his American contemporaries. He was too grandiose, too non-conformist, too much the genius for Hollywood to accept comfortably. Like previous master directors Erich Von Stroheim and D.W. Griffith, the excess in his films sent Hollywood's power brokers running scared. Like the The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil was taken away from Welles and re-edited and shortened by about 15 minutes. Yet, as Charlton Heston pointed out, Welles reputation for extravagance was unfounded, as all his films combined cost far less than any one opus from today's maestros of cinema - Spielberg, Kubrick, Coppola, Lucas. So we celebrate this so-called mad genius of cinema on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth by going back to the legacy of awesome and unique films he left us to enjoy.

Sources

Books: The Magic World of Orson Welles by James Naremore
            Orson Welles: Power, Heart and Soul by F.X. Feeney
            Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles by David Thomson
            The Great Movies by William Bayer
Video: The Orson Welles Story (BBC)

MGM's Fire Sale

For years, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) was considered the Tiffany & Co. of film studios. In its heyday, which lasted nearly 30 years, MGM had the biggest stars (Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire . . . the list seems endless), won the most Academy Awards (eight Best Picture Oscars between 1928 and 1959, the most for a single studio up to that time), and made the most money, regularly leading the industry in gross revenue.

By the 1960s, however, MGM was in a bad way. It began at the top with Ben-Hur winning the Oscar for Best Picture of 1959 and bringing in buckets of box office gold. But that epic, a remake of MGM's own 1926 silent version, ultimately did more harm than good. For the rest of the decade, MGM kept trying to recapture Ben-Hur's success with other big budget extravaganzas, often relying on remakes of past glories. 1960 started with the western Cimarron, a remake of 1931's Best Picture winner, with Glenn Ford - a big name at the time - that failed to recoup its costs. Nicholas Ray's reboot of the old Cecil B. DeMille silent, King of Kings, fared better, managing to eke out a small profit. Vincente Minnelli's 1962 version of the Rudolf Valentino classic, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, was almost the biggest loser of the decade for Metro but was bailed out later that same year by the ill-fated remake of the classic Oscar winner from 1935, Mutiny on the Bounty. Starring Marlon Brando, Bounty' s box office take of over $9 million made it the sixth highest grosser of the year, but with an $8.5 million budget that ballooned to $20 million during production, it was far from profitable, contributing to the the studio's loss of  $17 million for the year, the worst in its history. While the studio rebounded the next year with a tidy profit of over $7 million and continued to luck out now and then with big hits like Dr. Zhivago and Stanley Kubrick's ground-breaking sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, by 1969 the writing was on the wall. That year, MGM posted a loss of nearly $35 million, by far the worst in its 45-year history.

Still taken from the 1926 version of Ben-Hur. Though the movie shoot had begun in Italy, by the time this sequence was shot, the company was back in the Culver City studios. The chariot race was filmed at the intersection of Venice and LaCienega Boulevard.

With the losses came potential buyers. For MGM, the buyer with the deepest pockets turned out to be Las Vegas tycoon Kirk Kerkorian, and by mid-September 1969, he had acquired control of the beleaguered studio. One of Kerkorian's first orders of business was to find an executive to run production and day-to-day operations. To this role, he appointed Jim Aubrey, aka "the smiling cobra," to run the show. Aubrey had been top man at CBS in the late 50s and early 60s, responsible for making it the number one channel in television with shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Gilligan's Island, Petticoat Junction, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. He was also infamous for pulling the plug on the critically admired The Judy Garland Show after only one season. Aubrey's sudden dismissal by CBS founder William Paley in 1965 was the subject of much speculation. It's possible that Aubrey's reputation as a party animal caught up with him. In addition to "the smiling cobra" sobriquet, he was also known as "Jungle Jim" for his wild, womanizing ways (in her novel, The Love Machine, Jacqueline Susann would base the main character, Robin Stone, on Aubrey). Aubrey was a so-called bottom-line man, more interested in profit than art. This quality made him attractive to Kerkorian, who knew some hard ball would have to be played in order to turn the companies ledgers around.

MGM's Lot Two in the foreground with its sound stages looming in the upper portion of the photo.

Unfortunately Aubrey and company were also tough on the creative community, cancelling several pay-or-play deals for which everyone would get paid even if productions got canceled. Commitments involving respected filmmakers like director Fred Zinneman (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons), producer Martin Ransohoff (The Cincinnati Kid), and director David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago). All three men had big budget spectacles in production or pre-production. Two of the three were axed; only Lean's Ryan's Daughter survived. Aubrey's next steps included cutting the studio's workforce by half, closing its New York City headquarters; and closing, selling, or greatly reducing various production departments such as music, camera, and wardrobe. Aubrey reduced payroll by $7.5 million. In addition, the new regime prepared to sell off both Boreham Wood, MGM's studio outside London, for $4.3 million, and overseas theaters for $6.4 million. One loyal studio employee took Aubrey and several executives on a walking tour of the backlots, trying to impress upon them the vast amount of movie history the studio contained. Completely unimpressed, Aubrey interrupted the tour to ask, "Does any of this stuff get used anymore? It's just lying around. I don't want to hear any more bullshit about the old MGM. The old MGM is gone." To prove his point Aubrey removed the bust of Irving Thalberg from the Thalberg Building and gave the structure a much catchier name - The Administration Building.

In 1970, Jim Aubrey made a deal with the David Weisz Company to sell all props and costumes for $1.5 million. In May 1970, Weisz held an 18-day public auction described as "the greatest rummage sale in history" by The Hollywood Reporter. Tom Walsh, then president of the Art Directors Guild, remarked that the auction was "the defining moment when Rome was sacked and burned." At the time there was very little perceived value in the nostalgia of Hollywood's fabled past. Greta Garbo dresses, Clark Gable suits, the Bounty ship, the actual showboat from the 1951 musical, all of it was on the auction block. The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz were the star of the show, selling for $15,000 (the equivalent of $90,000 today).

Evidently, all that so-called junk that was lying around was worth more than the studio brain trust realized. As the auction netted about $8 million, MGM had clearly made a huge mistake by practically giving away the studio's history to the Weisz Company. Some stars who had worked at MGM like Debbie Reynolds were there. She purchased as many items as possible for a Hollywood museum she was planning. The auction also brought out other stars and studio employees who watched in dismay as pieces of the once great, proud studio were sold off to the highest bidder. What they didn't know was that there were worse times ahead.

On October 1, 1970, Variety broke the news that Jim Aubrey had brokered a deal to sell MGM's Lot Three for $7.25 million to a company that wanted the space to construct an apartment complex. Consequently, MGM's St. Louis Street, Western Street, Jungle Lake, Salem Waterfront, Process Tank, and Brooklyn Street - among others - were bulldozed in 1972. Lot Five and Lot Six were sold shortly after for a total of $1.5 million. Lot Seven became a shopping center.

Ultimately, Kirk Kerkorian proved that first and foremost, he was a Vegas guy. Making movies was never his real goal. Delighted by the $7.8 million profit MGM showed - mostly due to the sale of assets - in 1971, Kerkorian announced his plan to build the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, with a Rhett Butler Suite, among several other themed rooms. This was the real motive for Kerkorian's purchase of the studio - not to save it, but to strip it, using the left overs for his dream hotel. (According to Peter Bart's book about the last days of MGM, Fade Out, a studio official was appointed to "unleash a band of foragers to roam the back lot in search of what he called 'souvenirs'." The plan was to load up items for an MGM Grand gift shop. A year later, studio exec Jack Haley, Jr., found William Wyler's shooting script for Mrs. Miniver on sale in the gift shop for $12. Haley, along with production head Daniel Melnick and executive Roger Mayer, tried to persuade Jim Aubrey to donate the remaining scripts, production sketches and notes, and cartoon cels to a museum or to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library for a tax write-off. No, said Aubrey, the studio's main function was to furnish and fund the hotel.)

The abandoned New York Street on Lot Two awaits its fate.

In 1973, with the studio's fiftieth anniversary coming up, MGM stumbled onto its best project idea in years. One of Jack Haley, Jr.'s pet projects was helping to restore the films in the studio library that suffered from neglect and decay. With Daniel Melnick's help, Haley went to Jim Aubrey with a plan to save the studio's film history. Their plea fell on deaf ears. Haley secretly spent his free time going though films, splicing scenes together, and showing them to Melnick. Slowly, Haley added scenes of narration with old-timers like Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, and Fred Astaire. Melnick made one last attempt to persuade Aubrey to allow him to continue the project legitimately. Unsurprisingly, he was met with a typical reply, "You've really gone Hollywood, haven't you, Danny?"and was dismissed.  Not to be discouraged, Haley kept working and eventually a kind of sketch of a film was presented to Aubrey and some studio employees from the good old days. The audience was awestruck, remembering what the studio had accomplished in its prime. Sensing the enthusiasm of the viewers, Aubrey gave Melnick the OK to make That's Entertainment in time for Leo the Lion's fiftieth birthday in 1974.

One of the few bright spots from the studio in the early 1970s. 

Unfortunately, 1973 also brought the startling announcements that, going forward, MGM would produce only four or five films per year and that the company was cutting off its marketing and  distribution arm as part of the continual effort to reduce studio overhead. This announcement was big news in the industry. Production of about 20 films per year had held steady from 1970 to 1972,  but 1973 would bring the number to an all-time low of only 11 features. In 1974, MGM produced only five films. . . .

Debbie Reynolds had dreams of turning the MGM backlot into a "kind of Disneyland," she related in When the Lion Roars, the comprehensive documentary about the studio's history. She pictured studio alumni greeting crowds at the its gate. In the early 70s, Reynolds and Al Hart, the President of Culver City Bank tried to get an assortment of investors to buy Lot Two for about $5 million. This lot, across the street from the main studio, was the home of the Andy Hardy/New England Street, Three Musketeers Court, Small Town Railroad Depot, Waterloo Bridge, Copperfield Street, Verona Square, the Camille Cottage, the Esther Williams Pool, the Southern Mansion, the Lord Home, Wimpole Street, various New York Streets, and the Cartoon Department. But Jim Aubrey had an asking price of close to $7 million and rejected Reynolds' bid. Aubrey did take a $5 million bid from Levitt & Sons, the same company who had demolished Lot Three, however. No one knows why he rejected Reynolds' bid.

Toppling the Southern Mansion on the back lot.                     

The actual sale to Levitt never happened. In January 1974, Levitt & Sons secretly backed out of the deal due to the bankruptcy of Urbanetics, the builder Levitt had been using to develop Lot Three. Consequently, the actual sale of Lot Two didn't occur until April 1978 when it was sold to scrap dealers, Mr. and Mrs. Ching Lin, for $4.1 million. It's sad that Aubrey didn't go to Reynolds and relay this bit of info. If he had, Lot Two might still be around. Instead all that's left is the physical plant of offices and sound stages. I suppose we should be grateful that much is left. But sound sound stages all look pretty much the same, and MGM's remaining lot actually belongs to Columbia Pictures. The studio has a tour, which I haven't taken, but reviews claim that it's pretty disappointing. The tour guides pay homage to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune and, reasonably, focus their commentary on Columbia Pictures' movies, not MGM's. I guess the smiling cobra was right - "The old MGM is gone."

Sources:
* Fade Out - The Calamitous Final Days of MGM by Peter Bart
* MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan
* The MGM Story: The Complete History of  Fifty Roaring Years by John Douglas Eames
* IMDB
* Wikipedia
* All photos from the internet

Underrated Gem: Peter Bogdanovich's "At Long Last Love"

About a year ago - on a  whim - I purchased the Blu-ray of Peter Bogdanovich's much maligned musical comedy, At Long Last Love, a musical inspired by and showcasing the music of Cole Porter. What instigated my leap of faith? A big factor was the disc's promotion as the "Director's Definitive Edition" (whatever that means), my genuine affection for Bogdanovich's work, and my fondness for nearly all the members of the cast.

With three major hits (The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc?, and Paper Moon) and a minor failure (Daisy Miller) to his credit, Peter Bogdanovich decided to attempt a musical in which he would film the actors singing live - the early talkie way of filming musical numbers - rather than overdubbing the songs to a lip-synching cast, which was standard practice from the mid 1930s. Bogdanovich believed that this technique would allow for greater spontaneity. After watching the film, I agree.

Casting Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd, who had little vocal or no experience (Shepherd had recently cut an album of Cole Porter songs called Cybill Does It (to Cole Porter) that bombed), in the lead roles was a huge risk. Reynolds told the press at the time how much he loved doing a Cary Grant-type part rather than his usual good ole boy schtick. For Reynolds, who was just about the biggest movie star in the world at the time, this film would be the first of several sophisticated or pseudo-sophisticated comedic roles he would take on in the following years: Lucky Lady later in 1975; a re-teaming with Bogdanovich in 1976 for Nickelodeon, the valentine to film making's earliest  days; 1977's Semi-Tough, his most Cary Grant-like role; the critically acclaimed Starting Over in 1979; Rough Cut in 1980; and Best Friends in 1982 with fellow comedy master, Goldie Hawn. While his performance is probably the least inspired of the cast, At Long Last Love created an opportunity for Reynolds to at least try for other parts and expand his range as an actor.

John Hillerman and Eileen Brennan as the "hired help" nearly steal the show (I especially love Hillerman's trademark deadpan delivery). Second leads Madeline Kahn and Duilio Del Prete have the singing chops and are priceless in parts that, in lesser hands, would have made clear the thankless roles they are. The real revelation, though, is Cybill Shepherd's spoiled heiress. She sings, dances, and trades one liners with the aplomb of Claudette Colbert or Ginger Rogers. She is completely charming.

Duilio, Cybill, Burt, and Madeline try to get a leg up on the competition.

When the film opened in March 1975 at New York's Radio City Music Hall, it bombed. It wasn't any ordinary failure, however; it was a devastating one. Except for Roger Ebert and one or two other critics, the film was hated. Really hated. Hatred reflected by critical vitriol usually reserved for terrorists (the film holds a 4.8 on IMDB and a miserable 17% on Rotten Tomatoes). In its day the film's real cause célèbre - and the focus of most critical write-ups - was Bogdanovich and Shepherd's personal relationship (they were living together after starting the romantic relationship that broke up Bogdanovich's marriage during production of 1971's The Last Picture Show) rather than the film itself. More than a few reviewers compared the movie to the 1930s' Astaire/Rogers collaborations. In its setting and milieu, I can see where they would get that impression; however, this is where the critical community makes its first mistake: Stylistically, with its innuendo and changing partners, the film feels more like an Ernst Lubitsch film circa 1932, which could only doom the picture to failure. If the so-called knowledgeable critics didn't get it, how could moviegoers fed on the brutal violence and low humor of Rollerball, The Eiger Sanction, Airport '75, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Blazing Saddles, and the juggernaut that was Jaws possibly relate to Bogdanovich's tribute to a period long since forgotten when men dressed in tuxedos and women shimmering in glamorous gowns traded witty repartee?

Burt and Cybill, looking like they know the critical drubbing they are to receive.

The fact is that it's not surprising the film tanked. What is surprising is the movie got made at all. By 1975, the movie musical, especially the original movie musical, was dying. Musicals cost too much for the small audiences they attracted. Only three other musicals were made or released in 1975 (four if you could Robert Altman's Nashville, which I don't): stage musical adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show; The Who's rock opera, Tommy; and Funny Lady, sequel to the enormously successful 1968 movie, Funny Girl, starring the queen of all things musical in the 70s, Barbra Streisand. Rocky Horror became a cult fave with its midnight shows and dressed up audiences; Tommy grossed over $30 million on a $5 million budget (the same budget as At Long Last Love) and garnered some Oscar love, including a Best Actress nomination for its star, Ann-Margaret. Funny Lady, a period piece like At Long Last Love, was the musical of the year, grossing more than $40 million and becoming the 8th highest grosser of the year. Meanwhile, At Long Last Love, released two weeks before Funny Lady, grossed just $2.5 million. Seems Bogdanovich and friends were way off key in their calculation of what American audiences wanted.

At the races. . . . Here's a taste of the the movie's period feel.

With 1975 now a distant memory, At Long Last Love looks and feels incredibly fresh. The film's long takes really pay off, giving an opportunity for the performances' joyfulness to shine through. The Cole Porter tunes, though some not as well known as others, are classic, witty, and suit the setting perfectly. Another asset is the physical production itself. From the photography to the magnificent costumes to the splendid recreation of New York City in the 1930s (via a Hollywood backlot, natch) are all first rate. That said, the film isn't perfect. For one thing, at 123 minutes (the video release is four minutes longer than its theatrical running time) it goes on about 20 minutes too long, and the songs at times outweigh the dialogue (the cast bursts into song just a bit too much). But these are  minor quibbles compared to the wealth of enjoyment one gets from such a charming, infectious soufflé of a movie. Trying to resurrect the spirit of Lubitsch may have been foolish, but I for one am glad Bogdanovich did. The lesson here is don't listen to the critics. Buy or rent At Long Last Love and spend some time with Burt, Cybill, Madeline, and friends. Magic and joy in movies are in short supply these days. At Long Last Love gave me both.

Four Cynics: The Sons of Billy Wilder

In his day, Billy Wilder was Mr. Cynic. His singular take on the American character and its psyche was more in tune with today's anything goes vision of the world than what Wilder's contemporaries were pursuing in the forties, fifties, and sixties. Wilder, a refugee from Austria, saw the world as a morally dark place, full of hustlers and con artists. This quality alone made his films stand out from an overcrowded pack. After the success of his directorial debut, 1942's lightweight comedy, The Major and The Minor, Wilder moved onto the topical subject of the war in Five Graves to Cairo, starring (in name only) Franchot Tone as Corporal Bramble and (the real star) Erich Von Stroheim as Field Marshall Rommel. Then, after establishing himself as a capable director with these two features, Billy Wilder's perspective really began to emerge as he set loose his first "son" - Walter Neff, the insurance salesman played by Fred MacMurray in the near perfect film noir, Double Indemnity.

Walter Neff, the eldest. All of Billy Wilder's sons have weaknesses - sex, money, love, booze, fame - that cause their downfall. Walter Neff's weakness is sex. Yes, there is money involved, and it is certainly a factor in the killing of Phyllis Dietrichson's abusive husband. But Stanwyck's femme fatale is the main attraction for Neff.

 

Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is one of cinema's sublime black widows - and Walter Neff's weakness.

After all, if money were the only motive, Neff's judgment wouldn't be so clouded. Sex trips up Walter Neff, and he gets caught by the authorities because of it. Walter also carries a certain amount of self loathing. He's one of those guys who never sticks with a woman for long. The women he does choose are not classy dames but ones who "drink from the bottle," as Neff's co-worker, friend, and father figure, Barton Keyes, describes them. Neff's choice of women shows his lack of self worth. He would prefer to spend time with a cheap broad or two than settle down with a nice, respectable girl, and lead a nice, respectable life. Neff actually gets the chance to be respectable with Dietrichson's daughter, Lola. In the film's final third Neff befriends Lola, who he feels may be on to Phyllis. However, rather than bedding down with her, Neff helps Lola fix the strained relationship with her boyfriend, Nino, unbeknownst to them both, has been spending time with Phyllis. (The film is nothing if not perverse.)

Walter gets Phyllis' husband to sign his life away unwittingly, yet his gaze focuses on her leg.

Another of Walter Neff's flaws is his intelligence. Neff's bright all right, but he's also looking for the angle, eager to get rich and move to easy street, not realizing there's no such address. Of course, his smarts also get him in trouble - the deepest trouble. All of Billy Wilder's sons, from Walter Neff to Ace in the Hole's Chuck Tatum, are too smart for their own good. Eldest brother Walter Neff blazed the trail.

Don Birnam, the prodigal. Wilder's next film - made the very next year - 1945's The Lost Weekend, presents a very different man with a different weakness: Alcohol. Ray Milland as the alcoholic writer, Don Birnam, is magnificent. He carries the film and is in practically every scene. Birnam is a would-be genius. In college, the school newspaper couldn't get enough of his stories. Upon graduation, he was set to conquer the literary world with prose on par with Hemingway's. Then reality - or more likely, writer's block - set in. He found that by having a drink, the creative juices flowed a little easier. But then one drink was followed by another and another and another until Don was too drunk to write. The pattern that emerged had no end.

Just in time: Helen reaches Don just as he hits bottom. 

In a crucial scene, Don reveals to his kind girlfriend, Helen, what makes him tick - what makes him drink. Turns out Don has tried a cure to dry out, but it didn't take. Don's main problem, it seems, is his lack of self esteem, or as he puts it, "I never did anything with my life, and I never will do anything with my life. Zero, zero, zero!" So Don takes solace in a bottle rather than in the love of this good woman. In the end, though, Don is the only one of Wilder's sons who has a chance at redemption because he is the only one who doesn't die at the end of the movie. Jane Wyman's almost too-good-to-be-true Helen arrives just in time to save a completely sober Don from ending his life by shooting himself.

One more for the road

The Lost Weekend's presentation of Don Birnam as he goes from one humiliation to another is still pretty strong stuff - getting caught stealing money from the purse of a patron at a piano bar and being forcibly removed; wandering up and down 75th Street unsuccessfully trying to hock his typewriter for money to buy another drink; landing at Bellevue Hospital after falling down a flight of stairs, then escaping to a liquor store where he demands the clerk give him a bottle. And finally, alone in his apartment, the DTs hit him like a tidal wave as he hallucinates a mouse coming out of the wall and a bat swooping down to kill it. While the film ends on a positive note as Don puts out his cigarette in a glass of booze, I can't help but feel that it's just a temporary respite, that Don will eventually succeed in killing himself either with a bottle or a gun. Would these sons of Billy Wilder end up any other way?

 

Joe Gillis, the neglected middle child. Of all Billy Wilder's sons, perhaps none was closer to his heart than Hollywood screenwriter, Joe Gillis, in Sunset Boulevard. Joe is the hack Wilder might have been if he hadn't been so damned talented. He is also possibly Wilder's most tragic creation - a good guy who should have done more. He has screen credits ("My last film was about Okies in the dust bowl, only you wouldn't know it. When it was released the whole thing played on a torpedo boat."). He knows the ins and outs of the town, who to talk to, who to know, and who to avoid. Unfortunately for Joe, however, he forgets what he knows when he meets up with former silent movie queen, Norma Desmond. Joe has been a decent guy for several years in Tinseltown, but he's tired of being behind the eight ball - late on his car payment and his rent - and he feels, justifiably, entitled to a better life. So he hooks up with the aging Norma ("You use to be in silent pictures," Joe tells Norma, "You use to be big." "I am big!" she replies, "It's the pictures that got small.").

Uncomfortably numb: Norma and Joe on the couch

Joe, like older brother Walter Neff, has a chance for escape and a respectable life in the form of studio scenario reader, Betty Schaefer. Only Betty is engaged to Joe's only real friend, assistant director Artie Green. Sunset Boulevard is one of Wilder's greatest creations. Delusional Norma Desmond, played to the hilt yet sensitively by Gloria Swanson, is one of the cinema's most enduring characters. Former director, Erich Von Stroheim, hits all the right notes as Max, Norma's chauffeur and former husband who helps keep her legend alive and holds the madness at bay. Along the way we are introduced to various movie types - the callous agent only worried about his ten percent; the producer, Sheldrake, who makes a mockery of the story a desperate, broke Joe tries to sell him; and Norma's bridge playing friends from the silent movie days - her "waxworks," as Joe puts it.

Joe with script reader and aspiring writer, Betty Schaefer

William Holden as Joe Gillis is sometimes lost in the shuffle when put side by side with these other Hollywood types. Holden was nominated for an Academy Award for his effort, and the film paved the way to a great career, including his Oscar-winning turn as another Billy Wilder cynic in 1953's Stalag 17. However, when folks speak of the film today, it tends to be Norma Desmond they remember. The film, though, is about Joe, and Holden's work here is exemplary. We may not always like what we see, yet it is with Joe Gillis that we can identify.

Chuck Tatum, the baby (a.k.a., the spoiled brat). Ace in the Hole's Chuck Tatum may be the most despicable character Wilder ever created. In fact, he may be the most despicable character in Hollywood history.

Starring Kirk Douglas as reprehensible newspaper reporter, Chuck Tatum, who finds himself stranded in a small New Mexico town after being banished from his post on a New York paper for libel, drinking, and general debauchery, Chuck is bored senseless. Thinking he was in for a light sentence with time off for good behavior, he's been stranded for more than a year with no worthwhile story to pave his way back to the Big Apple. But then local restaurant/souvenir stand owner, Leo Minosa, gets trapped in an old mine while searching for American Indian artifacts. Seeing Leo's story as his ticket out of town, Chuck plays it up for all its worth, convincing the corrupt local sheriff and construction company to consider the most dynamic way to save the trapped man rather than the quickest and safest. It doesn't end well.

Stranded and in need of a job, Chuck Tatum works his wily charm on newspaper editor, Mr. Boot.

Chuck Tatum has the worst characteristics of all his brothers. Like them he is single-minded. His greed comes from big brother Walter Neff; the writing background and opportunism from older brother Joe Gillis; the turn of a quick phrase and love of drink from Don Birnam. Unlike his older brothers, however, Chuck has no heart. He is sorry about Leo's fate . . . because the human interest angle to the story requires a happy ending.

Kirk Douglas, who made a career of playing heels, sinks his teeth into the dialogue written by Wilder and Walter Newman, relishing every word. A shout out must also go to Jan Sterling as bottle blonde Lorraine Minosa, wife of the poor, unfortunate Leo, and worthy cohort/adversary of the cutthroat Chuck. Her portrait of a woman worn down by life - when told by Chuck to put on a good show for the spectators by going to church to pray for her husband, Lorraine replies, "I don't pray. Kneeling bags my nylons" - is nothing short of first rate. (Wilder has some daughters I should write about one day. His view of the opposite sex is no more kind than his perspective on many of the male schnooks whose stories he told.)

Ace in the Hole was a box office failure, and it scared Wilder. He didn't direct for a year, and when he did emerge, it was with one proven Broadway adaptation after another - Stalag 17 in 1953, Sabrina in 1954, and The Seven Year Itch in 1955. Only one of these could be considered a Wilder son like the previous four, and that would be William Holden's Sefton in Stalag 17. In all Wilder's future successes, however, he would never again be as abrasive and or as much of a risk taker as he was with these four films and his depictions of their flawed, desperate (anti-)heroes. 


Sources : Wikipedia
                IMDB 
                TCM
                Images gathered at random from the internet

". . . Writing history with lightning."

One hundred years ago this month, on February 8, 1915, director D.W. Griffith unleashed his epic, The Birth of a Nation, onto an unsuspecting world. Once considered a beacon of film art, today Birth is remembered more for its displays of racism than the pioneering work of a master director who contributed to film history not only the language of film but also the first full-blown blockbuster. Birth took film exhibition from cheap nickelodeons to grand theatrical palaces. It made so much money so fast that grosses can still not accurately be tallied - Time Magazine claimed the total was $15 million; The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots stated that by 1949, the film had grossed $50 million; and in 1977, Variety estimated grosses at around just $5 million. Whatever the amount, it was considerable for its time and made a fortune for everyone involved with the production.

Henry B. Walthall as Colonel Ben Cameron

Based on Thomas Dixon’s novel, The Clansman, which was the film’s original title, The Birth of a Nation is provocative in the extreme. Its depiction of members of the Ku Klux Klan as saviors of a glorious south that (never?) was is second only to its characterizations of post-Civil War blacks as lazy, shiftless characters who prey on white women. Further, white actors in blackface portray the film’s black characters, which was a common practice at the time as few - if any - African Americans were cast in mainstream films by white filmmakers in the early decades of the 20th Century. Also worth noting is the film's first half, which deals primarily with life before the War Between the States and was not taken from Dixon's book. These scenes show an idealized version of southern life before the Civil War’s outbreak in 1861 and were undoubtedly based on the stories heard by Griffith, a southerner, when he was a child.

Another reason for The Birth of a Nation's success was its controversial portrayal of African Americans, in this case played by a white actor in make-up. Its image of the KKK as the savior of the south also fed that controversy. 

The Birth of a Nation was the first film shown at the White House for then President Woodrow Wilson, who may or may not have said the film was "like writing history with lightning." Across the country the film was a cause celebre, inciting protests from the NAACP and eliciting derision in the black press for its shameful depiction of blacks and its interpretation of history. Shameful, it was. In The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith presented some of the most incendiary stereotypes of the American South. Nevertheless, The Birth of a Nation is a film worthy of acclaim for how it moved film forward. When Birth was released, most Americans had never seen a movie longer than 15 or 20 minutes. The comparative complexity of the narrative as well as its production values demanded attention like no other film had.

Indelible images such as this are a big part of why The Birth of a Nation was the phenomenon of its day.

To modern audiences, The Birth of a Nation may be easy to dismiss for its flaws, which are undeniable. Yet those flaws are also part of what makes the film relevant 100 years after its release. It incites discussion, perhaps even an attempt to understand our past and deal with it. While not entirely unreasonable, dismissing Birth simply as a racist film is not giving it its due. In its day, white audiences did not instantly recognize the film’s offensive depiction of blacks, the south, or the KKK. 1915 was a different time – what we recognize as oppression today was everyday life 100 years ago – and it was likely that whites saw blacks as inferior as a matter of fact. For better or worse, D.W. Griffith was largely a product of his time, as were those filmmakers who made movies starring white people in roles as Chinese field workers (1937's The Good Earth, starring Paul Muni and Louise Rainer) or Mexican peasant workers (1942’s Tortilla Flat, starring Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, and Hedy Lamarr). Film history is littered with casual discrimination like this, yet The Birth of a Nation remains the flashpoint for commentary on racism in cinema. Most likely this is due to the blatant nature of the racism on display in the film as well as to the power the film still has over spectators today.

Among the victims of The Birth of a Nation’s divisiveness are the subsequent accomplishments of D.W. Griffith’s career. After Birth, Griffith created arguably his greatest film in 1916 with Intolerance. Following that was Hearts of the World in 1918 and Broken Blossoms in 1919, which was a love story about a white girl who is brutalized by her father and befriended by a kindly Chinese man, and based on a story called "The Chink and the Girl" (which lends some insight into how acceptable racist ignorance was in the first half of the 20th Century). Other hit movies followed: Way Down East with Lillian Gish being rescued from an icy river at its climax; 1921's Orphans of the Storm, a drama set in the late 18th Century before the French Revolution, considered Griffith's last popular hit; and America, made in 1924 and set during the American Revolutionary War. America’s failure, coupled with the poor box office returns of his subsequent feature, Isn't Life Wonderful?, left Griffith with a huge debt and forced his departure from United Artists, the company he co-founded with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. Pushing though the decade, Griffith kept busy by making six more films, including a couple of early W.C Fields films. He made his first talkie, 1930's Abraham Lincoln with the great Walter Huston as Honest Abe. The film was fairly faithful to the early parts of Lincoln's life, though it became less factual as the story approached its climax (including Lincoln’s delivery of passages from the Gettysburg Address at Ford’s Theater immediately before his assassination). The film's box office was poor. Griffith's next film, The Struggle, which was released in 1931, told of how alcoholism affects a young man and his wife, and was partly inspired by Griffith's own battle with the bottle. It also died a quick death at the box office and marked the end of D.W. Griffith's career.

Griffith followed up one epic with another. This still is from 1916's Intolerance.

In D.W. Griffith's last years, he was neglected by the industry he helped found. Occasionally, he would be brought out for publicity, like during the production of Duel in the Sun, which co-starred former Griffith company players, Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish. Or in 1936 when Griffith received a much-needed paycheck by assisting with direction on earthquake scenes for his former assistant director, W.S. Van Dyke’s production of San Francisco, starring Clark Gable and Jeanette McDonald.

While living at the Knickerbocker Hotel (still standing in Hollywood but currently a retirement home) Griffith suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on July 23, 1948, and died a forgotten man. Orson Welles was quoted as saying "I have never really hated Hollywood except for its treatment of D.W. Griffith. No town, no industry, no profession, no art form owes so much to a single man." Charlie Chaplin called him "the teacher of us all." Other directors including John Ford, Jean Renoir, and Stanley Kubrick have spoken of their debt to Griffith. In 1953, the Director’s Guild of America named its lifetime achievement award after him, though that was rescinded in 1999 due to the racial stereotypes his most famous film helped to perpetuate. As the National Society of Film Critics suggested back in January 2000, I can’t help but think a better approach would have been to keep the name while advancing the work of directors with diverse backgrounds. But, it’s easier to make a simple change like the removal of a name from an award than to acknowledge the offenses of the past with a commitment to challenge and overcome them in the future. The entire body of D.W. Griffith’s work is significant to cinematic history, none more so than The Birth of a Nation, from its contemptible characterizations to its innovative narratives and exemplary production values. To ignore any of it is to avoid the opportunity to engage with our history, learn from it, and improve our piece of it.

 D.W. Griffith with megaphone, a familiar prop for silent film directors

Sources: Wikipedia page on D.W. Griffith and The Birth of a Nation
IMDB: D.W. Griffith
D.W. Griffith: An American Life by Richard Schickel
Indiewire: Peter Bogdanovich

Underrated Gem: "The Big Knife"

I have a terrible weakness for movies about movies. When Hollywood - or Europe, for that matter - turns its cameras on the movie business, I am instantly intrigued. I know where this fascination comes from: Because I have been drawn to the world of movies for so long and since I haven't - and most likely never will - work in the film business in any capacity, I need to view its inner workings, to remain connected, and to feel like a part of it. It may sound like a pathetic pastime, I know, but I remain obsessed just the same, whether it's an all-time stinkeroo like 1966's The Oscar (a famously bad movie); a sentimental tearjerker like A Star Is Born (both the 1937 version and the far more successful production from 1954 starring Judy Garland and James Mason); or a movie like Robert Altman's valentine to the so-called New Hollywood, 1992's The Player, whenever a backstage look at the film industry is on offer, I have to see it. (I even went to see the recent The Last Days of Robin Hood in spite of its 29% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes; in some ways, I'm fearless.)

A European poster in which the film was titled Hollywood Story. For me, the title change pretty much sums up the film.

Which brings us to The Big Knife. Based on the play by Clifford Odets whose original 1949 Broadway production starred John Garfield, the film was directed by Robert Aldrich in 15 days on a budget of less than $500,000. The plot centers on matinee idol Charlie Castle (Jack Palance), a once idealistic actor who went to Hollywood, became a big movie star, and sold out. After years of compromise, his estranged wife (Ida Lupino) threatens to leave him for good if he signs a new seven-year contract with Hoff-Federated Pictures Inc., owned and operated by Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), and take their young son with her. Along the way we get glimpses of Hollywood types like the dumb blonde, Dixie Evans (Miss Shelley Winters, as the movie credits bill her), who adores Charlie and knows a big secret about him that he and the studio want her to forget; publicity man, Buddy Bliss (Paul Langton), who took the blame for the car accident Charlie had years earlier in which a young woman was killed; Charlie's loyal agent, Nat Danzinger (Everett Sloane); and Hoff's right hand, hatchet man, Smiley Coy (Wendell Corey). The drama comes from Hoff threatening to use what he knows about Charlie's car accident and the studio-managed cover-up (which Hoff masterminded, natch) to make Charlie continue to sell out by signing his life away for another seven years, making films he hates, and losing his wife and child. Perhaps understandably, the sob story of a Hollywood star didn't appeal to middle America. The Big Knife was a box office failure, losing money despite its meager budget.

Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), aka Louis Mayer/Harry Cohn, ready for the kill.

Described by some as overwrought, overacted, over-the-top, and half-baked, The Big Knife was a Hollywood film nobody wanted to make. After being turned away by the major studios, the film was financed by United Artists, which was just emerging in the mid-1950s as a major player in Tinseltown after years of struggling. In 1955 when the film was made and released, it was equivalent to today's independent filmmaking - above-the-line talent working for union scale with a script the filmmakers believed in.

I wrote that the movie was shot in 15 days. 15 days! Can you imagine? Today, even a low-budget, indie film doesn't get made in 15 days and certainly not with a cast like this. And it's the cast and Odets' dialogue that are the stars of this show. Jack Palance's turn as Charlie Castle is effective enough, but the role cries out for Garfield (whom the character was partly patterned on). Ida Lupino as Charlie's wife Marion is fine, but the role is sanctimonious and a bit of a bore. My favorite bits are Wendell Corey's slippery Smiley Coy (great name), Rod Steiger's evil Stanley Hoff (a mix of Harry Cohn and Louis B. Mayer), and Everett Sloane as Charlie's hapless agent, Nat. Corey's Smiley Coy is just as vicious as Hoff but smooth as silk, like the snake in the Garden of Eden. Sloane-as-Nat is the epitome of the agent with a heart of gold, always calling Charlie "darling." Most agents are shown on film as ten percenters, always taking. Everett Sloane, a good, somewhat forgotten actor, despite his appearances in some Orson Welles classics, shows us an agent's humanity, pain, concern, and heartbreak, which isn't seen much on film. Steiger is ham-fisted and way over the top. He took some criticism for it, yet I think his characterization works. Every time I watch him in this film I think of the studio bosses who were better actors - or at least more dramatic - than the actors they employed. Steiger wasn't a very subtle actor, but, for my money, his bombastic interpretation is spot on.

Charlie signs his life away for another seven years as Hoff, Smiley Coy, and Nat Danzinger look on.

The other female roles are basically cliches and not one would make Gloria Steinem proud: Miss Shelley Winters dedicated her performance to Garfield (they had worked together on his last film, He Ran All the Way), but her B-level actress/good-time girl Dixie Evans is a character we've seen a thousand times and feels somewhat phoned in. Jean Hagen as Connie Bliss, the wife of publicity man Buddy Bliss, however, made a lasting impression on me. Her portrait of a woman who drinks too much, fools around a lot, and probably makes life hell for her poor schnook of a husband feels authentic. I don't think she is in the film more than ten minutes, but her presence is felt. Half drunk when she shows up at Charlie's house in the late afternoon of his no-good, very bad day, Hagen plays Connie as a kind of nympho on a bender - sexy, alluring, and slightly dangerous, out for a laugh and a roll in the hay because she's bored and horny. (Movies-about-movies fans can hardly forget Jean Hagen's scene-stealing performance as Lina Lamont in the classic Singin' in the Rain. She got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for that role, though the rest of her career proves that Hollywood seldom knew what to do with her. The Big Knife shows what she could do given the right material.)

Jean Hagen as Connie Bliss, tempting Charlie with a roll in the hay. The whole film is about Charlie's battle to stay pure and clean in the face of Hollywood's corrupting influences.

Robert Aldrich directed this movie the same year he made the noir classic Kiss Me Deadly. He was just starting out and would go on to make such tough guy classics as The Dirty Dozen, Flight of the Phoenix, and The Longest Yard. His first real success had come the year before The Big Knife with the western, Vera Cruz. Aldrich was an interesting filmmaker who bounced between those rough and tumble films, and Grand Guignol-style films like Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, and The Legend of Lylah Claire. Although not as well remembered, The Big Knife shares the mentality of those later films. The Big Knife wasn't a critical or popular success. Director Aldrich felt that casting Palance was a kiss of death for the film. As mentioned, John Garfield was the obvious first choice, but the actor had died at age 39 in 1952, a victim of the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC]'s Communist witch hunts. Burt Lancaster had been approached but declined. Palance, though a fine actor when the part was right, was all wrong for Castle. He just wasn't handsome enough to portray a movie star circa 1955, even one who grew up a tough street kid in New York City as Charlie Castle did.

Today, The Big Knife is remembered as a good adaptation of Clifford Odets' play. It carries a decent 6.9 rating on IMDB and 80% on Rotten Tomatoes with the admittedly small sample size of only five critics. . . .  Actually, that may be its very problem: Although director Robert Aldrich has his champions (noir specialist Alain Silver and James Ursini in particular), that support doesn't seem to be enough to pull this film out of semi-obscurity. Though the cast is first rate, none of them have a cult status (like Garfield does) that might draw the attention of potential fans. I personally find the film a fascinating capsule of a time when Hollywood was caught between the studio system of the pre-1950's era and the so-called New Hollywood when actors, directors, and, especially, agents could call their own shots. Unfortunately, The Big Knife continues to exist in a gray area - not quite a cult film, not quite a classic. In other words, it's a movie ripe for rediscovery. 

On the Road With Bing, Bob, and Dorothy

The only Road movie added to the National Film Registry.

In 1940, Paramount Pictures paired crooner Bing Crosby with rising comedian Bob Hope and "Sarong Queen" Dorothy Lamour in the film, Road to Singapore. While they weren't the studio's first - or even second - choices for their roles, Road to Singapore was a smash hit, leading the way to adventures in Zanzibar, Morocco, Rio, and other exotic locales (all, thanks to movie magic, located on the Paramount lot in Hollywood). Indeed, over the next twenty years Hope, Crosby, and usually Lamour would make seven of the tremendously successful Road movies. Through those years, the trio would individually go on to become an Oscar winner (Crosby for Going My Way in 1944), a pin-up queen for the soldiers overseas (Lamour, natch), and top ten box office attractions with Bing the top draw in pictures for five straight years from 1944 to 1948, which I believe is still a record. By 1962, when the last Road movie was released, the pair had transcended mere stardom, having become cultural icons and institutions.

Bob agrees to another one of Bing's life-endangering schemes.

After Singapore, the trio took off for Road to Zanzibar in 1941, followed closely by Road to Morocco, considered by many the series' funniest, in '42; my fave, Road to Utopia, in '45;  Road to Rio in '47; and Road to Bali in '52, the only one filmed in glorious technicolor. A long pause took place before the two were reunited in The Road to Hong Kong in 1962. Through all their travels their characters remained consistent: Vaudeville performers who were not quite honest but never entirely crooked. Bing was the sharpie - the man with the ideas -  Hope was the guinea pig, and beautiful Dorothy the love interest they wrestle over. In film after film, the formula was the same: Bing sang,  Bob joked, and Dorothy sizzled. 

Huge stars on their own, together Hope and Crosby had chemistry. The duo sang, danced, played both straight man and top banana for each other. When not starring together, they would occasionally pop up in each other's films, appearing often in surprise cameos at the film's conclusion. From the first Road picture to Crosby's death in 1977, the pair had an imaginary rivalry. While that rivalry was faked, to an extent, so was their friendship. Not to say they didn't get along, but it was a professional friendship that seldom bled into their private lives. Further, they were busy with their own careers. In the 1940s alone Hope appeared in 20 movies and Crosby in 19. In addition the two each had popular weekly radio shows - Crosby with Kraft Music Hall and Philco Radio Time, Hope with Pepsodent Show. When they worked together, though, it was hard to believe these guys weren't the best of pals.

The pair fight over the beauty that is Lamour, as usual.

To watch the Road pictures is to capture these show biz giants at their peak. I first saw Hope and Crosby in the 1970s on television as tired old men. Hope tried to be relevant with weak jokes on his NBC comedy specials; Bing sang on his Christmas shows (watch his performance of "Little Drummer Boy" with David Bowie to see how painful trying to be relevant can be). Watching these programs I wondered what made them so famous. Then I saw Road to Utopia, and their magic was instantly apparent. These guys were young, vital, energetic, and relevant. Like their peers, Abbott and Costello, or teams like Martin and Lewis that came after, Hope and Crosby together were comic perfection. They paved the way not only for those comic duos, but for Sinatra's Rat Pack and its movies as well (their comic stylings are even in evidence in the Ocean's Eleven remake with George Clooney and Brad Pitt). And of course, they were the prototype for Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in 1987's Ishtar. I suppose the intangible elements that made the Road movies so successful could never be repeated. It's hard to believe that two top stars today would ever get together that many times, nor would one play the buffoon so the other could get the girl. Agents, egos, script approval, top billing (for the record Bing was top billed in all but one of the Road pics), who would get the girl, and various other factors would far outweigh the quality of the script.

The last Road picture, 1962's The Road to Hong Kong, was the first in ten years, and it brought some changes. For one thing Lamour, now in her early forties, was no longer thought young enough to be the girl both Hope and Crosby wanted, so Joan Collins was hired to play the part instead (though Lamour did have a cameo). Hope and Crosby were not the young and carefree lads of days gone by, either. Both in their early sixties, the duo seemed to have lost a certain edge. Seeing these two guys cavorting and clowning around when their age indicated that they might have been more interested in being home with their families diminished their usual Road movie roles. Along with Dorothy Lamour, the film did benefit from assorted cameos from David Niven, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and a really funny bit with Peter Sellers as an Indian doctor trying to cure Hope of his amnesia. Emphasizing how outdated the Road movies were, some critics remarked on how Sellers' freshness stole the show from the two stars. In 1977, a new script by Melville Shavelson, Road to the Fountain of Youth, would have brought the the old pros together once more, but Bing died of a heart attack in October of that year. And anyway, it's probably a good thing that the series didn't continue. The Road movies were best when its stars were young, foolish, and willing to do anything for a laugh.

Sources: Bing Crosby: Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by Barbara Bauer
              Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, The Early Years by Gary Giddens
              Wikipedia page on the Road movies
              Photos courtesy of the internet