The Tall T (1957) Budd Boetticher

July 9, 2009 by John Greco

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    One of the ironies of Budd Boetticher’s “The Tall T” is that under different circumstances the two main protagonists could have been friends in this deceivingly simple story. Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott) is a non-conformist rancher, a loner who refuses to become part of a larger ranch owner’s consortium, even after he loses his horse in a bet with the rancher, that he can ride a bull. On his way back to his place, he hitches a ride on a stagecoach driven by longtime friend Rintoon (Arthur Hunnicutt). The stage is soon held up by Frank Usher (Richard Boone) and his gang only to find to their frustration there is no money on board. The stage is a special run, carrying newlyweds Willard Mims (John Hubbard) and his rich bride Doretta (Maureen O’Sullivan), to their honeymoon destination. Chink (Henry Silva), one of Usher’s men, cold bloodedly kills Rintoon and the remaining three are taken as prisoners. Mims, a wimpy former accountant, begs for his life informing the robbers about Doretta’s family fortune and that her father would be surely willing to pay for her safe return. After he arranges for the ransom payoff, the cowardly Willard is told he can safely leave. Without even saying anything to his wife Willard attempts to leave as Chink aims and shoots him in the back. When Usher goes off to pick up the ransom, Brennan, begins to erode the trust between Usher’s two stooges systematically separating and eventually killing them both.

Tall T Still   While little seems to happen, Boetticher and screenwriter Burt Kennedy draw out every bit of tension and nuance from the story and their actors. It is a  minimalist work with a small cast and little action, with only the rough western landscape looming large over the entire canvas. Unlike John Ford, Boetticher’s western presents a colder version of the west, there is little, if any sentiment in his work.  His characters kill without emotion or trepidation. For example, early in the film we find out the outlaws killed a stationmaster and his young son dumping their bodies unceremoniously into a well.

    Of the four main characters, three present a façade around their true selves. Willard Mims first comes across as a decent gentle man who is in love with his new bride. As we are soon to find out the former accountant is a conniving little weasel, who married Doretta for her money. Once under the control of the outlaws he willingly and spinelessly betrays his wife to try to save himself. Doretta, views herself as a good woman sticking by her man insisting they married each other for love. She later, after his death, admits that she knew all along Willard married her for her money and that she married him because she feared a life of loneliness and a desire to get away from her wicked father. Frank Usher also is deceiving himself into believing that some day he will have his own ranch and leave the outlaw life. He views himself as better than his two cohorts, who he describes as “animals.” It is only Pat Brennan, who does not give us a pretense of being someone other than what he is. Brennan is straightforward, admitting at one point that he is afraid, still he is intelligent and composed enough to outsmart the killers managing to segregate the members taking them down one by one. Brennan is a typically stoic Randolph Scott character who only displays any passion twice in the film, first, after Doretta admits she married Mims more out of loneliness and self-pity than love.  Brennan, holding her expresses his disapproval of her living a lie telling her “sometimes you gotta walk up and take what you want.” He then swiftly kisses her hard on the mouth. Later on, given the chance to take on the killers he is ready to kill and make sure it all ends here and now. 

talltx    Richard Boone gives a standout performance as the top outlaw, Frank Usher who deludes himself into thinking he could have a life similar to Brennan however, sees the desperado life as his only avenue there. Boone gives us so many nice touches to his character that Usher is the most sympathetic character in the film.

    Burt Kennedy’s screenplay is based on the short story, “The Captives”, by Elmore Leonard, whose works were also the source for “3:10 to Yuma” and “Hombre” among others. Today Leonard is better known as one of our best crime fiction writers whose novels include “Get Shorty”, “Out of Sight”, and “Be Cool.” Most recently, his novel “Killshot” was made into a good film and unceremoniously dumped almost straight to the video market. Much of the dialogue in the film Kennedy wisely took straight from the short story. In an interview at the Parallax View website Kennedy mentions that “The Tall T” was originally a project he wrote for John Wayne and his partner, Bob Fellows. When the partnership broke up, the project went with Fellows and he eventually sold it to Harry Joe Brown, Randolph Scott’s partner.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) Paul Mazursky

July 5, 2009 by John Greco

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    In the 1950’s, New York was the center of the art world. The Broadway Theater was filled with the works of great playwright like Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Robert Anderson with plays like “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “Sweet Bird of Youth”, “Picnic” and “Tea and Sympathy.” The musical theater was electric with shows like “Gypsy”, “West Side Story” “Guys and Dolls”, “Bye Bye Birdie” and all were original productions, new shows. Not one was a revival. The theater was just the tip of the iceberg, live television, dramas produced by such up and coming writers as Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Sterling were broadcast live featuring unknown actors like James Dean, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Ben Gazarra and Paul Newman, directed by such newbie’s as John Frankenheimer, and Sidney Lumet. Music was also in the air, Jazz clubs one after another on 52nd Street; Folk Music filled the streets of Greenwich Village, along young comedic acts like Woody Allen, Mort Sal and Lenny Bruce, and artists like Jackson Pollack and a young man by the name of Warhol were breaking new ground.

    It must have been an exciting time to be young, creative, free and living in New York, but not just New York but one specific area in lower Manhattan know as Greenwich Village. Art, coffee houses, poetry readings, politics, rent parties and sexual freedom, The Village was a place to fit in when you did not fit in anywhere else. In his 1976 film, “Next Stop, Greenwich Village, Paul Mazursky, who lived the life, gives us one of the best screen portraits of what Village life was like in those now bygone days. Mazursky, was a young actor and writer performing in improvisational theater before he moved on to the left coast and an acting career that included parts in Stanley Kubrick’s first film “Fear and Desire” along with “The Blackboard Jungle” and “Crime in the Streets.”     

NSGW-Still    His story centers on young Larry Lapinksy (Lenny Baker) a Brooklyn College graduate who has always wanted to be an actor. He moves out of his parents’ apartment, much to the despair of his over protective mother Fay (Shelley Winters) and complacent father (Mike Kellen), in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to Greenwich Village. Here he gets a job in a deli working for Lou Jacobi and attends acting classes where he meets other young hopefuls all vying for a piece of the artistic pie. Among Larry’s inner circle are his girl friend free spirited Sarah (Ellen Greene), intelligent, witty and incapable of committing to a relationship. When Lenny asked if she loves him, she could only respond by saying, she wears a diaphragm. She is also attracted to Robert (Christopher Walken), a self-absorbed playwright/Poet who draws women like flies yet remains emotionally cold. Other village eccentrics include Lois Smith as Anita, a depressed suicidal type, Antonia Fargas as Bernstein, a gay black man and a young Jeff Goldblum as Clyde Baxter already phony leading man type looking for his break.

 next_stop_gv_poster    Lenny may have left home but his over emotionally attached mother Fay (Shelley Winters) will not leave him. Inappropriately appearing at his apartment, she barges in during a rent party charging in like a hippo in a Yardro factory embarrassing Lenny to no end. On another occasion, she unexpectedly appears when he is attempting to make love to Sarah and blindly going into a tirade insisting that they now have to get married. Lenny gets a bit part in a Hollywood movie and is ready to fly off to Hollywood. Saying goodbye to his parents, his mother gives him a bagful of apple strudels to eat on the plane. She is a Jewish mother to be reckoned with; all love and terror wrapped up in a loud uncontrollable big heart spitting out guilt to for the world to share. Lenny Baker’s performance holds the film together and it is a shame his career was cut short when he was struck with cancer three years later and died prematurely in 1982. He was 37 years old. Shelley Winters is ideal as a lovable bear of a woman who is fearful of letting go of her baby. Ellen Greene tantalizing as Sarah and Christopher Walken is prefect as the unemotional Robert.

    Mazursky has written a gentle love letter to his past, a fond look back at his early days. You get the feeling that for him there is a nostalgic fondness to days gone when we see Larry’s imitations of Brando and his dreams of an Oscar acceptance speech as he waits at the subway station. Lenny is Mazursky as a young man.  It is a lovely film with no bitterness, resentment or regrets.

    “Next Stop, Greenwich Village”, opened to generally favorable reviews in 1976, Pauline Kael liked it, and Vincent Canby did not. The film was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival and Mazursky received a nomination for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen from the Writers Guild. This is a film that seems to have gotten lost in the seventies, an intelligent, witty and engaging work of a period in time that will never be seen again.

The Wanderers (1979) Philip Kaufman

July 2, 2009 by John Greco

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    Richard Price’s first novel “The Wanderers” was published in 1974, when he was twenty-four years old. Price knew the territory having grown up in the housing projects of The Bronx. It was a period just before the Assassination of JFK, before Vietnam was on the front page of every newspaper and before the Beatles. The episodic novel focuses on an Italian-American gang, “The Wanderers” led by Richie Gennaro (Ken Wahl). Price’s Bronx is overflowing with gangs, among them the Del Rays, the Fordham Baldies, the Wongs and the stunted Irish bat wielding wild men, the Ducky Boys. Phillip Kaufman’s 1979 film version, while diverting from it source novel in many respects, similarly focus’ on a series of descriptive scenes centering on Gennaro and his fellow Wanderers. Though they wear matching satin jackets, they are not so much a gang as they are a union of close friends hanging out on street corners, chasing girls and protecting themselves from the more dangerous gangs of the Bronx neighborhood they live in. This inner city coming of age film sparkles intermittently while managing to unfortunately derail itself at times with arty self-consciousness.  

    Statistically the sixties began in 1960 however, the mood, the essence, the spirit of the sixties began in 1963; the year it all began to change. At this point in time, the radio was still filled with American Rock and Roll; artists like Dion, The Contours, The Four Seasons, The Shirelles and The Isley Brothers ruled the Billboard charts. Guys hanging out on street corners singing doo-wop, watching the girls walk by, sizing them up, planning how to cop a feel by “accidentally” bumping into them.

    Wanderers LC1225162.1020.AThe film’s focus is on four of The Wanderers, Richie, Joey (John Friedrich), Perry (Tony Ganios) and Buddy (Jim Youngs).  Though the screenplay, written by Philip and Rose Kaufman, is as episodic at Price’s novel, the film never goes much beyond the boys’ current life and does not reveal any dreams or aspirations they may have beyond their present existence. In his novel, Price ventures to suggest what the future could offer, what they as individuals, want out of life beyond hanging out on the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road. True, Joey and Perry drive off to San Francisco at the end however; they do not seem to have any plans other than to get out of their current individual situations. The boys’ families are dysfunctional, Joey, an artistic type, is brutalized by his over macho father, Emilio (William Andrews), and Perry (Tony Ganios), a new kid on the block, just moved from New Jersey, has an alcoholic mother who sleeps around. As for Richie, he seems destined to marry his recently knock-up girlfriend Despie (Toni Kalem) and live a life of eating pasta and wearing Hawaiian shirts, similar to his Mafia like future father-in-law.

    The film is successful in spots, particularly the opening scenes where Kaufman’s camera gloriously flows over The Bronx from above, fluidly moving down in front Alexander’s Department store to focus on the pug faces of the Fordham Baldies, all to the beat of The Four Seasons “Walk Like a Man.”  Another finely realized scene is the strip poker party Richie orchestrates with Joey. The girls, Despie and a new girl Nina (Karen Allen), from the right side of the tracks, are set up to lose both the game and their clothes. There is a mischievous comic interplay between the four characters, the girls begin to catch on that the game is rigged, that is executed more naturally than anything else in the movie.

  The Wanderers posterss  Unfortunately, the film goes off course in other scenes, particularly when Kaufman films a bizarre atmospheric episode where Richie and his friends spot Nina walking down the street and follow her in Perry’s car. They end up in an eerie fog filled, oddly lit world controlled by the bat swinging Ducky Boys. It is such a strange out of context scene that I almost expected one of the Wanderers to say, “I don’t think we’re in The Bronx anymore, Toto” as they drive deeper into this strange Oz like landscape gone wrong. Outnumbered, the four are beaten up, though they eventually manage to escape the villainous Ducky Boys.     

    New York City, like many big cities, was inundated with youth gangs in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.  Price, in his novel, and Kaufman likewise in the film, used the names of real gangs from those bygone days. The Fordham Baldies (the real gang did not shave their heads), The Ducky Boys, and The Wanderers were all real and violent gangs. Unlike “The Warriors”, released earlier the same year, “The Wanderers” is not so much about gangs as it is about coming of age, in a more innocent time that was on the verge of extinction. We see the dawn of a new age (of Aquarius?) in various scenes. The Vietnam War, though never mentioned, is symbolized by the foreboding Marine recruiter who suckers some of the Baldies into signing up. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is viewed by Richie as he passes by a department store window with a TV broadcasting the news on the President’s death. During his bachelor party in Little Italy, Richie spots Nina and follows her a few blocks to Folk City where a young Bob Dylan is performing “The Times They Are A- Changin.’” Nina enters the club meeting some friends while, Richie uncertain remains outside. He turns and leaves returning to his party and the familiar world he knows. These scenes may be a bit obvious and even heavy-handed but they do convey an emotion that our lives will no longer be as innocent and carefree as they once were.

      Richard Price, as I am sure many know, is one of our grittiest and best novelist and screenwriters. His novels include “The Ladies Man”, “Bloodbrothers”, “Clockers”, “Freedomland”, and most recently “Lush Life.”  His screenplays include “Sea of Love”, “Clockers”, “Shaft”, “Mad Dog and Glory”, “Night and the City” and “The Color of Money.” Price also wrote the music video “Bad” for Michael Jackson, which was directed by Martin Scorsese.

    Wanders b wThe cast was filled, at the time, with talented unknowns. This was Ken Wahl’s first film; he would later star as Vinnie in Stephen Cannell’s TV series “Wiseguy.”  Karen Allen, of course, would hit it big in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Toni Kalem would later appear in “The Sopranos” as Angie Bonpensiero, Big Pussy’s wife. I especially found Wahl’s characterization of Richie and Toni Kalem’s, Despie the real highlights along with EricVan Lidth De Jeude who played Terror, the gigantic intimidating 350 pound, 6’6” imposing leader of the Baldies. Terror’s girlfriend was played by 4’ 10” Linda Manz. In filming the couple, polar opposites in size, Kaufman’s camera presents an idiosyncratic Fellini like images of the two.

       The soundtrack is filled with early sixties hits, highlighted by two of Dion’s greatest, “The Wanderer” and “Runaround Sue.” Kaufman’s uses the soundtrack not just as an excuse to sell albums; his choices compliment the visuals as effectively as Scorsese did in “Mean Streets” a few years earlier.  The use of “Walk Like a Man” at the beginning of the film where we first are introduced to the Fordham Baldies is a highlight. The pounding beat Dion’s “The Wanderer” is the Italian-American gang’s national anthem.      

    “The Wanderers” was released about six months after “The Warriors” and was unfairly compared to Walter Hill’s gang infested adventure with a New York City over ridden with gangs. What “The Wanderers” does is capture a moment in time, not always very successfully, but in spirit, a time when the innocence of a nation was about to end and we and The Wanderers were about to grow up.

Karl Malden 1912-2009

July 1, 2009 by John Greco

Boomerang!

Kiss of Death

The Gunfighter

Where the Sidewalk Ends

A Streetcar Named Desire

I Confess

On the Waterfront

Baby Doll

Fear Strikes Out

One Eyed Jacks

All Fall Down

Birdman of Alcatraz

How the West Was Won

Gyspy

Chyenne Autumn

The Cincinatti Kid

Billion Dollar Brain

Patton

Here is a recent New York Times  appraisal

Maldne One Eyed

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Malden Gyspy

Maldne Wateffornt

Malden BirdmanBAMeetWarden2

Malden- Baby doll

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White Heat (1949) Raoul Walsh

June 29, 2009 by John Greco

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    When James Cagney returned to the gangster role in 1949’s “White Heat”, the film exploded off the screen, just as it still does today. As Eddie Mueller points out in “Dark City” Cody is not a classic gangster but an outlaw and that is an important difference.  Arthur “Cody” Jarrett was not a victim of growing up on the poor side of town, like Tom Powers in “The Public Enemy” or a war veteran returning home to depression era high unemployment, as Eddie Bartlett did in “The Roaring Twenties.” Nor was Cody part of a criminal organization.  Jarrett instead is a cruel, psychotic, homicidal, maniacal mamma’s boy, a brother to Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo, Lawrence Tierney’s Sam Wild and a father to Al Pacino’s Tony Montana along other post war psychotic criminals. Whether he shoots holes into the trunk of his car “to give some air” to fellow prison escapee Parker, who attempted to kill Jarrett in prison, or shoots Big Ed (Steve Cochran) and gleefully kicks him down the stairs telling his boys to catch, Cody is cruelly vicious and unstable. As portrayed by Cagney, he is magnetic, one of the great performances of all time; you just cannot take your eyes off him.

white-heat-virginia-mayo-james-cagney    The film opens with Cody’s gang robbing a train setting the stage for his behavior of showing no mercy to his victims or fellow gang members. One of his men is badly burned by hot steam from the train, Days later; Cody leaves him behind when the gang has to make a getaway from their hideout. He actually, tells another member of the gang, Cotton (Wally Cassell), to kill him, “since they were close friends.” Cotton instead shoots off a few rounds into the ceiling so Cody and the others waiting outside the mountain cabin think he did kill him. He may as well of shot him because when discovered by the police, the guy had frozen to death.            

    Even Cody’s sultry two-timing wife Verna, (Virginia Mayo) does not escape Cody’s brutality. His treatment of his wife, who he kicks off a small bench, is reminiscent of, and as shocking as the grapefruit smashed into Mae Clarke’s face in “The Public Enemy.” When Cody concocts a plan to avoid a federal rap by pleading to a lesser State robbery with probably a two-year sentence, Verna says what is she going to do for two years waiting for him. Ma responds “the same thing you did before you married him, dearie.” Cody replies, “You better not!” the insinuation clear that Verna was walking the streets.

    Of course, Cody saves his love for Ma (Margaret Wycherly). Cody cares for no one like he does for his mother who is as cold blooded and vicious as her son. Along with Norman Bates, Cody is cinema’s poster boys for the Oedipus complex. When he gets the first in a series of extreme blinding headaches, his mother takes cares of him and Cody ends up sitting in Ma’s lap. Yes, there is no love like the love of a good mother. It is Ma’s death, (unknown to Cody, Verna shot her in the back, she later convinces Cody that Big Ed murdered her) that causes Cody to go berserk in the prison mess hall and eventually plan an escape.White heat inset 294623.1010.A

    Cody’s downfall turns out to be a trust issue. Other than Ma, Cody never trusted anyone until he met Nick Fallon (Edmond O’Brien) who is really federal agent Vic Pardo, a plant inside the prison where he first meets Cody. Gaining Cody’s confidence, Fallon is in on the prison break and the eventually explosive ending at a chemical plant.    

    The ending is one of the most famous in cinema history, always included in historical and retrospective clips. Trapped, on top of a gas storage tank, his gang members are all killed, either by the police or by his own gun, Cody is wounded three times by Fallon, using a high-powered rifle. Insane, shooting wildly with his pistol, Cody screams, “Made it Ma, top of the world!” and a split second later, the world explodes into a fiery ball of white heat.  

    Based on a story by Virginia Kellogg and credited as being based on the true-life story of Arthur “Doc” Barker and his mother Ma Barker. Kellogg was also responsible for the story and screenplay of the early women in prison film “Caged.” The screenplay was written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts. While Cagney ignites the screen with one of the most iconic performances in film, there are some other fine performances, particularly by Virginia Mayo as Verna, beautifully slutty and low class. Director Raoul Walsh provides both Mayo and Cagney with some nice small bits of business that enhance the characterizations, for example, when we first see Verna she is sound asleep snoring. Later, she spits out some gum just before kissing Cody. When Jarrett is shooting holes in the trunk to give Parker “a little air”, he is eating a chicken wing. These fragments give us insight into both Verna and Cody, her lack of class and his indifference to killing. Steve Cochran is exceptionally menacing and rat like as Big Ed and noted Shakespearian actress Margaret Wycherley is wonderful as Cody’s equally obsessive and psycho mother. By the way, Wycherley in Howard Hawks Sgt. York portrayed Gary Cooper’s mother, one that was at the opposite end of the spectrum. 

  White Strand  aadoa14  The film opened on Broadway at the colossal Strand Theater in New York, which contained over 2,700 seats, to generally rave reviews including the New York Times that stated, “the Warners have pulled all the stops in making this picture the acme of the gangster-prison film.” Times critic, Bosley Crowthers, always known for “changing” his mind, changed his opinion of the film, a week or so later, from its original rave review when conservative elements attacked the film for its innate violence.  Cagney came to hate the film, as it became more and more of a classic, abhorring the crazed loser who became one of his most identifiable characterizations. While Cagney would go on to play a few more criminal types in the remaining years of his career, the role of Cody Jarrett would be the last iconic hoodlum in a long and amazing career of classic gangster/outlaw roles.

    The film has taken on legendary status imitated, paid homage to in any number of works including 1980’ “Fade to Black”, “Naked Gun 33 1/3” and “Johnny Dangerously 

 

NOTE: White Heat will be shown on TCM on July 13th at 9:30PM EST   

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) John Ford

June 25, 2009 by John Greco

The Grapes of Wrath Darweell

One of the greatest films of all-time with superlative performances from Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell and magificent cinematography by Greg Toland who captures the texture of  Dorothea Lange’s exquisite depression era photographic work. 

Attached here  is a review I wrote on “The Grapes of Wrath”  for Halo-17.

The Grapes of Wrath fondaell 

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The Captive City (1952) Robert Wise

June 23, 2009 by John Greco

   Captive City poster 

    The Kefauver Senate Committee on Organized Crime revealed to many Americans, via televised hearings, just how infiltrated organized crime was in their communities. While the hearings are noted for investigating and identifying many top Mafia bosses of the day, connecting mob operations from New York to Chicago to Miami, it also focused on how small town America, seemingly unaffected by big city crime was really not. Kefauver however was accused by political enemies, of caring more about being in the limelight and making a name for himself than anything else. Whatever the political motivation, the hearings for many Americans was the first time they became aware of organized crime and how even if you lived in small town America you were affected. Hollywood, always on the look out for a new angle began cashing in. The 1950’s were filled with films about The Organization. Early fifties film like “The Enforcer”, “711 Ocean Drive”, and “The Racket” focused on the rise on a national crime syndicate infiltrating local governments and setting up legal enterprises to hide their illegal activities.

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    Robert Wise’s 1952 documentary style film “The Captive City”,  filmed on location, captures a gritty realism with a relative cast of unknowns lending a strong notion of reality. The use of a new wide-angle lens called the Hoge used by cinematographer Lee Garmes for the first time created some stunning depth of focus shots used effectively in the beginning of the film by Wise. Ralph Hoge, the inventor, was a key grip on Orson Welles classic, “Citizen Kane” and an assistant to Wise on this film. Of course, Wise himself worked with Welles as a film editor on “Kane.”

    Inspired by the true life story of Time magazine crime reporter Alvin Josephy Jr. and based on his own short story, the film, told in flashback, tells the story of Jim Austin (John Forsythe) who along with a former war time buddy run the Kennington Times, a small town newspaper in an outwardly clean typical American community. Life changes when Clyde Nelson a local private investigator handling a simple divorce case comes across a big time gambling operation that connects the mob, to the local police and politicians. He informs Austin who finds his claims exaggerated until Nelson is soon killed in what is supposedly a hit and run accident. This convinces Austin there was truth in what the now dead investigator said.

    As Austin investigates, he finds himself and his wife being harassed and warned not to get involved, to leave it alone. His newspaper is threatened with loss of ads causing a riff between Austin and his partner.  Gathering more and more evidence, he remains powerless to do anything with it, since the town’s leaders are controlled by the crime syndicate. When Austin reads about a Senate Crime investigating committee currently at the State Capitol he and his wife jump into their car and head off the City Capitol followed by two thugs out to kill them before they arrive.

    The films ending is unusual in that no one is brought to justice and the outcome of Austin’s testimony to the Senate committee is not known though you are left with the impression justice is being served. The movie going public is directly warned on the evils of gambling when Senator Estes Kefauver himself, directly addresses the audience on the evils of gambling and the syndicate.

  The Captive CitybA  The cast is headed by a young, relatively unknown John Forsythe as Jim Austin with Joan Camden as his wife Marge. Ray Teal play the Chief and a very young Martin Milner is a boy photographer who is beaten up when he takes some photos he should not have taken.  The screenplay was written by Alvin Josephy Jr.,  Director Robert Wise, whose career has sometimes been slammed due some of his later over blown work in “epic” messes like “The Hindenberg”, “Audrey Rose”, and “Star” has only in recent years been reevaluated and recognized for the amazing career he has had.  A versatile director who has created  some fine films in a variety of genres like “Blood on the Moon”, “Born to Kill”, “The Set Up”, “Somebody Up There Likes Me”, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “The Haunting.” and “The Body Snatcher.”  Wise, as many know, learned his trade working with two of the greats, Orson Welles and Val Lewton. Wise may not have been an auteur but he was a great craftsman with a strong sense of subject matter and style distinguishing him from the standard studio director.  

    “The Captive City” is a decent little “B” film with shades of noir, adequate performances, that along with Wise’s editing, showing signs of what he learned from his mentors, will keep you interested for its one and a half hour running time.  The ending with Estes Kefauver is naive, hackneyed and dated from today’s perspective falling flat but up until that point, this minor work is worth a ride.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) Frank Capra

June 19, 2009 by John Greco

mr-deeds-goes-to-town

    Frank Capra takes on the big city slickers vs. the small town yokels in this depression era comedy led by Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds and the always amazing Jean Arthur as Louise “Babe” Bennett. Capra was awarded his second Oscar for directing this 1936 classic. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper) Best Screenplay (Robert Riskin in his fifth collaboration with Capra) and Best Recording.  The story originally appeared in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post, written by Clarence Budington Kelland.

    Longfellow Deeds, greeting card poet and tuba player eccentric has a nice peaceful life in the small New England town of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Life is turned upside down when his late uncle, multi-millionaire Martin Semple leaves him an inheritance of twenty million dollars. Seduced by the estates attorney, John Cedar (Douglass Dumbriller) who plucks Longfellow out of his safety net of a little town and into the big bad city of New York.

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    Cedar, of the law firm, Cedar, Cedar, Cedar and Budington is a scheming rodent of a lawyer who will eventually attempt to get Deed’s to turn over to him power of attorney in order to hide his financial thievery. By the way, note the in-joke with the use of the last name of Budginton in the law firm name, which is the same as the middle name of the author of the original story. Cedar hires former newspaperman Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander) to keep other reporters away from Deeds; however, a foxy Louise “Babe” Bennett (Jean Arthur) outwits Cobb when she poses as a destitute woman named Mary Dawson, who has been pounding the concrete sidewalks everyday in vain, searching for a job. She gains Longfellow’s confidence who get “a fools notion about saving a lady in distress”, and begins writing a series of newspaper articles exploiting his eccentric behavior (feeding donuts to horses), anointing him with the name of “Cinderella Man.”

     Deeds finds himself exploited and the laughing stock of the big city, all due to the constant barrage of newspaper articles by Ms. Bennett. Unexpectedly, Mary/Babe begins to fall in love with our innocent hero and comes to regret her writing the uncaring exploitive articles. Deeds, fed up with the treatment and ridicule he has received and is ready to head back to Mandrake Falls when an evicted farmer breaks into his mansion, verbally attacking him for being insensitive cold hearted, spending thousands on parties when everyday people all over are starving. Instead of feeding doughnuts to horses, how about giving those doughnuts to needy hungry people. The man suddenly pulls out a gun threatening to shoot Deeds. Fortunately, the farmer comes to his senses, realizing what he is about to do, he breaks down, dropping the gun as Deeds, who never wanted the fortune, finally realizes here is a way to give his money away and do good in the process. He will give thousands of homeless farmer’s farmland to work, and if they work the land for three years, it will be theirs to keep.

    After Cedar becomes aware of Deeds plan, and realizes he will lose control of millions of dollars, he attempts to have Deeds declared mentally unbalanced in court, by manipulating the only other living relative of the millionaire uncle to take the money away from Deeds before he gives it away to poor people. At the same time Deeds finds out the truth about Mary/Babe and that the fantasy girl he fell in love with has betrayed him.

deeds     Deed is put on trial and the predator lawyers attack with a vengeance, to the extent of bringing into court two eccentric old ladies from Deeds hometown to corroborate his peculiar behavior even back in Mandrake Falls. Deeds meanwhile, has sunk into a deep depression losing all hope in mankind, even refusing an attorney to defend him. The strong court case against Deeds begins to fall apart when the farmers and Babe, who declares her love for him in open court, all begin to come to his defense and he himself begins to realize there are good honest decent people in the world.

     I have always had ambivalent feelings about Frank Capra’s work, however I found “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” to be one of Capra’s great films, with his classic theme about the common man, overcoming greedy parasites and underhandedness, in this case, from lawyers and newspapers. The film still rings true today and I can imagine it must have had an especially good reception with the depression era population of the 1930’s getting to see a regular guy stand up and win against rich corrupt forces. Capra’s film is just one of many films during the depression to condemn the big city, filled with greedy manipulators and parasites (Vidor’s “Our Daily Bread” is another) vs. the small town filled with friendly genteel folks, “democratic” as an old man in Mandrake Falls states early in the film.    

    Capra’s women, “Babe”, in “Mr. Deeds” and Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck in the more serious social drama, “Meet John Doe”), are small town girls who come to, and were “corrupted” by the big bad city. Both “Babe” and Ann were newspaper reporters, a cynic’s occupation in many of Capra’s films.  There was also Clark Gable’s fast talking disparager who had little use for facts in “It Happened One Night” and Robert Williams Stew Smith in “Platinum Blonde”, who foolishly marries the rich Jean Harlow while his real love co-reporter (Loretta Young) looks on. Interestingly enough, the phrase “Cinderella Man” is used in both “Platinum Blonde” and in “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.”  

    The screenplay was written by Robert Riskin, one of five films he worked on with Capra. Others include “Broadway Bill”, “Lady for a Day”, “You Can’t it With You”, “Meet John Doe”,  ”American Madness”, and the Academy Award winning “It Happened One Night.”  Capra and Riskin’s relationship was convoluted, a love-hate collaboration developed after many years of Capra taking credit for Riskin’s work on many of their films. Capra in his autobiography downplayed Riskin’s contributions to some of their greatest films, this long after Riskin’s death. Looking to preserve his reputation, Capra put forth his one man, one film theory claiming that many of his screenwriters, Riskin included, did their best work only with him.capra-riskin

    Legend has it that Riskin once handed Capra a blank sheet of paper and told him to go ahead and “put the famous Capra touch on that.”  In the final years of Riskin’s life, wheelchair bound due to a stroke, he remained loyal to Capra, despite Capra never coming visit him. He admonished fellow screenwriter Jo Swerling when he once commented to Riskin that it was not right Capra never came to visit him, insisting that Capra was his best friend. If so, Capra did not have any reservations about down grading Riskins contributions to their classic works. Fay Wray, Riskin’s wife for the last thirteen years of his life, said while many of Riskin’s friends came to visit him in those final days, Capra was not among them. An uncharitable turn by a man who cherished his reputation as a filmmaker whose films carried the wholesome message on the basic goodness human nature.    

   Who can play the wholesome ordinary man better than Cary Cooper? No one that I can think of and as for Jean Arthur, I can never say enough nice things about this naturalistic comedic actress who Capra would use again two more times. The film opened to good reviews, upon its initial release at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. Grahame Greene, then a critic for The Spectator  called it Capra’s best film. Along with the previously mentioned Oscars, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”,  also won The New York Film Critics award as the best film of the year.  

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    The film was “remade” in 2002 with Adam Sandler in the role of Longfellow Deeds. Sandler’s Deeds runs a pizza shop in Mandrake Falls, which means not even the writers of the remake  believed Sandler could write greeting card level poetry. Of course, the inheritance is upped from twenty million to billionaire status and the humor level has been brought down to Sandler’s sub-basement floor level. Other than a lack of wit, charm, intelligence and a heart, there is really nothing wrong with the remake. Why do they bother? Oh yeah, Greed, money, and manipulation by those big city parasites.

Sources: The Name Above the Title – Frank Capra

                   In Capra’s Shadow – Ian Scott

Hard to Handle (1933) Mervyn LeRoy

June 16, 2009 by John Greco

Hard to handle Cagn donllele80_

    The dance marathon became a phenomenon beginning in the 1920’s. Unlike flag pole sitting, another craze of those times, dance marathons had many participants who at first danced for just the pleasure of the wild heady experience, but later on as we entered the 1930’s and the depression, danced out of necessity for much needed money. The winner would get $1,000. Even if you did not win, you were fed, and had a place to keep warm. With the Great Depression going at full speed, there were many people in desperate need looking for any way possible to make a few dollars. The contests were long grueling endurance affairs going on for weeks, even months at a time before there was only one couple left standing and declared the winner.

lf    Rules were different depending on who held the contest. Some allowed 15-minute breaks on the hour allowing time for a bathroom pit stop, sleep and change of clothes. Horace McCoy’s 1930’s novel, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” gives a notable account of what these contests entailed. While the contestants were hard pressed folks out of work and luck, the promoters did create jobs for many other people like nurses, doctors, janitors, announcers, and others involved in putting on the event.  McCoy’s novel, not surprisingly, was ignored by the public when first published in the middle of the depression; however, it was eventually made into a magnificent movie in 1969, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Jane Fonda, Susannah York, Michael Sarrazin and Gig Young.

Hard to Handle Cagney Brain    Over thirty years earlier, Mervyn LeRoy directed the 1933 film, “Hard to Handle”, a James Cagney vehicle, which starts on a somewhat serious tone during the opening dance marathon, providing a realistic harsh look at what these lengthy contests involved, and reminding me much of the Pollack classic. However, soon after, the film moves into a different direction more toward a lighthearted energetic comedy. It could have just as easily turned into a con game/gangster drama from the early tone of the film.

    Cagney is Lefty Merrill, who along with his shady partner are running a dance marathon, which, “surprisingly” is won by Lefty’s girlfriend, Ruth Waters (Mary Brian). The opening scenes, reminiscent of Pollack’s excellent downbeat 1969 film, finds Allan Jenkins, in the Gig Young role, as the marathon’s emcee, rousing the audience to cheer on the final two surviving couples who are barely able to stand, (the second couple’s male dancer is a young Sterling Holloway).  Watching this scene with the audience’s bloodthirsty cheers edging the couples onward, reminds me of the vulture culture, that today’s TV audience has for shows like “Survivor” and other reality type shows. The similarities between this film and “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” quickly end with the marathon scenes conclusion. “Horses” goes on to be a bleak dark vision of the depression times and its toll on a group of people, while “Hard to Handle” veers off in the direction of a fast moving light comedy.lf

    The second dancing couple soon falls by the wayside, and Ruth and her partner are declared the winners. What should be a happy moment for Ruth, her clinging mother, Lil (Ruth Donnelly) and for Lefty turns into a nightmare when Lefty’s partner runs off with all the proceeds from the contest, leaving Lefty to face an angry crowd who believe they have been swindled. Lil is more outraged at Lefty for the loss of the money than Ruth is, but Lefty has more immediate problems, like quickly getting away from the massive angry crowd.

    Lefty soon falls on hard times financially when he finds Ruth, now a model, on the cover of Vogue, and finds her dating a successful fashion photographer. He begs to stay with Ruth and her mother just until he can get back on his feet. Lefty, ever the ingenious publicist gets a new idea when he spots Ruth struggling to rub facial cream on her face one day, and comes up with the absurd notion that women can lose calories this way, and promotes the facial cream as a diet treatment! The idea is “unbelievably” successful, and so lucrative that even money conscience Mamma Lil decides Lefty is marital worthy material again for her daughter Ruth.

197388_1020_A    Lefty financially successful again, next promotes a fund raising campaign for a small college where he successfully raises one million dollars and gains the attention of young student Marlene Reeves (Claire Dodd), who has eyes for him. Marlene’s father hires Lefty to promote a real estate deal in Florida, Grapefruit Acres.  Lefty wants to marry Ruth but she is still resistant, saying she will marry him only after he comes back from his big deal in Florida. While in Florida, Lefty is surprised to find Marlene there who makes it plain that she is very interested in Lefty, who defensively, declares his love for Ruth. Ruth and Lil decide to fly down to the sunshine state to surprise Lefty, and are surprised themselves when they find him and Marlene having breakfast together in their pajamas. Lefty claims that nothing happened, though that is hard to believe, since he is in her hotel room in his PJ’s. The Waters women fly quickly back to New York with Lefty chasing after them trying to explain. Soon after, Lefty is arrested for false advertising related to the Grapefruit Acres project. While in jail, he meets his thieving dance marathon partner who happens to tells him he lost weight over the past few days just eating nothing but grapefruit. Lefty’s new idea, The 18 day Grapefruit Diet, which becomes the nation’s latest fad.   A success again, and in Mama Lil’s favor again, Lefty finally, with some trickery, gets Ruth to say yes and marry him.

    “Hard to Handle” is certainly entertaining enough with the usually fine performance by Mr. Cagney, and a especially entertaining performance by Ruth Donnelly who plays the  money hungry Mama Lil, despite in real life being only three years older than Jimmy and ten years older the Mary Brian. Her character has plenty of sharp funny lines, delivered with fine timing, constantly referring to her daughter and herself as “we” when marrying and not marrying Cagney’s Lefty Merrill. Anyone marrying Ruth was definitely getting two for the price of one.  While Mary Brian is competent, I would have liked to have seen Joan Blondell in the role of Ruth. She and Donnelly would have been two quick pistols together and the charisma between Cagney and Blondell is always electric. The picture moves at lightening speed, thanks to Cagney’s exceptional flair for rapid speech, which gives no one any time to pause.

    The film unfortunately has never been released in the home video format and remains a hard film to see, undeservedly so. Hopefully, Warner Brothers will see fit to release this film in the near future. “Hard to Handle” was originally brought to my attention by Judy of Movie Classics’s who has written her own great review some time back, and as a Cagney admirer, is certainly worth reading to get her perspective on this film and other classics.

Our Daily Bread (1934) King Vidor

June 12, 2009 by John Greco

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   To say “Our Daily Bread” is an uneven flawed work is not giving the film its due. At this point in his career Vidor was an innovative forward thinking filmmaker willing to stretch himself and the medium. If he did not succeed one hundred percent here, and he did not, at least he attempted to extend the art of film as a tool of importance.  “Our Daily Bread is extension of   King Vidor’s masterful classic silent film “The Crowd.” The same lead characters, John and Mary Sims, who came to realize they were just faces in an endless whirlpool of humanity destined to live lives as anonymous nonentities return. It is now the depression years and Tom has lost his everyman job. The couple are about to be dispossessed from their apartment for lack of rent money. With no job opportunities on the horizon Mary’s Uncle offers the couple a farm that he no longer wants and  the government is about to foreclose.  Though John is a city boy with no farming experience, they accept the uncle’s offer and move out of the concrete jungle to the country.   

    John does not lack ambition, he sets out to work on the farm but it is not easy, especially since he lacks the skills and knowledge needed. While working the land one day, a truck traveling along the road just outside the farm breaks down. It belongs to an immigrant family of Swede’s headed by Chris (John Qualen). As John helps him repair the truck, he learns that Chris and his family have no home but he has plenty of farming experience. John gets an idea. There’s plenty of room on the farm, why not offer Chris and his family a place to stay on the farm in exchange for helping him work the land. Chris accepts. John decides that if one man can help what can ten men do. He soon takes in other out of work homeless families each man with a different set of skills to contribute. They create a commune where food, money and land are shared by all.

 Our Daily Bread-poster   John is voted in to be the boss and he hires a burly quiet secretive man named Louie, who unknown to anyone at the time is on the run from the law, as his strong arm. When one of the testier members of the group tries to push a smaller man off some of the land, Louie intercedes. When foreclosure threatens the commune, Louie shows what he’s made of, saving the day when he turns himself into the law, making sure the commune gets the reward money to help make payments on mounting bills. The commune’s next challenge is Mother Nature in the form of a drought that threatens the corn crops. In the face of this new disaster, John’s enthusiasm and leadership abilities fail him. He has also become distracted by the arrival of Sally (Barbara Pepper), a peroxide blonde floozy who Mary invited to stay though she refuses to do much work, spending most of her day listening to jazz and, it is implied, fooling around with John. He and the low budget Harlow actually run off together however, John, realizing this is a mistake, returns dumping the third rate bimbo. Inspired by Mary, John arouses the cooperative to discover a way to fight the drought and bring back the dying crops.

     The ending is one of the most vividly exciting scenes in the film as we watch the farmers digging a two-mile long irrigation ditch from the river to the farm in time to save the crop. Variety called the ending “a glorification of human will power driving man beyond ordinary feats of endurance.” As a “sequel” to one of Vidor’s master works, “Our Daily Bread” is an uneven mix of brilliance and corn bread, good old American know how and socialism mixed and stirred.

Our Daily Bread 2-BB     Tom Keene is an actor of modest talent; his bouts of enthusiasm and despair range from unconvincing to embarrassing. Best known for low budget westerns, Keene, unfortunately followed in the path of James Murray, who played John in “The Crowd”, and was a hard act to follow; Vidor apparently offered the role to James Murray however, by this time Murray was alcoholic and broke. He refused the role viewing it as a sympathetic handout by Vidor. Murray would soon drown after falling into the Hudson River. The medical examiner would never conclude on the cause of death whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. Karen Morley faired better in her role as Mary. Morley is probably best remembered for her role as “Poppy” the sexy negligee wearing gun moll in Howard Hawks “Scarface.”  Then there is the role of Sally, the floozy, who seems to have wondered in from another movie. Saying her character is unsuitable to the mood of the film is being kind. Vidor, in the Charles Higham/Joel Greenberg interview book, The Celluloid Muse admits, “There just wasn’t the audience for too much down to earth stuff – we brought in the extraneous character of the blonde floozy.”   He admits it was purely for box office and the Jean Harlow/Mae West platinum blonde look that was then in vogue. Set aside these negative features the film remains a powerful look at the great depression and men finding alternative lifestyles to survive a beaten down economy and the sometimes over powering forces of nature.

 Our daily bread -digging   Vidor discovered the story when he read a magazine article in Reader’s Digest on co-operative living. He viewed this as a vehicle for his two protagonists from “The Crowd”, who realizing they were just nobodies in a sea of nobodies opted out for the open vastness of life on a farm.  He presented the idea to Irving Thalberg who refused to finance it, as did other major studios. Vidor decided to make the film himself, but it was not until Charles Chaplin pledged support, and a guarantee of a release via United Artists, did Vidor managed to get the money he needed from the banks. Vidor is credited with the story, while the scenario is credited to Elizabeth Hill (Mrs. King Vidor) and the dialogue to Joseph L. Mankiewicz.        

    When the film opened, it received rave reviews from some critics like The New York Times who called it “a brilliant declaration of faith in the importance of the cinema as a social instrument.” However, there were the Hearst newspapers that labeled the film “pinko” Communist propaganda and cited as proof when the film was given an award at the Moscow Lenin Film Festival. Critics seemed to be drawing a line in the political sand. Was “Our Daily Bread” a look at American ingenuity; how folks rolled up their sleeves working together during hard times to survive, or was it socialist propaganda about people, working together without thought of personal profit, stifling American individuality and the dream of personal success? The films political message is as mixed as the rest of the film, for example, the commune seems similar to communal living seen in Russian movies of the period, yet unlike those films, the individual’s needs are respected and attended to. Vidor was not a political animal, subsequently, the mixed political message. Later in life, Vidor was known to be politically conservative. If anyone in the cast, had a left wing political bent it was Karen Morley, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy witch-hunts after refusing to answer questions before the HUAC. Morley was active in liberal politics in the San Francisco area and later on ran unsuccessfully for Lt. Governor of New York State as a candidate for the American Labor Party.

What we are left with is an essential film of the great depression years, with an inconsistent message along with some tolerable acting and a visually stunning and brilliant ending. 

 

Sources: Senses of Cinema – Dan Callahan

              We’re in the Money – Andrew Bergman