Answers, Updates, and Famous Photos...

A bit of this and that today:

First, a big huzzah and best wishes to all our fellow film bloggers enjoying the festivities at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Hollywood, which begins today and runs through Sunday.  I really enjoy reading their posts and updates on the fun, and their coverage only gets better each year.

**********************

Now, the answers to last week’s Leggy Ladies on Ladders photos:

A is Cyd Charisse.  Though it’s a candid sort of backstage shot, the film she was doing in this costume is Meet Me in Las Vegas, which we discussed previously here.

B is Paul Newman and…Alexis Smith.  This is from The Young Philadelphians, which we briefly mentioned in this previous post on Alexis.

C is Zachary Scott entering the room to find…Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, which we discussed here. And here.

*************************

I have a book signing coming up this Saturday, the 28^th of March at the Indian Orchard branch of the Springfield City Library, 44 Oak Street, Indian Orchard (Springfield), Massachusetts, from noon to 2:00 p.m.  I’ll have a variety of my books available for purchase, both non-fiction and novels, and if you have time to stop by, I’d love to chat with you.

*************************

And now, a word about my soon-to-be-published book on the career of Ann Blyth.  June 18^th is less than three months away, and will be here before we know it.  I’m working like mad on it, and I hope you’ll approve of the final product.

Part of the challenge of finding photographs for the book is investigating the copyright or ownership of the images.  It can be a daunting task, but also a pleasure when one discovers really fine photos by a master photographer.  In this case, I’m speaking of two greats: Florence Vandamm and Eileen Darby.  They were giants in the field of theatre photography, and Ann Blyth was photographed by both when she appeared in Watch on the Rhine as a young girl.

Florence Vandamm was a pioneer in this field, and from 1925 to about 1950, she was the foremost photographer capturing the greats of the Broadway stage.  The Vandamm Studio specialized in very glamorous portraits of the Broadway stars, images not too dissimilar from what the Hollywood studios would adopt for their style of light-sculpted, touched-up and stunning glamour photos in the 1940s.

Eileen Darby came a long a little later, beginning her career as a theatre photographer in 1940, Vandamm’s chief competitor and ultimate heir to this highly specialized field; however, Darby’s work had a different style.  She would most often perch herself in the front row seats and shoot with low light the dramatic action on stage, catching stars in the moment of their greatest work.

Ann Blyth, just by the serendipitous circumstances of being cast in Watch on the Rhine, was photographed by both these greats for that play, and I am so pleased and privileged to be including photos from both these famous photographers in my book.  I admire their work tremendously.

Today, the Vandamm body of work is the property of the Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  Because my budget was limited, I could only purchase the rights for one Vandamm photo.  Though I was tempted to go with the images that grouped Ann with Paul Lukas, who played her father, and other actors in the play, I ultimately chose, instead, a portrait of her.  The group photos were excellent, but I had seen them, or photos like them in other books and magazines.  The reasons I chose the portrait are twofold:

First, it is such a sweet expression that seems to show this young girl on the verge of leaving her “play-acting” years and becoming a serious actress – half school photo and half actor’s professional headshot.

Second, because something in that portrait kept calling to me, and finally I realized what it was.  I think I might have been the first person in seventy years to look upon that sweet face outside of the archives, and if I didn’t publish it, I might be the last.  So, since those other photos were more easily available to the public in other books, I took this rarely (or never) seen photo for mine.

The Eileen Darby photo of Ann in Watch on the Rhine is one of her “action shots” that shows Ann on stage with Lucile Watson, who played the family matriarch; George Coulouris, the villain of the piece; and Peter Fernandez, who played one of Ann’s brothers.  This particular photo had also found its way into the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts collection, but for rights to publish I had to turn to the Eileen Darby Estate, which is currently managed by her grandchildren.  I am very grateful to Mr. Alex Teslik for allowing me to publish that photo.

There will be quite a number of other photos in the book, and other photographers or publishers to whom I needed to apply for permission, but I wanted to tell the story of these two particular photographers because of the important place they have in the history of American theatre.

Last year, a retrospective of Vandamm's work was held at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts called: Pioneering Poet of Light: Photographer Florence Vandamm & the Vandamm Studio, which you can read about here and see some of her stunning work.

Eileen Darby's life and work has been presented in the excellent book, Stars on Stage- Eileen Darby & Broadway's Golden Age by Mary C. Henderson.

See you next Thursday for a little Easter noir.  You can probably guess the movie.

Deep in My Heart - 1954

Deep in My Heart (1954) is a delightful musical, a biography of composer Sigmund Romberg that is perhaps not so much biography as it is pastiche—but this is what makes it so successful.

It is long a common complaint of classic film fans, even fans of musicals, that filmed biographies of composers fall short of the mark when it comes to being authentic or factual.  I won’t disagree.  However, neither do I expect a musical, even in the form of a biography of a composer, to be a documentary.  It is first and foremost a revue of his music, and Deep in My Heart, though giving us a smattering of Romberg’s experiences as in immigrant to the U.S. in the days of Tin Pan Alley, nevertheless firmly keeps to his music as a method of telling the story of his aspirations as a composer.  To this end—fighting the “modern” trends of music with its soul-crushing disposable fads, and yearning for the opportunity to express himself in his own way—these ideals are timeless among creative people and in telling this story the film is completely successful.

Stanley Donen, I think, was an exceptional director of musicals, and his quick style and expressive camera work reminds me a little of the work of Michael Curtiz in a way, the way the camera sweeps, pans, and catches little things.  It is never static.  But it is the unlikely cast of this musical that is the most intriguing.  José Ferrer stars as composer Sigmund Romberg.  A star on Broadway in Shakespearian roles, and, of course, his Tony-Oscar-Emmy win for Cyrano—who in the world suggested, “Ah, a frothy musical on a Viennese composer of operettas!  Let’s get José Ferrer!”?  I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a serendipitous choice.  Mr. Ferrer is astounding in this role.  A true Renaissance man, his abilities not only in dramatic acting, musicianship, languages, and a beautifully silly flare for comedy, Ferrer is perfect in this film.

Helen Traubel, another in the “how did they ever think of her?” category, is splendid as Ferrer’s longtime buddy, an immigrant like himself from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who carries the sentimental veneer of Old Vienna, while at the same time espousing a scrappy American immigrant’s idealism and love for her new country.  She owns the café where Ferrer, a newcomer to the New World himself, plays piano, sometimes his own lovely compositions, and also waits on tables.  She is with him through thick and thin throughout his career, just as much a part of his life at the beginning as at his triumphant final moments before the fade out.  Miss Traubel was something of a Renaissance woman herself: one of the Metropolitan Opera’s Wagnerian sopranos in the 1940s, she later wrote mystery novels and was a long-time baseball fan, eventually becoming part-owner of her favorite, and unhappily unsuccessful team, The St. Louis Browns.  She and Ferrer play off each other well, as much celebrating as parodying the gemütlichkeit of their culture.

Joining Miss Traubel in supporting Ferrer’s career is Merle Oberon as Dorothy Donnelly, Sigmund Romberg’s real-life partner in musical theatre.  Dorothy Donnelly had an interesting and important place in American theatre in the early days of the twentieth century; noted stage actress, even appearing in a few silent films, playwright, producer, and director.  She also enjoyed fame as the librettist to many of Romberg’s most successful operettas.  In this movie, she has the rather shadowy role of being Romberg’s advisor, supporter, partner, but also as played by the fey and lovely Merle Oberon, a woman silently in love with him, who, for whatever reason, keeps her infatuation to herself.  Miss Oberon gives the role an intriguing sadness.  Her best roles, the height of her career was behind her, but she gives this slight role a lustrous charm.

 

Rounding out the cast we are given more real-life personages, but presented, in typical Hollywood fashion, more as “types.”  Doe Avedon, who enjoyed only a brief career in film, plays the elegant upper crust debutante with whom Ferrer is smitten and eventually marries. 

Walter Pidgeon, now relegated from leading man to character roles, mostly fuddy-duddy businessmen, plays theatre impresario J.J. Shubert. 

Paul Henreid briefly plays Florenz Ziegfeld.  Later this year, we’re going to discuss a bit more about Florenz Ziegfeld and the actors who played him on film.
 

Paul Stewart, normally relegated to gangster types with that icy stare, here has a prominent role as Bert Townsend, Shubert’s producer who frankly admits to being in the theatre racket for the money and who panders to a public he feels are more likely to attend snappy shows with up-to-date situations, dialogue, and tunes.  He stomps down hard on Ferrer’s artistic bent for presenting operetta with all its cultural, dramatic, and musical richness, and this is the running theme of the story:  The artist being allowed to create what he wants versus what is currently the rage in the marketplace.

This theme pulls this splendid movie from the cozy dream world of the usual MGM musical and plants it firmly in today’s era of art versus product marketability.  It’s the same for music, theatre, books, as it is for any artistic endeavor, and every artist can relate.  The only thing perhaps holding back a modern appreciation of the struggles Romberg faces in this film is that the struggles are over operetta.  Unfortunately, as we discussed last year in our posts on The Student Prince (1954), Rose Marie (1954) and The Great Caruso (1951), operetta, outside of regional theatre, no longer enjoys the popularity it once did.  Paul Stewart, the grumpy producer, feels the same.  He wants no part of these Viennese-inspired cupcakes.  He wants Al Jolson in blackface, college co-eds, and flaming youth.

Needing the money, and the exposure, Ferrer sells his soul, as it were, and allows himself to become the composer of a great number of these now-forgotten topical “hits” of the World War I era and the early 1920s.  He constantly hammers at Mr. Stewart to allow him to write the kind of music he wants to write, constantly shoving the score of Maytime in his face, at which Stewart turn up his nose like smelly garbage.  Maytime would become one of the colossal hits of Broadway, which finally gave Romberg a leg up on doing the kind of music he wanted.

The Student Prince, Desert Song, and Rose Marie were even bigger hits in the 1920s, and it is for these operettas, Romberg’s pride, that he is remembered and not the dreck he was forced to write earlier in his career.

So there, Paul Stewart.

A few scenes of note:  I love how the movie starts, slowly, elegantly, and grandly with a full orchestra, as the camera pans probingly, lovingly on the musicians at their instruments (I doubt close-ups were ever given to orchestra musicians before or probably since), then finally lands on José Ferrer conducting, and then, bang, the credits.  It is a classy way to begin.

The use of a roster of MGM stars to present the various musical numbers is genius: it allows the studio to play its first-stringers, and it allows most of the story to be centered on the music and not on any awkwardly strung-together “biography.”  Jane Powell and Vic Damone, Howard Keel, Tony Martin, Ann Miller all are presented in numbers that show off their best talents.

Ferrer, who, among his other talents, can sing a little as well, is presented in a charming number with his new wife, Rosemary Clooney, “Mr. and Mrs.”  And proves to be a pretty snappy dancer.

He also performs the ragtime novelty song and dance “Leg O’ Mutton Rag” with the delightfully game Helen Traubel.  Wagner?  Who’s that?

Cyd Charisse and James Mitchell dance to “One Alone” from The Desert Song in one of filmdom’s most sensual performances ever.  They way they move and cling to each other in perfect interpretation of the music makes her climbing over his body look curiously almost like ice dancing.  You’d swear there is more movement than the camera is capturing.

We see the fun stuff, and the most exquisitely beautiful popular music ever written.  “Softly, as a Morning Sunrise” is tops among these, and Helen Traubel gets to save it, most majestically, from its early foot-stomping mangled version as concocted by the Shuberts and the manic styling of Tamara Toumanova.

Gene Kelly, in a rare film duet song and dance with his brother Fred, appear in the “I Love to Go Swimmin’ with Wimmen.”

But the tops is José Ferrer’s tour-de-force performance in the scene where he is requested to describe his latest work for the Shuberts, a silly romp called “Jazzadadadoo” from Bombo.  Embarrassed about this show, he is reluctant to act and sing it in front of his lady friend and her snobby mother, but once persuaded, he throws himself into it, manic and most hysterically funny.  The performance is incredible; not only does he compresses the entire plot of the ridiculous show in a single scene, but he dances, does mimicry, funny voices, smears on a little blackface to imitate Al Jolson, and will make you laugh until you cry or wet your pants or both.   It’s like a Monty Python skit.

Dignity slowly returns to Romberg, and the movie, when we witness his eventual vindication among the Shuberts and all low-brow folks when his operettas are the hits of the shallow 1920s; when he mourns the loss of his pal, Merle Oberon as Dorothy Donnelly, who sadly died at only 47; and in the final majestic number before a full orchestra, Romberg’s signature tune, “Deep in My Heart.”

But were the Shuberts right, did they have the last laugh in knowing that someday operetta would no longer be what the public wanted?

Listen to the music.  “Softly as a Summer Sunrise” is one of the loveliness, most sensual tunes ever written, and is still performed by jazz/blues singers today, as well as “Lover, Come Back to Me” both from the operetta The New Moon.

And consider that if Linda Rondstadt and Kermit the Frog can perform “When I Grow to Old to Dream,” then it really is a cool song after all, isn’t it?

In this old radio show, we have Ferrer, Rosemary Clooney, Jane Powell and others on the soundtrack promoting the film: 

Deep in My Heart, sometimes shown on TCM, is available on DVD here:

©Jacqueline T. Lynch, 2007-2015. All rights reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Another Old Movie Blog, please be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission. 

**************************************

My book on Ann Blyth's career--Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. will be published on June 18th. To that end, I’ll be looking for some help in the pre-launch phase, so I’d like to invite any blogger—film blogger or book blogger—to participate in a blog tour. I’ll be looking for blogs to schedule publicity-oriented posts beginning Monday, June 1st. The last day will be June 17th. If anyone wants to pick a day, please let me know so I can coordinate with others. Think of it as a kind of blogathon. On your day, you can post a review of the book (I’ll have ARCs – advanced reading copies - available in PDF form which I’ll email to you that you can read on your computer), or you can do a Q&A with me, or I can just send you a 250-word excerpt of the book, or you can just post the cover and a link to the Amazon page, if you will. Just a little something to spread the word. I will be posting here every day from June 1st through the 18th and I’ll be linking to your blogs, pushing traffic to you.

Among those 17 bloggers who participate, I’ll throw your names in a hat and pick five winners who will receive a print book of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. when it is published on the 18th. The rest will receive an eBook file in whichever format you choose: ePub, Mobi, or PDF (Note, the ARC copies will not have the index).

For more on the upcoming book, please see this post.

 

It's Always Fair Weather - 1955

It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) paints a post-war world in Technicolor and CinemaScope—a combination of a quaint painted postcard and an image of modern life so large it threatens to consume us. This movie, like the era it portrays, has been forgotten in some circles, but Gene Kelly has unwittingly left a very special documentary about this era in the unlikely form of musical comedy. It’s not the valentine that Singin’ in the Rain (1952) was to the 1920s; the 1950s of It’s Always Fair Weather has less parody and more chagrin, even bitterness. I would submit that as a work reflecting its era this is a movie of greater value than Kelly’s more successful films.

This post is a contribution to the Gene Kelly Blogathon sponsored by the Classic Movie Blog Association. Have a look here for a list of other participating blogs.

Three returning vets played by Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd return to the states in 1945 and have one last (several) drinks together before parting company and heading back to civilian life. They pledge eternal friendship, and promise to meet in this bar in ten years’ time. Before they split up, they dance with garbage can lids on their feet.

There’s a lot of “incidentals” to this movie that make it special. First, the film was supposed to be a sequel to On the Town (1949), which Kelly made with Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin as three happy-go-lucky sailors on shore leave. Sinatra turned down It’s Always Fair Weather, and Gene Kelly and his creative partner Stanley Donen decided to change the premise of a reunion between the three sailors to different characters, this time soldiers who face not just the challenges of civilian life, but their own apparent failures at meeting those challenges.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the clever team who gave us On the Town crafted the script and lyrics for It’s Always Fair Weather. Music was by André Previn. So far, so good, but other incidentals turned the making of this film into what Donen called an atmosphere that “was really horrendous. We had to struggle from beginning to end. I can only say it was an absolute one hundred percent nightmare.” (Gene Kelly- A Life of Dance and Dreams by Alvin Yudkoff, Back Stage Books, NY, 1999, p. 234).

Kelly has been acknowledged by many partners and co-workers over the years as a difficult taskmaster as a director and choreographer. He and co-director Donen clashed a great deal over this film, and their relationship permanently deteriorated, probably not helped by Kelly’s romantic relationship with Donen’s ex-wife Jeanne Coyne. A couple of years later, Kelly divorced Betsy Blair, and eventually married Jeanne.

Though Gene Kelly is sometimes accused of being a camera hog, one must note that the two other men that he picked to round out the trio of buddies in this film were top-notch dancers. Kelly knew and appreciated talent. Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd were able to handle anything Kelly could dish out. It’s especially gratifying to even see Michael Kidd dance on film, since he didn’t make too many movies, and was known for his stage work both as a dancer and choreographer. He won five Tony Awards as a choreographer for Broadway, and we owe to him, among other spectacular screen moments, that vigorous ballet of woodsmen in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954).

Another lucky “incidental” for us is the appearance of Dolores Gray, who like Michael Kidd is known more for her stage work than movies. Here she’s a hoot as the self-involved TV host diva, a kind of Miss Piggy with better legs. She gets a great number “Thanks, But No Thanks” which she dances with chorus boys who ply her with jewels and such. She turns them down, brushing them off with disdain, with gunshots, with a detonator plunger removing her Romeos with a burst of TNT, and finally, by pulling a lever and dropping a cluster of chorus boys through a trap door in the stage. It’s a jazzy number with clever lyrics.

Add to this a voiceover by the great June Foray as an animated character in a TV soap commercial, and you have a movie that preserves talent for the ages.

Even Pope Pius XII gets a cameo.

Back to the boys. The years fly by us in a montage of dates and newsreel images. Dan Dailey, once an aspiring artist, has become an advertising man for a big agency. He is disillusioned and dyspeptic, and his marriage is on the rocks. Michael Kidd runs the Cordon Bleu, a grander name than usual for what is just a roadside eatery. His real success is his growing family. Gene is a gambler, a fight manager, and a hustler on the make for his next big break, but always broke.

They reunite with disappointment. They are strangers now, and can barely stand each other. This sudden revulsion could be thrown around as a comic tool, but is used in this movie with great poignancy and allows us to see into the lives of these men. Their disappointment in each other is matched by their disappointment in themselves and what they’ve done, or haven’t done, with their lives since the optimistic days of their Army discharge. They are unhappy with themselves, looking in the mirror at what frauds they’ve become.

Cyd Charisse is the program director for Dolores Gray’s TV show, “Midnight with Madeline”, a kind of “reality” variety show where one segment of the program is devoted to spotlighting man on the street “hard luck” stories and audience participation. When their guest sucker for the evening is scrapped, Miss Charisse comes up with the plan to use the three Army buddies on the show instead. She takes charge of Gene Kelly, keeping him occupied until she can get him to the studio to be surprised, and embarrassed, on live TV that evening. Another executive babysits Dan Dailey, and Dolores Gray entertains Michael Kidd.

The chief challenge in making this movie, and possibly its chief triumph, is working in CinemaScope, but apparently the budget was cut for this movie under production head Dore Schary. Kelly and Donen had to be especially careful in how to use the monstrous widescreen technology in a movie that essentially takes place in tight interiors. Close-ups, as well, could be really pretty ugly in CinemaScope. We mentioned here in This Happy Feeling  (1958) how awkward the widescreen setups can be.

Kelly and Donen successfully manipulate the unwieldy CinemaScope with some clever shots. We see the men in the restaurant thinking privately to themselves how much they dislike each other, to the tune of “The Blue Danube” waltz. Each gets a normal-sized close-up pasted together to avoid the distorted facial close-ups normally rendered in a CinemaScope shot. Two main locations, the gym and the TV studio-ballroom are larger spaces that accommodate CinemaScope well. In most situations we see the screen filled with a lot of people in the background, which keeps the central figure, usually a dancer, from looking diminished and insignificant in the huge spaces of widescreen.

Cyd Charisse gets only one number here (her singing dubbed), the energetic “Baby, You Knock Me Out” done with boxers in the gym.

Gene Kelly’s big solo number is the now iconic roller skate routine so masterfully done. We have to admire, again, his marvelous athleticism and creativity.

I particularly admire Dan Dailey’s number, “Situation-wise” which mocks the corporation mentality that pre-dates Jack Lemmon’s famous “Kubilek-wise” in The Apartment (1960). Dailey, who we last saw here in Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) had the ability, greater than the formidable Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, to act. He could be sensitive, deep, and all in the simplest of movements and facial expressions. He had a clear face, for want of a better term, that reminds me of Gary Cooper. Not that they resembled each other, but that each man was able to convey his deepest emotions transparently on his face with no affectations. Dana Andrews was like that, too. It’s as if they find a serene spot in the emotional turmoil and just let it be.

The “Situation-wise” number allows Dailey to act while he sings and dances, having had too much to drink at a cocktail party at his boss’s home as he faces his failings and self-disgust. It is a very inventive dance as well, because as he gets more out of control, he uses objects from the elegant living room as props. It all looks very natural and spontaneous. Often in Astaire or Kelly dance sequences, we see them placed in a situation where we anticipate what props are going to be used—a hat rack, a broom, etc., because they are as much on display as the dancer. There is a foreshadowing of what’s to come. But here, Dailey’s raucous slide into drunken mental breakdown is such that we don’t know what’s going to happen next as he snatches apparently improvisational props from around the living room. It is both heartbreaking and really funny at the same time. Look for the brief “Jerry Lewis-wise” lyric where he slaps his hands on his head and spasmodically struts like Jerry Lewis’s screen nerd character.


All three men reach their nadir, and their ultimate triumph, when they are dragged on stage to be feted and humiliated by Dolores Gray. Michael Kidd, who unfortunately we don’t get to see that much of in this movie, refuses her consolation gifts of a washing machine and shoes for his children because he is proud, and decides that his roadside diner is nothing of which to be ashamed. Dan Dailey likewise finds dignity in humility and wryly acknowledges that this moment on live TV is a “truly fitting climax to ten years of self-degradation.”

Gene Kelly goes a step further, mocking himself on camera, “I’m a bum. Boys, don’t be like me, be clean, use Klenzrite.”

We have our happy ending of sorts when the mobsters who are chasing Gene Kelly get their comeuppance on live TV in a spectacular brawl with a lot of bodies tossed on collapsing tables. The three buddies bond in fisticuffs defeating the bad guys, and when they at last part again, there is some satisfaction in their lives and their renewed friendship.

The final shot is another fine use of CinemaScope, the men walking off in different directions on the wet streets. The nighttime New York City skyline fills the widescreen nicely.

Even at the time it was made, It’s Always Fair Weather was recognized for capturing a slice of real life not usually noticed in musical comedies. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther pronounced the film to be, “Howling with derision at such recognizable idiocies of TV as singing and slobbering commercials, audience participation shows, give-away plugs for mundane products and the wise-talking agency boys.” He called it “continuously entertaining” and “a winning show.”

It was winning, and would be one of the last times Gene Kelly helmed a major vehicle of this genre. Musicals were on the wane, stories about WWII GIs were fading into the past, and perhaps the only thing that marched into the lasting future was the note of cynicism felt by the characters of this movie. That was prescient.

A few more fun incidentals: Oily TV announcer Frank Nelson—you may not know the name but the voice is unmistakable from a bushel full of TV guest spots. He delivers a commercial for H2O cola, possibly the first diet soda, also prescient.

Madge Blake, used as a prop in the party scene by Dan Dailey, whose frilly, befuddled “clubwoman” screen persona lent itself to TV supporting roles, including a hysterical stretch as Larry Mondello’s mother on Leave It to Beaver.

Phil Arnold, who is one of the boxers known as Butch, singing in his deep bass voice to Cyd in the gym. Another long career of roles without screen credit but whose face and voice is part of our shared TV memories.

A new DVD release of It’s Always Fair Weather contains some numbers that were relegated to the cutting room floor, which is always appreciated by fans, but just what’s here in the final cut is still plenty.

Have a look at the CMBA website for more posts celebrating the career of Gene Kelly and please visit the other blogs participating in the Gene Kelly Blogathon.

*********

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century.

And the Mystery Photographer Is...

You ladies are too smart for me.  I couldn't fool you.  You guessed that last Thursday's mystery photographer is:

Cyd Charisse from "Tension" (1949) which we discussed here.  I've hopped a fence or two in my day to take a picture, but her death-defying balancing act is one for the books.  Love the camera.

Romance at the Drugstore

In a nod to Valentine's Day tomorrow, we pay tribute to that most romantic location...the drugstore.

Oh, my, how we've seen time and again that first flush of passion amid the nostrums and patent medicine, and comic books, and tuna melt sandwiches at the lunch counter. 



Only recently we were witness to the lusty scene of forbidden love over the costmetics counter in Richard Basehart's drugstore in "Tension" (1949).  Here, in that sexy white coat, he woos Cyd Charisse with acne cream.  Or something.

Dana Andrews, again in that sexy white coat, which is bona fide chick magnet, seduces Teresa Wright in the drugstore with perfume in "The Best Years of our Lives" (1946).

Even the very young are not immune to the romance of the drugstore.  Puberty strikes young George Bailey and young Mary Hatch pretty hard in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946).



She whispers into his deaf ear as he prepares a sundae for her, "I"ll love you 'til the day I die."  Garbo never uttered more sultry words.

The drugstore is a place not only for romance, but for romantic rivalries.  No nightclub was ever so rife with players in the game of love.

Makes you want to slip out for some Vick's Vap-O-Rub or disposable razors, doesn't it?   Better doll up a little.  You never know what chance meeting may occur in the prostetics aisle to change your life.

Happy Valentine's Day.





Tension - 1949

Tension (1949) stretches the limit of tolerance in the rocky marriage of a mousy pharmacist, and becomes the plaything of a savvy detective solving a murder.

Actually, it’s the rubber band that’s the plaything of Barry Sullivan as the detective. He uses one as a visual aid in the first few moments of the film, breaking the fourth wall, speaking to us directly. He tells us that by manipulating tension, he breaks down criminals.

“Everybody’s got a breaking point.” At several points in the film, he takes out another trusty rubber band and stretches it in his fingers to remind us.

Plausibility is stretched, too, at times, but it’s a fun movie as a post-War period piece, and for the careful, deliberate way we see a one man walk to the precipice of doom, and then make a choice. This is Richard Basehart, a really fine actor especially adept at fragile, sensitive men struggling with inner turmoil. The first half of the movie belongs to him. We don’t even see Barry Sullivan again until the second half. The first half sets up the crime, or what we think is going to be the crime, and the second half follows Mr. Sullivan’s actions to solve it.

Mr. Basehart is Warren Quimby, a mousy name for a mousy guy. He works the night shift at the all-night drugstore in a post-war southern California where suburban sprawl is pulling highways after it like a loose thread unraveling. Where Malibu beach houses are inevitably the scenes of trysts, and murder.

Basehart is married to Audrey Totter, whose bread and butter in those days was B-noir bad dames. She sulks, she pouts, and holds out for what she wants, which is always more. She goes to the movies at night while her husband works, and gets picked up by guys with flashy cars, and by one guy in particular. He is Lloyd Gough, a liquor salesman in a pinstripe suit and a perpetual cigar clamped in a plastic tip between his teeth. She calls him a big man, and he thinks he is.

Mr. Basehart worries about his wife being alone -- or rather, not being alone -- while he is working. Calls the movie theater to see when the show ended, checking up on her. Fears that when he goes upstairs to their little apartment she won’t be there some night. We might think him a fool and deride his obsession with a woman so unworthy of him. But, that is because we are the audience and we are omniscient. When she enters a room, we hear the blaring, bluesy saxophone music that is her signature. In old movies, a sax equals sex, and a saxophone follows her everywhere.

She flirts with her husband’s employee, played by Tom D’Andrea, a stalwart palooka who mans the lunch counter at the drug store. Though he always respectfully refers to Basehart as Mr. Quimby, we might conclude he is his only friend. Mr. D’Andrea has no use for the boss’s wife. He sees her for what she is, a woman who does not finish her hamburger, and pushes it aside for pie with whipped cream on it instead.

Nice girls finish their supper before they have dessert.

But Basehart dotes on her. His puppy dog devotion is tested constantly, and only once does he seem to bristle under her rudeness. This comes when he surprises her with a ride to a housing development where he has put a down payment on a tract home. The treeless, orderly suburban subdivision is dotted with identical modern ranch homes. His handsome, boyish face beams as if he is offering her Shangri La. She won’t even get out of the car. When he counts off the selling points, including a dishwasher, she leans on the car horn over his talking, like a petulant teenager who refuses to listen to what she does not want to hear.

For a moment he turns and glares back at her, and we wonder if he finally sees how contemptible she is.

But, obsessions make us helpless.  He shuts up and gets dutifully back in the car. He has lost our respect. He never had hers.

One night all that’s left on their bed in the apartment above the drugstore is her doll with the frozen expression on her porcelain face, much like Audrey Totter’s perpetual scowl is chiseled on her pretty pale, porcelain countenance.

When she returns, it is only to pack. She and her dolly go to live in the liquor salesman’s beach house.

But Richard Basehart can’t let go. He goes to the beach, stomping in his loafers on the sand to ask her to return. He is such an annoying pest -- even we have to admit it -- that Liquor Salesman Lloyd punches him from here to next Tuesday. When Basehart retreats, his glasses broken, the “big man” calls him a four-eyed punk.

By the way, if you don’t want spoilers, you should have gotten off at that last exit.

Mr. Basehart goes to the eye doctor and gets a new pair of spectacles. They cost $5.

Five dollars. In a word, cripes.

Then Basehart begins to work on a germ of an idea of killing Liquor Salesman Lloyd for humiliating him in front of his wife.

It’s a plan worked out carefully, with us in on his thought processes. He decides to create a fake identity, and have that fake person do the killing, and then fade away into nothing. He goes back to the eye doc for a set of contact lenses, because he has seen a poster there that announces contact lenses will make him a new man.

He chooses a fake name, a fake profession as traveling salesman, and rents a furnished apartment in another part of town. He will live there only on weekends to lay down an alibi. It’s a logical process, and it’s interesting that his crime of passion can be so purposeful and practical. It says a lot about his character, a little man who plods along, works hard, and plans his future with precision. His passion now isn’t really for her; that’s dimming fast. His passion is for taking his methodical personality and using it for one big showy deed.

But his plan begins to unravel, like the miles of California highway, but the unforeseen complications turn out to be a good thing. He doesn’t see it at first, but eventually he will.

Foremost among the unforeseen complications is his new neighbor, played by Cyd Charisse in a non-dancing role. She is quite literally the girl next door, wholesome, winsome, elegant in her very fresh-faced appearance, and falling fast for the quiet little guy in contact lenses. He wishes for, more than succumbs to, the idea of a life with her. He holds himself a little aloof because he has a nasty job to do, and he thinks maybe he still loves his wife. He is afraid of getting too close to the lovely Cyd, and does not want to involve her in what he is beginning to see is a real mess.

But Basehart is a man who finishes what he starts, so he finally picks the day to go kill Liquor Salesman Lloyd.

A very dramatic scene, and nicely played out, is when he slips into the darkened beach house at night and finds Lloyd Gough asleep in a chair. He is alone. Perfect. About to impale him with an implement from the outdoor barbecue (which Lloyd had threatened him with earlier -- Basehart is keen on the fine details of revenge) -- Basehart suddenly notices Audrey Totter’s dolly on the table.

Audrey isn’t here.

Audrey isn’t here.

The scales fall from his eyes, and Richard Basehart sees she has taken a night off from Liquor Salesman Lloyd to pursue, or be pursued by, another “big man.”

Lloyd wakes, stunned to see Basehart about to jab him with a very large pointy thing. Basehart gets his revenge, but in a way he never expected. Like the old saying, the best revenge is living well.

“I must have been crazy. She’s not worth it. If it hadn’t have been you, it’d be some other guy.”

He gloats over Lloyd, who we see is clearly humiliated that she’s bored with him already.

“She’s all yours,” Basehart says with a sneer, and we can sense the weight off his shoulders and the rejoicing in his soul now that he is emotionally and psychologically free of that rude woman who doesn’t finish her hamburgers. Now he is free to love Cyd and start his life over.

Until the moment he’s shaving the next day, and Audrey Totter shows up in his bathroom mirror. We can hear the sax.

She is loving, contrite, and wants him to take her back.

Liquor Salesman Lloyd has been found murdered. Mr. Basehart’s nightmare is only beginning.

Barry Sullivan, and his rubber band collection, finally returns -- we had forgotten about him -- and he brings his partner, William Conrad, to solve the crime. Always fun to see William Conrad.

The rest of the movie is his show. We saw the crime plotted in the first half of the movie, and Sullivan dismantles the scenario in the second half. It’s a very interesting telling of a story, if a little hard to swallow here and there, including Sullivan’s phoney romancing of Audrey Totter to trick her and keep her off balance.

Some things I like:

First of all, the drugstore. I know the exteriors were shot in and around Culver City and Malibu, but I don’t know where. Film locations are Robby Cress’ specialty. If you haven’t seen his blog, check out Dear Old Hollywood here.

I don’t know about the interior of this drugstore set. My gut feeling is it’s a real store, because it is so wonderfully packed to the gills with everything a drugstore sold at that time, with the lunch counter and the somewhat worn-looking diamond pattern of floor tile. It almost seems too detailed for a set on a soundstage. But I don’t know.

I like how when Basehart is searching for a fake name for his new identity, he picks the surname Sothern, because he sees Ann Sothern on the cover of "Screen Digest” magazine.

A young boy of Asian ancestry, and a pretty young African-American woman are among the patrons having their prescriptions filled by Basehart. They are minor roles, but these two individuals should be noted for their not being stereotypes. Also, William Conrad’s name is Edgar Gonzales; we see a police detective with a Spanish surname, also not stereotyped. These three characters are presented naturally, as being all-American, and that is perhaps what is most effective.

Note when his friendly and ever-talkative counter man sidles up to Basehart with the newspaper, commenting on the news, “They’re still at it, trying to figure out who owns Germany, who owns the atom bombs…” See our series on Uneasy Victors about America’s involvement in post-War Germany as seen through the movies -- A Foreign Affair, The Big Lift, and Judgment at Nuremberg.

Most especially, I love the scene where Barry Sullivan takes Cyd Charisse to Basehart’s drugstore. She still thinks he is her Paul Sothern - neighbor, and prospective husband. She does not yet know he is Warren Quimby, murder suspect. When her sweetie seemed to disappear into thin air, she notified Missing Persons and gave them a photo. Through that action, the police were able to identify Warren Quimby as Paul Sothern, the man they were looking for in the murder of Liquor Salesman Lloyd.

Basehart’s not arrested yet, but he knows he’s being watched. It’s a wonderfully tense scene when Barry Sullivan, who just loves messing with people and causing TENSION, “introduces” Cyd to Basehart under the pretense of stopping in for coffee at the lunch counter. Both are shocked to see each other, Cyd is even more shocked to see him wearing his $5 glasses as Warren Quimby, Pharmacist and Murder Suspect.

But neither acknowledges they know each other. They pretend to be strangers while Sullivan plays them like a fiddle, also pretending not to know they are connected. Miss Charisse and Mr. Basehart want to protect each other, and struggle with their emotions. Sullivan needles them both a bit, especially Cyd, when he rapturously talks about Basehart’s gorgeous wife.

We wait for Cyd Charisse to lose it, hurt or outraged to learn that her boyfriend is already married -- which is even more insulting than being a murderer, too.

But, she’s too much a lady. She swallows her distress, and play acts disinterest.

At one point Cyd, deeply offended by Sullivan’s manipulation, tells him off without ever admitting she knows Basehart. Then in a rising voice as she’s about to stomp out of the place, she turns to Basehart,

“And you do make wonderful coffee!” What she means is I’ll never betray you no matter what, but that’s what comes out of her mouth. Exquisite.

Another fun scene is when Barry Sullivan pulls a similar trick on Audrey Totter. He brings her to Basehart’s furnished apartment and tells her Basehart’s been romancing the neighbor lady. Audrey is no Cyd, and she blows her top in an instant, furious at the thought that the husband she had been two-timing was two-timing her.

“Why that four-eyed little pill pusher!” She is deliciously jealous. She tells Sullivan all about how Basehart murdered Liquor Salesman Lloyd.

Now Sullivan has everyone where he wants them, and pulls one final stunt to unmask the murderer, because so far all he has is hearsay and his gut instincts.

Audrey Totter’s final exit is accompanied by the sultry notes of a sax.

A saxophone never plays like that when I enter or exit a room. I wish it would sometimes.

I have only two questions about this movie. One, the reason for the murder is never really explained, or else I missed it.

And how does Audrey Totter manage to keep such a slim, tiny figure with all those burgers and wedges of pie with whipped cream on them? There’s a shot of her in those high-waisted trousers of the day that is quite stunning.

Maybe it’s because she doesn’t finish her burger.

*********

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century.