Jane Wyatt - We're Only Human and Pitfall

The two films we cover today displayed Jane Wyatt’s strength on screen, no less steely for being presented with genteel poise. She is two different women here – a young urban career girl, and then, thirteen years later, a settled suburban housewife and mother. We recognize what is often referred to as her “finishing school accent,” but is she the same person? She could be. In both, she is supportive of the men in her life, but she demands they measure up to her standards.

We discussed last week how the Turner Classic Movies showing of four films of hers from the 1930s through the late 1940s in chronological order gives the viewer a fun tour of Jane Wyatt’s range as an actress, but the eras which reflected her film career were sometimes vastly different from her 1950s sitcom role as the suburban wife and mother. Because this long role on TV (for which she won three consecutive Emmys) is how most of us were introduced to her work, her film career is something yet to be discovered, sometimes with surprise.

Her early roles were sassy, sexy, and allowed her to demonstrate her talent for comedy, to be both sensual and scrappy. The unruffled 1950s woman who vacuumed in pearls waits in the future – but we shouldn’t just dismiss that role (screen role or real life for millions of women) as a consolation prize for youthful adventure lost. It was, rather, a progression, a maturity. For those who might consider it a regression forget how profound an impact those 1950s TV moms made on our lives and in pop-culture – so much as to leave us shocked at Jane Wyatt “girl reporter.”

We're Only Human (1935) pits Jane Wyatt against Preston Foster in her third film. It’s a gritty, somewhat manic cops-and-robbers story. Foster is a fascinating study as an aggressive cop who pushes the rules, breaks a few, to round up the bad guys, Depression-era gangsters, just so many notches on his gun. He is an adrenaline-junkie, and this will be his downfall, his greatest strength is his curse.

Jane Wyatt is the girl reporter, new to New York City from Kansas City, and it is refreshing that nobody – neither her photog sidekick, her editor, or Preston Foster – or the script, treats her condescendingly. She is as hard-hitting in her profession as Preston Foster is in his, and interestingly, even her good judgment leaves her at the end.

James Gleason is dependable as Foster's crusty-but-lovable partner. Jane Darwell, likewise, as Gleason’s wife. Foster lives with them, and they are his example of a supportive marriage and domesticity - Darwell bullies Gleason through a cold and rules the roost.

A collection of favorite character actors are on hand – Moroni Olsen as the police inspector who chews out Preston Foster over aggressive police tactics. Ward Bond is in a brief scene as a bank robber. Arthur Hohl is a crooked lawyer in league with gangsters, and Hattie McDaniel is his maid, whom Foster pushes past to have a hasty meeting with the pettifogger.  Even a few minutes of Hattie McDaniel is better than no Hattie McDaniel.

Mischa Auer is surprising as the crime boss, a far cry from his more famous comedy roles. His boisterous, goofy, charm and his Russian accent are gone here. He’s a hollow-eyed sinister creep, recently escaped from prison. Foster catches him with a display of foolhardy daring – angering his superiors for not calling backup – and when Auer eventually escapes his custody, Foster looks doubly bad.

Jane Wyatt is at first impressed with Foster's heroics. They begin a playful relationship – and though he barks, “How’d you like to be my girl?” they are friends rather than lovers. He is socially inept, and she is amused rather than devastated by his preoccupation with Mischa Auer.

She steers the course of their romance, just as she steers the roadster. At one point, he thinks she is offering him a home-cooked meal; she steers him to the delicatessen where he pays for the armload of food. She’s not a homebody.

The movie is a great big canvas for Preston Foster and he splatters himself all over it. Foster is in practically every scene, arguing, fighting, pushing, brooding, and loses none of his momentum – though nearly loses his mind – when his beloved partner James Gleason is gunned down by the bad guys.

The above spoiler was brought to you by Another Old Movie Blog – “Cheerfully Serving You Spoilers Since 2007.”

In an intense scene, Foster, accompanied by Jane Wyatt, must tell Jane Darwell that her husband is dead. Like an antsy kid who can’t keep a secret, he just blurts it out, wild and anxious. Jane Wyatt is shocked. His lack of sensitivity had been annoying to her, but now she sees the depth of his failure to appreciate or even understand the feelings of others.

Foster, as a reaction to his own grief and sense of guilt, goes off the wall, repeatedly haranguing the stunned widow with his defense that he told Gleason not to be too cautious, to rush in, that to hesitate would leave him a target, that a cop is as good as dead if he doesn’t strike first. It is a defense of his own carelessness, and an unrelenting rant of anger at his friend for dying.

Miss Wyatt silences him with a no less shocking, “Shut up!”

He tries to continue, but she slaps him down for good. “Get out!…Get. Out.”

The little woman shames him and controls him far more effectively than his bellowing police superiors, for she has worked her way into his self-serving conscience. He leaves.  She remains to console the widow.

In a later meeting when he tries to reconcile, he asks, “Mind if I sit down?”

“I wouldn’t mind if you fell down.” The sass and humor is back, but she is not punishing him like an angry girlfriend, she’s keeping herself at arm's length for her own protection.

The plot takes several twists and turns in the chase for Mischa, who taunts Foster with messages. In a shoot out, Foster is wounded in the head, and his eyes are bandaged temporarily. Another intense scene brings Jane Wyatt to his room to babysit him when Miss Darwell has left to buy groceries. Wyatt then leaves to go to the corner for a pack of cigarettes, and he has a meltdown, panicked by being alone, jumping at every sound.

A light bulb left on a table pops when it falls to the floor, and it sounds like a gunshot. 

Completely unglued, Foster pulls out his own gun and shoots wildly. He runs out of bullets just as Jane Wyatt reenters the room, the gun pointed at her.

Mr. Foster has at last learn to be cautious, so much so that when an opportunity arises to capture Mischa Auer, he hesitates, preferring to call for backup. Now it is Jane Wyatt who is rash. She has a tip on the bad guys' whereabouts and shares it with Foster, but doesn’t want anyone else to know. It might ruin her scoop. She is the aggressor now, pushing him – as Darwell says it is the job of a woman and a wife – “to make a man of him.”

There is an interesting scene using the lie detector technology of the day. Invariably, some comments left on the IMDb website reveal an unfamiliarity with the time, as some younger viewers forget that films were not made for our era, but for theirs. For example, there seems to be some disbelief over Foster's tendency to intimidate witnesses and force confessions from perpetrators by beating them up. This was, if not wholly acceptable, at least common back in the day. It should not be surprising seeing it surface in a film of that era. What is surprising is that police brutality continues in this country today – in an era where such behavior is more likely to be discovered. One can only attribute this to the fact that brutality and stupidity so often go hand-in-hand.

Preston Foster has his final showdown with the bad guys, pushed by Jane Wyatt. In the final scene, she is still in the driver's seat, recklessly kissing him as she steers – or not. She is a dynamo in a short curly bob, with a feather in her hat, and an infectious smile.

Jane is still driving in Pitfall (1948), and still challenges her man to measure up.

She is billed third behind Dick Powell, who plays her husband, and Lizabeth Scott, who plays the other woman.

Pitfall is a smooth and amazingly intricate noir, well-written and meticulously acted. Dick Powell is a revelation as the bored insurance salesman (the schmucks of film noir), frustrated by the sameness of his everyday life, who is nearly destroyed by events that all began when he finally finds something to interest him at his boring job - Lizabeth Scott.

In the opening scenes, we might almost take this for a family comedy, so funny is Powell in his sarcastic expressions of his restlessness, but he displays no sign of that shallow, smart-mouthed guy in earlier films where flippancy took the place of real acting. His usual wise-guy persona in early films seems to keep us at arm's length, not letting us get to know him too well.

Here, Powell turns himself inside out in a gutsy portrayal of a man whose integrity, his security, his family, his very life is slipping through his hands, with no one to blame but himself.

Lizabeth Scott plays her trademark role of the noir dame down on her luck who is bad luck to others but accepts it all with depressing resignation.  She is, however, very likable in the role and very personable. And the black beret she wears in the lounge scene is all I need to know she’s a great gal.

Raymond Burr is terrific as the sleazy private detective who is obsessed with Miss Scott. The scene where he poses as a customer in the dress shop where she works as a mannequin/model is one of the creepiest and most disgusting scenes of film noir. It is amazing how much is accomplished, how much is gotten away with in these days of Production Code censorship. She stands before him in an off the shoulder evening gown that demonstrates her attributes, and he as a customer has the right to ask her to remove her shawl, to turn around slowly before him while he undresses her with his eyes, a sneer indicating not only his pleasure in looking at her, but his pleasure in forcing her to do what he wants in full view of others.

She stands, fully clothed, in the midst of a crowd of workers and shoppers, almost as completely humiliated as if he had accosted her in a back alley.

John Litel is the district attorney whose speech to Powell on his idiocy for taking a gun to solve his problems remind us of the earlier movie, We’re Only Human, when the police inspector berates Preston Foster for ignoring police protocol.

Jimmy Hunt, whom we saw as the cute kid in the library in Katie Did It, is younger as Powell’s and Wyatt’s son. He adores his pop, although they have a difference of opinion as regards the comic books little Jimmy reads.

Byron Barr is the palooka who went to prison for going too far to dress his girl, Lizabeth, in jewels. Ann Doran is Powell’s dependable secretary.  Burr's secretary steals her scenes with the simple act of applying nail polish as she ignores Powell and other potential clients.

One of the treats of the film are the location shots of Los Angeles streets, Wilshire Boulevard, and the May department store where Lizabeth Scott works.

We get several postwar mile-markers – the so-called Busby Boys chapter book Powell reads to his son to distract him from the lurid comic books. “With perfect coordination” the Busby boys leaped to safety. That cracked me up. Young Jimmy wants to know why the Busby boys don’t use ray guns.

Powell snaps at him, “These are the Busby boys. They don’t have ray guns. They have slingshots.”

Jimmy sullenly answers, “Dopes.”

I also like the very small action of Powell wiping the nib of his dip pen before he uses it.  As one who occasionally uses a fountain pen, I was delighted as this bit of “business” that rings true.  I find myself always wiping the nib and lower barrel after I take off the cap.  Pen wipers used to be standard issue for offices and kids going back to school.

We start with Jane Wyatt cracking eggs in the skillet, feeding husband and son at the start of another busy day in their unvarying lives. She is just as sassy and intelligent as she was as a girl reporter in We’re Only Human. We have the feeling Jane Wyatt could not play in unintelligent person – it would be believable. Her intelligence is a huge part of what makes her an appealing screen presence. There is an excitement about her time on screen that is not really present with the languid Lizabeth Scott.

Dick Powell laments the sameness of their everyday lives.

"Whatever happened to those two people were going to build a boat and sail around the world?”

She replies breezily, while eating, “Well, I had a baby. I never did hear what happened you.”

We see at once that despite the burden he feels, theirs is a good marriage. Though his frustration will prove lethal, he is not looking for an extramarital affair.

Mr. Powell first visits Lizabeth Scott to get an inventory of the items obtaind by her imprisoned boyfriend with embezzled funds. 

His relationship with her starts as a fun and pleasant friendship. She is open, easy-going, shares her past with him as he takes notes on the insured items. She takes him for a ride in her motorboat, (not a boat to sail around the world) and we see he is instantly one of the Busby boys, going on an innocent but thrilling adventure in the middle of the workday. But Johnny stays too long at the fair, and Raymond Burr, jealous boyfriend-wannabe is lurking in the dark.

Through well-crafted twists and turns Powell gets more entangled with Scott, Burr, and the boyfriend soon to be released from prison.

Raymond Burr is a compelling creep, so sinister and if, as in the case of Jane Wyatt’s TV fans, one has been introduced to Raymond Burr through his decade-long stint as the stalwart Perry Mason, this turn as a smarmy stalker is fascinating. 

When events lead to Powell’s shooting a man, his conscience can take no more and he finally tells his wife what he’s been up to. Her reaction is cutting. No mourning and defeated little woman, she stares at him, with her expression sliding from disbelief to resentment, to something close to hatred.

“I can’t go on with this on my conscience," he says.

“Conscience?  You make it sound like a dirty word.  You worry about your filthy little conscience.  But I’ve got my son to think about…”

He wants to confess to the cops, too, but she orders him not to – not to drag the family through the dirt. “You lied once,” she snaps at him, “Came easy enough for you then.  You can lie now.”

In their early scenes, though he is troubled and wanting to break off from Scott, deeply seeking to appreciate his simple life once more, we are treated to some great lines and wonderful banter between husband and wife and son. When he is depressed, she cheers him up with the teasing, “We won the war together.” This is a brief comment that is so telling for so many married couples of that generation. The men didn’t just go away to war. The home front was as much involved. And on VJ day they had a right to slap themselves on the backs.

At one point little Jimmy wants to know what his father did during the war. Powell, somewhat shamefacedly confesses he was stationed in Denver. Jimmy is a little disappointed. Jane amusingly pipes up, "The Japs never got to Denver as long as your father was there.”

But Jane is not an idiot. She knows something’s going on with her husband. She’s just cutting him some slack, keeping observant, and waiting.

It is Lizabeth Scott who admonishes Powell, “What happens to men like you, Johnny? If I had a nice home like you do, I wouldn’t take a chance on losing it for anything in the world.”

Powell’s partner has the same opinion, and also chews him out. We see Powell is a man who desperately wants to unburden himself but he just waits too long.  He’s a decent guy, and we are touched by his humanity and his human failings, by the way he explains a nightmare to his son and kisses him goodnight, and the way he owns up to his mistakes, and tries to solve them.  By the time DA John Litel chews him out, we could cry for Powell.

In a final scene, Jane Wyatt is in the driver's seat again, picking him up from the police station and cruising down Wilshire Boulevard. He is beaten, without energy or hope, but she offers him not so much an olive branch, as a lease on a new life, suggesting that they move away to some new town. She has thought about divorce, and she is still very much on the fence. She doesn’t know if she can put this past her, but with flint in her voice, her determined gaze fixed on the road ahead, she suggests that it might be possible.

No clinch. No passionate, reckless kiss behind the steering wheel. They just go forward from that point in heavy traffic. We don’t really know what’s going to happen to them, or to Lizabeth, or to Raymond Burr, and the open-ended finale is refreshingly honest.

Jane Wyatt has backbone and a streak of independence. Her “finishing school accent” is hard and proud.

She could have been a girl reporter in her youth.

But she’s morphed into a suburban mom, a job no less gritty, shoring up the family, demanding her husband measure up, doing her job to “make a man of him.”

But Wait, There's More: Your friend and mine, Laura of Laura's Miscellaneous Musings covers We're Only Human here.

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And another thing:  Join us next week when we take part in the Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Blogathon hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association.  My pick will be Bright Eyes (1934) with Shirley Temple, James Dunn, and a bunch of flyboys.

And the week after that, the Universal Pictures Blogathon hosted by the Metzinger sisters over at Silver Scenes.  My pick for the party -- Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

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"Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey

"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films

"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings''

"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Jane Wyatt - Time Flies with Four Films in a Row

Jane Wyatt had an acting career that spanned over sixty years, from about 1930 in the early days of the Great Depression when she was a college girl-turned-summer stock-apprentice (at the Berkshire Playhouse, I’m pleased to say, in western Massachusetts, my neck of the woods.  They’re still with us and they still do great work, one of the treats of the New England summer.)—to when she capped it off with her final television sitcom guest appearance in the early nineties, at about seventy-two years old.

One of the features of Turner Classic Movies that I especially love is those days when they program several films of one star—but particularly when they show the films in chronological order.  This allows us to see the development of a career, and in the context of the eras in which the different films were made.  The star is a youngster in the morning, and by late afternoon when we're starting supper, he or she might be entering middle age and is now an old friend whom we know very well because we've seen so many sides to this person.

Not too long ago TCM showed a day of Jane Wyatt films.    Four in a row, for example, began with We’re Only Human (1935), in which Jane was in her mid-twenties, pairing off with Preston Foster in a cops-and-robbers scenario, she playing a feisty “girl reporter.” 

Next, it was Kisses for Breakfast (1941), a silly screwball comedy of mistaken identities, where she plays the owner of a Southern plantation and marries amnesiac playboy-turned hobo, Dennis Morgan, who is also already married to her cousin, Shirley Ross. The improbable scenario was the hallmark of screwball comedy, the last leavings of a more innocent America not yet having to face World War II.

Next, Army Surgeon (1942), a wartime drama that actually takes place during World War I in a flashback where she is a pioneering female surgeon.  She must pose as a nurse overseas because there is no place, evidently, for a female army surgeon, but she earns the respect of her grumpy doc-in-charge, played by James Ellison, and is the prize fought over by two men.  At the end of the film, we are on a troop ship in World War II, she is older now, gray in her hair, in uniform.   Her husband, one of the two old beaus from the previous war, is her fellow surgeon on staff.

Finally, Jane is the sassy wife whose home is turned upside down by an unfaithful husband played by Dick Powell in the noir Pitfall (1948).   

Each film shows her at different stages in her development as an actress, and also shows the changes in society occurring not always behind the scenes, but right there on the screen.

Miss Wyatt—who despite being a flippant girl reporter, a spirited bride who beat up Shirley Ross in a raucous wrestling match, got her white nurse’s shoes dirty in the trenches with the doughboys, and played a handful of suburban wives and mothers (we also discussed her work here in Our Very Own- 1950)—was a true blueblood.  Her crisp and elegant accent never lets us forget.  She is feminine and ladylike, but tough as nails.  She was raised in a well-to-do New York family where her father was a Wall Street investor and her mother a drama critic.

Can you imagine going into acting and your mother being a drama critic?   You’d have to have guts.

She was descended of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and also of a signatory to the U.S. Constitution, yet she lost her place in the blueblood’s bible: the Social Register, when she went to work as an actress on Broadway, understudying Rose Hobart. Jane married the same year We’re Only Human was released, and enjoyed a happy and long (sixty-five years) marriage until her husband’s passing.   Jane Wyatt left us at ninety-six years old in 2006.

We may remember her best in Father Knows Best, the TV sitcom for which she won three Emmy’s in a row, but her adventures as these other characters are a fascinating revelation of just how she fits into different eras, shrugging off not just one role for another, but one decade for another.  In a matter of four or five hours we have been time travelers through crucial years of the "American Century."

Next week, we’re going to take a closer look at We’re Only Human and Pitfall.  They are two very different roles, very different movies, and very different eras.  In both, Jane is charming, plays well off her co-stars, and displays exciting moments of commanding the screen, bringing the action to a halt with the same sureness and guts that made her leave Barnard for the Berkshires, and made her one of those infamous Hollywood liberals to stand up to McCarthyism in Congress.

These chronological rosters of films that TCM presents from time to time are excellent windows on the history of Hollywood and of American pop culture—made somehow more intimate when following the thread of one individual’s meandering career.   Though TCM gets high praise from classic film fans for so many reasons, I think the chronological roster is one of the most meaningful and important aspects of TCM's classic film programming.  It’s so simple, yet powerful, and I don't think any other retro channel or network has ever done this.  

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Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

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My new syndicated column on classic film is up at http://go60.us/advice-and-more/item/2047-everybody-comes-to-rick-s, or check with your local paper.

Split Second - 1953

Split Second (1953) straddles the portal from 1940s film noir to 1950s paranoia genre, and we can see an era turning before our eyes.

It almost aspires to a horror movie, but there are no giant insects or Martians. Just one atom bomb ready to explode at dawn, marking the end of this hellish night, with no new day to follow.

This movie marks the directorial debut of actor Dick Powell. His work here is strong, fast-paced, and solid. Note the alarm clock on the table in many scenes, reminding us that time is precious and slipping away from us. The script by William Bowers and Irving Wallace keeps the story moving briskly, with unexpected touches of macabre humor. This  keeps us and the characters on an even keel and brings us down to earth when our skin begins to crawl.

Keith Andes is a reporter assigned to cover the latest atom bomb test blast in the Nevada desert, but he gets taken off the story when a bigger one (if you’ve seen one atom bomb go off, you’ve seen them all) occurs. Murderer Stephen McNally and his partner Paul Kelly have broken out of prison and are on the loose.

Somewhere in the restricted test blast area.

Mr. Andes stops at a lonely desert diner and meets up with Jan Sterling, a night club dancer down on her luck, on her way to Reno. He comes up with the 50 cents for her pie and coffee. Yeah, we’ve seen this before. This part of the film, with the lone car driving on the dusty highway, the run-down diner, the gas pumps, looks like we’re about to enter a 1940s film noir nightmare. All the usual suspects start to show up.

McNally, one of the very best bad men in movies, whose handsome, rugged charm and wry, funny delivery to his lines, is offset by his suddenly volatile personality. We don't dare take our eyes off him.  He's exciting.

Paul Kelly is his older sidekick, and he’s been shot in the stomach. McNally won’t ditch his friend. They meet up with a pal called Dummy played by Frank DeKova. Frank doesn’t say much, but he reads comic books constantly, and the subject matter -- atomic super heroes, is our first clue that we’re about to enter a weird new world.

Alexis Smith and Robert Paige drive up to the gas pump. She’s in the driver’s seat. For now. It will be the last time she has control in this movie. Her fur stole is over the back of the seat between them. He’s not her husband.

Alexis, who we lamented in this recent post about not getting very good roles during her contract with Warner Bros., gets a good role here. She’s the restless, well-to-do wife of a doctor back in California. She’s run off with family friend Mr. Paige, who sells insurance.

Which, forgive me insurance brokers, cracks me up. Funny how insurance salesmen always end up being the fall guy in the old movies. Think of poor sap Fred MacMurray in our favorite insurance movie, Double Indemnity (1944) which we covered here.

Mr. Paige is likewise behind the 8-ball because of some very bad choices and a very bad dame.

Eventually, all seven unlikely travelers end up packed together in Mr. Andes’ big woody station wagon with the leaky radiator, driving through the desert like a Bizzaro World field trip. Mr. McNally, smart enough to work an ace up his sleeve, calls Alexis’ doctor husband, played by Richard Egan. McNally threatens to kill Alexis unless Mr. Egan comes to their hideout and takes the bullet out of his pal Paul Kelly.

Their hideout, until they can hook up with the rest of the gang, is an abandoned saloon in a ghost town.

In the atom bomb test range.

We’ve been well warned that the bomb will go off at dawn, so the alarm clock is ticking. Stephen McNally, with the bravado of a psychopath, is willing to play “chicken” with the bomb, until his friend gets medical help. The ensemble cast suffers agonies -- over the bomb, over their own past and present mistakes, and must submit to the brutality of their captor.

They are joined suddenly by Arthur Hunnicutt, who plays a folksy lone prospector on his way out of town. Mr. Hunnicutt, full of long-winded tall tales, brings humor to the script in his ability to annoy the others, but he’s also a safety value in his own homespun way. He’s a hoot.

They are a collection of interesting contrasts. Andes, the reporter, is not your typical cynical tough guy with rapid fire speech. He is quiet, easy going, charming, but passive. He’s willing to watch and bide his time.

Jan Sterling has some of the best lines, which she delivers with her blasé pout. Her character does not grow or change much, but she is a tough cookie with a heart and a conscience. When the doc shows up, she’s the one who helps with the operation.

At one point, McNally orders her to the kitchen of this old saloon “with that other dame to fix us something to eat.”

Being women, Alexis and Jan are naturally in charge of meals though they have nothing to cook. I am likewise, by virtue of my gender, able to put together a four-course meal with nothing but a can of beans, two soda crackers (Crown Pilots, ayah) and a teaspoon of Crisco. It’s a gift. Any woman can do it.

We never do get to see what they’ve had for supper, but afterwards they all settle down to listen to the portable radio and smoke. Just a relaxing evening at home.

The soft dance music and melodious ballads are interrupted by the radio announcer gleefully telling them, “We’ll try to give you ample warning so that you can get to your roofs and watch the flash from the explosion.”

Were we ever so innocent? I recall some comment singer/actress Kitty Carlisle made in her autobiography about watching a bomb blast from a hotel terrace, I think, in Las Vegas, a momentary distraction from a party. Like Alexis Smith in this movie, dressed to the nines.

These are strange days. McNally jokes about DeKova’s comic book, “In the next chapter, the Martians invade.”

The old prospector is fascinated by the bomb. A veteran of World War I, he marvels, “Just think what we could have done with a couple of them things at the Marne.”

Jan Sterling quips about their predicament, “Quite a spot. Between the devil and the bright red bomb.”

They are waiting for Richard Egan to show up, driving all the way from California into the restricted area here in Nevada. I’m not sure how he makes it through security checkpoints, but he’s Richard Egan. We trust him to do the job.

Alexis doubts he will come, knows that a cheating wife need not expect such devotion.

“He wouldn’t cross the street for me, much less risk his life.”

She tries to hedge her bets by urging her Insurance Man lover to do something.  Still, she is a little fascinated by the brute with the gun. Her Insurance Man looks less dashing in this dim light.  He is careful, perhaps regretting taking this trip, but when a leering McNally orders Alexis to go with him to the kitchen, Mr. Paige challenges McNally to a fight.

Mr. McNally, with a coolness that belies his own anxieties this evening, calmly shoots him dead. And drags Alexis off to the kitchen.

With a tear-streaked face she begs him not to kill her, but then the penny drops and she realizes he’s got another use for her just now. Hedging her bets again, she lets him kiss her. She’s not being clever or calculating, she’s just in a dead panic, like a drowning person ready to cling to anything floating by. If he wants a woman, by gorry, she’ll be his woman with everything she’s got.

Here’s where the subtlety of many classic films in addressing scenes of extreme violence or sexual situations is intriguing. We are taken back to the main room where the others sit and wait or sleep, or talk in whispered conversations. We get a tale from Jan Sterling about her miserable childhood and rotten parents. Time passes, but we don’t know how much time. Our attention is diverted to what is happening in the main room.

But we keep thinking about the sexual assault in the kitchen.

A funny paradox.  An explicit scene of violence that hammers the message home tends to make us draw back.  Here instead, lured into imaging the worst, we are drawn ever closer emotionally to the assault precisely because we have the safety of being voyeurs in our imaginations.

Alexis is eventually released from the kitchen like a skittish heifer after being branded -- self-conscious, shaky, nervously swiping her hair from her eyes. Jan Sterling sidles up to her, not to comfort, but to ask for a drink from Alexis’ hip flask and get the dirt.

Alexis, tense as a cat, fumbles with yet another cigarette, and masks degredation with another application lipstick, “Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know?”

“Do I have to?” Jan fires back, with a sarcastic smile. No, she doesn’t, and neither do we.

Richard Egan finally shows up to dig the bullet out of Paul Kelly. McNally needles Mr. Egan about his wife. “She decided not to depend on you entirely.” Alexis slinks away. The evening for her is a string of bad choices, panic, and humiliation. For everyone, a night of confidences, threats, secrets, and compromises.

McNally has had Alexis, so now he pursues Jan, who is smarter and better at pretending. She can handle McNally. She’s known men like him before.

Alexis, meanwhile, is baffled at Egan’s heroism.

“Are you still in love with me?” It's a fine moment; she's genuinely struggling to understand, perhaps even hoping that he does still love her.  She does not know, and even before this night is over, will never learn unselfishness and compassion. Her life has been ruled by her immediate desires, and she assumes that is everyone’s motive.

Mr. Egan is the stalwart, dependable man, a disappointed husband who’s been hurt enough and is more than willing to cut Alexis loose, (similar to his role in A Summer Place - 1959) but he’s genetically programmed to do the right thing and sticks his neck out for her, the room full of strangers, and his patient.

When the operation begins, Paul Kelly gets religion and wants a verse read from the Bible. The prospector has one in his gunny sack, right next to his gun.

His gun? Why he did not reveal to his fellow captives when he first arrived that he had a gun is a mystery and can only be chalked up to his maddeningly independent personality. He gets around to things when he gets around to them.

Nice, ironic scene where McNally reads to his pal in a flat voice, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” as the Sodium Pentothal is being injected.

But the gun comes out during the operation when Mr. Andes makes a play for it. McNally beats him to a pulp, and even slaps around Jan Sterling for trying to interfere. This cements the bond between Andes and Miss Sterling, and in a cozy moment when they become resigned to the fact that they are probably going to die, he jokes, “Sooner or later one of us has got to learn to fight.”

“We’ll take up judo in the next world,” she replies. If there was more time there would be a romance, but touching their sore heads together is the best they can do now.

Now the morning dawns, and McNally gets ready to make tracks. Alexis hangs on to him, begging him to take her with him, but he responds, “You’re a real bad dame…nobody can count on you for ten seconds.” He is sickened by her. She has fallen so low that a murderer won’t dirty his hands with her.

We get taken from the ghost town for a moment to some government file footage on preparation for the test in the command bunker. A voice announces, “At thirty seconds the master robot will take over.”

I think that’s the scariest line in the movie. We are no longer able to make choices for ourselves, not once we’ve gone past a certain point. Then we are all slaves of the Master Robot.

Spoilers coming up, so head to the fallout shelter if you don’t want to know.

Last minute fisticuffs, last minute choices, and only two of the cons get away, with Alexis, who practically dives into the passenger’s seat. They drive in the wrong direction.

“The bomb!”

She needs to be with them because otherwise we wouldn’t care if they drove off into the bomb blast. As flawed a person as she is, she is still the most interesting character there (except for McNally, but we already have him figured out) -- I think mainly because of the complex and layered way she plays it rather than the way it’s written. We really don’t know which way she’s going to go, because neither does she.

In one of his last-minute confounding ruminations, the prospector announces there is an abandoned mine nearby where they can shield themselves from the atomic blast.

Now, why in the name of Aunt Mary’s knickers did he not say that before? That would have given everybody another interesting choice to mull over. Do they tell the bad guys? Or, do they play God and keep the cave for themselves? They already played God with poor DeKova, who gets knocked out and left to die. They could have dragged him to the mine with them. They just leave him there with the corpse of the insurance man.

What if Alexis, fairly crazed by the end of the movie, was given the chance to hide in the mine? What if McNally had gone through with plugging Paul Kelly with a bullet when Kelly betrayed him at the last minute?

“The master robot is now taking over” is the next announcement as McNally’s car spins its tires in the desert sand, and the other captives rush for the abandoned mine. All our choices are gone.

The blast, with its white light and nuclear wind demolishing the ghost town is similar to declassified test bomb blast footage you may have seen.

“Let’s take a look at the world of tomorrow,” Richard Egan grimly says as the survivors crawl from the mine. In ten years they will probably all get cancer, but that’s another story. For today, it’s a flatter, whiter desert, and a giant mushroom cloud in the distance with the words “The End” written in script over it.

No monsters. Nothing is ever scarier than a bad reality.  Especially when we've caused it ourselves.

Gold Diggers of 1933

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) is kind of a shock to the system. A quintessential “Depression” movie, it actually aspires to be a Depression movie with no claim to be anything else, an in-your-face comment on current events.

The film begins with a barrage of blonde chorus girls singing “We’re in the Money,” in a frenzy of fantasy that must have been fascinating to moviegoers in 1933, the depths of the Great Depression. When you consider that many of those moviegoers had to scrimp for the purchase price of the ticket, probably anywhere from 10 cents to 25 cents depending on where they saw it, whether it was an evening performance or matinee, the sight of women swathed in gold coins placed in strategic places on their bodies must have been nothing short of obscene. Not in a sexual manner (though there is plenty of naughtiness in the movie as well), but obscene in the way you don’t eat a three-course dinner in front of a starving man. It’s cruel.

Choreographer Busby Berkeley, with his customary surreal and eye-popping musical scenarios, gave the crowd more than 10 cents' worth of fantasy, but there is a strange dichotomy between fantasy and cold, hard reality in this film. Warner Bros., as always, had a bead on the grim reality of the 1930s and fixed its reputation on socially relevant films. Gold Diggers of 1933 is a cross between a socially relevant film and lemon meringue.

Joan Blondell stars as the tough-talking chorus girl. Aline MacMahon and Ruby Keeler are her pals, and Ginger Rogers has a featured role, opening the film in the “We’re in the Money” number. The bit where she sings a chorus in pig Latin was put in, as she notes in her autobiography, Ginger, My Story (Harper Collins, 1991), by producer Darryl F. Zanuck after he heard her clowning around with the song and doing a verse in pig Latin during a rehearsal.

The girls are thrown out of work when the Broadway show they are in is shut down by creditors because Ned Sparks, the producer/director, can’t pay the bills. We see the girls struggling in their run-down apartment, stealing milk from the neighbors, and when they hear a rumor that a new show is going to be cast, they pool their clothes for one good outfit for Joan Blondell to wear to go check it out. When she calls them to relay the good news that a new show is on and they might all get jobs, she is crying on the phone. It is one of those real moments that breaks through all the wisecracks and reminds us, more that it does the audience of the day, that this was the Depression. Nostalgia buffs need to remember that for many people it was a nasty time to be alive. Or, as when one of the chorines complains of their hard luck, Ginger Rogers comes back with the world-weary remark, “The Depression, dearie.”

Dick Powell plays a young composer who lives in the apartment across the way. He is sweet on Ruby Keeler. He is also a wealthy playboy in disguise, so he comes up with the money to fund the new show. The show, as Ned Sparks envisions it, is going to be about the Depression, and featuring a number about “the forgotten man,” a 1930s euphemism for unemployed World War veterans. Sparks crows about his inspiration, “Men marching, marching…jobs… JOBS! Gee, don’t it get ya?”

It must have got everybody.

The rehearsals for the new show carry the fun of the typical backstage world the movies occasionally give us a glimpse of, just to remind us that there is hard work behind the magic.

We have some character actors who have very brief time on screen but give the film its quirky personality. Clarence Nordstrom plays the middle-aged “male juvenile” of the show, (we see him as well in the “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” number in 42nd Street) whose sudden attack of lumbago forces Dick Powell into the starring role on stage. Nobody seems to have lumbago anymore. It went the way of “the ague” and “the vapors,” I think.

It is another hard slap reminder that the wolf is at the door when, as Dick Powell first refuses to go on stage, Aline MacMahon chastises him with the information that all the cast will be out of work again, and perhaps some of the starving actresses will “have to do things I wouldn’t want on my conscience.” It brings the wealthy playboy to hard reality, and us, too.

Billy Barty plays the naughty “baby” in the strange “Pettin’ in the Park” park number. Sterling Holloway, future “Winnie the Pooh” voice among other roles, plays a delivery man, and ever dependable, ever-present Charles Lane has a brief spot as a reporter. Mr. Lane played curmudgeonly types in just about every film ever made in Hollywood and most TV shows in the 1950s through the 1990s. When he died at 102 years old, he was still working.

Warren William plays Dick Powell’s older brother, who tries to get Powell away from the clutches of Ruby Keeler, whom he sees as a gold digger. He views all actresses as gold diggers, and in his scheme to separate them, he unwittingly falls for Joan Blondell. He is a stuffed shirt, who grows more likable if only for his helplessness among the streetwise gold diggers, with family retainer Guy Kibbee in tow.

Ruby Keeler undoubtedly appeared very cute and sweet on screen, but her questionable range of talent made her no match for Joan Blondell. Particularly in the striking “Forgotten Man” number, Miss Blondell displays such intensity and commanding screen presence that is it surprising she did not enjoy a longer career as a leading lady, always cast in second leads. Perhaps Hollywood already enjoyed an embarras de richesse when it came to tough-talking blondes and felt it didn’t need another one.

We see a few pre-Code influences in the “Pettin’ in the Park” number with its undressing chorines drenched by rain pouring down on the multi-level “park” set that goes through different seasons.

“The Shadow Waltz” number, where even Ruby Keeler sports blonde finger waves, is typical Busby Berkeley fare, with overhead kaleidoscope shots of the girls in dresses with corkscrew hoops that spring and bounce as they play violins that are eerily lit by neon tubing. One wonders about the expense and the possible safety issues.

The film concludes abruptly with “The Forgotten Man” number, a stark street set where Joan Blondell speaks the first verse of this song about downtrodden World War vets. Only the year before, a “bonus army” of vets were routed by the Army with General Douglas MacArthur at its head and burned out for camping in protest in Washington, D.C., over the issue of their service bonuses.

“Remember my forgotten man.
You put a rifle in his hand.
You sent him far away.
You shouted hip hooray.
But look at him today.”

Etta Moten takes a verse in her rich contralto as the camera pans across the poverty-beaten wives of the jobless forgotten men. Miss Moten made only three films in Hollywood, all in this same year of 1933, but went on to a long career on stage and as a radio journalist. She is reported to be the first African-American performer to be invited to the White House, when the Roosevelts hosted her.

Much of this song is pantomimed, with many extras dressed as World War soldiers marching off to the war jubilantly, crowds waving. The rain beats down on them as they continue to march, now wounded, with a defeated attitude, home from the war, then shuffling in civilian clothes in a breadline with hollow eyes and bleak faces.

When a cop tries to roust a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk, Joan Blondell wordlessly comes to his rescue by turning over his coat lapel showing his Medal of Honor, and gives the cop a glare that would kill.

To us today this is a reminder that the Great Depression was not all waltzing with neon-lit violins and romantic fantasies. In 1933, they already knew that. Perhaps Warner Bros. felt the public wanted affirmation of their problems, some legitimacy granted their desperation.

The movie ends, or just slams shut, on this dour note, the complete opposite of how it began with “In the Money.” Both musical numbers are stunning, especially in that they show opposite sides of the “coin.”

   ********************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.