More Sexy Typists

Because there is nothing more sexy than a typewriter, and nothing more exciting than watching someone type, here we have a sequel to our post last November on “A Guy, A Girl, and a Typewriter”, but this time focusing in on the gentlemen.

Above we have Troy Donahue (“if Troy Donahue can learn to type, then I can learn to type…” I believe was how the lyric in “A Chorus Line” went) as the handsome young writer/stablehand in “Susan Slade” (1961). As we can see by the movies, typing is clearly an expression of virility.


Here we have David Niven and Doris Day in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” (1960), while the suave and dashing Niven pauses in his typing, allowing Miss Day to openly adore him for a moment or two before he goes back to work.



William Holden in “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing” (1955). Was there ever a more virile typist? I think not.


Even the normally aloof tough guy Humphrey Bogart, seen here in “A Lonely Place” (1950), evolves into a raging sex symbol just by taping out a few lines and slapping the carriage return, as he has slapped the mugs of so many gangsters.



Harold Lloyd, whose hapless bespectacled everyman might not be considered the most macho fellow around, but put him behind a typewriter, and he’s as sexy as William Holden. No, really. Love this old typewriter in “Girl Shy” (1924).


And just because we’ve noted before that Barbara Stanwyck is the silver screen’s most prolific typist, here she captivates Warren William in “The Secret Bride” (1934), proving once again that she can hold her own with the boys.

Crazy Bogie

Monday’s post which mentioned the movie “In a Lonely Place” (1950) brings to mind one side of Humphrey Bogart’s many film characters for discussion. Crazy Bogie, the man you love to report to the authorities.


In “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” (1947), Mr. Bogart plays an artist, living a quiet life in the English countryside with his second wife, Barbara Stanwyck. He murdered his former wife, and he seems to have similar designs on Miss Stanwyck, but first he has to paint a really ugly picture of her. Were he just a mean guy who wanted the insurance money, we could easily dismiss him as evil, but there is something more intriguing about Bogart’s murderer that makes him hard to dismiss. He manages to affect a loneliness in his psychosis that at times elicits more sympathy than fear. He suffers in his paranoia, and appears physically pained with outbursts. If both Bogie and Stanwyck, and the script, are a little over the top at times, it’s still a thoughtful characterization of trying to make us see things his way.

“In a Lonely Place” (1950) shows Humphrey Bogart as a snide Hollywood screenwriter, quick to anger, who is under investigation for a brutal murder. We follow his budding relationship with his new girlfriend, Gloria Grahame, and navigate the highs and lows of their romance, of the suspicion under which the police hold him, and Miss Grahame’s growing suspicions in the same dizzying way Bogie navigates the winding Los Angeles streets at night in a nearly out of control convertible.

Here again, we see a guy who could be a killer, but whether or not he is, there is still something amiss, something askew in his prickly personality that begs for sympathy. He regrets his outbursts, but cannot stop himself. He is defensive, paranoid, quick to wound, and quick to hurt others. But he’s not a nut we can just dismiss as being a nut. He is intelligent and articulate. There’s so much more to his grand persona that is real and valid and logical, that the nuttiness seems only a quirk, until it brings danger, until it’s almost too late. In true film noir fashion, he brings his own downfall.


“The Caine Mutiny” (1954) is so fine a movie it deserves it own discussion sometime for the many great performances in the ensemble cast. Here Bogart is the mercurial Captain Queeg, whose irrational displays cause his men to revile him and mutiny against him. Bogart is excellent in the role (though I would have loved to have also seen Lloyd Nolan, who played the part on stage). He is fearful and fretful, vengeful and bitter, paranoid and deceptive. Mr. Bogart plays the gamut of emotion, and makes us, as with the other characters, see how it could happen, and see the dismal sadness and lack of confidence in a person’s life that would alter his psyche and remove that under-appreciated but most important aspect of a person’s humanity, his self control.


Bogart is older in this part, and looks it, and at times looks tired, at times looks exactly like a man who knows he looks old and tired and is desperately trying to hide it. One common thread in all three of these “crazy” characterizations his Bogart’s seeming empathy with the character, playing him not as a “type”, but from the inside, somewhere deep, and intimate, and troubled. In one film he touches his forehead in a reflex reaction to accusation. In another, his hands shake when he lights a cigarette. In another, he fumbles with steel marbles to comfort himself. His technique runs to more than just a crazed expression. There is so much going on his eyes as haunted as it is threatening, silently begging for help before he strikes.

Movie Hating Public

There’s an interesting discussion at both Raquelle’s “Out of the Past” and at the “Back Alley Noir” message boards on the disappointment of seeing classic films in a public theater when some of the public ruins the experience by ridiculing the film while the movie is playing.

Others have chimed in with their own similar experiences and I would encourage our readers to go have a look. I can’t add anything new to what has already been discussed, except perhaps to acknowledge that it can be frustrating to attempt to share an old movie with someone who fails to be equally enchanted by it.

We’ve all known the eyeball-rolling response from otherwise good friends when we gush over a really, really old film they’ve never seen and don’t want to see.

The vocal ridicule and guffawing over a film noir classic like “In a Lonely Place” (1950) which Steve-o describes (also have a look at his great blog “Film Noir of the Week”) can be attributed to more than just a lack of appreciation for an old film, however. Even passionate film buffs disagree on what it is that makes a good movie.

This problem seems less about the old movie and more about the public. We’ve entered an age where people aggressively demand respect but who feel they are not obligated to respect others. The importance of self esteem seems to have eclipsed the virtues of humility and courtesy. The desire to make one’s own opinions known has evolved into a bullying need to not only refute anyone else’s opinions, but to destroy them from existing.

There are still enough people in the world who would sit in that same theater as the one Steve-o describes and think, “This movie seems pretty stupid and ridiculous to me, but I’ll let the others who paid as much as I did to see it just enjoy themselves.”

But the loudmouths, the classless morons who think that their price of admission allows them to ruin the movie for other people, they exert their power, brave and bold in the dark for 90 or so minutes, and then morph into nobodies on the street again. Meanwhile the film that was made over half a century ago will still be seen, and even enjoyed, half a century from now, so paltry is the loudmouth’s actual influence.