Happy Thanksgiving - and a SALE!

If watching this movie is part of your Thanksgiving tradition, you might just be an old movie buff.  Wishing all our American readers a Happy Thanksgiving.

As long as I have you on the phone, I'll take this opportunity to mention as well that for the next several days, through Monday, November 27th, the eBook version of my book on the career of Ann Blyth -- Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. will be available at Amazon for half price. Because black Friday and cyber Monday are Thanksgiving traditions, too.  I guess.

Amazon has also included my book in its new "X-Ray" function which will allow for descriptions and explanations of names, places, and events by holding down on a highlighted word, to enhance your reading experience. In case you didn't know what the Copacabana was.

Jerome Cowan

Jerome Cowan died in January 1972 at 74 years of age -- right at the beginning of the so-called nostalgia craze of the 1970s.  But this isn't an obituary, it's about what happened after.  One wonders what Cowan, and so many other character actors would have thought about our present-day familiarity with them and their work, and how beloved they are now to old movie fans.

This post is part of the What a Character Blogathon hosted by Aurora at Once Upon a Screen, Kellee at Outspoken and Freckled, and Paula at Paula's Cinema Club. 

Without that 1970s sudden sentimental interest in movies and pop culture of the first half of the 20^th century, principally the 1930s through the 1950s, we might not have so many classic films released on VHS and DVD, nor the experiment of the cable channel American Movie Classics, or the enduring magic that is Turner Classic Movies.  It has preserved our society’s longtime reverence for the great stars, of course, where Clark Gable and Judy Garland, James Cagney and Greta Garbo, et. al., still share a crowded pedestal.

But the real achievement in this fad-turned-big business of classic movie nostalgia is the celebrating of so many wonderful character actors.  So many years after their careers ended -- most of them, like Cowan, worked until they died -- have reached parity with the stars they supported.  We pay them homage they never received by anyone in the heyday of their careers.   What would Jerome Cowan and the others feted in this single blogathon think of that?

Mr. Cowan played a variety of roles, but still had his specialty of stuffy lawyers, like in Miracle on 34^th Street where he—now famous for it—plays John Payne’s courtroom adversary. 

He also played the prosecuting attorney in The Unfaithful (1947), which we covered here.  He could be silly, like the fake psychic he played in Claudia and David (1946), covered here.  Or even smarmy, like the creepy married man who makes a play for Barbara Stanwyck in My Reputation (1946) here.  He was the dead partner Humphrey Bogart avenged in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

But he started in films with a really different role, an angry young man, a fanatic, an outsider, a killer.  In Beloved Enemy (1936), discussed here, set in Ireland during The Troubles, he plays Brian Aherne’s comrade, a man of action and few words.  He is young here, rugged, and somewhat mysterious.  There is pain and mistrust in his eyes.  When Aherne is viewed by their gang as being a turncoat, Jerome Cowan gets the job of assassin, and aims for his friend from a rooftop, and pulls the trigger.

In that mysterious caste system created in Hollywood, he would likely never have gotten to play a lead, yet there is promise in this first performance of something dark and exciting, something more than just the stuffy lawyer or pompous businessman he would play so many times in decades to come.  But there were twists on the man with the pencil-thin mustache and the glint in his eye.  He was smart, or befuddled.  He was a phony, or helplessly sincere.  Only the suit was the same.

Like most character actors, he endured because he had achieved that strange combination of being familiar, and yet able to play many nuances, from sinister, to comic and still be recognizable.  Cowan was not a “man of a thousand faces.”  He was a man in a crowd of a thousand faces.  But we could always pick him out.

He worked almost up until the end of his life, having appeared in a couple TV show guest spots, a western and a sitcom, only months before his death in the previous year of 1971.  Maybe they were fun to do, and maybe they paid the bills.  

But if he were with us today, how amazed he would be at how famous he's become.

Please have a look at more of the great blogs participating in the What A Character Blogathon.

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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.

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 SILVER SCREEN, GOLDEN YEARS, on classic film is up at Go60  or check with your local paper.

EXTRA! Newspapers and the movies

Above a newspaper spread wide in the murderous hands of Joseph Cotten hides Mr. Cotten’s face from us as he intends to hide his crimes. But he is eventually revealed, at least to the trusting heart of his niece, Teresa Wright, through steadfast newspaper reporting that dogs him from town to town.


One of the most dramatic moments in this film, “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943) is when Teresa Wright goes to the library to read a copy of the newspaper her uncle has destroyed at home, to discover this haunting headline, and then the camera scrolls down the entire column to the thunderous strains of “The Merry Widow Waltz.”

Splashing newspaper headlines were a common dramatic device used in the old movies, sometimes to forward the plot, to explain a twist in the story, or to add a little humor. And it wasn’t enough to show us headlines; we were invariably shown a shot of the running printing presses, to boot. Though newspaper men and women were seen to be a fast-talking, cynical, and sometimes cagy lot, they were often represented as the last defense in a world of lies, soldiers against injustice, and the keepers of democracy.

Even the innocuous and heartwarming comedy, “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947), notes this aspect of gritty street journalism when the smarmy bully Mr. Sawyer, who as gotten Edmund Gwenn institutionalized, fears the power of the press. “We’re very anxious to avoid publicity of any kind.”


John Payne, Mr. Gwenn’s lawyer, realizes the power of the press is just the way to get his day in court, and we have the following parody of a newspaper headline in the days when editors had more puns up their sleeves than extra aces.

Other aspects to the old movie view of journalism, sidebars if you will, are guys like old Joe the linotype operator in “Meet John Doe” (1941), and this shouting newsboy who, flashing a newspaper full of that opposite pole of journalism we know as propaganda, storms into the crowd and brings an end to Gary Cooper’s crusade. The truth may set us free, but lies are mighty strong handcuffs.

Then there is the worst kind of free press, the kind that dies. We now live an age of many competing news sources, most wondrous and remarkable. No longer shackled to the printing press, we find ourselves in the curious position of losing the ability, or interest, in keeping a permanent record. The Internet is far-reaching, but hardly permanent. We may find ourselves irresistibly dawn, or pulled unwillingly, further into a world of up to the minute superficiality. Meanwhile, the solid bastions of democracy, the keepers of the record, morph into dinosaurs. The death toll continues.

Rocky Mountain News
Baltimore Examiner
Kentucky Post
Cincinnati Post
Albuquerque Tribune
South Idaho Press

These are only a few of the dinosaurs now extinct. For more on the state of the press, have a look at this website called Newspaper Death Watch. Morbid title, but in the tradition of splashy newspaper headlines in the movies, it gets your attention.

Movie Christmas Trees

Above we have a scene from “A Summer Place” (1959) in which Constance Ford remarks with satisfaction upon decorating her little Christmas tree, “It’s solid plastic. It ought to last ten years.” I love her delivery, and it is the funniest line in an otherwise rather dour movie. Really puts you in the Christmas mood. Oh, yeah.

Here’s a few more movie Christmas trees: Another artificial specimen, the white tree in the dressing room of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in “Holiday Inn” (1942).


Another really artificial, and makeshift, specimen on board ship in “So Proudly We Hail” (1943).



Among live trees, tabletop size seems to be popular in the movies. Here we have Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Tom Tully, Spring Byington, and Shirley Temple exchanging gifts in “I’ll Be Seeing You” (1944).



Shirley MacLaine laments her circumstances, not the size of the tree, in “The Apartment” (1960).



Marjorie Reynolds acts on a movie set that looks just the inn, with a tree that looks just like the inn’s tree -- but wait, that’s a set, too. “Holiday Inn” (1942).


Here’s a shot of Bing knocking off a bell solo in “Holiday Inn”, hitting all the right notes.


Nothing represents the abundance of the Christmas season like a full-size tree. Here Mary Astor, Leon Ames and family decide they’re not going to New York in “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944).



Little Natalie Wood searches the presents under the big tree in “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) for the two-story suburban colonial home Edmund Gwenn promised her.



Peggy Ann Garner and Ted Donaldson from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945) drag their tree home after some street vendor, who can’t sell it because it’s already late Christmas Eve, throws it at them. It turns out, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is not actually about a Christmas tree, but never mind. It could be.



Finally, the tree is up, and the family is assembled putting home-made paper ornaments on the hard-won tree. For what it represents, it’s probably the most poignant Christmas tree in the movies.


Trees do represent the homes in which we see them. They illustrate frugality and opulence, poverty and wealth. Here is wealthy, powerful, and lonely Edward Arnold pondering how to further crush Gary Cooper, as he gazes upon an enormous tree the servants decorated in “Meet John Doe” (1941).




Finally, here’s Barbara Stanwyck decorating the homey tree in the homey home that isn’t really hers in “Christmas in Connecticut” (1945) while Dennis Morgan serenades her on the piano. And to all a good night.

Not ready for Christmas?

Not ready for Christmas?

“A Christmas Carol” (1938) was released in time for Christmas, in mid-December 1938. A great deal of effort and planning by the studio was involved for this to happen. Oddly, most films we have come to regard as Christmas classics were never originally released to be shown in theaters at Christmastime.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) was released in January 1947, the month after Christmas.

“Christmas in Connecticut” (1945) came out in August of 1945, just as the war was ending and not reindeer in sight.

“White Christmas” (1954) came out in October.

“Holiday Inn” (1942) was released in August.

“Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) came out in not just in time for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, but in May.

Makes all those store gimmicks about “Christmas in July” seem not so stupid. That these films have become Christmas classics is due largely to more television, which bundles them all together at this time of year, than to the film industry.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) sets two interesting precedents for the American public. First, it becomes a traditional must-see film for the Christmas holiday season, something warm and fuzzy, and frequently re-made. Secondly, and more importantly, it openly and frankly acknowledges, perhaps even establishes, the phenomenon of yuletide commercialism, Black Friday binges, Cyber Mondays and Thanksgiving as a warm-up act for the big show to follow.

Maureen O’Hara is in Human Resources at New York City’s famed Macy’s Department Store and is in charge of the Thanksgiving Parade. She hires Edmund Gwenn as a last-minute replacement for the fellow supposed to play Santa Claus, whose float brings up the rear of the parade. She has unwittingly hired the real Santa Claus to play himself, and that is where the plot takes off. John Payne is her prospective beau and Santa’s attorney, and young Natalie Wood her daughter, who does not believe in Santa.

We have a few shots of Macy’s and a couple of actors playing Mr. Macy and his rival, Mr. Gimbel, but it’s not really so much about Macy’s or New York City. This could be any department store in any town. These could be your kids waiting in line in to sit in Santa’s lap, or it could be you, or your parents. We have a suggestion of the late war with the most touching scene in the movie probably where the little girl from Holland, who does not speak English, is captivated by a Santa Claus who can easily converse with her in Dutch. But most of the film is not about the past, either good old days or horrors gratefully behind us. It is not even about the present, with bustling well-dressed shoppers using cash instead of credit cards and content to wait until Christmas Eve to decorate their real trees, with dreams of their first suburban post-war homes dancing in their heads, topping their wish list.

It is about the future, a time which this film maps out even if it does not envision. It is about a time of paying with plastic, and of over-spending with plastic. It is about the economic reporters gauging, analyzing, cringing and exulting about how much money is being spent by the shopper, by the minute, in an America where two-thirds of our economy is dependent on this one short season.

It is about putting up the tree on Thanksgiving after rushing through the turkey dinner. It is about watching Miracle on 34th Street not because it is one of the few classic films which mentions that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, but because leads us into Christmas, ready, set, go right after you finish your piece of pumpkin pie.

Porter Hall

Porter Hall played a variety of villains, and pompous characters both in dramas and comedies. Some were quite small roles, such as Mr. Belknap in “Going My Way” (1945), whose irritation at having his window broken by kids playing ball brings him to a war of words, not to mention ideologies, with Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley, and announces angrily that he is an atheist when he spitefully chucks the baseball back at Father. To which Crosby replies, when his baseball is returned, “You throw like an atheist.”

Mr. Hall takes it on the chin figuratively and literally through a good part of his career playing unlikable characters, sometimes with an unaffected and natural quality, like his role as Mr. MacCaulay in “The Thin Man” (1934), his third film, and sometimes quite comically over the top, like his neurotic Mr. Sawyer, the Macy’s store psychologist in “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) who antagonizes Kris Kringle and gets smacked over the head with a cane for it.

His is identifiable in all his films, though in some you have to not blink or you’ll miss him, such as Senator Monroe in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) or the reporter Murphy in “His Girl Friday” (1940), or Mr. Jackson in “Double Indemnity” (1946).

Mr. Hall acted on Broadway and in touring stock companies in the 1920s and early 1930s before he came to Hollywood. He was in his 40s by the time he appeared in his first film. This shifty, irritable villain, neurotic psychologist, and occasional atheist was a deacon in Hollywood’s First Presbyterian Church, and reportedly an engaging and well-liked man. Evidently, a very good actor.