The Aviatrix Part 1 - Tail Spin and Women in the Wind

The word aviatrix seems almost an anachronism; a word representing the adventure of pioneer women who embraced technology and danger and achieved celebrity in a brief era where, despite the feminine noun, opportunity to achieve celebrity in daring feats was gender-free. Today and next week’s post, we will soar with these women in four different movies: Tail Spin and Women in the Wind, both from 1939; and Wings and the Woman (1942), and Flight for Freedom (1943).

In the British film Wings and the Woman, about the adventures of real-life aviatrix Amy Johnson, two businessmen investing in her venture to fly from Britain to Australia marvel at the dangers of her flight and the triumph of her success when she lands in Darwin.

“A young girl is doing something extremely courageous and thrilling. It’s more than that. She’s driving a coach and four, or an airplane, which is even quicker – through centuries of convention and custom.”

“Yes, in a few short hours she’s broken a great gap in the fence that’s been surrounding our young women for generations. And now the young devils will come pouring through it after her. I can’t quite see the end.”

“There isn’t any end to it. What that young woman has done is the sort of thing that goes on forever.”

There is a growing sentiment these days to de-gender terms that have always been gender-specific: modern actresses calling themselves actors in apparent defiance to be labeled feminine, government bodies doing away with “councilwoman,” “alderwoman,” etc. Personally, I find this new disgust for feminine nouns an affectation, for there is nothing humiliating or demeaning in a feminine reference. A negative connotation comes in the use of the word; not of the word itself. Exalt the feminine; do not diminish it in a gender-neutral mask. Aviatrix is a feminine noun with panache and a noble heritage.

But the ladies of the films we’re covering over the next two weeks are also called “girl pilots.” This might well cause as much chagrin as smiles, but there was a need back in the day to mark the distinction—and we should remember that these ladies were revolutionaries. What should be remarkable to us is that these adventurous aeronautic exploits should include women, and society was captivated but not surprised. In some respects, Hollywood provided more gender focus on women and their stories than it does today.

The first two films we cover in today’s post:  Tail Spin and Women in the Wind beautifully capture the esprit de corps of the aviatrix in an era of wood biplanes, open cockpits, and air races.  Though these movies are rather like formulaic B-movies with simplistic plots, they are still a vigorous and spirited view of some devil-may-care women – and completely accepted by the men in their sphere.

Both stories were taken from books, the memoir of an aviatrix, and a novel. Tail Spin was first released in February 1939, starring Alice Faye as Trixie, the spunky lead who is a hatcheck girl from Los Angeles living a double life as an amateur aviatrix. She ditches work so that she and her pal Joan Davis, who plays a comic relief sidekick mechanic, “Babe,” can enter a cross-country race for prize money. Alice supports her mom, played by Mary Gordon, and her younger brother, so she needs the dough and the trip from Los Angeles to the celebrated Cleveland Air Races is just the ticket. At Cleveland there are additional races to enter, which involve speed and skill racing a course around pylons. One noted real-life aviatrix who competed in these races was Amelia Earhart.

At one point, Babe has to enter a contest jumping from the plane Alice is flying to earn more dough.  Though she is sickened by the prospect, Babe parachutes neatly onto the target—something only a devoted sidekick would do.  

“Babe” was a popular nickname for men or women, speaking of gender-neutral. Jane Wyman plays “Alabama,” and Kane Richmond plays “Tex,” more androgynous nicknames. Wally Vernon is Chick, and Edward Norris is “Speed.” You can tell how fun a movie is going to be by how many nicknames there are among the characters.

(It reminds me of the time my parents years ago were ordering flowers for the funeral of a boyhood pal of my father, but they had to scour the phone book to find out the man’s real first name. He had been known by his nickname since he was a little kid. Everybody in the Great Depression had a nickname, or you were nobody. Possibly some kids even had “Nobody” for nickname. You just had to have one. My parents and their friends had forgotten this man’s real first name.)

Nancy Kelly is another aviatrix, married to Edward Norris (or Speed.)

Oh, and Charles Farrell is “Bud.” Not the best nickname, I grant you, but all the good ones were taken.

Constance Bennett gets the flashy role as the chic and ferocious rival of Alice Faye. She is a spoiled rich girl – her father is played by the wonderful Harry Davenport. She has the whitest, flashiest flying jumpsuit and the best plane. Flying attracts all incomes and classes of society, and the clouds are a level playing field.

Everything in this movie is “swell,” except when it isn’t swell. Jane Wyman crashes here in the daring and quite stupid attempt to intimidate Constance Bennett on a trial run. She’ll be okay, though. Anybody who can land on her head in a plane crash and still give a whispered pep talk from the stretcher is a trouper.  It’s Nancy Kelly who buys the farm – in a tragic series of scenes where we see her husband, Speed, crash; the other ladies comfort her, including Constance Bennett, who proves she’s a mensch after all. But Nancy’s will to live is gone, and she takes a swan dive in her plane, the wind blowing through her hair in a horrific and yet beautiful shot, and she grieves, but seems relieved to let the air and the moisture from the atmosphere smack her in the face as her last sensations of her earthly life.

The aerial photography and simulations of flight through rear-screen projection in this movie is really quite good, the dramatic aerial flying in the movie was choreographed by Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz.  Some of it is actual footage from the Cleveland Air Races – including some of the crash scenes. There is an element of fatalism in many Depression-era movies that is ironically surprising to those of us today though our view generally is that we live in a much more brutal era.

Alice gets in trouble, too.  First, her plane is sabotaged, and then next in her showdown race with Constant Bennett, but Bennett lets her win and in turn, Alice let’s Constance have her fiancé back – Tex, whom she had been romancing for a lark.

Alice sings “Are You in the Mood for Mischief,” in a moonlight tryst with Tex. It’s not a musical, but it’s Alice Faye. She has to sing.

The most interesting aspect about this movie is that the women are not demeaned or diminished by their male counterparts. Flying is not presented as being part of a male world and they are not shown as underdogs in a battle of the sexes. They have nothing to prove. They are already achievers because they have entered this rare world of daring explorers of a new frontier. Actually, the male roles are secondary in the story. Though we might be amused noting there is a separate hangar for the ladies’ planes.

The men get a bigger part in the story of Women in the Wind, released a few months later in April 1939, but the focus is still on the ladies. Kay Francis is the aviatrix here – or the girl pilot if you must – trying to win the Los Angeles to Cleveland air race for the prize money so she may pay for her brother’s operation.  Played by Charles Anthony Hughes, he had been a pilot, too, but now he lies in Victor Jory’s hospital. Doc Jory encourages Kay to use her flying skills to get the dough.

Eve Arden, Hollywood’s most beloved wisecracking sidekick, plays “Kit,” another pilot and Kay’s pal. She is the one with the crash this time – but she’s okay.  In the hospital with her head beautifully bandaged, she’s still wearing makeup and her beautifully manicured nails didn’t even chip.

William Gargan plays the lead male role, a conceited playboy pilot who’s all in the news for breaking the world record. His name is “Ace.” You didn’t think we were going to get away from a movie about pilots without at least one Ace, did you?

His comic sidekick – every hero has to have one – is “Stuffy,” played by Maxie Rosenbloom, whose real-life nickname was “Slapsie-Maxie,” I’m sure you’ll recall, from his boxing days.

Kay charms and tricks William Gargan into lending her his world record-breaking plane for the big race. He’s a pompous jerk but a nice guy at heart who just needs to be taken down a peg. This is accomplished more by his harridan ex-wife, played by Sheila Bromley, than by Kay. We last saw William Gargan in Swell Guy (1947) with Ann Blyth, in a much-reduced supporting role as the dopey elder brother of the star, Sonny Tufts. However, being able to turn to character roles saved and prolonged many acting careers. Unfortunately, Kay Francis, who may or may not have relished dopey minor roles in the future, was facing the inevitable descent of her stardom and the end of her film career in only a few more years. This was her last film for Warner Bros., with which she had a long contractual feud. She resented being pushed out of the stable and resisted it for as long as she could. She may or may not have relished this unchallenging role.

Her nemesis in this movie is Sheila Bromley, Ace’s ex-wife, who is a wicked conniver, but who also turns out to be a mensch in the end. We see among the aviatrix club there is above all a unity and mutual respect for each other, the women for the other women, the women for the men, and the men for the women.

These ladies in their silk scarves and leather flying helmets carry themselves with the confidence, a sense of humor, a playful camaraderie, and resilience at the hard knocks in life – including literal unhappy landings – that brought us through the Depression and made us look up, not only to the sky when a single biplane crossed over our towns, but to look up to and admire the women who flew.

Come back next Thursday for a look at two more films, made in wartime, about the exploits of two more lady fliers: Wings and the Woman with Anna Neagle and Robert Newton, and Flight for Freedom with Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray.

Meanwhile, next Tuesday on my New England Travels blog, I'll be discussing one such real-life aviatrix who competed in the Cleveland Air Races, a girl pilot from my hometown -- Maude Tait.

Victor Jory - On Stage and Screen

In the summer of 1952 Victor Jory toured the eastern summer theatre circuit with Alexis Smith in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives”. The sophisticate role was a natural for Miss Smith, who was typecast as such by Hollywood since her film career began some 12 years previously. But it was an even more natural fit for Victor Jory, who had a much longer film career, and a much, much longer stage career. Hollywood had already typecast Jory as a scruffy villain. On stage, he was urbane, witty, and devilishly charming. His second home on stage is proof that not all Hollywood character actors are what they seem.

This is my entry into the “What A Character” blogathon, sponsored by Outspoken and Freckled, Paula's Cinema Club, and Once Upon a Screen. Running from September 22nd through the 24th, favorite character actors take center stage.

From the Boston Daily Globe August 12, 1952: “The Boston Summer Theatre may be air-cooled but it sizzled last night with the heat engendered by Victor Jory kissing decorative Alexis Smith in that famous second act of “Private Lives”…I never saw…quite as much vigor and passion as Miss Smith and Mr. Jory, who seemed to enjoy every second of the sophisticated romp…The dialogue is light, witty and thoroughly naughty; the acting should be on the same order. And Miss Smith and Mr. Jory live up to audience expectations. It was a wonderful evening and the audience was capacity.”

Alexis Smith had minimal stage experience when she was in college, but Victor Jory had played stock theatre everywhere from his early apprenticeship at the Pasadena Playhouse to stages across the continent and as far as Australia. He played Shakespeare, Ibsen, Moliere, and Shaw. He wrote plays, and directed.

A year later, Miss Smith and Mr. Jory took another summer tour, this time with “Bell, Book and Candle.” From the Boston Daily Globe, June 28, 1953, Alexis credits Victor Jory, who directed, for teaching her stagecraft: “I can’t believe that anyone in the whole world could have taught me as much as Victor has about my job. Working with him is better than any training school of the theatre you ever heard of. Mr. Jory has a vast amount of experience and he is willing to share it. Some actors are reticent when it comes to giving newcomers tricks of the trade. Victor is generous and kind. He has taught me all I know about legitimate theatre.”

When she first met Jory, she had a different impression. This was on the set of her film “South of St. Louis” (1949), which we discussed here. Jory played a nasty villain. She thought him a “rather horrible person” who was, “dirty, bewhiskered and wearing baggy pants.”

This had become Jory’s fate by the 1940s. Syndicated Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas visited the set of “South of St. Louis”, as picked up by the St. Petersburg, Florida Evening Independent June 14, 1948:

“Victor Jory, the mug they love to slug, was being pummeled by Joel McCrea when I visited the “South of St. Louis” set. The poor guy was being bounced all over the barroom…”

In his acting career, Jory noted in that article he had broken his collarbone twice, five ribs, a thumb and a toe, received numerous cuts and bruises. In private life, he was much better able to handle Joel McCrea or anybody else. A champion amateur boxer, (and a champion wrestler as well as boxer while in the U.S. Coast Guard) he held his own both in the ring, and out of it when provoked.

It had been, first, a hardscrabble childhood. He was born in Alaska and spent his babyhood in the Yukon where his parents had attempted, unsuccessfully, to try their luck during the Gold Rush. They separated at his birth (though Jory’s birthday is always listed as November 1902, there is some information supplied by his daughter, Jean Jory Anderson on a website dedicated to Jory family genealogy that her father was actually born the following April 1903, with some speculation as to his natural father). His mother was a newspaperwoman, and she and her son scraped by financially for many years.

They came back to the US and he spent his childhood in Oregon and California, and then to Vancouver, where he juggled both acting and boxing.

In an article by Nancy Anderson in the Oxnard, California Press-Courier from March 13, 1977, Jory recalled, “I did both, because my mother and I were very poor and we needed all the money I could earn.”

The boxing matches started at 7:30 in the evening, and the theater curtain rose at 8:30. It was a tight squeeze.

“I could get $7.50 a week fighting in Vancouver. Then I could run over to the theater and do my walk-on and get another $1.50 a night.”

It was with another stock company in Denver that he met his future wife, actress Jean Inness. They eloped and were married 50 years until her death in 1978. They appeared together on stage on many occasions.

His first crack at Hollywood came in 1930. In the early years he had a few opportunities to play the romantic lead, such as in “Party Wire” (1935) with Jean Arthur. Here is a smooth-faced, handsome Victor Jory saving the day when his lady friend is threatened by vicious gossip.

He played Lamont Cranston in “The Shadow” serial, but hero roles were for the most part denied him. We are fortunate to have “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935), which we discussed here, as an example of Jory’s Shakespearean talents. He is the masterful Oberon, King of the Fairies in one of Hollywood’s unusual forays into an artistic film rather than a purely commercial one. His voice is perfect for Shakespeare, with precise intonation and resonant pitch such as actors develop only with stage experience.

Probably he is best remembered as Jonas Wilkerson, the smarmy overseer in “Gone With the Wind” (1939), a brief role that carried him into film villainy for at least a couple of decades.

A film he did later in his career, “The Miracle Worker” (1962) moves him from villain to just bombastic curmudgeon in the role of Captain Keller, the father of Helen Keller. He is marvelous in the role, and though a foil for the new teacher, Annie Sullivan, played by Anne Bancroft, we become sympathetic with this blustering, aging ex-Confederate officer largely through Jory’s heartfelt performance.

We see his difficult relationship with his grown son by a former marriage. His tenderness with his new young wife, played by Inga Swenson. In this screen cap, we see her horror and his intensity as they suddenly discover their infant daughter Helen can neither see, nor hear them. He shouts, shrieks into her face and claps his hands to make noise, but the baby does not respond.

Later in the movie, we see his weariness, his suspicion of Annie Sullivan’s methods, his disdain for her strong personality. Finally, we see his awe, his heartbreaking sense of wonder when the child Helen, played by Patty Duke, learns to communicate. He was not nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, but he should have been.

Reminiscing on his career with Gary Luhr of the Bowling Green, Kentucky Daily News, May 4, 1971, Jory recalled some 140 films under his belt, 480 stage shows at that time, 500 TV shows, and 200 radio programs. He also wrote a travel column. His passions were fishing, and collecting recipes. Jory was a gourmet cook. One wonders if Alexis Smith, who later became a gourmet cook and voracious collector of recipes herself, was as inspired by Victor Jory in cooking as she was in theatre.

At the time of that article, Jory and his wife were living in Louisville, Kentucky, where they performed in several shows at the Louisville Actors Theatre. Their son, Jon, was the producing director of that prestigious regional theater for over three decades. There are three performance spaces at the Louisville Actors Theatre. The smallest, opened in April 1973, is named the Victor Jory Theatre.

Though Alexis Smith’s first unpleasant memory of Victor Jory was as a filthy saddle tramp in “South of St. Louis”, they both did actually appear in “Lady with Red Hair” (1940) some nine years earlier. He had a small role in this Miriam Hopkins and Claude Rains feature, and Alexis had an uncredited walk-on as Girl at Wedding. It is possible they never met. Coincidentally, her future husband, Craig Stevens, also had an uncredited walk-on. Not so coincidentally, Bess Flowers showed up, too. What were you expecting?

After “South of St. Louis”, Alexis and Victor Jory worked on one more film together, “Cave of Outlaws” (1951). He’s still a villain here, but considerably cleaned up, a man of wealth and power.  He vies with Macdonald Carey for the love of the typically cool and aloof Alexis.  He gets beaten up again.

It was on the set of “Cave of Outlaws” where she and Victor got to know each other better. They talked of theatre, of his experience in it, and her desire to pursue it. They formed the plan of working together. In the following year, they found themselves in an unexpected hit in “Private Lives”.

The next year, they met with further success in “Bell, Book and Candle”. Their performances were sold out, largely on the strength of their previous hit.  From the Lewiston (Maine) Evening Journal, July 3, 1953. Smith and Jory “broke all attendance records at the same theater last year with their presentation of ‘Private Lives’.” They had opened their tour of “Bell, Book and Candle” in Ogunquit, Maine at the famed Ogunquit Playhouse “to the pleasure of all that saw them there.”

Hollywood was entering a precarious period in the early 1950s. Between the studios cutting back on productions, the court-mandated breaking up of movie theater properties, the competition from television, and the Communist witch hunts going on in the industry, actors were being booted out from the system or else voluntarily fleeing for work on the stage or television. It was, not so coincidentally, one of the most celebrated periods of summer theatre, a time when great names and great plays were brought together, and the stage flourished.

Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas noted the loss of acting jobs in the film industry, syndicated in the Waycross (Georgia) Journal-Herald, September 18, 1953. The article’s ominous headline:

Situation Looks

Grim for Persons

Seeking Film Jobs

He interviewed actor William Holden, who at that time was Vice President of the Screen Actors Guild. Mr. Holden noted that MGM was planning to produce 18 films that year, compared to 40 or 50 films per year done in the past. Paramount was slotted to make 12 movies, and Fox was also slated to make only 12. TV became a haven for struggling actors, not just new actors, but the old character actors who could comfortably fit into several movies a year, even if they grumbled about being typecast as the maid or the heavy. At least they had work. Now, there was little to go around.

Victor Jory already had that problem licked. He was a working actor. The stage was his second home.

Holden noted, “The stage offers a lot more work, particularly in summer theatre. Alexis Smith and Victor Jory just came back from a long tour and made a lot of money.”

To moviegoers, Jory may have been the smarmy Jonas Wilkerson, or the grimy saddle tramp, but to stage audiences he was the witty and urbane sophisticate. The playboy. He was Henry VIII. He was a character actor in that he could play anybody.  Tennessee Williams' "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof".  Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman".  Roles of depth and substance, and fine writing that was worthy of his talent.  On stage, he was the star.

Please have a look at the other blogs participating in the What A Character blogathon.

Stop by my New England Travels blog tomorrow for a bit more on Victor Jory’s and Alexis Smith’s New England summer theatre tours.

Golden Age Perspectives on Film Sex and Violence

In a recent article in the Hollywood Reporter (August 3, 2012), director Peter Bogdanovich is interviewed (as told to Gregg Kilday) on movie violence and the horrific movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado this past July. Mr. Bogdanovich’s directorial debut in 1968 was, coincidentally, “Targets”, which concludes with a sniper shooting the audience at a drive-in movie.  He also wrote the screenplay.

Bogdanovich responds, “Violence on the screen has increased tenfold. It's almost pornographic. In fact, it is pornographic. Video games are violent, too. It's all out of control. I can see where it would drive somebody crazy.”

Mr. Bogdanovich’s remark may be refreshing to many of us classic film fans, whose preference for older films may indicate a preference for less film violence and the opinion that film violence can inspire a more violent society (obviously not necessarily the opinion of all of us). I wonder if his opinion is based only on his being a veteran filmmaker questioning the course younger filmmakers are taking? His “Targets” was shocking for its day and meant to be. But then, he was a much younger man.

Does his moral outrage simply stem from getting older?

Emotional and mental maturity are worthy of respect. Often it seems our present day mores are rife with ignorance and immaturity.

How much movies play into making our society more violent or sexually promiscuous one could discuss forever and never reach agreement. What I find interesting, and quite poignant, are the first calls against film violence and graphic sexual situations from those classic film actors who found themselves, like Peter Bogdanovich, getting older in an industry so drastically changed that they no longer recognized it.  How bewildering that must have seemed.

How much more shocking would the films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, perhaps films like “Target” been to a Golden Age studio contract player now middle aged or older and still looking for work?

Mary Astor: “I admire nudity and I like sex, and so did a lot of people in the Thirties. But, to me, overexposure blunts the fun…Sex as something beautiful may soon disappear. Once it was a knife so finely honed the edge was invisible until it was touched and then it cut deep. Now it is so blunt that it merely bruises and leaves ugly marks. Nudity is fine in the privacy of my own bedroom with the appropriate partner. Or for a model in life class at art school. Or as portrayed in stone and paint. But I don’t like it used as a joke or to titillate. Or be so bloody frank about.” (Mary Astor- A Life on Film, NY: Delacorte Press, 1971, pp 90-91).

Audrey Hepburn: “It’s all sex and violence. I don’t like guns, and I can’t strip because I don’t have the body for it. I’m too scrawny. So I don’t know what the future holds…But, whatever happens, the most important thing is growing old gracefully.” (Rex Reed, Valentines & Vitriol, NY: Delacorte Press, 1977, p.59)

Victor Jory: “I don’t know if it’s a moral thing or not…but over the years—and I started acting when I was 16—you develop certain standards. I don’t want to be photographed with naked ladies and I don’t want to say certain words in films. In private conversation, I use four-letter words, but I don’t want to use them in front of an audience” (Syndicated, NEA, Williamson (West Virginia) Daily News, May 23, 1977, p. 8)

Ginger Rogers: “I enjoyed a happy image in films. Why should I become a destructive force in the minds of the young people in this country who grew to love Fred and Ginger on the Late Show? No, thank you. I can do creative things elsewhere. I don’t want to stoop to horror films.” (Reed, p. 158)

Mary Astor: “I don’t think Garbo with her clothes off, panting in a brass bed, would have been more sexy than she was.” (Astor,p. 92)

Dana Andrews, during his tenure as President of the Screen Actors Guild denounced nude scenes as demeaning for actresses (New York Times, December 23, 1963).

William Holden accepted both his age and the state of the movies, even welcomed it, on his return in “Network” (1976): “What am I? A craggy-faced, middle-aged man. I can’t grow younger. People seeing “Network” say, ‘God! He’s getting old.’ Fortunately, they don’t have reruns of their past on TV…at least I no longer have to sit on the edge of Gloria Swanson’s bed with one foot on the floor and my overcoat on. The movies have grown up and so have I.” (Reed, p. 189).

Holden was one of the few Golden Age stars who, if they wished, could find work in starring roles in the 1970s, not just cameo roles.   We might compare him to Meryl Streep or Clint Eastwood, who both are commanding fabulous salaries and are as much in demand as they were, say, 30 years ago in the early 1980s. They are older--elderly--but their stature as stars has only grown and not diminished with age.

But, despite the fantastic technological developments--computers, cell phones, etc.--in our everyday lives, the movies have not changed as drastically in the 30-year period between 1982 and 2012, as they did between, say 1940 and 1970. Our social standards, for want of a better term, are not that different today from the early ‘80s. Television has changed; the language and subject matter of network “family” shows today are equal to (or surpass) what was shown on late-night TV in the early ‘80s, and cable television surpasses everything.

The movies have plateaued to a level of public taste being irrelevant, or, judging from the box office take of many films, non-existent. It has become, using the terminology of the stock market for a moment--“what the market will bear.”

In the early 1970s the Golden Age stars observed the first experimentations with pushing the boundaries, and they must have felt like dinosaurs.

Mary Astor: “I admire the young film-makers for trying new things, new concepts, but I think they are just as much in danger of getting trapped in clichés as at any time in film-making history. Audiences will get just as tire of people wrestling in bed as they did of Tom Mix kissing his horse.” (Astor, pp. 186-187)

Pearl Bailey: “Why do all the movies have to be pornographic? Ten minutes after the picture starts, before I get the popcorn open, they’re in bed. For every ten minutes in the bed, I’d like to see fifteen minutes in the shower gettin’ clean again. Equal time for hygiene, that’s all. The courts let the criminals go free, nobody controls the guns the maniacs are carrying around—there are a thousand things we gotta change instead of worryin’ about who’s got the oil and who’s got the wheat.” (Reed, p. 83)

Mary Astor again, perhaps most eloquent on the impact of film: “We need identification that can purge but not lower one’s spirit…This is not accomplished by shotgun stimulation. Multiple action, strobe lighting, flashing, psychedelic color, split second subliminal cuts. It’s exciting, yes, but very tiring.” (Astor, p. 92)

“…To ‘tell it like it is’ is an impertinence, because it just isn’t, not everywhere. Therefore, it becomes propagandizing.” (Astor, p. 93)

Peter Bogdanovich, from the article noted above: “Today, there's a general numbing of the audience. There's too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it's not so terrible. Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, 'We're brutalizing the audience. We're going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.' The respect for human life seems to be eroding.”

Perhaps modern filmmakers, and their younger audiences, would benefit from a greater familiarity with the heritage of classic film. It tends to lend perspective. Perspective lends maturity.  Personally, I am more offended by childishness and stupidity than I am by scenes of sex or violence (though I find heavily resorting to using sex and violence to tell a story both immature and stupid).

Don Ameche, though not risen to the level of superstar like Meryl Streep or Clint Eastwood, nevertheless was one Golden Age star who enjoyed a brief movie “comeback” in 1983 with a supporting role in “Trading Places.” He was required to use profanity, and though it made him uncomfortable, he compromised. He would perform only one take.

And he apologized to everyone on set before he cussed.

Mary Astor: “…I watch the new ones, the new breed, and when they do something great and fine, I’m proud. And when they do things that are blatantly bad, I am ashamed. But I don’t disinherit them, for no matter how much they may feel that it is a whole new thing, it isn’t really. It is a continuation. For what they have today was built upon the great and find and the blatantly bad jobs we did—we old movie-makers.” (Astor, p.219)

South of St. Louis - 1949

“South of St. Louis” (1949) displays an almost startling lack of moral righteousness. Set in the comfortable Western venue, the good guys, instead of seeking justice, are looking for a profit. Against the backdrop of the American Civil War, what sides are taken are easily abandoned. Its moral ambiguity could make it film noir, except it’s shot in Technicolor and a burst of final sentiment makes over ninety minutes of vendetta crumble away. Still, there are no lessons, no morals, except to let go of one’s hatred because it kills everything around you.

On this Memorial Day, we once again turn our attention to Hollywood’s treatment of the Civil War, the war that gave us Memorial Day.

The prologue narration describes a “wall of hate between North and South,” but if we are expecting a story of torn loyalties, we get fooled. There is precious little loyalty to either North or South going on in this movie.

Joel McCrea, Zachary Scott, and Douglas Kennedy are pals who run a ranch together in Texas. The ranch is called Three Bell, and they each wear a tiny bell on one spur that jingles when they walk. When they are off rounding up cattle, Victor Jory and his band of raiders burn out the ranch, abscond with some cattle and chase off the rest. The three pals are left with nothing.

Victor Jory, in his patented nasty heavy role is currently working for the Union Army, which has just taken the border town Brownsville, Texas from the Confederates. Jory scatters and terrorizes the settlers.

One of which is Dorothy Malone, who here is a couple years after her intriguing book shop proprietress from “The Big Sleep” (1946), and several years away from her Oscar-winning mambo in “Written on the Wind” (1956). You might not recognize her in her long brown curls and gingham. She’s as pretty -- and as static -- as a daisy. Not her fault, though. She clearly got the leftovers on this gig.

The flashy part goes to Alexis Smith as dance hall singer Rouge. She was quoted in an article by Bob Thomas syndicated in the Regina, Saskatchewan Ledger-Post (July 28, 1948): “It’s a pleasure to be playing someone named ‘Rouge’ after seven years of ‘Ceciles’”.  It amuses me that Canadian newspapers back in the day never missed a chance to publish anything on Alexis Smith, usually heading the article "Penticton, B.C. girl...."

She elaborated her delight on shifting from icy clotheshorse to lusty babe for the Dayton Beach Morning Journal (June 15, 1948): “For seven years I’ve played society dame parts and begged for a role with guts. Now I’ve got my wish and I’ll probably spend the next seven years wishing to get back into clothes.”

Not likely.  The seven-year contract days were ending for the Hollywood studios, and she would soon be, along with hundreds of others, cast into the freelance lagoon to sink or swim.

Joel McCrea and the boys head for Brownsville to beat up Victor Jory for torching their ranch. McCrea, his matinee idol face now craggy and softer -- he would turn to cowboy movies pretty much for good now -- tells Jory to get out of Texas. Jory flees to Matamoros, Mexico, just over the Rio Grande.

The movie is kind of "a tale of two cities" -- Brownsville and Matamoros.

Zachary Scott and McCrea have to scrounge up some money to replace their herd and fix their ranch. This is where Alexis Smith comes in.  She sets them up in the gunrunning business. They will take weapons from Matamoros into Texas and sell them to the Confederate Army.

Douglas Kennedy bows out, decides he wants to join the Confederate Army. His pals tease him. There is no question of fighting for “the cause” for McCrea or Scott. Neither of them are pacifists or Unionists -- they hate the Yankee soldiers in Brownsville -- but they wander around in a most curiously self-involved cloud, as if the monumental events of the day, the battles ranging all around them are far away and none of their business.

Their self-preservation is not unique. Everybody in Brownsville is afflicted with it. When Joel makes his first gunrunning attempt and gets caught by the Union Army, he is sent to the stockade, possibly to be shot -- Alexis bribes the marshals to get him out.

She explains, “They’re southerners -- for $100 gold.”

There is much back and forth between Brownsville and Matamoros. McCrea and Scott get themselves a band of cutthroats to help them smuggle the guns into Texas. One of these men, played by Bob Steele, wears a long knife in his belt and has an almost psychotic silent-movie stare. No wonder, for Mr. Steele, who made about a zillion westerns, began his film career in 1920.

The gunrunning trade shows us a complex economy. They pick up the guns in Matamoros, and sell them to the Confederates in Texas, but are paid in Texas cotton. Then they must take the cotton back to Matamoros where they sell it to a British agent for pounds. Remember, the Union blockade of southern ports hit the British textile industry. The cotton mills of Manchester were waiting for Joel McCrea to get them some more raw material.

All this has been set up by Alexis, a shrewd businesswoman with no seeming loyalty to North or South. When we meet her, she is singing in Alan Hale’s saloon (Hale too little used, by the way), “Yankee Doodle.” The Union men are cheering her and buying another round, making Mr. Hale very rich and very happy. Later on, after the Confederates have taken Brownsville again (though actually the Union Army abandoned Brownsville), she sings to Confederate men, noting to Zachary Scott, “I’ve got a couple of fences that need mending.”

Hale is happy, too, for after all, he stresses he was born in Missouri. Alexis is from Baton Rouge (her nickname Rouge is from her birthplace and not her fancy gal cosmetics). Both southerners, each blows with the wind. (All the main characters in this movie are southern, and none have appropriate accents.)

Alexis’ singing in this movie is done by herself, according to the syndicated article in The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, December 29, 1949), but the IMDb lists her as being dubbed by Bonnie Lou Williams. I believe the first number, “Yankee Doodle” is definitely Alexis, but I’m not sure about the other two numbers. In the quiet, sultry, “Too Much Love”, which she croons, bitterly tipsy, to Joel McCrea could be dubbed, but it’s just such a good vocal match it’s hard to tell. I’m even less certain about the third song, “It Must Be Fun to Have a Soldier”.

Somewhere between gunrunning and vendettas with Victor Jory, Miss Smith has fallen hard for Joel, who is planning to marry Dorothy Malone. Smith’s “How pretty is she? Very pretty? Kip, is she very pretty?” shows the showy saloon girl with a heart full of pain, asking for what can only hurt her.

Her song and dance number, “It Must Be Fun to Have a Soldier” comes with other consequences. You can see as she sings that the dark beauty spot located just to the right side of her mouth has slipped off her face and landed conspicuously on her right breast.  Blooper?  Joke?

For those of you who sing in public, please be sure your beauty spot is fastened firmly to your face, or you may lose it on the next chorus. This has been a public service announcement from Another Old Movie Blog - Serving Your Old Movie and Saloon Girl Cosmetic Needs Since 2007.

Dorothy Malone, no beauty spot needed, works as a nurse in a makeshift hospital for Confederate soldiers. Douglas Kennedy has become an officer and is posted to Brownsville. In one of the most ironic scenes in the movie, McCrea’s gunrunning band dresses as Union men to steal weapons from Victory Jory and sneak across the border, but runs into a Confederate patrol. A skirmish occurs and men are killed on both sides. McCrea’s band, who are running guns in support of the Confederate Army, have just wiped out a Confederate patrol.

So many true-life senseless killings happened in that war, but rarely has old Hollywood acknowledged it, let alone treated it with such a blasé shrug of the shoulders. Douglas Kennedy finds out and is of course outraged, but no pangs of conscience hit his buddies.

“We couldn’t help it,” McCrea says, “They started shooting. We had to defend ourselves.”

“Defend the wagons, you mean,” Kennedy answers, “You were willing to fight us, kill our men, anything just to make sure you got your money.”

Vendettas continue between Jory, who is no longer working for the Union Army, but is selling guns to the Confederates in competition with McCrea and Scott. Scott takes it up a notch by looking the other way when Bob Steele attempts to assassinate McCrea so they could have a greater share of the wealth.

The only two people with a sense of commitment are Dorothy Malone and Douglas Kennedy, who finally commit to each other and intend to marry, and McCrea is disgusted at one buddy who tries to kill him and one who steals his girl. It is from disgust, more than any moral epiphany, that he resigns from the gunrunning business and tells Scott he can have all the money.

Alexis follows him, even though he doesn’t want her, and Zachary Scott, who fancies her himself, wants to know why she’d give up a lucrative business for a saddle tramp who doesn’t even know she’s alive.

“He ain’t got nothing but the clothes on his back.”

“It’s how you wear them, Charlie,” she responds, “It’s all in how you wear ‘em.”

Eventually he does notice Alexis in a scene more sweet than passionate, and has a final showdown, helping Douglas Kennedy, now a Texas Ranger that the “hostilities have ended” -- you’d think the end of the war was nothing more than a passing thunderstorm -- fight off the bad guys.

We hear the tiny jingle of silver bells on their spurs, and cut to a shot of Zachary Scott’s face. Will he remember past friendships? Will he have a change of heart before the trigger is pulled?

There is no sense of redemption for anyone, but a lesson nevertheless as Alexis slams Joel, who is caught it a morass of anger, self-pity and vengeance, “What are you going to do, spend the rest of your life getting even?”

With malice toward none, with charity to all.

A peaceful day of solemn remembrance to everyone this Memorial Day.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

A Midsummer Nights Dream (1935) is almost startlingly good. I’m not sure if its being good is unexpected because Warner Bros. was more noted for its grim gangster fare, or the presumption that Hollywood was ever too shallow for the likes of the Bard, but then, this is a fantasy piece and Hollywood has always known how to spin fantasy. It is their realm. 

The cast is wonderful, and a real mixed bag. Olivia de Havilland in her first film role, plays Hermia with lovely confidence, masterfully, perhaps because she came to this film straight from her stage appearance as Hermia at the Hollywood Bowl. Victor Jory imposingly glowers as Oberon, King of the Fairies, 14-year-old Mickey Rooney is good as Puck, the mischievous fairy. With all the enthusiasm of that precocious child actor, he appears almost crazed at times, taking wild pleasure as he scoffs, “What fools these mortals be!” and handles the Shakespearean dialogue better than your average 14-year old. His voice seems to be changing. 

Joe E. Brown is hysterical as Flute, the Bellows-Maker, a rubber-faced peasant who plays the female Thisby in the play-within-a-play that the local town tradesmen are putting on in competition for the Duke. Frank McHugh heads the erstwhile amateur thespians as Quince the Joiner. 

Most truly outstanding of all, is James Cagney as Bottom the Weaver, who plays the part the best I’ve ever seen anyone play it. Cagney clearly relishes this role, throws his whole being into it, without an ounce of inhibition. His clipped and precise diction is remarkably well suited to Shakespeare. Bottom, the typical community theatre ham, wants to play all the roles, and his enthusiasm has to be restrained. His scenes romancing Thisby played by Joe E. Brown, dressed in a long wig and truly sad breast prosthetics, are very, very funny. Their bumbling Romeo and Juliet style demise at the end of their play for the Duke is utterly ridiculous. Mr. Cagney also gets to sing for us a bit when he is changed into an ass by a magical spell. 

The special effects on this film are simple and somewhat crude, but perhaps all the more theatrical because they are simple. The actors, Cagney especially, all seem to look natural in their Shakespearean dress. Only Dick Powell, who plays Lysander, in love with Hermia, seems too modern, with his wise guy mannerisms. He appears like a fellow wandering around lost from 42nd Street. 

The production gives us a glistening forest, dewy cobwebs, actors as fairies flying on wires, and a bit of fog like a werewolf movie. There are a few outdoor shots of forest deer, but most of the film is shot on a rather claustrophobic set of gnarled trees and mossy glens. Rooney makes his entrance climbing right up out of the ground through a clump of leaves, screeching as if in a horror movie. The film is magical, like the Felix Mendelssohn score, like the spidery fairies, like a dream. 

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

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.