Tuesday, November 7, 2017
311 - Sullivan's Travels, United States, 1941. Dir. Preston Sturges.
Whatever the story, a talking picture is only as good as its dialogue. I believe good dialogue is the cheapest insurance a producer can buy. - Preston Sturges to Jesse L. Lasky.
Preston Sturges paved the way for a new kind of talent in Hollywood.
The Writer-Director.
Before him, writers worked in committees, were paid their salary, and had little say in the final outcome of the pictures on which they worked.
Sturges changed all that.
John Huston and Billy Wilder followed shortly after. Then Orson Welles and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Woody Allen. Quentin Tarantino. Wes Anderson. Paul Thomas Anderson. David O. Russell. Joss Whedon. Christopher Nolan.
It is common today.
Of course Charlie Chaplin came before him, but he owned his own studio. Sturges worked for a major studio, Paramount, and he had to negotiate his way into being allowed to direct his own script. He did it by selling the screenplay to The Great McGinty for $1 in order to be allowed to direct, and then turning in a money-making hit.
This was after twenty-five movies had been made with him as writer alone. Twenty-five.
The Great McGinty started a string of a dozen in a decade, including eight in five years at Paramount, after which his place as one of the great American comedic filmmakers was secured.
John L. "Sully" Sullivan is a successful studio director of light comedies. His hits include such titles as So Long Sarong, Hey-Hey in the Hayloft, and Ants in Your Plants of 1939. The studio executives love him. He brings home the bacon. But he is dissatisfied. He wants to make a serious picture. Something socially serious. The Grapes of Wrath is in the air. And Frank Capra. He wants to make a picture about the hard life of rural Great Depression and call it O Brother Where Art Thou?
Yes! Sullivan's Travels, which ostensibly gets its name from Gulliver's Travels, in turn gives the name to the Coen Brothers' 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou?, which in turn pretends to be an adaptation of The Odyssey,
Sullivan, who grew up in boarding schools for the wealthy, wants to live the life of a hobo so that he can understand poverty and suffering. His bosses understand this to be a mistake. They try to talk him out of it. They acknowledge that there is precedent for serious social movies to make money, but he is not the man for the job. He is the last one who would understand the plight of the poor. When they fail to talk him out of it, they end up following him in a publicity RV, a "land yacht," in order to milk the story for promotion.
He convinces them to wait two weeks for him in Las Vegas, and during that time he meets a struggling girl, a washed-up extra on her way out of town. She is kind to him, and he is impressed. He tries to help her without revealing who he really is, but through a series of unfortunate events, she comes to understand. And by then, she wants to be with him.
So they set out again, this time together, and they experience the kind of hardships one can go back and write about without having ever really experienced any.
It will take another turn of events before Sullivan will learn what real hardship means.
And Sturges brilliantly inserts serious social commentary into a comedy that otherwise affirms comedy while satirizing serious social commentary. He knows how to communicate while remaining in his wheelhouse.
Of course Sullivan is named after Gulliver, and his story stands in the tradition of that other satire, but he is also named after a contemporaneously famous boxer named John L. Sullivan.
The title O Brother Where Art Thou? was also alluded to in several other works before the Coen Brothers made their feature. Naturally, they would make theirs a comedy more in the vein of Sullivan's Travels than in The Odyssey, which they stated later that they had not read.
During a conversation with the Girl, Sully tosses out the name of another fictional film, Hold Back Tomorrow. A film with that title came out a few years later in 1955, directed by Hugo Haas.
In the end Sullivan will learn his lesson not from his amateurish efforts at hoboing, but while listening to a sermon in a black church, while being arrested and put on a chain gang, and while watching Mickey Mouse and Pluto in Walt Disney's 1934 Playful Pluto.
The insights he finally gains from these experiences will form his new aesthetic.
Which is an affirmation of his old one.
"There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? . . . It's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Monday, November 6, 2017
310 - The Lady Eve, United States, 1941. Dir. Preston Sturges.
Monday, November 6, 2017
310 - The Lady Eve, United States, 1941. Dir. Preston Sturges.
Charles Pike has been called Hopsie since he was six years old. Hopsie, because he was born into a brewing family fortune. Pike's Pale! The Ale that Won the Yale!
He himself, however, does not like beer. In a great line he states that he does not like beer, bock, lager, steam, pale ale, brown ale, nut brown ale, porter, or stout. He does not, however, mention Dunkel, Gose, Hefeweizen, Helles, Kolsch, Lambic, Malt Liquor, Marzen, Oktoberfest, Pilsner, Saison, Schwarzbier, or Witbier, but then who is counting?
If Hopsie does not like hops, what does Pike like?
Snakes.
Snakes?
Snakes.
He is an ophidologist.
He practices ophidology. He studies ophidians.
He has just spent the past year in the Amazon with his associate Muggsy. Really.
Muggsy is played by William Demarest, one of history's great character actors. You may know him from his seven years as Uncle Charlie on the television series My Three Sons. Or from one of about a gazillion movies in which he appeared. It is only 1941, and The Lady Eve is something like his seventieth feature film. And he has something like seventy to go. William Demarest was a workhorse.
Hopsie has not seen a woman in over a year, but Muggsy sure has. He has wasted no time entering into a relationship with one of the natives. Now they are going back, and Pike expresses his sentiments.
"If I had my way, believe me, this is the way I'd like to spend all my time--in the company of men like yourselves in the pursuit of knowledge."
He is not thinking of women. He is thinking of snakes. In fact, he is bringing one with him, Emma, a marked garter snake, coiled amiably in her box. Once a day he will be feeding her a couple flies and a sip of milk, and maybe a pigeon's egg on Sundays.
Professor Jones replies, "Be careful of the traffic. You haven't dodged any in a long time."
Mac adds, "And be careful of the dames. You haven't dodged any of them in a long time either."
If only Mac knew how prophetic he was being.
Dodging dames is one thing. But dodging Barbara Stanwyck, well, that just might be too much to ask of Henry Fonda.
In fact, not only will he not dodge her, but he will also trip over her. Three times in the film. The first when she sticks out her leg as he walks by her booth on board the ship.
She has just held him in the palm of her hand. Or held his image in her compact mirror, anyway. As she has just spent the last few minutes making fun of all the single ladies attempting to throw themselves at this most eligible bachelor, the fortunate heir of the beer fortune.
Pike is too busy reading his book, Are Snakes Necessary?, to fall for amateur seductresses. But he sure can fall for a professional.
After Pike picks himself up off the floor, she blames him. For breaking her heel. Then she manipulates him into walking her to her stateroom to pick out another pair for her to wear.
She is Eugenia Harrington. H-a-double r-i . . . um . . . n-g-t-o-n spells Harrington. You try to sing it. People call her Jean. She is with her father. He is a colonel. Or so he calls himself. Like Colonel Parker. Or Colonel Sanders. Not really.
They are cardsharks. Or cardsharps. Whichever. They play cards. They cheat. They take your money. Hopsie is a millionaire. They are there to play him. And cheat. And take his money.
When they saw him boarding the ship, Jean stated, "Gee, I hope he's rich." Her father responded, "Don't be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked but never common."
Then she dropped an apple on his head. She is Eve, after all. She will return in one of her ploys as Lady Eve.
There is just one problem with their little scheme.
Jean is human. She has a heart. She is capable of falling too.
Perhaps it starts when he kneels like Prince Charming and places her shoe on her foot like Cinderella. Or when Emma the snake helps him by scaring Jean into falling off the chaise and into his arms.
The predator is smitten with her prey.
But even if she is tempted to stop the chicanery, her father is not.
And things might just not turn out the way anyone expects them to.
Stay tuned for some twists.
In this madcap slapstick screwball comedy.
This is our third film in a few days starring Henry Fonda. In three very different performances. And our first with Barbara Stanwyck. And the first of four with Preston Sturges. Who in the early 1940s underwent a period of productivity like none other.
310 - The Lady Eve, United States, 1941. Dir. Preston Sturges.
Charles Pike has been called Hopsie since he was six years old. Hopsie, because he was born into a brewing family fortune. Pike's Pale! The Ale that Won the Yale!
He himself, however, does not like beer. In a great line he states that he does not like beer, bock, lager, steam, pale ale, brown ale, nut brown ale, porter, or stout. He does not, however, mention Dunkel, Gose, Hefeweizen, Helles, Kolsch, Lambic, Malt Liquor, Marzen, Oktoberfest, Pilsner, Saison, Schwarzbier, or Witbier, but then who is counting?
If Hopsie does not like hops, what does Pike like?
Snakes.
Snakes?
Snakes.
He is an ophidologist.
He practices ophidology. He studies ophidians.
He has just spent the past year in the Amazon with his associate Muggsy. Really.
Muggsy is played by William Demarest, one of history's great character actors. You may know him from his seven years as Uncle Charlie on the television series My Three Sons. Or from one of about a gazillion movies in which he appeared. It is only 1941, and The Lady Eve is something like his seventieth feature film. And he has something like seventy to go. William Demarest was a workhorse.
Hopsie has not seen a woman in over a year, but Muggsy sure has. He has wasted no time entering into a relationship with one of the natives. Now they are going back, and Pike expresses his sentiments.
"If I had my way, believe me, this is the way I'd like to spend all my time--in the company of men like yourselves in the pursuit of knowledge."
He is not thinking of women. He is thinking of snakes. In fact, he is bringing one with him, Emma, a marked garter snake, coiled amiably in her box. Once a day he will be feeding her a couple flies and a sip of milk, and maybe a pigeon's egg on Sundays.
Mac adds, "And be careful of the dames. You haven't dodged any of them in a long time either."
If only Mac knew how prophetic he was being.
Dodging dames is one thing. But dodging Barbara Stanwyck, well, that just might be too much to ask of Henry Fonda.
In fact, not only will he not dodge her, but he will also trip over her. Three times in the film. The first when she sticks out her leg as he walks by her booth on board the ship.
She has just held him in the palm of her hand. Or held his image in her compact mirror, anyway. As she has just spent the last few minutes making fun of all the single ladies attempting to throw themselves at this most eligible bachelor, the fortunate heir of the beer fortune.
Pike is too busy reading his book, Are Snakes Necessary?, to fall for amateur seductresses. But he sure can fall for a professional.
After Pike picks himself up off the floor, she blames him. For breaking her heel. Then she manipulates him into walking her to her stateroom to pick out another pair for her to wear.
She is Eugenia Harrington. H-a-double r-i . . . um . . . n-g-t-o-n spells Harrington. You try to sing it. People call her Jean. She is with her father. He is a colonel. Or so he calls himself. Like Colonel Parker. Or Colonel Sanders. Not really.
They are cardsharks. Or cardsharps. Whichever. They play cards. They cheat. They take your money. Hopsie is a millionaire. They are there to play him. And cheat. And take his money.
When they saw him boarding the ship, Jean stated, "Gee, I hope he's rich." Her father responded, "Don't be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked but never common."
Then she dropped an apple on his head. She is Eve, after all. She will return in one of her ploys as Lady Eve.
There is just one problem with their little scheme.
Jean is human. She has a heart. She is capable of falling too.
Perhaps it starts when he kneels like Prince Charming and places her shoe on her foot like Cinderella. Or when Emma the snake helps him by scaring Jean into falling off the chaise and into his arms.
The predator is smitten with her prey.
But even if she is tempted to stop the chicanery, her father is not.
And things might just not turn out the way anyone expects them to.
Stay tuned for some twists.
In this madcap slapstick screwball comedy.
This is our third film in a few days starring Henry Fonda. In three very different performances. And our first with Barbara Stanwyck. And the first of four with Preston Sturges. Who in the early 1940s underwent a period of productivity like none other.
Sunday, November 5, 2017
309 - The Front Page, United States, 1931. Dir. Lewis Milestone.
Sunday, November 6, 2017
309 - The Front Page, United States, 1931. Dir. Lewis Milestone.
Lewis Milestone started making movies in the 19-teens.
By 1930 he had made All Quiet on the Western Front and had won the Academy Award for Best Director, as the film won the Academy for Best Picture. It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Writing.
He would go on to direct Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman in 1936's Anything Goes, Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939), Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan in additional scenes of William Wyler's The Westerner, Dana Andrews in A Walk in the Sun (1945), Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin in The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers (1946), Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum in John Steinbeck's The Red Pony (1949), his own version of Les Miserables (1952), Gregory Peck in Pork Chop Hill (1959), Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford in Ocean's 11 (1960), and Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).
Coming off that great Oscar win in 1930, Milestone next made a comedy based on a popular play written by former newspapermen Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.
Two days ago we watched Howard Hawks 1940 film His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant as Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson. Burn and Johson were ex-husband and wife who also worked together on the newspaper. The original Burns and Johnson, however, were both men. In this version, Adolphe Mejou plays Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien plays Hildebrand "Hildy" Johnson.
In this first version, Hildy is also quitting the business, in this case to get married. They are also holed up in the Chicago Criminal Courts Building. Earl Williams also escapes the Cook County jail before being hanged, crawls through the open upstairs window to the news room, and hides in the roll top desk.
The fast witty language was adapted by Bartlett Cormack, with additional dialogue by Charles Lederer (who would later adapt Hawks' version His Girl Friday).
Folks assume that the Howard Hawks 1940 version His Girl Friday is automatically faster paced. However, Hawks himself did not believe so. He believed they were about the same speed. He set up two projectors side by side and played both The Front Page and His Girl Friday onto screens alongside each other. He determined that the two films ran at about the same rate.
Check out the wit and physicality of 1931.
It is a different film.
But it is also funny.
309 - The Front Page, United States, 1931. Dir. Lewis Milestone.
Lewis Milestone started making movies in the 19-teens.
By 1930 he had made All Quiet on the Western Front and had won the Academy Award for Best Director, as the film won the Academy for Best Picture. It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Writing.
He would go on to direct Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman in 1936's Anything Goes, Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939), Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan in additional scenes of William Wyler's The Westerner, Dana Andrews in A Walk in the Sun (1945), Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin in The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers (1946), Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum in John Steinbeck's The Red Pony (1949), his own version of Les Miserables (1952), Gregory Peck in Pork Chop Hill (1959), Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford in Ocean's 11 (1960), and Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).
Coming off that great Oscar win in 1930, Milestone next made a comedy based on a popular play written by former newspapermen Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.
Two days ago we watched Howard Hawks 1940 film His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant as Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson. Burn and Johson were ex-husband and wife who also worked together on the newspaper. The original Burns and Johnson, however, were both men. In this version, Adolphe Mejou plays Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien plays Hildebrand "Hildy" Johnson.
In this first version, Hildy is also quitting the business, in this case to get married. They are also holed up in the Chicago Criminal Courts Building. Earl Williams also escapes the Cook County jail before being hanged, crawls through the open upstairs window to the news room, and hides in the roll top desk.
The fast witty language was adapted by Bartlett Cormack, with additional dialogue by Charles Lederer (who would later adapt Hawks' version His Girl Friday).
Folks assume that the Howard Hawks 1940 version His Girl Friday is automatically faster paced. However, Hawks himself did not believe so. He believed they were about the same speed. He set up two projectors side by side and played both The Front Page and His Girl Friday onto screens alongside each other. He determined that the two films ran at about the same rate.
Check out the wit and physicality of 1931.
It is a different film.
But it is also funny.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
308 - Red River, United States, 1948. Dir. Howard Hawks.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
308 - Red River, United States, 1948. Dir. Howard Hawks.
You love him, don't you? He must love you. That wouldn't be hard.
Tess Millay is speaking to Tom Dunson about Matt Garth. She met Matt eight days ago as he was driving 10,000 cattle from Texas to Abilene, Kansas, across a brand new path called the Chisolm Trail.
The cattle belong to Dunson. He branded them Red River D. Not M. He is the owner. The boss. And the adoptive father of Matt Garth.
And he is on his way to kill Matt.
Why?
This is a story about the love of an older man for a younger man. Father and son. Mentor and apprentice. Master and protege.
It is the story of the older man Nadine Groot, played by Walter Brennan, and the younger man Thomas Dunson, played by John Wayne.
It is the story of the older man Thomas Dunson and the younger man Matt Garth, played beautifully by Montgomery Clift.
There are brothers--or brother types--with Matt and Cherry Valance, played by John Ireland, and there are other older men, such as Harry Carey's Mr. Melville, who steps in as a father figure and helps Matt negotiate with Melville for the sale of the cattle.
Then there are the real father and son playing on the film--Harry Carey Sr. as Mr. Melville and Harry Carey Jr. as Dan Latimer.
Noah Beery Jr.'s father Noah Beery, however, does not appear, nor does his uncle Wallace Beery nor his father-in-law Buck Jones nor his son Buck Beery.
It is significant that Harry Carey's character is named Mr. Melville, as John Wayne's character shares strong similarities with Captain Ahab the whaler. He is after something. Obsessed with it. Willing to stake his life for it. Beginning to go mad with his obsession.
And the men are ready to mutiny.
Tom Dunson began on a wagon train fourteen years ago. And he decided to go out on his own. South. To Texas. Old Man Groot went with him. And they picked up the boy Matt Garth along the way. Matt was a kid. He escaped the attack by the Indians. The attack that Tom's girl Fen did not escape. He brought a cow with him. And added it to the three cows Dunson had.
They made their way to Texas. Crossed the Red River.
And made a life for themselves in the vast open land on which Dunson staked his claim. The Man. The Old Man. The Boy. With four cows. On thousands of acres of land. All alone. Together. Making their way.
Fourteen years later they have 10,000 cows.
They breed most of them. Appropriate some of them. Just as they did the land. Now they have their dream. Dunson's dream. The great cattle ranch with the Red River D.
But the Civil War and the corrupt Carpetbaggers from the North have taken away the cattle market in Texas, so they must head north to Missouri. A thousand miles. At ten miles a day. They will travel about a hundred days.
The hands sign up for hardship. Lean rations. Long days. Scarce clean water. Wind. Rain. Heat. Dust. Hostile Indians. Border gangs.
And Tom's cold, hard driving.
The one thing he demands is that you do not quit. If you try, he will go after you. Whip you with a lariat. Shoot you. Hang you. Whatever it takes to finish the job.
Tom hates quitters.
But he has pushed the men to the very edge.
And his father figure Groot and his son figure Garth must do something about it.
Fathers and Sons.
Turgenev, 1862.
Hemingway, 1933.
Does the father kill the son?
Abraham and Isaac. God and Jesus.
Does the son kill the father figure?
Oedipus and Laius. Hamlet and Claudius.
Does the father lose the son?
Jacob and Joseph. David and Absalom. Daedalus and Icarus.
Does the son lose the father?
Bambi. The Lion King.
Do they reunite?
The Prodigal Son.
How does the love of a woman intervene?
The man wants to build something with his own two hands. Then he wants a son to give it to, because he will not live forever. He wants to pass on his work. Leave a legacy.
Howard Hawks has made one of the most exciting films we have seen this year.
With 1,500 real cattle. Real horses. Real wagons. Real rivers. And real men really crossing them.
Vital. Significant. Alive.
It is Mr. Melville himself who says, "There's three times in a man's life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start."
Howard Hawks is all about that idea.
And we understand it.
* * * * *
Howard Hawks is one of the great directors. Telling vital stories in all the different genres. Working with great star actors. And great character actors. The list of his films is breathtaking. Here are just the more famous ones.
The Dawn Patrol (1930). Scarface (1932). Twentieth Century (1934). Barbary Coast (1935). Bringing Up Baby (1938). Only Angels Have Wings (1939). His Girl Friday (1940). Sergeant York (1941). To Have and Have Not (1944). The Big Sleep (1946). Red River (1948). A Song is Born (1948). I Was a Male War Bride (1949). The Thing from Another World (1949). Monkey Business (1952). Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Rio Bravo (1959). Hatari! (1962). El Dorado (1967). Rio Lobo (1970).
308 - Red River, United States, 1948. Dir. Howard Hawks.
You love him, don't you? He must love you. That wouldn't be hard.
Tess Millay is speaking to Tom Dunson about Matt Garth. She met Matt eight days ago as he was driving 10,000 cattle from Texas to Abilene, Kansas, across a brand new path called the Chisolm Trail.
The cattle belong to Dunson. He branded them Red River D. Not M. He is the owner. The boss. And the adoptive father of Matt Garth.
And he is on his way to kill Matt.
Why?
This is a story about the love of an older man for a younger man. Father and son. Mentor and apprentice. Master and protege.
It is the story of the older man Nadine Groot, played by Walter Brennan, and the younger man Thomas Dunson, played by John Wayne.
It is the story of the older man Thomas Dunson and the younger man Matt Garth, played beautifully by Montgomery Clift.
There are brothers--or brother types--with Matt and Cherry Valance, played by John Ireland, and there are other older men, such as Harry Carey's Mr. Melville, who steps in as a father figure and helps Matt negotiate with Melville for the sale of the cattle.
Then there are the real father and son playing on the film--Harry Carey Sr. as Mr. Melville and Harry Carey Jr. as Dan Latimer.
Noah Beery Jr.'s father Noah Beery, however, does not appear, nor does his uncle Wallace Beery nor his father-in-law Buck Jones nor his son Buck Beery.
It is significant that Harry Carey's character is named Mr. Melville, as John Wayne's character shares strong similarities with Captain Ahab the whaler. He is after something. Obsessed with it. Willing to stake his life for it. Beginning to go mad with his obsession.
And the men are ready to mutiny.
Tom Dunson began on a wagon train fourteen years ago. And he decided to go out on his own. South. To Texas. Old Man Groot went with him. And they picked up the boy Matt Garth along the way. Matt was a kid. He escaped the attack by the Indians. The attack that Tom's girl Fen did not escape. He brought a cow with him. And added it to the three cows Dunson had.
They made their way to Texas. Crossed the Red River.
And made a life for themselves in the vast open land on which Dunson staked his claim. The Man. The Old Man. The Boy. With four cows. On thousands of acres of land. All alone. Together. Making their way.
Fourteen years later they have 10,000 cows.
They breed most of them. Appropriate some of them. Just as they did the land. Now they have their dream. Dunson's dream. The great cattle ranch with the Red River D.
But the Civil War and the corrupt Carpetbaggers from the North have taken away the cattle market in Texas, so they must head north to Missouri. A thousand miles. At ten miles a day. They will travel about a hundred days.
The hands sign up for hardship. Lean rations. Long days. Scarce clean water. Wind. Rain. Heat. Dust. Hostile Indians. Border gangs.
And Tom's cold, hard driving.
The one thing he demands is that you do not quit. If you try, he will go after you. Whip you with a lariat. Shoot you. Hang you. Whatever it takes to finish the job.
Tom hates quitters.
But he has pushed the men to the very edge.
And his father figure Groot and his son figure Garth must do something about it.
Fathers and Sons.
Turgenev, 1862.
Hemingway, 1933.
Does the father kill the son?
Abraham and Isaac. God and Jesus.
Does the son kill the father figure?
Oedipus and Laius. Hamlet and Claudius.
Does the father lose the son?
Jacob and Joseph. David and Absalom. Daedalus and Icarus.
Does the son lose the father?
Bambi. The Lion King.
Do they reunite?
The Prodigal Son.
How does the love of a woman intervene?
The man wants to build something with his own two hands. Then he wants a son to give it to, because he will not live forever. He wants to pass on his work. Leave a legacy.
Howard Hawks has made one of the most exciting films we have seen this year.
With 1,500 real cattle. Real horses. Real wagons. Real rivers. And real men really crossing them.
Vital. Significant. Alive.
It is Mr. Melville himself who says, "There's three times in a man's life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start."
Howard Hawks is all about that idea.
And we understand it.
* * * * *
Howard Hawks is one of the great directors. Telling vital stories in all the different genres. Working with great star actors. And great character actors. The list of his films is breathtaking. Here are just the more famous ones.
The Dawn Patrol (1930). Scarface (1932). Twentieth Century (1934). Barbary Coast (1935). Bringing Up Baby (1938). Only Angels Have Wings (1939). His Girl Friday (1940). Sergeant York (1941). To Have and Have Not (1944). The Big Sleep (1946). Red River (1948). A Song is Born (1948). I Was a Male War Bride (1949). The Thing from Another World (1949). Monkey Business (1952). Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Rio Bravo (1959). Hatari! (1962). El Dorado (1967). Rio Lobo (1970).
Friday, November 3, 2017
307 - His Girl Friday, United States, 1940. Dir. Howard Hawks.
Friday, November 3, 2017
307 - His Girl Friday, United States, 1940. Dir. Howard Hawks.
Aren't they inhuman?
I know. They're newspapermen.
Mollie Malloy asks the question a few moments before jumping out the window of the press room in the Chicago Criminal Courts Building, the window overlooking the courtyard of the Cook County Jail.
Hildy Johnson answers it.
Hildy is herself a newspaperman and wants to be a wife. She has quit her job, divorced her ex-husband--Morning Post managing editor Walter Burns--gone on a six-week vacation, and gotten herself engaged to earnest insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin.
She needs to make the 4:00 train--make that the 6:00 train--make that the 9:00 train--in order to make their wedding in Albany tomorrow and their honeymoon in Niagara Falls. After that they will move in with his mother until they get settled.
Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, Walter still loves Hildy and wants her back. She left him because his mind was always on his work--getting the next scoop, publishing the hottest story--and they spent their own honeymoon hovering over typewriters to meet a deadline.
But Hildy has reporting in her blood.
Can she really abandon it?
Walter believes she cannot, and he believes he can win her back now that Earl Williams has escaped from the County Jail. Earl is scheduled to be hanged tomorrow. Sheriff Peter B. "Pinky" Hartwell (Gene Lockhart) and the Mayor (Clarence Kolb) want him to be hanged because the election is next week and getting him hanged is worth two hundred thousand votes. The Mayor says they need those votes to get reelected.
The only problem is the Governor is about to issue a reprieve. No problem for the Sheriff and the Mayor. They can fix anything. The Mayor says so himself. He offers the messenger, Joe Pettibone (Billy Gilbert) a cushy job and hefty salary as a "City Sealer" if he will pretend he was unable to deliver the reprieve in time.
If you think that is corrupt, look at what Walter Burns does to try to win Hildy back.
He gets Bruce put in jail three times, for stealing a watch, soliciting a prostitute, and using counterfeit money--all set up by Walter--just to stall him long enough to keep Hildy around. And he hires reporter Roy Bensinger (Ernest Truex) just to get him out of the room. He will have him fired again once his story is finished.
Hildy knows all about Walter's ways. Earlier when Bruce meets Walter and tells Hildy that "he's got a lot of charm," she responds, "He comes by it naturally. His grandfather was a snake."
But Walter is no different from any other newspapermen. At one point when something big happens, all of them call their respective editors with fabricated and contradictory headlines, each trying to outdo the other.
Earl Williams will deliver for Walter Burns by showing up in the Press Room and pulling a gun on Hildy Johnson. He will fire the last round out the window. She will take the gun and hide him in the rolltop desk. And she will find herself sitting on the hottest story of the year.
Hildy has reporting in her blood.
Can she turn down this story?
Can she turn down Walter, the love of her life?
His Girl Friday is known as the fastest talking screwball comedy in the history of the movies. It is a tour-de-force of ensemble acting, entrances and exits, physical comedy, overlapping dialogue, rapid delivery, comedic timing, inside jokes, political parody, social commentary, word play, insinuations, and chemistry.
It began as a play, The Front Page, by master writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and it had already been made as a movie in 1931 by Lewis Milestone.
The play takes place entirely in the press room, and it features two males. The focus is on the newspaper business.
Howard Hawks in his genius, with screenwriter Charles Lederer (who had written dialogue for the original film), rebranded Hildebrand as Hildegard and made Hildy a woman, adding the sexual tension, chemistry, innuendo, the love triangle, and the romantic plot, making a successful story even better. It is hard to imagine the play or the movie without these elements.
Milestone's original film was already noted for its fast-paced dialogue. Howard Hawks tested his own speed by placing two projectors next to each other and running the two films side by side. But where Milestone gets his speed by editing, cutting out the pauses (which also eliminates the overlapping dialogue), Hawks gets it in the acting, letting the camera sit in long takes as the actors put their chops on full display.
The film is also full of great character actors with full personalities, who enter and exit and add to the mayhem.
Peter Bogdanovich asked Howard Hawks what makes a good director.
Hawks said a good storyteller.
Bogdanovich: "Did you ever think of making movies as an art?"
Hawks: "No."
Bogdanovich: "What do you think of it?"
Hawks: "Business. Fun."
Hildy: Stop that acting. We've got a lot to do.
Walter: Now you're talking!
* * * * *
The Front Page, 1931. Male/Male. Film. Dir. Lewis Milestone. Adolphe Menjou & Pat O'Brien.
His Girl Friday, 1940. Male/Female. Film. Dir. Howard Hawks. Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell.
The Front Page, 1945. Male/Male. TV movie. Dir. Ed Sobol. Matt Crowley & Vinton Hayworth.
The Front Page, 1948. Male/Male. TV movie. Prod. Joel O'Brien. Henry Gilbert & Sidney James.
The Front Page, 1949. Male/Male. TV episode. Prod. Donald Davis. John Daly & Mark Roberts.
The Front Page, 1970. Male/Male. TV movie. Dir. Alan Handley. Robert Ryan & George Grizzard.
The Front Page, 1974. Male/Male. Film. Dir. Billy Wilder. Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon.
Switching Channels, 1988. Male/Female. Film. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Burt Reynolds & Kathleen Turner.
* * * * *
He looks like that fellow in the movies. You know, Ralph Bellemy.
Get back in there, you Mock Turtle!
The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat.
307 - His Girl Friday, United States, 1940. Dir. Howard Hawks.
Aren't they inhuman?
I know. They're newspapermen.
Mollie Malloy asks the question a few moments before jumping out the window of the press room in the Chicago Criminal Courts Building, the window overlooking the courtyard of the Cook County Jail.
Hildy Johnson answers it.
Hildy is herself a newspaperman and wants to be a wife. She has quit her job, divorced her ex-husband--Morning Post managing editor Walter Burns--gone on a six-week vacation, and gotten herself engaged to earnest insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin.
She needs to make the 4:00 train--make that the 6:00 train--make that the 9:00 train--in order to make their wedding in Albany tomorrow and their honeymoon in Niagara Falls. After that they will move in with his mother until they get settled.
Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, Walter still loves Hildy and wants her back. She left him because his mind was always on his work--getting the next scoop, publishing the hottest story--and they spent their own honeymoon hovering over typewriters to meet a deadline.
But Hildy has reporting in her blood.
Can she really abandon it?
Walter believes she cannot, and he believes he can win her back now that Earl Williams has escaped from the County Jail. Earl is scheduled to be hanged tomorrow. Sheriff Peter B. "Pinky" Hartwell (Gene Lockhart) and the Mayor (Clarence Kolb) want him to be hanged because the election is next week and getting him hanged is worth two hundred thousand votes. The Mayor says they need those votes to get reelected.
The only problem is the Governor is about to issue a reprieve. No problem for the Sheriff and the Mayor. They can fix anything. The Mayor says so himself. He offers the messenger, Joe Pettibone (Billy Gilbert) a cushy job and hefty salary as a "City Sealer" if he will pretend he was unable to deliver the reprieve in time.
If you think that is corrupt, look at what Walter Burns does to try to win Hildy back.
He gets Bruce put in jail three times, for stealing a watch, soliciting a prostitute, and using counterfeit money--all set up by Walter--just to stall him long enough to keep Hildy around. And he hires reporter Roy Bensinger (Ernest Truex) just to get him out of the room. He will have him fired again once his story is finished.
Hildy knows all about Walter's ways. Earlier when Bruce meets Walter and tells Hildy that "he's got a lot of charm," she responds, "He comes by it naturally. His grandfather was a snake."
Earl Williams will deliver for Walter Burns by showing up in the Press Room and pulling a gun on Hildy Johnson. He will fire the last round out the window. She will take the gun and hide him in the rolltop desk. And she will find herself sitting on the hottest story of the year.
Hildy has reporting in her blood.
Can she turn down this story?
Can she turn down Walter, the love of her life?
His Girl Friday is known as the fastest talking screwball comedy in the history of the movies. It is a tour-de-force of ensemble acting, entrances and exits, physical comedy, overlapping dialogue, rapid delivery, comedic timing, inside jokes, political parody, social commentary, word play, insinuations, and chemistry.
It began as a play, The Front Page, by master writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and it had already been made as a movie in 1931 by Lewis Milestone.
The play takes place entirely in the press room, and it features two males. The focus is on the newspaper business.
Howard Hawks in his genius, with screenwriter Charles Lederer (who had written dialogue for the original film), rebranded Hildebrand as Hildegard and made Hildy a woman, adding the sexual tension, chemistry, innuendo, the love triangle, and the romantic plot, making a successful story even better. It is hard to imagine the play or the movie without these elements.
Milestone's original film was already noted for its fast-paced dialogue. Howard Hawks tested his own speed by placing two projectors next to each other and running the two films side by side. But where Milestone gets his speed by editing, cutting out the pauses (which also eliminates the overlapping dialogue), Hawks gets it in the acting, letting the camera sit in long takes as the actors put their chops on full display.
The film is also full of great character actors with full personalities, who enter and exit and add to the mayhem.
Peter Bogdanovich asked Howard Hawks what makes a good director.
Hawks said a good storyteller.
Bogdanovich: "Did you ever think of making movies as an art?"
Hawks: "No."
Bogdanovich: "What do you think of it?"
Hawks: "Business. Fun."
Hildy: Stop that acting. We've got a lot to do.
Walter: Now you're talking!
* * * * *
The Front Page, 1931. Male/Male. Film. Dir. Lewis Milestone. Adolphe Menjou & Pat O'Brien.
His Girl Friday, 1940. Male/Female. Film. Dir. Howard Hawks. Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell.
The Front Page, 1945. Male/Male. TV movie. Dir. Ed Sobol. Matt Crowley & Vinton Hayworth.
The Front Page, 1948. Male/Male. TV movie. Prod. Joel O'Brien. Henry Gilbert & Sidney James.
The Front Page, 1949. Male/Male. TV episode. Prod. Donald Davis. John Daly & Mark Roberts.
The Front Page, 1970. Male/Male. TV movie. Dir. Alan Handley. Robert Ryan & George Grizzard.
The Front Page, 1974. Male/Male. Film. Dir. Billy Wilder. Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon.
Switching Channels, 1988. Male/Female. Film. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Burt Reynolds & Kathleen Turner.
* * * * *
He looks like that fellow in the movies. You know, Ralph Bellemy.
Get back in there, you Mock Turtle!
The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
306 - Only Angels Have Wings, United States, 1939. Dir. Howard Hawks.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
306 - Only Angels Have Wings, United States, 1939. Dir. Howard Hawks.
I'd never ask a woman to do anything.
So says Geoff Carter.
Geoff Carter the airline pilot. As played by Cary Grant.
Geoff Carter says, "I'd never ask a woman to do anything."
Three years later Humphrey Bogart will say, "I stick my neck out for nobody."
Cary Grant's Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings shares some similarities to Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942). Geoff is an American. He lives in a foreign country. He runs an American company (in this case a small freight airline instead of a restaurant). He is popular, beloved, and powerful in his small circle of friends. He is loyal. He is stoic. He has been hurt in the past by a woman, and he protects himself by not talking about it and not making himself vulnerable again.
After 30 movies in 6 years, Cary Grant hit his stride. He made a pair of screwball comedies last year, in 1938, in which he presented to the world the cool debonair for which he would become legendary.
He starred with Katharine Hepburn in both of them, and their comedic chemistry was palpable. They had already worked together in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), and that film planted the seeds for what was to come.
The two 1938 films were Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, both involving fast-talking, quick-witted banter between man and woman as well as physicality with abandon.
It was a long way from the role of the Mock Turtle in 1933's Alice in Wonderland.
Where he looked like THIS:
Yes, folks. If Cary Grant could play the role in the picture above and then be an international star five years later, then there is hope for you. Pursue your dreams.
Cary Grant would work with Katharine Hepburn in four films, three of which were directed by George Cukor--Sylvia Scarlett, Holiday, and The Philadelphia Story (1940). George Cukor was known as a woman's director--in fact, he made a movie entitled The Women (1939), starring only women--and his comedic style was a great fit for Grant's urbane masculine charm and easy grace.
But the other movie, Bringing Up Baby, the one where Cary Grant plays a paleontologist, the one with the leopard, was directed by that marvel of a director, Howard Hawks.
Howard Hawks.
We could write an entire book about him. Many people have.
He was one of the great directors. He worked in a system that rewarded reliability. Show up and do your job. Do it well, and be invited to do it again. Because he did it, he kept working. His real-life work ethic was similar to what we are about to see in today's film.
Cary Grant made five movies with Howard Hawks--Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), I Was a Male War Bride (1949), and Monkey Business (1952).
Most of them also show him in that role in which he shined--the debonair leading man in a romantic comedy that walks on air to get the girl, and who is so self-confident that he can make fun of himself without ever losing his cool.
But in the midst of those romantic comedies, where Cary Grant developed the fine art of playing Cary Grant, he made two adventure films where he played something different from the typical Cary Grant image. These two movies both came out in 1939. They were George Stevens' Gunga Din and Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings.
When a film comes out in 1939, it is worth taking note.
There was something special about that year. The studios considered the film industry to have begun in 1889, making 1939 the 50th year anniversary. In the Fall of 1938 they began planning their next year, and they decided to pull out all the stops and put their best efforts into their 1939 slate of films. They put more money, more time, more craft, more heart and soul, and more love into the 1939 films than they had ever done before. The results continue to amaze. There are more great movies made in 1939 than any other year. And Only Angels Have Wings shares that same something that so many 1939 movies have.
Geoff Carter runs a small airmail operation in a place called Barranca in the Andes Mountains. The company is owned by a man called Dutchy, and he is trying to prove himself in order to win a new contract. The company is barely solvent. He can pay his pilots and maintain his planes, but he is always one crash away from going under. If he can prove himself over the next six months, then he will win the contract, which will guarantee steady business and put him and his employees into good fortune.
Only Dutchy and Geoff know about this test. Dutchy does not tell his pilots because they would push themselves too hard and put their lives in danger for him. They are brave and proud men. We begin the story at the end of the six-month trial period, with one week to go.
A ship arrives at port.
Bonnie Lee gets off. She is joyful and vivacious. A couple of pilots--Joe Souther and Les Peters--strike up a conversation with her. They invite her to come hang out at the air field while she waits for her next ship to depart. Their boss Dutchy has steak! Juicy American steak. That clinches it for her. Bonnie Lee is a good sport. She comes and hangs out with the guys.
Bonnie Lee is played by the one-and-only Jean Arthur, a screen veteran. If Cary Grant made his thirtieth film in Bringing Up Baby, making this one his thirty-fourth, Jean Arthur is approaching her eightieth feature with this one. She is only four years older than Grant, but she started working in pictures nearly a decade before him. (He was performing with a traveling acrobatic troupe before making movies.) She also has a couple Frank Capra films under her belt. She can walk and talk and wisecrack in her sleep. You may know her from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Talk of the Town (again with Grant), and Shane. Oddly, however, for all her work in the beginning of her career, she did little later. She spent nearly forty years in retirement before dying in 1991 at the age of 90. (The roles did not dry up. She retired. The roles kept coming but she turned them down.)
But here she is in her prime, able to be one of the guys and a very special woman at the same time. Both Joe and Les vie for her, and she is game to go along. They make a date for that evening. But first, Joe is called to make a mail run. He must fly through the pass in deep fog.
Geoff Carter, played by Cary Grant, is a professional. He takes his work seriously, and he does his job. He himself is the best pilot, and he makes runs that no one else can. He will not put their lives in danger, however. He keeps constant tabs on the weather and orders his men to return when conditions worsen.
Unfortunately, conditions have just worsened. Geoff gave Joe the go-ahead and Joe has taken off and started flying. However, the fog has set in and made the pass unpassable. Geoff orders Joe to return. He does. But the fog has set in so badly that Joe cannot land here either. After a couple of aborted attempts, Geoff orders Joe to stay above the fog until it clears. He has enough fuel for three hours, so he is to circle around and land when it clears.
Joe is played by Noah Beery Jr. Whom you may know and love for his 121 performances starting thirty-five years later as Joseph Rocky Rockford, James Garner's father, on The Rockford Files.
Joe disobeys orders. He has a woman on the brain. He has a date with Bonnie Lee, and he cannot break it. Geoff demands that he break his date. Joe tries to land anyway. He crashes. Tears up his plan. And dies. Geoff is furious with Bonnie Lee for distracting Joe. But he controls it. He controls all of his emotions. And he and the other men move on.
Bonnie Lee cannot believe what she sees. The men have a way of dealing with grief and pain by not talking about it, by focusing on their work, by remaining committed to their professionalism. She learns quickly. Their approach is necessary for survival.
They play the piano and sing.
As Bonnie Lee gets to know Geoff Carter she finds him intriguing. He will never ask a woman to do anything. He guards his heart. He protects himself. He does not talk about it. They get along well, but he will not be vulnerable and let her in. She misses her boat on purpose to get to know him better. When he returns from a mail run she is still there. He did not ask her to stay. He would never ask a woman to do anything. He blows her off.
The story involves his best friend Kid Dabb, played by Thomas Mitchell, the man who is everywhere.
And a man named Bat MacPherson. Or really Kilgallen. Played by Richard Barthelmess.
Richard Barthelmess talks!
Barthelmess was a silent film star, most remembered now for D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919). He had worked with Howard Hawks before in an airplane talkie, in 1930's The Dawn Patrol. He appears here in one of his final performances.
Once Kid realizes MacPherson is really Kilgallen, all bets are off. They have a past. In fact, Kilgallen changed his name to MacPherson to hide that past.
But the past catches up with him.
Geoff is going to have to make some decisions that Kid will not like, which will hurt him, but Kid valiantly understands. As men they abide by their code of honor. They put work first. They are professionals.
MacPherson has a wife. Like Victor Laszlo has a wife.
Of all the airports in all the towns in all the world . . .
In walks his old fling Judy.
Judy! Judy! Judy!
Cary Grant never says that in the movie--nor ever--yet Goober Pyle makes the phrase famous with his "imitation" in The Andy Griffith Show. It comes from this film, though it is not said in this film.
Judy MacPherson is played by a young woman named Rita Cansino. She has been working in the movies as a singer and dancer and her star is on the rise. She has recently changed her name.
To Rita Hayworth.
The artist futurely known as Gilda. The Lady from Shanghai. Salome. And Miss Sadie Thompson.
She is the perfect foil to Bonnie Lee.
Where Bonnie Lee is the girl next door, the kid sister, one of the guys, Judy MacPherson is feminine, mysterious, and seductive. Both are desirable, but in different ways.
And the love triangle develops around a man who was not looking for love in the first place. A man who would rather be left alone.
He will not be left alone.
He will have more dangerous flights to make, for himself and for his men. He will have more testing to endure. More death. More hardship. More difficulty.
And in the end he will place his fate and his future in the flip of a coin.
Well . . . maybe.
And the man who would never ask a woman to do anything will discover a woman who wants him to. And Jean Arthur is given one of the great lines in film history.
As Bonnie Lee says,
"I'm hard to get, Geoff. All you have to do is ask me."
306 - Only Angels Have Wings, United States, 1939. Dir. Howard Hawks.
I'd never ask a woman to do anything.
So says Geoff Carter.
Geoff Carter the airline pilot. As played by Cary Grant.
Geoff Carter says, "I'd never ask a woman to do anything."
Three years later Humphrey Bogart will say, "I stick my neck out for nobody."
Cary Grant's Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings shares some similarities to Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942). Geoff is an American. He lives in a foreign country. He runs an American company (in this case a small freight airline instead of a restaurant). He is popular, beloved, and powerful in his small circle of friends. He is loyal. He is stoic. He has been hurt in the past by a woman, and he protects himself by not talking about it and not making himself vulnerable again.
After 30 movies in 6 years, Cary Grant hit his stride. He made a pair of screwball comedies last year, in 1938, in which he presented to the world the cool debonair for which he would become legendary.
He starred with Katharine Hepburn in both of them, and their comedic chemistry was palpable. They had already worked together in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), and that film planted the seeds for what was to come.
The two 1938 films were Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, both involving fast-talking, quick-witted banter between man and woman as well as physicality with abandon.
It was a long way from the role of the Mock Turtle in 1933's Alice in Wonderland.
Where he looked like THIS:
Yes, folks. If Cary Grant could play the role in the picture above and then be an international star five years later, then there is hope for you. Pursue your dreams.
Cary Grant would work with Katharine Hepburn in four films, three of which were directed by George Cukor--Sylvia Scarlett, Holiday, and The Philadelphia Story (1940). George Cukor was known as a woman's director--in fact, he made a movie entitled The Women (1939), starring only women--and his comedic style was a great fit for Grant's urbane masculine charm and easy grace.
But the other movie, Bringing Up Baby, the one where Cary Grant plays a paleontologist, the one with the leopard, was directed by that marvel of a director, Howard Hawks.
Howard Hawks.
We could write an entire book about him. Many people have.
He was one of the great directors. He worked in a system that rewarded reliability. Show up and do your job. Do it well, and be invited to do it again. Because he did it, he kept working. His real-life work ethic was similar to what we are about to see in today's film.
Cary Grant made five movies with Howard Hawks--Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), I Was a Male War Bride (1949), and Monkey Business (1952).
Most of them also show him in that role in which he shined--the debonair leading man in a romantic comedy that walks on air to get the girl, and who is so self-confident that he can make fun of himself without ever losing his cool.
But in the midst of those romantic comedies, where Cary Grant developed the fine art of playing Cary Grant, he made two adventure films where he played something different from the typical Cary Grant image. These two movies both came out in 1939. They were George Stevens' Gunga Din and Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings.
When a film comes out in 1939, it is worth taking note.
There was something special about that year. The studios considered the film industry to have begun in 1889, making 1939 the 50th year anniversary. In the Fall of 1938 they began planning their next year, and they decided to pull out all the stops and put their best efforts into their 1939 slate of films. They put more money, more time, more craft, more heart and soul, and more love into the 1939 films than they had ever done before. The results continue to amaze. There are more great movies made in 1939 than any other year. And Only Angels Have Wings shares that same something that so many 1939 movies have.
Geoff Carter runs a small airmail operation in a place called Barranca in the Andes Mountains. The company is owned by a man called Dutchy, and he is trying to prove himself in order to win a new contract. The company is barely solvent. He can pay his pilots and maintain his planes, but he is always one crash away from going under. If he can prove himself over the next six months, then he will win the contract, which will guarantee steady business and put him and his employees into good fortune.
Only Dutchy and Geoff know about this test. Dutchy does not tell his pilots because they would push themselves too hard and put their lives in danger for him. They are brave and proud men. We begin the story at the end of the six-month trial period, with one week to go.
A ship arrives at port.
Bonnie Lee gets off. She is joyful and vivacious. A couple of pilots--Joe Souther and Les Peters--strike up a conversation with her. They invite her to come hang out at the air field while she waits for her next ship to depart. Their boss Dutchy has steak! Juicy American steak. That clinches it for her. Bonnie Lee is a good sport. She comes and hangs out with the guys.
Bonnie Lee is played by the one-and-only Jean Arthur, a screen veteran. If Cary Grant made his thirtieth film in Bringing Up Baby, making this one his thirty-fourth, Jean Arthur is approaching her eightieth feature with this one. She is only four years older than Grant, but she started working in pictures nearly a decade before him. (He was performing with a traveling acrobatic troupe before making movies.) She also has a couple Frank Capra films under her belt. She can walk and talk and wisecrack in her sleep. You may know her from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Talk of the Town (again with Grant), and Shane. Oddly, however, for all her work in the beginning of her career, she did little later. She spent nearly forty years in retirement before dying in 1991 at the age of 90. (The roles did not dry up. She retired. The roles kept coming but she turned them down.)
But here she is in her prime, able to be one of the guys and a very special woman at the same time. Both Joe and Les vie for her, and she is game to go along. They make a date for that evening. But first, Joe is called to make a mail run. He must fly through the pass in deep fog.
Geoff Carter, played by Cary Grant, is a professional. He takes his work seriously, and he does his job. He himself is the best pilot, and he makes runs that no one else can. He will not put their lives in danger, however. He keeps constant tabs on the weather and orders his men to return when conditions worsen.
Unfortunately, conditions have just worsened. Geoff gave Joe the go-ahead and Joe has taken off and started flying. However, the fog has set in and made the pass unpassable. Geoff orders Joe to return. He does. But the fog has set in so badly that Joe cannot land here either. After a couple of aborted attempts, Geoff orders Joe to stay above the fog until it clears. He has enough fuel for three hours, so he is to circle around and land when it clears.
Joe is played by Noah Beery Jr. Whom you may know and love for his 121 performances starting thirty-five years later as Joseph Rocky Rockford, James Garner's father, on The Rockford Files.
Joe disobeys orders. He has a woman on the brain. He has a date with Bonnie Lee, and he cannot break it. Geoff demands that he break his date. Joe tries to land anyway. He crashes. Tears up his plan. And dies. Geoff is furious with Bonnie Lee for distracting Joe. But he controls it. He controls all of his emotions. And he and the other men move on.
Bonnie Lee cannot believe what she sees. The men have a way of dealing with grief and pain by not talking about it, by focusing on their work, by remaining committed to their professionalism. She learns quickly. Their approach is necessary for survival.
They play the piano and sing.
As Bonnie Lee gets to know Geoff Carter she finds him intriguing. He will never ask a woman to do anything. He guards his heart. He protects himself. He does not talk about it. They get along well, but he will not be vulnerable and let her in. She misses her boat on purpose to get to know him better. When he returns from a mail run she is still there. He did not ask her to stay. He would never ask a woman to do anything. He blows her off.
The story involves his best friend Kid Dabb, played by Thomas Mitchell, the man who is everywhere.
And a man named Bat MacPherson. Or really Kilgallen. Played by Richard Barthelmess.
Richard Barthelmess talks!
Barthelmess was a silent film star, most remembered now for D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919). He had worked with Howard Hawks before in an airplane talkie, in 1930's The Dawn Patrol. He appears here in one of his final performances.
Once Kid realizes MacPherson is really Kilgallen, all bets are off. They have a past. In fact, Kilgallen changed his name to MacPherson to hide that past.
But the past catches up with him.
Geoff is going to have to make some decisions that Kid will not like, which will hurt him, but Kid valiantly understands. As men they abide by their code of honor. They put work first. They are professionals.
MacPherson has a wife. Like Victor Laszlo has a wife.
Of all the airports in all the towns in all the world . . .
In walks his old fling Judy.
Judy! Judy! Judy!
Cary Grant never says that in the movie--nor ever--yet Goober Pyle makes the phrase famous with his "imitation" in The Andy Griffith Show. It comes from this film, though it is not said in this film.
Judy MacPherson is played by a young woman named Rita Cansino. She has been working in the movies as a singer and dancer and her star is on the rise. She has recently changed her name.
To Rita Hayworth.
The artist futurely known as Gilda. The Lady from Shanghai. Salome. And Miss Sadie Thompson.
She is the perfect foil to Bonnie Lee.
Where Bonnie Lee is the girl next door, the kid sister, one of the guys, Judy MacPherson is feminine, mysterious, and seductive. Both are desirable, but in different ways.
And the love triangle develops around a man who was not looking for love in the first place. A man who would rather be left alone.
He will not be left alone.
He will have more dangerous flights to make, for himself and for his men. He will have more testing to endure. More death. More hardship. More difficulty.
And in the end he will place his fate and his future in the flip of a coin.
Well . . . maybe.
And the man who would never ask a woman to do anything will discover a woman who wants him to. And Jean Arthur is given one of the great lines in film history.
As Bonnie Lee says,
"I'm hard to get, Geoff. All you have to do is ask me."
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
305 - My Darling Clementine, United States, 1946. Dir. John Ford.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
305 - My Darling Clementine, United States, 1946. Dir. John Ford.
Tombstone.
Biggest graveyard west of the Rockies.
Doc Holliday runs the town. He informs the new Marshal, installed today, that he and each successive marshal get along as long as they understand this. He asks Earp what he would do if Holliday were to take a notion to break the law himself, hypothetically, of course. Earp informs him that Holliday has already broken the law. By running a poker player out of town.
"That's none of your business," Earp informs him.
"I see we're in opposite camps, Marshal," Holliday returns.
These men are not friends.
Holliday pulls a gun on Earp at the bar and challenges him to draw. Earp shows that he is unarmed. Yet when Holliday asks the bartender to loan Earp the bar's rifle, Earp's brother slides his pistol down the bar instead. Earp introduces Holliday to his two brothers at the bar, and Holliday realizes he is outmanned. He relents. He offers the room a round of drinks on him.
How will these two men, who meet as enemies, eventually come together?
A common enemy.
The Clanton gang.
Old Man Clanton. And his sons. Billy. Sam. And Ike.
Old Man Clanton is played by Walter Brennan. You may know him from the TV series The Real McCoys. But did you know that he won three Academy Awards? THREE.
He won for supporting roles in Come and Get It (1937), Kentucky (1939), and The Westerner (1941). (He was also nominated for an Emmy in 1959 for his work on The Real McCoys). So he had already won them years before appearing in this film.
Only six people have won three or more Oscars. Katharine Hepburn, who won four, Daniel Day Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep, and Walter Brennan. That's some company.
Wyatt Earp and his three brothers, Morgan, Virgil, and James, were driving cattle on their way to California when they met up with the Clantons, Old Man and Ike. They had a friendly conversation. Old Man offered to buy the cattle. He upped his price. Wyatt turned him down. The three older Earps went into town for a shave and a haircut (two bits!), and a beer, leaving kid brother James to watch the cows. James has a silver medallion.
The town they found was a wreck wrapped in turmoil drowning in mayhem.
And that is on the good days.
When Wyatt reclines (i.e. is thrown down) in the new-fangled barber chair, bullets whiz into the shop and shatter the mirrors. The barber flees. Wyatt is left lying in the chair, half-shaved
He and his two brothers run outside. The sheriff quits. The shaving-cream-faced, cutting-cape-wearing stranger is offered to be, on the spot, the new sheriff.
Welcome to town.
No, thank you.
They leave. They return to their cattle. The cattle are gone. James is dead. Lying face down in the mud. His silver medallion gone.
Who did this?
Why?
Wyatt takes the job as the sheriff.
Game on.
Doc Holliday has a girl named Chihuahua.
But he used to have another girl. And she appears. Suddenly. Out of the blue.
Her name is Clementine.
Oh, my Darling.
How did you know I was here?
I didn't. Finding you hasn't been easy. From cow camp to cow camp. . . . You should at least be flattered that a girl has been chasing you.
Imagine that.
Two people from Boston. With some kind of past. He is secluded in some nondescript stagecoach stop in frontier Arizona, 2,600 miles away. In 1881.
And she searches. With no leads. Until she finds him.
What is going on inside that heart to make that happen?
To make a woman seek at all costs to find a man?
Everything is falling apart.
Wyatt Earp has lost his brother.
He has become sheriff of a town wild with vice and crime.
He and Doc Holliday do not get along.
Doc Holliday is dying. He has tuberculosis. He is coughing up blood.
Two women are fighting for him. Fighting potentially to the death.
The Clantons are on the loose.
Doc flees.
And one of the women, Chihuahua, is turns up with that medallion. The one that belonged to the dead brother James.
How did she get that? Who gave it to her? And what does that mean?
How will it all go down?
How will it all end?
Who will live? Who will die? Who will be lost and gone forever?
Bodies start falling.
Tensions are rising.
Events are escalating.
To a final showdown.
A Gunfight.
At the OK Corral.
* * * * *
Wyatt Earp lived until 1929, 48 years after the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He died at age 80. He longed for someone to tell his story and vindicate him. He told his story to a man named John Flood, who tried to write his official, authorized biography. Apparently, however, Flood was a terrible writer and Earp's wife Josephine intervened with her own opinions to make it even worse. No publisher would publish Flood's book.
Earp loved the movies, and he thought a movie might help him. He wrote a letter to his friend William S. Hart, the leading cowboy of the early silent pictures, asking him to make a picture that would tell Earp's story as he remembered it. Hart never made the movie, but he did write a letter to The Saturday Evening Post, asking them to publish the biography written by Flood. They did not. No one would publish it!
Could he have asked a better writer? Wyatt Earp knew Jack London. . . .
The first "biography" of Earp, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake, was not published till after his death, in 1931, and it was largely fictionalized. Apparently, Josephine tried to intervene in the writing of this book as well. Several of the Wyatt Earp films, including this one, are said to have been based in part on this fictionalized book.
The more one digs into the historical facts of these events, the more he discovers how difficult it is to find them. The stories are replete with contradictory statements. The facts have been largely lost in the legend.
But here is something interesting.
In his retirement, Wyatt Earp, who lived in Los Angeles, would go down to the silent movie sets and hang out. He spent a lot of time on John Ford sets. He and John Ford were friends!
Wyatt Earp told John Ford his story.
Imagine that.
Before any books had been written, before any movies had been made, Wyatt Earp told John Ford personally what had happened.
John Ford recounts these memories to Henry Fonda himself.
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAObTxfEOH0
According to this interview, John Ford stages the Gunfight in this movie exactly the way Wyatt Earp told him it really happened. Earp sketched it on paper and Ford filmed it that way.
That is an amazing thought.
Is it true?
John Ford could be lying. Or he might be telling a story he has come to believe. Or his point may be limited to the choreography of the Gunfight. Perhaps Ford took that piece from the sketch Earp made, and then made up the rest.
Is a reliable history of this story even possible?
If the truth is lost in the legend, maybe this legend is as good as any of the others.
One thing we do know--
There was no Clementine.
She never existed.
She is a fictional character.
Dreadful sorry.
* * * * *
The actors playing Doc Holliday and Chihuahua come straight out of Film Noir.
Victor Mature - I Wake Up Screaming (1941), The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Kiss of Death (1947), Cry of the City (1948), Gambling House (1950), Dangerous Mission (1954), Violent Saturday (1955), Pickup Alley (1957),
Linda Darnell - Summer Storm (1944), Hangover Square (1945), Fallen Angel (1945), No Way Out (1950), The 13th Letter (1951), Night Without Sleep (1952), Second Chance (1953), and Zero Hour! (1957).
Meanwhile, Cathy Downs, who plays Clementine, played in at least one film noir, The Dark Corner (1946), starring none other than Lucille Ball.
305 - My Darling Clementine, United States, 1946. Dir. John Ford.
Tombstone.
Biggest graveyard west of the Rockies.
Doc Holliday runs the town. He informs the new Marshal, installed today, that he and each successive marshal get along as long as they understand this. He asks Earp what he would do if Holliday were to take a notion to break the law himself, hypothetically, of course. Earp informs him that Holliday has already broken the law. By running a poker player out of town.
"That's none of your business," Earp informs him.
"I see we're in opposite camps, Marshal," Holliday returns.
These men are not friends.
Holliday pulls a gun on Earp at the bar and challenges him to draw. Earp shows that he is unarmed. Yet when Holliday asks the bartender to loan Earp the bar's rifle, Earp's brother slides his pistol down the bar instead. Earp introduces Holliday to his two brothers at the bar, and Holliday realizes he is outmanned. He relents. He offers the room a round of drinks on him.
How will these two men, who meet as enemies, eventually come together?
A common enemy.
The Clanton gang.
Old Man Clanton. And his sons. Billy. Sam. And Ike.
Old Man Clanton is played by Walter Brennan. You may know him from the TV series The Real McCoys. But did you know that he won three Academy Awards? THREE.
He won for supporting roles in Come and Get It (1937), Kentucky (1939), and The Westerner (1941). (He was also nominated for an Emmy in 1959 for his work on The Real McCoys). So he had already won them years before appearing in this film.
Only six people have won three or more Oscars. Katharine Hepburn, who won four, Daniel Day Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep, and Walter Brennan. That's some company.
Wyatt Earp and his three brothers, Morgan, Virgil, and James, were driving cattle on their way to California when they met up with the Clantons, Old Man and Ike. They had a friendly conversation. Old Man offered to buy the cattle. He upped his price. Wyatt turned him down. The three older Earps went into town for a shave and a haircut (two bits!), and a beer, leaving kid brother James to watch the cows. James has a silver medallion.
The town they found was a wreck wrapped in turmoil drowning in mayhem.
And that is on the good days.
When Wyatt reclines (i.e. is thrown down) in the new-fangled barber chair, bullets whiz into the shop and shatter the mirrors. The barber flees. Wyatt is left lying in the chair, half-shaved
He and his two brothers run outside. The sheriff quits. The shaving-cream-faced, cutting-cape-wearing stranger is offered to be, on the spot, the new sheriff.
Welcome to town.
No, thank you.
They leave. They return to their cattle. The cattle are gone. James is dead. Lying face down in the mud. His silver medallion gone.
Who did this?
Why?
Wyatt takes the job as the sheriff.
Game on.
Doc Holliday has a girl named Chihuahua.
But he used to have another girl. And she appears. Suddenly. Out of the blue.
Her name is Clementine.
Oh, my Darling.
How did you know I was here?
I didn't. Finding you hasn't been easy. From cow camp to cow camp. . . . You should at least be flattered that a girl has been chasing you.
Imagine that.
Two people from Boston. With some kind of past. He is secluded in some nondescript stagecoach stop in frontier Arizona, 2,600 miles away. In 1881.
And she searches. With no leads. Until she finds him.
What is going on inside that heart to make that happen?
To make a woman seek at all costs to find a man?
Everything is falling apart.
Wyatt Earp has lost his brother.
He has become sheriff of a town wild with vice and crime.
He and Doc Holliday do not get along.
Doc Holliday is dying. He has tuberculosis. He is coughing up blood.
Two women are fighting for him. Fighting potentially to the death.
The Clantons are on the loose.
Doc flees.
And one of the women, Chihuahua, is turns up with that medallion. The one that belonged to the dead brother James.
How did she get that? Who gave it to her? And what does that mean?
How will it all go down?
How will it all end?
Who will live? Who will die? Who will be lost and gone forever?
Bodies start falling.
Tensions are rising.
Events are escalating.
To a final showdown.
A Gunfight.
At the OK Corral.
* * * * *
Wyatt Earp lived until 1929, 48 years after the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He died at age 80. He longed for someone to tell his story and vindicate him. He told his story to a man named John Flood, who tried to write his official, authorized biography. Apparently, however, Flood was a terrible writer and Earp's wife Josephine intervened with her own opinions to make it even worse. No publisher would publish Flood's book.
Earp loved the movies, and he thought a movie might help him. He wrote a letter to his friend William S. Hart, the leading cowboy of the early silent pictures, asking him to make a picture that would tell Earp's story as he remembered it. Hart never made the movie, but he did write a letter to The Saturday Evening Post, asking them to publish the biography written by Flood. They did not. No one would publish it!
Could he have asked a better writer? Wyatt Earp knew Jack London. . . .
The first "biography" of Earp, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake, was not published till after his death, in 1931, and it was largely fictionalized. Apparently, Josephine tried to intervene in the writing of this book as well. Several of the Wyatt Earp films, including this one, are said to have been based in part on this fictionalized book.
The more one digs into the historical facts of these events, the more he discovers how difficult it is to find them. The stories are replete with contradictory statements. The facts have been largely lost in the legend.
But here is something interesting.
In his retirement, Wyatt Earp, who lived in Los Angeles, would go down to the silent movie sets and hang out. He spent a lot of time on John Ford sets. He and John Ford were friends!
Wyatt Earp told John Ford his story.
Imagine that.
Before any books had been written, before any movies had been made, Wyatt Earp told John Ford personally what had happened.
John Ford recounts these memories to Henry Fonda himself.
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAObTxfEOH0
That is an amazing thought.
Is it true?
John Ford could be lying. Or he might be telling a story he has come to believe. Or his point may be limited to the choreography of the Gunfight. Perhaps Ford took that piece from the sketch Earp made, and then made up the rest.
Is a reliable history of this story even possible?
If the truth is lost in the legend, maybe this legend is as good as any of the others.
One thing we do know--
There was no Clementine.
She never existed.
She is a fictional character.
Dreadful sorry.
* * * * *
The actors playing Doc Holliday and Chihuahua come straight out of Film Noir.
Victor Mature - I Wake Up Screaming (1941), The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Kiss of Death (1947), Cry of the City (1948), Gambling House (1950), Dangerous Mission (1954), Violent Saturday (1955), Pickup Alley (1957),
Linda Darnell - Summer Storm (1944), Hangover Square (1945), Fallen Angel (1945), No Way Out (1950), The 13th Letter (1951), Night Without Sleep (1952), Second Chance (1953), and Zero Hour! (1957).
Meanwhile, Cathy Downs, who plays Clementine, played in at least one film noir, The Dark Corner (1946), starring none other than Lucille Ball.
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