Are the Stars Out Tonight?

Wise: Howdy, Werth.  

Werth:  Good evening, sir.  May I offer you a cocktail?  

Wise:  I'll take the booze, but what's with the penguin suit?  

Werth: Lee Daniels' The Butler opens today and I'm getting ready for the juggernaut of Hollywood talent that plays presidential dress-up in a fictionalized version of the life of White House domestic Eugene Allen.  Alan Rickman plays Reagan, James Marsden plays Kennedy, Jane Fonda plays Nancy Reagan—

Wise: But will any of them be as good as Oprah?  

Werth:  Not if she has a scene where she marches through a cornfield. Hollywood realized the scratch to be made by lumping together their top stars early on, and when the silents turned to talkies, MGM tried the tactic to beat its competitors to the musical punch with The Hollywood Revue of 1929. It's one of those cases where the title says it all. Mimicking the Broadway and vaudeville stage shows of the time, MGM put together a group of musical numbers, comedy sketches, and dance routines using a "galaxy of stars" both known and relatively unknown.

Wise: It's one way to keep idle stars off the skids. 

Werth: Master of Ceremonies Jack Benny had been a vaudeville regular, but his violin-toting, deadpan act was still in its infancy for Revue. Benny mugs and puns as he introduces the acts, including then matinee idol Conrad Nagel as the evening's Interlocutor.

Wise: Evidence of Nagel's long and successful career in film, television and radio can be seen in his three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Werth: Fame seemed to haunt Revue. Buster Keaton shimmies as an Egyptian dancer in "The Dance of the Sea" but the stoic-faced comic's most notable years were behind him. Meanwhile Laurel and Hardy perform a magic act complete with a cake-in-the-face pratfall while they were moving from silent short stars to feature-length comedy stars. 

Other silent luminaries who transitioned to sound successfully in Revue are Norma Shearer, William Randolph Hearst's main squeeze Marion Davies, and a young Joan Crawford who dances and sings like her life depended on it. But some counted Revue as the sunset of their careers with both dashing William Haines and handsome but prissy-throated John Gilbert ending their careers by 1936. 

Marie Dressler's career was supposedly over by 1929, but a year later this vaudeville veteran would be seeing a career re-birth by starring with Garbo in Anna Christie and getting an Oscar for Min and Bill.



Wise: Nothing like a little song and dance to jumpstart a comeback. 

Werth: Revue is one of those early sound films that's best watched like it's a filmic cave drawing. Sound was only two years young at this point, and many directors, including Revue's, were unskilled at moving the camera. The dialogue is stilted, numbers seem to go on interminably and most scenes are shot with a static camera facing the stage as if you were sitting in the audience of George White's Scandals. 

But cinematic touches appear in a couple numbers with a strange film negative minstrel show, a special effects shot of dancer/singer Bessie Love miniaturized (twice), the use of two-strip Technicolor for a couple scenes, and kaleidoscopic, overhead shots of the not-so-precise dancers dancing in fear to "Lon Chaney's Gonna Get You If You Don't Watch Out." 

These shots must have been informed by choreographer Busby Berkeley's earlier Broadway work, but he was not involved with the filming. He would start revolutionizing film a year later when he staged the dances for Samuel Goldwyn's Whoopee! 

Whatever the primitive flaws of Revue, it was a hit and earned an Oscar nomination that year garnering a lot of attention for the song, "Singin' in the Rain," and its lyricist, future musical mogul Arthur Freed.

Wise: The success of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and its long list of La-La-Land luminaries prompted a surge in adaptions of Agatha Christie penned mysteries, and one of the most enjoyable is The Mirror Crack'd (1980).  Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak play Marina Rudd and Lola Brewster, two long-time rival actresses who descend on a tiny English village to film a lavish costume picture based on contretemps between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.  

Adding to the pressure cooker atmosphere is Marina's husband Jason (Rock Hudson), the director of the film, and Lola's husband Marty (Tony Curtis), who's the producer.  At a village reception, a gushing fan brags about her devotion to Marina, only to wind up dead after sipping from her idol's cocktail.  

Marina spirals out of control after this attempt on her life, and order is only restored upon the arrival of Angela Lansbury as Christie's beloved Miss Jane Marple in sensible shoes and a tightly curled wig.  

Werth: From Miss Marple to Jessica Fletcher. No one should commit a crime around Angela Lansbury.

 

Wise: Part of the pleasure of these big ensemble films is the opportunity they give big stars to play outsized versions of themselves.  Taylor as Marina gets to be both more extravagantly beautiful (she arrives on screen wearing a helmet made of lilacs) and more dramatic (the hysterics of her breakdown would have sunk a less starry film).  

She and Novak trade a few delicious barbs whenever they're in the same scene, taking full advantage of the public's endless appetite for the kind of cooked up, bitchy antagonism that sells a lot of movie magazines even to this day.  Tony Curtis plays a seedier version of his character in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957).  

Only Rock Hudson seems a little subdued; his supportive husband lacks the winking charm that made him so great in so many films.  

Werth: For a second, I read that last line as if Rock Hudson had a supportive husband... which he should have.

Wise: Lansbury's performance is a little less broad than her co-stars' efforts, but she still gets to have a lot of sly fun as Christie's grandmotherly know-it-all.  She always has a bit of business to perform—knitting, cooking, pulling a Mackintosh more securely about her shoulders—that distracts both the audience and the criminals from observing her deductive powers at work.  Like the most satisfying whodunnits, the identity of the murderer is the least likely suspect, but the pleasure of the revelation comes from the clever, cat-like way that Lansbury's Marple unravels the mystery in the final reel.  

Werth: Well, Wise, I guess we should reveal that this is something of the final reel for Film Gab.  

Wise: Right.  After almost three years and several hundred movie recommendations, we're going to be taking a little break from our weekly updates.  

Werth: But fear not, loyal Gabbers. We'll be popping in from time to time comment on new films, Hollywood trends, and to salute the passing of our Tinsel Town heroes.  

Wise: In the meantime, why not take a sentimental journey back to the beginning of Film Gab and catch up on any of the flicks you may have missed? 

Werth: And if you ever need a little live Film Gab in your life, just remember that our extensive love of Hollywood lore can be had for the price of a couple drinks.  Cheers!

Film Gab's Leading Ladies

Wise: Good day, Werth.

Werth: Good day, Wise. Have you finished signing our birthday card to Hillary Clinton?

Wise: I got distracted by one of those memes of her texting in sunglasses.



Werth: I really enjoy watching her strut through press conferences in her power pantsuits. But then I've always found women in politics exciting—especially if they are women in politics in the movies!

Take the role of Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury) in the 1962 political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate. Eleanor's son Raymond (Laurence Harvey) has just returned from being a prisoner of war in Korea and she immediately turns his Medal of Honor arrival into a band-playing, banner-waving photo op for her husband, the McCarthy-esque Senator, John Iselin (James Gregory). 


Wise: Wouldn't a pot roast have been easier? 

Werth: Eleanor's political ambitions to be the wife of a Vice-President know no bounds and include trying to keep her son away from a left-wing politician's daughter who Raymond takes a fancy to.

But Raymond is acting very strangely and some of the men from his company have started having nightmares where they are having tea in a New Jersey garden club with the top brass of the Soviet and Chinese Communist Party who turn into little old ladies who tell Raymond to kill his own men.

Wise: That sounds like Bayonne to me.  

Werth: Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra—who also produced) begins to investigate and soon discovers that he and his patrol are cards in a deadly game of solitaire. John Frankenheimer's taut direction and iconic visual punch make this film one of the great suspense classics of all time.

All the performances are first-rate—but Lansbury dominates this film. Her portrayal of Eleanor as a woman whose naked ambition is lightly clothed in good ol' American maternal sentiment as she icily barks orders at her son, her husband and anyone who stands in her way should have won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year. Patty Duke walked away with it for The Miracle Worker, but I've always felt that Landsbury was robbed... even if it was by Helen Keller.
 

Wise: The Young Victoria (2009) charts the political and personal growth of Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) in the years just previous to and just following her ascension to the throne.  Growing up sheltered by her mother The Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her mother's adviser Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), she finds herself struggling against the political machinations that surround her.  

Her uncle King William IV (Jim Broadbent) wants to exert more influence upon her before passing on the throne while her other uncle King Leopold I of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann) hopes to ally the two kingdoms with the marriage of his son Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) to Victoria.  Meanwhile, the seductive Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) attempts to charm his way into Victoria's good graces, proving to be both friend and foe.

Werth: Sounds like a political gangbang.  

Wise: The film is a surprising hybrid of women's picture and political thriller, almost as if Joan Crawford had been directed by Oliver Stone.  It's not alone in that category (recent examples include Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and The Duchess and reach at least as far back as Bette Davis in Juarez), but it is one of the few to take the affairs of state just as seriously as the romantic kind.  

Werth: There must be a Hillary film in the works. Notting Hill-ary?

Wise: Part of the film's success in portraying the rigors of statecraft comes from the intelligence of the performances.  Emily Blunt indulges in all the requisite bosom heaving and tempestuous dialogue, but makes Victoria as passionate about Parliament as she is about her prince.  

And somehow Rupert Friend turns a buttoned up wonk into a dashing matinee idol who smolders while proposing social reforms.  Both actors resemble their historical counterparts to an almost shocking degree, particularly Friend who studied contemporary accounts in order to capture Albert's somewhat prickly demeanor and awkward habits. 

Werth: Hamburger Hill-ary.

Wise: Julian Fellowes's script artfully balances the personal and the political, cleverly highlighting the effect human desire (both petty and profound) plays in shaping public policy.  Director Jean-Marc Vallée also performs a balancing act: giving each scene a contemporary dash while still lingering over the sumptuous period detail (particularly Sandy Powell's gorgeous and authentic costumes).  

But perhaps the best example of how this film epitomizes the surprising union of seeming opposites is that its producers include Martin Scorsese and the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson (who knows more than a little about the perils of being a princess). 

Werth: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill-ary But Came Down a  Mountain.



Wise: Tune in to Film Gab next week when hopefully Werth will have run out of spoof Hillary movie titles.

Werth: The House on Haunted Hill-ary!  

 

Will You Gabby Me?

Werth: Wuzzup, Wise?  

Wise: Oh, hi, Werth.  Just give me a minute; I'm feeling kind of queasy.  

Werth: Lose a fight with a Doritos Locos Taco?

Wise: No, I just got back from an afternoon in the park and was horrified to witness some dude proposing to his girlfriend...in song.  

Werth: Was the girl Zooey Deschanel?  

Wise: Hardly.  She was an earnest, non-profit type in desperate need of a VO5 Hot Oil treatment.  And he looked like a branch bank assistant manager who spends all his vacations at Disneyland.  

Werth: Love is in the air.  It must have something to do with Jason Segel's new flick The Five Year Engagement.

Wise: It certainly does get me thinking about great films featuring couples hoping to get hitched.  Like The Harvey Girls (1946) starring Judy Garland as Susan Bradley, an Ohio gal with such a longing for adventure that she answers an ad in a lonely hearts column and gets engaged to a dreamboat from the Wild West whom she's never met.  The only problem is that her rodeo Romeo turns out to be a marble mouthed dummy played by Chill Wills.  

Werth: She might have had better luck using Grindr.

Wise: It turns out that all the letters Judy exchanged with her beau were ghost written by saloon owner Ned Trent (John Hodiak).  She breaks the engagement and goes to work at the brand new Fred Harvey Restaurant in town—part of a chain of restaurants that followed the railroads out west and exerted a huge influence on civilizing the cowboys and merchandizing the Native Americans.

Of course, this influx of manners and good food doesn't sit well with the corrupt local judge or the lead dance hall girl, Em (a delightful Angela Lansbury in spangles, a corset and a lot of green eye shadow), who want the cowboys to keep drinking and carousing instead of cleaning up and marrying the lady waitresses at the Harvey House.  

Werth: I'd do a lot for a good plate of meatloaf, but I'd never give up Angela Lansbury.  

Wise: The film was originally conceived as a traditional western starring Lana Turner and Clark Gable—  

Werth: So it wasn't the first time Judy got Lana's sloppy seconds.  

Wise: But MGM's legendary musical producer Arthur Freed was convinced that the story would make a perfect vehicle for Judy (also so he could shoehorn his mistress Lucille Bremer into Yolanda and the Thief opposite Fred Astaire which was the picture Judy wanted to make).  Mostly Freed was right.  

Judy is marvelous in the film, especially her showstopping rendition of the Harry Warren/Johnny Mercer hit "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Sante Fe."  Less successful was her chemistry with Hodiak, making their on-screen romance something of a bust, but she does have a few magical moments with her Wizard of Oz co-star Ray Bolger.  Still, with a cast that includes Cyd Charisse, Marjorie Main and Virginia O'Brien, it's hard not to fall in love with this singing saddles confection.  

Werth: Western engagements are nice, but I prefer my engagement flicks hard-boiled. The betrothal in film-noir classic Laura (1944) ends on a bit of a sour note, with the lucky, young bride-to-be found shot dead in her apartment.



Wise: Well, that's one less tacky bachelorette party the world has to endure.

Werth: Dashing detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) learns through his investigation that stunning, smart corpse Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) was engaged to low-life playboy Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). 

Wise: Engaged to The Abominable Dr. Phibes? Maybe it's all for the best that she's dead.

Werth: But were they really engaged? Poison-pen man-about-town Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) reveals to McPherson in a series of flashbacks that Laura hadn't decided to marry Shelby yet, and that Laura's rich, spinster aunt Ann Treadwell (the eternally delicious Judith Anderson) would rather be the the one carrying the bouquet down the aisle with Shelby. 

Complicating matters is the fact that McPherson during the course of his investigation has fallen in love with the victim, spending hours hanging out with her well-lit portrait over the fireplace and drinking her whiskey.

Wise: I do that sometimes with my picture of Margaret Hamilton.

Werth: As convoluted as it all sounds, one of the most famous cinematic twists happens about half-way through and turns the whole movie upside down, making any further discussion of the plot a guaranteed spoiler.  

While many speak of Laura as a typical noir, to be fair, it doesn't have the gritty nature that many other crime flicks of the era have. Director Otto Preminger skillfully built the mystery and suspense with refined wit and sophistication instead of dingy bars and dark alleys. The characters of Laura are a well-heeled crew who kill as much with bon mots as they do .38 specials. 

Standing at the top of this stylish pack is Lydecker. Webb's performance as the acid-tongued critic is joyously arch and earned him an Academy Award nomination. His police interview from a bathtub is the epitome of cheek, and if you ask me, totally gay.

Wise: And who wouldn't ask you?

Werth: With two of the best-looking leads and a bevy of the era's best character actors, Laura is an engagement no one should miss.

Wise: Speaking of engagements, how's about you and me head to the park and marry a pair of those Doritos Loco Tacos?

Werth: As long as the honeymoon's over in time for next week's Film Gab.

Stressed-out Gab

Werth: Hey there, Wise.  What’s with all the scented candles?  

Wise: Hello, Werth.  It’s Stress Awareness Month and I’m trying to bring a little enlightenment and peace into my world.  Care for some chamomile tea?  

Werth: Only if it’s spiked with vodka. Look, is this a bad time for Film Gab?  Because we can do this after you give yourself an oat bran facial or whatever else you have planned.  

Wise: No, I’m prepared.  Talking to a Friend is one of the Ten Strategies for Stress Reduction.  

Werth: So is Talking about Movies where Characters are more Stressed than You are.

Wise: And I have the perfect stressed-out damsel with Bette Davis in one of her most camp-tastic roles: the tragic southern belle driven crazy by a secret from her past in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. 


Werth: I love a good ellipsis.

Wise: Planned as a follow-up to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? the movie originally re-teamed Davis with Joan Crawford until either illness or on-set rivalry forced Crawford to drop out of the picture.  A number of replacements were considered, including Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Loretta Young, and Vivien Leigh whose legendary response to the offer was: “I can just about stand to look at Joan Crawford at six in the morning on a southern plantation, but I couldn't possibly look at Bette Davis.”  Instead, Olivia de Havilland got the role of the poor cousin returning to the ancestral home of Davis’s Charlotte who has lived as a mad recluse ever since her married lover was discovered hacked to bits in the summer house.  

Werth: I hate when that happens.  

Wise: Charlotte has been shunned by the locals ever since the murder thirty years ago, and she gets no sympathy from her neighbors when the state serves her an eviction notice that orders the demolition of her plantation house to make way for a brand-new super highway.  Pinning her hopes on her cousin Miriam to save her home, Charlotte gradually realizes that her poor relation has grown into something more sinister.  With de Haviland’s Miriam on the scene, Charlotte begins having nightmarish visions, flashbacks to her lover’s dismembered corpse, but when she appeals to her cousin for help, the comfort that Miriam offers is cold indeed.  

Werth: And de Havilland definitely uses some of her goody-two-shoes routine from Gone With the Wind to chilling effect.
   

Wise: She really has some terrifying moments, especially when she’s dealing with Charlotte’s loyal maid, played with high Southern Gothic abandon by Agnes Moorehead who received her fourth Best Supporting Actress nomination for her efforts.  But she’s just part of a fantastic cast that includes Joseph Cotten, Victor Buono, George Kennedy, Bruce Dern, and an almost unrecognizable Mary Astor in her final film role as the bitter widow of Charlotte’s dead lover.   

Werth: Moonlight and magnolias mixed with an ax.

Wise: Living up to the myth of Scarlett O’Hara would make anyone anxious. 

 
Werth: Maybe that’s true, but there’s really nothing like the stress of being a woman of leisure in Edwardian England, and that’s why George Cukor’s 1944 thriller Gaslight really stresses me out.

Wise: Really?  I thought it would be the lack of electric lighting.  

Werth: Ingrid Bergman plays Paula Alquist, the blushing bride of handsome and romantic pianist Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer.) They have returned from their honeymoon to live in her childhood home, nestled in a picturesque London square complete with crowing flower peddlers.

Wise: I feel the stress washing over me in waves.

Werth: Did I mention that as a child, Paula found her famous opera star aunt strangled to death in that same house, the murder never solved?

Wise: That could make being carried over the threshold a little creepy.

Werth: Soon poor Paula begins to forget and lose things, hear footsteps at night, and imagine that the gas lamps in her bedroom are dimming all because she is, as her husband so gently puts it,  “high-strung.”

Wise: I’ve heard about cures for high-strung Edwardian women...

Werth: The fun in this film comes from Cukor’s choice to let the audience in on what’s going on. Almost immediately he gives visual cues that the person behind Paula’s impending madness is none other than her loving husband. Playing against the French lover roles that made him famous, Boyer soon reveals that he is, what the French call, a douchebag. His refined sadism and controlling, condescending behavior falls only slightly short of the husband in The Burning Bed.

Wise: That sounds like an abandoned Calvin Klein fragrance. 

Werth: What really makes this thriller work is that even though we know who the villain is, Bergman’s Paula does not—and it is her superb performance as a woman struggling with self-doubt and the terror of encroaching madness that makes us climb the walls right along with her. In another actress’ hands we might say, “Hey, stupid. Look at the keylight shining on your husband’s evil, beady eyes,” but Bergman’s fragility and beauty makes audiences want to protect her—or at least to cheer her on when she decides to protect herself.  That year Bergman would beat no less than Claudette Colbert, Greer Garson, Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis to win her first of three Oscars. It was a warm-up for her part as another endangered female in master stress-maker Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Notorious which premiered a few months later.

Wise: Talk about out of the fire and into the Nazi espionage ring.

 Werth: In Gaslight, Bergman is joined by steadily working (but not-at-all British) Joseph Cotten, dithering nosy neighbor Dame May Witty, and in a star-making turn, the very young Angela Lansbury as snide, tartlet maid, Nancy. Cukor is not generally remembered for his thrillers, but it was clearly a genre that he understood. He very skillfully melded his “women’s picture” style with the mystery genre, sculpting nerve-wracking close-ups of Bergman as she strained to maintain her sanity under those maddening, flickering gaslamps.

Wise: Whew!  I’m not sure if delving into these stress-filled movies made me feel better or worse.  Maybe we should put on some Enya and journal about our experiences.   

Werth: You do the Orinoco Flow. I’ll think of themes for next week’s Film Gab.