Wise: Werth, I see you have two cakes prepared again. Is it another double birthday or are you binging?
Werth: I'm binging on birthdays because today is the birthday of not one, but two great character actors, Eileen Heckart and Arthur O'Connell.
Wise: They not only shared a birthday but they also shared the Broadway stage in the premiere of William Inge's Picnic in 1953 and the silver screen in 1956's
Bus Stop.
Werth: Eileen was the younger of the two Oscar-nominated actors, greeting the world as Anna Eileen Herbet in Columbus, OH. Eileen graduated from Ohio State and while her husband was away at war, she moved to NYC to pursue a stage career. She would go on to become a Tony-nominated fixture on the Great White Way and found her way into the fledgling television biz performing stage properites on classic shows like The Ford Theatre Hour and Lux Video Theatre. Her road to Hollywood was a little rougher, as her looks didn't easily translate to the screen. But in 1956 she was in four—count 'em four—films and earned her first Oscar nomination for the camp classic, The Bad Seed.
One of those films was also a big starting vehicle for a then fairly unknown actor named Paul Newman. Somebody Up There Likes Me is the film adaptation of boxer Rocky Graziano's autobiography and follows the young Rocky from boyhood no-goodnik, to adult no-goodnik, to boxing champion.
Wise: But not up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, I assume.
Werth: Filmed by director Robert Wise in black-and-white, the film maintains a gritty, noir-ish look at poverty-stricken New York and Brooklyn and at the shady world of prize-fighting. Newman is a wonder to behold, his classic good looks busted into broken noses and swollen eyes care of makeup artist William Tuttle.
But Newman proves he's not just a man to drool over. He gives Rocky a torn characterization that gives him more humanity than a simple punching bag. Newman's Rocky is dumb and lazy but resourceful and driven, a callous thug and a tender father. The NY accent hinders Newman's innate naturalness on screen, but his role in Somebody clearly shows a star was born.
Wise: That and his boxing trunks.
Werth: And only six years Newman's senior, Heckart plays Rocky's mother, Ma Barbella, a guilt-ridden mother who only wants the best for her son—even when he doesn't deserve it. Heckart was wonderful at playing flawed survivors.
As Ma, she lives with the guilt of knowing that her husband's abusive, downward spiral into the shit-heel we see is all because she begged him to stop boxing, killing his dream at the expense of her desire not to see his mug get beat-up all the time. Wrapped in a shawl watching Rocky get the crap knocked out of him on television, Ma has to re-face the consequences of the sweet science.
Wise:I bet Newman's agent was doing the same thing.
Werth: While the fight scenes are not as realistic as a post-Rocky and Raging Bull audience might be used to, the black-and-white photography of the fight scenes brings the ring into stark-reality, the audience encircling it thrown into darkness as they watch two men punching their way to what they hope will be a better life. Cinematopgrapher Joseph Ruttenberg earned an Oscar for his work on the film.
Heckart would join the Oscar Winner's Circle in 1972 when she won for the role she created on stage in Butterflies Are Free, before going on to a busy career in television playing everything from Mary's aunt on the Mary Tyler Moore Show to playing Ellen's Grandma on Ellen.
Wise: Arthur O'Connell had a similarly varied career, making his big break as a reporter in the final moments of Citizen Kane (1941) before earning an Oscar nom for Picnic (1955), sharing screen time with James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1956), and playing a friendly pharmacist in a series of ads for Crest. This versatility came in handy when he joined the cast of Frank Capra's Pocket Full of Miracles (1961) in a small but pivotal role.
The film, a remake of Capra's own Lady for a Day (1933), features a deep bench of some of Hollywood's great character actors.
Werth: And Ann-Margret playing Ann-Margret.
Wise: The film stars Glenn Ford as Dave the Dude, a superstitious gangster on the make who refuses to seal a deal without first buying a rosy-cheeked fruit from Apple Annie (a bedraggled Bette Davis).
When he discovers that Annie has a secret daughter whom she's been supporting in a Spanish boarding school and who now wants to finally meet her mother, Dave and his girlfriend Queenie (Hope Lange) clean Annie up, install her in a swank apartment, and assemble a cast of underground toughs to pose as her society friends.
Werth: There should be a reality show based on this.
Wise: O'Connell plays Count Alfonso Romero, the potential father-in-law to Annie's daughter, and the role calls for a very nuanced take—stern enough to put the ruse at risk, but tender enough to make audiences root for the romance to succeed—and O'Connell succeeds brilliantly. Davis has a lot of fun in the first half of the film playing a drunk guttersnipe with a heart of gold, and later, after she's had a makeover and the script calls for little more than smiling beatifically, she still radiates the passion of a mother who would do anything for her child.
Peter Falk has a few great lines (and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination) as Dave's sidekick Joy Boy. But it's veteran scene-stealer and Film Gab favorite Edward Everett Horton who seems to
be having the best time onscreen, making sly nods to the audience while taking full advantage of all the plum bits that Capra and his screenwriters were feeding him.
Even amidst this wealth of talent, O'Connell shines, bringing dignity and humor to a role that anchors the madcap shenanigans around him.
Werth: So, Wise, are you ready to dig into this cake?
Wise: I'll take two pieces. One for now and one for next week's Film Gab.
Werth: You know what, Wise?
Wise: What's that, Werth?
Werth: I'd really like to thank the Acadamy.
Wise: Because they like you, they really like you?
Werth: No, because the Oscar telecast finally recognized Oscar losers. I'm not gonna say that host Seth MacFarlane and Kristin Chenoweth stole our idea, but we have mined this territory twice before.
Wise: It seems Mr. MacFarlane did a lot of things to ruffle people's feathers at the Oscars.
Werth: One person who must have been super ruffled was legendary film director, Steven Spielberg. His hugely successful bio-pic Lincoln lost Best Picture and, more surprisingly, Best Director.
Wise: And not just because historical bio-pics are usually a shoo-in at the Academy Awards.
Werth: But Spielberg might be used to losing Oscars on his slavery-themed movies. The Color Purple (1985) was famously nominated for 11 Oscars and lost every single one. But perhaps less remembered is Spielberg's cinematic treatment of a group of Africans who escape a slave ship in 1839, only to be put on trial here in America, Amistad (1997). The film was nominated for four Oscars and lost them all.
Wise:Most of the gold that year went to another film about an ill-fated ship.
Werth: Amistad is based on the true story of a group of Africans who are kidnapped and sent to Cuba before rising up against their captors, slaying them, and then trying to steer their boat home. Unfortunately they wind-up off Long Island, and are soon in shackles again for murder.
They become the center of an international property dispute that quickly leads to Presidential involvement due to the case's ramifications to American slavery. It's the sort of epic human issue canvas that Spielberg loves to paint on.
Wise: Munich, anyone?
Werth: The film veers between heavy-handedness, perceptive humor and stark, shocking realism, but the real joy in this film is to watch the performances. Morgan Freeman gives his typical charming and noble turn as freed slave Theodore Joadson, and Matthew McConaughey is spunky and eager as the defense attorney for the Africans, Roger Sherman Baldwin.
But the two standouts are Djimon Hounsou as Cinque and Anthony Hopkins as former president John Quincy Adams. Hounsou is a revelation, his imposing screen presence a mix of sheer physical size, vocal roar, and intensity.
Hopkins works magic by throwing himself whole hog into this addled and rickety, irascible and brilliant man. The scene where we first see Adams "napping" in Congress is textbook perfection of how to introduce a character with only a simple shot and one line of dialogue.
Hopkins lost the best Supporting Oscar to Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting and Spielberg wasn't even nominated. So my guess is Spielberg will avoid slavery flicks for a little while.
Wise: Perhaps there's no better example of an Oscar loser than Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage (1934). Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, the film also stars Leslie Howard as Philip Carey, a club-footed aesthete who abandons his dream of studying art in Paris and returns to study medicine in London where he falls for cockney waitress Mildred (Davis). He lavishes attention on her, but she prefers the company of wealthier men who enjoy life's rowdier pleasures and aren't burdened by a dysfunctional leg.
Werth: I'm with ya' Mildred.
Wise: Mildred runs off with another man, but comes back destitute and pregnant. Philip takes her in, but just as she makes it back on her feet, she runs off again beginning a cycle that results in both spiraling out of control. Along the way, Philip finds comfort in the friendship he develops with a patient (Reginald Owen) and his daughter (Frances Dee).
Werth: But Mildred's more fun.
Wise: This was the picture that made Davis' career. She had been laboring in smaller films at Warner Bros., but when Bondage director John Cromwell caught of preview of one of Davis' performances, he insisted on borrowing her for the film. Legend has it that the Warner brass was happy to have the tempestuous actress off the lot for a few weeks, but were furious when their contract player was transformed into a star by another studio and quietly encouraged the Academy not to nominate Davis.
A furious write-in campaign erupted, but despite the best efforts of her peers, Davis still lost the Oscar to Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night. Still, Davis is magnificent playing both the slatternly Mildred and Philip's fantasy vision of her: tender, compliant, virginal in softly-lit, frothy white dresses. She even gets an incredible breakdown scene where she rages at Philip's impotence and later almost destroys his chances of finishing medical school.
Werth: No actress has ever done as much with the line "Wipe my mouth."
Wise: It's really an amazing performance, full of vibrance, passion, and wit.
Werth: Which is more than I can say for this year's Oscars ceremony.
Wise: Perhaps next year we can host— but until then, check in next week for more Film Gab!
Werth: Happy New Year, Wise!
Wise: Happy New Year, Werth!
Werth: The New Year is all about new beginnings, and some of the best movies are about characters who start new lives as new people.
Wise: Are we talking about identity theft? Because my parents are obsessed with that.
Werth: Not exactly, although theft and identity are part of my "new beginnings" classic, 1969's Midnight Cowboy. John Schlesinger's controversial film starts off with a shot of a mostly deserted Texas drive-in with the prairie and the sky stretching off into the distance. It's the perfect image for Joe Buck's (Jon Voight) Hollywood-style fantasy of moving out of his one-horse town to New York City to become a successful gigolo.
Wise: It must have been a much more glamorous career path before the advent of Craig's List.
Werth: Dressed in his fringe jacket, green shirt and black cowboy hat and boots, Joe Buck packs up his cowhide suitcase with western shirts and a picture of Paul Newman from the movie Hud and rides a Greyhound to New York City only to find his new beginning as a "stud" is fraught with wake-up calls.
After being swindled by a blousy penthouse-frau (don't-ask-me-why Academy Award-nominated Sylvia Miles), Joe meets skanky cripple Rico "Ratso" Rizzo (a post-Graduate Dustin Hoffman) and these two outsiders forge an uncomfortable, yet touching bond.
They hatch scheme after scheme, exhausting themselves and the chances around them, until they have no other choice but to leave New York City for good. Sadly, as Nilsson croons "Everybody's Talkin'", we know that the movie-inspired dreams of these luckless scavengers are doomed whether they are in a condemned apartment building in Manhattan or on the sunny beaches of Florida.
Wise: At least the fresh orange juice will keep scurvy at bay.
Werth: Many film-folk like to point to Easy Rider (1969) as the movie that ushered in a new era for Hollywood, but I think a better case can be made for Midnight Cowboy dragging Tinseltown into the '70's.
Even with an initial X-Rating due to the nudity, sex, drag queens, drug use and a gay blowjob courtesy of a young Bob Balaban, Midnight Cowboy earned seven Academy Award noms and won three—including Best Picture and Best Director.
It was the first time that the Old Guard handed its highest accolade to such edgy, raw material. Schelsinger's use of montage editing was fresh and impactful in visualizing the crossroads of daydreams, nightmares, and real life—and helped define a cinematic style, making Midnight Cowboy a new beginning for Hollywood film.
Wise: In Now, Voyager (1942), Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, a dowdy Boston spinster suffering under her dictatorial mother (Gladys Cooper who made a career of playing judgmental society matrons). A kind psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains) admits her to his sanitarium where Charlotte transforms into a self-possessed woman; fearing relapse if she returns to her mother's house, Charlotte instead embarks on a cruise to South America where she meets a handsome (and married) stranger Jeremiah Duvaux Durrance (Paul Henreid).
An accident during a sightseeing excursion, separates them from the ship and while stranded, they fall in love.
Werth: Stuck together in a cabin after their Portugese taxi driver nearly takes them off a mountain cliff is reason enough for anyone to fall in love.
Wise: Unwilling to break up her lover's marriage, Charlotte returns to Boston heartbroken, but full of a strength she never knew she had. She takes control of her relationship with her mother and gets engaged to a handsome widower from one of the most prominent Boston Brahmin families, but when a fierce argument with her mother results in her mother's sudden death, Charlotte returns to the sanitarium where she attempts to forge a new life for the second time.
Werth: The scene of Charlotte sassing her mother to death is one of my all-time favorites.
Wise: Davis, who had always struggled against the confines of the studio system, found new independence in Now, Voyager both onscreen and off. Because producer Hal B. Wallace developed the film as an independent production within Warner Bros., Davis was able to exert her influence on costumes, casting, and even her director Irving Rapper who found the collaboration both rewarding and exhausting.
But it's onscreen that Davis makes her biggest transformation, not just within the film by trading dowdy foulard dresses for sleek Orry-Kelly designs, but by putting aside the snarling independence of her earlier roles and taking on a new fortitude grounded in moral certainty. It's shocking to see Davis this tender, yet just as ferocious as she had ever been.
Werth: And even more shocking to see her with those eyebrows.
Wise: Tune in to next week's Film Gab when we pluck out more classic films!
Wise: Howdy, Werth!
Werth: Don't howdy, me! After all you've done to me, I would think you would be ashamed to even speak to me!
Wise: Hunh?
Werth: I just figured with all the Hollywood couples that have been breaking up, maybe we should have a blow-out so we can make some headlines.
Wise: As opposed to making headlines for being such a great writing team?
Werth: Come on Wise! Bad couples are so much more fun to watch! Take Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Mike Nichols's screen adaptation of Edward Albee's Broadway sensation was the perfect film to showcase this fiery Hollywood couple in all their dysfunctional glory. Taylor and Burton first met at a party in 1952 while Liz was married to Michael Wilding, but it wasn't until the two were teamed up in the mega-budget epic Cleopatra (1963) that sparks and gossip columns started to fly. By 1964 the two had rid themselves of their spouses, laughed at a Vatican condemnation, and tied the knot.
Wise: Plus made themselves the archetype for every Hollywood power couple ever since.
Werth: In Woolf (Burton and Taylor's fourth screen pairing), the studio played yet again to the public's perception of their wild and passionate relationship only this time the vehicle wound up being a well-crafted Oscar magnet that proved the acting talents of both Taylor and Burton.
George (Burton) and Martha (Taylor) are a middle-aged couple who live near the campus of the college where George teaches and where Martha's dad is president. From the first shot of the two entering their home, Nichols throws the audience a major curveball. Handsome Burton is wrinkled and worn-out in a sweater and glasses, and the normally glamorous and sexy Taylor is replaced by a frumpy, loud-mouthed house frau.
Bickering about a line from a Bette Davis movie, Martha continues her drinking jag, "braying" and chewing on her ice while George keeps pace with her drinking and her verbal barbs. It's all a warm-up for the battle of wits royale that will take place in front of (and include) a new university couple (George Segal and Sandy Dennis) that innocently accepted an invitation for a nightcap, but wind up staying for a night of "games" and revelations.
Wise: Sounds like their martinis were shaken and stirred.
Werth: George and Martha seethe with rancor for one another to the point that you can't imagine why they are together. But that's the real beauty of this work. Taylor and Burton not only masterfully depict the snide resentment, but also the tender attachment of two people who are so lost they only have each other to cling to.
It's hard to believe that their real-life marriage was full of as much venom and spite as George and Martha's, but considering their divorce, then re-marriage, then re-divorce eight years later, you can't help but think Dick and Liz brought a little of their tumultuous relationship to these characters. However they did it, both were nominated for Oscars (Taylor and Dennis won) and the film remains a mesmerizing example of how to translate a cerebral stage property to the screen.
Wise: Another play-turned-film that also features a couple both at war and in love with each other is The Letter (1940), director William Wyler's adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1929 play of the same name. Justly famous for the opening scene where Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie guns down her lover Geoff Hammond (David Newell) on the steps of her husband's rubber plantation in British Malaya, the film follows that initial salvo with a crackerjack combination of marital infidelity, deceit and manipulation.
Werth: And fantastic lace-making!
Wise: Disguising the crime as an act of self-defense, Leslie is sent to jail as a mere formality until the native assistant to her attorney Howard Joyce (James Stephenson) delivers a copy of an incriminating letter written by Leslie to her lover. Joyce immediately tracks down Hammond's widow (a scintillating Gale Sondergaard in full dragon lady drag) who insists on an outrageous ransom for the return of the purloined post.
Werth: Sondergaard would give Myrna Loy and Luise Rainer a real run for their money in a "white chick playing Asian" contest.
Wise: Davis earned a nomination for Best Actress for The Letter, and it's easy to see why: her turn as a killer who's also a wronged woman fighting for her life in a courtroom drama is mesmerizing. It also represents what Davis did perhaps better than any other classic Hollywood actress: playing the woman who deserved her sorry end and yet was principled enough to know it. Her performance is a thrilling combination of cruelty and honor.
Herbert Marshall as the wronged husband has fewer scenes, but is no less potent as a man who would give up anything to save his wife.
Werth: Herbert Marshall would get more marital woe from Davis when they were paired again a year later in The Little Foxes.
Wise: Of course the film wouldn't gel without James Stephenson's excellent work as attorney Joyce. A relative unknown when he was cast, he went on to earn an Oscar nomination for the role. His performance both supports Davis's heavy lifting, as well as functioning as audience surrogate, reacting to Leslie's deeds with both admiration and revulsion.
Guiding all these performances through an Orientalism-inflected noir landscape, director Wyler suggests that marriage is after all the perfect balance between crime and passion.
Werth: I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier, Wise. Let's make up.
Wise: Did you just realize that we could get press coverage by getting back together like K-Patt?
Werth: I realize we'll both be back next week for more Film Gab!
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