Peck 'n Bette Birthday Spectacular!

Wise: Hello, Werth.

Werth: Hello, Wise. I see you brought a belated Happy Birthday cake for Gregory Peck with you today.

Wise: No, I brought a belated Happy Birthday cake for Bette Davis.

Werth: What? Both of these celluloid big-wigs had birthdays yesterday? No way!

Wise: Apparently way. Good Queen Bette would have turned 104.

Werth: And Gorgeous Greg would have been 96. Ironic that they shared a birthday but never screentime in a movie.

Wise: Bette would have made a marvelous Boo Radley.

Werth: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) is usually the first Peck movie that people think of, but he had a wonderfully long and prolific movie career. One of my favorites is the William Wyler romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953). Peck is American journalist Joe Bradley who lucks out on his way home from a poker game when he finds an unconscious runaway royal princess.

Wise: Happens in the West Village all the time.

Werth: Only this doped-up princess is played by then newcomer, Audrey Hepburn. Much ado has been made of Hepburn's first starring role, and boy does she deserve it. You can't take your eyes off her. Her effortless beauty and youthful maturity leap off the screen. It's hard to imagine this girl ever being anything except a hugely successful movie star.

Wise: She wouldn't be scrubbing the john with those cheekbones. 

Werth: With all the attention being given to Hepburn's bird-like, belted waist, you'd think her co-star would just fade into the Trevi Fountain, but not Peck. He had wanted to do a comedy to get away from all the heavy dramas, biblical epics and westerns he'd been doing, so he relished playing the handsome, free-wheeling Bradley. 

This slick, "knows all the angles" newsman attempts to trick this incognito, day-tripping princess into giving him a whopper of an interview without disclosing who he is—or that he knows who she is. He leads her all over Rome on a once-in-a-lifetime tour that has probably done more for Roman tourism than any other movie.

Wise: Except maybe for Gladiator.

Werth: Shot entirely on location (with some help from the legendary Cinecitta Studios) Roman Holiday is just that: a wonderful adventure through a 1950's Rome crowded with horses, bicycles, Vespas, and wildly gesticulating Italian "types."  Of course the two fall in love—but wisely, the ending avoids the fairy-tale possibilities by showing us that sometimes the most magical day in our life only lasts one day. 

With ten Oscars noms (including Wyler for Best Director and pre-Green Acres Eddie Albert for Best Supporting Actor) and three wins (Hepburn as Best Actress, Edith Head for Best Costume Design B&W, and blacklistee Dalton Trumbo hiding behind McLellan Hunter for Best Writing Motion Picture Story), Roman Holiday is a light laugh confection that makes you yearn to use some of those air miles for a nostalgic Italian getaway.  

Wise: Bette Davis leaves for an island getaway at the end of Jezebel (1938), but it's not for a romantic romp. 

Werth: Unless you consider a Yellow Fever colony romantic.  

Wise: Davis plays Julie Marsden, a strong-willed Southern belle who asserts her independence to the detriment of her engagement to stolid banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda).  

When she dons a flaming red gown instead of the white traditional to unmarried women at the annual Olympus ball, Preston breaks their engagement and she is shunned by New Orleans society.  After a year spent in seclusion, Julie learns that Preston has returned from a sojourn up North and she goes to him begging for forgiveness and to resume their engagement only to find that he has married another woman in the meantime.  

To further complicate matters, a Yellow Fever epidemic sweeps the city, sickening Preston and condemning him to an island where all the victims are quarantined.  His new wife Amy prepares to accompany him, but Julie begs to take her place on the grounds that only a Southerner could survive the horrors of the island and to prove that her love for Preston has transcended her selfishness. 

Werth: I don't know about you, but there are better ways to try and prove you're unselfish than subjecting yourself to deadly communicable diseases. Donate money to the Milk Fund or something.

Wise: Hollywood legend has it that Davis used Jezebel as a lengthy audition for David Selznick as he was casting Scarlett O'Hara, but whatever the truth to that claim, the film is much more than a pale copy of Gone with the Wind. Davis won her second Oscar for Best Actress and the film cemented her status as a top Hollywood star. 

Of course all the hallmarks of classic Davis performance are here—the unruly pride, a frankness about women's desire—but she also incorporates a vision of ennobling female sacrifice that transforms the character from run-of-the-mill to extraordinary.

Werth: Her Louisiana accent by way of Boston is extraordinary.

Wise: Helping her along is William Wyler's evocative direction, Max Steiner's moving score, and Ernest Haller's alternately tender and terrifying cinematography.  But perhaps the biggest assist comes from costume designer Orry-Kelly who created not only the infamous red dress as well as its obverse, the dimity lace number she was supposed to wear, but also the self-abnegating gray cloak she wears at the end of the film that obliterates her vanity and asserts her sacrifice. So, Werth, whose cake should we slice into first?

Werth: Any way you slice it, we'll be back for next week's Film Gab. 

Wise: No, seriously. I want to eat both cakes.

Well, Well, Wellman!

Werth: How do, Wise?

Wise: I do fine, Werth. What scintillating cinematic synopses do we have planned this week?

Werth: Once again, Film Forum is the mother of invention, because starting today they are showing the films of early director William A. Wellman.

Wise: I'll be sure to expect screwball hijinks, fisticuffs and a lot of aeronautics.  

Werth: Part of the reason Wellman's style isn't as well-known as some of his contemporaries is because he shot such a wide range of film genres—action, comedy, drama, western. In fact, one of my Wellman favorites mixes comedy and mystery in, of all places, an old burlesque house.

Wise: Something tells me a lot of your favorite things are connected to burlesque. 

Werth: Lady of Burlesque (1943) stars Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy, a burlesque-stripper with a heart of gold and a mouth of brass. What starts off as a backstage comedy full of dressing room catfights, randy musical numbers and a fast-talking, improbable romance between Dixie and novelty comic Biff Brannigan (played by over-smiler Michael O'Shea), soon turns dark as strippers are found strangled to death with their own g-strings.  

Wise: What a way to go!  

Werth: In what can best be described as "Ten Little Strippers," all the suspects are gathered in the dressing room to find out whodunnit before the next victim falls prey to the panty-wielding maniac. Based on Gypsy Rose Lee's successful book, "The G-String Murders," the film suffers from its vacillation between showbiz comedy and grisly murder mystery—only half-successfully achieving the comedy portion. Wellman skips grand, Busby Berkeley-esque dance numbers and instead goes for a more realistic approach staging unpolished, almost amateur numbers with girls who look like they're used to taking it off—  

Wise: But had to leave it on, thanks to the Production Code.  

Werth: What elevates this film is the presence of Stanwyck. Like Stanwyck's hilarious turn as Dixie's "sistah from another movie," Sugarpuss O'Shea in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire (1941), Stanwyck adds a hard-bitten class to the role that makes her a match for anyone on either side of the tracks. She growls her ridiculously crass song "Take It Off the E-String, Put It On the G-String" and struts through the film supremely confident, but refreshingly genuine. Her tight little body is gorgeous—dressed by costume designer extrordinaire Edith Head.

Head camouflaged Stanwyck's unusually long waist and low rear with cleverly designed waistlines and large belts that tapered in the back, making Stanwyck one of Head's frequent clotheshorses both in front of and away from the camera. The supporting cast of fun, gum-chewing broads is also dressed and un-dressed to the hilt, proving that all you need for a good time is hats, heels and hose... and Barbara Stanwyck.  

Wise: Wellman routinely brought out the best in his leading ladies, but one of the most luminous performances came from Carole Lombard in Nothing Sacred (1937).  As Hazel Flagg, she plays a woman from small-town Vermont supposedly stricken by radium poisoning.  When disgraced New York reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) discovers her plight, he sweeps her off to New York City where he embarks on a series of florid profiles, turning this country nobody into the darling of the big city demimonde. 

Things get even more complicated for Hazel when she discovers that her tippling hometown physician, Dr. Enoch Downer (Charles Winninger) has misdiagnosed her, forcing her to obscure her health and disguise her increasingly tender feelings for Wally.  


Werth: Who knew that cancer, press manipulation and alcoholic medical misdiagnosis could be so funny?  

Wise: The shocking thing about this film is how contemporary it feels, and a lot of the credit for that, I think, goes to Lombard.  Unlike the more polished comedy personas of her screwball peers (Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, and Katherine Hepburn), Lombard feels artless, dissolving into tears, undone by anxiety, frantic in desperate straits.  By comparison, Babs, Roz and Kate always seemed to have another trick up their sleeve, while the stakes feel a little higher for Lombard; there's big trouble as her schemes burst apart.  

Werth: Scheme-bursting was de rigeur for Lombard in many of her best comedies—Twentieth Century (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and To Have and Have Not (1942).


Wise: The screenplay by Ben Hecht (with some polishing by Dorothy Parker, Sidney Howard and Moss Hart) is full of knowing jabs at New York, lampooning the excesses of tabloid journalism and the insincerity of society life. 

But he doesn't let the rural folk off any easier; Margaret Hamilton has a particularly juicy scene as the town druggist whose sanctimoniousness is matched only by the sharpness of her tongue.  

Werth: And possibly her nose.  

Wise: Wellman liked to work fast, wrangling articulate films from a jumble of plotlines, actions sequences and performances.  Several actors accused him of being a bully, but whatever the chaos on set, onscreen his stars were magic (take, for example, the pyrotechnics Hattie McDaniel makes of a single line).  He may not have been one of Hollywood's most sophisticated directors, but the quick character studies and rapid-fire pace he demanded are still with us today.  

Werth: And that's why you should go check out some of Wellman's best movies at the Film Forum until March 1st or at a DVD player near you.

Wise: And check out Film Gab next Friday for more films with radioactive strippers!