Film Gab Birthday Duo!

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.

 

No More Teacher’s Dirty Gab

Wise: What’s up, Werth?

Werth: Shhhh!  I’m studying.

Wise: Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s homepage?

Werth: While everyone else is gearing up for the Memorial Day Weekend, I’m studying for college finals. And they can’t happen soon enough.

Wise: Would talking about a school-themed classic film make the time go by faster for you?

Werth: You know me too well, Wise. One of my favorite school movies gives new meaning to the words “School House Rock”. When MGM’s Blackboard Jungle came out in 1955, much ado was made over its gritty depiction of a new teacher literally fighting to teach at an inner city boys’ school. The opening credits were underscored by the unthinkable—a rock-n-roll song.

Wise: Max Steiner must have been appalled.  

Werth: Bill Hailey and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” shot to number one, and legend has it that teenagers tore up movie theaters across the country. Director Richard Brooks uses the song as a rough, musical symbol of a young generation lashing out at a  society obsessed with conformity. He shot Blackboard in dark tones with low lighting and sparse studio sets, cleverly neglecting to mention which city it was set in to remind us this failing high school could be anywhere. There are no great cinematic flourishes here as Brooks went instead for raw, emotional intensity. The scenes of violence (including an attempted rape in a library) are remorseless, bloody and ugly. 

These no-good-niks aren’t your father’s Dead End Kids. Instigated by Artie Wilson (a truly menacing Vic Morrow), they are a lawless, arrogant, sadistic crew that make us question whether Richard Dadier’s (Glenn Ford) goal of teaching them is a misguided pipe dream.

Wise: Having pipe dreams about inner city youth seems like it might get you into trouble.  

Werth: Aside from the stylistic choices, this movie works because of the performances of its two stars—Ford and, in his first major role, Sidney Poitier. Through great films like Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), Ford had crafted a handsome, intelligent, masculine screen persona that seemed to flow naturally. Like Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck, Ford embodied simple traits and translated them to the big screen to serve the wide variety of films he made. In Blackboard Jungle he is optimistic and strong, not in a saccharine, “Aw shucks, we can do anything” way. He reminds us instead of a tough, flawed, but ultimately well-meaning father figure. And in his moments of doubt Ford really makes us wonder if he believes the convictions he’s been spouting. 

One student he focuses his “you too can learn” philosophy on is Gregory Miller, played by Poitier. Poitier’s electric charm and quick-fuse fury create a performance that portended the great actor this young man would become. He is sleek, angry and gives tantalizing hints of the grace and pride that would become hallmarks of his career.

Wise: Sort of like, Guess Who’s Coming to Detention?  

Werth: Blackboard Jungle may seem a little dated with it’s “Daddy-o’s” and use of the word “stinkin’” instead of another word that ends with a ‘k’, but the issues of social inequality, racism and impenetrable bureaucracy in our schools are as topical today as they were when juvenile delinquents threatened the ‘50’s American Way. And where else will you see an early walk-on from Richard Deacon (Mel Cooley from the Dick Van Dyke Show) and a very young Jamie Farr (Klinger of M.A.S.H fame) as a constantly-grinning hoodlum?

Wise: The hoodlums in The Trouble with Angels (1966) are of the more girlish variety. Angels is something of an anomaly in Hollywood: a slapstick comedy about the lives of teenage girls, written and directed by women and starring an almost all-female cast.  It’s certainly not overburdened by a heavy feminist message, but it does take its characters quite seriously and uses the daily lives of women as fodder for the hilarity that ensues.  Haley Mills, in an attempt to overcome the good-girl image of her Disney past, plays Mary Clancy, a rebellious teenager with a penchant for hijinks, sent to staid St. Francis Academy where she teams up with the morose Rachel Devery (June Harding), and together they run afoul of the Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell).  

Werth: Rosalind Russell—the smokiest Catholic baritone since Joan of Arc burned at the stake.

Wise: It’s also something of a departure for her.  Long after her run in classic screwball comedies and just past her outsize roles in Gypsy and Auntie Mame, Russell still gets to show off her comic chops, but she’s also doing something a bit more subtle.  Amid the pratfalls and double-takes, she exudes wisdom and gentleness and really makes the audience believe that she is a woman with a religious calling and not just a dame in a habit.  

Werth: It probably helped that Russell was a devout Catholic—or as biographers like to say, “deeply religious.”

Wise: That deep humanity runs through the entire film, largely thanks to the direction by Ida Lupino who began her career at Warner Bros. as their second-string Bette Davis and grew into the most prominent female director in 50’s and 60’s Hollywood.  She did a lot of TV (including several episodes of Gilligan’s Island) and B movies, and although a lot of that was genre work, she was consistently able to subvert the conventions of formula work and examine the inner lives of women within the confines of the Hollywood system. 

Werth: Subverting the dominant paradigm is a hoot!

Wise: The Trouble with Angels is one of the rare movies that makes me laugh just as much as an adult as it did when I was a kid.  The timing is so spot-on, but there’s an undercurrent of seriousness that grounds the comedy and makes it not just a picture about jokes, but one about wit. 

Werth: Jesse Tyler Ferguson is very witty.

Wise: What happened to studying for finals?

Werth: Jesse’s ginger-ness is very distracting.

 Wise: Tune in to next week’s Film Gab for more cinematic distractions!