When Irish Eyes are Gabbing

Werth: Top o' the morning to ye, Wise.

Wise: Hello there, Werth.  I'm assuming that the shamrocks and shillelagh are part of your tasteful nod to Saint Patrick's Day.  

Werth: Faith an' Begorrah!  Did ye not notice me green knickers, tailcoat and top hat?  

Wise: Very subtle.  

Werth: It's all to pay tribute to our favorite Irish actors of the silver screen. One of my favorite Irish actors has been giving us wonderful performances for almost 60 years. Apparently Peter O'Toole isn't sure if he was actually born in Ireland—he has a birth certificate from Connemara County, Ireland and Leeds, England. But with those sparkling eyes, effervescent charm and a name like O'Toole, there's no doubt where he gets his spunk.

Wise: Sounds like you're setting me up for a double O'Tendre.

Werth: O'Toole has given performances in such great films as Beckett (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), My Favorite Year (1982), The Last Emperor (1986) and Ratatouille (2007) and has been nominated for eight Oscars—finally earning an Honorary Academy Award in 2003. But he is still best remembered for his first big role, that of T.E. Lawrence in David Lean's epic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Lean had proven his visual mastery in films like Summertime (1955) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). But Venice and the jungles of Indochina wilt in the hot, stark sun of the desert in Lawrence. With scenery design by God, Lean's panoramic shots of the deserts of Northern Africa are breathtaking, truly putting any green-screen chicanery to shame.

Wise: Take that, Avatar!

Werth: The scene where a lone rider appears on the horizon, approaching the thirsty Lawrence at a well takes its sweet time in showing the unknown danger approach across a stunning, but godforsaken, vista. What makes Lawrence more than just an exotic travel magazine come to life is O'Toole. With his bright blue eyes shining, O'Toole produces an electric performance. Giant close-ups of his tanned, determined face give the sky and sand dunes a run for their money. 

Wise: I'd walk 10,000 miles to get back to that. 

Werth: Many scholars have poo-pooed the story, but watching Lawrence survive the desert of the Sinai, unite Arab tribes, and give a royal butt-kicking to the Germans in World War I only to succumb to the temptations of power and fame is worth the historical inaccuracies. O'Toole does an amazing job of making Lawrence at once mythic and human.

His performance seems even more realistic when compared to his co-stars. Alec Guinness as Arab Prince Faisal in brown face and Anthony Quinn as Auda abu Tayi in said brown face with a phony hatchet nose chew the scenery in their typical fun fashion, but are too much to be believed.

Only then-newcomer Omar Sharif approaches O'Toole's sheer natural charisma in a film that visually and (with a soundtrack by Maurice Jarre) aurally overwhelms its audience, making you grasp for your green beer as the sun burns the sand.

Wise: Despite having such a temperate climate, Ireland has certainly produced some scorching hot stars.  Consider Maureen O'Hara—her flaming hair and milky skin is the stuff of movie-going legend—who used her sexuality as just one of the tools in her fully stocked acting arsenal.  For example, she isn't the star of The Parent Trap (1961), but she is the film's emotional core.   Coming after a long run of playing exotic beauties and fiery foils to John Wayne, O'Hara steps away from her history of glamorous spitfires and into the more muted territory of Maggie McKendrick, a divorced mother of twin girls, Susan and Sharon (both played with impudent charm by Hayley Mills with the help of some split screen trickery). 

The girls meet at summer camp after being separated by their parents as infants, and take an instant dislike to each other, their turbulent rivalry threatening to topple the camp into chaos.  Only later do they discover their true relationship and immediately hatch a plan to switch places and scheme to bring their parents back together.  

Werth: Giving children of divorced families everywhere the vain hope that Mommy and Daddy will get back together again after a bloody divorce.

Wise: While the first half of the film is a paean to the kind of kid-friendly hijinks that were (and continue to be) bread-and-butter to this type of Disney teen-aimed flicks, once O'Hara appears on screen, the film takes on a decidedly more adult tone.  

Werth: Yeah. She shows her ankle.

Wise: When Susan arrives in Boston to meet the mother she has never known, she discovers a prim divorcée completely unlike the masculine and free-spirited father (Brian Keith) with whom she grew up.  But through persistence (and an unfamiliarity with Brahmin social codes), she brings about a gradual defrosting, and by the time Susan and Maggie arrive in California to undo the switch, O'Hara has allowed her brittle shell to crack and allowed the more toothsome woman to emerge.  

Werth: I like my gals toothsome. 

Wise: The sensual rapport between Keith and O'Hara is frankly shocking in a kid flick, and the lustful gaze with which he appreciates her body would be lewd if it weren't comically mirrored by the droll local reverend (the marvelous Leo G. Carroll) doing the same thing.  It is also part of the movie's theme—the reunion of halves split asunder—ostensibly about the shenanigans of two tween girls each finding her twin, but more deeply about the bond between two people united in love.  

Werth: Wise, let's bond with a couple shots o' Jameson's.  

Wise: Just pass me a Shamrock Shake and we'll be sure to reunite next week for more 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!