Happy Birthday Bette Joan Perske!

Wise: Howdy, Werth!

Werth: Greetings, Wise!

Wise: What's with the flamethrower?

Werth: I made a cake for Lauren Bacall's birthday and I figured it would be the easiest way to light 87 candles.

Wise: Wow. At her age, she'll need a wind machine to blow them out.

Werth: She'll just pucker up her lips and blow. Bacall is one of the great figures of classic film, and I think we should give her a Film Gab birthday present, and dedicate this week's entry to her.

Wise: Sounds good to me. Beats having to buy her something.

Werth: Bacall first came on the scene with a bang in 1944  in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not. She was paired with her future husband Humphrey Bogart and the cinematic sparks flew. The legendary duo made four movies together and their last one is a perfect Sunday afternoon, curl up on your couch classic.

Wise: As opposed to the typical hangover-induced, Domino's binge Sunday couch surfing? 

Werth: Key Largo (1948) is a veritable time capsule of some of the greats of the Hollywood studio system. Bogart is Frank McCloud, a war hero who comes to the Florida Keys to visit the young wife and father of one of his men who was killed in action. Nora (Bacall) and James Temple (the wheeled Lionel Barrymore) are happy to meet the man they've heard so much about and ask him to stay on in their hotel. 

But this bittersweet meeting is made even more bitter when a gang of mobsters led by Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) decides to take up residence in the hotel. All hell breaks loose when a hurricane hits and traps them all for the duration, pitting Bogart against Robinson in a silver screen titan throwdown.

Wise: I wish Bogart and Robinson had stopped by my place during Hurricane Irene.

Werth: Directed by Bogart friend and collaborator John Huston, Key Largo lacks some of the film noir edge of Huston's Maltese Falcon (1941) and Asphalt Jungle (1950). But in several scenes Huston uses bright light to give the film a grainy, almost verite feel, and some of his closeups eschew Hollywood's typical beauty shots and instead go for craggy realism. But oh what faces! Bacall is beautiful and dumps her typical sly vamp routine for one of a fresh-faced, tender woman whose looks at Bogey are more schoolgirl crush than 40's seductress. Bogey gives the reluctant man of action performance that audiences had come to expect of him, but never tired of. 

Edward G. Robinson is dapper and indomitable playing exiled mobster Johnny Rocco as if he was Napoleon, slapping women, taunting old men and chomping lustily on a cigar. Lionel Barrymore is the most boisterous invalid to ever roll across the screen and he lets loose at Rocco with both barrels, making you wonder if he could get out of that wheelchair what he would do. 

Wise: If he were alive today, probably a second career at Dancing with the Stars.  

Werth: But the real stunner in this already crowded talent pool is Claire Trevor. As the washed-up, drunken gun moll Gaye Dawn, Trevor is a heart-wrenching sensation. Desperately clinging to the bar, Trevor gives a full-bodied, Oscar-winning performance that culminates in a humiliating singing routine for a drink. She leaves us wanting to either throw her a gimlet or rush her to a twelve step program.  

Key Largo is a fun assemblage of performers at the top of their games portraying people who "ain't what they used to be"—as worn-out as the threadbare lobby of the Largo Hotel.

Wise: Or, as worn-out as the 1981 Bertie Higgins song.  At the other end of the spectrum is Bacall's late career supporting role in My Fellow Americans (1996).  A comedy about former rivals and current ex-Presidents Russell P. Kramer (Jack Lemmon) and Matt Douglas (James Garner) as they thwart assassination attempts, unravel Washington skullduggery, and meet the most cheerful, oddball Americans this side of a sit-com's backyard fence.  

Bacall, as former first lady Margaret Kramer, has little to do but gaze adoringly at Lemmon and occasionally crack wise, but she uses all her star power to communicate the brittle dignity forced upon Presidents' wives.  

Werth: Speaking of brittle dignity, I wonder if Nancy Reagan reads Film Gab...

Wise: Also along for the ride are Dan Aykroyd, Wilford Brimley, Sela Ward, Bradley Whitford, and Ester Rolle.  

Werth: It sounds like the cast for a very special episode of Murder, She Wrote.  

Wise: The credits are definitely chock-full of the usual Hollywood suspects, and the script provides each of them with a spicy morsel of scenery to chew.  And while it's not exactly Chekhov—  

Werth: Is Chekov from Star Trek in it too? 

Wise:  —the film is one of the few attempts at imagining life after the White House and the kinds of humiliations ex-Presidents face as they attempt to both keep their dignity and find purpose in the dénouement of their careers.  Of course, those small tragedies are each played for laughs—and often, the broadest, most inane yuks possible—but the film does question the afterlife of public service and the possibility of redemption after a lifetime of political compromises.  

Werth: Speaking of lifetimes—thank you, Lauren Bacall, for a lifetime of movie memories!

Wise: - and bring Nancy Reagan next week for leftover cake and more Film Gab.  

Here Comes the Gab

Werth: Oh, Wise...

Wise: Oh, Werth...

Werth: Is it just me, or is the whole world high on matrimony?

Wise: We’re snorting weddings like cheap cocaine.

Werth: Will and Kate just headed off on their crown-sponsored honeymoon, gay marriage ads are popping up on television, last week my dream-husband John Krasinski opened in the by-the-wedding-book rom-com Something Borrowed—

Wise: —and don’t forget Judd Apatow’s Bridesmaids walks down the aisle today.

Werth: It’s like a betrothal zeitgeist. And the worst part is I haven’t been invited to a single wedding this summer.

Wise: Cheer up. Maybe one of your Kansas relatives will require an unexpected shotgun wedding.

Werth: I think I’ll just curl up on my couch with a box of buttermints and a classic movie with a wedding in it—wait—not just one wedding, but three!

Wise: I love your over-achievement.

Werth: 1953’s How to Marry a Millionaire follows three department store models who figure the best way to get ahead in life is to find a rich man and marry him.

Wise: Because nothing says traditional marriage like gold digging.  



Werth: Loco, Pola and Schatze (you can’t make this stuff up, kids) pool their money to rent a luxury apartment in New York in the hopes of springing their mantrap on any eligible tycoons, heirs or lottery winners that they can find. And their bait was the best Hollywood had to offer.

Plucky Betty Grable and her legs had been a staple of the cinema and soldier’s lockers since WWII. Lauren Bacall’s sophisticated beauty had nabbed Bogey’s heart and everyone else’s in such film noir classics as To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Key Largo (1948). And rounding out this cast of man-hungry beauties was the new mink in Twentieth Century Fox’s closet, Marilyn Monroe. Her hands still sticky from being immortalized in the wet cement of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Monroe was riding high on a wave of superstardom caused by her popular performance earlier that year in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953).

Wise: Jiminy. Grable, Bacall and Monroe?  That’s like the bombshell version of Sophie’s Choice.  

Werth: Exactly the kind of quandry Twentieth Century Fox execs wanted. So to give the audience as much female perusal as possible, director Jean Negluesco shot Millionaire in Cinemascope, making it the first movie made in the new wide-screen format. (The Robe (1953) actually went to theaters first, but it was shot second.) In addition to the grandiose buffet of cans, kissers and gams, the acting styles of these three actresses complimented each other fantastically. Bacall’s droll, smart-mouth sophistication tempered Grable’s feisty “chorus-girl” spunk, and Monroe—well for anyone who thinks all Monroe ever did was play dumb blondes, Millionaire is a perfect example of how intelligent a comedienne she really was.

The well-proprotioned Pola has a manhunting handicap—she can’t see without her glasses. And since men don’t makes passes at girls who wear glasses, she takes them off whenever she’s working a room. Monroe gets to trip, stumble and grope her way across the screen, literally searching for her millionaire.

Wise: Like a pair of glasses would keep any red-blooded male away from Marilyn Monroe.

Werth: You have to suspend disbelief, but it gives Monroe the chance to strut her stuff as the adept physical comedienne she truly was. This performance goes a long way towards explaining why she was such a big movie star.

Wise: Do all three gals nab a Rockefeller for a husband?

Werth: Twists and turns abound with the male assistance of David Wayne, Rory Calhoun and William Powell, but let’s just say, nobody leaves the movie single.

Wise: Well not to one-up your three weddings, but one of my favorite wedding flicks has four weddings in it.

Werth: Are you going to review Big Love?

Wise: No, but I do have a big love for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).  Following the misadventures of a close-knit group of singleton Brits as they navigate an unending season of weddings, the movie became a surprise hit when it was released, becoming the top-earning British film to date and nabbing an Oscar nom for best picture.  Directed by Mike Newell and written by Richard Curtis, it delightfully captures all the pratfalls, misunderstandings, and exhilarations of falling in love.  These guys have had a hand in just about every movie you guiltily watch rainy weekend afternoons: Love, Actually, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Enchanted April.  It’s like they invented an entirely new genre of movie: the feel-good tear-jerker, British edition.  

Werth: Which also describes frequent star of those films, Hugh Grant.  

Wise: Four Weddings created Hugh Grant and his shambling, charming, floppy-haired persona.  He was the It boy of the 90s, and much of his subsequent career has been playing either to or against this type.  But he wasn’t the only star to emerge. Kirsten Scott Thomas, who was spot-on as the love-lorn Fiona, went on to an Oscar nominated turn in The English Patient.  

Simon Callow, who played vest-loving Gareth, has been in innumerable films often playing similar grandiose characters.  Plus he’s written well-received biographies of Charles Laughton and Orson Wells.  And John Hannah, playing sensitive Matthew, turned this early screen role into a string of delightful performances in everything from Agatha Christie TV movies to action-adventure in The Mummy to the sword and sandal shenanigans of TV’s Spartacus.  

Werth: I notice that you haven’t mentioned Andie MacDowell. Is it because she’s not British?

Wise: It’s because she’s kind of forgettable in this role.  Don’t get me wrong.  She’s perfectly lovely and believable as long as the camera simply lingers on her ethereal beauty, but once she starts speaking, it’s over for me.  To be fair, she’s really playing a symbol while the rest of the cast indulges in a carnival of emotions.  Still, she’s more scenery than screen siren.  

Werth: So it’s not ‘til death do you part with Andie?

Wise: I would not get to that church on time.

Werth: Then let’s just leave her at the altar. Tune in next week when we say “I do” to more Film Gab!