Fashion Makes the Gab

Wise: Howdy, Werth.  

Werth: Hello, Wise.  You look exhausted.  And what's with all the bags?  

Wise: It was Fashion Week here in New York last week, and I've been inspired to live with a greater sense of style.  So, I've been out shopping, trying to discover my very own je ne se quoi.  

Werth: And what have you found?  

Wise: That fashion is probably best left to the professionals and the teenage gazelles that inspire them.  Still, it's nice to look good, and when I can't afford the latest from Lanvin, I like to return to one of the style icons of the Silver Screen: William Powell in The Thin Man.  

Werth: You've sung the stylish praises of Nick and Nora Charles once before. 

Wise: Which is part of the pleasure of MGM's greatest detective duo: there's always another sequel to enjoy.  After the Thin Man (1936) begins a few days after the events of the first film as Nick (Powell) and Nora (the ever delightful Myrna Loy) alight from the train in their hometown of San Francisco, anxious to begin celebrating New Year's Eve. 

But first they have to overcome two obstacles: the crowd of unruly uninvited guests already jammed into their home and a last-minute invitation to dinner from Nora's strident Aunt Katherine (Jessie Ralph).  Once there, they discover that Nora's cousin Selma (Elissa Landi) is miserable because her two-timing husband has been missing for days.  Even her childhood sweetheart David Graham (Jimmy Stewart) can't seem to cheer her up. 

Werth: Maybe she should try jumping off a bridge and being saved by an angel.

Wise: Escaping Selma's tears (and Aunt Katherine's stultifying guests) Nick and Nora head to a nightclub where they find Selma's ne'er do well husband Robert (Alan Marshall) making time with a two-bit nightclub singer (Dorothy McNulty who later took the name Penny Singleton and provided the voice for Jane Jetson).  Robert recently convinced David to pay him off for leaving Selma, and when he turns up with a bullet in his back, Selma is the number one suspect, and Nick and Nora begin to investigate. 

Their search turns up an assortment of petty thieves, gangster lowlifes, stereotyped evil Asians, and a load of slapstick provided by Powell's tippling and their loyal dog Asta's not-so-loyal doggie wife.

Werth: That bitch.


Wise: As in the first film, the clues don't exactly lead up to the final revelation, but who really cares when the detectives are as charming as these? 

Not exactly a matinee idol, Powell and his tailor managed to transform him into one of the most debonair figures in Hollywood history: handsome, elegant, and charming no matter how much hooch he's poured down his gullet.  His trademark pencil mustache and swank double breasted suits with sharp lapels make him the epitome of style no matter the era.  And Myrna Loy, who began her career as little more than a pretty face, livens her beauty with crack comic timing, making her the fantasy wife of millions of moviegoers.  (She also gets to wear a jaw-dropping sequined gown that reveals plenty of décolletage and almost all of her back.)  Their pairing makes the perfect fashion statement, whatever the season.  

Werth: The fashion statement of Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine (1998) would be a tad more overstated than Mr. Powell's. Set in the wild era of 70's glam-rock and after, Goldmine follows reporter Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) as he tries to find out whatever happened to his rock idol, Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) ten years after his 1974 feathery, faked assassination. The film becomes a glittery trip down memory lane as Stuart interviews an old manager (Michael Feast) and Slade's sycophantic ex-wife Mandy (Toni Collette) about the time they spent with the ego-maniacal performer.

Wise: So, sort of a disco-era Citizen Kane, only this time Rosebud's a Moog synthesizer. 

Werth: The timeline gets all jumbled as flashbacks collide and Stuart's own personal memories become intertwined with the saga of Brian Slade. The film's exploration of "otherness" and adoration is a mass of intense visual design, erotica, and fashion.

Sandy Powell's Oscar-nominated costumes bring the age back to vivid life with platform shoes and boots, boas, neckscarves, tight jeans, velvet jackets, and glitter adorning nearly every character, with the exception of when Ewan McGregor bares it all (and I mean all) on stage as the savage Curt Wild.

Wise: That's one rock show I'd pay to see.

Werth: Slade's show costumes are inspired constructions reminiscent of the creations from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust period. Bowie himself pulled his support of the film when he realized Haynes was basing it on unauthorized bios of Bowie, but the resemblances to infamous performers like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and even Kurt Cobain are unmistakeable.

Goldmine feels like an extended music video at times, but then, looking back, perhaps that's the best way to depict that era. Haynes' focus on fashion goes beyond simple replication and celebrates the sense of identity, sexuality, and freedom that clothing can bring. So even if I wouldn't be caught dead in sequin-studded tights with thigh-high purple platform boots and a Louis XIV velvet jacket—

Wise: You wouldn't?

Werth: Maybe for next week's Film Gab.

American Gabsters

Wise: Hi there, Werth!

Werth: Hi there, Wise!  I see you're chipper today.

Wise: Because BAM's American Gagster Festival is running now through September 17th.  It's a series of fifty classic comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the 1980's and celebrates some of the most hilarious actor/director partnerships in cinema history. 

Werth: I'm assuming that Adam Sandler is not represented.

Wise: Unfortunately not, but the festival kicks off with the detective comedy classic The Thin Man (1934).  Adapted from the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the film adds a madcap gloss to the book's gumshoe aesthetic.  William Powell and Myran Loy play Nick and Nora Charles—he a retired, tippling detective and she a glamorous heiress—who get pulled into the case of missing inventor Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis) whose mistress turns up dead.  

Werth: Because nothing is funnier than a dimestore blonde with a bullet in her back.

Wise: The film is a strange—but delightful—hybrid of film noir and screwball comedy, filled with street toughs lurking in shadows, loud-mouthed dames, but leavened by the amazing chemistry between Powell and Loy.  Powell's performance as cocktail guzzling Nick is loaded with charm as he nimbly displays a sparkling verbal acuity as well as a liver that just won't quit.

Werth: How he shoots balloons off a Christmas tree after five martinis I'll never know. 

Wise: But just as spectacular is Loy's effervescent performance as Nora.  Taking what could have been yet another dithering society girl, Loy gives Nora beauty and brains and shows she knows how to use both.  

Her devotion to Nick makes him sexy, and just as Ginger Rogers brought out Fred Astaire's carnality, Loy makes a funny-looking man with an odd talent into an object of desire.

Werth: She should have been paired up with Peter Lorre.

Wise: Of course, I have to mention the other great performance in the film: Skippy as the Charles' wire-haired fox terrier Asta.  Instead of remaining a canine accessory, Asta ferrets out both clues and comic relief, plus sparked a nationwide frenzy for the breed.  Director W.S. Van Dyke gives Asta some of the best screen moments, which actually seems to point to Van Dyke's strength as a director.  

Known around the MGM lot as "one take Woody," he shot The Thin Man in about fourteen days, and while he dispenses with some of the visual flourishes that might have marked him an auteur, his strategy seems to have been laying a solid groundwork, then getting out of the way while his on-screen talent made fireworks of their own.

 Werth: I think I'll go to BAM to take in one of my favorite laugh-fests, Preston Sturges' classic, Sullivan's Travels (1941).

Wise: You mentioned that flick once before in our posting about silver screen racism.


Werth: I did, because one particular scene does smack of racist stereotypes, but interestingly enough as the movie progresses, Sturges seems to comment on these sterotypes as he explores the difference and interdependence between comedy and drama.

John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is a successful director of frothy comedies like Ants in Your Plants and Hey, Hey in the Hayloft. But he has tired of making the world laugh and wants to instead address the serious issues of poverty and homelessness in America in a new film called O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Wise: Talk about being stuck in development until George Clooney and the Coen brothers took it on. 

Werth: But after an argument with his producers, Sullivan realizes that he doesn't have any idea what it means to be poor or in trouble. So he decides to dress in the era's hobo-chic and ride the rails to connect with the common man. Sullivan's producers balk at the idea of their big money-making vehicle driving off the road, so they have him followed by a crew of keepers, doctors and reporters in a "land-yacht."

In the midst of trying to shake this stellar group of character actors (including Sturges favorite William Demarest), Sullivan meets a failed starlet (ethereal and pregnant at the time Veronica Lake) who joins in on his adventure to help him experience life on the wrong side of the tracks. The film has all the Sturges comedy hallmarks of pratfalls, bullet-fast dialogue and complex physical comedy scenes—like when the inside of the land-yacht turns into a funhouse as the bus drives off-road chasing Sullivan in a nitrus-powered kiddie car.

Wise: I guess Lucy's pratfalls in The Long, Long Trailer (1953) weren't so original.

Werth: But mid-way, the film takes a fascinating turn. As Sullivan and his partner walk into trainyards, shanty-towns, and soup kitchens, Sturges shows an assemblage of disturbingly real faces—worn, grizzled, forgotten, White, Black, and Brown. As Sullivan is shanghaied, mistaken for dead and put on a Southern chaingang, the movie leaves the realm of comedy entirely, making us realize that maybe the tumbles into swimming pools, wisecracks and flying cake batter aren't so important. But to Sturges, they are.

The legendary scene of the prisoners watching a Mickey and Pluto cartoon in a Black church is a touching (albeit obvious) depiction of the power of comedy to elevate our spirits, if only for a moment. The film asserts that comedy lifts humanity out of the troubles of life and that it's better to go to a movie to laugh than to cry. But it's not that simple.

Sturges uses drama in Sullivan's Travels to help us arrive at his theme of comedy conquers all, making drama and comedy an inseparable yin and yang of the Hollywood movie and our lives.

Wise: Which reminds me of another inseparable pairing: Film Gab and Next Week.  

Werth: Hilarious! And don't forget to catch a little comedy genius at BAM.   

Red State Stars

Werth: Happy Friday, Wise!

Wise: Happy Friday, Werth! I trust you survived this week with your chipper-ness intact.

Werth: I did—but with so much focus on Republicans in the media, I got a little antsy.

Wise: Now, now, Werth. Republicans can be a great source of entertainment—and some of them were even great movie stars. Long before she became a pal of high-powered Republicans, or the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana (1974) and Czechoslovakia (1989), but after she had abandoned the frilly dresses and sausage curls, Shirley Temple tried to make a career of being a teenage movie star. 

Werth:  This is the second time you've talked about late-career Shirley Temple.  

Wise: It's a fascinating period as she attempts to transform from Depression-era icon of spirited pluck and into a more complicated image of a young woman whose desire to do right is sometimes torpedoed by her overblown romantic fantasies.  


Werth: The Good Ship Lollipop could have used a torpedo...  

Wise: In The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) Temple stars as seventeen-year-old Susan Turner who unceremoniously discards her boyfriend after playboy/artist Richard Nugent (Cary Grant) delivers a lecture at her school.  Her sudden infatuation is so intense that her older sister and guardian Margaret (Myna Loy playing a dour, smalltown judge with a bit of a wink) forces Grant to pose as Temple's boyfriend until she gets over the crush.  This leads to some fantastic comedy as Grant gamely delivers nonsensical teenage patois, makes a mad dash in a sack race, and suffers the kind of indignities that only an actor with his unflappable charm could endure.  

Werth: He doesn't tapdance on a stairway with her, does he?

Wise: Screenwriter Sidney Sheldon captures and caricatures the pretensions of each character—including fine comedic work from Harry Davenport, Rudy Vallee and Ray Collins—and won an Oscar for best screenplay.  His script is both funny and savvy and features the kind of cross-talking gymnastics that Grant specialized in during these screwball comedies.  

But it is Temple herself who has the biggest heart and gives the biggest performance in this movie—she is sly, witty, vulnerable and endearing—and it's a shame there aren't more examples of her skills playing a young adult.  

Werth: My favorite Hollywood Republican never had sausage curls, but he was definitely a beefcake. William Holden considered himself a moderate Republican, but was not very politically active, unless you count his stint as best man at Ronald Reagan's wedding to Nancy Davis in 1952 (back when Reagan was still a Democrat.)

Wise: Also before the Republicans abandoned the country club for NASCAR. 

Werth: Holden made a career out of playing leading men who had brains as well as looks, and his turn as journalist Paul Verrall in Born Yesterday (1950) is no exception. Paul is hired by scrap metal magnate cum gangster Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) to smarten up his ex-chorus girl fiancée (pronounced "fee-an-see") Billie (Judy Holliday) so she won't embarrass Harry while he wines, dines and bribes Washington, DC, congressmen and their wives.

Wise: Now, of course, the obvious path for dim-witted dames afflicted by malapropisms is running for President. 

Werth: Paul wants to write a story on how crooked Harry is, so a civics lesson for Billie is the perfect chance for him to get in close. Following the bible of romantic comedies, Paul and Billie fall in love, but the unique element is how Billie is transformed—not by love—but by knowledge. She goes from being comfortable with being stupid as long as she gets a coupla' mink coats designed by Jean Louis, to a woman who wants a better life for herself and for her country... but who still wears Jean Louis.

Wise: These days you'd be stupid to want mink coats—unless you enjoy having paint thrown at you.

Werth: Directed by George Cukor and based on the successful Garson Kanin stageplay, Born Yesterday has its moments of "too cute" as Billie learns about democracy walking with Paul through quaint '50's DC locations, but the performances of the three leads more than make up for it. Holden is so effortlessly charming on camera that it is impossible not to fall head over heels in love with him—even when he's wearing glasses. 

Broderick Crawford gets the right balance of doofus and menace to make Harry the comic villain that we like less than we hate. And Holliday puts in an Oscar-winning performance as Billie (she beat both Bette Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard). Following-up her performance in the role on Broadway, she chirps and squawks her way through the film with comic precision and sensitivity—creating a woman that transcends the typical dumb, blonde, mob moll stereotype. 

Wise: See. Didn't I tell you that Republicans could be entertaining?

Werth: At least when they're on the silver screen. Tune in next week when we discuss Michelle Bachman in The Goodbye Girl.

Reunited and it Feels So Gab!

Werth: Hello, Wise!

Wise: Werth!  Welcome back from your high school reunion weekend!  How was it seeing your old school chums?  

Werth: On the whole, pretty darned swell. I haven't seen Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, but I assume my reunion was very similar... only with more Mike's Hard Lemonade—  

Wise: And less Alan Cumming in freaky make-up.  

Werth: Alan Cummings wishes he was in the class of '91. 

Wise: High school reunions have often provided fodder for great films, and one of my all-time favorites is Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).  Kathleen Turner plays Peggy Sue, a woman flummoxed by adulthood and by the infidelities of her husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage).  Despite her marriage being in shambles, she decides to attend her 25 year reunion.  After a few awkward encounters with barely recognizable old friends, Peggy is stunned to discover that she has been elected queen of the reunion, but when she ascends the stage to accept the honor, the lights and her confusion cause her to faint.  

Werth: Being married to Nicolas Cage would make anyone pass out.  

Wise: She wakes up only to realize that somehow she has been transported back to her senior year of high school.  At first she thinks she has died, but gradually she realizes that she has been given a second chance at figuring out her life.  She begins by telling off the mean girls in high school and informing her math teacher that she will never, in fact, use algebra ever again.  

Gradually, however, she starts to explore the possibilities her youth had offered but which she never explored until, ultimately, she must decide between the future she knows and the one she doesn't.  

Werth: I'd go for the one without Nicolas Cage.

Wise: The film is full of great performances, most notably Kathleen Turner's Oscar nominated Peggy, but also memorable turns from soon-to-be stars like Helen Hunt, Joan Allen, and Jim Carey, as well as established stars like Barbara Harris as Peggy's mother.  But the two most touching performances come from Leon Ames and Maureen O'Sullivan as Peggy's grandparents.  These stalwarts from the Golden Age of Hollywood both ground the film's emotions and allow for the supernatural flights of fancy that make the film's slippery chronology possible.  

Werth: Speaking of slippery, did Maureen wear her Jane costume?

Wise: Part of what makes Peggy Sue Got Married so moving is that it doesn't simply cater to nerd revenge fantasies or romantic pipe dreams; instead, the film is a meditation on the passage of time and the consequences of small decisions as they reverberate throughout the years. 

Werth: The consequences of a reunion are more deadly in the thriller, Thirteen Women (1932). Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) sends out a call to some of her old girl-schoolmates for a reunion dinner in Los Angeles. This gathering is not just an opportunity to catch up on lost time or to see how fat everyone's gotten. These women have all been getting their horoscopes mailed to them by renowned astrologer Swami Yogadachi, but recently "you will meet a dark stranger" has turned into "buy a funeral plot."

Wise: At least he didn't bake cyanide tablets into fortune cookies. 

Werth: Three friends have already been affected by these miserable missives and wound up dead or locked up. Laura hopes to convince her remaining friends that it's all hogwash, but when someone tries to poison her only son, she starts to get the heebie jeebies. As girlfriends and the swami himself drop like flies, it becomes obvious that someone else is looking into the crystal ball. And it is none other than former Eurasian classmate, Ursula Georgy (Myrna Loy). For Ursula, revenge for the "half-breed" taunting she received in school is a dish best served in your horoscope.

Wise: I'll take my Sagittarius extra spicy with a side of sticky rice. 

Werth: 1932 was a very Asian year for Loy because she was also cast as diabolical Fah Lo See in The Mask of Fu Manchu. Myrna Adele Williams was as whitebread as her birthplace in Montana, but somehow the studio contrived ways of turning her into an Asian femme fatale—and Loy made the most of it. 

In Thirteen Girls she is lithe in form-fitting, exotic gowns with eyes that are both wicked, sexy and pitiless. Like a cobra she glides into the lives of those she wants to manipulate, literally hypnotizing and using them to fulfill her righteous rage at these privileged girls who teased her mercilessly. 

Wise:Was this the prototype for Gossip Girl? 

Werth: While it sounds racially campy that the same woman who played Nora Charles is also portraying a "Hindu dame," Loy made Ursula poised and elegant without a silly accent or exaggerated mannerisms. It makes one wonder if young producer David O. Selznick could have re-imagined the character from Tiffany Thayer's "startling" book, dumped the race-baiting plotline and just let Loy be an evil white lady with a private school axe to grind.

Wise: But then she wouldn't get to wear all that dark eyeliner.

Werth: True. But as it is, Loy (and the always earth-ily charming Irene Dunne) make the silly plot of Thirteen Women a reunion worth going to.

Wise: I notice that Thirteen Women isn't available on DVD.

Werth: Perhaps by the time I go to another high school reunion it will be.

Wise: Luckily our readers will only have to wait a week to be reunited with the next edition of Film Gab!