Silver Screen Standards: Dangerous When Wet (1953)
Williams was at the height of her career as the star of MGM’s “aqua musicals” when she made Dangerous When Wet in 1953.
In June, I was finally able to return to the retirement community where I present classic movie programs for the residents, and I knew that Esther Williams was the perfect star to celebrate summer and the sense of joy we all felt at being able to gather again. We watched three of Williams’ pictures, including Bathing Beauty (1944) and Neptune’s Daughter (1949), but Dangerous When Wet (1953) was the crowd favorite and for good reason. Most of Esther Williams’ movies are fun, light-hearted musical and romantic comedies, but Dangerous When Wet combines all of these elements with a more coherent story that uses Williams’ talents as a swimmer to the fullest. We get a great sports story, plenty of romance with Fernando Lamas, some wonderful family elements, and a fabulous animated sequence that pairs Williams with cartoon stars Tom and Jerry. It’s no wonder that Dangerous When Wet was a box office hit when it first appeared in 1953 and remains a favorite today with classic movie fans.
The highlight of the movie is an extended dream sequence in which Williams swims with cartoon stars, Tom and Jerry.
While Bathing Beauty and Neptune’s Daughter are both thin on plot and heavy on musical numbers from performers like Xavier Cugat, Dangerous When Wet settles into a proper story about the healthy, happy Higgins family, who run a dairy farm in Arkansas and keep in shape with lots of exercise – especially swimming. Promoter Windy Weebe (Jack Carson) discovers them while hawking a health tonic called Liquapep, and he quickly engineers a scheme in which the Higgins family will travel to England to swim the English Channel as an advertisement for the tonic. Windy has a particular yen for the eldest daughter, Katie (Esther Williams), but while swimming in the heavy English fog Katie meets handsome Frenchman André (Fernando Lamas), who distracts her from training with his ardent attention. When the rest of the Higgins swimmers are disqualified, the family’s hopes and future all depend on Katie successfully completing the grueling Channel swim, especially because her father (William Demarest) has already bought expensive dairy upgrades on credit with the intention of paying for it out of their winnings.
The Higgins family gathers around as Windy (Jack Carson) pitches his promotional idea of them swimming the English Channel to his boss at Liquapep.
Of course, we also get the colorful musical spectacles we expect from an Esther Williams “aqua musical,” although these are less Busby Berkeley style showstoppers and more musical moments woven into the narrative. The movie opens with a song from the Higgins family, “I Got Out of Bed on the Right Side,” which sets the tone and introduces us to this peppy, can-do crew. Barbara Whiting, who plays second daughter Suzie, performs a fun number called “I Like Men” at the Liquapep talent contest, which gives Windy the opportunity to recruit the family for his English Channel scheme. We also have songs featuring Fernando Lamas, including “In My Wildest Dreams” and “Ain’t Nature Grand,” but as handsome as he is the Argentine actor gets upstaged by Tom and Jerry in the extended animated sequence. Like the similar segment in Anchors Aweigh (1945), this portion of the film combines live-action footage of the star with the animated characters and is a crowd-pleasing highlight of the picture. Ironically, the lack of synchronized swimmers and elaborate staging helps us really see and appreciate Esther Williams’ ability to “swim pretty” throughout this part of the movie, and it’s clear that she’s performing underwater and holding her breath for long stretches to get the unbroken takes of her cavorting with her animated companions.
As her worried family watches, Katie (Williams) prepares to swim the icy English Channel with only her goggles and a layer of goose grease to protect her.
Williams is very much the star in her prime, with almost a decade of leading roles behind her after her big breakout appearance in Bathing Beauty, but I really enjoy the supporting cast for this outing, too, especially William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood as Katie’s loving if somewhat unconventional parents. Greenwood gets a chance to demonstrate her famous long-legged high kicks during the “Ain’t Nature Grand” number, but she’s solid throughout as the mother of the family, while Demarest is typically gruff but lovable as the dad. Fernando Lamas, in real life a champion swimmer and thus a perfect partner for Williams, has such good chemistry with his leading lady that he ended up becoming her third husband in 1969, a union that lasted until his death in 1982. Lamas and Williams have a terrific swimming scene together that cements their rightness as a couple, but the climactic end of the Channel swim adds dramatic emotional realism to their earlier flirtations. You won’t think for a minute that Jack Carson’s Windy is the man for Katie, but he’s more fun when the tables are turned by Denise Darcel as the spunky French swimmer who sets her swim cap at him.
For a fun homage to and parody of Williams’ aquatic stardom, see Scarlett Johansson in Hail, Caesar! (2016).
While Dangerous When Wet is probably my favorite of the Esther Williams pictures, plenty of her other movies are worthwhile if you’re in the mood for splashy summer romance. See her first real film appearance in Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1942) and then the breakout role in Bathing Beauty to understand Williams’ rise to stardom, or go with Take Me Out to the Ball Game(1949) and Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) for other high points in her career. Don’t miss the loving parody of Williams’ unique kind of stardom in the 2016 Coen brothers picture, Hail, Caesar!, in which Scarlett Johansson plays a pregnant swimming star struggling to fit into her spangled mermaid costumes.
Georges Méliès and the Creation of the First Horror Film
It started with a bat.
And what a perfect opening image it was for the world’s first horror film. After all, the bat has been one of the most iconic images in movies for more than century thanks to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Yet Le Manoir du Diable – also known as The Haunted Castle (U.S.), The Devil’s Castle (Britain) and House of the Devil – was made in 1896, the year before Stoker’s Dracula was published.
The film came from the fertile imagination of the film’s writer, director and star Georges Méliès, a master illusionist and film pioneer who was always ahead of his time. In this case, he not only made the first horror movie, but the first vampire film as well since the bat also transformed into a demon as it would in countless vampire films since.
In a scene played out in horror films for more than 100 years, a crucifix is raised before a demon in the first horror film, the 1896 film Le Manoir du Diable by Georges Méliès.
And let’s go for the horror triumvirate by calling Méliès,
the auteur best known for decades of whimsical fantasy films, the first horror
film director. (There would be other “firsts” for Méliès, not the least of
which was making the first sci-fi film, ATrip to the Moon in 1902.)
That’s a lot of accolades for a film that barely clocks in at 3 minutes, but had a starring role in film history.
This would not have been the case except for a simple twist of fate involving a jammed camera. To get to that tale, we must first know more about Georges Méliès. Here is the shortest biography you will ever read about him.
Georges Méliès was a master illusionist who took what he did on stage and transformed it to the screen.
Méliès was born in Paris in 1861 and showed an interest in the arts, including puppetry, as a child. His father owned a footwear factory and Georges was expected to follow in the family business. Sent to London for an apprenticeship in textiles and to learn English, he found a city filled with magic shows and returned to Paris obsessed with them. He studied and experimented while working for his father. When his father retired in 1888, he sold his share of the business to his brothers to buy the famous house of illusion Thêatre Robert-Houdin, where he created his own magic shows. And he was excellent at it.
In less than a decade, however, a demonstration of the Lumière Brothers cinematograph (a camera and projector) in 1895 changed his life. Soon Méliès was taking the illusions he crafted for the stage and transforming them on screen, creating the “cinema spectacle” and becoming the father of special effects, thanks again to that jammed camera.
Here’s what happened.
Méliès was filming a street scene in Paris when his camera momentarily stuck. Later while editing the film, Méliès was surprised to see there was a shift in the location of objects including a Madeleine-Bastille bus that turned into a hearse with a family following behind. The accident would be known as the camera freeze, becoming the first cinematic special effect and one Méliès exhaustively used in creating his worlds of fantasy.
That’s what he did in Le Manoir du Diable as all sorts of people and props appeared and disappeared as he stopped and restarted the camera.
That flying bat in the opening seconds turns into a demon with dark powers before our eyes. He conjures a small assistant and a cauldron from which a woman rises in a billow of smoke. Two men arrive but one is driven off by fear, while the other stays and is taunted by demonic activity. A skeleton turns into bat then the demon. A beautiful woman becomes a hag, and specters and witches appear. Those effects are all packed in under 3 minutes – imagine what Méliès would have done with another minute!
Is our first horror film horrifying? Not to today’s audiences. But in 1896, movies were under 30 seconds long and showed real-life images like a train famously moving toward them in L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat by the Lumière Brothers. (Two of the earliest shorts by Méliès were called Playing Cards and Watering the Flowers for a very good reason.)
In the Georges Méliès short film Le Manoir du Diable, a skeleton suddenly appears on a bench which must have been a terrifying sight for 1896 moviegoers.
For those audiences, watching a “long,” 3-minute film with a
demon making things appear and disappear would have been terrifying.
But it’s doubtful Méliès was looking to scare people. Judging by his decades of work on stage and film, you can see how he enchanted audiences with illusion and fantasy. In fact, these early Méliès films were considered horror comedies through their use of pantomime and gags (a man getting poked with a pitchfork in the rear will always get laugh). Yet the film carries imagery still familiar in horror films today like the shadow of a cross on a wall and what appear to be vampire brides in long white coverings stalking a man.
Méliès would make more than 500 films in his career that was unfortunately filled with as many lows as highs while the infant film industry was finding its way. In 1923 he became so despondent over what was happening to his films, that he burned most of the negatives stored at his studio in Montreuil, a suburb outside Paris. Thankfully, preservation efforts have uncovered about 200 films.
One of those was Le Manoir du Diable, which was discovered in 1988 at the New Zealand Film Archives. We owe the person who originally bought it in a junk shop around the 1930s or ‘40s in Christchurch, New Zealand a debt of gratitude for finding the world’s first horror film.
* * * *
To learn more about Méliès, his career and the search for
his films, watch the excellent new documentary The
Méliès Mystery, which recently had its U.S. premiere as part of the TCM
Classic Film Festival.
* * * *
More from the horror master
Méliès churned out an incredible 81 shorts in 1896, the year he made Le Manoir du Diable. Here are a few of his other “horror” works he filmed around the same time.
Une nuit terrible (A Terrible Night), 1896. A man (Méliès) fights a giant bug in his bed.
L’auberge ensorcelee (Bewitched Inn), 1897. A hotel guest (Méliès) is haunted by a mischievous spirit.
La Cavernemaudite (The Cave of the Demons),1898. Translated into the “accursed cave,” a woman stumbles into a cave with spirits of those who died there. This presumably lost film marked the first film Méliès used double exposure.
Le Diable Geant ou Le Miracle de la Madone (The Devil and the Statue),1901. A young maiden attacked by the devil prays to a statue of the Madonna to save her while her love is trapped outside by barred windows.
In the Georges Méliès short, La Chaudron Infernal (The Infernal Cauldron), the devil sacrifices three women who then rise from the dead in visions of white.
Le Chaudron Infernal (The Infernal Cauldron),1903. Satan sacrifices three young women into a fiery cauldron but when their spirits rise from the dead, they turn the tables on him.
Damnation of Faust. Méliès filmed multiple versions of the story of Faust including in 1903 and 1904, and impressively used such techniques as dissolves, pyrotechnics and superimposition.
Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at
The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever. Toni was
the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and now leads the
offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo
and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight as the inaugural winner of
the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.
These titles will be available for FREE STREAMING all month long on the CMH Channel. All you need to do is click on the movie/show of your choice, then click ‘play’ — you do not have to opt for a 7-day trial.
In celebration of July Birthdays, we’re featuring the lovely and talented Olivia de Havilland (born Jul 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan) with Michael Curtiz’s The Proud Rebel, co-starring Alan Ladd. We’re also celebrating Barbara Stanwyck’s birthday (born Jul 16, 1907 in Brooklyn, NY) with the critically-acclaimed film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, directed by Lewis Milestone. We’ll also be featuring films starring Charles Laughton, James Cagney and William Powell, born Jul 1, 1899, Jul 17, 1899 and Jul 29, 1892, respectively.
…..
We’re also celebrating Fan Favorites this month with some personal favorites 🙂
…..
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the service, Best Classics Ever is a new mega streaming channel built especially for classic movie and TV lovers. The idea of the channel is to make lots of classic titles accessible and affordable for all. That said, Classic Movie Hub is curating titles each month that our fans can stream for free on the Classic Movie Hub Channelat Best Classics Ever. If you’d like access to the entire selection of Best Classics Ever titles, you can subscribe to everything for a low monthly fee of $4.99/month (Best Stars Ever, Best Westerns Ever, Best Mysteries Ever, Best TV Ever) or for an individual channel for only $1.99/month.
You can read more about Best Classics Ever and our partnership here.
Noir Nook: Uncommon Ladies of Noir – Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward has long been one of my favorite actresses. When I was growing up, I thrilled with her performances in such films as Smash Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), for which she earned her first of five Oscar nominations; I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1951), where she starred as a ruthlessly ambitious fashion designer; and I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), based on the life of singer Lillian Roth. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that she had quite a presence in the realm of film noir, with appearances in four features from the era: Among the Living (1941), Deadline at Dawn (1946), They Won’t Believe Me (1947), and House of Strangers (1949). This month’s Noir Nook shines the spotlight on this talented, versatile, and often-underrated actress.
Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner in the Flatbush section of
Brooklyn, New York. At the age of seven, she was hit by a car, suffering a
fractured hip. Although her doctors predicted that she would never walk again,
the future star was able to get around on crutches after six months and a year
later, she returned to school. The accident left her with one leg shorter than
the other – she wore a lift in one shoe, contributing to the sexy, strutting
walk that would become her trademark in years to come.
Edythe showed an early affinity for acting, performing in numerous plays at Girls Commercial High School, and started her career as a model for the Walter Thornton Agency. Shortly after she was featured in a spread in the Saturday Evening Post, she signed a test contract with Selznick Studios and became one of the countless young women who tried out of the part of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind(1939) The part, of course, ultimately went to Vivien Leigh, but Edythe was undaunted. She boarded a train to California and before long had engaged an agent, signed a six-month contract with Warner Bros., and changed her name to Susan Hayward.
Although she was dropped by Warner’s at the end of her contract, Hayward was snapped up by Paramount, where she appeared in a small but memorable role in Beau Geste (1939) and a couple of programmers before entering the shadowy world of noir.
Among the Living (1941)
Susan Hayward and Albert Dekker in Among the Living (1941)
Released near the start of the noir era, Among the Living stars Albert Dekker in a dual role as twins – John Raden is a millionaire and his brother, Paul, who was thought to have died in his childhood, is a criminally insane serial killer. Hayward plays Millie Perkins, whose father owns the boarding house where Paul rents a room. Unaware that Paul is a killer, Millie uses her flirtatious ways to solicit his help in securing the reward for finding the murderer – who everyone thinks is John.
Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Susan Hayward and Paul Lukas in Deadline at Dawn (1946)
In this feature, Bill Williams is Alex Winkley, a naïve sailor on a 24-hour leave who finds himself in hot water when he learns that a woman he encountered while drunk has turned up dead. Alex enlists cynical-but-good-hearted dance hall girl June Goth (Hayward) to help him track down the killer. (A bit of trivia – and who doesn’t love trivia? – Bill Williams later married actress Barbara Hale, of Perry Mason fame, and the couple had three children, one of which was William Katt, who would later star in the 1976 horror classic Carrie and on TV’s Greatest American Hero. You’re welcome. Back to Susan.)
They Won’t Believe Me (1947)
Robert Young and Susan Hayward in They Won’t Believe Me (1947)
I was always fond of this noir-with-a-twist, but I liked it even more after seeing it with 20 minutes of restored footage as part of the 2021 TCM Virtual Film Festival. In this film, Hayward is Verna Carlson, one of three women involved with womanizing – and very married – stockbroker Larry Ballentine (Robert Young). Most of the film is presented in flashback, as we learn from Ballentine the circumstances that led to him being on trial for the murder of his wife.
House of Strangers (1950)
Richard Conte and Susan Hayward in House of Strangers (1950)
Richard Conte stars here as Max Monetti, whose bank owner father, Gino (Edward G. Robinson), and three brothers comprise the strangers of the film’s title. When Gino is arrested for his often illegal banking practices, Max is the only son to come to his father’s aid – but his methods land him in prison. As Max’s girlfriend, Hayward is devoted and passionate, but also strong-willed and independent – just what Max needs after a seven-year stint in the pokey.
Away from the big screen, Hayward was married for 10 years to actor Jess Barker; the couple had two children, but by all accounts, the union was a stormy one. Hayward fared far better with her second marriage, to Floyd Eaton Chalkley, an attorney and former FBI man from Carrollton, Georgia; they were together from 1957 to 1966, when Chalkley died of hepatitis. In 1973, Hayward’s son, Tim, revealed that she was suffering from several inoperable brain tumors and was only expected to live another six months. Like the strong-willed little girl who’d been told she would never walk, Hayward proved the doctors wrong; a year later, she appeared as a presenter at the 1974 Academy Awards, and she hung on nearly a year after that, finally succumbing on March 14, 1975, at the age of 56.
Hayward herself once summed up the determined, unyielding persona that propelled her to fame and saw her receive numerous accolades throughout her career, including the Academy Award for Best Actress for I Want to Live! In 1958: “I had to slug my way up in a town called Hollywood where people love to trample you to death. I don’t relax because I don’t know how. I don’t want to know how.
“Life is too short to relax.”
…
– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages. If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:
And — please join us on July 11th for our next Screen Classics Discussion Video Series Event with University Press of Kentucky and co-host Aurora from Once Upon a Screen, in which author Eve Golden will be discussing the book! It will be a live Facebook Chat, so you’ll be able to comment and ask questions!
In the meantime, please don’t forget to check out our other author discussions in the series, embedded for your convenience way down near the bottom of this post: “Vitagraph: America’s First Great Motion Picture Studio,” “Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend” and “Growing Up Hollywood”.
…..
In order to qualify to win this book via this contest giveaway, you must complete the below entry task by Saturday, July 31 at 6PM EST. Winners will be chosen via random drawings.
We will announce our four lucky winners on Twitter @ClassicMovieHub on Sunday, August 1, around 9PM EST. And, please note that you don’t have to have a Twitter account to enter; just see below for the details.
To recap, there will be FOUR WINNERS, chosen by random, all to be announced on August 1st.
Edmond O’Brien, Jayne Mansfield and Tom Ewell in The Girl Can’t Help It
…..
And now on to the contest!
ENTRY TASK (2-parts) to be completed by Saturday, July 31, 2021 at 6PM EST
1) Answer the below question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog post
2)ThenTWEET (not DM) the following message*: Just entered to win the “Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It” #BookGiveaway courtesy of @KentuckyPress & @ClassicMovieHub – #EnterToWin http://www.classicmoviehub.com/blog/jayne-mansfield-the-girl-couldnt-help-it-book-giveaway-july/
THE QUESTION: What is your favorite Jayne Mansfield film and why? And, if you’re not familiar with Jayne’s movies, why do you want to win this book?
*If you do not have a Twitter account, you can still enter the contest by simply answering the above question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog — BUT PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU ADD THIS VERBIAGE TO YOUR ANSWER: I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
NOTE: if for any reason you encounter a problem commenting here on this blog, please feel free to tweet or DM us, or send an email to clas…@gmail.com and we will be happy to create the entry for you.
ALSO: Please allow us 48 hours to approve your comments. Sorry about that, but we are being overwhelmed with spam, and must sort through 100s of comments…
…..
Join us on Sunday, July 11 at 9pm ET (6pm PT) for a Facebook Live Chat with Author Eve Golden
…..
If you missed our other chats in the Screen Classics Discussion Series, you can catch them on Facebook and YouTube:
Vitagraph: America’s First Great Motion Picture Studio – with Author Andrew Erish:
…..
Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend – with Author Christina Rice:
…..
Growing Up Hollywood with Victoria Riskin and William Wellman Jr:
…..
About the Book: In the first definitive biography of Mansfield, Eve Golden offers a joyful account of the star Andy Warhol called “the poet of publicity,” revealing the smart, determined woman behind the persona. While she always had her sights set on the silver screen, Mansfield got her start as Rita Marlowe in the Broadway show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. She made her film debut in the low-budget drama Female Jungle (1955) before landing the starring role in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). Mansfield followed this success with a dramatic role in The Wayward Bus(1957), winning a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year, and starred alongside Cary Grant in Kiss Them for Me (1957). Despite her popularity, her appearance as the first celebrity in Playboy and her nude scene in Promises! Promises! (1963) cemented her reputation as an outsider.
Sophia Lauren shoots Jayne the world’s most famous side-eye, April 12, 1957
By the 1960s, Mansfield’s film career had declined, but she remained very popular with the public. She capitalized on that popularity through in-person and TV appearances, nightclub appearances, and stage productions. Her larger-than-life life ended sadly when she passed away at age thirty-four in a car accident. Golden looks beyond Mansfield’s flashy public image and tragic death to fully explore her life and legacy. She discusses Mansfield’s childhood, her many loves―including her famous on-again, off-again relationship with Miklós “Mickey” Hargitay―her struggles with alcohol, and her sometimes tumultuous family relationships. She also considers Mansfield’s enduring contributions to American popular culture and celebrity culture. This funny, engaging biography offers a nuanced portrait of a fascinating woman who loved every minute of life and lived each one to the fullest.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging for the entire planet, to say the least, but it has also produced some unexpected gifts. If not for the pandemic, a British woman named Debbie Wileman, who hadn’t sung professionally in years, would never have started her “A Song a Day” project on Facebook where she simply wanted to entertain her friends in lockdown. To Debbie’s shock and surprise, her videos began to go viral, turning countless people around the world into avid fans who looked forward to her incredible videos. Debbie has a gorgeous voice that she uses to sing a range of songs — as herself and in the style of various singers including Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, Cass Elliott, Janis Joplin, Barbra Streisand, and Marilyn Monroe. But it is Debbie’s ability to take on the persona of her lifelong idol, Judy Garland, that really got the Internet buzzing. It’s an astounding recreation that borders on channeling. I was thrilled to talk to the delightful Debbie Wileman by phone from her home north of London.
Danny Miller: Debbie, I can’t begin to tell you how much pleasure you’ve given me and my family over the past year. To get my kvelling out of the way, I’ve seen many amazing singers, I’ve seen lots of people do tributes to Judy Garland, but there’s just nobody that can compare to what you do, it’s pretty insane. I love when you sing as yourself, I love your tributes to other singers, but your Judy Garland videos are just astounding. Before you started doing these videos during the pandemic, you were singing all the time, right?
Debbie Wileman: I mean, not really. To be honest, just in the shower for myself, and I hadn’t been doing the Judy Garland singing for ages.
That’s incredible. In addition to your amazing voice, what kills me is that you seem to get every speech pattern, every nuance down perfectly. Have you been studying Judy for years?
It started when I was at university getting a performing arts degree. At the end of my three-year course, you could write a thesis or put on a performance. I just thought, “Ooh, what would I like to do?” Well, I loved Judy Garland and decided to write a play where I’d get to be Judy Garland so I could sing her songs. That’s when I really started watching her very closely. I was already a huge fan, obviously. I had watched all of her films and her TV shows, and had loved her since I was six. It was my Nana who introduced me to her originally, we both shared a love of Old Hollywood, and I used to try to sing like Judy when I was a little girl to make my Nana laugh. But that was just the singing, it was only when I decided to do this play that I started studying her mannerisms.
Did anything happen with that play?
Yes, I did it at this small theater that was part of my university — this was the University of Salford in Manchester. Someone from a gay bar theatre in Manchester saw it and asked me if I’d like to make it a bit longer and perform it there. So I wrote a bit more and did it for a week. I was 21 at the time. And then I got a chance to do it at a few other places including London at the King’s Head Theatre in London. It was a lot of fun.
Did this lead to other acting and singing engagements?
Some, but unfortunately I just didn’t get enough work to make a living. I tried for a few years but I’m not from a rich family or anything and I just couldn’t afford to keep doing it. I had to go and get a job and that was it, really. I haven’t done much singing for years because I was an honest working stiff as they say!
And then when the pandemic happened, you just had the idea to start putting some videos out?
Yeah, it was when everyone was in lockdown last year. It was a really scary time and so many people were by themselves. I just thought, well, it might be nice to sing a song on Facebook every day, just for my few friends. It would give me something to do and it might be nice for people who were isolating by themselves. I had no idea that anything would come of it — I really doubt that I would have done it if I had known. I would have thought it was a bit cringe-o, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t have put myself out there like, “Look at me, world, I’m singing a song!” If not for the pandemic, I never would have done any of this.
Wow. And how long did it take before you realized your videos were really catching on and spreading like wildfire?
It was so crazy. The first one I did was just me singing a Johnny Mathis song. Then I think I did the Etta James song, “At Last.” And then on Day 3, I thought, oh, go on, I’ll go find my old Judy wig that’s somewhere in the attic, and I’ll sing “The Man That Got Away.” Why not, that will be fun!
And that’s the first one that went viral?
Well, I had the idea to share it with the Judy Garland group on Facebook and that’s what did it. I suddenly started getting all of these friend requests, and not knowing any better, I just accepted them all. “You want to be my friend? Sure, okay, accept, accept, accept!” I didn’t know who any of them were. It was mostly excellent but I did get a few unsolicited ‘images’ coming my way!
Oh my, is nothing sacred?
Judy Garland with John Meyer
I know! All these people friended me but I had no clue who they were. For example, I had no idea that the person I had accepted called John Meyer was THE John Meyer, the man who had dated Judy Garland in the 60s! Much later, when I did Judy’s “I’d Like to Hate Myself in the Morning,” he commented on that post and I couldn’t believe he was already my friend! I sent him a photo of me reading his book, Heartbreaker!
I remember the first time I saw someone post a link to one of your Judy videos. To be honest, my first thought was, “Oh, no, not another one! Who is this woman and how dare she think she could perform as Judy Garland!”
(Laughs.) I’m exactly the same! Very protective of Judy!
And then when I watched it I thought, “Oh, she must by lip-syncing.” When I realized that was actually your voice, I thought, “Oh, this is something different!” I’ve watched every video since. I love watching you get into character. It reminds me, forgive me, of someone like Sybil when she’s transforming into one of her other personalities and you just see that change come over her face, like she’s accepting another entity into her body. Does it feel like that for you? Or can you just pop into it without any notice at all?
[switching to perfect Judy Garland voice] Well, no, Danny, it just kind of happens, I can’t really explain it. I have to think about it a little bit but not that much!
Oh my God, I’m talking to Judy Garland! Goosebumps! I love all your Judy videos but the one I saw the other day when you’re singing “Happy Harvest” from Summer Stock sitting in the tractor may have been my favorite, including your young daughter’s cameo. How the hell did you find that tractor that was so much like the one Judy is sitting in for that song?
I live in North Essex, just above London, and were driving to the next village one day when I saw this tractor in the park and I thought, “Ooh, I have to use that!” Now I’m constantly looking for things that I can use as props for these songs. I was visiting my parents on the South Coast last summer and discovered this miniature steam railway down there. I spoke to the woman who ran it and asked her if I could record a video on it. She said it would be fine but then we had another lockdown and a bunch of new restrictions in the UK so I haven’t been able to do it yet, but I still plan to. That’s a bit of a spoiler alert, I think you can guess what song that will be!
Then you pull that throttle, whistle blows Huffing and puffing and away she goes All aboard for California On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe!
I can’t wait! I notice that when you’re speaking as Judy, it’s usually Judy in the 1960s, but I love how you can change your voice depending on what era you’re trying to emulate. Have you done any of the songs she sang as a young girl in the 1930s?
Not too many of the songs when she was properly young which is good because I still have a lot more to do. I have done “I’m Nobody’s Baby” and “But Not for Me” and I even did those in black and white for the effect!
As the pandemic begins to recede, you have to start doing live performances. Could you imagine doing a whole evening as Judy?
Yeah, of course, I would love it! I did it in my early twenties and I think I’ve gotten better at it since I’m older now and my voice has matured.
I assume you’ve seen the play End of the Rainbow, and the film Judy?
To be honest, I’m not a big fan of the doom and gloom aspects that always seem so popular when people do things about Judy. It’s always very tragic and miserable and I’m like, “No!” Every person I’ve spoken to that knew her has said how fun she was and she wasn’t in any way a tragic figure.
That’s exactly the message that her good friend Dottie Ponedel wanted to get across and why her niece Meredith Ponedel and I published the book About Face, about Dottie’s friendship with Judy.
Debbie reading About Face
Yes, I always heard that she was such a fantastic friend and so warm and fun. That’s why I hate the doom and gloom portrayals. Yes, it’s sad that she died so young but she was so funny and talented and great and witty that you want to celebrate that. I think that would make a much more entertaining film.
Does the thought of hearing from any of her children make you nervous?
Not nervous, I would be overjoyed! I think Liza is absolutely brilliant, I love her and have seen her in concert twice. Apart from the Judy connection, Cabaret is one of my favorite films ever. Even if she wasn’t Judy Garland’s daughter I would still absolutely adore Liza Minnelli, so if I ever did hear from her that would be brilliant. I know that all of the children are understandably a bit wary about people doing their mum, which is completely fair, but I would hope that if they ever did hear me, they’d know that it was done with so much love and respect.
I love your Liza songs as well on your videos!
If I put you on the spot and said, what are your three favorite Judy Garland movies off the top of your head, what would you say?
Easter Parade, definitely, that is my favorite. Next, I Could Go On Singing, possibly because I’m a Londoner and I love it, and third, probably Summer Stock!
All excellent choices, although her final film, I Could Go On Singing, is a bit of an outlier. Are there other classic movie stars that you’re obsessed with?
Oh, lots, but the biggest for me are definitely Judy and Marilyn. I really love Marilyn Monroe.
Oh, let’s see one of your Marilyn songs!
You did a song a day for a while but now you’re doing three a week, which is still a lot!
Yes, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I usually do them at night after my daughter goes to sleep. Which is why I often end up doing them from my car because my neighbor complains.
He complains? If you were my neighbor I’d set my clock to your performances and invite people over to listen!
Oh, they don’t like it if it gets too late! So I have to get into my car and drive to an empty car park. I got stopped by the police once. I was dressed as Judy with the wig and full makeup and I had a skipping rope I was using as my long corded microphone! The police officer knocked on my window — he was very suspicious because, as I later found out, there are a lot of naughty goings-on in small Essex car parks! Who knew? [switches to Judy voice] “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!”
I hope that when the officer knocked on your window that you spoke to him as Judy Garland,
Oh, I wish I had! He was like, “What are you doing in there?” And I said “Well, I’m singing a song and recording myself.” And he said, “What?”
I love it!
You have to be very resourceful dong this work with no budget!
I just saw the great video you did for “The Boy Next Door” from Meet Me in St. Louis. It looked like you had a full costume for that one.
Look closer, Danny, that bow I’m wearing is made out of toilet paper!
Oh, the glamour!
Check out Debbie Wileman’s fantastic YouTube Channel. My fantasy is that she’ll be invited to next year’s TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood to help celebrate Judy Garland’s 100th birthday!
Long before Fred and Ginger, Vernon and Irene Castle were lauded as an exceptionally talented dancing duo. Though a tragedy ended their partnership, their influence as dancers as well as Irene’s activism continues to live on.
Irene Foote was born on April 17, 1893, in New Rochelle, New York. Her
father was a physician and her mother was a homemaker. As Foote grew, she
developed an interest in dancing and studied the art, participating in a
variety of performances before meeting established dancer and comedian Vernon
Blyth. The two were introduced at the New Rochelle Rowing Club and, with his
influence, Foote was hired for her first professional dancing role in “The
Summer Widowers.” Their friendship quickly blossomed into a romance, leading
them to be married on May 28, 1911, in New Rochelle.
Blyth worked under the stage name of Vernon Castle, which Irene adopted as
they began performing together. They worked in The Hen-Pecks (1911) and toured Paris, performing numerous American
ragtime dances, including the Turkey Trot and Grizzly Bear. They returned to
New York with great fanfare, finding that they were in high demand on the stage
as well as in films. They appeared on Broadway regularly, including roles in
Irving Berlin’s Watch Your Step (1914),
for which he wrote his first score with the Castles in mind. Along the way, the
Castles popularized the Foxtrot.
A young Vernon & Irene
In the same year, the Castles opened “Castle House” in New York, which was
their dancing school. They also opened up a restaurant called Sans Souci as
well as the Castles by the Sea nightclub in Long Beach, New York. During the
day, they would teach at Castle House, while by night, they would perform at
their nightclub. In addition, they offered private lessons and appearances at
parties.
Irene was noted as a fashion trendsetter of the time
In addition to their success as a team, the Castles made close dancing
respectable to the tune of ragtime and jazz. Irene even became a popular
fashion trendsetter, showcasing short, full skirts and loose corsets and
frequently designing clothes herself. She is also credited with bringing the
bob to America.
Though Vernon and Irene never had children, they loved animals and had numerous pets. Many of these animals were performing animals that they rescued. Among their many pups — including a beloved dog named Zowie — was also a pet monkey. They eventually purchased an estate near the Long Island Sound with kennels and stables for their 24 dogs, 5 horses, a donkey, and many more animals.
Irene and her beloved dog, Zowie
Unfortunately, Vernon died in a plane crash at the age of 30 after sailing to England to enlist as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. During training over Benbrook Field in Texas, his plane stalled and he was not able to regain control. Irene wrote My Husband as a tribute to Vernon.
Irene
would marry three more times after Vernon, having two children with Fredric
McLaughlin, founding owner of the Chicago Blackhawks. Upon relocating to
Chicago, Irene was credited with designing the original sweater for the
Blackhawks Hockey Club.
Beyond dancing, Irene heavily invested herself in animal rights activism. She founded Orphans of the Storm animal shelter, named after D.W. Griffith‘s Orphans of the Storm(1921), in Deerfield, Illinois, aiming to save the lives of Chicago animals and place them in loving homes.
Irene and some of her many rescued pets
Irene passed away at the age of 75 in her Arkansas home on
January 25, 1959. Vernon and Irene are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York.
At the time of Vernon’s death, Irene
posed for the weeping ballet dancer memorial marker, entitled “End of the
Day.”
Vernon Castle’s grave with a ballet dancer sculpture modeled by Irene
Today, the Castles are honored in numerous ways. The story of the Castles was turned into a film called The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle(1939), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Though Irene served as a technical advisor for the film, she argued with Rogers, who did not wish to wear Castle’s bob or darken her hair. Castle was also against the casting of white actor Walter Brennan as the Castles’ manservant in the film, who, in real life, was black.
Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
The Castles split their time between residences in Long
Island and New York City, with a townhouse at 120 Lexington Ave. in New York.
Here is the property today:
120 Lexington Ave., New York, NY
Vernon’s
crash site now has a memorial in his honor, located in Benbrook, Texas. It can
be located after taking the I-20 exit 429 onto US 337/Benbrook Blvd, heading
south a little over a mile, and left onto Sproles Drive.
The memorial at the site of Vernon’s fatal plane crash
In
1954, Irene and her fourth husband relocated to Eureka Springs, Arkansas,
living at Destiny Farm. The sign, which Irene helped design, still remains.
Destiny Farm at Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Seven of Irene’s many pets were buried in the Castle plot at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in New York. Each pet has a special epitaph. Her beloved Zowie’s reads:
To My Adored Zowie.
I do not cringe from death so much,
Since you are gone, my truest friend,
Thy dear, dumb soul will wait for me.
However long before the end.
Irene’s pet cemetery plot in Hartsdale, NY
Orphans of the Storm, Irene’s pride and joy, continues to operate to this day. While their mission is going strong, aside from a short YouTube video, little is celebrated and discussed regarding its history and connection to Castle. My inquiries relating to their history went unanswered and, unfortunately, the name Irene Castle did not seem to ring a bell to the staff. Nonetheless, I think Irene would be pleased to see her work carrying on as animals continue to be adopted from Orphans regularly. Upon my visits, I enjoyed playing with the cats and giving them some extra cuddles–getting pretty attached to one named “Pigeon,” in particular! Sadly, I wasn’t in a place to adopt a pet at the time but I’m happy to say that my favorite cat of the bunch is now in a happy home. (…and I have since adopted a sweet dog!)
Meet Pigeon!
Though the Castles may not be discussed quite so often today, their influence in dancing and dedication to the welfare of animals lives on.
Annette Bochenek of Chicago, Illinois, is a PhD student at Dominican University and an independent scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the Hometowns to Hollywood blog, in which she writes about her trips exploring the legacies and hometowns of Golden Age stars. Annette also hosts the “Hometowns to Hollywood” film series throughout the Chicago area. She has been featured on Turner Classic Movies and is the president of TCM Backlot’s Chicago chapter. In addition to writing for Classic Movie Hub, she also writes for Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, and Chicago Art Deco SocietyMagazine.
In past columns, I’ve taken a look at Western movie locations in Lone Pine and Corriganville. This month my focus is a popular Western location further afield from Hollywood: Kanab, Utah.
Kanab is in the southern
part of the state, not far from the Arizona border. Founded in 1870, the
current population is around 4700.
I could go on with a
much longer list of titles, but that gives readers a good idea of some of the
films made in the area.
Just as Lone Pine’s Dow
Villa Hotel regularly served movie companies, film productions shooting in the
Kanab area often stayed at the Parry Lodge, which first opened in 1931.
Parry Lodge, Kanab, Utah
The lodge is still in operation today, nine decades later, although it’s currently closed for the 2021 season due to COVID. On a recent visit to Utah, I was able to take a number of photographs of the closed lodge.
Parry Lodge entrance
The rooms outside the main building are labeled with the names of some of the stars who stayed there while working in Utah.
Joel McCrea Room
Robert Taylor Room
In front of the hotel, there’s a row of signs honoring numerous filmmakers who worked in Kanab.
Parry Lodge not only served as headquarters for countless film production companies, it was also a key location in the crime film The Girl in Black Stockings (1957), starring Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, and Mamie Van Doren. That movie, which was released by United Artists, provides some wonderful shots of the lodge, including the pool area.
The pool at Parry Lodge
One of the very finest films which did extensive filming in the Kanab area was the previously mentioned Westward the Women, with Robert Taylor heading an outstanding cast. A few miles outside of Kanab, a Western town was built for the film, which was also used as a set in a number of other productions over the years.
Town scene from Westward the Women (1951)
Today the crumbling
remains of that town set may still be seen by anyone who turns off Highway 89
and drives 5.4 miles down Johnson Canyon Road. Given my love for Westward
the Women, I found it an extremely moving experience.
Here are screenshots of
the pavilion seen in the film’s closing sequence, after the women arrive at
their destination in California:
Here’s that very same
pavilion building today. It looks as though a later production finished the
interior so it looked more like a house, but the exterior is easy to identify
by matching it up with screenshots from the film.
Another town building is seen above.
I don’t know for certain, but I’m guessing the crumbling chimney seen in the photograph below is the same chimney seen in the screenshots shown here from the opening minutes of the movie:
John McIntire
It’s remarkable to find the town still standing — in a manner of speaking — seven decades after the movie’s release. Looking around one could just imagine Robert Taylor, John McIntire, Denise Darcel, and the rest of the cast having been there.
Beverly Dennis, Renata Vanni, Marilyn Erskine, Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Julie Bishop, and Lenore Lonergan in Westward the Women (1951)
Anyone who visits the
set should be aware that it sits on private property, so bring a telephoto lens
to photograph it from the public road.
For additional information on Westerns filmed in Kanab and elsewhere in Utah, I highly recommend the book When Hollywood Came to Town: A History of Moviemaking in Utah by James D’Arc. I wrote more about that book in my January 2021 column Western Film Book Library – Part 4.
…
— Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
Lives Behind the Legends: Mae West – Spiritual Vixen
Mae West
Mae West has gone down in history as a larger-than-life character. Ballsy, confident, funny and sexy; she was a trailblazer in the conventional 1930’s. Nothing could stop this street smart vixen. Still, there was a surprising side to her that not many people are aware of. You would be forgiven for thinking that the sassy Miss West was as down to earth as it gets, but in reality, Mae was a very spiritual person. She meditated, considered herself psychic and loved to hold séances with friends.
The year was 1928. Mae West had just become the biggest star on Broadway with her self-written play Diamond ‘Lil. The tough-talking, independent and fun ‘Lil would be a part of the Mae West persona forevermore. But the real Mae was being plagued by extreme abdominal pains. Doctors ran tests, but no reason was found. Mae’s manager and best friend James Timony took matters into his own hands and introduced her to yogi healer Sri Deva Ram Sukul, who was the president of the Yoga Institute for America. When Mae and the yogi met, he chanted a Hindu prayer, stood behind her and pressed his hands on her stomach for a few minutes. When he suddenly released his hold, the pain was gone. Mae asked the yogi what had caused the pain and he told her that it was other people’s envy. This was Mae’s first tangible experience with spirituality and it made a big impression on her.
Though Mae attended church from time to time, she wasn’t particularly religious. She was interested in a broader concept of spirituality. She wanted to know if there ‘was more,’ and events like this strengthened her belief that there truly was. Mae was especially fascinated by the spirit world, so she was game when she was asked to participate in a séance in the early 30’s, reportedly by none other than aviatrix Amelia Earhart. This may seem like a random pairing, but these two independent career women had long admired each other before becoming acquainted. In any case, Mae was vacationing at posh resort, La Cinta, and she offered up her bungalow for the small gathering. This would be Mae’s first séance and she became a true believer. Her deceased father came through with a message about the men she was dating.
Mae surrounded by men in Belle of the Nineties
One was ‘okay’, the other was not. But the real highlight was when a message came through that nobody understood, until someone pointed out that it was in Yiddish. One of the guests was Jewish and had been in a long-term relationship with a Catholic woman. The message was from the man’s mother and said: ‘do what your heart tells you and never mind your father.’ The message moved Mae deeply. Especially since the pair then married, the father came around, and they lived a long and happy life together.
Mae had always fancied herself an intuitive person and she became more and more drawn to developing her own spiritual abilities. She started reading up on psychic research and learned how to meditate. She was a self-confessed quick study, later stating that she learned how to meditate in a week. She was keen to meet spiritual mentors and she even took a yogi with her when traveling for a while. Mae was always straightforward about using the ‘Forces’, as she called them, for her life and her work. When she was writing a screenplay, she would ask them for help. Afterward, she would write or dictate in a stream of consciousness. ‘I believe the Forces have a lot to do with what we call inspiration,’ she said. No matter how she got the inspiration, it worked, and Mae became a power player on stage and in Hollywood. Still, she started feeling that there was something missing in 1941. Her career was at a high, but her life felt incomplete. She decided to take six months off to really dive into that spiritual world that she was so fascinated with. ‘The best is knowing the powers within you,’ she later pointed out. Mae chose Jack Kelly, founder of the Spiritual Church of Life, as a guide on this journey. It was said that he was tested by Duke University and was found to possess psychic powers. Mae was even more convinced of his powers when he personally predicted to her that the Japanese would launch a surprise attack on America and Pearl Harbor was attacked soon after.
Mae West with Jack Kelly (middle)
Kelly found that, though everyone has the ability within them, Mae truly had the ‘Gift’ when it came to contacting the spirit world. For weeks she trained, getting her mind blank through meditation and inviting in the spirits. Finally, they came to her in full form, but not in the way she had hoped. ‘There were a lot of them, I think all men, and they weren’t interested in me, so that didn’t make any sense. They must have been really dead. They sort of just talked with each other. And I never did like crowds.’ What Mae really wanted was to make contact with her mother. Kelly told her that she had to be patient and that her gift was undisciplined. After a while, Mae grew tired of the uninvited guests and told them to leave. They did, and Mae never tried to contact the spirits in that way again. Still, she was satisfied knowing that there was more, and that she had the ability to make contact. She felt reassured that her mother was somewhere watching over her, even if neither of them knew how to make contact. Though this experience had been a little too intense, Mae kept her connection to the other side. She continued to ask the spirits for help and information and she loved hosting séances by psychics for her friends.
It was not just the supernatural that Mae was interested in; other spiritual beliefs had her attention as well. For instance, she felt that astrology explained her personality. As a fiery Leo with her rising sign in beauty planet Venus, she said that it was predetermined she would be ‘strong like a lioness and at the same time totally feminine.’ In her book Mae West on Sex, Health and ESP, she even relayed her experiences with men throughout the signs. Quipping about Aries: ‘They don’t call the guys born under this sign the Rams for nothing.’ She would consult her astrology chart from time to time to help her make decisions. Mae reportedly even had her chart read on set by veteran silent film actor Stuart Holmes, whose wife Blanka was a Hollywood astrologist. According to a 1935 Australian Women’s Weekly article, Holmes found that Mae would have made a good nurse, the height of her screen career would be reached in 1939, Hollywood was the best place for her to reside in, and she might be married in three years. He may have misread that last prediction, but Mae still generously called him a ‘remarkable researcher.’ Mae did not just depend on outside sources, she was also a firm believer in the power of positive thinking. She never allowed a negative thought to take root in her mind. She felt that by thinking and feeling positive you created a better understanding of yourself, and it would enable you to accomplish things you never thought you could. Her advice was always that self-confidence was the most important thing to possess, a belief that was mirrored by the self-assured stage persona we know and love.
Mae really was ahead of her time in many ways. Her stage persona paved the way for confident, sexy women who were not afraid to speak their minds. Mae was this way off-stage as well; she wrote all of her own material and held a tight grasp on her image, so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that even her spiritual side was ahead of its time. Meditation, astrology, the power of positive thinking, and a belief in an energy that connects us are almost commonplace in the 21st century. In the 30’s and 40’s, Mae was an outsider in her convictions, but she didn’t care. Her open-mindedness in every facet of life and her steadfast confidence were her biggest strengths. As society finally caught up with Mae, people became more open-minded about sex and spirituality. Because of this, Mae had a career resurgence in the 1970’s as people appreciated, once again, what a trailblazer she had been.
Mae and her fans
Mae, a savvy businesswoman, saw an opportunity and released her novel Mae West on Sex, Health and ESP. She was introduced to, and embraced by, a whole new generation while in her eighties. As an entertainer at heart, she loved every minute of it.
Arancha has been fascinated with Classic Hollywood and its stars for years. Her main area of expertise is the behind-the-scenes stories, though she’s pretty sure she could beat you at movie trivia night too. Her website, Classic Hollywood Central, is about everything Classic Hollywood, from actors’ life stories and movie facts to Classic Hollywood myths. You can follow her on Twitter at @ClassicHC.
“If I knew you were coming, I would’ve set fire to the place.”
Remakes are a risky endeavor, especially in the world of film noir. There have been countless instances of remakes coasting on the iconography of its predecessor, sans the emotion and angst that made them impactful. The 1981 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice is too lewd for its own good, and 1988’s D.O.A. trades in the electricity of the original for a broad, over-stylized approach. It’s never easy. That said, there are some remakes that defy the odds and add something worthwhile to the noir canon. One such remake is 1964’s The Killers.
The Killers, or The Killers ‘64, was set to be one of the early TV movies to air on NBC. It was pitched as an episode of the Project 120 series, but once the network got a look at the final product, they decided it was too violent for homes and repurposed it for theaters. The decision proved to be a beneficial one, as the film performed well at the box office and earned Lee Marvin a BAFTA Award for Best Actor. But how did The Killers ‘64 escape the curse of so many noir remakes? What did it do to differentiate itself from its predecessor? The solution, simple as it may be, is change everything.
The film’s New Wave-inspired poster
The film was always going to have to contend with the legacy of The Killers (1946), the landmark noir that launched the careers of both Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster. It was a near perfect translation of the Ernest Hemingway short story, bolstering the parameters of his doomed world while adding layers of angst and sexual frustration. Don Siegel, the director of the remake, was all too familiar with the 1946 version, as he had been fired from the project and replaced with the more established Robert Siodmak. When it came time to remake the film, the wily Siegel worked with screenwriter Gene L. Coon on a treatment that disregarded most of what came before. He was crafting a remake in name, but a wholly original film in spirit.
Charlie (R) and Lee kill time between killings
The differences between the 1946 and 1964 versions are evident from the opening scene. The former opens with a Hopperesque diner, and culminates with the shooting of boxer Swede Anderson in a seedy motel. Clean and professional, like clockwork. The latter takes place at an institute for the blind, where hitmen Charlie (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager) saunter through the lobby, bullying hapless patients. They instigate as much chaos as possible before cornering Johnny North (John Cassavetes) and subjecting him to a hail of gunfire. The endgame is the same, but The Killers ‘64 has something else on its mind. It savors the anarchy of its lawless characters and invites us to do the same. The overriding mood of the original was doom, but here, it’s psychotically gleeful.
The rest of the film unfolds with similar irreverence. Charlie and Lee are confused by the ease with which Johnny North accepted his fate, and decide to look into his past. They already got paid, so they kill time by looking up Johnny’s best friend Earl (Claude Atkins) and on/off girlfriend Sheila (Angie Dickinson). What makes these interrogation scenes so memorable is not the discovery of information, but the brutish way Charlie and Lee go about getting it. These are the men that ended Johnny’s life and here they are dangling Sheila out of a window because she’s refusing to disclose his secrets.
Coon’s screenplay was quietly radical in terms of how it stitched seemingly incongruent noir tropes together. In the past, hitmen had been dismissed as loners or psychopaths, doomed to die before the final reel. By contrast, private detectives were seen as trustworthy, and given access to exclusive information. Charlie and Lee are given the access of the more congenial private detective, but their homicidal tendencies lead them to abuse their power and belittle their various witnesses. We never know what they’re going to do next, and the result is as sickening as it is exciting.
John Cassavetes and Angie Dickinson in a promotional still
Marvin and Galugar deserve all the credit in the world for making their hitmen so magnetic. They have contrasting but complimentary styles: Charlie is the economic veteran and Lee is the showboat kid who loves inflicting pain. Their shared concern for money bonds them, and their banter keeps the film hurtling along like the view from their train compartment. Marvin is particularly good here, tossing off quotables with palpable disdain. “Whoever laid this contract wasn’t worried about the million dollars, and the only people that don’t worry about a million dollars are the people that have a million dollars”, he asserts. Later, when faced with having to shoot another victim, he delivers another gem: “You see, the only man that’s not afraid to die is the man that’s dead already.” Marvin later referred to the role as one of his best, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t agree with him.
The flashbacks detailing Johnny’s fall from grace are similarly kinetic. The filmmakers wisely changed the profession of the character from boxer to race car driver, which dovetails nicely with his eventual getaway driver gig. The subsequent driving scenes make use of rear projection (sometimes a little too obviously), but Siegel’s implementation of real life racing footage helps to sell the illusion of anxiety. Cassavetes’s laconic presence also does wonders for the film’s quieter moments. He’s constantly leery of his surroundings, as though he knows his number will soon be up.
Ronald Reagan quietly waits out his final film role
If there’s one element of The Killers ‘64 that pales in comparison to the original, it’s the casting of Ronald Reagan as the antagonist. Reagan is the gangster who romances Sheila and pushes Johnny into the heist, despite not possessing the moxy to do either. He’s hopelessly outmatched in scenes opposite Cassavetes, and given that he retired from acting soon after the film’s release, one can assume his heart wasn’t invested in his work. Fortunately, the limitations of Reagan’s performance are salvaged by the finale, where Siegel delivers some of the most brutal and stylized directorial work of his career.
Charlie and Lee trace the source of the hit to Reagan’s gangster, but both men have been shot and are bleeding out. The former struggles to maintain focus, which Siegel emulates through the camera lens, before lifting his pistol and popping the gangster in spectacular fashion. The image of Charlie’s pistol aiming down the barrel of the camera is the most iconic in the film, and one that maintains its singular power some 50 years later. Equally powerful, though perhaps less known, is the last frame, where a bloodied Charlie succumbs to his wounds and dies on the front lawn of a suburban home. It’s an appropriately twisted ending for such a sadistic man.
The film’s most iconic shot (in more ways than one)
The Killers ‘64 was one of the first noir remakes to go into production, and it’s a testament to its quality that it remains one of the finest. The decision to use the original premise as a jumping off point for another story was inspired, and the nimble execution by Siegel and Coon qualifies it as some of their best work. The 1946 version may still have the upper hand, but the splashy, irreverent influence of The Killers ‘64 can be seen more readily in neo-noir like Pulp Fiction (1994) and In Bruges (2007). In other words, it manages to be a classic all on its own.
TRIVIA: Despite having a John Williams score, the film’s opening and end title music was taken from Touch of Evil (1958), which was scored by Henry Mancini.
…..
–Danilo Castro for Classic Movie Hub
Danilo Castro is a film noir aficionado and Contributing Writer for Classic Movie Hub. You can read more of Danilo’s articles and reviews at the Film Noir Archive, or you can follow Danilo on Twitter @DaniloSCastro.
,
