Classic Movie Hub Blog

Western RoundUp: TCM Classic Film Festival 15

Posted on June 27, 2024 by Laura Grieve

Westerns at the TCM Classic Film Festival 15

Over the years the TCM Classic Film Festival has typically included a couple of Westerns on the schedule, such as Winchester ’73 (1950), which I wrote about here back in 2019, or last year’s opening night premiere of the restored Rio Bravo (1959).

That said, Westerns have historically tended to be represented in fewer numbers than other genres at the festival, so it was very exciting that Westerns were front and center in a big way at this year’s fest.

This was my 11th time covering the 15-year-old festival, held in Hollywood this year from April 18th to 21st. It always seems as though each year’s festival is the best ever, only to be surpassed by the following year, and the 2024 festival was no exception. It was a remarkable experience start to finish, and I felt lucky to attend.

On Saturday, April 20th, revered film historian Jeanine Basinger was honored with this year’s Robert Osborne Award, following in the footsteps of honorees such as Leonard Maltin and Kevin Brownlow.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 20: Jeanine Basinger accepts the Robert Osborne award onstage at the "Westward the Women" screening during the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival at TCL Chinese Theatre on April 20, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TCM) — Jeanine Basinger accepts the Robert Osborne Award onstage at the “Westward the Women” screening during the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre on April 20, 2024, in Hollywood, California. [Photo courtesy of Turner Classic Movies]

It was a deeply deserved honor for one of my all-time favorite writers on film, and it was all the more special as the film she chose to accompany her award ceremony was Westward the Women (1951).

Westward the Women was directed by William A. Wellman and stars Robert Taylor and a large cast of women, headed by Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, Julie Bishop, and Lenore Lonergan. The screening, which took place at the recently remodeled Egyptian Theatre, was a lovely 35mm print.

In explaining her selection, Basinger recounted working as a movie theater usher in her teens and that the reaction to the film was striking; instead of getting up to leave as soon as the movie ended, audiences stayed and applauded the cast credits, which was very unusual in that place and time.

Basinger also commented that she liked that the film demonstrates the women’s toughness and determination, while they also retain their essential femininity, as seen in the film’s final scenes.

Westward the Women Still 1 — Westward the Women

Westward the Women is one of my all-time favorite films, but I was curious what the audience reaction would be, given that Robert Taylor’s character makes some statements which could be perceived as misogynistic, plus there’s quite of bit of slapping which occurs in the film.

While I noted at least one Twitter reaction complaining about the above, as well as the women marrying strangers, I was gratified that many in the audience appreciated the growth of Taylor’s character as the film went on and were profoundly moved by the film. I gathered from overheard conversations that viewers loved the characters and were surprised by the movie’s gritty tone.

Westward the Women Still 2 — Westward the Women

A smattering of appreciative Twitter responses by different audience members:

“All I can say is WOW! One of my favorite fest discoveries ever. Thank you Jeanine Basinger for picking this movie to screen at #TCMFF.”

“Out of all the films so far, the one that affected me the most so far is Westward the Women (1951). William A. Wellman knows how to mess with my emotions.”

“Was overwhelmed. So happy it more than lived up to the reputation…right up there with the best westerns every made and that’s not hyperbole.”

“…I wonder how it’s not already a contender for every list. Maybe new favorite Wellman?”

The next morning was another special Western screening, this time the world premiere restoration of Law and Order (1932). The restoration was by Universal Studios in collaboration with the Film Foundation; it was shown via DCP in the Chinese Multiplex 6, introduced by Brendan Connell Jr. of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy was listed as a “co-presenter” of the film on the festival website.

Law and Order was directed by Edward L. Cahn from a script by Tom Reed, based on a John Huston adaptation of W.R. Burnett’s novel Saint Johnson. The film is also known by the alternate title Guns A’Blazin.

Law and Order had been shown at the festival at 2016, but I missed it that year. It’s said to be the first cinematic spin on the tale of Wyatt Earp, as Huston and company try to tame Tombstone, Arizona. The Earp story has, of course, been filmed many times since, and I’ve written about several versions in past Western RoundUp posts.

Writer John Huston’s father Walter stars as the Earp-inspired Frame “Saint” Johnson, the “killingest peace officer that ever lived.”

Huston is backed by Harry Carey Sr., Raymond Hatton, and Russell Hopton. Huston and Carey, in particular, are exceptionally good in the film.

Law and Order has a decidedly gritty tone and feels authentic, whether it’s the costumes or the climactic, fast-paced shootout with the “Northrups” (Clantons) at the OK Corral. The film’s humor is notably dark, particularly when it comes to Andy Devine as a dim-witted fellow headed for the gallows, who’s happy to be going out as the first man “hung legal” in Tombstone.

It’s a movie very much worth seeing and provides fascinating historical context for those interested in the legend of Wyatt Earp on film.

The highlight of this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival came on Sunday afternoon at the Egyptian, with a sold-out 70mm world premiere restoration of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956). The movie stars John Wayne and many members of what we today refer to as the “John Ford Stock Company.”

The restoration by Warner Bros. scanned the original VistaVision camera negative in 13K, with the restoration work done in 6.5K. The Film Foundation gave its approval to the newly restored 70mm print.

The movie was introduced by noted director Alexander Payne. Cast member Patrick Wayne, son of the film’s star, was in the audience and received a nice round of applause.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 21: Alexander Payne speaks onstage during the "The Searchers" screening during the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival at TCL Chinese Theatre on April 21, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images for TCM) — Alexander Payne speaks onstage before the “The Searchers” screening during the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre on April 21, 2024, in Hollywood, California. [Photo courtesy of Turner Classic Movies.]

The Searchers is a favorite film, but I don’t watch it too often as, to borrow a comment above, it really messes with my emotions. I briefly toyed with the idea of going to see Eddie Muller introduce Chinatown (1974) in the same time slot, since I hadn’t seen that one since college, but ultimately the lure of John Ford in 70mm could not be ignored.

I can’t say how grateful I am that I chose The Searchers that day; as I wrote at my personal blog, it was “one of the best festival decisions I’ve ever made…a majestic, profound experience which left me awed and deeply moved.”

I had seen the film twice before on a big screen – one print I saw as a teenager I particularly remember being quite scratched – but this screening made an exceptional impact. My eyes watered with emotion throughout. For anyone who has the chance to see this 70mm restoration, I emphatically recommend the experience!

All in all, it was a wonderful year for Westerns at the TCM Classic Film Festival. I hope some of my readers who have not yet attended the festival will be able to be there in 2025.

With this column I mark my sixth anniversary writing the Western RoundUp column. Thanks to all for reading!

Related Western RoundUp posts: Westward the Women locations in Kanab, Utah; The Searchers location at Bronson Canyon, Los Angeles.

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– 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.

Posted in Posts by Laura Grieve, TCM, Western RoundUp | Tagged law and order, tcm classic film festival 2024, TCMFF, the searchers, westward the women | 2 Comments

Silents are Golden: A Closer Look At: Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Posted on June 25, 2024 by Lea Stans

A Closer Look At: Sherlock Jr. (1924)

2024 marks the 100th anniversary of one of Buster Keaton’s most beloved films: his third feature, Sherlock Jr. (1924). Still every bit as funny and fresh as it was in the early 20th century, its sophisticated special effects have also aged remarkably well–even to today’s CGI-accustomed audiences.

Compared to the two Keaton features that it was sandwiched between, the period piece Our Hospitality (1923) and the lost-at-sea adventure The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. was a much smaller-scale film. Keaton had originally envisioned adapting the popular 1922 play Merton of the Movies, about a young man from a small town who dreams of becoming a Hollywood star. However, Famous Players-Lasky had snapped up the rights and were planning on making a version starring Glenn Hunter. Keaton decided to use a similar story revolving around a small town theater projectionist, who in this case dreams of becoming a famous detective.

buster keaton sherlock jr how to be a detective

Keaton would later credit his cameraman, Elgin Lessley, for coming up with the idea of having much of the film take place in a dream. Lessley insisted that many of the surreal movie-themed gags Keaton had in mind wouldn’t work in a “legitimate” story, and that audiences were more likely to accept the topsy-turvy logic of the dream world. This turned out to be an excellent idea, freeing them to create the memorable scenes of Keaton jumping in and out of a movie screen that are still admired today.

The studio started filming in November of 1923 under the working title of The Misfit. The leading lady was initially played by Marion Harlan, who apparently had to drop out after falling ill. She was replaced by Kathryn McGuire, a petite former Mack Sennett comedienne who paired well with the 5’6” Keaton. Ward Crane was cast as the intimidating rival for McGuire’s hand, and Keaton’s father Joe would also make an appearance as the girl’s father.

Another major addition to the film’s production–at least temporarily–was Keaton’s old pal Roscoe Arbuckle, who was brought on as a co-director. Arbuckle’s life had been upended in 1921 after actress Virginia Rappe fell ill at a party he hosted in San Francisco, later passing away. After several sensational trials for manslaughter he was acquitted of all charges, but he had been relegated to working quietly behind the camera ever since. It only took a few days for Keaton to realize that the patient, genial comedian he had worked with in the past now had a hair-trigger temper, his nerves still shattered from undergoing those trials. He gently thanked Arbuckle for his help and told him he now felt comfortable directing himself.

By now the story had evolved into Keaton playing a humble projectionist moonlighting as a detective while also contending with a rival for his girl’s hand. The rival steals a pocketwatch belonging to the girl’s father and blames Buster for it. Disgraced, a dejected Buster dreams that he is the famous, dashing detective Sherlock Jr., who retrieves a stolen necklace of pearls. Apparently a 1922 John Barrymore film, Sherlock Holmes, inspired the change in title.

Keaton performed numerous stunts for the film, from riding alone on the handlebars of a fast-moving motorcycle to performing a vaudeville trick where he appeared to disappear into a small case being held by an assistant. The most dangerous stunt showed him running along the top of a moving train as it rumbled past a water tower. He grabbed a rope hanging from the tower’s spout and the resulting torrent of water pushed him down onto the tracks below. He hit one of the rails directly on his neck. The film shows him springing up and running off unscathed, but after the cameras stopped rolling he had a lingering headache that he “cured” with a couple of stiff drinks. Decades later, an x-ray taken during a routine checkup revealed he’d gotten a neck fracture–in such a precise spot that it healed without him being aware of it.

Other feats performed by Keaton included doing all the billiard ball tricks during the pool room sequence, which took several months of lessons from an expert pool player, and of course the wonderful “film within a film” sequence. Buster, having fallen asleep, is dreaming that he’s watching the film Hearts and Pearls and he jumps into the movie screen. While he’s onscreen the scenes suddenly change around him, depositing him into city streets, jungles of wildcats, snowy landscapes, and so on. The effect was done by having Lessley measure the precise distance from Keaton to the camera and to the edges of the frame–precise down to the fraction of an inch–so he could get in the exact right place for each shot.

Once Sherlock finished production in February of 1924 Keaton had it previewed in Long Beach, Glendale, and finally Los Angeles, tweaking the film after each audience reaction. The finished product ran under five reels, or about 45 minutes, making it shorter than the average comedy feature.

Sherlock Jr. was generally well-received and did well at the box office, although it didn’t perform as well as Our Hospitality and would be somewhat overshadowed by the phenomenal success of Keaton’s next picture, The Navigator (1924). Yet its reputation has steadily grown over time, and many fans consider it one of the great comedian’s best. Today, a full 100 years later, its centenary has been celebrated with public screenings at several film festivals, and of course, plenty of love from fans online.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.

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Posted in Posts by Lea Stans, Silents are Golden | Tagged Buster Keaton, sherlock jr | 1 Comment

Classic Movie Travels: Marjorie White

Posted on June 23, 2024 by Annette Bochenek

Marjorie White

Marjorie Ann Guthrie was born on July 22, 1904, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Robert and Nettie Guthrie. Her father worked as a grain merchant.

Guthrie entered into the entertainment industry as a child performer, working as one of the dancing and singing Winnipeg Kiddies. Once she became a teenager, she relocated to San Francisco, California, and performed alongside actress Thelma Wolpa in vaudeville. They performed as a duo act titled “Wolpa and Guthrie, Little Bits of Everything.” By the time they took the act to New York, they were renamed as “The White Sisters,” with both actresses keeping the surname White after the dissolution of their partnership.

In 1924, White married producer Edwin Tierney. She performed in various Broadway musicals in the late 1920s before she and her husband relocated to Hollywood. Once there, the year of her birth was modified by four years to make her marketable to studios as a younger star. She was also required to drop four pounds by Fox Film studios, though she was already 103 pounds and stood just under five feet tall. A specific role called for “a woman who weighed less than 100 pounds.”

White’s early film roles included Happy Days (1929) and Sunny Side Up (1929). She transitioned between Broadway and Hollywood once again for the musical Hot-Cha before returning to films and appearing in Charlie Chan films. One of her more noticeable roles in this period was in The Black Camel, performing as one of the suspects in the film. She also appeared in the Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey film Diplomaniacs (1933) as a femme fatale.

Marjorie White, Woman Haters — Woman Haters

White worked alongside numerous stars of her day, including an appearance with Joan Crawford in Possessed (1931). However, her best-known appearance is her co-starring role in Woman Haters (1934), the first Three Stooges short for Columbia Pictures. Sadly, this would be her final film role.

On August 20, 1935, White was involved in a car accident in Santa Monica, California. Driver Marlow M. Lovell and White were in the open car. At the last minute, White traded cars with Gloria Gould, who had forgotten to wear her wrap that evening. As a result, Gould rode with White’s husband and followed Lovell’s car. Lovell’s car sideswiped the car of a couple who had just been married. The car overturned and White was the only one who suffered serious injuries. She died from internal hemorrhaging the following day on August 21, 1935, and a coroner’s jury ruled that Lovell’s reckless driving was the cause of her death. She was 31 years old.

White was buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

In 1911, White and her family resided at 350 Pacific Avenue in Manitoba. In 1921, White lived with her mother and father, as well as four siblings, at 414 William Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. This home no longer stands.

In 1929, White and her husband lived at 1919 Argyle Ave., Los Angeles, California. This home stands.

By 1930, White and her husband resided at 5934 Manola Way, Los Angeles, California. At this point, he was working as a producer and she was employed as an actress. The home also stands.

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–Annette Bochenek for Classic Movie Hub

Annette Bochenek pens our monthly Classic Movie Travels column. You can read all of Annette’s Classic Movie Travel articles here.

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.

Posted in Classic Movie Travels, Posts by Annette Bochenek | Tagged Marjorie White | Leave a comment

Noir Nook: Unmistakable Noir

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry

Unmistakable Noir

One of the most interesting – and challenging – aspects of classic film noir is the fact that it’s not a hard and fast, clear-cut genre. There are countless films that are staunchly considered by some to fall in the category of noir, and just as vehemently believed by others to be anything but noir.

However!

There are some features that are undoubtedly, irrefutably, unmistakably noir – they’ve got more femmes fatales and flashbacks than you can shake a stick at – and this month’s Noir Nook kicks off a new limited series that looks at these features, beginning with Double Indemnity. This first-rate feature, released by Paramount Pictures in 1944, was directed by the great Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler.

I may have mentioned this once or twice before, but in case I haven’t, Double Indemnity is my favorite noir. In a very succinct nutshell, it tells the story of a married woman who teams with her insurance salesman lover to murder her husband – and might have gotten away with it if not for said insurance salesman’s supervisor, who had the instincts and determination of a bloodhound.

Double Indemnity Fred MacMurray Voiceover — Insurance Agent, Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray)

Two archetypal noir characteristics are revealed in the first few minutes of the film: voiceover narration and flashback. We see these after the insurance agent, Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), careens his way through the deserted, early morning streets of Los Angeles, on his way to his office. Once there, his Dictaphone – on which he records a letter to his boss, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) – furnishes the means for the flashback that will last until close to the film’s end. Similarly, that same recording to Keyes provides the viewer with the thread that connects crucial scenes in the film, from Walter’s first visit to the home of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and his introduction – via photographs on the piano – to Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers) and his daughter, Lola (Jean Heather); to the step-by-step plan that results in the slaying of Phyllis’s spouse; to the paranoia, suspicion, and distrust that ultimately leads to the downfall of both Phyllis and Walter.

Double Indemnity Fred MacMurray Low Key Lighting

In addition to the voiceover narration and flashback device, Double Indemnity is rife with a painterly use of lights and shadows, courtesy of seven-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer John Seitz. Seitz achieved the film’s oppressively somber effect through the use of low-key lighting which, unlike high-key lighting, places an emphasis on shadows, contrasted with intense brights radiating from solitary sources. We see this throughout the film, beginning in the opening scene; we see the dusky street of Los Angeles, cloaked mostly in shadows, but with conspicuous lights coming from the streetlights, safety lamps, traffic lights, and a railway maintenance sign. The film’s shadowy look is omnipresent; one of the most notable comes in the scene where Walter enters the Dietrichson living room as he’s waiting for Phyllis to join him. (Even Walter notices; in his recording to Keyes, he recalls: “The windows were closed and the sunshine coming through the Venetian blinds showed up the dust in the air.” Seitz achieved this effect by mixing aluminum dust and smoke into a shaft of light.) Other effects included shadows from the steel railings in Walter’s office building, electric fans, floor lamps, hat racks, and tree branches. The shadows in Double Indemnity are so prevalent and pervasive that they all but represent another character.

Double Indemnity 4 Barbara Stanwyck — Femme Fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck)

The most significant prototypical noir trait in Double Indemnity is the presence of the femme fatale, Phyllis. Before we see her, we hear her voice calling for her housekeeper, Nettie (Betty Farrington), an when she makes her appearance, she’s clad in a large towel – she’s been taking a sun bath, and that’s the most innocent act that Phyllis will undertake for the rest of the film. We get a few minor hints that Phyllis might be someone to reckon with when we hear her sultry voice and see the lingering look she gives Walter when she tells Nettie to show him into the living room. But our first concrete clue to Phyllis’s persona is the gold anklet she wears and the way it captivates Walter as she descends the stairs. And only scant minutes pass before Phyllis is acknowledging Walter’s intelligence and asking him about accident insurance. You can practically see the wheels turning in her head.

Early on, Walter is completely oblivious to Phyllis’s machinations (he’s too captivated by that anklet) and, to his credit, when he catches on that she’s interested in bumping off her husband, he beats a hasty retreat. But Phyllis isn’t one to take “no” for an answer – when at first she doesn’t succeed, she changes her tack (and her outfit); by the time she’s finished, she’s got Walter eating out of her hand and single-handedly planning Mr. Dietrichson’s murder. (And thinking it was all his own idea.)

Not only does Double Indemnity contain these emblematic film noir tropes, but it also serves up a perfect ending. Originally, the movie concluded with Walter’s execution in the San Quentin gas chamber, but (luckily) that ending was scrapped, in favor of the confrontation between Walter and Keyes in Walter’s office. Here, we’re able to witness the profound disappointment and pity on Keyes’s face and the way Walter can barely look his boss and friend squarely in the eye. We hear Walter’s pathetic last-ditch effort to escape, with plans to flee across the border, and Keyes’s accurate prediction that he wouldn’t make it as far as the elevator. And, finally, we experience Keyes providing the match to light Walter’s blood-soaked cigarette and Walter’s final words to close out the proceedings: “I love you, too.” Want to see a pure, unmistakable noir? Check out Double Indemnity. And join me here in the coming months as I take a look at more entries in this shadowy, distinctive category of films.

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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.

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:

Posted in Films, Noir Nook, Posts by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry | Tagged barbara stanwyck, billy wilder, Double Indemnity, fred macmurray, raymond chandler | Leave a comment

Silver Screen Standards: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Posted on June 20, 2024 by Jennifer Garlen

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

When Roger Corman died on May 9, 2024, at the impressive age of 98, his passing marked the end of a brilliant cinematic career that began in the 1950s and continued for more than 70 years. I’ve been a fan of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films ever since I first discovered them, so this feels like the perfect moment to revisit one of my favorites, The Pit and the Pendulum (1961). It’s not the most faithful of Corman’s Poe series, but it perfectly captures all of the defining elements of both the original author’s works and the Corman films they inspired. It’s a vivid, violent fever dream of a movie, from the swirling paint of the opening credits to that final horrifying closeup, with especially memorable performances from horror icons Vincent Price and Barbara Steele. Richard Matheson’s screenplay and Floyd Crosby’s cinematography weave together all the quintessential sensations of Poe’s Gothic horror, making the whole a truly sublime experience in the classic Romantic sense.

In a flashback to happier times, Nicholas (Vincent Price) paints a portrait of his beloved Elizabeth (Barbara Steele).

Corman regular Vincent Price leads the cast as the 16^th century Spanish gentleman, Nicholas Medina, whose wife, Elizabeth (Barbara Steele), has recently died under mysterious circumstances. When Elizabeth’s brother, Francis (John Kerr), arrives from England looking for answers about her demise, he finds Nicholas in a state of psychological distress caused by Elizabeth’s death and his traumatic childhood as the son of a brutal Inquisition torturer who killed his own wife and brother for their adulterous affair while Nicholas watched. Nicholas’ sister, Catherine (Luana Anders) and his physician, Charles (Antony Carbone), provide the persistent Francis with details about the family’s history and Elizabeth’s fate, but Nicholas grows increasingly certain that they have accidentally interred Elizabeth alive and caused her vengeful ghost to haunt him.

Nicholas relies on his friend and physician Charles (Antony Carbone) after Elizabeth’s death unsettles his already traumatized psyche.

Poe’s original story is much too thin to serve as the plot of a full-length feature film, so The Pit and the Pendulum builds a narrative using most of the author’s favorite themes, including premature burial, revenge, madness, and haunted protagonists. Several plot points echo “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which had served as the source for Corman’s first Poe picture in 1960, with a white-haired Price as the hypersensitive Roderick, but the horror of being buried alive recurs in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Premature Burial.” Guilt-stricken protagonists also come unhinged in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” while a dead wife’s return marks the climax of both “Morella” and “Ligeia.” Many of these stories would later get their own Corman adaptations, either as feature films or as segments of the anthology picture, Tales of Terror (1962), but The Pit and the Pendulum mixes a heady Gothic cocktail of phantasmagoria that’s difficult to surpass. We see flashbacks to the gruesome vengeance of Nicholas’ father and the seemingly deranged wanderings of a haunted Elizabeth. We get the dreadful sight of the corpse bricked up inside Elizabeth’s tomb and the eerie sounds of her harpsichord echoing through the halls. Price’s performance emphasizes the vulnerability of the psyche to repeated violent shocks; his Nicholas is more victim than villain, even though his suffering eventually drives him to reenact his father’s brutality. Like Price’s character in the 1953 film, House of Wax, Nicholas is a sensitive artist whose monstrosity emerges from sadistic mistreatment. Although the breaking of the mind through cruelty and suffering is presented very differently in the movie than it is in Poe’s original story, it’s still the central theme and the ultimate source of horror.

Catherine (Luana Anders) wants only to protect her fragile brother, but Francis (John Kerr) is determined to learn the truth about his sister’s mysterious, sudden death.

In general, Corman’s Poe pictures manage to look lavish in spite of shoestring budgets and rapid-fire shooting schedules, and The Pit and the Pendulum is a perfect example of this combination of economy and extravagance. Although the movie was shot in just 15 days, it still looks fantastic, with gorgeous sets by Daniel Heller and elaborate costumes that heighten the Gothic atmosphere. Having Vincent Price as the star makes a huge difference in all of their collaborations, but especially in a story like The Pit and the Pendulum, where the actor must portray a sympathetic but damaged protagonist whose collapse into madness strikes the audience as profoundly tragic. Corman could trust a gifted veteran star like Price to lean into whatever a role required, and of course the horror maestro excelled at full-tilt villains, but I especially admire Price’s performance in The Pit and the Pendulum for its pathos. If I have any real complaint about the movie, it’s the brief screen time allowed for Barbara Steele, who embodies malevolent loveliness so deftly as Elizabeth, but at least she gets some flashback scenes to enhance our sense of the character. When she and Price share the screen in the third act, the full horror of the tale at last becomes apparent, much to our spine-tingling delight. The titular pit and pendulum that follow can’t hope to compete with that lethal pair.

The sadistic Elizabeth taunts Nicholas once her evil plan has successfully driven him mad.

I’ve seen all of Corman’s Poe movies, and my favorites in addition to The Pit and the Pendulum are The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), but they’re all worth watching if you enjoy the Gothic thrills of Corman’s contemporaries, particularly Hammer and Mario Bava. Speaking of Bava, the best place to appreciate Barbara Steele is Bava’s iconic Black Sunday (1960), but you can also see her in other Italian horror pictures like Castle of Blood (1964) and The Long Hair of Death (1964). Vincent Price’s other films during the Poe years include Twice-Told Tales (1963), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), and The Last Man on Earth (1964), each of which has its own merits. If you’ve never gotten around to watching Corman’s Poe films, I suggest starting with Tales of Terror (1962) for its anthology format and delightful performances by Price, Basil Rathbone, and Peter Lorre.

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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub

Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.

Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.

Posted in Films, Posts by Jennifer Garlen, Silver Screen Standards | Tagged Antony Carbone, Barbara Steele, edgar allan poe, John Kerr, Luana Anders, roger corman, vincent price | Leave a comment

Monsters and Matinees: How Roger Corman’s ingenuity created a film legacy

Posted on June 8, 2024 by Toni Ruberto

How Roger Corman’s ingenuity created a film legacy

It started, appropriately, with Monster from the Ocean Floor in 1954.

That was Roger Corman’s first film and everything about it, including that fun title, was a taste of what he would give us during his 60-plus years of filmmaking.

When Corman died May 9 at the age of 98, he left behind an amazing legacy of nearly 400 films (he often worked uncredited, so it’s hard to get the full tally), directing 50 and producing the others. And while his low-budget independent movies earned him the title of the King of the B-movies, he also played a large role in launching the careers of many A-listers.

For his first film, Roger Corman produced *Monster from the Ocean Floor* in 1954.

Corman’s remarkable life and career have been documented in the many books written about him – and by him – so it seems almost ridiculous to try and sum up his career in a 1,500-word story. Yet I try. Why? Because he stirred my sense of wonder.

The Beast With a Million Eyes. Attack of the Crab Monsters. Not of This Earth. The Wasp Woman. She Gods of Shark Reef. Bloody Mama. Galaxy of Terror. Carnosaur. Sharktopus.

Just reading those titles sparks my imagination again, as the films did the first time I saw them. Even today, when I see Corman’s name in the opening credits, it’s a reassurance that I will be entertained.

Right from Monster from the Ocean Floor, Corman had creative ideas on how to make movies despite lacking resources and budget. His ingenuity was his gift as a filmmaker, and he shared it with us.

Here’s how he did it.

Roger Corman’s first film credit was as producer of *Monster from the Ocean Floor.* What evil lurks in the nearby sea cove?

Pay it forward. Corman took the money he made from one film, and paid it forward to finance his next project. He used the meager proceeds from his first script called House in the Sea to make Monster from the Ocean Floor. (The script became the 1954 film Highway Dragnet starring Richard Conte and Joan Bennett. Oh, and Corman added to his experience by working as an associate producer on the film for free.) He was proud that he made his first film with $12,000 in cash from selling the script, with a $5,000 deferment for lab costs. Monster made a profit of $100,000, which went toward financing the next film, and so it went. A legacy was created.

Hide the monster. Working with low budgets meant there wasn’t money for special effects so creatures were shrouded in darkness or only partially shown. Seeing only the giant claw in Attack of the Crab Monsters was much scarier than the full plodding creature.

Roger Corman’s *The Wasp Woman* was ahead of its time in its statement about women and the business of beauty. But it was one of the films when the creature was best kept under low light.

Keep talking. You’ll notice Corman’s films can be talkative (with lots of scientific mumbo-jumbo in his horror/sci-fi films) and they utilize narration, sometimes in odd spots. It was to help tell the story and fill in blanks when there wasn’t money for additional scenes or special effects.

Blame radiation. Raise a glass of cheer when you hear the word “radiation” in his films, because it helps make any creature you can imagine come alive. A giant, talking crab? Blame radioactive underwater tests. A huge devil-like sea creature with a glaring red eye? Ditto. The mutant walking around a post-apocalyptic world? Just a poor guy suffering from radiation poison.

Cheap & quick. That’s how Corman was able to make nearly 400 movies. Little Shop of Horrors, starring Jack Nicholson, was filmed in two days for $35,000. The Wasp Woman in about five days for $50,000.

When he had a “fortune” to spend – like the $350,000 on The Raven, he still directed it in only two weeks. And that brings me to my favorite Corman story: how he made The Terror.

Roger Corman not only reused sets and actors for *The Terror,* Jack Nicholson (at left) wore the coat originally worn by Marlon Brando in *Désirée*.

The Raven was the fifth in Corman’s eight-film “Poe Cycle” (1960-64). By that time, he wanted to “out-Poe” the author and “create a Gothic tale from scratch,” Corman is quoted in his indispensable and entertaining book How I Made Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. Boris Karloff had two days left on his contract for The Raven so Corman, not one to waste good talent or money, kept the actor on the set for the weekend and used the footage as a base for another movie that still needed a script. That would become The Terror.

Corman’s three-day wonder, as it has since been called, was cobbled together like Frankenstein’s monster using bit and pieces from other films and sets, and at times it looks as patchwork as that sounds.

Even the uniform that Nicholson wears was recycled: It was originally used by Marlon Brando in Désirée.

A studio system. Corman worked with people like he ran an old-time film studio as he used a stable of young, undiscovered talent both in front of and behind the camera.

Jack Nicholson made his film debut as The Cry Baby Killer (1958). It was one of eight films he starred in for Corman, who also produced three of his screenplays all before Nicholson became a star with Easy Rider.

Robert De Niro, William Shatner, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Ellen Burstyn and Sandra Bullock were others whose talent he recognized and utilized. Beverly Garland starred in four of his films (Gunslinger, Swamp Women, It Conquered the World and Not of This Earth), Susan Cabot in six (Sorority Girl, War of the Satellites, Machine-Gun Kelly, The Wasp Woman, Carnival Rock and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Great Waters of the Sea Serpent. Great character actor Dick Miller starred in too-many Corman films to list, but they include The Terror, War of the Satellites, A Bucket of Blood, Carnival Rock, Apache Woman (he had two parts!), Not of This Earth and X: The Man with The X-Ray Eyes.

Then there’s a guy named Vincent Price who starred in seven films in Corman’s “Poe Cycle.”

That’s a fresh-faced Roger Corman at left playing Jimmy the deck hand in a scene from the first film he made,*Monster from the Ocean Floor.*

And who is that handsome young deckhand in his first film? That’s Corman, offering a towel to the scuba-diving tourist played by Anne Kimbell in Monster from the Ocean Floor. Though he didn’t make a cameo in every film he made like Hitchcock, you can catch him now and again.

This brings us to the people behind the camera and the …

Roger Corman Film School. We’ve all watched movies from the filmmakers who were part of what was affectionately called “The Roger Corman Film School.”

James Cameron, Gale Anne Herd, Joe Dante, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Curtis Hanson and Ron Howard are among some of the many filmmakers who started out working with Corman in various ways. Additionally, composer James Horner and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, both Oscar winners, worked early with Corman.

Oscar-winning director James Cameron has frequently spoken about Corman, proclaiming that he “came from the Roger Corman film school.”

Corman gave Cameron his first film work as art director and visual effects on Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and he produced Cameron’s first full-length feature Piranha II: The Spawning (1982). Two years later, Cameron blew the doors off the film industry with The Terminator.

And there’s more

With nearly 400 films in his career, Corman wasn’t exclusively making horror and sci-fi films. You’ll find racing films, westerns, rock ‘n roll quickies, “teen girl noirs” and his, ahem, “nurse cycle” which included Night Call Nurses.

Perhaps the most underrated part of his career was how used his New World distribution and production company to release an impressive array of prestigious foreign films into U.S. theaters including Ingmar Bergman’s Crimes and Whispers, Francois Truffaut‘s Story of Adele H and Small Changes, and Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, which won an Academy Award as best foreign language film.

If you haven’t seen *Sharktopus*, you should. Corman was executive producer and made a cameo in the 2010 made-for-TV sci-fi film.

Let’s watch

So where do you even start if you want to become familiar with Corman films or revisit them? Since this column is called Monsters and Matinees, we’ll stick with Corman’s horror and sci-fi films, many that I’ve already mentioned.

In the mood for undersea creatures? Start at the beginning with Monster from the Ocean Floor then head toward the end of his career with one of my favorite films ever – the miraculously titled Sharktopus.

Looking for an end-of-the-world film? Day the World Ended, Last Woman on Earth.

Alien attacks? Not of This Earth, The Beast With a Million Eyes.

Out of this world adventures? Galaxy of Terror, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet.

Want some Lovecraft with your Corman? The Dunwich Horror, The Haunted Palace.

Finally, how about some Poe, too? Head straight to Corman’s “Poe Cycle” films and start anywhere: House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, The Premature Burial, The Raven, The Haunted Palace (part Lovecraft, part Poe), The Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia. The eight films are enough to keep you entertained for a while and stars like Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Barbara Steele, Lon Chaney Jr., Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre make them a special delight for horror fans.

– Toni Ruberto for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Toni’s Monsters and Matinees articles here.

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 and is a writer and board member of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and also led 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.

Posted in Horror, Monsters and Matinees, Posts by Toni Ruberto | Tagged attack of the crab monsters, jack nicholson, james cameron, Monster from the Ocean Floor, roger corman, sharktopus, The Wasp Woman, vincent price | Leave a comment

Western RoundUp: High Noon

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Laura Grieve

High Noon (1952)

I’ve seen High Noon (1952) multiple times over the years, including a memorable theatrical screening at the FilmEx festival when I was in my teens. The FilmEx screening, which took place in Century City, California, was part of a 50-hour movie marathon honoring the 50th anniversary of the Oscars!

That said, despite my love for Westerns and its vaunted reputation, High Noon has never been a favorite of mine and consequently I hadn’t seen it for roughly two decades. I was thus very interested to take a fresh look at the film via the new Special Edition Blu-ray just released by Kino Lorber. I find that sometimes seeing a film in a new context, including having viewed many more movies in the intervening years, provides an interesting new perspective.

As many will already be aware, High Noon tells the tale of Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who has just married a young bride, Amy (Grace Kelly), and retired as the marshal of Hadleyville, New Mexico.

Will and Amy are on the point of leaving town when Will learns that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), who Will sent to prison, has been inexplicably pardoned and is on his way to town to exact his revenge on Will. Members of Frank’s gang (Robert J. Wilke, Lee van Cleef, and Sheb Wooley) are already waiting for Frank at the train station.

High Noon Gary Coope, Grace rKelly 2 — Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly

The town judge (Otto Kruger) immediately hightails it out of town, and Will initially agrees to leave with Amy as planned. However, he feels that dealing with Frank is his responsibility and heads back to town, despite Amy threatening to leave him. Will’s concern that they would forever be looking over their shoulders for Frank to show up in their new town also fails to move Amy.

Amy, we learn, became a Quaker pacifist after her father and brother were gunned down, but she eventually has second thoughts about abandoning her new husband after a heartfelt discussion with Will’s former lover, Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado).

Meanwhile Will is shocked when no one in town will help him, as the clock ticks ever closer to noon…

High Noon received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director (Fred Zinnemann). Cooper won the Best Actor trophy, and the film also won its Editing nomination, with Elmo Williams and Harry Gerstad taking home Oscars.

As implied by its Oscar nominations and wins, the film is nicely crafted, running a well-paced 85 minutes; a running time under an hour and a half is always a plus for me. I’ve enjoyed the film enough to go back to it every now and then — always hoping that this time I’ll end up loving it, yet it never quite happens. I wouldn’t precisely say I dislike it, as it has a few positive aspects, but my issues with it if anything have become more strongly felt with the passage of time.

It’s been said in many quarters that High Noon is a film for people who don’t like Westerns; being a Western fan I can’t say if that’s true, but I did feel that, other than the actors, it may have been made by people who don’t like Westerns.

The film is curiously lacking in joy, with a sour, negative tone. I revisited this film exactly a week after seeing the new restoration of John Ford’s masterpiece, The Searchers (1956), and was struck that although the Ford film is about a very, shall we say, complicated man and the film goes to some very dark places, it’s also awe-inspiring; The Searchers deeply moves the viewer with its powerful story and great beauty.

I never get those feelings from High Noon, despite being prepared to love it because of its great cast of familiar faces. As I’ve analyzed it, I feel that it’s actually kind of a self-consciously, deliberately nasty movie, and a key flaw is that not one male character in it is admirable.

I include Will Kane in that assessment. On the one hand I do appreciate his sense of responsibility to the town, but I felt he didn’t simultaneously show enough responsibility and concern for his wife. One might blame his not taking time to hash things out with her at length due to the ticking clock — indeed, “I don’t have time” becomes his somewhat whiny refrain over the course of the film — but he showed far too little concern for his brand-new wife’s feelings.

And as the film goes on, Kane’s character begins to seem negative right alongside the townspeople hiding in their homes. It certainly seems that Kane has never actually been a leader, because not one person will follow him, least of all his feckless former deputy, Harvey (Lloyd Bridges).

The movie expands on a theme seen in at least one film on Wyatt Earp, that once a town has been cleaned up, the citizens begin to resent it, including sometimes the negative financial impacts. That discomfort seems to be part of the explanation here, but it’s not explored in enough depth to help us understand what’s going on, and it becomes tiresome simply watching people turn down helping their former marshal.

The ladies are a different story and part of what makes the movie worthwhile, despite its deficiencies. Although the movie starting at the moment of Will and Amy’s wedding robs us of much background and character development for the relationship of Will and his (much) younger bride, Amy’s reactions are reasonable and understandable, especially after she explains her pacifism to Helen. And after she struggles over what to do, I find Amy’s ultimate decisions admirable.

Katy Jurado, I commented on Twitter recently, is a “goddess” in this film, so compelling that I honestly find her the main reason to watch; indeed, I think she deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Whether she’s sharing scenes with Cooper, Kelly, or Bridges, she commands attention.

Though one might question why such a smart woman has been having an affair with Harvey, the overall picture of Helen is of an intelligent, ethical woman. Her discussions with Amy are for my money the best scenes in the film, and I also really love the small, almost throwaway scene in which Helen decides to sell out and leave town, as it illustrates her business savvy.

Left unanswered for the viewer is why Helen and Will broke up, though one might infer she was not the “kind” of woman a man like Will married in that era, whether due to her business or even her ethnicity. Their brief exchange in Spanish — which I was able to understand due to many months of Duolingo — was moving.

Among the female characters, let us also not forget the wonderful character actress Virginia Christine, who has a scene in which she tries but fails to rally fellow churchgoers to Kane’s side.

The screenplay by Carl Foreman was based on the story “The Tin Star” by John W. Cunningham. Much has been written over the years analyzing High Noon and its screenplay as political allegory, but I choose not to go there in this piece; that’s a complicated discussion which deserves more words than I have room for here. I find it sufficient to judge High Noon simply as a Western among other Westerns and say that for me it comes up short.

The musical score is by Dimitri Tiomkin, with lyrics for the title song by Ned Washington; Tex Ritter is the singer. Days later the music is still reverberating in my head!

The black and white cinematography was by Floyd Crosby. A fun bit of trivia is that he was the father of David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Supporting cast members not already mentioned above include Thomas Mitchell, James Millican, Lon Chaney Jr., Harry Morgan, Eve McVeagh, Ralph Reed, Lee Aaker, Jack Elam, and John Doucette.

High Noon Gary Cooper, Lon Chaney Jr — Lon Chaney Jr. and Gary Cooper

Kino Lorber’s fine print is from a new HD master from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. In addition to the Blu-ray I reviewed, it’s also being released by Kino Lorber in a 4K edition.

This Special Edition Blu-ray release comes with a reversible cover and cardboard slipcase. The nice selection of extras includes not one but two separate commentary tracks, one by Alan K. Rode and the other by Julie Kirgo. Although I haven’t yet listened to these tracks, I’ve heard many other tracks over the years by both Rode and Kirgo so am confident saying they will each be worthwhile.

The disc also includes half a dozen featurettes; the trailer; and a gallery of trailers for seven other films available from Kino Lorber. Kino Lorber has done its usual stellar job, and this is an excellent way to see High Noon.

If nothing else, High Noon is a thought-provoking film, and I welcome discussion pro and con in the comments.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

…

– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Posted in Films, Posts by Laura Grieve, Western RoundUp | Tagged Alan K Rode, elmo williams, eve mcveagh, Floyd Crosby, fred zinnemann, Gary Cooper, grace kelly, harry gerstad, harry morgan, high noon, ian macdonald, jack elam, James Millican, John Doucette, julie kirgo, Katy Jurado, lee aaker, Lee Van Cleef, lloyd bridges, lon chaney jr, Otto Kruger, ralph reed, robert j wilke, Sheb Wooley, tex ritter, thomas mitchell | 5 Comments

Silents are Golden: A Closer Look At: Metropolis (1927)

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Lea Stans

A Closer Look At: Metropolis (1927)

By the mid-1920s, cinema had reached incredible heights. Lighting and cinematography had evolved into fine art. The camera itself was liberated from the stagnant wooden tripods, made to float along elaborate tracks and swing from ceilings. The screen captured epic war stories, romance in distant lands, and chapters from history. It could also bring striking feats of imagination to life in a way no other medium could. The timing was just right for a grand, strange, artistic sci-fi epic like the German mega-production Metropolis.

Based on a book by screenwriter and novelist Thea von Harbou, the wife of renowned director Fritz Lang, Metropolis would have a futuristic setting with universal themes. Von Harbou wrote the book specifically with a film version in mind, and Lang, an imperious personality already known for Destiny (1921) and Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), agreed to collaborate with her to bring it to life. Since it would be produced by UFA, the German media conglomerate, the budget would be considerable – around 5 million Reichsmarks.

The story was set in a dystopian future where society is divided by the wealthy elite living in vast skyscrapers and the workers who toil underground on huge machines. Thousands of extras would be enlisted and filming would take a year and a half to complete. Eugen Schüfftan was put in charge of the special effects, including the elaborate miniatures of the Expressionist city and its stop motion cars and planes. His “Schüfftan process” used mirrors to capture live actors and miniatures in the same smooth shots. Supposedly the look of the metropolis was also inspired by Lang’s trip to New York City in 1924, when he gazed at the cityscape from the deck of the S.S. Deutschland.

A film with Metropolis’s scale needed a stellar cast, and fortunately fate played a hand. The story goes that Lang was working on his mythological epic Die Nibelungen (1924) when von Harbou received a letter from Gretchen Schittenhelm with an enclosed photo of her teenaged daughter Brigitte. While Brigitte only had experience in school plays, Gretchen was hoping to get her some work in the movies. Von Harbou liked Brigitte’s looks and Lang agreed to have her come in for an audition. The teenager recalled that she was asked to put on screen makeup and simply read from a letter as a motion picture camera cranked away. As she was reading, an actor suddenly stormed the stage and started shouting at her. Startled, she shrank back–and Lang called for the cameraman to cut, having gotten the authentic reaction he had hoped for. Brigitte Helm had unwittingly nabbed what turned out to be the role of a lifetime, the saintly Maria in Metropolis–and her evil doppelganger, the robot who unleashes violence on the city.

Metropolis Brigitte Helm 1 — Brigitte Helm

Initially, a different actor was cast in the role of Freder, the son of the city ruler. During a shoot with a number of extras, von Harbou noticed Gustav Fröhlich in the background and thought he looked suitable for the part. After shooting lackluster scenes with the original Freder, Lang listened to von Harbou and gave Fröhlich the role. It was his first breakthrough role on film, having mostly played bit parts in the past. The city ruler would be played by theater actor Alfred Abel (it would be his best-known role) and the mad scientist Rotwang was portrayed by Rudolf Klein-Rogge – von Harbou’s previous husband.

Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm and Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Metropolis — Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm and Rudolf Klein-Rogge

The frosty Lang was already legendary for his high expectations and obsessive work ethic, and both actors and extras were expected to spend long hours in a studio that was routinely too hot or too cold. Endless retakes were demanded for the simplest scenes. The weak economy of Weimar Germany made it easy to hire extras – even when Lang required a thousand to shave their heads for the Tower of Babel sequence. 500 children were hired for the flood scenes, which dragged on for two weeks. Von Harbou later said they were fed well, housed comfortably, and glad to earn some money – although Lang did keep the water unreasonably cold.

Helm had an especially difficult time wearing the robot costume, which could be very hot and also caused cuts and bruises. It was created from a plaster cast of her body and sculpted from a type of wood filler that had a bit of flexibility while still appearing metallic. Some shots didn’t even show her actual face, but Lang insisted no double could be used, claiming he needed to “sense” her presence in the costume.

Brigitte Helm in costume, Metropolis — Brigitte Helm in costume

By the time Metropolis was in the can it was 150 minutes long and well over budget, but promised to be a spectacle like no other. It also featured a dramatic orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz, who drew inspiration from Wagner, “La Marseillaise” and “Dies Irae.” Its world premiere was held in Berlin at the UFA-Palast am Zoo on January 10, 1927. Some reports claimed the film had a tepid reception, while others mentioned audiences cheering at some of the showstopper scenes. All in all the film seems to have had mixed reviews, with many finding it silly or merely weird, although the special effects were widely praised. It would be heavily edited for its U.S. release, much to Lang’s fury, who swore: “I love films, so I shall never go to America. Their experts have slashed my best film, Metropolis, so cruelly that I dare not see it…”

Gustav Fröhlich Metropolis — Gustav Fröhlich

It took decades, but in time Metropolis was reassessed by critics and historians and proclaimed a masterpiece, one of the silent era’s greatest achievements. Its reputation was further cemented by careful restorations, especially the 2010 “definitive” restoration using footage discovered in Argentina in 2008. Today we can see that it’s not only the great-grandfather of our many sci-fi films, but a unique work of art that was somehow both “of its time” and very much ahead of its time.

…

–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Posted in Films, Posts by Lea Stans, Silents are Golden | Tagged alfred abel, Brigitte Helm, Eugen Schüfftan, Fritz Lang, Gottfried Huppertz, metropolis, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Thea von Harbou | 1 Comment

Noir Nook: Spring Trivia – Laraine Day, Van Heflin, Robert Taylor and More

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry

Spring Trivia – Laraine Day, Van Heflin, Robert Taylor and More

Classic movie trivia and the budding of spring – two things that go great together . . . at least, they do here at the Noir Nook! This month’s Nook celebrates the new season with some tasty tidbits about six great performers and some of their noir roles. Enjoy!

Laraine Day

In 1946, Laraine Day starred in RKO’s The Locket, which she would later call her favorite film. In it, she plays a kleptomaniac who destroys the lives of every man who is unlucky enough to fall for her beauty and charm. The story, originally called What Nancy Wanted, unfolds through a series of flashbacks – in fact, the film serves up flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. According to Day, she almost didn’t get the role; after she’d expressed interest in the film, William Dozier, who was in charge of RKO at the time, decided he wanted the film to star his then-wife, Joan Fontaine. Day said that she and her agent “put up such a battle that we finally got it.”

…..

Barry Sullivan

Speaking of favorite films, The Gangster (1947) was one of Barry Sullivan’s. He starred in the feature as Shubunka, a neurotic, scar-faced mobster. Critics of the day weren’t impressed by the film; the critic for the New York Times described Sullivan as “stern and tight-lipped” and Viriginia Wright of the Los Angeles Daily News opined that the film suffered from a “confused and over-written script.” Sullivan disagreed, however. He appreciated the “rather artsy” look of the film, provided by director Gordon Wiles, who was an Academy Award-winning art director, and he found the screenplay to be the best part of the picture: “[Screenwriter] Daniel Fuchs had been a teacher in New York, knew the milieu and really had a handle on the sort of small-time gangster the picture portrayed.”

…..

Signe Hasso

The House on 92nd Street (1945), based on actual FBI files, started a trend for crime films shot entirely on location, according to the picture’s star, Signe Hasso. She played the owner of a dress shop who ran a Nazi spy ring in New York, masquerading as a man known only as “Mr. Christopher.” Hasso explained that the real-life head of the spy ring was a man masquerading as a woman, “but the censors wouldn’t allow that. [But] a woman posing as a man was all right.” She recalled once arriving on set dressed as Mr. Christopher: “Someone came up to me and said, ‘No visitors on this set!’ I said, ‘It’s me!’ No one had recognized me as a man.”

…..

Van Heflin

Van Heflin starred in 1947 opposite Joan Crawford in Possessed, in which she played a mentally ill nurse obsessed with Heflin’s engineer. When he first met the actress in the early 1940s, Heflin recalled that he was “very snooty,” dismissing Crawford as “just a movie star.” He changed his tune when the two appeared together in Possessed, stating that he “found in her a tremendous knowledge of acting. She knew everything about the camera. She knew everything about those lights. She knew everything about the psychopathic girl she was playing. She knew everything, period.”

…..

Ann Savage

Although Ann Savage enjoyed a screen career that spanned six decades, she is best known today for her role as the snarling, hard-boiled, take-no-prisoners femme fatale in Detour (1945). She recalled that it took less than four days to film her role but added that Edgar Ulmer was the best director she’d ever worked with. “He gave me a click-click-click tempo that he wanted me to use as the character, and I kept that approach throughout the part,” Savage said. She also said that Ulmer combed cold cream through her hair “to make me look a believable wreck. Remember, this was still the period in Hollywood when everyone was looking their best, when your face never got messed up when you cried, when you awoke in the morning with a fresh make-up job.”

…..

Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor was openly complimentary about his Johnny Eager (1941) co-star Lana Turner – and that’s putting it mildly. He recalled that her face was “delicate and beautiful” and said that he had “never seen lips like hers.” He added that her voice was like that of a breathless child: “I don’t think she knew how to talk without being sexy.” Although he was married to Barbara Stanwyck at the time, Taylor reportedly became romantically involved with Turner during shooting, telling reporters that he “was never known to run after blondes, [but] Lana was the exception.” For his performance on screen – which was one of Taylor’s first as a “heavy” – the actor earned raves from critics. The Variety reviewer labeled his performance “soundly socked and . . . very convincing,” and the critic for The Hollywood Reporter raved, “Robert Taylor is brilliant in projecting a relentless mobster, hard as nails and twice as sharp.”

…

– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.

Posted in Noir Nook, Posts by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry | Tagged Ann Savage, barry sullivan, laraine day, Robert Taylor, signe hasso, van heflin | Leave a comment

Silver Screen Standards: Transformative Drag in Some Like It Hot (1959)

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Jennifer Garlen

Transformative Drag in Some Like It Hot (1959)

Some Like It Hot (1959) is widely celebrated as one of classic Hollywood’s greatest comedies, even though its cross-dressing plot roused conservative ire and caused the movie to be released without Hays Code approval in 1959. Thanks to the brilliant direction of co-writer and producer Billy Wilder and the outstanding performances of Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe, the movie went on to earn six Oscar nominations, which probably infuriated its detractors even more, and its success helped to nail shut the coffin of the waning Motion Picture Production Code. After 65 years, one might expect Some Like It Hot to have lost some of its relevance, especially in its depiction of gender identity, but the movie holds up surprisingly well. I think its continued appeal stems in part from the fact that it doesn’t just play the cross-dressing of its protagonists for laughs. Instead, the film treats the experience as transformative, allowing its male characters to learn and grow as a result of their time inhabiting female identities.

Some Like it Hot Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in garage, witnessing massacre — Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) go on the run after witnessing a gangland massacre.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon star as jazz musicians Joe and Jerry, who find it tough to make a living in Chicago during Prohibition. Living becomes even tougher after the pair accidentally witness a gangland massacre carried out by Spats Colombo (George Raft) and his henchmen, so Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as women in order to leave town with an all-female band. Presenting themselves as Josephine and Daphne, the two make friends with fellow performer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) and arrive in sunny Florida, where surprising romances develop for both of them even as Spats and his fellow gangsters arrive at the same hotel for a gathering of organized criminal groups.

Some Like it Hot Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as Josephine and Geraldine Closeup — As Josephine and Daphne, Joe and Jerry join an all-female band on a train headed to Florida.

Each of the two men starts out behaving like a stereotypical heterosexual male in the most negative sense. Joe manipulates the women around him for his own benefit; he flatters them and pretends to care until he gets whatever he wants out of them. We see Joe’s success with these tactics at the agent’s office, but we also see the secretary’s resentment of this behavior, which we understand to be habitual. Before their speakeasy gets raided, Jerry mentions that the two have borrowed money from every woman working there, so we know that they have a long history of taking advantage of women (most of whom get arrested during the raid while Joe and Jerry slip away). If Joe is a heel, Jerry turns out to be more of a wolf, a trait we first see after they board the train in Chicago as Josephine and Daphne. Jerry/Daphne gleefully imagines himself enjoying the female bandmates like a kid set loose in a pastry shop, suggestively comparing them to jelly rolls, cream pies, and cherry tarts. Both men are sexually attracted to Sugar Kane but are initially frustrated by their inability to pursue her due to their disguises, which lead Sugar to think of them as sympathetic girlfriends.

Some Like it Hot Marilyn Monroe on the Train — Joe and Jerry both find Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) extremely attractive, but their female identities force them to behave as friends instead of suitors.

Joe and Jerry have unique transformative experiences thanks to their cross-dressing, which introduces them to situations they have never had to consider as men. As Josephine, Joe learns how Sugar has been hurt in the past by men just like him; he transforms himself into a fake millionaire because that’s the kind of man Sugar says she has decided to pursue. Although he lies to her about his background and wealth, Sugar also lies to Joe, and Joe cares enough that he tries to comfort her when it looks like he’ll have to abandon her to avoid being murdered by the gangsters. Instead of trying to sweet talk her out of her money to aid his escape, Joe gives Sugar a valuable diamond bracelet (which doesn’t belong to him, to be fair, but still represents money he and Jerry badly need for themselves). Being Josephine gives Joe the opportunity to form a different kind of relationship with a woman and become a better man as a result.

Some Like It Hot Joe E Brown and Jack Lemmon, Tango — Osgood (Joe E. Brown) wins Daphne over with a night of romantic tango dancing.

While Joe spends a lot of time in his Cary Grant millionaire persona, Jerry commits more fully to his feminine identity as Daphne, which leads to a more dramatic blurring of gender roles. Jerry/Daphne is initially flummoxed by the romantic advances of wealthy wooer Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), but their passionate tango night marks a turning point in the relationship. Daphne accepts Osgood’s marriage proposal and worries more about the details of the wedding and the opinion of Osgood’s mother than the problem of revealing that Daphne is also Jerry. In the memorable finale, even that revelation fails to dissuade Osgood, who merely replies, “Well, nobody’s perfect!” Because the movie ends there, we don’t know how being Daphne will affect Jerry’s life going forward, but it has definitely altered his sense of himself and allowed him to question the very nature of his identity. Neither Jerry nor Joe will ever be perfect, but they both seem much improved as a result of their experiences as Daphne and Josephine.

Some Like It Hot Joe E Brown and Jack Lemmon, Ending — In that famous final scene, Osgood is blissfully unphased by Jerry’s bombshell confession.

Jack Lemmon’s performance as Jerry/Daphne earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and Billy Wilder picked up nominations for both Director and Screenplay, but the film’s only win was for Orry-Kelly’s costume design. For more of Wilder’s transgressive comedy, see The Major and the Minor (1942), in which Ginger Rogers tries to romance Ray Milland while pretending to be under the age of 12. Wilder also directed Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Jack Lemmon in The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), and The Front Page (1974). If you want to explore the history of drag in classic films, check out any version of Charley’s Aunt (the 1941 version stars Jack Benny), or look at silent and Pre-Code films in comparison with those made after the collapse of the Hays Code. Some of the most memorable Hollywood depictions of drag and cross-dressing include Queen Christina (1933), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Glen or Glenda (1953), Victor/Victoria (1982), Tootsie (1982), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), and The Birdcage (1996), but there are plenty of other noteworthy examples.