Given all we that are learning and all that we have always known about certain men in certain jobs, why oh why would anyone want to spend time watching a movie about an ambitious weakling who lends out his apartment to philandering executives for after-hours hookups? A movie that is billed as a romantic comedy and infuriatingly holds up as such? Why?!

I certainly didn't feel like it. In fact, I'm supposed to be writing about Baby Face (1933), a film about an ambitious man-trap who uses the corporate ladder to better her circumstances the only way she knows how. THAT movie's protagonist is steely, goal-directed. After a lifetime of sexual exploitation and poverty, Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) wants the kind of security that money and power provide and the fastest way to achieve that is to go where the money is and exploit men's weaknesses. She uses sex to get ahead because she learned early that her greatest skill was sizing up men: what they want to hear, how they want her to be, and how to make them feel powerful. I get Lily Powers: nobody pushes her around, not even the Hays Office.

But The Apartment kept intruding on me, with its gross premise and its many Academy Awards. It is a 57-year-old, irritatingly recognizable tale of a man who uses sex (if tangentially) to get ahead, who keeps his superiors' secrets, and compartmentalizes the sleaze of it enough to enjoy his advancement until someone he actually knows and likes is adversely affected. It is exactly the stuff that is supposedly shocking us all to our core today: that there are men in power who engage in sexual misconduct in the workplace as an expression of that power and hurt the less powerful in the process.

In The Apartment, Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a low-level employee at an insurance company who happens to have an apartment felicitously close to work. Some of the married executives learn about his bachelor pad and promise Baxter promotions and perks in exchange for the use of his place for adulterous hookups. Since this is a comedy, we only see the consensual liaisons and get to sniff at the callous, dreadful men who exploit their underling and string along their women. Baxter finds the arrangement distasteful and gross, but goes along, catching colds while he waits outside some nights and catching sidelong glances in the mornings from neighbors who think he is a sexual dynamo. When The Guys come through with a meager promotion, Baxter believes it's all paying off.

Meanwhile, news of The Apartment reaches the head of personnel, a Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who decides to get in on the action, offering Baxter a meteoric promotion in exchange for exclusive access to the place. At first, Baxter thinks he's being noticed for his work, since he has been there for several years, but it's the key or no promotion. To complicate things further, Baxter learns that Sheldrake's office conquest is the smart, cute elevator operator, Fran Kubelick (Shirley MacLaine), the girl for whom Baxter has a Thing. This fact not only dashes his own hopes in that regard, but also makes working for Sheldrake and being in his own apartment all the more difficult.

Unfortunately, Sheldrake's most immediate past mistress (played beautifully by Edie Adams) clues Fran in on Sheldrake's pattern, laying out the history of his conquests, tracing his path from girl to girl, department to department. Fran and Sheldrake break up spectacularly in Baxter's apartment (which she still does not know is his) and Fran impulsively downs a bottle of sleeping pills she finds in the medicine cabinet. Baxter comes home to discover an unconscious Fran in his bed, leaps to her aid, and lets her recuperate there for several days. Fran makes clear that Baxter is too weak a man for her (the apartment set-up is gross), but they become friends nonetheless.

Eventually, of course, these two get together. It takes a smooth retaliatory act by Sheldrake's secretary, Sheldrake's own personality, and Baxter finally listening to that little voice to do it, but it happens.

Billy Wilder, the co-writer and director of the film, does a masterful job of making us care for both Baxter and Miss Kubelick, who are required to navigate some difficult moral terrain: he is the social climber making dubious professional choices; she is a regular girl who falls in love with a married man. Jack Lemmon is marvelous at conveying pangs of conscience in his face and body; you can see this likable weakling register the sordid situation he's enabling, quickly rationalize it, then continue down his path. Shirley MacLaine can play vulnerable with incredible strength of character and natural humor: unlike Baxter, Fran Kubelick is fully aware of the consequences of her actions and chooses to meet them head on. (Like Lily in Baby Face, which I swear to god I'll get back to, but with more introspection.) Fred MacMurray, despite all the nonsensical hand-wringing over this role ruining his "good guy" image, has always been superb at playing a smooth-talking heel.*

It irritates me that this is a great romantic comedy, because it is. I hate that I had to steel myself to watch it again because I was worried that my memory of it would be wrong -- wrong in the way you might think "Oh look, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is on. I love that movie. I bet it's not rapey at all." I feared that the sexual politics in The Apartment would be too broadly drawn, that Baxter might be less aware that not every encounter there would be consensual (Ray Walston is super sketchy); that he wouldn't see his bosses for who they were or be disgusted with himself. I worried that Shirley MacLaine's character would have less self-awareness or that we'd be asked to sympathize somehow with the adulterous executives. The film is better than my concerns and I'm so relieved.

But I *hate* that The Apartment is nearly sixty years old and is probably the only film to date that makes us look at workplace sexual misconduct from the point of view of one of the "nice" guys -- a guy who didn't think too hard about what he was doing to get ahead and enjoyed his perks with vague unease until he just couldn't do it anymore.

Here's what finally tips the scales for Baxter: he had just come into his boss's office with a bunch of charts and stats about personnel and a plan to improve retention. He was positively giddy about it. Sheldrake waves the work away and tells Baxter that his wife has kicked him out and he and Fran are back together, so hand over the key. In that moment, Baxter realizes that as a newly promoted junior executive, not only will he have to be OK with the object of his affection sleeping with his boss in Baxter's bed, but none of the work he will ever do in that office will be taken seriously. Ever. His success in the company will always be whispered about and his merits never fully acknowledged no matter what he does -- as if he were one of the girls, instead of one of the boys.

So he says no.

And loses his job. As did Miss Kubelick. As does Sheldrake's secretary, fired by her boss and former lover.

But you know who's still head of Personnel*?

And that, boys and girls, is why we can't have nice things, like pay equity or a woman president.

The Plot
Standard fare for early Warner Bros. talkies, Night Nurse takes an unsentimental look at the life of a student nurse learning the ropes in a big city hospital. Young Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) befriends kindly Dr. Bell (Charles Winninger) and streetwise classmate, Maloney (Joan Blondell) to become a professional health care worker to all walks of life, from immigrant mothers to bootleggers to society dames.

Naturally, this involves a lot of undressing.

After graduation, Nurse Hart takes a position in a private home to look after two young girls who are suffering from malnutrition. The doctor on the case, Dr. Ranger (Ralf Harolde), is a shady sort who twitches like a drug addict (which, now that I think about it, may be why the actor kept doing that) and forbids Hart from deviating from his strict feeding regimen. To complicate matters, the children's mother is a terrible drunk, who seems to be in a romance with both another terrible drunk, and a sober, but equally terrible chauffeur (Clark Gable), who has taken over the household. The children's rich father is long dead (we know not why, but have Suspicions) and a sister of theirs was killed in an automobile accident (see terrible chauffeur). Dr. Ranger and Clark Gable are plotting to starve the children to death and split their trust fund, presumably after getting drunk mom to walk off a building or something.

Lora and her boyfriend (Ben Lyon), an affable bootlegger she once treated for a gunshot wound in the ER on the down-low, foil the plan and save the girls.

A 71 minute picture about half-naked nurses harassed by interns, drunken playboys, evil doctors, and wooed by bootleggers...

...becomes a wholesome tale of a plucky, fully-clothed nurse, her equally wholesome friend, and her milkman beau helping an invalid mother rescue her children from an evil servant. It should clock in at just under an hour.

This post is my contribution to The Great Breening Blogathon, hosted by the Pure Entertainment Preservation Society.

There's a lot of moral protection going on over there, so I suggest you head over for a thorough cleansing pronto.

 I have been known to insist that anyone with six-and-a-half hours and plenty of tissues to spare should watch the 1989 miniseries, Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's epic tale of two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from south Texas to Montana. The other film I get pushy about is Paper Moon (1973), Peter Bogdanovich's lyrical adaptation of a Depression-Era novel about an orphan's friendship with a con-man who is probably her father. The talents of these two great storytellers come together in The Last Picture Show, a beautifully composed, (mostly) quiet
tale of small town Texas life in the early 1950s.

Anarene, Texas (McMurtry's actual hometown of Archer) is an oil town past its prime. It boasts a dying movie house, a dilapidated billiard parlor, and a pretty decent cafe, all owned by Sam "The Lion" (Ben Johnson) and all of which are the frequent haunts of Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges), high school seniors and best friends. They co-captain the school's terrible football team, which is such a disappointment that no citizen of Anarene will let that fact go unmentioned in their presence.

Duane goes steady with Jacy, the town beauty (a beguiling Cybill Shepherd in her screen debut) and Sonny halfheartedly takes out Charlene (Sharon Taggart) until they both get so bored with each other they quit. Everyone is going about the routine exercise of getting rid of their virginity, either through marriage or sport. Their efforts are unromantic and perfunctory in that way teenagers can have about hurrying into adulthood; no one is having an especially good time. Jacy in particular is anxious for excitement. She's already aware that her beauty has power, a fact her mother, Lois (Ellen Burstyn), a vivacious looker herself, is trying to help her navigate. Lois is my favorite. I can't imagine anyone not falling at least a little bit in love with Lois.

One day, the football coach, a terrible man who uses a spit cup, asks Sonny to take his wife, Ruth (Cloris Leachman), to the lady doctor in another town. We never do find out what's wrong with her medically, but she is desperately lonely and unhappy. She and Sonny begin an affair, which starts out bumbling and uncomfortable -- because he's a CHILD and she's a married forty-something -- but which turns into a tender romance that makes Ruth blossom. A fact everyone notices.

The boys and their friends get the town prostitute to sleep with Billy, a  mentally challenged kid who doesn't speak. Sonny usually treats Billy kindly, almost like a brother, so when Billy gets a bloody nose from the prostitute, Sam bans the boys from his businesses for treating the boy so badly. Sonny, whose father is the town drunk and whose mother we don't hear about at all, is deeply upset at himself for disappointing his father figure. Sam relents after a bit and the two make up.

Meanwhile, Jacy is flirting with the country club set. She attends a risque pool party and sets her cap for the richest boy there. He will have nothing to do with virgins, so she finally lets Duane go "all the way" (after a false start). Jacy is unimpressed on several levels and breaks up with Duane, who decides to join the Army to drown his sorrows. The rich boy Jacy wanted runs off and gets married, which was totally not the plan, so she seduces her mother's boyfriend, Abilene, in Sam's pool hall. But Abilene is a grown-ass man who does not play games. Except pool, apparently; he has his own cue. Lois is disappointed, but more on Jacy's behalf than in her lover's inconstancy.*

But a bored Jacy is a dangerous Jacy. She sets her cap for Sonny, who has always had a thing for her. Sonny takes the bait and drops Ruth without a word. Jacy thinks it would be exciting to elope, which they do, and immediately regrets it. She secretly calls her parents to waylay the two and have the marriage annulled. Eventually, Jacy is whisked off to college, leaving Sonny to take a hard look at his actions.

Everyone has an opinion about Sonny's behavior. Especially Duane, who, back on leave, beats the crap out of him for dating Jacy, nearly blinding him with a beer bottle. They make up right before Duane ships off to Korea and take a trip to Mexico to blow off some steam. When they come back with the world's biggest hangovers, they learn that Sam the Lion has died, leaving Sonny the pool hall.

I realize I've spoiled most of the picture and it's nearly over, but I won't ruin the ending, except to say that it's sad and strange and includes the scene that probably won Cloris Leachman the Academy Award that year for Best Supporting Actress. Bogdanovich's direction and Robert Surtees' gorgeous black-and-white cinematography make this one of the best coming of age films out there. My only complaint is that the soundtrack -- although fantastic: Hank Williams, Jo Stafford, etc. -- often comes through louder than the dialog. I don't remember it being that way on the big screen, so it may be an unfortunate feature of the digital rendering. The movie is so beautifully and necessarily quiet otherwise; it does not seem like the director's choice.

Still. The Last Picture Show is a wonderful film about lost love, friendship, and the families we make.

* Lois is great.

This post is my entry for the Texas Blogathon, hosted by the Midnite Drive-In.

Lots of great writers bloggin' about great pitchers and such.

It's probably a good idea to watch this film every time we have a presidential election to remind us that the issues we face now have been with us for ages -- and on film for at least three-quarters of a century. The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford's masterful retelling of John Steinbeck's 1939 classic novel, documents one family's struggle to survive during what is arguably our country's harshest and most protracted ecological disasters.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was the result of massive drought, ill-advised farming practices, and rapid mechanization. Farmers in the plains states, many of them sharecroppers, were forced off blighted land, homes destroyed by savage storms, and bank foreclosures. Steinbeck's novel documented not only the plight of displaced families searching for work, but also the exploitation and abuses they suffered at the hands of corporate farmers, banks, and politicians.

The first half of the film follows the book pretty closely: young Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) heads home to his family farm having just been paroled from prison for an unspecified murder. On the way, he comes across an old acquaintance, Jim Casy (John Carradine), a fallen preacher. They continue together to the Joad farm and find the family and most of the neighbors gone and their homes abandoned. The land has dried up, the banks have foreclosed, and the homes have been condemned. Tom learns that his family -- Ma (​Jane Darwell), Pa (Russell Simpson, a John Ford regular), and his siblings -- are at his uncle's place preparing to leave for California where there is work to be had picking fruit, or so it says on this here yeller flyer. Thus reunited, the whole clan sets off on Route 66 for, literally, greener pastures.

 Along the way they learn from migrants who have been on the road longer that opportunities aren't as plentiful as promised by the yellow flyer. The Joads come across Okie encampments filled with families who've been out of work for months and whose children are starving. Jobs present themselves in fits and for low wages. The Joads are offered an opportunity to pick peaches at a ranch that provides cabins for the workers and a store where they can buy supplies. Unbeknownst to them, the family are strike-breaking at half-wages and what little money they make must be spent at a "company store" (a time-honored, American tradition) where low wages buy groceries at inflated prices.

Once Tom learns of the strike, he sneaks out of the camp to a workers' meeting. The group is raided by deputies and in the ensuing scuffle, Casy is killed by one guard and Tom kills another while trying to protect his friend. The Joads leave under cover of darkness to keep from being found out. Eventually, they come to a New Deal camp, where the younger Joad children discover indoor plumbing and Ma is reacquainted with normal social conventions, like manners. The camp is kept orderly and clean by the workers, who organize themselves and social activities. Just as things are looking up for the family, deputies close in on Tom who decides he must run off to protect his family from further aggravation.

Ma, whose sole mission this entire picture has been to keep the family together, is unhappy about this development, but she understands. This is Tom's second murder, after all, and he assures her that he will devote his life to helping the little guy against the powerful and corrupt. Tom thus departs in one direction while what's left of his family (spoiler: not everyone makes it and I left out some players) heads off in another. Pa apologizes to Ma for not being stronger; for looking backwards on better times. Ma tells him that all of this has made her less afraid, because:

And in spite of the massive beating they've taken, she is sure that they'll be fine, because they're "the people that live" and will go on forever.

​The book is distinctly more critical than the film of the capitalist excesses (union-busting goons, company stores, police brutality) and it ends on a much bleaker note, but the notoriously conservative John Ford managed to convey the terrible conditions faced by migrant workers while offering a glimmer of hope at the film's end. Before agreeing to do the film, Ford visited some of the camps described in Steinbeck's novel to make sure the author hadn't sensationalized the conditions. He discovered they were worse. Ford downplayed the book's larger pro-labor and anti-corporate themes, deciding instead to focus on one family's experience. And in the end, Ford portrayed the government as a positive force: fair, solution-oriented, and important.

I wonder if in our current political climate, where one side is concerned about migrants taking all our good fruit-picking, toilet-cleaning, and ditch-digging jobs and the other is fighting for a minimum wage that meets the current cost of living, whether we can ever have a progressive book made into a movie by a conservative director -- at all. We still have labor problems, ecological disasters (regular and man-made) and poverty, but we used to just disagree on how to solve those problems, not whether they even exist.

This post is my contribution to the Nature's Fury Blogathon, hosted by Cinematic Catharsis.

Please take a moment to read the other entries describing horrible calamities nature hath wrought.

Sugarpuss: [After asking the biology professor to  check her throat]  SLIGHT rosiness! It's as red as the Daily Worker and just as sore!

                       *  *  *

Sugarpuss: [looking through Potts' books] Oh, "Greek philosophy!" I got a set like this with a radio inside.
​​
                       *  *  *

Prof. Potts: Make no mistake, I shall regret the absence of your keen mind; unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body.

                       *  *  *
​
Prof. Potts: I made an ass of myself and I know it.
Prof. Jerome: Oh, well, we all have, Potts.
Prof. Potts: Yes, but I was the lead donkey.

What is it about a tough-talking girl with a good heart, great legs, and a healthy romantic appetite? If that girl has a sense of irony and enough self-confidence to floor a room full of academics, then I'm sunk. This is exactly how Barbara Stanwyck ruined me for other women as Katherine "Sugarpuss" O'Shea, bespangled nightclub singer, in the great Howard Hawks/Billy Wilder romp, Ball of Fire. 

In a Victorian mansion on the quiet side of town, eight rumpled academics are hard at work on a new encyclopedia. They are older, socially-awkward professors, each with his own area of specialty. The youngest among them is Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper), a linguist who is charged with updating the "slang" section. Potts has been gathering regular Joes from around town to help with his research: taxi drivers, garbage men, you know, Allen Jenkins types (and he's one of them). He goes to a nightclub one evening in search of some really good words and tries to recruit the club's headliner, Sugarpuss (Shugie). She refuses point blank.

At that moment, however, Shugie's boyfriend, handsome mobster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), has been up to something especially mobby and has to beat it out of town. Before she has time to rip up Prof. Pott's card, Lilac's goons, Pastrami (Dan Duryea) and Asthma (Ralph Peters), yank Shugie out of the club and tell her to lay low until things cool down. Ding! What better place to hide than a house full of Abercrombies?

Still in her costume, Shugie shimmies her way through the front door, and since none of these guys have ever seen spangles up close like this, they're completely on board, 

I mean...

So Shugie settles in and makes friends with all the fellas, teaching them how to dance and mix cocktails and such. She even helps Prof. Potts with his slang research on the regular and begins to take an interest in his work. For his part, Potts has begun to take an interest in her -- not just for the spangles, but on accounta because (that's a pleonasm) she is intelligent and curious. And he is young and healthy and not blind or dead.
​
Shugie also has eyes that see and has not failed to notice that Prof. Potts is one hot philologist. They develop feelings for one another: hers conflicted (she still has Dana Andrews in the wings, remember); his sincere and marriage-minded.

Speaking of the mobster boyfriend, Joe Lilac has been apprised of Shugie's doings and whereabouts by his goons -- who, by the way, are great goons. Dan Duryea is at his high, quiet slippery best and Asthma (the other one) looks like he was born with a machine gun in his hand. Lilac's lawyer advises him to marry Shugie so that she won't be able to testify against him in his upcoming racketeering trial. Posing as Shugie's father, Lilac phones the encyclopedia house to tell her to meet him in Jersey to get married. Potts takes the opportunity to ask "Mr. O'Shea" for his daughter's hand, which Lilac obviously grants, because now he can use the cover of eight professors to sneak Shugie out to meet him right under the cops' noses. 

Poor Shugie. If she refuses Lilac, he'll have everybody killed. Also, with a choice between a guy who "gets more bang outta you than any dame he ever knew" and another who quotes Shakespeare, she'd rather stick with Potts, with whom she has, in spite of herself, fallen in love:

She agrees to marry Potts, knowing she'll break his heart and humiliate him in front his colleagues, who are also her friends. He gives her the world's smallest ring with the world's sweetest inscription. Once they've safely delivered Shugie into Lilac's hands, however, Lilac tosses Shugie a million carat diamond ring, socks Potts in the eye, and sends them all packing back to their encyclopedia, Because he knows Shugie is actually in love with Potts, Lilac also sends Pastrami and Asthma along to guard them until the marriage is official.

Back in their library under the watchful guns of Lilac's goons, the professors realize that the ring Shugie gave back to Potts was Lilac's ring. According to the psychology professor in their midst, this means she kept the one she truly wanted: the one Potts gave her. Emboldened by love and hope, Potts and his friends science their way past the gunmen and rescue Shugie just in time. 

And they lived happily ever after, see?

I love Sugarpuss O'Shea for the same reasons Professor Bertram Potts does: she's tough, sweet, smart, and sexy. ​She had us both at "yum-yum."

This post is my contribution to the Reel Infatuation Blogathon, hosted by Font & Frock and Silver Screenings.

Visit the blogathon pages to see how many ways a person can swoon. So many great posts and picks. 

Some people's favorite villains are the ones with the biggest gadgets, the deepest vendettas, or the loopiest plans for world domination. I get it. Who doesn't want to see a hero prevail over crotch-splitting lasers, flying monkeys, or Satan's minions? That kind of victory is exciting, high-stakes, splashy stuff. But for me, the more terrifying evil is the quiet, intimate kind that goes on right under everyone's nose: the mean girl spreading life-destroying rumors (These Three), a seemingly doting husband carefully driving his wife mad (Gaslight), and of course, any number of domineering mothers.

If Freud had been a girl, Mrs. Henry Vale (Gladys Cooper) in the 1942 romantic drama, Now, Voyager, would have been his worst nightmare. Mrs. Vale is the matriarch of one of Boston's oldest families, with a couple of grown sons we don't see much of and a 30-something daughter, Charlotte (Bette Davis), who lives at home. Since the day the child was born -- unwanted and late in life -- Mrs. Vale has told her what to do, where to go, whom to see, what to wear, what to eat, and when to talk. As a result, Charlotte is a thick-set, hand-wringing bundle of nerves, whom everyone in the family treats as an object of either pity or fun. 

We meet Charlotte on the day her kindly sister-in-law, Lisa (Ilka Chase), decides to help the poor girl by introducing her to Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), a friendly psychiatrist who runs a sanitarium in the country. Mrs. Vale thinks the whole idea is preposterous. Why, Charlotte isn't having a nervous breakdown, she's just seeking attention; simply one of her latest peculiarities. No one in the history of the Vale family has EVER had a nervous breakdown. The idea! Charlotte, stop that blubbering at once!

Bette Davis does a grand job of it, tricked out in a padded suit under an awful dress, insanely sensible shoes, and one big eyebrow. She walks like a person whose every move is scrutinized (because it is) and reads insult and contempt in every word she hears (because it's there). Dr. Jaquith manages to get Charlotte away from her mother for a quiet talk up in her room. She is skeptical and mistrusting, but when Jaquith shows a genuine interest in her artwork (Charlotte, in sublimating her intense frustrations, has turned naturally to the old whaler's craft of scrimshaw), she opens up slightly with a tale of mother-thwarted romance on the high seas. She gives Jaquith a box of tightly carved ivory in thanks for his kindness and attention.

When Charlotte's niece, June (Bonita Granville, see evil child above), spies the gift in Jaquith's hand she teases her aunt about it in that casually cruel way pretty girls sometimes have with their plainer acquaintances; it is certainly the way her family has taught her to talk to Charlotte. Dr. Jaquith has seen enough. He insists that Charlotte check into the sanitarium immediately, giving old lady Vale a piece of his mind in the process.
​​
After several months of weaving and eyebrow therapy, Charlotte is a new woman. Almost. Dr. Jaquith and Lisa give her a recovery gift of a pleasure cruise to South America, with the instruction to live a little and to try new things. One of the new things she tries is hanging out with handsome hard-starer, Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), an unhappily married man with great clothes and a sexy way of lighting cigarettes. The two get stranded on shore after a car wreck and fall in love. As you do.

Alas, it can never be; he is married, if unhappily, with two children to consider. Charlotte reunites with her cruise with a good deal more confidence and Jerry goes off to build stuff in the jungle or whatever. Once back in Boston, everyone is amazed, if not entirely delighted, by Charlotte's transformation. Even the loathsome June is nicer and apologetic. Charlotte 2.0 charms the entire family, with one notable exception: her mother.

​It seems the Mrs. Vale developed a heart problem (you think?) while Charlotte was away and has needed a nurse (the wonderful Mary Wickes) day and night since. But now that she's back, the old battleaxe expects Charlotte to take up her former position as unpaid, browbeatable servant. Bolstered by her shipboard romance, or more likely months and months of therapy, Charlotte politely but firmly refuses to return to the way things were. Mrs. Vale, not liking this newfound independence one bit, promptly throws herself down the stairs, but Charlotte holds her ground. Time passes, and the two women reach an uneasy truce. Charlotte gets engaged to a nice enough man and all seems to be working out.

Until one night, she runs into Jerry at a party. The two must pretend they've only just met and have a silly non-conversation along the lines of "(Louder than necessary) Architecture, that must be very interesting -- (slightly quieter) Oh Jerry, how I've longed to see you." "(also louder than required) Yes, building a hospital...(lighting two cigarettes) darling, how I love you." They say goodbye again and Charlotte realizes that she can't marry the new nice guy because she doesn't love him. Back home, exhausted, she tells her mother that the engagement is off and the two quarrel. The ONE TIME Charlotte says something remotely mean to her mother, the old lady's heart gives out and she DIES. 

Now that's commitment to the villain project.
​
Wracked with guilt, Charlotte checks herself back into the sanitarium. It doesn't take as long to bounce back, partly because she has tweezers now and other therapeutic tools, but also because she meets an awkward young girl with self-esteem issues there; a girl who reminds her of herself at that age. Turns out the child is none other than Jerry's daughter, Tina, and Charlotte takes her under her wing. It gets a little weird after that, boundary-wise, but in the end, Charlotte finds a calling, Dr. Jaquith gets to build a new wing at the sanitarium, and Jerry, one supposes, finds some other ladies to share cigarettes with.

​I'd always imagined -- in the world beyond the movie -- that Charlotte wound up with Dr. Jaquith somehow. He's infinitely more suitable than Smoky McTwoCigs. Or how about she just chooses not to be with anybody. Why not? This is one of the few films where the heroine saves herself in the end: she gets some much-needed romance on the high seas; gets out from under her mother's toxic control; develops a relationship with her remaining family; declines to marry a guy she doesn't love; and uses her Boston money to help others. 

I don't know why they call this a romance; this is a success story.

This post is my contribution to the 2016 Great Villain Blogathon, hosted by Speakeasy, Silver Screenings, and Shadows and Satin.

SO much evil in the world -- get reading!

It's impossible to watch this movie today without the miasma of a year's bitter primary campaigning oozing in around the edges of Frank Capra's bumpy tale of a forgotten but otherwise happy man tempted and victimized by cynics and optimists alike. There are too many parallels and sad reminders that not much has changed in our political discourse over the past 75 years, and like us I guess, the film can't quite commit to either cynicism or optimism.

John Doe isn't real. He's the product of the disgruntled imagination of Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), a sob sister columnist for the Bulletin, who has just been laid off by the paper's new management. The old Bulletin's motto was "A Free Press Means a Free People;" the New Bulletin is "A Streamlined Newspaper for a Streamlined Era." Ann's parting shot at the new paper was to invent a letter for her column from an unemployed Everyman (Doe) who vows to leap off City Hall on Christmas Eve to protest the sorry state of American civilization. Most people in the newspaper game suspect this is a hoax, but the public believes the story and floods the New Bulletin with offers to help and pleas for Someone to do Something.

In order to avoid exposure managing editor Henry Connell (James Gleason) hires Ann back to help manage the public's expectations and to figure out a way to cover up the fraud. Luckily, a stampede of tramps has descending on the offices claiming to be John Doe in order to get the work and other help offered by the citizenry. Ann persuades Connell to pick one of these men to pose as the "real" John Doe and use him as a front to write a column about the plight of downtrodden regular folks and to boost circulation.

They hire "Long" John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a strapping, kind of dopey ex-ballplayer who never goes anywhere without his friend, a professional hobo called The Colonel (Walter Brennan). The Colonel believes that anyone who keeps money of any amount for any length of time is bound to be corrupted. "When you become a guy with a bank account, they gotcha, " he says, Who's gotcha? Heelots (a lot of heels) gotcha, because when you have money people want to sell you stuff and then you're caught, "you're not the free and happy guy you used to be, then you become a Heelot* yourself."

Sheesh. Who is that guy, Bernie Sanders' dad?

So here's the score so far: Ann's original column is a cynical move but it stimulates the public's optimism and basic decency. Willoughby makes the cynical decision to pretend to be John Doe, but is optimistic that it will help him earn enough money to get his pitching arm fixed. The Colonel walks around calling everyone Heelots and threatening to redistribute any wealth coming his way, which is either extra-cynical or wildly optimistic, depending on who you're voting for this cycle.

​Pretty soon everyone starts getting in over their heads. Ann's column is a huge success, but it's ruffling political and journalistic feathers. The Bulletin's new publisher, D. B. Norton (Edward Arnold), makes a deal with Ann to put Willoughby on the radio as John Doe to put to rest suspicions that he's a fake (which he is), while providing Norton with a populist proxy for his political ambitions with Ann writing speeches at triple her former salary. Win-win.

Ann needs the money, by the way, because she is the breadwinner for her widowed mother (Spring Byington) and two school-aged sisters. Her mother has a habit of giving the leftover household money away on the needy, which Ann finds both irritating and inspirational. And at 62 cents on a man's 1941 dollar, a raise would come in handy. Mrs. Mitchell helps Ann past her speech-writing block by suggesting that "People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio... Why don't you let him say something simple and real. Something with hope in it?" So Ann writes a real barn burner and in the process, starts to believe in this John Doe stuff.

Willoughby, meanwhile, is offered $5,000 from a rival newspaper to read an alternate speech on the night of the broadcast confessing to the hoax. Gary Cooper does a masterful job conveying his internal conflict while deciding what to do​: admit the hoax, ease his conscience, and get the operation he needs, or do right by Ann, with whom is is falling in love, and read her speech about tearing down fences, loving your neighbor, and being decent. He decides to go ahead with Ann's speech, but bolts with The Colonel immediately afterward to slip back into a life of poor but honest obscurity.

But Willoughby can't hide for long from Norton's media machine. While he and Bernie's dad have been out riding the rails, "John Doe Clubs" have been popping up all over; just regular citizens picking up his call to be nice to one other. And No Politicians Allowed. He is recognized at a local diner, corralled by "fans" and convinced by a local John Doe Club in one of the more tedious, Capra-esque, aw-shucks, cornfields of a speech to go back on the radio and spread the word.

Soon John Doe Clubs are spreading like wildfire. D.B. Norton is thrilled, because it's an election year and he has plans to make Willoughby announce the formation of a new political party and endorse Norton as The John Doe Party candidate for president. But John Doe Clubs are specifically apolitical, Ann and Willoughby remind Norton, and that would be wrong. Oh wise up, kids. Besides, Norton explains, he could very easily expose the whole racket that Ann concocted in the first place and ruin them both.

The kids don't back down; Norton exposes Willoughby on national radio and steps in as the savior of the movement. John Doe's once adoring fans are heartbroken and angry and they turn on him It isn't pretty. A despondent Willoughby disappears. Months go by and around Christmas time the main characters start to wonder whether he'll make his way to City Hall and make good on the original plan: throw himself off the roof in protest over how horrible people are.

Sure enough, that's where he winds up. He almost does it too, but a feverish Ann, a less cranky Colonel, and Bulletin editor Connell are there to stop him. Even Norton is there to convince him, in his sincere but Scroogey way, that it would be pointless to kill himself, because he'd just remove all traces of John's existence (come on, he's trying). What does the trick ultimately, is the cornball members of the first John Doe club -- also on the roof, at midnight, in the snow -- telling him they don't care if he's a fake, the message was a good one and whaddyasay? Ann faints from illness; Willoughby carries her off the roof (the regular way).

Is this a happy ending? I don't know, does Ann die of fever? This is the trouble with conservative Capra directing the script of liberal Robert Riskin: the tone is all over the place. The Heelot stuff is meant to be annoying, but Ann's mother is just as free with other people's money, and somehow she's more sympathetic. Why is the Colonel a crackpot and Mrs. Mitchell the heart of the people?

In the end it all goes to pieces HARD and big money wins again: that one rich bad apple probably became president for all we know. At the beginning of the picture, Long John Willoughby's is broke and can't afford an operation that will save his baseball career, but he has a friend and a harmonica and freedom. At the end, he's just as broke, still can't pitch, his friends love him, but now he wants to jump off the roof. Why? Because he had hope? Because no one turns on a savior faster than his disappointed followers?

That's bleak, man. No wonder It's a Wonderful Life  is the Christmas picture.

This post is my contribution to the CMBA Spring Blogathon: Words! Words! Words!

There's a lot going on over there, so please catch up and read all the entries in this wordfest.

I finished re-reading Christopher Morley's excellent, deftly told, first-person narrative of an American "shanty" Irish girl's life story as of her 28th year in 1939 seconds before re-viewing the film Kitty Foyle (1940), for the first time since the (first?) Clinton administration. I hope I speak for every woman my darling late grandmother's age (coincidentally within one year of the heroine Kitty Foyle and her portrayer, Ginger Rogers) when I say, "What the hell with the opening montage?! Said context-setting kick in the ovaries implies that white collar girls gave up chivalry and decorous baby-making for (whaddyacallit) citizenship, which, naturally, means no more pedestal-placing by men, more rudeness on streetcars, and less pay and no recognition for the same work forever. 

You asked for it, Girlie.

And the film, thereafter, cedes the humanness and agency of the book's heroine and devolves into a kind of love triangle completely dissociated from the message of the book from which it was adapted -- by no less than Dalton Trumbo and Donald Ogden Stewart. So, yeah, it's a disappointing book-to-screen translation. Ginger Rogers won an Academy Award for her performance, but I'd like to think she'd have had a better time with the original text.

The novel is the story of Katherine "Kitty" Foyle, a young woman coming of age in Philadelphia in the late 1920s. She is the youngest child in a working class family with modest expectations of social mobility through public education and American ingenuity. Kitty's mother dies when the girl is not yet a teenager and she sent to live with her aunt and uncle in a Chicago suburb. There she makes friends and develops ambitions, but must foreswear the college she is admitted to in order to care for her father who has had a stroke back in Philly. Fundamentally, it is about how a young girl navigates a life between a city and suburb in two different states, the friendships she forms, and how she comes to make her way in the world during one of the most difficult economic and social times in our history.

Let me pause to point out that this book was written nearly 80 years ago by a man approaching 50 in the credible voice of a twenty-something woman. Christopher Morley is surprisingly adept and insightful as the narrator. Like most of his books, it crackles with wonderful dialog in the first few chapters, repeats itself somewhat tediously in the middle, then picks up again at the end. In Kitty Foyle there is much observation about the difference between Men and Women, which becomes a bit of a snooze with repetition after one marvels at how nothing much has changed in that regard since the book was written. Also, Morley never has had the heart to "kill his darlings," so redundant aphorisms tend to abound. The important thing is that our heroine falls in love with a man outside her class, has a happy sexual relationship with him, gets pregnant, then terminates that pregnancy (because she has access to a safe one, as white women in certain circles have always had) rather than upset the father's comfortable life and goes on to enjoy a healthy career, a new (if less volatile) romance, and a solid group of friends and family who love her. That's the book.

The film, however, downplays both the fundamental intelligence of its heroine and the moral weakness of  her love interest and inflates the influence of the men in her life. The movie would have you believe that Kitty was attracted to the wealthy Philadelphia set her whole life; whereas the book only mentions them as a touchstone for her paper doll fantasies. The fact that her lover turns out to be one of the Philadelphia Main Line is a point of intense difficulty for her in the novel, not one of aspiration as the film suggests. The men in the film are given all the "good" lines about the nature of life and work.

Which is excessively annoying to one who has, literally, just put down the book.

Wyn Strafford, the weakling socialite in question, is played admirably in the film, if not faithfully to the novel, by Dennis Morgan. In the book Wyn is the kind of guy who has had things so softened for him by circumstance than any risk he might possibly conceive to undertake is utterly circumscribed by the narrow confines of his privilege. And Kitty is fully aware that while fundamentally a sweet guy, Wyn is ill-equipped to meet her at the level of her own experience.

Let's take the magazine Wyn starts and which employs young Kitty Foyle. In the book they have already begun their love affair when Wyn tries his hand at publishing and she is already accustomed to correcting his spelling and editing his clumsy prose to make him come across more erudite than he is. Wyn started the mag to prove that he could make it on his own outside the family banking business, with just his own pluck, a couple of bored fraternity brothers, and the $10,000 nut his father gave him -- you know, boot straps.

The film would have you think that Kitty is learning from Wyn in this endeavor, which is quite wrong. In the book, she knows the venture will fail from the start, because it's a copy of the New Yorker and Philly isn't that kind of town and Kitty knows something about regular people and their tastes. Kitty also knows, that when the magazine folds (and it will) that she is the one who will be left struggling to find work to support herself and her dying father (another element left out of the movie).

But Kitty loves Wyn. A lot. So much, that she has a protracted and glorious love affair with him, even though it is 1930-ish, they are not married, and the class difference between them would be impossible for Wyn to overcome. "There never was anybody whose whole existence was so settled upon a whole lot of people doing a comfortable makebelieve" she says in the book. Wyn himself "knew nothing of life, all its small anxieties and makeshifts, problems of grocery bills and insurance and clean clothes..."

Nevertheless, Kitty goes all in knowing this about Wyn and knowing that she risks so very much more, because she is a woman and  "when a woman gives up her conventions she's really handing you something." Kitty knows Wyn is clueless about his privilege as both a rich person and also as a man. So when at about the same time she discovers, via the society column, that Wyn has become engaged to a more suitable someone else, she also discovers, via the calendar, that she is pregnant, she decides never to tell him. In the book, she terminates the pregnancy, because she knew "Wyn wasn't big enough to have a bastard; or the folks he had to live with wouldn't let him be. It would be making people unhappy for the sake of somebody that didn't really exist yet."

The film has them marry before she gets pregnant and divorced before she gives birth to a dead child. Because that's so much better. Wyn knows nothing of her pregnancy or the possibility that he may have to provide for it had it lived; it didn't and he won't ever have had to.

Meanwhile, Kitty has affable Dr. Mark Eisen (James Craig) in the wings; more front-and-center and WASP-y in the film, more peripheral and Jewish in the book.

Which reminds me... as much as I love Christopher Morley (see photo below) his work contains several encrusted passe tropes of his time, including liberal use of the Black "dialect" and several words we just don't use anymore, and that can be a little rough in the reading. There are even some barnacles I hadn't realized we'd already shucked. For instance, Kitty refers several times to having to overcome her race prejudice to consider Mark as a potential husband, and each time she mentioned it, it took me a moment to realize she was talking about Jews and not Black people. 

I forgot about that, even though in real life at approximately the same time my late grandfather was obliged to attend Middlesex University (now Brandeis) for medical school, because it was the only one in his neck of the woods that didn't have a Jewish quota. The girl he married was my aforementioned darling grandmother, a white collar working (Jewish) girl who may or may not have inspired Christopher Morley himself to write a poem about her, a lovely young woman on a subway in New York -- family apocryphra I prefer to think is true, if not even remotely verified, thank you very much. All of which makes me wonder, when did we Jews make the transition to white?

In sum, if you haven't seen Kitty Foyle the film, read the book instead and if you've only read the book, don't see the film: it will annoy you for not retaining the excellent dialog or telling the right story. Either way, read the book and give the picture a miss. The clothes are great and the boys are handsome, but it's got none of the friendships, family, or true feeling of the real Kitty Foyle.

This post is my contribution to the Beyond the Cover: Books to Film Blogathon, hosted by Now Voyaging and Speakeasy.

There's a lot to cover (har-de-har), so get over to the hosts' sites and get reading!

Even though The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show was technically before my time (it officially ended the year I was born), my sister and I were lucky enough to catch it in syndication as part of our regular weekend cartoon lineup from elementary through high school. Macrame, crocheted vests, and constant second-hand smoke notwithstanding, the 1970s were good for this at least: regular television could give a girl a great education in satire, the power of voice characterization, and quality parody. I'm talking about the Carol Burnett Show, Saturday morning Warner Bros. cartoons, and the genius output of Jay Ward Productions, without which I may not be the classic film lover I am today.

Peabody's Improbable History was one of the short segments that broke up Rocky & Bullwinkle's serial adventures, alternating with Fractured Fairy Tales, Dudley Do-Right, and Aesop & Son, all of which featured the voice talents of Stan Freberg, June Foray, Paul Frees, Daws Butler, Edward Everett Horton, and Bill Scott. 

Mr. Peabody (Bill Scott, also the voice of Bullwinkle) is a Harvard-educated, entrepreneurial, multi-lingual former puppy prodigy who lives all alone in his Manhattan penthouse. Peabody decides to get a boy for companionship, but finds none suitable in any pet shop. One day, he sees a little ginger kid with glasses getting beat up in an alley by some street toughs. After chasing off the attackers, Mr. Peabody intends to take Sherman (veteran radio actor, Walter Tetley) back home to his parents, but finding he is an orphan and living in a crummy orphanage, Peabody decides to adopt him instead.

To keep Sherman entertained, Mr. Peabody builds the WABAC, a time machine, through which he and Sherman can -- and do -- enjoy many an adventure in what "should have been" in history. 

Between 1959 and 1963, Mr. Peabody and Sherman went on 91 five-minute trips through time and space, visiting the likes of Napoleon, Galileo, Lady Godiva, and Cleopatra along the way. Sherman was always good for charmingly stating the obvious ("Mr. Franklin, your kite is going to be struck by lightning!") and setting up the horrible pun Mr. Peabody inevitably let fly at the end of every episode ("We assisted the Pony Express. The least we can do is help...Western Onion." Tuba blast.)

Walter Tetley, the man who played Sherman, was 44 years old and already a twenty year veteran as a voice actor. He started out in the 1930s as the voice of Felix the Cat and later Andy Panda, but is probably best known to old radio buffs as Leroy, the annoying nephew of The Great Gildersleeve and Julius Abruzzio, the grocery boy on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.

Tetley was born with a hormonal condition that kept his voice from cracking, which enabled him to play boys and teenagers throughout his long career, but that also prevented him from fully developing to manhood. In 1971, Tetley was injured in a motorcycle accident that confined him to a wheelchair until his death from stomach cancer only four years later at the age of 60.

My generation will always remember him as Sherman, Mr. Peabody's faithful boy, although many of us will mistakenly credit June Foray (the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel) for his fine work. On a more uplifting note, it is now possible to watch the Peabody's Improbable History pun-soaked oeuvre streaming on Hulu Plus, and many of these wonderful cartoons are on YouTube for free (for the time being).

​Do Walter Tetley a solid. 

This post is my contribution to The TV Sidekick Blogathon hosted by the Classic Film & TV Cafe.

Please take a moment to read all the excellent entries about your favorite next-door-neighbors, best friends, deputies, and more.
​

It never ceases to amaze me that in the decades when women* had fewer rights or career options than we do today, female characters in the movies had more to do, say, and feel than they seem to do in modern pictures. This is certainly the case for the women nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1942 in parts that were assuredly "types": two ingénues, a spinster, and a couple of old ladies -- yet each of these characters was complicated, well-written, and beautifully acted.

The winner, Teresa Wright, played a young war bride in Mrs. Miniver a girl who must balance the fears for her newly-enlisted husband with hope for their future. In the same film, (Dame) May Whitty also earned a nomination as Wright’s grandmother, a local noblewomen who must come to terms with the fact that class distinctions and privilege will be forever changed by the war. Susan Peters played the impossibly young and equally impossible parallel love interest to Ronald Coleman's memory-challenged veteran in Random Harvest, and Gladys Cooper turned in a chilling performance as the the cruel, domineering mother of unhappy spinster Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.

But it was the other unhappy spinster of the year who, in my opinion, should have taken home the trophy: Agnes Moorehead as Fanny Minafer, the maiden aunt whose narrow circumstances grow ever bleaker in Orson Welles’s (and her) second picture ever, The Magnificent Ambersons.
 
The Magnificent Ambersons is the story of a well-to-do Midwestern family whose wealth and position afford them near-royalty status in their sleepy late-19th century town. Major Amberson, the source of that wealth, is the patriarch who has raised his son, Jack (Ray Collins) and daughter Isabel (Dolores Costello) in the grand manner in a grand mansion. When Isabel’s beau, Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), has a bit too much to drink one night, he tries to serenade her under her window and steps clean through his bass viol. Isabel is so horrified by the spectacle that, in spite of truly loving Gene, she breaks up with him and decides to marry quiet little unromantic Wilbur Minafer instead. Isabel, Wilbur, and Wilbur’s sister Fanny (Moorehead) take up residence in Amberson mansion. Isabel and Wilbur have just one child, George Amberson Minafer, who turns out to be The Worst Little Brat Ever. There isn't a soul in town who can wait for the day little Georgie gets his “come-uppance.”

Georgie (Tim Holt) grows up to be a horrible, egotistical snob. His mother still spoils him, his grandfather indulges him, his Uncle Jack ignores him, and Aunt Fanny alternately fights with and looks after him. It's been about 20 years since the bass viol incident, and Morgan comes back to town, a non-drinking, successful inventor now in the horseless carriage business. Morgan also has a beautiful, self-sufficient daughter called Lucy (Anne Baxter), who captivates Georgie when the Morgans come to one of the grand balls at Amberson mansion.

Aunt Fanny sets her cap for Morgan, but it is soon clear that he only has eyes for Isabel. When Fanny's brother (Isabel's husband) dies, Morgan and Lucy become more of a regular fixture at the Ambersons. Fanny becomes jealous and insinuates to George that Isabel only ever really loved Morgan (not his father), and that everyone in town knows about it. This sends Georgie into an irrational tizzy over his mother's reputation and he refuses to allow Morgan in the home. Morgan begs Isabel to put her own (and his happiness) first and marry him, but she is unable to hurt her son's delicate feelings, let alone tell him to mind his own business. So Isabel and George go off to Europe leaving Morgan heartbroken and Lucy furious on her father's behalf.

Isabel grows gravely ill while they're abroad and the two come home just in time for Isabel to die without seeing Eugene one last time. Shortly thereafter, Major Amberson dies, shell-shocked at the rapid changes in his community and in his family. He leaves no inheritance. Wilbur Minafer left a small bit of insurance for his sister, but she invested it all in a business scheme that went belly up and she is broke. Georgie never worked a day in his life, so he is broke. Any money Isabel had was spent in Europe or otherwise on her child; now the richest family in town find themselves in a modern world with absolutely nothing.

Forced into sudden straits, George pulls himself together for the sake of his Aunt Fanny, for whom it turns out he cares a great deal. He is miserable over how he treated his mother...and Eugene...and takes a high-paying dangerous job to make sure his Aunt, at least, can enjoy some comfort. One day, he is struck down by a car -- the machine he once scoffed at as a ludicrous fad that is now the source of Morgan's great fortune -- which breaks both his legs. This means certain destitution for him and his Aunt.

Orson Welles would have left it at that, had he not been called away to do war work on another film before his final edits were made. The studio snipped almost an hour from The Magnificent Ambersons and reshot Welles's intended grim ending for one that was truer to Booth Tarkington's novel: Lucy and Morgan visit George in the hospital and all is forgiven. Even Fanny is reconciled to eternal spinsterhood.

Had it not been so early in the war for the United States, the role of beleaguered, fretful Aunt Fanny might have earned more popular acclaim. As it was, audiences were more inclined to favor uplifting stories of noble sacrifice, escapism, or silliness. Welles’s retelling of the Tarkington bestseller, was dark, sad, and completely antithetical to the American Dream for which so many were fighting.  Moorehead's performance was intentionally (and effectively) highly strung and sometimes shrill. Indeed, moviegoers laughed at some of Aunt Fanny's breakdowns in early previews, forcing some of the famous edits the studio forced on Mr. Welles. Her sadness, her sudden, instantly regretted moments of spite and frustration are lyric. At least the New York Film Critics Circle thought so and gave Agnes Moorehead the award for Best Actress for 1942.

There is something beautiful in Agnes Moorehead's quavering voice, sharp features, and utter vulnerability in this picture. But it was, indeed, a tough year. In fact, I'm still scared of Gladys Cooper from Now, Voyager (so MEAN!). But if ever there were a performance worthy of an Academy Award among Agnes Moorehead's many, many pictures, this was it.

* I mean white women, of course. Women of color had far fewer options socially and even less opportunity to be seen as anything other than a servant or a pauper in those days, a fact that sadly, has not changed all that much.

This post is my contribution to The Oscars Snubs Blogathon, hosted by The Midnite Drive-In and Silver Scenes.

Please take some time to read the excellent entries in this blogathon. So many people were robbed so thoroughly over the years.