The fine fellow at Rupert Pupkin Speaks asked me to submit a list of five mystery-slash-detective movies I consider to be underrated. It was a tough exercise, because I am far from an expert on the genre and often have trouble separating what I find enjoyable from what is actually good. Plus for some reason I kept thinking of ghost stories. 

Ultimately, I chose movies that met the following criteria:

• An unsolved crime (preferably murder) is central to the plot;
• The solving of said crime is done by a detective or talented amateur;
• You don't really know how it's going to turn out right away (i.e., there is actual mystery);
• The film (or film version) has not been made available widely, has not been shown for a while, or does not leap to mind immediately;
• The films could not all be lumped into one style (e.g. film noir)
  

And here's what I chose (in chronological order):

1. The Lodger  (1927)
2. After the Thin Man  (1936)
3. And Then There Were None  (1945)
4. Wanted for Murder  (1946)
5. Murder By Death  (1976)
   
   

So if you'd like to read why I chose what I chose, please visit my list at Rupert Pupkin Speaks and check out the other bloggers' selections therein.

I'm a day late to this party, but I couldn't ignore the fascinating Paulette Goddard this week. At the risk of repeating myself in these Birthdays of the Week, I really, really wonder why, in a place as self-referential as Hollywood, no one has made a picture about this woman's life.

Anyone who could be married (or whatever) to as unlikely a trio as Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith, and Erich Maria Remarque over the course of two decades, was an avid art collector who hung around with the likes of Diego Rivera and Andy Warhol, and who donated millions to theater and arts programs needs to have a movie made about her.

We don't really know for sure when Ms. Goddard was born; could be 1905, 1910, or 1915, based on various reports, but I'm inclined toward the middle number. 1915 seems unlikely, as that would have made her an 11-year-old Ziegfeld Girl in 1926 when she appeared in the Follies and more uncomfortably, a child bride of 12 when she married lumber magnate, Edgar James in 1927. Neither does she look to be 31 in her breakout role in Modern Times as the "gamine" romantic interest to Charlie Chaplin's tramp in 1936. So I pick 1910.

It's also unclear whether her father left the family or her mother left the father with very young Pauline. Or Marion. The name is up for grabs as well. In any case, Goddard was raised by her mother and helped support the family by modeling while still a child. Her father showed up after Paulette became famous and sued for defamation of character after Goddard claimed he wasn't her biological father in a magazine interview. She lost the case. One presumes that was the end of their relationship.

After her first divorce, Goddard and her mother moved to Hollywood, where she tried to break into pictures with little success. In 1932, she became a Goldwyn Girl, but left the studio due to conflicts with the boss, Sam Goldwyn, and went to do uncredit roles in comedy shorts at the Hal Roach Studios. Goddard was dating Charlie Chaplin during this time, but didn't get a major role until he cast her as the female lead in Modern Times. 

A further mystery is whether she and Chaplin were truly married, as they purportedly wed on a boat in the far east somewhere, but could never produce a marriage license. Who cares, you might ask? Well, anyone auditioning for Gone With the Wind were subject to studio morality clauses, and Goddard, who was up for Scarlett O'Hara, would not qualify if she could not prove she was married. Also perhaps not the best choice for the part, but that's just me. And David O. Selznick.

Chaplin and Goddard broke up (or divorced, whatever) in 1942, but remained on good terms. Her film career continued steady and strong throughout the 1940s. In 1944 she married Burgess Meredith, with whom she had appeared in several pictures, but they too divorced in 1949. By 1950, Paulette Goddard was tired of Hollywood and it seemed to be through with her, but she was wealthy, loved to travel, and had many other interests besides the movies.

On these travels she met and married Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front. The two lived in Switzerland (and a couple of other places) until his death in 1970. Thereafter, Goddard lived the life of a wealthy socialite and art collector in New York, admired for her wit, charm, and ability to make lots and lots of money. When she died in 1990 of heart failure and emphysema, she left New York University $20 million.

Seriously. Where's this movie?

Yet another reason to love the SFSFF: getting to see a differently, possibly funnier version of the famous "mirror scene" the Marx Brothers made popular in Duck Soup, this time with Max Linder and the uncredited guy who played his cook in Seven Years Bad Luck.

Max plays Max, a groom-to-be, who on the eve of his bachelor party, gets inventively drunk and passes out in his rooms. Before Max wakes, his butler accidentally breaks his full-length dressing mirror while chasing the maid round and round. In attempt to fool the groggy master, the butler dresses the cook like Max so that he can pretend to be the other end of the looking glass while the butler runs off to get replacement glass.

It works for the most part, but just as Max starts to suspect, the glass gets replaced while he's in the other room plotting how to surprise his "reflection." In so doing, Max breaks the new glass and becomes convinced he'll have seven years bad luck.

The bad luck then begins. First it's a falling out with his fiancee through the inadvertent soaking of her little Bichon Frise, then a Hawaiian dance with the housemaid. Max decides to lay low in the country and is immediately robbed of his valise and wallet. With no money, he hops a train and spends most of the rest of the movie evading conductors, station agents, and policemen. Meanwhile, his scheming friend, seeing an opportunity in the breakup, starts to woo Betty, Max's girl.

Eventually Max winds up in court on the same day his former fiancee is getting married to his no-good, snake-in-the-grass friend. The two reconcile and get married instead. 

You have to love Max Linder. There are both kids and animals in this picture and he seemed to get on with them fine.

Dragnet Girl was, hands down, the swellest surprise of the festival for me. I already love Yasujiro Ozu like a sensitively observant drunk brother, but this film opened up a whole new chamber of my heart.

Tokiko (the incredible Kinuyo Tanaka) is a secretary whose boss, the son of the company, has a massive crush on. Tokiko, however, is the girlfriend Joji (Joji Oka), a gangster in an unspecified racket that has to do somehow with boxing. There is an amusing collection of thugs around Joji, who used to be a boxer himself, and one day, a featherweight student called Hiroshi (Koji Mitsui) shows up wanting to be part of the gang.

Once in the gang, Hiroshi stops going to school and starts hanging out in the pool hall with other toughs. He also begins to take money from his sister Kazuko (Sumiko Mizukubo), who works in the most amazing RCA Victor phonograph shop I've ever seen. Drool-worthy.

Hiroshi, who looks uncannily like Fred Armisen, also has a pretty obvious crush on Joji, which is clearly one of the reasons Kazuko is worried about him. She goes to Joji one day to ask him to help her brother "straighten out." Joji can't help but fall in love with her and decides to quit the racket (whatever it is). Tokiko, however, is not thrilled about this and goes to check out her competition. Instead of scaring her off, as she intended, Tokiko develops an affection for Kazuko and tries to win Joji back.

Meanwhile, Hiroshi has stolen a good deal of money from the till at the record store, Kazuko has found out and is despondent. Joji and Tokiko have a spectacular reconciliation, decide to go straight, but not before robbing Tokiko's boss (who still loves her) and give the money to Kazuko to make good.

There are scenes in this film that are etched in my memory forever, particularly the opening sequence. With live accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald, whose Peter-Gunn-like rhythms elevated the action, you forget this picture is silent.

Man, I love this festival.

I had to catch my flight back to DC halfway through Girl in Tails, but I did get to see the beginning of the main conflict in this Swedish comedy (TWO, count 'em two, in one festival) directed by Karin Swanstrom, who also starred as the terrifying town matriarch.

The story is about Katja (Magda Holm) a young student who helps her study-averse friend, Count Ludwig (Einar Axelsson) cram for and pass his final exams. Katja lives with her widowed inventor father and preferred brother. The meager income her father commands goes to the son, for his studies and his clothes, because what would a girl want with a new dress when she has one or two perfectly good ones already?

The fact that the student count has passed his exams baffles everyone in the village, particularly the "learned women" inexplicably living on his country estate. He decides to throw a ball in celebration (even though it is JUNE) and invites all his classmates and their families. But what can Katja wear? Her brother has acquired tails for the occasion, but their father refuses to spend money on his daughter, saying she should be happy with what she has and just stay home.

This, she will not do. Rather than miss out on the ball, Katja dons her brothers tails and waltzes into the affair, scandalizing everyone.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is when I had to leave for SFO.

I'm assuming all works out in the end and that Katja marries the count and gets to wear whatever the hell she wants.

Getting to review Duck Soup * for the Snoopathon couldn't be more timely or delightful. I just returned from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival this morning (note to self:  you're too old for the red eye), where I got the opportunity to see Max Linder perform one of the earlier versions of the mirror scene, made famous to those of my generation by the Marx Brothers.

And because it isn't always necessary to recap a plot from a Marx Bros. film (particularly those made at Paramount), I'm just going to lead with the scene in question and work backwards to the story from there:

President Firefly appoints Chicolini and Pinky to his cabinet knowing full well they are spies for Trentino, but it doesn't matter in the slightest. Firefly barely has allegiance to his own country and is, in fact, directly responsible for the war that rages between Freedonia and Sylvania. 

There are a number of classic bits in Duck Soup: The clash between burly lemonade vendor Edgar Kennedy (a Keystone comedy veteran) and spies/peanut vendors Chicolini and Pinky; the running gag of the sidecar; great lines like "Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did."

But the best of all is the crazy-ass musical number sung by the entire cast about the thrill of going to war. Every opinion is represented and overtaken (or overruled) by the jubilation ("all god's chillun got guhh-uns!") with the four brothers playing and singing and pranking the lot. When the war is on in full, each cutaway to Firefly puts him in a different uniform. First he's Union, then Confederate, then Davy Crockett, then a scoutmaster. They're outnumbered, outgunned, and shells are sailing through the windows (until Firefly draws the blind). Chicolini and Pinky have switched sides a bunch of times and even Mrs. Teasdale shoulders a rifle during the final stand-off, which they, of course, and against all odds, emerge victorious.

See? Pointless. Like political backbiting between and within governments? Like war? It's tempting to ascribe a method to Duck Soup's madness, but I'm inclined to resist. Those guys were crazy funny geniuses, but their routines are hardscrabble, 20th-century American satyr plays that satirized everything by ridicule, not necessary for social commentary. That said, I think Duck Soup ranks as one of the best anti-war movies ever, just as Horse Feathers is a pretty sharp indictment of how sports can bulldoze over academics at institutions of higher learning. For that perspective, we probably need to thank scenarist, Arthur Sheekman, who wrote many of the Marx's movies.

Duck Soup was to be the last film the four Marx Brothers would make at Paramount and the last they'd all four make together. Zeppo (Herbert Marx), who had been kind of a straight man (I always thought he was very funny) and romantic lead (which he was; see torn shirt below) went on to become a theatrical agent and inventor. He was the most mechanically-inclined of the brothers and ran a machine shop that manufactured (among other things) the Marman clamps that held the "fat man" A-Bomb securely in place inside the B-29 bomber. A regular Hedy Lamarr (I refer you again to the photo below).

See Duck Soup again if you haven't in a long while. It's only about an hour and 15 minutes, so your kids can watch it too. Come for the spies, stay for the crazy.

This post is my contribution to Snoopathon: A Blogathon of Spies, hosted by Movies Silently (the great Fritzi Kramer).

Check it out! You got your Cold War spies, your Bondiana, your Great War intrigue, and everybody's favorite: World War II! Those Nazis are a bad bunch, I'll say.

* The phrase "duck soup" is turn-of-the-last-century slang for something that is very easy to do: a lead pipe cinch, as it were, or easy as pie.