Is it just me, or has the line on Nazi people-purging always been that we didn't know about concentration camps until after the war? Imagine my surprise, then, when Humphrey Bogart reads an important clue in fifth columnist Conrad Veidt's notebook out loud to William Demarest in All Through the Night, a tremendously entertaining noir-comedy-thriller released the Tuesday before the attack on Pearl Harbor: December 2, 1941.
 
Gloves (Bogart): Her father is in D-A-C-H-A-U. Da-chow. What's that?
Sunshine (Demarest): I don't know. Must be one of those towns across the drink.

The film opens up with what appears to be the entire roster of character actors under contract to Warner Bros. maneuvering toy soldiers around a cafe table arguing over how Britain can win the war. You've got William Demarest, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Frank McHugh, and Wally Ford as henchmen of playboy sports promoter (gambler) Alfred "Gloves" Donahue (Bogart) with names like "Spats," "Sunshine," and "Starchy."  When the little old German baker who makes Gloves's favorite cheesecake disappears, Gloves's mom, "Mom" (Jane Darwell) gets a bad feeling and asks her son to look into it.

Turns out the baker has been killed by a pipsqueak thug called "Pepi" (Peter Lorre) and stuffed into a large basket in the basement of his shop. Gloves and a couple of his gang get extra interested when Leda (Kaaren Verne ), an attractive blonde with a Dietrich-esque accent ("I'd like to finish my dwink...") shows up at the bakery looking furtive. She turns out to be a nightclub singer at a toney joint run by wiseguys Callahan (Barton MacLane) and Denning (Edward Brophy -- see? they just keep coming!) who are no friends of Gloves's. 

Who should turn up as Leda's accompanist, but that little stinker, Pepi. Leda is upset by the baker's murder and Denning stumbles upon Pepi yelling at her in German to get a grip and in the course of eavesdropping, POW, he gets killed too. But not before Gloves, who has been following Leda, sees him dying on the floor and leans over to catch his last gesture, which is something like a high five. Gloves leaves the scene, intending to call the police, but what should he hear on the radio but an APB calling for everyone in New York to look out for Alfred "Gloves" Donahue, now wanted in connection with the murder of his known enemy, Joe Denning, because guess what Gloves dropped at the scene of the crime?* 

The rest is a race against time (and the cops) for Donahue and his gang to find out who really killed Denning. Soon it becomes clear that Leda and the baker had been mixed up with a bunch of "Fivers" operating out of a swank auction house under the leadership of a dashing older gentleman named Ebbing (Conrad Veidt) and a forbidding woman with great clothes called "Madame" (Judith Anderson), who take turns carrying around an uncredited dachshund (in case we weren't clear about them being German). During the chase, we learn that Dachau is the concentration camp where Ebbing has sent Leda's father and has been bargaining his safety for her cooperation. We also learn that her father actually died there some time ago, so that frees her up to fall in love with Donahue and help him defeat the Fivers.

How they do it is great fun and fast-paced. There's some terrific dialog and great comedic moments, particularly between Demarest and Bogart, who seem genuinely to be having a good time. An odd combination of styles, All Through the Night is like a Damon Runyon story told by Raymond Chandler and filmed in chiaroscuro. I'm not too far off with the joke: Leo Rosten (The Joys of Yiddish) and Leonard Spigelgass (The Big Street) collaborated on the screenplay and Sidney Hickox, who shot other Bogart film noir classics To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep  (1946), and Dark Passage  (1947), was the film's cinematographer.

So there you go...and you can't go wrong.

This is my entry for the Build-Your-Own Blogathon, hosted by the Classic Film & TV Cafe. I'm following the excellent Fritzi Kramer of Movies Silently, who reviewed the 1929 film, The Last Performance, and am using Conrad Veidt as the link for this post.

Stay tuned for The Blonde at the Film's review of Sullivan's Travels with William Demarest as  her blog connector.

Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, 
By Leonard Maltin, Plume, 1987 

I can only imagine what was in the drinking water in Kansas City, Missouri, at the turn of the last century, but somehow that town was the stomping ground for some of the most influential and important animators in film history: Walt Disney was barely in his twenties when he started his own company, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, and hired cartoonists Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Ub Iwerks, and Isadore "Friz" Freleng, to produce animated shorts for local theaters.

The popularity of his creations (if not the studio, which went bankrupt within a year), sent Disney and Iwerks to Hollywood to complete the weird live-action/animated short subjects called the "Alice Comedies," and develop the more enduring cash cow that would be Mickey Mouse. Harman, Ising, and Freleng stayed behind to found their own short-lived studio, creating their own Mickey-like character Bosko, a happy-go-lucky Negro boy. Their cartoon was one of the first to synchronize speech and music with animation and was quickly picked up by Leon Schlesinger, producer of what would become Warner Bros. Animation classic series, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. 

While Harman & Ising were making money for Schlesinger, Freleng went to New York to work on the animated version of the sublime Krazy Kat comic strip, eventually coming round to Warner Bros. to be replace Harman & Ising who had quit Schlesinger over contract disputes.* Freleng became the head director and developed the first fully-defined character, Porky Pig, in 1935. He in turn left Warner Bros. for an unhappy two-year stint with the animation studios of MGM (because those cartoons were stupid), then came back to Warner's to stay in 1939. 

Thus began the Golden Age of movie cartoons, particularly for Warner Bros. Some of the finest, funniest, sharpest shorts were created under the direction of Friz Freleng and his fellow animator/directors, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones. Freleng introduced or retooled such beloved characters as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam (whom he was said to resemble), Tweety Bird, and Sylvester Cat, and went on to win four Academy Awards for the studio. 

Freleng was also responsible for Speedy Gonzales, a cringeworthy character developed in the mid-1950s and a precursor to the less clever, less-deftly animated creations of the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (DFE), which he co-created with Dave DePatie around the time the Warner Bros. animation studios folded in 1963. You can thank DePatie-Freleng for the Ant and the Aardvark series, The Barkleys (a cartoon based on All in the Family ...only with dogs), and most famously and profitably, The Pink Panther.  DFE made cartoons until 1981, when it was bought by Marvel Comics Group and renamed Marvel Productions. 

And that, Jimmy, is where Transformers comes from.

Eventually (and inevitably) the Disney Conglomeration bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009, so here we are back at square one and the drinking water in Kansas City.

Throughout the 1980s, Freleng did very well for himself as an executive producer of various Looney Tunes-related vehicles and revivals. He retired from Warner Bros. in 1986, handing the reins to his former secretary, Kathleen Helppie-Shipley, who has quietly become the longest-serving producer of the franchise, second only to its creator, Leon Schlesinger. 

Friz Freleng died of natural causes on May 26, 1995 at the age of 88.

He did great things.

Set in an English seaside hotel in the off-season, Separate Tables is a character study of the people who live there year-round. There's shy, spinster Sybil (Deborah Kerr) and her horrible, controlling mother, Mrs. Railton-Bell (Gladys Cooper, the old stinker); blustering, bloviating, boring Major Pollock (David Niven), who can't seem to get his own facts straight; young peripheral couple Charles (Rod Taylor) and Jean (Audrey Dalton); and the weirdest love triangle ever, ex-spouses Ann (Rita Hayworth) and John (Burt Lancaster) and his  new love interest, hotel owner, sensible Miss Cooper (Wendy Hiller.) 

There's a lot going on for such a small place. Mrs. Railton-Bell and her much nicer friend, Gladys (Cathleen Nesbitt) rule the roost, observing and commenting on everything. Somehow they haven't noticed that Miss Cooper and handsome, often-drunk American, John, are secretly engaged. But then again, Miss Cooper isn't completely convinced that engagement is what they've got. With the arrival out of nowhere of glamorous, bejeweled ex-wife, Ann, John's passion is ignited. Turns out that passion is hate, because before their divorce, John tried to kill Ann, spent some time in prison for it, and is now reinventing himself at Miss Cooper's. What is Ann doing there now, anyway? Why, she's engaged to an English guy and is there to meet his family.

Or is she?

And speaking of secrets, Major Pollock has been skulking around trying to steal people's newspapers, because there's something in there he doesn't want anyone to see, least of all that battleaxe, Lady Railton-Bell. Alas, he is unsuccessful, and Mrs. R-B not only learns that Major Pollock has been arrested and tried for indecent behavior in movie theaters, but he has been lying about his background, rank and war record. He was only a lieutenant stationed in a supply depot in the West Indies and not a major in North Africa fighting Rommel, as he's been claiming (or declaiming, wot wot?).

Mrs. R-B can't WAIT to spill the beans to her fellow residents and get the man ejected from the hotel. It's just icing on the cake that her daughter Sybil, who is not-so-secretly in love with Major Pollock, will be crushed by the news. Pretending to protect her from the scandal, Mrs. R-B goads Sybil into begging for the news then gleefully breaks her heart. Sybil's mother takes a vote among the other residents to See What's to Be Done. Mr. Fowler, the ex-headmaster, has always been suspicious of some of the Major's claims and considers him somewhat pathetic, but he doesn't think lax moral behavior should be tolerated -- on principle, The hotel lesbian, Miss Meacham (May Hallatt), doesn't give a damn, and Burt Lancaster is, of course, against expelling the Major. Sadly, Gladys and Sybil always do what Mrs. R-B says, so the vote comes out against the man. 

As Mrs. R-B skips off to strong-arm Miss Cooper into giving the Major the boot, we learn a lot more about Ann and John and why their marriage broke up. He wanted children; she wanted a career. He resented her ambitions and she froze him out of the bedroom. So he tried to kill her, as you do. But she's still in love with him, she says, and he can't stop himself. Miss Cooper, of course, has sized up the situation and decides to take a wait-and-see attitude. She waits. She sees.

Major Pollock, meanwhile, runs into a distraught Sybil, who tells him the cat is out of the bag and how could he and what's wrong with him and oh, what will become of him? Deborah Kerr is a bit overwrought as the stunted, frustrated, old maid daughter, but Gladys Cooper did exactly the same thing to Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, and that resulted in elaborate scrimshaw, so it can be forgiven. David Niven, on the other hand, is very affecting as the Major: sensitive, sympathetic, and complicated in this Oscar-winning performance. Wendy Hiller won one as well for her controlled passion and common sense. Miss Cooper dodged a bullet there and she knows it.

Edith Head got a credit for dressing up Rita Hayworth, but I'd really like to know who dressed Deborah Kerr down. Is there an award for frumping up one of the most beautiful women in the world?

It's a fine picture that doesn't mind being a play and is well worth a viewing for Mr. Niven and the peripherals. Nobody dies and things do turn out all right in the end.

Finally. A kid with good parents. 

If you've seen a picture with Jackie "Butch" Jenkins in it (and you have), you'll remember him as the most natural child on the screen. In my (and Pauline Kael's) opinion, he's the best thing about The Human Comedy and the only thing that makes me want to watch Margaret O'Brien* at all, but especially in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. 

He was funny-looking, completely unaffected, and believable as the bigger name's younger brother, even if one of those stars is Elizabeth Taylor and the other is Mickey Rooney, because yeah, they could be related. By the time he was 11, Jenkins had made 13 pictures -- four of them with James Craig -- then up and quit after he developed a nervous stutter. His mother, actress Doris Dudley, took him out before the business further screwed him up and invested the money he made for him, so that he was quite well off by the time he was in his thirties.

Jenkins lived happily in Texas for many years and became a successful non-show-businessman. He said that he never regretted leaving films and was "very grateful to my mother for taking me away from it...There may be a better way to live than on a lake with a couple of cows, a wife, and children but being a movie star is not one."

"Butch" Jenkins died August 14, 2001 in his sleep at his home in Asheville, North Carolina just a few weeks before his 64th birthday.

A pretty happy ending.

The first actress to use "bloody" in a British film, Wendy Hiller was primarily a stage actress performing modern roles to great acclaim in London's West End and on Broadway. She attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw in the early 1930s and became one of his favorite actresses of the time. Shaw cast her in revival productions of his plays, Pygmalion, Major Barbara, and Saint Joan during that period, and insisted she play the part of Eliza in the film production of Pygmalion in 1938. That role would earn Hiller the first of several Academy Award nominations.

There is quite a nice biography of her on IMDb that I won't even try to paraphrase; you should just read it.  Instead, I will reminisce, because I first became aware of Wendy Hiller that magical year of my movie memory, 1974, when anthology and nostalgic ensemble pictures seemed all the rage. She played the wizened old Princess Dragomiroff in Murder on the Orient Express, and I remember being instantly drawn to her overbite and twinkling eyes, thinking this is probably SOMEbody. I'm sure she'll correct me, but I recall that my sister told me at the time that Wendy Hiller had played the original Eliza Doolittle in the movie that became the musical, My Fair Lady and (probably) that she was Shaw's favorite actress -- because my sister was that kind of 11-year-old -- but we'd never seen her in any other picture.

Not until Separate Tables turned up on The Movie Loft (Channel 38) or something some years later, and it clicked: wow, Wendy Hiller was somebody. But British movies seldom turned up on television then and I didn't get to see her early work until decades later. Thankfully, now you can access most of her films streaming or on DVD. If you are so inclined to roll back the years on Princess Dragomiroff, I recommend the wonderful Powell & Pressburger film, I Know Where I'm Going, a peculiar, beautifully acted romance set in the Hebrides with lots of wind and sea and rocks and my pal, Roger Livesey. 

Wendy Hiller was a tremendous actress and by all accounts, a down-to-earth, untheatrical, generous professional. She was married to British playwright Ronald Gow for nearly sixty years until his death in 1993. Hiller retired from acting that same year and spent her remaining days at her home in Buckinghamshire, where she died on May 14, 2003 of natural causes at the age of 90.

No matter how many times I see this movie, I am always taken aback by what wonderful performances Cary Grant and Jean Dixon give in it. So great are they (and Edward Everett Horton), that you don't mind Katharine Hepburn's occasional scenery chewing, or the fact that Doris Nolan's character, Julia, seems like a highly unlikely choice for hero Johnny Case (Grant).

Holiday was originally a play by Philip Barry (author of The Philadelphia Story, another play-to-film success for Grant, Hepburn, and director, George Cukor). It had been filmed already in 1930 with Robert Ames as Johnny, Ann Harding as Linda (the Hepburn role), and Mary Astor as Julia. Edward Everett Horton played Professor Potter in both films, with (get this) Hedda Hopper as his wife, Susan. No Jean Dixon, she.

I have never seen the 1930 version, an oversight that shall be corrected forthwith. I mean --the poster alone...

Holiday is the story of Johnny Case, a happy-go-lucky self-starter, who has worked his way up from humble beginnings to a place of some promise in the world of finance. He meets Julia Seton while on his first vacation ever in Lake Placid and after two weeks of apparently not talking at all about anything that matters to either of them, they fall in love and decide to get married.

Back in Manhattan, Johnny meets up with his pals, the Potters (Horton and Dixon), a homey, perfectly-matched, charming couple, tells them he's getting married, and runs over to his fiancee's house to meet the family and get the father's blessing. The house in question takes up a block of Fifth or Park Avenue or something, so he figures Julia must work there and goes by the servant's entrance. Turns out she lives there and a freaked out butler escorts a baffled Johnny to a marble-lined entry way the size of an airplane hangar. Johnny is asked, in the words of Firesign Theater, to sit in the waiting room or wait in the sitting room, and runs into an unsteady young man in a top hat and head plaster who turns out to be Julia's massively hungover brother, Ned (Lew Ayres). Julia finally shows up and explains that she has to go to church to break the news to her father there so that he can't raise his voice about it. Johnny asks her why she didn't mention she was one of THOSE Setons, but says it makes no difference; after all, it's like learning that she can play the piano or something. He is to come back at lunch time to meet Father (Henry Kolker). On the way out the door, they run into Linda, Julia's elder sister, who is NOT going to church, and takes an instant liking to Johnny's carriage and humor.

So we've met just about everyone we need to and we've learned the following: The Potters are awesome and love Johnny; Ned is a drunk who does everything he's told, which is why he's a drunk; Julia is beautiful and manipulative; Johnny is at ease in any situation; and Linda is the black sheep. And once we meet Father, the rest falls into place. 

Old man Seton is a domineering martinet who dotes on Julia (who is very much like him, as we come to learn), barely tolerates Ned, and is continually exasperated with Linda (who is very much like his late wife). Johnny gets a chance to talk with Linda and Ned before meeting Mr. Seton. There is a special room in the house -- the children's old playroom -- where Linda spends most of her time. Johnny charms the bejeezus out the two of them and they are delighted that Julia made such a surprisingly good decision. We also find out that Johnny has a master plan: he wants to make a pile of money then retire to roam the world, see what it's All About, then come back and work when he knows what he should be working for. Who knows how long it will take, but he wants to do it while he's "young and feel(s) good all the time."

Linda thinks that's fantastic, but has he told Julia?

No. No, he hasn't, because I guess they hadn't covered that in the two weeks they hung out together on the ski slopes of Lake Placid. That, and her tremendous position of privilege and desire to keep it.

Anyway, Mr. Seton agrees to their marriage and proceeds to ride roughshod over their marital plans, which is just fine with Julia. At their New Year's engagement cotillion (Linda wanted to throw them a nice small party in the playroom, but father wouldn't hear of it) Johnny learns that a deal has gone through that earned him the necessary pile of dough to take his holiday. He finally tells both father and daughter about his life's ambition, and they are deeply horrified at the notion that there may just be "enough money." Johnny is stunned, but the engagement is still on. Maybe he should compromise. Maybe she'll come around.

Meanwhile, Linda, sulking up in the playroom, strikes up a friendship with the Potters, who have stumbled upon the room while trying to escape the sea of wealth and power of the party below. Their introduction to that event is one of the most delightful bits of writing and acting in the history of writing and acting.

I'm not telling you how it ends, but you can probably figure it out. You can get this picture streaming from various sources or on DVD. If you haven't seen it in a while, do yourself a favor. Then imagine how much better it would have been if Irene Dunne had been cast as Linda as originally planned. Don't get me wrong: I love Katharine Hepburn, but this isn't her best era. That begins with The Philadelphia Story.

I've always had a love/ hate relationship with I Love Lucy and the subsequent Lucy franchises (though mostly hate with those), but never, ever, have I felt anything but love and admiration for Lucille Ball. Her movies weren't that great and her acting wasn't particularly versatile, but her timing and comic intelligence were unparalleled. 

Born in Jamestown, NY to a telephone lineman father and concert pianist mother, Lucille  led a peripatetic life with her family, moving from state to state because of her father's job. When typhoid fever took him in 1915, her mother remarried into a strict family and left the children with step-grandparents who did not show young Lucille much affection, encouragement, or joy. Her maternal grandfather, however, was a devotee of theater and encouraged the girl to participate in plays and express herself. Lucille's grandfather, an eccentric socialist, also persuaded her in 1936 to register to vote as a Communist, a gesture of affection that kind of kicked her in the butt some years later.

Ball started off in New York as a model for Hattie Carnegie and a cigarette girl for Chesterfield cigarettes. After being fired from a few shows and road companies, Ball went to Hollywood for a short stint as a Goldwyn Girl, then moved there permanently in 1933 as a contract player for RKO. At that studio, she appeared in a few Astaire-Rogers films, which led to a breakout performance in one of my favorite pictures, Stage Door (1937).

From there it was wacky showgirls and nightclub singers, starring in not-so-great movies meant as vehicles for more prominent male stars, like Bob Hope and Red Skelton. During the 1940s, she made memorable dramatic and comedic radio appearances, including starring in her own popular show, My Favorite Husband opposite Richard Denning. Lucille Ball made the shrewd career move to transfer her radio success to the fledgling medium of television, using her popular radio program as a leaping off point. She insisted that her husband, Desi Arnaz, play her TV husband on the renamed show I Love Lucy.

And we all know how that turned out. She got rich and famous, both as a performer and producer, and deservedly so. Before Angela Lansbury gave all her old Hollywood pals roles on Murder, She Wrote, Lucille Ball often worked with writers, producers, musicians, and fellow actors from radio. She remained a major presence on television until the mid-1970s, when changing appetites diminished the popularity of her shows and the shows produced by her studio, Lucille Ball Productions. Thereafter, she appeared on awards shows, variety shows, and specials throughout the 1980s. 

In 1989, Lucille Ball underwent an aortic replacement surgery that ultimately failed. Her heart ruptured while she was in recovery and on April 26, 1989, Lucille Ball died at the age of 77.