Happy Halloween, Everybody! Let's talk about scary stuff, like devil-worshipping old people and misogynist obstetricians.

There's a lot going on in Rosemary's Baby, even if Roman Polanski didn't realize it. The film is Polanski's adaptation of Ira Levin's best-selling horror novel of the same name, and by all accounts (I've never read it), sticks remarkably close to it. It's the story of a young couple, struggling actor Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) and his wife Rosemary (Mia Farrow), who luck into a palatial apartment in the West 70s on the Park called The Bramford* when one of its many elderly residents suddenly dies. 

The Woodhouses are instantly glommed onto by the eccentric couple next door, Roman Castavet (Sidney Blackmer) and his wife Minnie (Ruth Gordon). Rosemary befriends what looks like the only other person under 70 living in the building, an ex-drug addict named Terry, whom the Castavets have taken in. Within a day or two, Terry is found outside the building, an apparent suicide from having jumped out the Castavets' apartment window. Minnie gives Rosemary a special good-luck charm; the same charm that Terry wore before, well, her luck ran out.

Soon Rosemary becomes the object of Minnie's charming, but constant attention and Guy develops a friendly attachment to the Castavets, running next door every time he gets a piece of good news. Like when the actor who got the career-making part Guy had hoped for suddenly goes blind and Guy is given the role after all. That kind of news.

Now that Guy is on the way up, he finally agrees to start the family Rosemary has apparently been pestering him for, so they start planning the right time to conceive. On Baby-Making Night, the Woodhouses have a romantic dinner, complete with candlelight, barrels of wine, and some homemade mousse from Minnie next door. Rosemary finds her dessert to be a bit chalky to the taste and doesn't finish it. A bit later, she starts feeling a little woozy, passes out, and has this horrible, but very realistic dream that she is being raped by a demon surrounded by a bunch of septuagenarian nudists, one of whom looks remarkably like Aunt Bee's best friend from the Andy Griffith Show.**

The next morning, she wakes up with scratches all down her back and Guy tells her, yeah, I went ahead and did it with you anyway, what can I tell you, we were both hammered. Rosemary does one of several "wait, WHAT?" moments that pepper this film, but is quickly dismissed and walked out on. Which also happens a lot.

I don't know what's scarier, being roofied then raped by the devil or having the kind of husband who says he had sex with you while you were unconscious by way of covering it up. Seriously. Guy is an unbelievably narcissistic d-bag all the way through this picture: he's dismissive, short-tempered, and whiny -- just the kind of person the devil likes to make a contract with.

Rosemary becomes pregnant and starts seeing a Dr. Hill (Charles Grodin) on the recommendation of a friend. Minnie won't have any of that no-name-OB nonsense and arranges for the famous Dr. Sapirstein (my pal, Ralph Bellamy) to take over Rosemary's care. Of course, this guy is so famous that no one dares question him, even when Rosemary starts to feel terrible pain, loses weight (and it's Mia Farrow, for Pete's sake, not a lot to work with there), and is miserable for months. "It'll pass" says Dr. Sapirstein, for weeks at a time, "I'll tell you when you have pain." When Rosemary breaks down and confides in some of her girlfriends that this hotshot doctor isn't helping her, they are appalled and insist she go back to Dr. Hill. Guy, of course, shouts at her, refusing to let her see Dr. Hill on the grounds that 1) Sapirstein will be insulted ("wait, WHAT?!"), 2) she's just being hysterical (geh), and 3) it'll be too expensive.***

Meanwhile, Rosemary's dear old friend, Hutch (Maurice Evans), is also concerned about her obvious ill health, and digs up some information about the unusual charm, the herb it contains, and the people who gave it to her. On the day he plans to meet with Rosemary to discuss his findings, he lapses into a mysterious coma and eventually dies. But not before arranging to send Rosemary a book all about witches, with a particular passage underlined -- a clue to the real identity of Roman Castavet. Turns out the Castavets run a coven, which includes Dr. Sapirstein and recent addition, Guy, whom Rosemary rightly surmises has made a pact with them: career advancement for their baby, to use as a sacrifice or whatever.

Now to me, what happens next is the most frightening part of the film. Rosemary, desperate to save her baby, grabs all the cash she can find (it's the Sixties: she probably doesn't have access to her own money), throws a few extra things in her hospital suitcase, and high-tails it to Dr. Hill's office. She tells him about the weird neighbors, the crazy "vitamin" drinks, the fact that Roman comes from Satan worshippers (it's in a book, look it up), and Dr. Hill is actually sympathetic on account of there being all kinds of weirdos in New York, until she gets to the part where she mentions that Dr. Sapirstein is her OB. At that point it is 100% clear that Dr. Hill is too afraid to undermine an influential colleague to take any action except  to call BOTH Dr. Sapirstein and her husband, Guy. And that's the doctor who ISN'T evil.

Turns out that scary dream was real, but it wasn't just any old demon, it was Satan, who, as Minnie says "chose you out of all the women in the whole world," arranged things so she could have his child, which, compared with Guy, is kind of a step up.

Mia Farrow is truly good in this movie. Sure she's wispy, but she's quite believable as a woman in love, amused but annoyed by meddling old neighbors, baffled by men who don't believe her own experiences are true. During the making of this film Frank Sinatra, the very recent husband of Mia Farrow, had her served with divorce papers -- on the set, in front of cast and crew -- because no wife of his was going to work, Baby. Maybe she drew on that experience a bit.

I like this film a lot. It's instructive and stylish and quite funny in places. Patsy Kelly is the pleasantest surprise, in my humble opinion, and Cassavetes the weakest. Plus Phil Leeds as a member of an Upper West Side coven is kind of a stroke of genius.

Beautiful, competent, stylish, Margaret Lindsay originally started out as a stage actress and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before moving to England to hone her craft on the London stage. It was her convincing British accent that led to a contract with Universal Studios in 1932. Universal loaned her out to Columbia and Fox until Warner Bros. picked up her option and gave her a real shot.

Between 1932 and 1948, Lindsay would make about 75 pictures, many of them A-pictures in supporting roles (jilted lover, faithful wife, patient girlfriend), very few of them in lead parts, and of those, all but a few in second-string, lower-budget fare.

Born in Dubuque, Iowa, the eldest of six children, Margaret Kies knew early on she wanted to be on stage. When her film opportunities dried up in the late 1940s, Lindsay turned to television and occasional movies

She never quite broke out as a star, but if you're a pre-Code Warner Bros. fan, you can't help but run across this likable, talented performer. Lindsay had a few break-out performances, most notably in The House of the Seven Gables opposite George Sanders and Vincent Price, but generally, she was the capable, dependable ingenue until time and studio imagination limited her opportunities.

There isn't a lot written about Margaret Lindsay, which is a shame. The fact that she managed to convince her parents to send her to acting school when they had many other kids to support; that she was successful enough to get a Hollywood contract before her 22nd birthday; and that she was a comparatively out lesbian for most of her life, makes me think the life of Margaret Lindsay would make truly interesting reading.

Her long-time companion was stage and television performer, Mary McCarty (tough Nurse Willoughby on Trapper John, M.D.), who, though younger by 13 years, predeceased Lindsay by one year.

Margaret Lindsay passed away on May 9, 1981 of emphysema at the age of 70. 

I recommend Jezebel for a good representation of the bulk of Lindsay's best work. She is secondary, but memorable, and occasionally gets to give Bette Davis some choice looks.

Jezebel (1938)
The House of the Seven Gables (1940)
Ellery Queen Mystery Series (1940-1942)
The Spoilers (1942)
Scarlet Street (1945)

This post is my contribution to the CMBA Blogathon: Forgotten Stars. Please take a moment to review all the excellent entries by other members of the Classic Movie Blog Association.

The Innocents, along with The Haunting (1963), is one of those movies I worry about returning to for fear it will not inspire in me the same wonderful feeling of looming terror I got from first viewing. I'm glad to say it holds up.

For a horror flick, The Innocents is pretty languid. It is an adaptation of  the Broadway play of the same name by William Archibald, which is turn was an adaptation of Henry James's short novel, The Turn of The Screw.  Truman Capote reworked much of the play into the screenplay for the film, which may explain its Gothic slowness. Set in an English country estate in the late 19th century, the story is of a novice governess whose first assignment is to care for -- almost wholly unsupervised -- the young niece and nephew of a London playboy (Michael Redgrave), who makes it charmingly clear that he is not interested in country family life. He hires Miss Giddens, not because she is especially (or demonstrably qualified) but because she agrees not to pester him with details or responsibilities, or bring up the last governess's death to young Flora; they were very close. Now, off you go.

Deborah Kerr plays Miss Giddens, the nervous, inexperienced governess. There is an anxiety about Miss Giddens that doesn't quite let up. Maybe it's just nerves about working for the first time and so very far from home. Maybe it's something else. When she meets little Flora (the luminous Pamela Franklin) in the garden of the gorgeous estate playing with her turtle, Rupert, Giddens is completely won over. The house is large and lovely; the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), is friendly and helpful; the boy, Miles (British scary kid staple, Martin Stephens), is away at school and will be home for the holidays. 

So far so good.

Except Flora keeps saying the Miles will be coming home soon (it's nowhere near the holidays). And it thunders a lot. And those gorgeous white roses keep shedding their petals no matter how freshly they've been cut. And Miss Giddens can't seem to get a good night's sleep, what with the dreams and all. And who was that man standing in the dovecote high in the tower?

Turns out Flora had correctly predicted Miles's imminent return, because he is on is way home after having been expelled from his boarding school for being a "corrupting influence." Miss Giddens can't imagine why, because he is such a lovely, agreeable boy, who very much loves his sister. 

Meanwhile, Miss Giddens is beginning to find Flora's continual humming of a sad song and her frequent wandering off to the lake to be troubling. One day, Miss Giddens sees a dark-eyed figure of a woman standing in the distant reeds by the lake. She hounds Mrs. Grose for more information about Miss Jessel, the children's last governess. Turns out the former (dead) governess had developed a tragic attachment to the uncle's former (also dead) valet, Peter Quint (played in light and shadow by Peter Wyngarde). After Quint met his end by slipping on some ice after a drunken night out, Miss Jessel (played at a terrifying distance by Clytie Jessop), went mad and drowned herself in the lake. Quint had been cruel to everyone, especially Miss Jessel, but young Miles doted on him.

With Miles back at home, the children start to act strangely, whispering to one another, and playing benign if slightly off-putting tricks on poor Miss Giddens, who keeps seeing Quint and Miss Jessel all over the place. Miss Giddens is convinced that their spirits are possessing the children and making them behave unnaturally close (if you know what I mean). She, in turn, behaves suspiciously toward the children all the time now and comes to believe that the youngsters can only be saved if they confess to being possessed.* Poor Mrs. Grose doesn't know what to think.

It doesn't end well. Let's just say that young Pamela Franklin was a convincing little screamer.

We are never quite sure whether Miss Giddens is going mad or if the spirits are indeed haunting the children. The film is replete with psycho-sexual undertones, but are they other-worldly in origin or the imaginings of a woman who is slowly unraveling? The director, Jack Clayton, leaves it deliberately ambiguous. 

The Innocents can feel a bit plodding and overwrought at times, but the cinematography is so breathtaking, and the haunting so uncertain, that you couldn't spend a more compelling, creepier hour and a half. Best of all, it can be watched for free on YouTube (in one go with Portuguese subtitles, or in pieces without), and does not suffer at all from a small screen viewing.

I realize it's Thursday, but this particular Wednesday's Child is not full of woe, but has come far and clearly has far to go.

Dean Stockwell is one of my favorite former child actor dudes, from Anchor's Aweigh to Battlestar Gallactica, he does the thing he does with charm and sweetness, even when he plays a crumb bum.

Born in Hollywood to vaudevillian mother, Nina Olivette, and Hollywood actor/singer Harry Stockwell, Dean Stockwell was probably only ever going to go into show business. Indeed, he and his elder brother, Guy, became child actors well before their teenage years, though Dean would have the longer resume in both film and television.

Stockwell's good looks and natural acting style helped him make a successful transition from child star to adolescent working actor, unlike many of his contemporaries. He took a bit of a break in the 1960s to do some hippie stuff with friends Dennis Hopper, Russ Tamblyn, and Neil Young, but still racked up quite a few TV credits. The man has worked more-or-less continuously since the age of 9 and has been a welcome presence on many a popular television show.

In his spare time, Stockwell is an artist whose medium is collage, and it's some pretty cool stuff: http://stockwellart.com/rds/?page_id=3.

A life well-lived.

I have loved Lillian Gish from the very first moment I saw her photograph in our family's aged coffee table book about "the movies." We're talking pre-school, so that makes her, hands down, the longest crush of my life.

The first full-length picture I saw her in that was not a clip in an anthology, or montage in a tribute was The Birth of a Nation (1915), that famous discomfiting picture, which everyone seems to want to show and discuss, but which isn't nearly as good as Broken Blossoms (1919), a film that is just as racist and disturbing. 

Miss Gish has always been the transcendent figure in these early troubling narratives.

Lillian Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio, to a drunken philanderer and an actress, Mary Robinson McConnell. Lillian and her sister, Dorothy, performed on the stage with their mother, who had only turned to acting in order to support her family after her husband abandoned them. Mrs. Gish also ran a candy store next to the Majestic Theater in East St. Louis, Illinois, where they had relocated to be near Lillian's aunt and uncle. After the theater burned down in 1912, the family moved to New York and there befriended a young actress named Gladys Smith, who worked with some guy called D.W. Griffith at the Biograph Studios. Gladys (better known as Mary Pickford) introduced the girls to Mr. Griffith, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Lillian and Dorothy Gish spent their early years at Biograph as extras and in short films. By 1915, Lillian's talent and (comparative) naturalness on screen made her a star; Dorothy would eventually become one of the screen's best-loved comediennes. Throughout the Teens and for most of the Twenties, Lillian Gish became known as "The First Lady of the Silent Screen," but wasn't much interested in working in film once sound was introduced: "I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive." And back to the stage she went for the next couple of decades.

But she did return to film every so often, and when she did, Lillian Gish made a huge impression. For her role as the mother of two crazy mixed up cowboys in the dopey Western soap opera, Duel in the Sun (1946), Gish got (and lost) her only Academy Award nomination. She should have got and won one for The Wind, but who am I? 

For a slight, angelic-looking person, Lillian Gish has always conveyed a determination and strength that belied her deceptively frail physique. In real life she was a workhorse: conservative, very private, and not a little anti-Semitic. She never married, believing marriage was a business, like acting, and she had no intention of having two jobs. The job she picked netted her millions, which she bequeathed at her death to establish The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, for “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” Spike Lee won it last year.

Lillian Gish died in her sleep at her home in Manhattan on February 27, 1993. She was 99 years old.

I will love her until the day I die.

I can't remember the last time I saw this picture in its entirety. I've seen the parodies and the drag homages a number of times fairly recently, but it's quite possible that it's been more than a decade since I watched the original.

Here's how the movie got back on my radar: A couple weeks ago, I saw Rain again and was feeling pretty sympathetic toward Joan Crawford. That got me in the mood to watch Mommie Dearest again, which I thought was hilarious when it came out and kind of boring and irritating* last weekend when I gave it another go. One of these days, I may write about that movie here, but don't hold your breath. It's a screechy, clunky, slog.

Naturally, Mommie D got me thinking about My Mother's Keeper, B.D. Hyman's awful, mean-spirited, whine-fest about growing up with Bette Davis for a mother, which I read and detested** when it came out in 1985. And B.D. Merrill (at the time) was the worst thing in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

So here we are back in 1962. 

And B.D. Merrill is still embarrassingly bad as the teenager who lives next door to former Hollywood star Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford) and her sister, Jane (Bette Davis). No one ever really sees Blanche, because she has been confined to a wheelchair since the mid-1930s, the result of a car accident for which Jane was responsible.

In the days of vaudeville, Jane was famous nationwide as "Baby" Jane Hudson, precocious singer, dancer, and breadwinner for the Hudson family. Father Hudson accompanied Jane on stage, spoiled the pants off her, and was cruel to and neglectful of plainer Blanche. Mother Hudson is cowed by her husband and younger daughter, but is comforting to Blanche, asking her after one particularly stinging slight, to please, as the years go by, remember to be kinder to Jane than their father is to her now.

Blanche does not forget this exhortation. 

Indeed, after talking pictures kill Jane's vaudeville career, Blanche finds her talent in the movies and becomes a big star. As part of her contract, Blanche insists that the studio find pictures for Jane, even though Jane can't act her way out of a paper bag, but Blanche made a promise. Now in her sister's shadow, adult Jane not only stinks, but drinks, and was stinking drunk the night of the crash that crippled her sister.

Back in 1962, Blanche is a virtual prisoner in her room with only a parakeet, a television, some books, a one-day-a-week maid named Elvira (Maidie Norman), and a summoning buzzer, to keep her entertained. Jane has become a blousy, overly-made-up, beslippered wreck, who is eaten up with jealousy when a TV station begins playing Blanche Hudson movies. This has been putting the color back in Blanche's cheeks and an extra drag in Jane's steps as she schleps three meals a day on a tray up to Blanche's room.

Concerned about Jane's increasingly erratic behavior (see parakeet), Blanche has been plotting to sell the house, put Jane in some kind of hospital, and move someplace where Elvira can take care of her full time. Elvira has had her suspicions about Jane for some time, particularly after finding out that Jane has been intercepting, opening, and writing obscenities on the wave of fan mail Blanche has been getting from the TV revival. 

Eventually, Jane gets wind of her sister's plan and begins to hatch one of her own: one that involves starving her sister to death*** and reviving her own career. She puts an ad in the paper for an accompanist and attracts a creepy young composer named Edwin Flagg (an extra young, extra creepy Victor Buono), whose goal is to bilk Jane of every spare penny she has.

Blanche, who has already missed a few meals, has begun to put two-and-two together. While Jane is out picking up adult-sized versions of her old costumes, Blanche wheels herself into Jane's room where she discovers that Jane has been practicing and perfecting Blanche's signature. There are also a few conspicuous check stubs for items that Blanche did not purchase. Completely wigged out, Blanche painstakingly hauls herself down the stairs to the telephone and calls the nuthatch doctor and begs him to come over.

At the exact moment Jane returns from her errands. 

It all goes south pretty quickly for Blanche from there. Jane hauls her back upstairs, ties and gags her, and calls the doctor back in Blanche's voice (actually Joan Crawford's; Davis couldn't imitate her) to say it was all a mistake and everything's fine. Jane also gets an opportunity to fire Elvira, who instantly becomes wicked suspicious and tries (and fails) to save Blanche. That part scared me pretty bad when I was a kid.

Things begin to spiral out of control for Jane. She's done one horrible thing after another and becomes completely unhinged. While Blanche is starving and dying, Jane takes her to the beach -- the last place the sisters were ever happy together. With her dying breath, Blanche tells Jane a secret that softens them both in a way you didn't think possible.

Bette Davis is truly excellent in this film. Her anger, jealousy, weird bits of delight, and even the crazy all worked for me. Joan Crawford is also remarkably understated for her and is very affecting.

But it's Bette's picture. 

I know there's a lot of talk about their famous feud during the making of this film -- how much they hated each other, the pranks they pulled on set. I'm not sure how much of those rumors are true. It seems that after the film's success, the two developed a well-documented hostility toward one another: Bette was nominated for an Academy Award and Joan was not and when Bette lost, Joan went out of her way to rub it in her face. Not nice, but who cares?

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is one hell of a good movie that I shouldn't have waited so long to revisit.