Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

VOICES

   Everyone’s (well, almost everyone) favorite movie musical Singing in the Rain (1952) is all about how the transition from silent to talking films spelled the end of many film acting careers whose voices were not good enough for the big screen. In the first decade of talkies, Hollywood studios thought the most pleasant voices were aristocratic British types. Ladies and gentlemen in evening clothes populated many dramas speaking with refined British vowels, dropping the “R” at the end of words.

Throughout the following decades, voices of American actors, particularly through the preponderance of westerns and gangster films, gradually changed to allow a more natural American sound. But since British actors were frequently working in Hollywood, audiences seemed not to be confused by hearing both Gary Cooper and Brian Aherne in a double feature. Or Clark Gable and Ray Milland. Or Robert Taylor and Robert Donat. There were still American actors who tried to affect that slightly British tone to their speech (Joan Crawford comes to mind), but for the most part, the voices one heard in the films of the Golden Age were American.

So, occasionally, I am struck by the sound of voices so elegant and mellifluous, the enunciation so exact, that it is worth recommending. The most recent experience of this was in the film Lost Horizon, from 1937, which I saw again last night. The star, Ronald Colman, had such a voice. It was a pleasure to hear him as Robert Conway, an important man of the world who finds himself out of the world in a valley in the Himalayas. Adapted from the novel by James Hilton, it had been a while since I had seen the film, and I appreciated the lure of this Utopia even more. It’s a lovely story costarring a young and pretty Jane Wyatt. She is certainly an enticement to renounce the world and fame and fortune to stay in Shangri La, but the main reason is that he has been chosen to replace the High Lama. The wonderful set design and score by Dimitri Tiomkin give credibility to the other worldly valley in which the English plane-crash survivors find themselves. Edward Everett Horton and Thomas Mitchell play two of the survivors who find new value for life in Shangri La, whereas John Howard, who plays Ronald Colman’s brother, is unable to appreciate the peace and tranquility, and essentially obligates his brother to leave with him. Admirably directed by Frank Capra.

No actor could be counted on to bring the classic figures of literature to the screen as well as Colman.  His portrayal of two characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to another character move the plots in both stories.  Colman as Sidney Carton in the 1935 adaptation of the Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, directed by Jack Conway, is the voice one hears saying the novel’s famous lines, “It is a far, far better thing I do…”

In the 1937 The Prisoner of Zenda, Colman again plays lookalikes: a touring Englishman and an endangered king, who he must impersonate in order to prevent the evil Prince Michael (Raymond Massey) from taking the throne.  Along the way, he falls in love with the king’s betrothed, Princess Flavia (the lovely Madeleine Carroll) and finishes with a spectacular sword fight with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  Directed by John Cromwell, with a great score by Alfred Newman and beautiful black and white photography by James Wong Howe.

My favorite Ronald Colman film is the one where his voice is perfectly matched by the voice of his costar, Greer Garson. In the 1942 adaptation of another James Hilton novel, Random Harvest, Colman plays a World War I amnesiac who is helped by Garson’s character until an accident separates them and restores the memory of his earlier life.  I can’t help but think of Carol Burnett’s comedy version of the amnesia plot device, because on paper it does sound ridiculous. But on the screen, the reappearance of Garson into his new life produces real suspense as to whether he will ever remember her. The two actors play well together in one of the great love stories and the elegant sound of their voices make the two hours seem like a concert. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

 

A different kind of precise diction is heard in the voice of James Mason. The remarkable thing about James Mason is that he pronounced every letter in the words he spoke.  This is not the norm even for the actors mentioned here, who might occasionally slur one letter into the next if that is the way they were taught.

The following films are a few highlights of Mason’s career of interesting roles. But he seemed very comfortable playing the ever-so-articulate villain, the imperfect man, or the outsider.  

In 1949, Mason starred as a successful businessman who strays from wife, Barbara Stanwyck, to hang around with Ava Gardner in the  adaptation of Marcia Davenport’s novel, East Side, West Side. He is tortured by it and repents too late.  Also starring Van Heflin and Cyd Charisse and directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

Many people will remember him as the cold-blooded nemesis of Cary Grant in North by Northwest, the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, costarring Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau.

Mason was a strong but slightly menacing Captain Nemo in the adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954) directed by Richard Fletcher. The film, costarring Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre, is considered a great adaptation of the Verne novel, with sets that were faithful to Verne’s descriptions with great special effects.

A completely different type of man was the character, Norman Maine, in the second (in my opinion, the best} version of A Star is Born (1954).  Directed by George Cukor, who agreed to direct because Judy Garland was in the lead role. Mason gives a poignant portrayal of an actor at the end of his career who realizes that he is a drag on his wife’s success.

One of my favorites, A Touch of Larceny from 1960, directed by Guy Hamilton, has Mason playing a British Navy Commander, who pretends to defect in order to get money to woo Vera Miles.  But the best part is that George Sanders is his other costar and Sanders rivals Mason here as the best English-speaking voice.  George Sanders, also a rival for Vera Miles in the film, doesn’t believe James Mason is a defector and works against him.  A great-sounding film!

While we’re on the subject, George Sanders appears in one of my all-time favorites, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir from 1947.  The stars are Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison, but Sanders plays the role of a charming cad, which he does rather well, as in All About Eve, from 1950 except that we are glad he’s a cad because Eve is so ruthless. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed both films.

Sanders always sounded like a scoundrel even when he was playing a mostly good guy, as he did in the series of “Saint” films based on the Leslie Charteris books. The Saint Strikes Back from 1939, was the first, directed by John Farrow, and like the rest of the series, is entertaining because Sanders uses his cultured voice to express a humorous disregard for the lowly criminals he encounters.

 

In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) directed by Albert Lewin, Sanders has the perfect voice for pronouncing Oscar Wilde’s witticisms in the dark fable of the young gentleman whose soul becomes decayed from a life of sin.

In 1940, Sanders tones down the disdainful attitude to be one of the good guys with costar Joel McCrea, in the excellent World War II spy thriller, Foreign Correspondent. Also starring Herbert Marshall and Larraine Day, it is directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In another Hitchcock thriller from 1940, Rebecca, Sanders is back to being a cad.

 

While we’re on the subject of Rebecca, I next turn your attention to its star, Laurence Olivier, whose voice is also quite remarkable in its elegance. But Olivier’s acting voice has a quality besides precision. He uses meter or rhythm.  He is able to convey real feeling to the lines by structuring the rhythm of the words. In the revelatory scene with costar, Joan Fontaine, the way he says “You think I loved Rebecca?  You think that? I hated her.” (oh, spoiler alert) is so memorable that I can hear it in my head.

His diction is even more pronounced in Wuthering Heights, the 1939 William Wyler version of the Emily Bronte novel. In the story, Olivier as the mistreated orphan, Heathcliffe, eventually runs away and comes back some years later as a cultured gentleman, where he has acquired a gentleman’s way of speaking, much to the resentment of the David Niven character who has married Cathy, Heathcliffe’s love.  His reaction to Cathy’s betrayal which is played out as cold revenge throughout the rest of the story, begins here in this scene where his diction is even more clipped and excessively polite.  The line “It occurs to me that I have not yet congratulated you on your marriage” has so many syllables that when he speaks it with such fluidity, we can’t help being impressed.

A special treat is the film that pairs Olivier with his wife, Vivien Leigh, who also has a lovely speaking voice. That Hamilton Woman from 1941, the story of the love affair of Lady Hamilton, an ambassador’s wife, with the married Lord Nelson, the naval hero who defeated Napoleon.  The scandalous, but doomed, affair, nevertheless is a great love story.  Directed by Alexander Korda.

 

But my favorite costar who matches Olivier’s voice in elegance is, once again, Greer Garson in the 1940 production of Pride and Prejudice . It is quite magical to hear them together reciting Jane Austen’s words. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, there were cinematic alterations of the novel, but the overall quality of the cast and production puts this above most of the subsequent remakes.  But even Jane Austen purists will take great pleasure in listening to Olivier as Mr. Darcy and Garson as Elizabeth Bennet.

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Now is the discontent of our winter. 

    

        How to cope? For me, film offers two different escape routes. One seems to be not an escape but immersion in a world so bleak that your own seems slightly more optimistic. I am referring to the film noir, French, for black film, both in the dark world their stories take place, and also in their appearance, mostly black and white. Lately, I have seen, for the first time, four films, from the forties, where the noir was born, thanks to the noir night on Turner Classic Movies, that match my cynicism.

       

The Phantom Lady (1944)

      Directed by Robert Siodmak, Ella Raines is the devoted secretary who is determined to clear her boss, played by Alan Curtis, of the charge of murdering his wife. She, basically, carries the film, even when the boss's best friend, Franchot Tone, offers to help.  Thomas Gomez plays the reasonable police detective.  Oh, the phantom lady of the title refers to the boss's alibi -- an unknown woman with whom he spent the evening in question.

Pitfall (1948)

     Bored insurance agent and family man, Dick Powell, makes the mistake of getting involved with Lizabeth Scott.  She has a boyfriend in prison and a freelance insurance agent who is frighteningly obsessive about her, played by who else but Raymond Burr.  Jane Wyatt plays Powell's wife who resents being kept in the dark about the dangerous situation they are in.  Directed by Andre De Toth.

I Love Trouble (1948)

       So here's Franchot Tone again.  This time as a private detective hired to find the client's wife.  Only her sister, played by Janet Blair, doesn't recognize the woman in the picture the client has supplied, and there are two other women played by Janis Carter and Adele Jergens who you need to keep track of.  Then there's the secretary, the always entertaining Glenda Farrell.  At some point, we meet John Ireland and Raymond Burr, again -- and many other familiar faces from the noir world. You may not be able to keep up with the plot, but it's entertaining in a weird way. Directed by S. Sylvan Simon.

Too Late for Tears (1949)

       Lizabeth Scott again.  This time she and her husband come into possession (in the most unbelievable way) of $60,000, which was even bigger money in 1949. Husband, Arthur Kennedy wants to turn it in, but not Liz. We learn she will go to any ends to keep it.  Don DeFore comes to the apartment to see his friend, Kennedy, but meets sister, Kristine Miller, who lives across the hall, and who is very suspicious of her sister-in-law.  Lizabeth evades them but runs into Dan Duryea, who wants that money.  Even though he may be Mr. Noir, he finds that he is no match for Ms. Scott, who wants that money more.  Directed by Byron Haskin.

         The other escapist films are not new to me -- they are films I have rejected in the past as not worth my time.  These are the totally strange movies starring Esther Williams;  strange because a "dramatic" script is constructed around a water venue so that Ms. Williams, the champion swimmer, can swim. But, this seems to be just what the doctor ordered at the lowest point of gloom.  They did not in any way require my emotional involvement.  I just watched and in the process of doing so, I realized what pretty pictures they were.  Esther was made for technicolor and vice versa.

The Duchess of Idaho (1950)

           This film is ostensibly about the plot Esther and her friend, Paula Raymond hatch to get Paula's boss, John Lund, to see Paula as wife material and not just a secretary. But most of it takes place in Sun Valley, at a resort with phenomenal entertainment, like Lena Horne, Van Johnson, Eleanor Powell. Not to worry, however, there are swimming production numbers with underwater scenes that we are to believe the resort guests are watching. Everyone looks lovely. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard.

Neptune's Daughter (1949)

        The story here is the weakest part of the film with a plot that derives from mistaken identity -- how original! Esther's character, a swimsuit designer, tries to keep her sister, played by Betty Garrett from playboy, Ricardo Montalban, when all along, Betty is in love with Red Skelton, and expresses same in Academy Award winning song, Baby, it's Cold Outside. Lots of good-looking swimsuits and a great aquatic finale. Directed by Edward Buzzell.

On an Island with You (1948)

       

      Movie star Esther, engaged to Ricardo Montalban is shooting on location in the South Pacific and is pursued by a smitten naval officer, played by Peter Lawford.  Jimmy Durante provides some comedy, Xavier Cougat and his orchestra provide some music, and Cyd Charisse provides some great dancing.  Esther, while having little chemistry with Lawford, looks terrific and has a great wardrobe by Irene.  The technicolor is as mesmerizing as Moana 2.  Directed by Richard Thorpe.

Bathing Beauty (1944)

       Esther, in her first co-starring role -- Red Skelton is the star. They are a married couple having a crisis and have split. She returns to teach at a girls' school. He tries to win her back. That's all you need to know about the plot. It's a silly excuse for a musical with Xavier Cougat and his orchestra, Harry James, Helen Forrest, and others. Also a cast that includes Basil Rathbone, Donald Meek, and Janis Paige. This is pretty much the format MGM followed with Esther and was very popular: lightweight plot, good music, great wardrobe and an aquatic extravaganza to end the film, all in stunning technicolor.


So, take a look at whatever works for you. Remember to avoid really good movies -- you don't want to be emotionally triggered. Stick with these characters stuck in dismal depths or in hollow heights of eye-candy.

And if you're not ready for end of the season celebrations, here are some fun films that show what it's supposed to look like.


Ginger Rogers and David Niven looking lovely in Bachelor Mother (1939) have a great New Years Eve date. Directed by Garson Kanin.

William Powell and Myrna Loy celebrate in a Chinese restaurant in the second film of the series, After the Thin Man (1936), directed by W.S. Van Dyke.

If it's poignancy that moves you, Ginger Rogers stars again, this time with Joseph Cotten in a tender tale of two troubled people who meet over the holidays in I'll Be Seeing You (1944). Directed by William Dieterle.

                           

Also, my favorite seasonal classic and romance, Remember the Night (1939), with Fred MacMurray as the assistant D.A., who unwisely brings thief, Barbara Stanwyck, back home to Indiana for the holidays. In celebrating with the family, they manage to make romantic sparks fly! Directed by Mitchell Leisen.

       On the other hand, you could immerse yourself in a Marx brothers marathon, starting with The Cocoanuts (1929), followed by Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) Duck Soup (1933),  A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races 1937), At the Circus (1939), and if you have room in your brain for one more, choose, Go West (1940). I guarantee that while you're watching the brothers' classic anarchy, you won't remember what was troubling you.

                 Good viewing to all!

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Something for Everyone, 

A Comedy Tonight*

        I’d been feeling a little low and was casting about for something to snap me out of it. Browsing my collection of DVDs, I realized that there were many films that had the power to suspend the blahs, and so, naturally, I made a list.

 

There was a time in Hollywood when there were stars in such abundance – men and women who excelled in drama and comedy, they could move from one genre to the other seamlessly.  Benefitting from great scripts and great directors, certain actors, although dependable in drama, had a unique ability that transformed scripts into the classic comedies that still make us laugh.

 

So many to choose from as examples.  But starting with the women (and why not?), I offer six actresses who had the ability to make comedies great.  There are those women who are funny – their voices, their expressions, the situations where they may not look glamorous.  Then there are women who know how to carry a comedy by the way they master the dialogue and match it with expressions and attitude.

 

Jean Arthur

Arthur has been convincing in some serious dramas like History is Made at Night, directed by Frank Borzage, where she shines in a love story opposite Charles Boyer and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington directed by Frank Capra, where she supports brand-new senator, James Stewart. But there’s no doubt she is known for her ability to sell a comedy, usually, as the victim of circumstances beyond her control. Two of the best known of these are from director, George Stevens: The More the Merrier with Joel McCrea and The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant,

Less well-known are If Only You Could Cook from 1935, directed by William A. Seiter, and my favorite, Easy Living from 1937, directed by Mitchell Leisen, with a script by Preston Sturges.

If Only You Could Cook co-stars Herbert Marshall as the head of an automobile company who, in a dispute with his board of directors, walks out in a huff and finds himself in the park, sharing a bench with Arthur.  Arthur is unemployed and reading the help-wanted ads, and assuming Marshall is also looking for a job, comments that there seem to only be jobs available for couples.  Thus the plan evolves that they will pretend to be a married couple – a cook and butler.  They land a job with an amiable gangster, played by Leo Carillo, who has a suspicious sidekick, played by Lionel Stander. Marshall’s character goes along with the ruse on a lark, and because he likes Arthur’s character and goes to a lot of trouble to keep his identity a secret.

 

Easy Living starts with an angry Edward Arnold throwing his over-extravagant wife’s mink coat off the roof of their Park Avenue home, and then having second thoughts.  The coat has landed on Arthur, ruining her hat, and Arnold tells her to keep the coat and buys her a new hat while driving her to work.  While in the car, he tries to explain to her how compound interest works, which is one of best scenes that Preston Sturges ever wrote.  The plot of the film is about how people treat unemployed Arthur when she is wearing a mink coat and they think she is ‘sponsored’ by tycoon. J.B. Ball (Arnold). Conveniently J.B. Ball has a son, played by Ray Milland, who provides the love interest. Another hilarious scene is in the automat, for those who remember what that was.

Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne, best known in a long career for dramas like George Stevens’ Penny Serenade from 1941, and I Remember Mama from 1948, was equally famous for her comedies with Cary Grant: The Awful Truth from 1937 and My Favorite Wife from 1940,  directed by Leo McCarey.

Less known, but worth a look: Charles Vidor’s Together Again from 1944, Tay Garnett’s Joy of Living  from 1938 and my favorite, Richard Boleslawski’s Theodora Goes Wild from 1936.

Together Again costars Charles Boyer as a sophisticated New York sculptor who thinks he has been commissioned to create a statue of the beloved former mayor of a small town by his widow. The widow, played by Dunne, who has succeeded her husband as mayor, and is the soul of respectability, got into a bit of scandalous trouble while in the big city and wants to forget about New York and Boyer. Although this is a lot like the plot of the earlier Theodora Goes Wild, the chemistry with Boyer, who excels in a comedy role, adds a different element. Note: The title wins the prize for most misleading, having nothing to do with the plot.

 

Joy of Living is the story of Dunne as a successful Broadway musical star who supports a demanding and ungrateful family, played by an ensemble of familiar faces:  Alice Brady, Guy Kibbee, Lucille Ball, Billy Gilbert.  She is pursued by an admirer, played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who tries to convince her to run away with him to the South Sea Island where he’s heading. (Some might notice a similar theme to Bombshell from 1933, the Jean Harlow vehicle of the ultimate put upon star, mentioned below.)  But there are some very funny scenes here and Dunne’s lovely rendition of the musical score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields.

Theodora Goes Wild is the best known of the three.  Small town girl, Dunne, lives an ultra-respectable life with her two aunts. But she has a dark secret.  She has written a best-selling romance novel under a pseudonym. While visiting her uncle in New York, and living the life of her alter-ego, she meets and attracts a friend of her publisher, played by Melvyn Douglas, who accidentally gets a clue to her real identity.  He follows her home and forces her to give him a job to keep her secret. How they work it out is complicated and makes for a delightful romcom.

Jean Harlow

Harlow’s short life was spectacularly brilliant in Hollywood terms. If you only know Jean from clips – like the often-shown scene with Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight, you tend to dismiss her as a glamorous, but kind-of-cheap, confection given predictable lines to match. But if you actually watch her films, you will realize what a polished comedy actress she was – that the tinny, cheap voice is one she uses when the role calls for it and is absent when she is playing another kind of character.

Red-Headed Woman from 1932 is a pre-code gem that leaves no doubt why gold-digger Harlow was irresistible. The Girl from Missouri from 1934 is very similar to the plot of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because Anita Loos wrote both.  Unlike the Marilyn Monroe character, Harlow’s character is very much out to accept jewels from rich men. 

Bombshell from 1933 seemed to be a parody of Harlow’s real life. She plays a big star named Lola Burns, with a troop of hangers-on: her ne’er-do-well father and brother, played by Frank Morgan and Ted Healy, respectively, her personal assistant, played by Una Merkel, her maid, played by Louise Beavers, her director, played by Pat O’Brien, and particularly, her nemesis/agent, played by Lee Tracy, who is always thwarting Harlow’s every attempt to change her image, of which she is sincerely tired. She thinks that she has finally found a way to escape his non-stop publicity stunts – she plans to adopt a baby and acquire a new image. The dialogue is rapid fire in this hilarious pre-code comedy, directed by Victor Fleming.

Harlow is a little less manic, but no less funny, playing Spencer Tracy’s fiancée in Libeled Lady from 1936. Tracy runs a newspaper and to hear his fiancée’s opinion, the newspaper runs him. Every time they are supposed to be married, a crisis at the paper requires a postponement. This time the paper is being sued by socialite, Myrna Loy, for libel and millions are at stake. The only one who can save the day is a former reporter played by William Powell, who devises a plan that involves Harlow’s character pretending to marry him. Tracy sees no problem with marrying his fiancée off to Powell for the sake of the paper, and Harlow’s character spends much of the film resenting the way she is disrespected and misused. But Powell’s character has an equal number of hilarious scenes (Powell fishing for trout is laugh-out-loud). Deftly directed by Jack Conway in a time when a studio could put four of Hollywood’s biggest stars in one film. They just don’t make them like this anymore.

Katherine Hepburn

 

Katherine Hepburn made quite a few comedies in her career of more than five decades. Most of her early film career was serious drama, the first film that could be considered a comedy was, in fact, the definitive screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby from 1938 with Cary Grant, followed by the 1940 hit, The Philadelphia Story, with Cary Grant and James Stewart.  After that, nothing in the comedy line until Adam’s Rib with Spencer Tracy in 1949, which is not on my favorite list, despite being a showcase for the comedy talents of Jean Hagen and Judy Holliday.  And despite being written by the same couple (Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin) and directed by the same director (George Cukor) as Pat and Mike from 1952, also with Tracy, which is on my list of favorites. I should mention that The African Queen from 1951, which is usually considered an adventure/romance, contains great comic performances by both Hepburn and co-star Humphrey Bogart.  Almost twenty years after Bringing Up Baby, she made Desk Set in 1957, also with Tracy, which is my second favorite Hepburn comedy.

 

Desk Set, directed by Walter Lang, is the story of Bunny Watson (Hepburn), the head of the research department of a television network – in the dark ages before everything was computerized. The women in this department relied on books! If the film had nothing else, I would still have enjoyed it, as I have always been partial to stories in libraries. But this film has more -- a fine cast:  Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall, as Hepburn’s research department associates, Gig Young as her consistently disappointing beau, and Spencer Tracy as the man who is tasked with bringing efficiency to the department. This cast works very well together and gives the impression at times that they are ad-libbing, thanks to the script adapted from the stage by Henry and Phoebe Ephron. There are some truly funny and memorable (for me) scenes, particularly the interplay between Hepburn and Blondell and the alcohol-loosened Hepburn at the office Christmas party.

The other great screenwriting team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin who were responsible for the 1949 film, Adam’s Rib, seemed to have acquired a more modern model for the relationship between men and women by 1952 when they wrote Pat and Mike.  Whereas in Adam’s Rib, attorney, Hepburn, defends the woman her husband, district attorney, Spencer Tracy, is prosecuting, and seems to be accused of wrecking their marriage for doing so, in Pat and Mike, Mike, played again by Tracy, promotes multi-athlete, Pat (Hepburn) in a relationship he describes as five-0 – five-0.  Just the titles of the two films tells you about the way women are considered in them. 

Hepburn’s character in Pat and Mike is Pat Pemberton, a three-sport athlete who tends to freeze up whenever her fiancé is in the audience.  Mike, played by Spencer Tracy, is a sports promoter/agent who sees the financial potential in her talent and having her with his agency, as long as he can keep the fiancé away.  They are from two very different worlds, which he recognizes, she from the upper class, and he from the more streetwise set. She knows she needs help and decides to trust him.  He thinks his street smarts put him in control. As their relationship develops, some truly funny scenes occur to disabuse him of that idea.

In spite of the fact that she was depicted as a scatterbrained disaster for Cary Grant’s character, Hepburn’s character in the 1938 film, Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, seemed to me the most liberated, perhaps reflecting the times. Katherine Hepburn was comfortable in the role of the upper-class young woman commanding a certain respect, even when she is playing an idiot like her character, Susan Vance. She operates with ease in a summer frock or a Chinese costume, in an evening gown or golf togs, dealing with servants, driving cars, and generally getting her way. When she plays tennis or golf on film, we get the impression that she really plays tennis and golf. There is a confidence in the way she wears clothes, including trousers, which along with the Bryn Mawr accent, tells us that she may be a scatterbrain but she is definitely in charge of her life. In the end, we are not sure if Susan relentlessly intruded into the life of Cary Grant’s character, David Huxley, unintentionally, or if it was her plan all along, because the end result was what she wanted – David breaks his engagement to his fiancée and confesses his love to her.

Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard played comedy roles with great abandon, unafraid to shed the glamorous image for a laugh. She, too, died young, in 1942, but had made 80 films in her short life, since the silent era, getting some comedy training in Mack Sennett shorts in 1928. By 1934, she had become one of Paramount’s top stars, and starred in the comic Twentieth Century with John Barrymore, where she showed that she had a real talent for comedy.

Lombard plays the actress, Lily Garland, who has graduated from the ingenue creation of director, Oscar Jaffe, played by Barrymore, to Hollywood star.  Barrymore wants her back in his latest play to save his failing company and tries to get her under contract when they are on the Twentieth Century, the Chicago/New York train. Lily has no intention of returning to the controlling Jaffe. Barrymore chews up the scenery, and Lombard, in her first big film, is a match. Howard Hawks directs one of the first screwball comedies, an experience that is honed in his later classics, Bringing Up Baby in 1938, and His Girl Friday in 1940 (with the help of the writing of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who also wrote The Front Page, the play and two earlier film versions before His Girl Friday).

Lombard best-known comedy is probably My Man Godfrey from 1936, nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including best actress. Also in 1936, one of four films she made with Fred MacMurray, The Princess Comes Across, where she tries to pass herself off as a princess, doing a broad impersonation of Garbo, in order to further her acting career. My favorite with MacMurray is Hands Across the Table, with Lombard as a manicurist who is intent on marrying a rich man and helping MacMurray marry a rich woman. Predictably, their plans fall through. She and MacMurray had good chemistry, and there are some very romantic scenes as well as comedy, skillfully directed by Mitchell Leisen.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith from 1941 has the distinction of being the only real comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Co-starring Robert Montgomery, as Lombard’s husband, this happily married couple has their life turned upside down when it turns out that through a technicality, their marriage has been invalidated. Montgomery, who I think is rather good in comedy roles, has trouble convincing Lombard that he is sufficiently anxious to exchange their vows again.  His situation is made worse by his partner and friend, played by Gene Raymond, deciding to court Lombard, now that he has the chance.  And of course there is the meddling, disapproving mother-in-law, played by Esther Dale.

 

Her last film was the 1942 To Be or Not to Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch (remade in 1983 by Mel Brooks with Anne Bancroft). Her co-star, Jack Benny, had the all the funny bits, but Lombard carries the comedy drama well. They play the Turas, stars of an acting company in Poland when the Germans invade in 1939, and the company becomes involved in a plan to save a list of names in the underground.  It was rather daring, an anti-Nazi comedy in 1942 (it was made a year earlier, but withheld until the U.S. entered the war), but it makes a clear case for art versus barbarity with sharp wit and a matchless cast of characters.   

Rosalind Russell

I could not finish this list without a mention of Rosalind Russell who is the costar of my favorite comedy, His Girl Friday, with Cary Grant. After that role of ace reporter, Hildy Johnson, Russell’s comedies throughout the forties are less screwball than morality plays, with Russell playing no less than ten successful career women who eventually realize that being a wife is real success, although This Thing Called Love with Melvyn Douglas (1940), Tell it to the Judge (1949) are less offensive screwball types.

In This Thing Called Love, directed by Alexander Hall, Roz is a consultant to an insurance company, who has written an article suggesting the divorce rate would decrease if prospective couples would take the time to know each other outside the bedroom before consummating the marriage.  She suggests three months as a good trial period, and she is convinced that she should try out the theory in her own life, informing fiancé, Melvyn Douglas, of the plan. Naturally he thinks she will change her mind as soon as they are living together. Douglas and Russell are so good at this kind of comedy and they are backed by a fine supporting cast:  Binnie Barnes, Allen Joslyn and Lee J. Cobb.

By 1949, career women were even less in favor, but in Tell it to the Judge, directed by Norman Foster, Russell’s character, Marsha, a lawyer, is being considered for an appointment to the bench, and is worried that her divorce from Pete, played by Robert Cummings, might work against her. The couple divorced due to a misunderstanding, are still in love, and decide to remarry, Her father, played by Harry Davenport, tries to thwart their plans because he thinks it will ruin her chances for the appointment. There follows a surfeit of misunderstandings that include Gig Young and Marie McDonald, as plans are thwarted and double thwarted. Although Russell is her usual master of snappy dialogue, it is Robert Cummings, that shines in a role that showed his gift for comedy, which may have been why he successfully transitioned to television sitcom.

One film that stands out among the career woman formula plot is Take a Letter Darling from 1942. Yes, Roz is a high-powered business executive, and yes, she does end up falling in love, but the path of this story has some great dialogue, wonderful performances by a small cast, and great direction – once again, by the highly recognized as underrated, Mitchell Leisen, (who, if you recall is responsible for the superb comedies, Easy Living with Jean Arthur, and Hands Across the Table with Carole Lombard, mentioned above).

This time Russell is a partner in an advertising agency with Robert Benchley . She needs a male ‘secretary’ to act as a buffer at various social affairs that are vital to getting agency business. As she puts it, it keeps the wives from being jealous and the men from making passes. Fred MacMurray plays a penniless artist who desperately needs the good salary so he can pay his debts and move to Mexico to paint. It is not an easy relationship and things fall apart when they are at the estate of prospective clients, tobacco company heirs, brother and sister, played by MacDonald Carey and Constance Moore, who present amorous temptations to the fake couple. It was a rather unusual, quasi gender-bending story for its time. If it were made today, you can imagine the predictable situations that were not so predictable in 1942.

Playing ace reporter, Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday, besides being a time-tested, comedy classic (a play and two previous film versions by Hecht and MacArthur), Russell followed a slightly different career woman narrative.  In this version of the story, Hildy is a woman, and is tired of the news business and her ex-husband, ex-boss, Walter Burns, played by Cary Grant.  When the film begins, she is off to get married, when Walter tricks her into turning in one last story and possibly saving a man’s life. For the rest of the film she is constantly trying to get away, but is always drawn back to by the lure of a scoop.  This conflict is played out with rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, the signature of director, Howard Hawks, and hilarious scenes courtesy of the Hecht/MacArthur script and a great cast.  I have watched this classic many, many times and each time I am able to discover something new to laugh at.

 

Although, my subject matter is usually confined to the Golden Age of cinema in Hollywood, I need to point out that Rosalind Russell continued to prove her ability to dominate in a comedy. For example, her performance in Auntie Mame in 1958, directed by Morton DeCosta, showed she hadn’t lost a step. And in 1962, she starred with Hayley Mills in the beloved and hilarious The Trouble with Angels, directed by Ida Lupino. Although the comedy was supplied by Mills and her best friend and follower, June Harding, Russell’s reactions were as necessary as their hijinks.

 

 

 * A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim