Watchingwell   

             Curated classic films

Season’s Greetings!

        It's April and although we are not likely to think Spring when snow is visible out the window, we still can think -- baseball!  Yes, baseball in the snow in several cities this month.  Balaclavas under baseball caps -- what planet is this? It is Earth, of course -- where else would such a gratuitously-complicated sport have been invented? Well, the answer to that is that it is not a sport, it is a ritual, part of the authentic American culture, which has even penetrated the cultures of other nations.  Hence, everyone, whether they know the rules, or even like the game, relates to a story about baseball, and Hollywood has played a part in this.  Some of the following films are better than others, but they all offer American audiences something familiar and reassuring about the baseball mythology of teamwork and individual aspirations, disappointment and redemption, often seen through the lens of family memories.

Gary Cooper was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (1942).  Directed by Sam Wood, and co-starring Teresa Wright as his wife, this is the prototype sports biography, with Gehrig's illustrious career ended by ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), and his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, declaring himself, "the luckiest man on the face of the earth", insuring his and the film's immortality.





Speaking of "pride", there was also The Pride of St. Louis (1952), the story of Hall of Fame pitcher, Jerome "Dizzy" Dean, starring Dan Dailey.  Directed by Harmon Jones and co-starring Joanne Dru and Richard Crenna.






                                                Another biopic, The Stratton Story (1949), is about pitcher, Monty Stratton, who lost his leg in a hunting accident and was able to resume his career.  Starring James Stewart and June Allyson and directed by Sam Wood, this is an uplifting, well-acted story.





A biography that is not so  uplifting is Fear Strikes Out (1957), directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Anthony Perkins as Billy Piersall, a popular player in Boston, who suffers a mental breakdown, after being subjected to years of  brutal, perfectionist standards by his father, played by Karl Malden, in one of his best roles.




The Winning Team (1952) is the entertaining story of Grover Cleveland Alexander, the Hall of Fame pitcher of the early 1900s, starring Ronald Reagan as Alexander and Doris Day as his wife.  Directed by Lewis Seiler, the film recounts Alexander's problems with epilepsy and alcohol, even though he never had a losing season, with 373 lifetime victories.




    
I hesitate to mention this film, 
which is arguably the worst

sports biography, but it's one of those 'so-bad-it's-fun' films, and it is about the best-known player in history, The Babe Ruth Story (1948). Many biopics tend to portray the subject as an unblemished hero, but this one sugarcoats with a trowel. Babe Ruth was a great player, extremely likable and generous, but his over-the-top lifestyle was well-known. Starring William Bendix as the Babe with Claire Trevor, directed by Roy Del Ruth. 




Two entertaining musicals you should see that have baseball themes:  Damn Yankees (1958) starring the amazing Gwen Verdon and directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen,and Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) with Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Esther Williams and Betty Garrett, directed by Busby Berkeley.



Several baseball films deal with perennially losing teams like the one in Damn Yankees where someone makes a deal, in desperation, with the devil or some other power to let the team win. Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh star in Angels in the Outfield (1951), where the title helpers of the Pittsburgh Pirates are invisible. Directed by Clarence Bown. 





Billy Chapin becomes the nine-year old manager of the losing Bisons in The Kid From Left Field (1953) relaying advice from his ex-player father, and when he gets sick, his dad, Dan Dailey, must step-in.  Co-starring Anne Bancroft, directed by Jack Sher.

Then there is another kid, The Kid From Cleveland (1949) where young Russ Tamblyn, is re-directed from some bad influences by his beloved Cleveland baseball team.  Starring George Brent and Lynn Bari, directed by Herbert Kline.


Speaking of kids, many of us have fond memories

of kids playing for The Bad News Bears (1976). Michael Ritchie directs Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, and Vic Morrow. There are many fine performances from the kids who play the game in this story of the enduring appeal of the little leagues.




     

In film, there are many possible influences on a team's fortunes  besides the quality of play.  For instance, there is the secret chemical formula that repels wood (as in a baseball bat) discovered in It Happens Every Spring (1949). Ray Milland, Jean Peters, and Paul Douglas star in this semi-madcap comedy, directed by  Loyd Bacon.


Another Ray Milland baseball comedy is Rhubarb (1951) directed by Arthur Lubin. Also starring Jan Sterling and Gene Lockhart, Rhubarb is the name of a cat who becomes the team mascot as they start to win and is a target for the opposing teams. This is a good comedy, especially for people who like baseball and cats.





Lloyd Bacon directed another semi-madcap comedy, Kill the Umpire (1950), where Ray Collins arranges for baseball- crazy grandson, William Bendix, to go to umpire school.  It's not so easy for Bendix, who is used to being on the other end of the abuse.



Leslie Goodwins directed the 1943 comedy from RKO, Ladies Day, about a team's star pitcher, Eddie Albert, whose  pitching suffers when he is in love, which is frequently, this time with Lupe Velez.  So, the wives of the other team members, who want the cash that comes with winning the World Series, plot to keep the couple apart.

Edward G. Robinson plays the real-life Hans Lobert, who runs a school for young prospects for the New York Giants in Big Leaguer (1953). Director Robert Aldrich makes this somewhat predictable story of young men trying to make the big leagues pretty watchable. Having Edward G. Robinson in the lead doesn't hurt.

                                                                                           

 

James Earl Jones, Billie Dee Williams, and Richard Pryor star in an intelligent and under-appreciated comedy, The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings (1976), a fictional story of a Negro League team that rebels against corrupt management and goes out on their own in the 1930s. Directed by John Badham, the cast is great, as is the music by William Goldstein.

Before Robert DeNiro became -- well, Robert DeNiro, he starred with Michael Moriarty in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), the story of a friendship between a star pitcher and a not-so-valuable catcher who is terminally ill. Directed by John Hancock, with a great performance by Vincent Gardenia as the manager, DeNiro and Moriarty give peerless performances that elevate this from the level of tearjerker.


      I will go no further forward in time than 1984 but this allows me to include my personal favorite baseball movie, The Natural, which captures the mythological quality of the game more than most. Yes, Robert Redford may have been too old for the role, but he got it right.  Based on the Bernard Malamud novel, and directed by Barry Levinson, the film is best when it centers on the game itself.  The iconic score by Randy Newman adds to the magical reality. It captures like no other that I have seen the sounds and the tension of a crowd filled with hope in the bottom of the ninth, with two out and two strikes on the batter.  In what other sport is there still the possibility of victory with just one swing of the bat? Four years later life imitated art when Kirk Gibson hit that improbable home run in the ninth inning of Game One of the 1988 World Series in Los Angeles with two out and two strikes. Everyone thought about that scene in The Natural.

Watchingwell   

             Curated classic films

IN CHARGE

     

      Some notice has been taken of the admirable work in recent films of women directors – Ava DuVernay for A Wrinkle in Time, and Selma, Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker and Detroit, and Patty Jenkins for Wonder Woman, for examples, and it’s high time. The recent nomination at the 2018 Academy Awards of Agnes Varda, a trailblazer director from Belgium and the recognition of her body of work in less enlightened times also points to the rarity of women in the position of ‘auteur’ in film.

     This is, as I have said, as it should be, but I would like to remind everyone of two women who worked regularly as directors in the less enlightened times.  The first, and probably, most difficult to explain, is the career with the largest body of work of a woman director, occurring during Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age, Dorothy Arzner.  For some reason that no one seems to explain convincingly, Arzner was

given regular work as a director in the studio system. Born in San Francisco in 1897 and raised in Los Angeles, she was introduced to William DeMille (brother of Cecil B.) and hired as a stenographer for what eventually became Paramount Pictures.  Her first assignment was to type up scripts.  She worked her way up from there to writer, script girl, editor (she was the first Hollywood editor to be credited on-screen).  In 1927, she was given a chance to direct a silent film, which was so successful that she was given another film to direct, Paramount’s first talkie in 1928, the first woman to direct a sound picture.  Strangely, women directors were not that uncommon in silent films, but Arzner seems to be the only one to have transitioned to the sound era.

     After making Merrily We Go to Hell from pre-code

1932, the story of a man who marries and drags his new wife down the destructive path of alcoholism, with fine performances from Fredric March and Sylvia Sidney, Arzner left Paramount to freelance.  She was hired by RKO to direct Katherine Hepburn in her second role as an aviatrix having an affair with a married man, in Christopher Strong (1933), a film

which stands out in my memory as the one with Hepburn in a moth costume. It is not clear in my mind whether she wears this to a costume party or just had strange ideas about party clothes.  Colin Clive, her co-star, does not strike one as someone that would inspire a brave aviatrix to engage in illicit love, particularly with the husband and father of friends, but it was a fun picture, if just for the costumes.

     

     Although Arzner is reputed to have had a difficult relationship with Hepburn, she formed a long friendship with Joan Crawford, during the filming of two pictures from 1937, which extended to the commercials she directed for Pepsi Cola while Crawford was married to the boss and after Arzner had left film directing. 

The Last of Mrs. Cheney, also starring Robert Montgomery and William Powell is a rare comedy for Crawford who plays a rich, American widow – or is she?  The other film from 1937 is The Bride Wore Red, co-starring Franchot Tone and Robert Young. In this story, Crawford is a poor girl who has two weeks to find a rich husband at a resort, although she is in love with a poor postman.

“What’s it for?” Judy demands. “So you can go home when the show’s over, strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you. I’m sure they see through you just like we do!” 

     With these lines, Arzner’s 1940 semi-comedy, Dance Girl Dance, became forever celebrated as a feminist commentary as well as a veiled critique of Hollywood’s male hierarchy.  Spoken before a burlesque audience that had booed her ballet dance  while gearing up for the real attraction, Bubbles, played by Lucille Ball, Maureen O’Hara changes from the mere warm-up act for her successful friend to the strong woman who finally sees things as they really are.

It is assumed by some that this perception was possible because of the combination of the Vicki Baum story, the screenplay by the married team of Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, and the  woman director, and that this angle would not have been as strong if the creative team had been comprised of all men. 

     In 1943, Arzner joined the war effort by making training films for the WACs.  After the war, health problems prevented her from returning to directing feature films, although she did direct documentaries and commercials for television.  During the 60s and 70s, she taught filmmaking at UCLA. Dorothy Arzner died in 1979 at the age of 82.

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      The English actress, Ida Lupino, having co-written the script of the 1949, Not Wanted, was given her first directing job when the director, Elmer Clifton, fell ill during the filming. The results were successful enough that Lupino was able to secure more work as a director, and, although these were generally considered ‘B‘ pictures,  she quickly showed a distinct point-of-view, creating well-regarded work in stylish, black and white noir-y pictures. 

     In the 1950 film, Outrage, the script, which

Lupino co-wrote, focuses on a rape, which had to be called “criminal assault” in 1950, which suggests how rare it was for Hollywood to deal with the subject, and its aftermath, with very little held back, emotionally.  It portrays the terror of the act and the distress that follows for the main character, played by Mala Powers, in a manner that would have seemed uncompromising at the time, and undoubtedly a manner resulting from a very personal female vantage point of the writer/director.

     In 1951, Lupino directed Claire Trevor and Sally Forrest in the unfortunately-titled, Hard, Fast, and Beautiful, the story of a talented tennis protégée, Forrest, whose mother, Trevor, sees a big future for them both and keeps a tight rein on her daughter’s life to protect that dream.  Naturally, romance rears its ugly head and Forrest realizes she has a conflict.

     Two of Lupino’s films were released in 1953, one of which, The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O’Brien

and Frank Lovejoy as two men on a fishing trip who pick up psychotic, William Talman (Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason) on the road, is a real thriller and a genuine film noir, the only one directed by a  woman.
.       Lupino also co-wrote this with her writing partner, Collier Young, with whom she wrote the other film of 1953 that she directed, The Bigamist. Again starring Edmond O’Brien as the title character and co-starring Joan Fontaine and Ida, who was still acting, as the two women who are each unaware of the other.

     By 1956, she turned to television where she directed episodes in many popular shows such as The Untouchables, Thriller, and The Fugitive. Through the seventies, Lupino continued to act, in guest appearances on television and small parts in a few movies. During this period, she did direct one particular feature film that is one of my inexplicably, personal favorites, The Trouble With Angels (1966), starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell.  When I first saw this, I laughed till I cried in the cigar scene, but not in subsequent viewings.     

It is a heartwarming film, I suppose, and Hayley Mills was great at pulling off the right tone for zany, comedy scenes (I still use the term, “scathingly brilliant idea”, which she did frequently in the film.).  But, if you ever saw Ida Lupino and her then-husband, Howard Duff, when they guest-starred on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in 1959, or the couple’s short-lived sit-com, Mr. Adams and Eve, you will remember what a hoot Ida Lupino was as a comedienne and wish she had been given the chance to try her hand at directing comedies.

     The second woman to be admitted into the Director’s Guild, after Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino died in Los Angles in 1995 at the age of 77.

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Watchingwell   

             Curated classic films

Speaking of… Love

     My nomination for the best love story of the classic film era is an adaption of a great novel so it has a head start.  But as we know, Hollywood doesn’t have an unblemished track record in this area, so it could also be a handicap.  Anyway, my choice is Wuthering Heights from 1939.  It fulfills my requirements, totally arbitrary, of what does and does not constitute a great love story.  It is not about a love that is made poignant by suffering and separation due to contrived accidents of Fate, or the blindness of one of the individuals that is only lifted at the last moment of the film.  This lets out Random Harvest, Gone with the Wind, Romeo and Juliet (in all its forms), The Shop Around the Corner, and the one that YOU are thinking about.

     Yes, WH has suffering and separation, but the love story is not defined by this – it actually serves to underline the resilience of the bond between Cathy and Heathcliff. The pair are never out of love, even when absent from each other, even when married to others, while, at the same time they seem to accept that they cannot be together.  All right, it is a fine line I draw, but it’s my party.  The fact is that the inescapable-love-as-obsession story by Emily Bronte was pretty well realized by the screenplay by Ben Hecht and the direction of William Wyler.  But a large part of the credit must go to Laurence Olivier who really ‘got’ Heathcliff, and sold us the tortured soul who was incapable of separating from Cathy’s even when realizing the shallow character of hers.  It took me years to look at Merle Oberon’s performance objectively, after my aunt had poisoned my child’s mind with her criticism of her “cat-like” looks and bad acting. Actually, she does a credible job with a difficult role.  My aunt, whose opinion of Oberon did not prevent her from loving the film, thought Vivien Leigh would have been better in the part.  So, reportedly, did Olivier. But I disagree.  I think I even disagreed when I was a child.  Leigh was too delicate.  Cathy needed to be robust, a child of the moors, a tomboy, who rode horses and scrambled up the rocky outgrowths of Penistone Crag. So, Oberon did OK, except for a little too much emoting in the moments before she dies.  Oh – spoiler alert, I guess.  And, in her most important scene, IMO, in the kitchen with her maid/confidante, when she admits how she is hopelessly bonded to Heathcliff, and suddenly, framed by lightning, declares, “Ellen, sometimes I think I am Heathcliff”, she understands this revelation has to balance all the behavior that otherwise would make her unlikable.  And, although the words are Emily Bronte’s, they are probably the most eloquent expression of love you see on American film before the modern era.  Second to this would be the speech Heathcliff pronounces over the newly-dead Cathy begging her to  haunt him, “only never leave me alone in this abyss”. 

     Speaking of Laurence Olivier, and women novelists who were adapted into decent movies, I must give a nod to the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, directed by  

Robert Z. Leonard, with Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Olivier as Mr. Darcy.  I have never seen a bad film of P&P, come to think of it, and although Garson seems a little more mature than some of the other Elizabeths, it works in a different kind of way, because no matter who pronounces the words, they are good words. This is a satisfying romance where the audience knows before the two protagonists that they will end up together, and it is sooo lovely to hear Olivier and Garson speak English.

     Speaking of director, William Wyler, you’ve got to give him credit for recognizing the screen magic that Audrey Hepburn would produce in her first starring role as the errant princess in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday, written by Ian MacLellan Hunter, fronting for the blacklisted, Dalton Trumbo. With Gregory Peck who plays the reporter who tries to capitalize on his luck in finding her and ends up falling in love, as audiences did.  And she falls for him as they spend one glorious day and night in Rome before she tears herself away from him and returns to her important princess duties.  Who doesn’t cry at that ending?

     Breaking away from women novelists, but back to Ben Hecht, who, let’s face it, was a great and prolific American writer, we turn to one of my faves of all categories, Notorious, from 1946, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Ingrid Bergman as a woman who is recruited by the American government to spy on Nazis in South America and Cary Grant as her ‘handler’ who gets emotionally involved and then feels guilty, so he feigns detachment and then feels guilty for that.  Cary Grant plays a more stoical version of his usual self, made even more so by the naturalistic Bergman.  There is great chemistry between them and tension, as only Hitchcock knows how to provide.  The ending, with its revolving shot of their whispered embrace is made more explicit by the touch of realism that Bergman brought to every role.

     Speaking of William Wyler again, a powerful love story is enclosed in the multi-layered The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) between Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright.  The screen play by Robert E. Sherwood from the novel by MacKinlay Kantor is about America’s post-war adjustment, but it is contained in several story lines. The love story of Frederic March and Myrna Loy is poignantly expressed to their daughter, Wright, as they oppose her  relationship with Andrews who is married, unhappily, to Virginia Mayo.  But by the touching wedding ceremony they all attend at the end, we know that true love has won out. Tears are required here also.

    Speaking of Dana Andrews, he becomes obsessively in love with a murder victim in Laura, the 1944 film noir directed by Otto Preminger.  Based on the novel by Vera Caspary, the screen play by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Betty Reinhardt  (with an uncredited Ring Lardner, Jr). displays just the right tone of cynical and witty dialogue. Of course, Laura Hunt, played by Gene Tierney isn’t really dead.  But by the time she shows up in the film, Andrews is already on the verge of losing his professional judgment.  This tension is balanced by Tierney’s calm influence, which, in the end, is no match for obsession.  She falls under his spell. Yes, it is a murder mystery.   But it is a love story, too.

     I have posted a clip and written before about the 1943 film The More the Merrier, directed by George Stevens so I need to remind everyone again what a good love story Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur make of this comedy.  In this case, the comedy takes the edge off the emotional content, so it can’t be a great love story.(My rules.)  But a comedy is useful to take the edge off the shocking (for 1943) theme of an unmarried couple forced to cohabitate by unusual circumstances and fall in love as a result.  A similar (and also shocking for 1934) route to love was taken

by Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in another successful comedy/ romance, It Happened One Night, directed by Frank Capra. This theme is a handy way to speed along the slow process of really getting to know someone, especially someone who initially doesn’t interest you.

     Speaking of which, this is precisely what happens in the 1945 film, Without Love, directed by Harold S. Bucquet and starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in one of their less-famous vehicles. Written by Donald Ogden Stewart and based on the play by Philip Barry (Philadelphia Story, Holiday), the ‘marriage of convenience’ between the two stars is a tender story of how fragile people who want to be emotionally safe are enticed into trying again.  There is a great supporting performance by Lucille Ball that livens up the drama.

     Speaking of a marriage of convenience, this is the plot device in a charming romance from 1944, Come Live with

Me, starring James Stewart and Hedy Lamarr and directed by Clarence Brown. In a seemingly timeless theme, Hedy is an immigrant facing deportation, but in those days, you could stay if you were married to a citizen for love and not for avoiding deportation.  So, when Hedy meets struggling writer, James Stewart, she proposes a strictly business arrangement, offering to help him financially, which she can do with the help of her wealthy, but married boyfriend.  However, the lovely Lamarr gives a convincing performance of a sophisticated woman who comes to appreciate the honest relationship with Stewart more than she had anticipated.

Love and chocolate to you.