Category: classic movie impressions

Classic Movie Impressions: Singing In The Rain

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions18 Comments

I’ve written about a lot of different movies on this blog and what shocks me is that I’ve never written about my favorite movie – Singing in the Rain (1952).

I have to be honest that I am actually nervous to do so because there is so much about this movie that I love, I am truly afraid I will forget to mention something important about it or it’s making or I will mess  up a fact.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have cable. We had one black and white TV and an antenna on the back porch that my dad would adjust to help us get four channels — an ABC affiliate, a CBS affiliate, an NBC affiliate, and PBS. Because we only had those four channels, I often found myself watching old movies on PBS. I was fascinated with them, the light and shadow, the framing, the cinematography, and the acting. It all mesmerized me. 

The stories seemed richer, more fascinating, deeper somehow, than the shows I would see on primetime or the cartoons on Saturday morning. As I grew older, my options grew, but I still always found myself turning that cable TV back to the classics, usually the black and white movies or a musical. To me, the writers of those old movies knew how to tell stories, not just make a movie for show or for special effects. Those great stories tied in with my love of reading and are probably what made me want to go into journalism (which I did for 14 years) and then write fiction books (which I do just for fun now).

My favorite movie was Singing in the Rain and it’s remained so all these years. I used to dance around the living room saying, “And I can’t stand ‘im!” in Jean Hagen’s high-pitched voice, putting on a show for my family. I would dance around the room like I was on that street dancing in the rain in that iconic dance sequence with Gene Kelly.

I would recite good chunks of the movie whether it was on or not and my mom said I should go into drama. Luckily I was too shy to get into drama because I am pretty sure if I had gone into drama I would have mentally crashed and burned out fast. My introvert self is not cut out for the crazy world of acting.

It wasn’t until my late teens, when my brother bought me a VHS copy of the movie, that I learned the movie was actually shot in Technicolor. I’d always watched it on that old black-and-white TV and now here it was in blazing, beautiful color.

Magnificent.

Singing in the Rain has so much going for it — an amazing story tied into the history of talking films replacing silent films, great songs, great actors with great performances, and amazing dance routines (though I maintain that the 20-minute one with Cyd Charisse is just a bit too long and a bit too much — yet also brilliant.)

For those who don’t know what Singing in the Rain is about — for shame! FOR SHAME!

Oh, I mean, please, let me tell you what it is about.

The movie, which takes place in 1927, has a couple underlying storylines. One is a love story between Gene Kelly’s character Don Lockwood and Debbie Reynold’s character, Kathy Selden.

The other is a historical story about the end of silent films and the beginning of talking films.

That’s the simple description, but there is so much more going on underneath the surface of this comedy/musical.

We start the movie with silent screen swashbuckler star Don Lockwood and his movie partner Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) attending a  movie premiere. They are kind of like the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of their time, only they are silent film stars of Victorian-era romance-adventures.

It is only Don and his friend Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) — the musical accompaniest for the Lockwood and Lamont movies — who speak during the red carpet interview. It seems like the men are keeping Lina from speaking to the interviewer.

Don provides a sanitized version of how he and Cosmo got into show business and  how he and Lamont met, with his words not matching up to what we see on our screen. He says that his motto in his career was to always conduct himself with dignity and what we see is him and Cosmo doing crazy vaudeville acts or working as stuntmen when they were first starting out.

We also see how Don and Lina first met and though Don tells the audience at the premiere they had an immediate connection, moviegoers see her sticking her nose up at him when he was a stuntman but changing her tune when the head of the studio announces Don is going to be their next big star.

We go a full 20 or 30 minutes into the movie before we find out why no one would let Lina speak during the red carpet interview. I hate to ruin this for anyone who has not seen the movie but…. I’m going to so you have been warned.

You ready?

Don’t read on if you don’t want to know……

Lina has a very annoying, high pitched voice and says things like, “Why didn’t I get to talk out there. What do you think I am? Dumb or sumthin’…”

The studio executives, Cosmo, and Don do indeed believe, and know, that Lina is dumb. They also know that she thinks she and Don are really couple, when Don wants her to know they are not.

“There’s  nothing between us, Lina,” he tells her. “There never has been. Just air.”

After the premiere, Don and Cosmo are on their way to the after party when Cosmo’s car gets a flat tire. Don is spotted by a bunch of fans who swarm him and begin to demand autographs and souveniers, ripping off part of his  tuxedo jacket.

He runs away, through traffic, and ends up jumping into a car being driven by a shocked young woman named Kathy Selden.

Kathy doesn’t recognized Don right away. Instead, she thinks she’s seen his photo on a Most Wanted poster at the post office and begins to scream. She stops and tells a police officer that this man just jumped into her car and the police officer says, “Why you’re Don Lockwood!”

Kathy becomes much more cordial then and asks Don if he’d like her to drop him off somewhere. He says he would like to get changed out of the tuxedo his fans ripped up and the conversation goes along smoothly until Don starts to flirt with Kathy.

She catches on to his schtick pretty fast and then pretends to be unimpressed with him. She’s an actor on the stage, which she claims is much more prestigious than acting on film.

She informs Don that all he is is a shadow up on the screen, not a real person. He just makes faces and doesn’t really speak, which is what she believes acting really is.

Don is, of course, quite offended by her mocking his professionn and when she pulls over to let him out,  now safe from the screaming fans, he leans toward her and says she shouldn’t be afraid of him. What can he do to her, after all, he’s but a mere shadow.

I pause in this recap to comment on how brilliant the acting is by both of them in this scene.

I’ve provided a clip here because it’s just so good. The quality of the clip is not good, however. It is all I could find online:

We flash forward to Don at the party with all the other stars and a bunch of other famous people. At the party, the studio owner R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) shows everyone in attendance an example of talking film. Everyone is surprised but doesn’t think that it will ever replace silent films, or if it does it will be years off. R.F. disagrees and later on, after another studio releases the first talking picture, R.F. says that their studio is going to film its first talking film and their biggest stars, Don and Lina, will be the stars.

A second later, when Lina speaks, though, their hearts sink.

Lina can’t speak in the movie. Not with that voice.

This is all very ironic, of course, because in real life, Jean  Hagen has a lovely, sultry voice. Her real voice is actually used later in the movie where Kathy is supposedly dubbing Lina’s high voice with a more sultry one. Instead, that more sultry voice is Jean’s actual voice.

 I’ve jumped ahead a bit, so let me go back:  Cosos gets the brilliant idea for Kathy to dub Lina’s voice so Lina will sound like she looks in the talking movies.

What could go wrong, right?

Umm…wrong. Lina . . . well, you’ll have to watch to see why Lina isn’t a big Kathy Seldon fan and what she does about her lack of love for Kathy.

I can say that one reason Lina doesn’t like Kathy is because of what happened at that after party. After R.F.’s big announcement about talking films, a large cake is pushed into the room and suddenly out pops Kathy Selden, the “more refined” actress, who actually turns out to be a chorus girl.

Don enjoys mocking her over this which prompts her to attempt to throw a pie in his face, which instead hits Lina square in the face.

Kathy is mortified by her behavior and runs from the room with Don behind her. She manages to escape and drive off before he can find her, though, and he spends several weeks trying to track her down after Lina gets her fired from her job.

An article on TCM says many critics and fans call Singing in the Rain the greatest musical ever made and I’d have to say I am one of those fans who feels that way.  There is just so much about this musical that is superior to all other musicals.

The songs are amazing, with well-written and witty lyrics.

The acting is amazing.

The dance sequences are amazing.

The comedy is spot on.

The masterful way the writers created characters mocking Hollywood films and actors all while making a Hollywood film with actors is brilliant.

It is also a visual spectacle.

There is so much talent shoved into this one movie that it almost creates sensory overload, but delightful sensory overload. Not the sensory overload that sends you running to a quiet room with your soft blanket and a white noise machine.

The most famous scene from the movie is, of course, Gene’s dancing in the rain in his hat and suit, with an umbrella.

I loved reading the following paragraph on TCM.com about the development and filming of the title song:

“While the film is chock full of musical highlights, Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” number is the genuine showstopper. Regarding his immortal solo number, Kelly later commented, quite graciously and modestly, on what made the scene work so well: “The concept was so simple I shied away from explaining it to the brass at the studio in case I couldn’t make it sound worth doing. The real work for this one was done by the technicians who had to pipe two city blocks on the backlot with overhead sprays, and the poor cameraman who had to shoot through all that water. All I had to do was dance.” The technicians’ efforts are all the more remarkable since there was a severe water shortage in Culver City, California, the day the sequence was shot.”

Here it is for your enjoyment (if WordPress lets the link work):

It is just about the best dance sequence I have ever seen in a movie but one can’t forget O’Connor singing and dancing (and participating in some serious slapstick/physical comedy) in “Make ‘Em Laugh” or Reynolds, Kelly, and O’Connor singing “Good Morning.”

This movie pokes fun at swashbuckling films and silent films and Kelly was all in, even though it poked some fun at him as an actor too.

The film was directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donan and Gene also choreographed mos of the dance sequences. Between all that and starring in the film, he must have been absolutely exhausted!

He’d started his career with the movie Cover Girl in 1944, revolutionizing the Hollywood musical with innovative and “free-flowing” dance routines.

After that movie,  he earned an Oscar nomination for Anchors Aweigh (1945, with Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson and a cute, little Dean Stockwell. I liked this one.)

It was On The Town from 1949 that really sent his career flying. That movie was the first of three collaborations with Donen.

Debbie Reynolds was only 19 when she first started filming as Kathy Seldon (though I’ve read interviews where she said she was 17 and watched an interview where she said she was 18) and you may have read that there was quite a bit of tension between her and Kelly during filming because Gene was a perfectionist. He was also 39-40 during filming and may have kissed her a bit more passionately than she was ready for, according to an interview she gave with The Pittsburgh Gazette, where she said he “stuck his tongue down my throat.” When she ran off crying, he was much more  careful during future takes and  kissed her more gently, she said, though he was a bit “pissed about it”.

 Some say that Debbie called Gene abusive and she did refer to him in her 2013 memoir, Unsinkable, as a “cruel taskmaster”.  Despite writing this, Debbie also remembered how his pushing her helped her to become a better actress later and how the movie shot her into stardom.

“He is a perfectionist and a disciplinarian – the most exciting director I’ve ever worked for,” she said. “And he has a good temper. Every so often he would yell at me and make me cry. But it took a lot of patience for him to work with someone who had never danced before. It’s amazing that I could keep up with him and Donald O’Connor.”

Years later Kelly expressed regret at how hard he pushed her and said he was truly shocked she still spoke to him after all he’d put her through. So clearly, they did still speak to each other even if she thought he was rough on her during filming.

The other day I was looking at the Facebook page of Gene’s last wife (he was married three times, with his final wife being 31 and him being 78 at the time of their marriage in 1990) and she had written about how Jean Hagen was hired for the film.

“Gene told me that the only dispute he had with Producer Arthur Freed and co-director Stanley Donen in casting Singin’ in the Rain was over the role of Lina Lamont,” she wrote. “Freed and Donen did not think that Jean Hagen was glamorous enough to play the part. As Gene said, “Stanley was very strong for a young lady from Fox, who was very pretty and a nice actress. She looked like a movie star, but she didn’t have enough depth to do the role. Arthur Freed had a couple of favorites that he wanted to put in. But they were both thinking of girls that look like movie stars. Beautiful, glamorous girls. Arthur even once mentioned Lana Turner, who just couldn’t have played the role that way.”

Patricia writes that the issue was neither of the men had ever  seen Jean Hagen all dressed up and looking beautiful.

Kelly and Jean were friends and he thought she’d be wonderful in the role, according to Patricia.

“He did a test with her and the minute Freed and Done saw it, “they fell right in with it” and “when the first rushes came in on her, we were all mad about her.” Born Jean Shirley Verhagen in Chicago in 1923. She was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Singin’ in the Rain but lost to Gloria Grahame in The Bad and the Beautiful. I have a feeling we can all agree with Gene that Jean Hagen was perfect for the role and, as he said, “she was the glue that held the picture together.” 

I could go on and on about this movie and all the background of it, so I guess I’d better stop here and instead link you to a few articles or YouTube videos with more information. I will also leave you with some trivia and quotes from the movie.

Some trivia *wink*:

  • Despite all of Debbie’s hard work on the “Good Morning” number, Kelly decided that someone should dub her tap sounds, so he went into a dubbing room to dub the sound of her feet as well as his own.
  • It cost $2.5 million to make the movie, which was $665,000 over budget. The movie earned $7.7 million upon its initial release. 
  • Donald O’Connor invited his brother to help him rehearse the stunt of running up the wall in Make ‘Em Laugh with a rope. O’Connor was smoking four packs of cigarettes day back thn and went to bed for a week after completing the scene. Sadly, an accident deleted all of his hard work and he had to reshoot the entire scene again later.
  • Cyd Charisse, who plays Gene Kelly’s dancing partner in the “Broadway Ballet” number, studied ballet in Los Angeles with Adolph Bolm and Bronislawa Nijinska. She danced with Ballets Russes under the name of Siderova. After World War II she was hired by Arthur Freed to be the resident ballet dancer at MGM.
  • From TCM: “The comical bit that Donald O’Connor does in the “Make ’em Laugh” sequence, where he pushes and pulls on his face to make absurd faces, is known as “gurning.”
  • Gene Kelly had a 103 degree fever when he shot the Singing in the Rain dance sequence.
  • Debbie Reynolds’ voice was dubbed by Betty Royce for the scenes where Reynolds’ character dubs Lina Lamont’s singing and speaking voice. In addition, in the scene where Kathy Selden is dubbing Lina Lamont, Hagen is actually dubbing Reynolds dubbing Hagen on screen for just one line.

Some hilarious quotes from the movie:


Lina: Oh Donny! You couldn’t kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy bit!
Don: Meet the greatest actor in the world! I’d rather kiss a tarantula.
Lina: You don’t mean that.
Don: I don’t— Hey Joe, get me a tarantula.

Lina: Gee, this wig weighs a ton! What dope’d wear a thing like this?
Roscoe: Everybody used to wear them, Lina.
Lina: Well, then everybody was a dope.

Cosmo: Talking pictures, that means I’m out of a job. At last I can start suffering and write that symphony.
Simpson: You’re not out of a job, we’re putting you in as head of our new music department.
Cosmo: Oh, thanks, R.F.! At last I can stop suffering and write that symphony.

Lina: Why, I make more money than – than – than Calvin Coolidge, put together!

Lina: “People”? I ain’t “people.” I am a – “a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament.”

Lina: If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as if our hard work ain’t been in vain for nothing.

[A dancer watching Lina Lamont in “The Royal Rascal”] Flapper: She’s so refined. I think I’ll kill myself.

Lockwood: What’s the matter with that girl? Can’t she take a gentle hint?
Cosmo: Well haven’t ya heard? She’s irresistible. She told me so herself.

Cosmo Brown: Lina. She can’t act, she can’t sing, she can’t dance. A triple threat.

Lina Lamont: What’s wrong with the way I talk? What’s the big idea? Am I dumb or something?

Lina Lamont: What’s wrong with the way I talk? What’s the big idea? Am I dumb or something?

Trailer:

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/afi-top-100/404767/singin-in-the-rain-1952

Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds on Good Morning America talking about working together in 1986: https://youtu.be/hjHcGL_D5eY?si=eRyxk30EOANrg9wn

Patricia Ward Kelly talking about the dubbing in Singing in the Rain: https://youtu.be/pG6iCVFDlRc?si=Qs0KIU70_pmLKMdZ

Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor talking about Singing in the Rain with TCM:

More trivia about Singing in the Rain:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/71662/trivia-singin-in-the-rain-1952

Classic Movie Impression: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions9 Comments

I finally watched Around the World in 80 Days from 1956 with David Niven, two years after reading Jules Verne’s novel, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The movie, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1956, was a ton of fun and I am going to watch it again just to catch all the moments I might have missed.

The book and the movie follow the story of Phileas Fogg, an English gentleman, who no one in his gentleman’s  club can exactly figure out. During a discussion Phileas brags that he could go around the world in 80 days. A wager is made and he and his French valet (newly hired) Passepartout (Pass-par-too) head out, starting their journey in a large, hot air balloon.

 As you can imagine, all kind of situations arise on the journey and along the way they pick up a couple other travelers, one an Indian princess they rescue from being killed and another man who turns out to be a police officer who thinks that Phileas is actually the man who robbed the bank of England shortly before leaving on his trip.

(I may be the only one who thinks of Phineas and Ferb, the kids’ cartoon, when I read or hear the name Phileas but that is because I had a little one when the show first came out.)

In addition to Niven as Phileas Fogg, we also have Cantinflas as Passepartout, Shirley MacLaine as Aouda and Robert Newton as Inspector Fix.

I’m going to be upfront and say that I had no idea Shirley McClaine was Aouda, the Indian princess. I didn’t recognize her at all and didn’t realize it until I was working on this blog post and saw her name listed in the cast.

I found it interesting that the movie created the idea of “cameo roles” as a way to invite established stars to participate in a production. The cameos in this movie included the most I’ve ever head of at 40 cameos with some of the most notable being Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Buster Keaton, Noel Coward, Charles Boyer, Caser Romero, Ronald Colman, Red Skelton, and Peter Lorre.

Of course there are some aspects of the movie that have not aged well but many of the racial stereotypes I expected luckily didn’t surface with the focus mainly being on our main characters and the adventures they find themselves in.

Clocking in at 2 hours and 55 minutes, this was one of the longer classic movies I have watched and I actually took several breaks from watching it to run errands, cook dinner, go to bed, and do several other things that needed doing. In other words it took me a couple of days to finish it. I actually do that a lot with movies, no matter the length, because it feels like I am constantly interrupted while watching them.

One couldn’t be expected to shove all that happens in Verne’s book into a 90-minute to 2-hour movie, though, right? The characters travel across several countries, including the US, while being chased by a man who thinks Phileas is a robber, and, for Passepartout, often getting lost or separated from the group.

Michael  Todd produced the movie and when it was released,  he urged promoters not to refer to Around the World in 80 Days as a movie. To him it was an epic, a spectacle, an experience to immerse oneself in.

Michael Todd with his wife Elizabeth Taylor and movie director Michael Anderson.

“Do not refer to Around the World in 80 Days as a movie,” Todd wrote when the movie was distributed. “It’s not a movie. Movies are something you can see in your neighborhood theatre and eat popcorn while you’re watching them….Show Around the World in 80 Days almost exactly as you would present a Broadway show in your theatre.”

Critics and movie-goers agreed with the assessment, though some felt the movie would never end because it was so long.

Todd was a master at convincing stars to get involved, according to Jeff Stafford , writing for TCM.com.

“One of his talents was attracting marquee-name talent through his sheer extravagant nature,” Stafford wrote. “When he learned that the Jules Verne novel had been a childhood favorite of David Niven, he casually offered him the role of Phileas Fogg, to which Niven excitedly said, “I’d do it for nothing.” Todd’s famous remark was “You’ve got a deal.” He enticed other actors with gifts: Ronald Colman received a new yellow Cadillac for half a day’s work. Noel Coward was allowed to write his own dialogue for his cameo scene and received a Bonnard painting as a Christmas present. John Gielgud was seduced into appearing in a small role out of sheer curiosity. Todd recalled that “Gielgud asked me, ‘Why do you want me to play a sacked butler? I am a Shakespearean actor.’ I said, ‘Because I know you could do it so well and I know it’s right for you.’ He said, ‘Let me read it.’ I gave him the pages and he read it. Then he said, ‘My dear Mr. Todd, you really want me to play this? Why?…Who is playing the other part?’ I said, ‘Noel Coward.’ He said, ‘I’ve got to see that.’ I said, ‘One way for you to see it – be on the set tomorrow.’ And he was on the set.”

Todd went all out in other ways for this film too. He not only traveled the world to secure actors but props or locations for scenes.

From Stafford’s article: “He went to Chinchon, Spain, and hired the entire population of 6,500 residents to appear in a bullfight sequence. He visited his friend, the King of Thailand, who loaned him his 165-foot-long royal barge, complete with 70 glitteringly clad oarsmen, for a scene that lasted maybe 12 seconds. In China, Todd acquired a Chinese dragon used in holiday processions, which was 250 years old, thirty-feet-long, and required 24 men to operate it. In Pakistan, the producer persuaded the Nawab of Pritim Pasha to loan him his private elephant herd.”

And the train in the movie?

It was a Durango museum piece and used to run from San Francisco to Colorado in 1871 and Todd convinced the museum to loan it after a million dollar bond was secured.

The movie set some definite records, including:

  • the most people (68,894) ever photographed in separate worldwide locations; the greatest distance ever travelled to make a film (four million air passenger miles);
  • the most camera set-ups ever used (200 more than Gone With the Wind, 1939);
  • the most sets ever used (140 actual locations plus interiors on soundstages in London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo as well as six Hollywood studios);
  • the most costumes ever used (74,685);
  • and the most assistant directors (33).

The movie was directed by Michael Anderson.

Younger viewers may not recognize some of the cameos, I certainly didn’t, but it’s still fun to read about them later and learn who they were. I, honestly, only recognized Frank Sinatra until I read about who was in it after I watched it.

There were generations of people who came to know David Niven through this movie, not realizing his long career before it ever came out.

Gentleman’s Journal wrote that Niven represented the perfect English gentlemen in the minds of generations.

In his first movie he said “Good-bye, my dear,” to a lady getting on a train.

“In just a few words, Niven had distilled onto celluloid the perfect English gentleman – suave and cheerful, sleek and charming,” The website states. “His success skyrocketed overnight, and it echoes still today. Even now, when we think of the quintessential Englishman, it is Niven’s smiling face, pencil moustache, and effortless attire that flashes into view.”

Well, if not Niven, then Phileas Fogg.

A few tidbits of trivia I learned about the movie while researching:

  • Orson Welles was a little upset he did not get a cameo in the film. He was upset because before Michael Todd produced this film, he produced a stage version by Welles. The play flopped but Todd turned the project into a film anyway and it enjoyed great success. Welles felt he gave the idea to Todd in the first place. (Source Classic Movie Hub).
  • Shirley MacLaine wrote that filming a scene with thousands of extras ground to a complete halt because the propman forgot to put the bottle of champagne in the balloon with David Niven and Cantinflas.
  • Michael Todd never had anyone else other than David Niven in mind for the role of Phileas Fogg.
  • Michael Todd’s original estimate for the film’s budget was $3 million. The film ended up costing nearly double that, largely thanks to Todd’s demands for verisimilitude and location shooting.
  • Alexander Korda had previously taken an unsuccessful stab at the material. His advice to Michael Todd was “Back away from it, Mike. I’ve been trying to lick it for years. Total loss.”

Have you seen this one?

Sources or additional information :

https://www.classicmoviehub.com/facts-and-trivia/film/around-the-world-in-eighty-days-1956/page/1/

https://www.tcm.com/articles/62567/around-the-world-in-80-days

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048960/trivia

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Classic Movie Impressions. Spring of Bette Davis: The Petrified Forest (1936)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, everyday musings, Movie Impresssions5 Comments

I have been watching Bette Davis movies for the last couple of months and today I am writing about the final one in the list I made for myself for this feature — The Petrified Forest.

It  took all those Bette Davis movies all those online lists said were “must watches” to get to one I liked the most (other than Jezebel).

I know why they suggested the others — they highlight Bette’s talents more than this one does.  She was the star in  most of the other movies I watched, while in this one it was Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard who were the stars — well, actually Leslie Howard was the big star at that time.

Dialogue-wise, though, I preferred this movie over them all (except for Jezebel).

This movie is based on a hit Broadway play of the same name written by Robert Sherwood.

First, let’s give you a description of the movie from Google: “In this film adaptation of the Robert E. Sherwood play, a drifter, a waitress and a notorious gangster cross paths in the Petrified Forest region of Arizona. Alan Squire (Leslie Howard), a destitute writer, goes into the diner where Gabrielle Maple (Bette Davis) works. Gabrielle dreams of studying art, and she and Alan connect as they talk about Europe, and she tells him her ambition. But gangster Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) shows up and takes the customers hostage.”

I read before that there was some friction between Bette and Leslie during filming, (their second together after Of Human Bondage) but I thought that the chemistry between them worked very well here, maybe because Leslie was so good in this one.

Gabrielle works as a waitress at her father’s diner in the desert.  Employee, beefy former football player, Boze Hertzlinger (Dick Foran) is smitten with her but is very pushy and borders on an aggressor who forces a kiss onto her at the same moment Alan wanders on scene after crossing the desert.

She’s not really interested in Boze and when she starts talking to Alan, she realizes there are much better fish in the sea. She talks to him about the poetry she is reading, her paintings, and just life in general.

“The problem with me Gabrielle, is that I belong to a vanishing race,” he tells her. “I’m one of the intellectuals. Brains without purpose. Noise without sound. Faith without substance.”

Gabrielle’s father has gone to a meeting of the something or other reenactment guard before Alan arrives. Her grandfather has been rambling on about Duke Mantee being on the loose to anyone who will listen.

With all this foreshadowing, we viewers, of course, start to assume we will see Duke at some point.

That will come after Alan bids farewell to Gabrielle with a quick kiss and Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm arrive in their fancy car looking for directions and a drink. Their black chauffeur is driving them. His race will come into play later in the movie so I did not mention it for no reason.

Alan decides he’s going to leave, much to Gabrielle’s disappointment so she arranges for him to travel with the Chisholms.

The Chisholms and Alan don’t get too far, though, before they find a group of men broken down on the road who wave them down. As soon as they pull over, Duke raises a gun and orders them out so he can take their car. It’s here we learn the couple isn’t exactly having a great marriage journey, especially when Mr. Chisholm does nothing to stand up for his wife and she calls him out as soon as Duke and his men leave.

Mr. Chisholm says he didn’t stand up to him because that was Duke Mantee, the gangster they heard about on the radio who was responsible for killing a bunch of people.

Alan hears Duke’s name, which he knows about because of Gabrielle’s chatty grandfather, and worries he’s headed toward Gabrielle, so he starts walking back to the café.

This is not a high-action film until the end. The movie takes place mainly in one place, and while Bogart plays a gangster, this movie is more cerebral than active.

Almost the entire film was filmed on a soundstage in Hollywood, but I didn’t even think about it because the dialogue and the performances were the main stars, in my opinion.

While Jeremy Arnold, a writer for TCM, believed the dialogue was a bit “stagy” but writes that, “unlike other films for which such qualities are the kiss of death, The Petrified Forest is vital and engaging, partly due to the strength of the play itself and partly due to its first-rate performances. All the actors underplay their roles quite effectively. (Even Bette Davis, as the The New York Times reviewer noted: “Davis demonstrates that she does not have to be hysterical to give a grand portrayal.”)”

Earlier, I mentioned that the race of the chauffeur, Joseph, would come into play in the movie and it does when Slim, Duke’s black member shows up. He is one of the gang, not a servant, as he points out to Joseph when he offers him a drink, and the chauffeur asks permission from Mr. Chisholm first.

“Listen to him,” Slim mocks. “Is it alright, Mr. Chisholm? Ain’t you hear about the big liberation? Come on, take your drink, Weasel.”

This was Bogart’s breakout movie, and he had Howard to thank for it.

When the studio said Bogart wasn’t good enough for the role, especially since he hadn’t been a big hit at all yet, and probably never would, Howard said if they wouldn’t hire Bogart, then he was out too.

Bogart, according to author Eric Lax, knew who had given him his first chance and as a tribute named his second daughter with Lauren Bacall, Leslie, after Howard.

It helped Bogart that he looked a lot like John Dillinger because the play’s author based the character Duke Mantee on Dillinger, who was wanted by police in 1936. Bogart reportedly studied film footage of Dillinger to perfect his mannerisms and when moviegoers found out he was doing a Dillinger impression, they flocked to the movie to see Bogart’s version.

There are some great quotes in this one, thanks to the writer of the play and screenwriters Charles Kenyon and Delmer Daves, who adapted it.

Alan Squier: Tell us, Duke, what kind of a life have you had?

Duke Mantee: What do you think? I spent most of my time since I grew up in jail. And it looks like I’ll spend the rest of my life dead.

***

Gabrielle Maple: Petrified forest is a lot of dead trees in the desert that have turned to stone. Here’s a good specimen.

Alan Squier: So that was once a tree? Hmmm. Petrified forest, eh? Suitable haven for me. Well, perhaps that’s what I’m destined to become, an interesting fossil for future study.

***

Alan Squier: I’ve never kidded anybody, outside of myself.

***

Bette asks Leslie at one point, “What are you looking for?”

He ponders this question and says, “I don’t know. I suppose I was looking for something to believe in. Something worth living for, worth dying for.”

***

Mrs. Chisholm: I was married to this pillar of the mortgage loan and trust. He took my soul and stenciled it on a card and filed. And that’s where I’ve been ever since, in an odd metal cabinet.

***

Duke to Alan: “You can talk sitting down. I heard you doing it.”

Alan Squier: ‘The Hollow Men’… refers to the intellectuals who thought they’d conquered nature. They damned it up and used its waters to irrigate the wastelands. They built streamlined monstrosities to penetrate its resistance. They wrapped it up in cellophane and sold it in drugstores. They were so certain they had it subdued. And, now- ? Do you realize what it is that’s causing world chaos? Well, I’m probably the only living man who can tell you. It’s nature hitting back. She’s fighting with new instruments called neuroses. She’s deliberately afflicting mankind with the jitters. Nature’s proving that she can’t be beaten, not by the likes of us. She’s taking the world away from the intellectuals and giving it back to the apes.

***

Alan Squier: You better come with me, Duke. I’m planning to buried in the Petrified Forest. I’ve formed a theory about that that would interest you. It’s the graveyard of the civilization that’s shot from under us. The world of outmoded ideas. They’re all so many dead stumps in the desert. That’s where I belong. And so do you, Duke. For you’re the last great apostle of rugged individualism.

I’m taking a break from an actor-themed movie marathon for the rest of the summer, but in the fall I’ll be watching Jimmy Stewart movies.

This summer, I will be finishing up my rewatches and blog posts about The Thin Man movies and also writing about some other old movies I’ve watched or will be watching.

Thank you for coming along on this Bette Davis marathon with me.

If you would like to read about the other movies I watched this spring, you can find the list here:

Sources and additional resources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/31568/the-petrified-forest

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028096/quotes

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

Notice: This post may contain affiiate links. If you purchase the product from these links I will receive a small compensation at no extra charge to you.

Spring of Bette Davis: Now, Voyager

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Spring of Bette5 Comments

I have been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and clearly, it is stretching a bit into summer.

This week I am writing about Now, Voyager — a movie that chronicles the life of a mentally abused woman whose narcissistic mother held her back and down for years.

It was released in 1942, which was in an era where movies were being geared toward women, left home during World War II. It was a feminist-yet-not-feminist movie that was ahead of its time in some ways and right in line with the times in others.

Bette portrays Charlotte Val, an abused woman who only escapes the horror of her mother (Gladys Cooper) when a psychiatrist named Dr. Jaquith (portrayed by Claude Rains) sees what is happening and suggests Charlotte come to a sanatorium. His hope is to unravel the neurotic mess caused by her domineering mother.

This movie starts with Bette looking very dowdy and old, with a unibrow. Online, it also says she was overweight but…well, that wasn’t what I think of as overweight. Different standards back then, of course.

 We learn right off the bat that Charlotte’s mother is a domineering, crazy lady. Charlotte has three older brothers and was the “unwanted child” that her mother felt was a burden.

Charlotte’s sister-in-law, Lisa, (Ilka Chase) brings Dr. Jaquith to meet Charlotte, and I can’t help feeling she did this to try to help Charlotte escape her mother.

Ilka also has a teenage daughter (Bonita Granville, who was also in the old Nancy Drew movies) who laughs at her spinster aunt. She is not a lovely girl, but she does improve somewhat later on.

When Charlotte leaves the sanitorium — thinner, more beautiful, and full of more confidence than when she went in — Dr. Jaquith and Lisa suggest she delay her return to her mother and instead go on a cruise, which she does. There she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid), who is on a business trip, and who she falls in love with but soon learns is married, though unhappily. They end up pushed together a lot on this trip, and when they are involved in a car crash while going to see the sights on a stop in Rio de Janeiro, they spend the night together, cuddling (maybe more? Hmmm…), and then spend five days together after missing the ship.

Charlotte eventually catches up with the ship to return home after she and Jerry admit they can’t be together because of his marriage.

This movie was very good, suspenseful and fascinating, but I am going to share one annoyance for me —  and please keep in mind that this was most likely a me issue and is probably due to some sensory overload issues I’ve been having as I get older — the music that constantly plays in the background of every single scene and never lets up was very distracting for me. I hesitate to even share this lest one of the enthusiastic Bette fans who have found my movie clips on social media come here and berate me, but the music, while very good, was very distracting for me. Maybe it was the sound on my TV? I have no idea.

I searched online to see if this bothered anyone else and it did (thank you Reddit and other forums), but I also read that this was to set the mood of the movie and to show how intense things kept getting for Charlotte throughout various stages of her breaking away from her mother.

That makes sense, but it was no less annoying for me. At times, I had trouble concentrating on the dialogue because of how prevalent the music was. It was a 2-hour movie and the music never, or at least rarely, stopped. The score, composed by Max Steiner, won an Oscar, though, so this is apparently just a “me” issue.

Like many of Bette’s movies, Now, Voyager is a melodrama, and melodramatic music is to be expected.  

The blog The Hollywood Garden shared that Steiner scored 21 of Bette’s movies; she was a huge fan of his. Rightly so. The music is great — just a bit too great in some scenes where it was more prominent than the voices to me.

“In 1939, during the making of Dark Victory (dir. Edmund Goulding), Bette stopped the climactic scene and asked Goulding if Steiner was going to score the picture,” The Hollywood Garden wrote. “He said he didn’t know and asked what the big deal was. She famously said, ‘Either I’m going to climb those stairs or Max Steiner is going to climb those stairs. But I’ll be g******** if Max Steiner and I are going to climb those stairs together!’”

But, as usual, I have digressed a bit. Let’s get back to the rest of the movie.

From the first moment that Dr. Jaquith takes Charlotte from her mother’s home, I was rooting for her.

I was hoping she would break away, tell that old bitty to jump off a bridge, and start her own life. Some of this did happen, but then Charlotte was in a new cage — one of a mistress who can’t really have the man she wants because he’s already married with children. Ironically, one of his children, a daughter, is very similar to Charlotte and is treated as poorly by her mother as Charlotte was by hers.

That will come into play in the movie, of course.

Bette showed her true range in this film. I almost forgot she was Bette. Instead of being brash and bold and yelling, like she was in many of her other films, she was withdrawn, subdued, quiet, and confused during the beginning of Now, Voyager, with a later transformation into a bold and determined woman.

It was fascinating to watch the process of where Charlotte started and where she eventually ended up.

I’ve almost forgotten to mention that this movie is based on the book by Olive Higgins Prouty. It was the third novel in a series about the wealthy Vale family of Boston and was released in 1941.

Bette was not the first choice for this film, which was directed by Michael Curtiz after the first director, Edmund Goulding, became ill.

Warner Bros. Production Head Hal Wallis first looked to Irene Dunne, who had starred in another melodramatic film, Love Affair, with Charles Boyer, a couple of years before. Also considered were Norma Shearer and Ginger Rogers.

None of those women were available in the end, and Bette was in the middle of yet another blow-up and battle with Jack Warner, head of Warner Bros.

When a friend at the studio told Bette that the rights had been obtained to Prouty’s novel, though, she began to lobby for the role. She was a native Bostonian and would understand the role more than other actresses, she said.

Warner said Bette wasn’t attractive enough to go from an ugly duckling to a glamorous woman.

Bette countered that her modest appearance would appeal to all women around the nation instead of a Hollywood beauty, and Wallis agreed, thus convincing Warner to cave and give her the role.

One famous scene or recurring action that came in this film was when Paul Henreid lit two cigarettes in his mouth and handed one to Bette’s character. It was a move that followed Paul around for years afterwards, with fans offering to light his cigarettes that way.

I rented this one, but I believe it is streaming on various sites.

After I finish one more Bette Davis movie, The Petrified Forrest, I’ll be taking a break from a set movie/actor theme until Autumn, when I will be watching Jimmy Stewart movies.

The movies I’ve watched for this feature include:

It’s Love I’m After 

The  Working Man 

Another Man’s Poison 

Dark Victory

Jezebel 

Dangerous

The Letter

Of Human Bondage

Now, Voyager

The Petrified Forrest

You can find a suggestion of Bette Davis movies to watch here.

_____

Sources or further reading:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6703-now-voyager-we-have-the-stars

https://theoldhollywoodgarden.wordpress.com/2021/08/14/max-steiner-and-now-voyager-1942/

https://www.tcm.com/articles/1074847/now-voyager

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/aug/04/now-voyager-review-bette-daviss-sublime-sex-free-act-of-sublimation

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

Notice: This post may contain affiiate links. If you purchase the product from these links I will receive a small compensation at no extra charge to you.

Spring of Bette: The Letter (1940)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions, Spring of Bette6 Comments

I’ve been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and I’m stretching a bit into summer because of some delays but … no one really cares because I think two people (including me) read these posts. Ha! But it’s still fun for me so I keep writing them.

This week I am writing about The Letter.

This one was very suspenseful and fascinating.

I wondered what the truth was and when I did know it, I wondered how everyone in the movie would figure it out.

And the ending…oof. I sort of knew it was coming and am not sure what I think about it, but I am going to not talk about it here. I’ll let some of you watch it and then you can come back and tell me what you thought.

Here is a brief description of the movie from TCM.com:

Based on a short story and play by British author W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter is the story of Leslie Crosbie, who has killed her lover and claims self-defense. But an incriminating letter exists…

I couldn’t write any better what Margarita Landazuri wrote on TCM.com about the opening sequence of this movie:


“It is a sultry, sweltering, moonlit night on a Malayan rubber plantation. The camera pans across the native workers sleeping fitfully in their hammocks, through the silent, menacing darkness. Suddenly, a shot rings out. A ghostly tropical bird, startled, flies off its perch. A man stumbles down the steps of the veranda, followed by a woman who pumps several more shots into him and drops the gun. In two wordless minutes, director William Wyler grabs the audience and sets the mood of The Letter (1940), with one of the most stunning opening sequences ever.”

This movie, released in 1940 is a remake of a 1929 movie starring Jeanne Eagels shortly before her death. It is one of the only, if not the only, surviving film she was ever in. There was a silent and a talking version with her in it released that year and it caused quite a stir with some towns in the U.S. banning it and calling it “too adult” for most audiences.

But we are talking about the 1940 version today.

This version was directed by William Wyler who Bette Davis had worked with in Jezebel and had a brief affair with (like who didn’t she have an affair with at this point?!). Davis said there was no other director who she would trust and listen to as much as Wyler.

There were a couple of major challenges to this insistence by Davis, but, overall, their close friendship did prove to be a plus for the movie.

In addition to Davis, the movie also stars:

James Stephenson (an unknown British actor at the time who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance but sadly died a year later from a heart attack), Herbert Marshall, and Victor Sen Yung as Ong Chi Seng.

Sen Yung, Bette, and Stephenson

Sen Yung was amazing and a pivotal part of the movie all the way through. His subtle expressions and slight raise of his voice just when needed as absolutely perfect. I’d like to find out more about him and the roles he was able to, and not to, play in Hollywood back then.

I did read that he played Hop Sing on Bonanza and I’ve never seen Bonanza but I’m guessing it was pretty stereotypical. Not sure though.

Gale Sondergaard plays an Asian woman, which was very odd, but also worked somehow. She was very intimidating and creepy but that was also enhanced with Wyler’s decision to cut the soundtrack in scenes with her, leaving only the sounds of wind or windchimes during her appearances.  

Davis was extremely intense during much of the  movie and her unflinching telling of the true story was chilling and unnerving. It had me gasping a couple of times but I gasped even more at her audacity at the end of the movie.

After watching all these movies with Bette, I don’t know that she is my favorite actress and sometimes I feel like she is the same person in a lot of movies, without much variety in her acting style (please, Bette fans, don’t throw things at me .. I wrote sometimes !) but she certainly commanded the screen with her presence. More so than what Bette says is how she looks in a scene. She has this subtle, and sometimes not subtle, way of cocking one eyebrow and lowering her eyelids at the same time that alerts you to an impending fit, temper tantrum, or epic take down.

This movie, much like Jezebel, showcases Bette’s ability to convey so much through just a few looks. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her and found myself saying, “Oh no you didn’t…” a lot to the screen when she was on.

This one is definitely on of hers I would recommend if you have never seen a Bette Davis movie, or one that was good at least.

Here is the opening sequence I was talking about above:

Here is an explanation on why this movie is considered noir by many film buffs

Up next I am watching Of Human Bondage, one of Bette’s most acclaimed early films.

My watch list for this feature:

It’s Love I’m After 

The  Working Man 

Another Man’s Poison 

Dark Victory

Jezebel 

Dangerous

The Letter

Of Human Bondage (June 2)

Now, Voyager (June 5)              

The Petrified Forrest (June 11)

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/18603/the-letter

https://classicforareason.com/2017/07/04/the-letter-1940/

https://classiq.me/breaking-the-rules-of-a-leading-lady-bette-davis-in-the-letter

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

Spring of Bette Davis: Dangerous (1935) (with spoilers)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions, Spring of Bette8 Comments

This Spring, I am watching Bette Davis films.

 This week I watched Dangerous  (1935) and I will be honest before we get too far — I didn’t like it very much. I feel weird writing that because Bette won an Oscar for this movie and it is regarded as one of her breakout roles besides Human Bondage (1934). I think what I didn’t like about this film was the story. It didn’t seem super well written to me.

There are many film buffs who feel similar, according to what I read online.

Bette seemed a bit too over-the-top for me at times, but then she was playing a woman who wasn’t really mentally stable, especially toward the end of the movie.

The movie is about a former theater star who loses her career due to her alcoholism, but is rehabilitated by an architect/theater buff who falls for her.

I partially didn’t like the movie because, to me, it did what too many movies of the 30s through 50s did and made the woman out to be evil and the man innocent, even if he did the same thing as the woman.

How many movies of that period have you watched where everyone warned people of a man who was a womanizer instead of warning a man about the “floozy woman”?

I’ve watched a fair amount and it gets a bit old.

Bette’s character is a mess, and she does bring ruin to all men she’s around and encounters, yes. She’s also ruined her own acting career with her alcoholism.

You can’t help hoping throughout the movie that she’ll turn her life around, and at least once, it looks like she might.

I won’t give the end of the movie away, in case you ever want to try it, but I will say, don’t hold out too much hope. The ending is complex. Did she turn her life around, didn’t she? I’m not sure what to think, but I believe there was some character development.

The beginning starts with our male main character, Don Bellows (Franchot Tone), who is an architect, hearing about what a trainwreck Bette Davis’s character (Joyce Heath) is, but having fond memories of seeing her on the stage.

Don is engaged to Gail Armitage when he sees Joyce, drunk in a bar, later in the movie (what a coinky-dink, eh?). He feels bad for her and wants to rescue her, so he offers to let her stay at his house in the country (White Knight Syndrome anyone?).

The big issue is that Joyce, and many others, believe that she is bad luck for any man who comes around her.

This proves to be true for poor Don, who falls for Joyce and works to rehabilitate her, even though she acts like a spoiled brat who hates the world. Eventually Joyce starts to act better, like a stray cat that finally lets its rescuer give it a pet. Don breaks his engagement with Gail and puts up his fortune to back Joyce in a Broadway show because no one else will hire her unless he offers money.

He wants to marry Joyce, but she refuses him.

That’s when we learn that dear Joyce is still married to a man who was loyal to her but who she financially ruined. She asks him for a divorce and . .. Well, you will have to watch and see what happens.

Bette almost didn’t make this movie, which seems to be a theme with her actually. I’ve read a couple times that she had to be talked into starring in certain films. Those films were later a success.

I’ve also read a couple of times now how she started affairs with her leading men. This one was no different, other than it might be what kicked off her years-long rivalry and bitter feelings toward Joan Crawford, or Joan’s feelings toward her.

Joan and Franchot (what a name) were engaged when Bette started an affair with him, although she claimed it was an unrequited crush. Years later, producer Harry Joe Brown said it was anything but that when he found the two “in a compromising position.”

Reports say that Crawford knew all about it but didn’t break the engagement. Instead, she simply increased her visits to the set to make Davis jealous. She eventually did marry Tone and, like most of her marriages, it lasted about four years.

Dangerous was originally titled Hard Luck Woman.

In the movie, Bette plays a wide range of personalities, from a drunk woman to a woman who hopes for a better future with a man she loves.

I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t thrilled with the movie overall. Critics didn’t like the story, but they did like Bette’s performance.

One critic is said by TCM.com to have given her one of the most famous reviews of her career:

E. Arnot Robertson in Picture Post wrote: “I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet.”

So, while I didn’t like the storyline of the film as much as some, I did like Bette’s performance.

Up next, I am watching The Letter.

My watch list for this feature:

It’s Love I’m After 

The  Working Man 

Another Man’s Poison 

Dark Victory

Jezebel https://lisahoweler.com/2026/05/06/spring-of-bette-davis-jezebel-1938/

Dangerous

The Letter (May 26)

Of Human Bondage (May 28)

Now, Voyager (June 2)              

The Petrified Forrest (June 11)

I am tacking another movie on to this list — The Petrified Forrest with her and Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. My husband watched this one years ago and says it is very good so I will use it to round out my Spring of Bette Davis, which will stretch a little bit into the summer.

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/87882/dangerous
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026261/

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/2/25/seasons-of-bette-dangerous-1935.html

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026261/
https://www.tcm.com/articles/87882/dangerous

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

Spring of Bette (Davis): Jezebel (1938). Otherwise known as the movie that made me say, “Well, that escalated fast.”

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions, Spring of Bette11 Comments

This spring, I have been watching Bette Davis movies, and this past weekend, I watched Jezebel from 1938.

Wow.  What a wild ride.

The tagline for this one could be — well, that escalated fast.

Especially as the movie gets toward the end.

It just races forward like a freight train out of control, but in a good way.

Bette stars in this one with a very serious Henry Fonda (I think he’s serious in every movie he is in).

George Brent, who was also in Dark Victory with her, is in this one too.

George Brent and Bette Davis.
This is not my photo. Copyright Warner Bros.

Our story takes place outside of New Orleans in 1852.

Bette portrays a woman named Julie who comes from a wealthy family and is engaged to a banker named Preston. Preston is often busy, and this irks Julie, who is very headstrong and self-centered.

When she is getting fitted for a long white ballgown she is supposed to wear to a special ball, she sees a red dress and decides she’s going to stand out and wear that one.

Everyone in the shop and in her family is horrified.

You just don’t wear red in “polite Southern society” at this or any ball.

Forget that, Julie says, even when Preston sees the dress and tells her there is no way she is wearing it. She is wearing it, she tells him, and that is that. The dress is gorgeous, even in black and white, by the way. I wanted to see it color and looked online, but couldn’t actually find an official photo of it anywhere. There are some colorizations of it, but those were done by others, that I can see.

A Photoshopped-colorized image of Julie’s forbidden red dress. Not my photo.

All of Bette’s clothes in this movie are stunning.

Back to the movie, though….Preston is furious but takes her to the ball anyhow. At the ball, people part like the Red Sea, not because they are impressed. They are scandalized by the dress and act like Julie is a — well, you know.

Preston returns Julie and her family home later that evening and says to Julie’s mother he wishes her a goodnight. To Julie, he says, “Goodbye, Julie.”

This is after they had known each other as children and always expected to marry. Oof!

Julie doesn’t believe it’s really happening, but things get real when Preston moves to the North to run a bank and leaves her behind.

I won’t ruin the rest of it for you. I will tell you that there is a reason the movie is called Jezebel and it is because Julie is called it by someone she knows.

Promotional image for Jezebel from Warner Bros.

For those who are not familiar with the name Jezebel, it refers to the wife of King Ahab of Israel, who was not a very nice woman at all. She would be called “immoral” by many.

I don’t tell you some of the details of the movie or the ending, but I will caution you that you need to fasten your seatbelt after this point in the movie if you do decide to watch it. There is going to be betrayal, talk of slavery failing the south on an economic level, slaves singing as part of the nightly entertainment, a yellow fever breakout, a dual, and so much more.

Your head is going to start spinning before it is all said and done.

Bette in her white dress. (Not my photo.)

Overall, I enjoyed the rush of this movie. I couldn’t look away. It was a bit like Gone with the Wind but shorter. I was somewhat horrified at how women were expected to act and dress a certain way during that time, but,  of course, knowing the history, I know it was true.

While I am on the subject of Gone with the Wind, Bette Davis tried out for the role of Scarlet, but didn’t get it.

That worked out well for her in the end. This movie was her first big-budget film, and she won an Oscar for it in 1939. Bette’s co-star, Fay Bainter, who played her aunt Belle, also won an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Vivien Leigh won hers in 1940 for playing Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind.

Henry Fonda was very good as the brooding Preston, who was also facing his changing ideas of what the South really was.

I haven’t seen him in a ton of movies, but the ones I have seen him in, he was a lot older, so it was fun to see him so young.

Henry Fonda and Bette Davis. (Copyright TCM)

The acting from all of the cast was really very strong, and pulled me right into the time period. The black actors were great but I have a bad feeling they didn’t get the credit they should have at the time.

Warner Bros. had started planning Jezebel as a way for Davis to break out in a big movie as far back as 1935. They were going to buy playwright Owen Davis Sr.’s failed play back then, but passed on it.

But then the book Gone With The Wind took off.

Warner Bros didn’t get the rights to that, so they went back to get the rights to Jezebel.

They hired one of Hollywood’s top directors of that time, William Wyler.

Bette and William started an affair and when he later married another actress, Bette was said to be devastated and in later years called him the love of her life. They paired up again in a professional capacity in The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941).

So far, I would say this one, next to It’s Love I’m After, is my favorite movie of Bette’s I’ve watched so far.

Up next, I am watching Dangerous.

My watch list for this feature:

It’s Love I’m After 

The  Working Man 

Another Man’s Poison 

Dark Victory

Jezebel

Dangerous (May 9)

The Letter (May 14)

Of Human Bondage (May 21)

Now, Voyager (May 28)

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/136752/the-essentials-jezebel

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

Spring of Bette (Davis): Another Man’s Poison

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions12 Comments

Another Man’s Poison was my second Bette Davis movie, and I watched it on a whim sometime back in January. All About Eve was my first Bette Davis movie, in case you are curious.

This movie is dark from the start. We have Bette Davis as Janet Frobisher, and she’s already committed a crime that she would like to keep quiet.

A celebrated mystery writer, Janet married a criminal who was also abusive. We never get to see her husband because at the start of the movie, he’s already dead and she’s killed him. Not a spoiler. It’s the movie set up and will set up the direction of the rest of the movie.

She’s already called Larry, the fiancé of her secretary, who she, incidentally, is having an affair with, and asked him to come to her house that weekend. She’s walked to a phone box very far from her house to make the call and her nose neighbor, Dr. Henderson, the local vet, comments to her about how odd it is she is in town when she owns a mansion with phones in every room.

Janet essentially tells him to get lost and goes back home.

She has plans to dump her husband’s body in the pond on their property, but a man, George Bates (played by her real-life husband Gary Merrill), breaks into her house looking for her husband, saying he’s a robber and a murderer he and her husband were supposed to meet there after the robbery to escape together.

After a bunch of back and forth, Janet confesses she killed her husband but before she can kick Bates out the door, Dr. Henderson (Emlyn Williams) shows up and not wanting him to know she killed her husband, who Henderson has never met, she agrees to let Bates pretend he is her husband.

What results is another hour or so of panic, blackmail, and manipulation that will make your head spin. And then ending…well I can’t talk about it but oof! All I’ll say is karma is a word I do not write out or usually use so I’ll just say — a jerk!

While researching this film I was surprised to find out that it was co-produced by one of my favorite actors — Douglas Fairbanks Jr. I watched a ton of his movies last winter, which you can find here (scroll down the page).

Bette jumped at the opportunity to film this British thriller in the UK because there was a part for her new husband, free passage on the Queen Elizabeth cruise liner, and she could bring her children. It was essentially a free honeymoon.

There was a problem with the script but, according to TCM, Bette ignored this because she could choose her director (American Irving Rapper who directed one of her biggest hits, Now, Voyager in 1942). She liked him because “she could dominate him” the TCM article says.

“I’ve always wanted to play in a suspense picture as they’re made in England, with that quiet effectiveness which the British singularly seem to possess,” Bette told the British reporter.

Trouble always seemed to follow Bette and this time was no different. As soon as she arrived in England she threw a lavish party for the British press who rewarded her with tabloid articles about her mink coats, her excess and her husband, “Mr. Davis.”

This movie was not really well-received, with critics rolling their eyes at what they called “the absurdities of the script.”

They were impressed with how Bette pulled off the role even with the issues, though.

“No one has ever accused Bette Davis of failing to rise to a good script; what this film shows is how far she can go to meet a bad one,” critic Frank Hauser wrote in New Statesman and Nation.



The movie wasn’t a success at the time for the couple but visiting England was.

Actor Emlyn Williams bringing the schoolteacher who had been the inspiration for Miss Moffat in The Corn Is Green onto the set of Another Man’s Poison, and introducing her to Davis was an absolute thrill for Davis who  starred in The Corn is Green in 1945.

The marriage went the way of the movie, I should add, ending only a year later, which was probably good because it was said to be a rocky and abusive one.

Have you seen this one?

Up next for my Spring of Bette feature is: Dark Victory.

My watch list for this feature:

It’s Love I’m After (April 15)

The  Working Man (April 21)

Another Man’s Poison (April 27)

Dark Victory (April 30)

Jezebel (May 1)

Dangerous (May 7)

The Letter (May 12)

Of Human Bondage (May 21)

Now, Voyager (May 28)

Additional sources/resources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/27959/another-mans-poison

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

Classic Movie Impressions: Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions2 Comments

I have been watching and writing about The Thin Man movies, and up this time is Shadow of the Thin Man, which is the fourth movie in a six-movie series.

You can find my impressions/reviews/recaps/whatever you want to call it here.

If you have read my other posts or are familiar with these movies, then you know that the main characters are Nick and Nora Charles.

Nick is a private investigator, but is mainly helping to manage all of Nora’s money since she is an heiress.

Nora, however, would like Nick to do a little more and keep himself busy instead of drinking alcohol and gambling. 

Myrna Loy made a comment in her autobiography that movies four through six weren’t as good as the first three because the original writers, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, had decided they didn’t want to be a part of the franchise any longer. I respectfully disagree with her, at least for Shadow of the Thin Man. The mystery is convoluted, as always, (and I am really not sure about the guilty party making sense) but I felt the banter between Nick and Nora was as well-written as the previous movies. This one was a lot better than Another Thin Man, which was confusing and all over the place to me, and written by the married writers.

Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett tried to tank the series after the second movie by adding a baby because they really didn’t want to write a third. They clearly failed at sinking the series. By this movie, Goodrich and Hackett had literally had it.

“They press you awfully hard there…” Goodrich said. “When they started talking about another Thin Man, we started throwing up and crying into our typewriters. We had the nervous breakdown together, [so] we said, ‘let’s get out of here [and] we quit.’”

Novelist Dashiell Hammett, the original creator of the characters, also bowed out of the movies and refused to be part of it.

In this edition, we are introduced to Nick Jr., who is now around 5-years-old. He adds even more chaos and comedy to the mix, especially with his interactions with Nick Sr.

In one scene, he tells his dad he needs to drink more milk instead of alcohol at dinner. This makes Nick Sr. choke down half a glass of milk with some hilarious expressions, before the doorbell rings and he is let off the hook.

It is in this movie that I have to admit I do feel like Nick’s drinking is less funny and more sad. I get that Nick drinking too much is a running joke throughout the movie series, but he’s a dad now and showing his kid that he drinks no matter the mood he is in. There is always an excuse to drink with Nick Charles Sr.

But let’s not get too logical or realistic here. This is a comedy-mystery and we are meant to have some fun watching it, which I did.

In the beginning of the film, we see Nick and Nick Jr. at the park and they are supposed to be reading a child’s book, but Nick Sr. is trying to read the horses who are going to be at the races later in the day. He’s added gambling to his irresponsible repertoire I guess.

Soon Nick is on his way to the track, but not before he’s pulled over for speeding, which is quickly forgiven when the officer recognizes Nick name. Not only does the office not give Nick a ticket, but he’s given a police escort to the track. Things seem to be out of hand, though, when tons of police cars surround the car and escort Nick and Nora into the track. The couple is confused when officers gather around the car and start fawning over him and telling him how impressed they were with the last case he solved.

It turns out that they aren’t actually there for Nick, though. There’s been a murder at the track. Nick doesn’t care, though, and seems determined not to get involved.

He doesn’t want to get involved even when Major Jason I. Sculley, the special deputy for the state legislature, and investigative reporter Paul Clarke visit and ask for his help in the case.

Of course, he eventually does get involved and the mystery picks up. I enjoyed the little interludes in this one, more than the mystery. There are some hilarious scenes with Nora and Nick at a wrestling match where Nora is where a hat that men keep commenting on because they think it is silly.

Then there is the relatable scene where Nick is on a merry-go-round with Nick Jr., trying to grab a ring but getting motion sick and dizzy in the process.

Another Thin Man (1939) was filmed shortly after Powell’s finance Jean Harlow died suddenly. This movie also brought heartache for cast members, especially Powell who lost his ex-wife Carole Lombard in a plane crash in and then his first wife and mother of his only son, Eileen Wilson also died. Myrna Loy went through a divorce and then a quick marriage, which was a strike at her character’s “good girl image.”

But then the real blow to the entire cast and country was when Pearl Harbor was attacked two weeks after the movie released.

In 1943 the franchise also lost its director, W.S. Vandyke, after he passed away.

Loy recalled feeling the void, both of a director and friend, saying that “[Van Dyke] seems to be neglected now. He was one of Hollywood’s best, most versatile directors.

Donna Reed appeared in this film in only her second major screen role.

The firth movie in the series, The Thin Man Goes Home, didn’t come out until 1944, partially due to the war and VanDyke’s death.

Did you make it this far in the series?

You can catch my other movie recaps here:

The Thin Man

After The Thin Man

Another Thin Man

Sources or Additional Resources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/81421/shadow-of-the-thin-man

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish