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 Victorywith 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.
If you enjoy the kind of content on my blog and all that goes into it, you can support my writing for $2.99 a month or a single donation. Learn more here: https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/
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.
I’m watching Bette Davis movies this spring, but have chosen some of the less popular ones for something different.
This next movie, A Working Man, came on afterIt’s Love I’m Afterand intrigued me in the first several minutes so I decided to stick with it. I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. It was a cute movie and a very early one for Bette. So early, she still had platinum blonde hair and was 25-years old.
I have a temporarily lost remote to thank for finding this one.
This pre-Hayes Code 1933 movie is about John Reeves (George Arliss), the president of the Reeves Shoe Company, who is determined to beat his competitor, Hartland Shoes.
He’s so determined to beat the competition that he ignores a request by a friend to go fishing in Maine.
His nephew Benjamin Burnett is ready for Reeves to retire so he can take over the business already.
When Tom Hartland, CEO of the Hartland Shoe Company, dies, John Reeves is saddened, even though he was his main competitor.
Benjamin begins to hint that John is senile and to teach him a lesson, John heads off for that fishing in Maine, leaving him to run the business for a while and see what it is like.
Ironically, though, a yacht stops running near John’s fishing pier and two young people swim up to ask for booze while they wait. John, who has always been a hard worker, is disgusted by their laziness. One of those young people is Bette Davis as Jenny Hartland.
The other is her brother Tommy Hartland played by Theodore Newton.
As they begin to chat, John learns they are the spoiled children of the recently deceased Tom Hartland. John decides to call himself John Walton and befriends them so he can spy on their company but as the spying begins, John starts to like the two kids and decides he wants to help them better themselves. He also discovers that the shoe making plant for their late father’s business is being mismanaged.
This launches him into a journey to save the business he’s been trying to destroy for years while also trying to keep his own business going and his identity hidden.
Bette is so young in this one, as I mentioned above.
The screenplay for the movie was based on a story The Adopted Father by Edgar Franklin and written by Charles Kenyon and Maude T. Howell.
Arliss was a well-known silent movie star before going into talking films and reprised his role in this movie from his 1924 silent movie Twenty Dollars a Week, which was based on the same story. Hollywood does like to rehash an old story because the 1936 20th Century Fox film Everybody’s Old Man was based on the same source.
The movie was Arliss and Bette’s second time appearing together in a movie. They were in The Man Who Played God the year before.
But their relationship goes deeper than just being in a previous movie together, according to TCM.com.
“[The Working Man] was the second and last film Davis made with Arliss, whom she always considered one of her mentors and the person who was responsible for saving her nascent film career,” an article on the site states. “She first met Arliss in the late 1920s, when he was a guest lecturer at the drama school she attended in New York. He counseled her not to adopt the exaggerated “cultured” English diction that many actors were then using. Instead, he suggested that she speak standard American English, but make an effort to get rid of her New England accent. Davis followed his advice. In late 1930, Davis was signed to a contract by Universal and went to Hollywood, but she was cast in pallid secondary roles and made little impression. Nine months later, Universal dropped her. According to Davis, she and her mother were packing up to return to New York, when she received a phone call summoning her to a meeting with Arliss, then one of Warners’ top stars. After meeting with Arliss, she was cast in The Man Who Played God, and signed to a Warner Bros. contract.”
We talk about the oversaturation of the entertainment market these days, but back then, movies were made fast and furious. Bette made, or at least released, seven movies in 1933.
The Working Man was her 15th movie, and she only started working in movies two years before. The New York Times gave Bette a good review saying, “Bette Davis, whose diction is music to the ears, does good work in the role of Jenny.” Bette had good memories of working with Arliss.
“Whatever was happening on his set, at four p.m. sharp, everything stopped for a half hour while we had tea,” she said. “I think he had it in his contract. Mr. Arliss helped pour, and everyone, to the lowliest grip, participated. I especially enjoyed knowing instinctively that Mr. Jack L. Warner was sitting in his office having a fit during this expensive homage to a civilized way of life.”
Even after Arliss went back to England in 1935, Bette continued to look at him as her mentor.
Margarita Landazuri wrote in her article on TCM that when Bette was in a contract dispute with Warner, Arliss told her to give in and not to try to sue Jack Warner again. She’d already lost her first attempt.
“Bette, you must go home and do anything they ask for one year,” he told her. “You must accept the fact that you have lost. It’s difficult to handle defeat, but you can take it.” Realizing that her career would be over if she continued to fight, Davis followed his advice. She swallowed her pride and returned to Warner Bros., where she soon became the studio’s top female star. “He certainly was my first professional father,” Davis said of Arliss, and the sentiment was reciprocated. In her home, she kept a framed photograph of Arliss. The inscription read, “with adopted fatherly affection.”
Up next in my Spring of Bette Davis, I’ll be writing about Another Man’s Poison.
An arrogant, self-absorbed, womanizing stage actor and the actress who keeps putting up with him are the main characters in It’s Love I’m After, a 1937 romantic comedy starring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, and Olivia De Havilland.
I stumbled on this one by accident while looking for Bette Davis movies to add to my Spring of Bette Davis feature and ended up absolutely loving it.
I didn’t even know it was a comedy when I started it, but when the pair started insulting each other in loud whispers during a scene from Romeo and Juliet, I knew this movie was going to be very entertaining.
And it was very entertaining, very funny, and a very nice surprise.
Leslie Howard plays the part of Basil Underwood, a famous stage actor who women fall all over.
Bette plays his co-star and on-again-off-again girlfriend, Joyce Arden, who joins Leslie’s drama with her own drama. In the beginning, we see the two sniping at each other right after their performance, going back to the hotel and continuing their arguing through the door separating their rooms.
It is at the hotel where we meet Basil’s valet Digges played by Eric Blore. Their interaction reminded me so much of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse. I absolutely loved their bantering, bickering, and joking.
They have this whole routine where Digges either gives or takes away points from Basil based on his behavior, and Basil’s behavior is often not good because he is frequently running off with married women or breaking hearts, all while in a relationship with Joyce.
Leslie Howard and Eric Blore
Joyce and Basil have decided they are going to get married early on in the movie, but there is one problem. After their performance at the beginning of the movie, a young woman named Marcia West (De Havilland) comes to visit Basil and tells him she is in love with him. This is very exciting for him because, you know, he loves women and the attention of women. Marcia leaves without telling him her name, and Basil is left with a well-stroked ego.
Once he and Joyce have decided to marry, and Joyce has closed herself in her room to get ready to leave for the wedding at a justice of the peace, Marcia’s fiancé, Henry Grant Jr. (Patrick Knowles) shows up and tells Basil he’s angry at him because Marica is in love with him.
Leslie Howard and Bette Davis
There is this whole hilarious scene where Basil says the situation reminds him of a play he was once in and he and Digges act it out for Henry, who is bewildered and annoyed.
The play they act out is about a woman who is in love with a man, but the man wants to shake the woman, so he acts like a cad to get rid of her.
Henry is delighted and says that is what he wants Basil to do — come to Marcia’s family’s house that weekend and be an absolute jerk so she will be fall out of love with him.
What follows is an absolutely hilarious second act that had me in stitches. Olivia was absolutely perfect as a celebrity-obsessed woman, and Leslie was perfect as the arrogant, self-absorbed star.
The cast was just so perfect together.
There is one line that isn’t really a spoiler, so I just have to share it — at one point Olivia says that she was obsessed with Clark Gable for a month and Leslie says, “Who’s Clark Gable?”
I felt like such a nerd when I said, to myself because my daughter was not listening, “Do you know why that’s so funny? It’s so funny because Leslie, Olivia, and Clark were all in Gone with the Wind together and in that movie Olivia’s character was in love with Leslie’s character and Clark was in a relationship with Vivien Leigh.” Then I snorted a laugh.
Gone With the Wind was released two years after this movie. I thought it would have been funny if It’s Love I’m After had been made after Gone with The Wind.
Leslie Howard wanted the movie made to give himself a break after appearing in mostly heavy dramatic roles like The Petrified Forest (1936) and Romeo and Juliet (1936), according to TCM. The screenplay was based on the story Gentlemen After Midnight by Maurice Hanlin.
Producer Hal Willis wasn’t sure about Leslie’s ability to pull of comedy, but did accept the suggestion for the film. Casey Robinson wrote the screenplay, and Archie Mayo directed.
Leslie originally wanted a comedic actress from the stage, like Gertrude Lawrence or Ina Claire to play opposite him but after a few failed attempts, the picture began production without a leading lady.
Finally, Wallis decided that Bette Davis could use a change of pace after intensely dramatic roles in Marked Woman, Kid Galahad and That Certain Woman (all 1937).
Bette wasn’t so sure, though. She’d turned out a lot of films in a short time and actually wanted a break. This would be her third film with Leslie, and she liked working with him but didn’t like that he was going to receive top billing above her. The two had had a strained relationship during the filming of Of Human Bondage when Leslie was cold and dismissive and said to resent the fact an American had been cast in a very British story. He’d also run hot and cold during the filming of The Petrified Forest, sometimes ignoring her, and also, she said, coming on to her “rather crudely.”
In It’s Love I’m After he turned his attention to Olivia, reportedly driving her nuts with his persistence in trying to woo her.
Olivia De Havilland and Leslie Howard
If it sounds like his character wasn’t too far off from the real Leslie, then you’d be right. He was known to be a womanizer, despite being married, and had many affairs.
Bette finally agreed to accept the role, but did ask for a cinematographer she liked to be hired to help her look good on screen.
Audiences proved that the producer had no reason to be worried about Leslie not doing well in a comedy, with over $1 million being brought in during its initial release.
Leslie followed this movie up by directing himself in George Bernard Shaw’s classic movie, Pygmalion (1938)
Up next for Spring of Bette, I will be writing about another one of her less-familiar movies, A Working Man, where she was in full blonde mode.
Here is the complete list of movies I will be watching during this feature:
Nancy Drew: Nancy’s Mysterious Letter by Carolyn Keene
I hope to watch:
Bette Davis movies for my Spring of Bette, including Now Voyager and Jezebel.
I’ve already watched It’s Love I’m After, The Working Man, and Another Man’s Poison for the feature.
How was your March, and what do you hope to read or watch in April?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
The cinematography in The Third Man (1949 ) is outstanding. The play of light with shadows, figures stepping in and out of light and dark both visually and metaphorically, makes this a movie you can’t look away from. If you do, you might miss a subtle exchange of looks, a quick smirk, someone moving in the shadows. You have to be on high alert while also relaxing into the story. You’re on the edge of your seat but also have plenty of moments to sit back and admire the superb acting of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton.
The movie is set in post-World War II Vienna, Austria at a time when four political powers America, Russia, England, and France were overseeing a corrupt post-war environment.
Cotton plays Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives without any money as the guest of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Welles). The problem is, when Martins arrives, he finds out Lime has been killed, hit by a car.
Martins wants to know how his friend died and why, and learns there was a “third man” who was present during the accident. This leads him down a path that gets him mixed up with Lime’s girlfriend and British intelligence and knocks him right into the middle of complicated moral and ethical issues.
A British noir film, The Third Man was directed by Carol Reed and produced by Reed, David Selznick, and Alexander Korda. The cinematographer was Robert Krasker, who won an Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography for his work on it.
It was written by Graham Greene for the screen, and later a novella was released.
According to information online, Korda was someone who repeatedly told Welles he would fund his projects, but at the last minute, would pull out.
“My whole time with Alex was things like that,” Welles once said. “I kept doing projects for him which I did not abandon, but which he did.”
When it came to casting for the film, everyone knew Welles fit the part (with Greene essentially describing Welles when he described Lime) so Korda asked him. Welles agreed but then, as revenge for Korda’s past behavior, proceeded to tour Europe to film scenes for Othello (1952).
Korda wanted the contract signed and Welles locked in, so he sent his brother, Vincent, after Welles. Over the next week, Vincent had to chase Welles to Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Capri because Wels would make sure they picked up and move to a new location each time Vincent was almost to them.
“I knew I was going to do it,” Welles later said, “but I was going to make it just as unpleasant as possible.” I loved this part of the story shared by TCM.com:
“On the way back to London via a privately chartered plane, Welles played one final, brilliant prank on Alexander Korda. Vincent asked him to hold a basket of fruit that he had gathered for his brother during the pursuit. This was post-war Europe, so fresh fruit was an exceedingly rare item. “It was going to be offered as a great present,” Welles said. “He’d gone and picked each piece of fruit. It was too good to be true! I knew Alex wouldn’t touch any of it if it had been bitten into.” So, when Vincent was asleep, Welles carefully took a bite out of each piece.”
Yes, Welles was literally chased down for this role, and it paid off because the character he played became known as one of the most iconic villains in cinema history.
I can’t say enough about the brilliant imagery in this film. Maybe it is my photography background/experience and my absolutely obsession with black and white photography that had me gawking in amazement and visually enamored with so many of this movie’s scenes.
Here is a still from a scene in the cemetery.
Anna is standing in the middle of the shot, the focal point of the photo, and on either side of her are rows of naked trees, forcing the viewer’s eyes to follow the trees down to Anna and only then wander slowly to Holly, watching her walk away. There is a barren feeling to the scene — the nakedness of the trees, the pale white of the sky showing it’s an overcast day, Anna with her head down, clearly in thought as she’s walking away, Holly watching her with a hint of sadness in his gaze.
Then there is this still from one of the most famous scenes in the movie.
Orson Welles in Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN (1949). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures / Studiocanal
There’s a chase through the sewers going on, Welles’ character is on the run and what is so incredible about this entire scene is how the tunnel forms a tunnel for our eyes, once again bringing our focus right to the man running in the middle of the scene, toward the light, toward freedom that he may or may not ever reach.
It was hard for me to take my eyes off this film, not only because of the story but because of the visual smorgasboard.
There are quite a few reviews of the movie online, with many of them agreeing that The Third Man is one of, if not the, greatest noir film ever made.
Tom Spoors from Loud and Clear Reviews writes: “Almost every frame of The Third Man is a visual marvel, employing all kinds of cinematic techniques. There’s plenty of dutch angles, sure, but what I found even more interesting is the way that Reed uses shadows. He puts his main character in a situation and a location that is brand new to him, and builds this world to be one constantly cloaked in mystery. Reed places silhouettes around every corner, plasters every wall with them, creating a city that almost doesn’t feel real. It’s an atmosphere that I don’t think has ever been captured again to this extent, and perhaps the biggest reason why the moviehas gone on to be one of the most critically acclaimed noirs of all time. Simply put, no other film in its genre looks or feels quite like it.”
Philip French of The Guardian wrote about the movie: “From the moment the first audiences saw the opening image of Anton Karas’s zither filling the screen with the nerve-jangling Harry Lime Theme (before, indeed, they had heard the word “zither”), they knew that with the second collaboration between director Carol Reed and author Graham Greene they were in for something special. At its end they recognised (British spelling) they’d seen a near-perfect work, what we now call a noir classic.”
It’s become a tradition for me to share and then disagree with the late film critic Roger Ebert’s reviews on here but this time I can’t.
“Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies. I saw it first on a rainy day in a tiny, smoke-filled cinema on the Left Bank in Paris. It told a story of existential loss and betrayal. It was weary and knowing, and its glorious style was an act of defiance against the corrupt world it pictured. Seeing it, I realized how many Hollywood movies were like the pulp Westerns that Holly Martins wrote: naive formulas supplying happy endings for passive consumption.”
If you haven’t seen the movie, you really need to and find out if this scene below is a flashback or … what’s really going on….
If you enjoy the kind of content on my blog and all that goes into it, you can support my writing for $2.99 a month or a single donation. Learn more here: https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/
This Winter I’ve been watching James Cagney movies.
I’ve switched the movie I was going to write about last week with the one I was going to write this week because I was going to watch the DVD of Angels With Dirty Faces I picked up, but I’ve been waiting for a night to watch it with The Husband, and that hasn’t come.
In the end, I decided to wait to watch that movie with him because he would like to see it as well, and it will be fun to watch together.
Angels with Dirty Faces stars Cagney with Humphrey Bogart, and Bogie is one of my husband’s favorite actors.
The Bride Came C.O.D. with Cagney and Bette Davis was a perfect substitute for this week, though.
It was a delightfully fun movie, and I needed it this week, so I’m glad I made the trade.
I will be watching this movie again with him soon, though, because it was just too much fun and should be watched with others.
This is a slapstick comedy where Cagney and Davis were both trying their acting talents at something a little different.
First, the premise: Davis is playing Joan Winfield, an heiress who makes impulsive decisions, and her latest impulsive decision is marrying Alan Brice (Jack Carson), a famous singer and band leader. The marriage announcement comes at just the right time for gossip and entertainment broadcaster named Hinkle who needs a big story.
He talks Brice into marrying Joan right away because it will make a great story for his broadcast.
The only issue is that Joan is on the phone with her father when Alan announces his engagement to Joan to the audience at the club and she is trying to work up the courage to tell her father she’s engaged.
Their call is cut short and she never tells him, but Hinkle arranges for her and Alan to go to a small airport to be flown by a private plane to Las Vegas where they can be married.
Steve Collins, a notorious womanizer who pretends he is married with children so he doesn’t get roped into marriage by women who like to date married men, owns the airport and the main plane. He’s never paid for the plane though and the finance company now wants it back. Steve’s handy man, Pee Wee (George Tobias) tells him that Hinkle has arranged for their plane to take a famous couple to Las Vegas and Steve wonders if they will even have a plane to take them in.
Collins tries to think of a way to get the money and has no ideas until Joan’s father, oil tycoon Lucius K. Winfield (Eugene Pallette) calls the airport to try to reach his daughter and Collins strikes up a plan with Winfield to make sure his daughter doesn’t make it to Las Vegas to marry Alan Brice.
If Collins pulls off the delay, meeting Winfield with his daughter in tow in Texas instead, Winfield will pay Collins the money he needs to pay off the plane and keep the airport in business.
The first task at hand is to get rid of Hinkle and Alan which PeeWee helps Collins with. With them out of the way, Collins jumps in the plane and takes off with Joan, his plan to fly her to Texas. Unfortunately, Joan isn’t too happy with this arrangement and tries to escape, causing the plane to crash in the desert.
Here we will be introduced to Pop Tolliver (Harry Davenport), who I just loved.
I loved a lot about this movie.
It was very witty and fun, with some great lines.
Bette Davis was supposed to be 23 in the film which I found a little unbelievable but then again, Bette always looked older to me than she was.
She was actually 33 when this movie was made.
According to Frank Miller from TCM (yes, my go-to-source), Cagney made the movie on the heels of Strawberry Blonde because he wanted to break out of gangster roles.
Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, and Rosalind Russell were considered for Davis’s role but when she expressed interest in trying out, Hal Willis, the producer of the movie, went to bat for her.
“In addition, she was eager to re-team with Cagney, who like her had a history of battles with the Warner Bros. management,” Miller wrote. “They had not worked together since 1934, when they teamed for the minor comedy Jimmy the Gent. Some biographers have suggested that the studio was punishing her with the film because of her notorious temperament, while others have suggested she may have wanted to emulate Katharine Hepburn, who had been equally successful in serious and comic roles. Also possible is that she was drawn to the film’s obvious similarities to It Happened One Night (1934), another tale of a runaway heiress saved from a bad marriage by the love of a simple working guy.”
There was a lot of trouble with the movie, including the writing and the fact Cagney wasn’t a fan of the sweltering heat at the shooting location of Death Valley.
Davis also wasn’t happy because while a stunt double was supposed to take the fall into a cactus for her, she had a fall of her own and ended up with 45 cactus quills having to be removed from her behind.
Neither actor was very fond of the movie years down the road and even critics bashed it with one saying, “Okay, Jimmie and Bette. You’ve had your fling. Now go back to work.”
As for me, I found the film a lot of fun and ended up snickering at the silliness and the exchanges between our main characters.
And as I said above, Harry Davenport really added some charm to the film for me.
Have you ever seen this one?
I found it for rent on Amazon Prime but it is also available on HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube, and AppleTV.
Next week I’ll wrap up my Winter of Cagney with Angels With Dirty Faces and two weeks after that I’ll start a bi-weekly movie watch of Bette Davis films.
If you want to catch up on the other Cagney films I’ve watched this winter you can do so here:
If you enjoy the kind of content on my blog and all that goes into it, you can support my writing for $2.99 a month or a single donation. Learn more here: https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/
I’m watching James Cagney movies this winter and last week I watched one of his most acclaimed movies — White Heat (1949).
The movie is considered by film critics to be one of the best gangster films of all time.
As I often do, I’ll start this post with an online description of the movie:
“Gang leader Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) lives for his mother, planning heists between horrible headaches. During a train robbery that goes wrong, Cody shoots an investigator. Realizing Cody will never be stopped if he knows he’s being pursued, authorities plant undercover agent Hank (Edmond O’Brien) in Cody’s cell.”
This description is wrong, though, because the investigator is shot after the robbery. But the conductor is shot by Cody.
All that aside, the robbery does go wrong, partially because a member of the gang is horribly burned. The gang has to hide out and we learn that Cody is very close to his mother, who helps him plan crimes. Closer than he is to his wife who is very lazy and sleeps a lot.
This isn’t an inappropriate relationship like Hamlet or Macbeth or whichever play that was, but Cody relies on Ma for a lot — including helping him when raging headaches hit him and practically debilitate him. The gang believes his headaches are the same mental illness his father had.
His mother doesn’t want him to let the gang see him that way because he will look weak.
It doesn’t matter if he looks week because his gang is ready to turn on him and take the money they stole from the train and cut him out of the deal no matter what.
He doesn’t know this, but he does know they have to split so the police don’t find them.
They have an injured gang member whom Cody orders one of his men to shoot. The man can’t do it, though, and leaves the burned man. The man still dies, and when he is found it is reported to the police, who eventually connect him to the gang.
A police officer sees Cody’s mom out by chance and they try to follow her back to the motel Cody, his mom and wife are staying at. She loses them but the police eventually find her car and corner Cody who shoots the investigator in the arm.
Cody is able to escape with his mom and wife, but finally decides if he really wants to shake the police, he will have to give himself up. He’s not going to admit to the big crime, though. He’s going to say he committed another crime that another criminal he knows pulled. He’ll only get about two years for that crime and it will be his alibi for the other crime. He couldn’t have robbed the train if he was committing a less serious robbery in another state, he says.
His wife and mom don’t like the idea, for different reasons.
His wife likes the idea a lot more when she realizes that her husband being in jail in another state will give her time with her husband’s second hand man, who she’s been having an affair with.
Cody’s plan works — sort of. The police figure out what he is trying to do, though, and still want to pin the first crime on him so they send an undercover cop into jail with him to try to make friends with him and find out where he hid the money from the train heist.
I’ll leave it there, so I don’t spoil what happens, but I am going to have to give a big spoiler here to discuss in the paragraph following this next one so if you don’t want to know, you need to stop here.
This movie was dark, intense, and while Cody Jarrett was a horrible man and easy to hate, I also couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him because he felt crime was the only way to make a living.
SPOILER ALERT!!
Also, the one person who loved him and he loved dies halfway through the movie. I won’t say how his mom dies but it is her death that leads to a much-talked-about scene where Cody absolutely flips out after he finds out she’s gone.
What is interesting about this scene is a couple hundred extras were used as the inmates inside the cafeteria and none of them were told what Cagney was going to do. Most of the shocked faces focused on during that scene were authentic because they were kept in the dark about Cagney’s plans. Some of them really thought Cagney had flipped out.
Another scene we need to talk about happens at the end. Throughout the movie Cody’s mom always ends their conversations by saying, “Top of the world, son! Top of the world!”
This is a line that has been used in pop culture references and parodies for years and I never knew what it was. Now I do and it’s honestly quite heartbreaking. There is so much Cody could have done with his life and not only did he choose crime but his own mother encouraged him to do so.
Cagney came back to Warner Brothers for this film after leaving for several years to start his own movie-making business with his brother. When that failed, he accepted an offer from Warner Brothers, even though Jack Warner really didn’t want him back — mainly because he needed the money.
Warner famously called Cagney, “that little b******.”
Cagney famously said of Warner in Rolling Stone Magazine, “I used to like to walk out on him, frankly, whenever my contract didn’t suit me. I’d cuss him out in Yiddish, which I had learned from Jewish friends in my days at Studyvesant High School. Drove him wild. ‘What’d he say?!’ he’d yell. ‘What’d he just call me?!’”
Their arguments mainly started over Cagney’s contracts in the 30s.
Rob Nixon wrote for TCM.com that White Heat is considered Cagney’s last good gangster film.
“An exciting, dynamic film in its own right, White Heat also stands out as the flaming finale to the era of stark, fast-paced crime films made famous by Warner Brothers and James Cagney (among other stars) from the 1930s on films in which the focus was on the often violent but charismatic gangster rather than the law enforcement officials who hunt him,” Nixon wrote. “It was also the apotheosis of Cagney’s brilliant career, a kind of summing up of the memorable outlaw characters he had created. His projects that followed in the 1950s were mostly lackluster affairs, and the cocky, pugnacious star audiences had come to love was glimpsed infrequently in such films as Love Me or Leave Me and Mister Roberts (both 1955).”
The film was directed by Raoul Walsh and in addition to Cagney it starred Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien, and Margaret Wycherly as Ma.
Many scenes, such as the one mentioned above were adlibbed by Cagney or Walsh.
One of those was when he got annoyed at Mayo (his wife) and he was supposed to just glare at her but instead Walsh told Cagney to kick her off the chair she was standing on. For me, this showed how nasty and heartless Cody really was – as if the opening scenes hadn’t already shown that.
The story for the movie was written by Virginia Kellogg and she was nominated for an Oscar for it, but didn’t win and no one else was nominated. Over the years, though, the film has been praised and named as the fourth best gangster movie by the American Film Institute, has been quoted or parodied too many times to count and in 2003, the American Film Institute named Cody Jarrett in its list of the best heroes and villains of the past 100 years.
I have to be honest and say that the end of the movie annoyed me. I don’t want to give it away but it was a typical movie from the 40s and 50s with the whole idea of the bad guy suffering and the “good guys/cops” being the heroes was very cliché.
In many ways there was nothing good that was going to come for Cagney’s character, though, so things ending badly for him was probably the only way for things to go.
Next week I will be watching Angels With Dirty Faces with Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. To end the event I will be watching The Bride Came C.O.D. (which will move me into my Spring of Bette Davis).
You can read about the other movies I watched by clicking the links below:
If you enjoy the kind of content on my blog and all that goes into it, you can support my writing for $2.99 a month or a single donation. Learn more here: https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/
For the next month or so I will be sharing posts here and there about The Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
The series is my favorite movie series of all time. The six movies kick off with The Thin Man (1934).
The Thin Man will be 91 years old this year and, to me and many others, it still holds up.
This cozy mystery masterpiece has hit the Top 100 movies list from a variety of film organizations and critics over the years and for good reason. My family owns the DVD set of all six movies so we can watch any of the movies any time we want.
If you haven’t seen this movie or the five sequels involving witty, often intoxicated, private detective, Nick Charles (William Powell), and his equally witty and mouthy wife, Nora Charles (Myrna Loy), then you’re missing out.
Each of the six movies is full of mystery, zaniness, misunderstandings, mishaps, and hilarious interactions between Nick and Nora and everyone else. Oh and a crime or two is mixed in too.
The crimes themselves, and how they were committed, are a bit dark at times, but never graphic or gruesome and the darkness is always overshadowed by the Charles’ antics.
The pairing of Powell and Loy was the ticket for success in the 1930s as they were in a number of movies together and are still considered one of the best movie couples of all time.
Their first film was Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and directed by the same director of The Thin Man, W.S. “Woody” Van Dyke.
The Thin Man is based on a book by Dashiell Hammet and as the movie starts, we find Nick has retired from being a Private Investigator in New York City to help oversee Nora’s wealth as an heiress in San Francisco. This leaves Nick with a lot of time on his hand to go drinking, goof off and do some general carousing, though never with women because he is completely and utterly devoted to Nora.
Nora would like him to get back to work, though, so when they go back to New York for a visit and Nick’s former client, Clyde Wynant (who is later described as simply a thin man — hence the name of the book/movie), goes missing. His daughter Dorothy comes to Nick for help, Nora gently, and later not-so-gently, suggests he help.
What makes this movie such a fun one that might bring an occasional gasp from viewers is that it is a pre-Hays Code movie. That means it was filmed before a bunch of rules went into affect about what can and cannot be shown or said in movies. That’s why there were a couple comments from some of the characters in this that had me gasping and then laughing.
For example:
Nick: I’m a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune.
Nora: I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids.
Nick: It’s not true. He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids.
Before I forget, what makes these movies even more fun is the addition of Asta, the couple’s wife-fox terrier, who also acted in Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn and The Awful Truth with Irene Dunn and Cary. He’s a fun addition who always adds to a scene. At one point Nick tells a criminal, (Summarizing here): Stay right there or my dog will get you. He’s vicious.”
All the while Asta is finding a place to hide under a table.
Asta’s real name was Skippy, by the way, and there are some fun stories about him, but I will share more about Asta/Skippy in future posts about the series.
So back in the beginning of the movie, before we even see Nick and Nora, Dorothy Wynant goes to her inventor father to tell him she’s getting married.
During that conversation we learn that Clyde cheated on Dorothy’s mother years ago with his secretary and they are now divorced. Later we will see that divorce really wasn’t such a bad thing because the ex-wife is absolutely batty.
Anyhow, shortly after Dorothy told her father she was getting married, we learn that Clyde Wynant’s former secretary and mistress, Julia Wolf, has stolen $50,000 worth of bonds from his safe. Those were going to go to Dorothy for her wedding gift. Clyde immediately suspects Julia, goes to her apartment, and finds her with a man named Joe Morelli.
Julia confesses she took the bonds, but she can’t give them back. She already spent $25,000 of them.
Clyde isn’t a very nice man and tells her she better get the $25,000 back or she’ll pay. He then leaves for a business trip and presumably never returns because three months later, Nick is out at a bar back in NYC for a visit when he runs into Dorothy who tells him her father is missing. She asks if Nick will help find him but Nick brushes her off by saying he’s sure her father will show up.
Things change later while Nick and Nora are throwing a party and Dorothy shows up to say Julia has been murdered and she truly feels her father is in danger. Now Nora pushes Nick to help out.
“You know, that sounds like an interesting case,” she says to Nick. “Why don’t you take it?”
Nick chuckles. “I haven’t the time. I’m much too busy seeing that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.”
The really quirky and memorable characters show up when Dorothy goes to visit her mother, Mimi, who — like I said above — is crazy, but also is married to a loser, jobless husband named Chris. Living with her mother is her Mama’s Boy macabre-obsessed brother Gilbert.
Gilbert is a bit of a nerd who walks around with a book and shows everyone how smart he is by using very big words and even bigger theories about things. He’s also a smart mouth.
At one point, he asks one of the cops: “Could I come down and see the body? I’ve never seen a dead body.”
The cop asks why he’d want to, and he says, “Well, I’ve been studying psychopathic criminology and I have a theory. Perhaps this was the work of a sadist or a paranoiac. If I saw it, I might be able to tell.”
Dorothy’s mother, Mimi, is self-focused and selfish and though she was cheated on and might have been a victim in any other movie, she’s a total mess in this movie. Her biggest worry is losing access to her ex-husband’s money, which she has been able to hold on to through alimony. When Julia is murdered, she sees an opportunity to get even more of her ex-husband’s money.
Going back to Nick and Nora … What makes them so memorable, beyond their amazing banter, is how they show that adventure, sex, and adoration doesn’t end after the wedding bells ring. I love how affectionate and playful they are throughout the series.
The writing for them is absolutely outstanding, which is probably because the screenwriters (Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett) were told to focus less on Hammet’s story and more on the banter between the couple.
Some of my favorite exchanges:
Nora Charles: How many drinks have you had?
Nick Charles: This will make six Martinis.
Nora Charles: [to the waiter] All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.
——————
Nick Charles: Oh, it’s all right, Joe. It’s all right. It’s my dog. And, uh, my wife.
Nora Charles: Well you might have mentioned me first on the billing.
______________
Lieutenant John Guild: You got a pistol permit?
Nick Charles: No.
Lieutenant John Guild: Ever heard of the Sullivan Act?
Nora Charles: Oh, that’s all right, we’re married.
______________
Nora Charles: Pretty girl (about Dorothy Wynant)
Nick Charles: Yes. She’s a very nice type.
Nora Charles: You got types?
Nick Charles: Only you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
_______________
Nora Charles: All right! Go ahead! Go on! See if I care! But I think it’s a dirty trick to bring me all the way to New York just to make a widow of me.
Nick Charles: You wouldn’t be a widow long.
Nora Charles: You bet I wouldn’t!
Nick Charles: Not with all your money…
According to information online, Hammett based Nick and Nora’s banter upon his rocky on-again, off-again relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman and the book itself on his experience as a union-busting Pinkerton.
MGM tried to prevent Myrna Loy from being cast in The Thin Man by telling director Van Dyke that he could have her “only if she was finished in three weeks to begin shooting Stamboul Quest (1934),” according to TCM. Van Dyke not only completed Loy’s scenes but all of the production somewhere between 12 and 18 days.
“Known as “One-Take Woody,” Van Dyke often did not bother with cover shots if he felt the scene was right on the first take, reasoning that actors “lose their fire” if they have to do something over and over,” Rob Nixon wrote for TCM. “It was a lot of pressure on the actors, who often had to learn new lines and business immediately before shooting, without the luxury of retakes, but Loy credited much of the appeal of The Thin Man to Van Dyke’s pacing and spontaneity.”
It was Van Dyke, with that whole desire of his to create natural reactions, who worked out Loy’s classic entrance into the bar and restaurant at the beginning of the movie — all her packages spilling on to the floor as Asta pulls her down the hall toward Powell.
Loy was told about the scene right before they shot it.
Van Dyke took a similar approach with Powell by telling him to take the cocktail shaker, go behind the bar, and walk through one of the early scenes while the crew checked lights and sound.
Powell did so and ad-libbed some comments to the crew as he worked out the scene. Before he knew it VanDyke yelled “That’s it! Print it!”
The director had had the cameras rolling the whole time.
He liked his actors as relaxed and natural as possible which is why a scene of Nick shooting the ornaments off the tree was added into the movie because “Powell playfully picked up an air gun and started shooting ornaments that the art department was putting up.”
I couldn’t find quotes from Powell about working with Van Dyke but there are quotes about working with Powell because he loved working with her.
“When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren’t acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony,” he said. “Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and take of acting that brings out the best.”
You can find plenty of opinions and articles about this movie online, most of them positive.
The Blonde at the Film wrote on her blog in 2014, “The Thin Man (1934) is a truly delightful mystery-comedy chock full of snappy dialogue, fantastic stars, art deco sets, magnificent costumes, enough mystery to make it suspenseful, and enough alcohol to give you a sympathy hangover.”
Christopher Orr wrote for The Atlantic: “As Nick and Nora, Powell and Loy subverted the classic detective film with comic aplomb and presented an impressively modern vision of marriage as an association of equals. They were also cinema’s most glamorous dipsomaniacs, a reminder of a bygone era when Hollywood could still imagine that charm, taste, and good humor might go hand-in-hand with the copious consumption of distilled spirits.”
His opinion of the mysteries in this movie and the others is fairly accurate, even though not altogether positive: “The mysteries themselves tend to be somewhat disappointing–needlessly convoluted, with solutions that often hinge on a last minute revelation or “clue” of dubious import (for example, whether or not someone announced themselves before opening a door). Rather, the chief pleasure of the films is in spending time with Nick and Nora as they tease, cajole, and romance their way toward the conclusion.”
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote of The Thin Man, “William Powell is to dialogue as Fred Astaire is to dance. His delivery is so droll and insinuating, so knowing and innocent at the same time, that it hardly matters what he’s saying.”
He continued: “Powell plays the character with a lyrical alcoholic slur that waxes and wanes but never topples either way into inebriation or sobriety. The drinks are the lubricant for dialogue of elegant wit and wicked timing, used by a character who is decadent on the surface but fundamentally brave and brilliant.”
Have you seen The Thin Man? What did you think of it?
Up next (at some point) I will be writing about the next movie in the series, After The Thin Man.
