By Ed Garea
April 8
6:00 am Lawyer Man (WB, 1933) Director: William Dieterle. Cast:
William Powell, Joan Blondell, David Landau, Helen Vinson, Claire Dodd, Alan Dinehart,
and Kenneth Thompson. B&W, 72 min.
Who
would have ever thought that Powell would be a romantic leading man in the
‘30s? He didn’t make his feature film debut until the age of 30 in 1922 and had
a face that seemingly doomed him to the world of character or supporting
actors. As a matter of fact, Powell wasn’t even the first choice for this film.
It was Edward G. Robinson, but Eddie G. was unavailable when the film was cast
and so it went to Powell.
Blondell,
on the other hand, was a treasure Warners simply had no clue as how best to
use. A gifted comedienne, she was frequently cast as either the best friend, or
moll of the leading man or leading lady. Aside from Barbara Stanwyck, there was
no one better at playing the Working Class Heroine than Blondell. And she
shines forth in this film playing a secretary, though she and Powell could be
said to be a mismatched couple.
The
plot of the film is simple: Powell is Anton “Tony” Adam, a rather successful
lawyer working on New York’s Lower East Side. Blondell is Olga, his extremely
competent albeit lovesick secretary. When he is framed by showgirl Virginia St.
Johns (Dodd), her crooked doctor boyfriend, Dr. Gresham (Thompson), and
political boss John Gilmurry (Landau) for unethical conduct, he decides that if
he’s going to be seen as a shyster, he might as well act like one and accepts
every shady case that comes his way, charging huge fees for his appearances.
Another court showdown with Gilmurry leads to an out-of-court settlement with
Tony being appointed an ADA, from which position he exacts revenge on Gresham.
Offered a judgeship by the organization, he turns it down to pursue his
original career of honest law work on the Lower East Side, with the faithful
Olga in tow.
Trivia: Max Trell wrote
the novel on which Lawyer Man is based. Trell was better known
as a children’s book author and as a contributor to such popular comic strips
as “Prince Valiant.”
9:30 pm Knock on Any Door (Columbia, 1949) Director: Nicholas Ray. Cast:
Humphrey Bogart, John Derek, George Macready, Allene Roberts, Susan Perry, and
Barry Kelley. B&W, 100 min.
Bogie
is crusading attorney Andrew Morton, who is defending juvenile delinquent Nick
Romano (Derek), accused of murdering a policemen during a robbery, with the old
“it’s society that’s to blame, for there is no such thing as a bad boy” canard.
It’s sort of tough defending a young man whose personal motto is “live fast,
die young, and have a good looking corpse.” But in Bogie’s final summation to
the jury he tells them, “Until we do away with the type of neighborhood that
produced this boy, ten will spring up to take his place, a hundred, a thousand.
Until we wipe out the slums and rebuild them, knock on any door and you may
find Nick Romano.” Did we really believe that?
Trivia: This was the first
effort from Bogart’s Santana Productions, founded along with business manager
A. Morgan Maree and producer Robert Lord. It was named after Bogart’s beloved
boat.
April 9
2:30 am Three Strangers (WB,
1946) Director: Jean Negulasco. Cast: Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald,
Peter Lorre, Joan Loring, and Robert Shayne. B&W, 96 min.
This
is a great, underrated movie about three down-on-their-luck strangers – Crystal
(Fitzgerald), a jilted wife; Arbutny (Greenstreet), a disreputable lawyer; and
Johnny (Lorre), a petty thief. They meet on a London street on the Chinese New
Year in 1938 and strike up a friendship, chipping in to buy a sweepstakes
ticket with the hope it will change their luck. It does, but their greed and
paranoia does them in and leads to tragedy.
Trivia: John Huston wrote
the story in 1936 while in England, and, with Howard Koch, completed the
screenplay a short time after. When Warners decided to go ahead with the
project in 1946, Huston was unable to fulfill the directorial duties due to the
fact that he was still in the U.S. Army Signal corps at the time. Huston also conceived
the project with Bogart, Greenstreet and Mary Astor as the leads.
April 10
2:45 pm The Set-Up (RKO, 1949) Director: Robert Wise. Cast: Robert
Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter, Edwin Max, and Wallace
Ford. B&W, 72 min.
Robert
Ryan has never been better than in this film, where he plays down-an-out club
fighter Bill “Stoker” Thompson, who insists that he is only one or two fights
away from reclaiming his place in the big time. Unbeknownst to him, his
manager, Tiny (Tobias), has sold him out for $50 to local gangster Little Boy
(Baxter), who wants Stoker to take a dive to up-and-coming Tiger Nelson. Stoker
fights as if the bout is on the level, and when it looks as though he might
win, Tiny tells him about the bribe and to take the dive. Stoker refuses and
knocks out Nelson to win, but that victory will be short-lived when the angry
Little Boy and his thugs get a hold of Stoker. The screenplay is by former
sportswriter Art Cohn, who supplied most of the film’s amazing realism. Wise directs
it like a documentary, even further adding to the realism. It’s a must see,
even if you’re not a boxing fan.
Trivia: Cohn based his
screenplay, incredibly, on a narrative poem published in 1928 by Joseph Moncure
March, who went to Hollywood as a screenwriter on the strength of it. The lead
character in March’s poem was Black, but Wise said there were no
African-American leading men in the Hollywood of 1948 and so cast Ryan, a
boxing champion during his student days at Dartmouth, instead.
5:45 pm The Woman on Pier 13 (RKO, 1949) Director: Robert Stevenson. Cast:
Robert Ryan, Laraine Day, John Agar, Thomas Gomez, Janice Carter William
Talman, and Richard Rober. B&W, 73 min.
There
is a special fun in watching “Red Scare” films, if for no other reason than
because they are so preposterous. And this is one of the best (or worst,
depending on your point of view) of the lot. Robert Ryan is shipping executive
Brad Collins, who, long ago, was once a member of the Communist Party. And as
we lovers of this genre know – once you’re in, you’re never out. The Commies
are little better than mobsters here – they blackmail, torture, and kill anyone
in their way. Brad has recently married Nan (Day) who knows nothing of his
former life. But one day Brad is visited by old flame Christine (Carter), who
tries to blackmail him back into the Party. When that doesn’t work she turns
her attentions to Nan’s naïve brother-in-law Don Lowry (Agar) and begins to
influence his politics. Because Christine was unsuccessful, the Party head
himself, Vanning (Gomez) steps in, using intimidation tactics and death threats
to force Ryan to rejoin the Party and go along with his nefarious scheme to
initiate a crippling strike on the San Francisco docks. Brad eventually foils
the Commies and saves the day for America, but at a great cost.
Trivia: The original title
of the film was I Married a Communist. The film marks the screen
debut for William Talman, who plays a sleazy carnival barker and hit man for
the Commies.
April 11
8:00 am Love Me Tender (20th Century Fox, 1956) Director:
Robert D. Webb. Cast: Richard Egan, Debra Paget, Elvis Presley, William
Campbell, and Neville Brand. B&W, 89 min.
This
so-so Western will always hold a special place among music fans as the debut
film of Elvis Presley. Producer Hal Wallis signed Elvis to a film contract, and
while developing what he considered the right material for Presley, he loaned
him to 20th Century Fox for this Western about four brothers,
three of whom went off to fight in the Civil War for the Confederacy while the
youngest, Vince (Presley), stayed behind to care for their mother and work the
family farm. This was the only time, by the way, that Elvis was ever cast in a
supporting role. From here on in, he was the star of the picture.
Trivia: Elvis developed a
crush on co-star Debra Paget during filming, but his love was unrequited, as
her mother had other plans for her. Elvis would make a habit of falling for
someone in his films, usually his leading lady. The title was changed from the
original The Reno Brothers to promote the title song sung by
Elvis.
April 12
11:45 pm The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (Columbia, 1953) Director: Roy Rowland. Cast:
Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Hans Conried, Tommy Rettig, and John
Heasley. Color, 90 min.
One
of the best – and most forgotten – Hollywood fantasies, with a script by Dr.
Seuss (Theodore Geisel) with characters and sets as only he could imagine them.
Coming hot on the heels of Geisel’s 1951 Oscar winning cartoon, Gerald
McBoing-Boing, this is a surrealistic young boy’s nightmare about
tyrannical piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Conried), who enslaves 500 boys to
play together on his giant piano. Although today it’s rightly regarded as a
cult classic, it was a critical and financial flop when originally released.
Trivia: During filming one
of the piano students ate a hot dog that had passed its prime, resulting in his
becoming sick to his stomach on the set. This in turn caused a chain reaction
that resulted in over 1,000 boys hurling their lunches onto the ivory keys.
April 13
2:15 am Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Golden Harvest, 1991) Director: Ngai Choi Lam.
Cast: Fan Siu-Wong, Fan Mei-Sheng, Ho Ka-Kui, Yukari Oshima, and Tetsuro Tanba.
Color, 91 min.
Throw
logic to the wind and just sit back and revel in this psychotronic prison movie
set in the near future where, in a privatized prison, the inmates are used as
slave labor by the evil warden to work his opium garden and heroin refining
factory. They are overseen by a quartet of thugs led by a vicious and
effeminate kung fu master played by Japanese actress Yukari Oshima (!).
Into
this scenario enters Riki (Fan Siu-Wong), a decent citizen whose virginal
girlfriend has just died at the hands of heroin dealers. Thus he’s out on a
quest for all the revenge he can get and will punish every worker in the heroin
machine. Absurdity is truly the name of the game in this joint Hong
Kong/Japanese production. Upon entering the prison, Riki sets off the metal
detector due to the five bullets he still has in his leg. The Assistant Warden
not only has a prosthetic metal claw for a hand, but also removes his glass eye
from time to time to enjoy the breath mints he has hidden in it. And the
warden, if for no other reason than he must naturally have the most powerful
kung fu, has the ability to morph into a nine-foot tall demonic hulk.
The
action scenes are even more unbelievable. After having powdered glass thrown in
his eyes by one of the warden’s enforcers, Riki breaks open a sewer main with
his hands to clean his eyes with the spraying sewage. He later repairs his
injured arm by ripping all the tendons out with his teeth and tying them back
together by hand. He hits one of his opponents with so much force that the
man’s eye pops out and is immediately eaten by crows. But that’s not all. His
opponent fakes his own ritualistic death, but instead he wraps his intestines
around Riki’s neck as the Assistant Warden tells Riki he has a lot of guts. And
as if that wasn’t enough, the screen later goes to an x-ray look to show Riki’s
fist smashing through a man’s skull and into his brain.
Even
in a genre where the unusual is all in a day’s work, this film manages to raise
the bar.
Trivia: So much fake blood
was used in the “meat grinder” finale (don’t ask), that Siu-Wong was unable to
wash it off his skin for several days.
April 14
2:00 am Kurotokage (Black Lizard) (Daiei, 1962) Director: Umetsugu Inoue. Cast:
Machiko Kyo, Minoru Oki, Junko Kano, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, and Masao Mishima.
Color, 101 min.
This
is a mystery based on a novel by Japan’s master of suspense, Rampo Edogawa, and
adapted for the stage by the famous Yukio Mishima. It concerns an androgynous
master jewel thief. This is not to be confused with a later version shot by
Kinji Fukusaku for Shochika in 1969.
In
fact, the real mystery may be just which version TCM deigns to show, for in
their description the year of production given is 1962, but the cast is from
1969.
I
readily admit that I haven’t seen the 1969 version; it’s the ’62 version I’m
familiar with, and it’s the ’62 version which so impressed me when I saw it,
with its breathtaking cinematography and haunting musical score. It was also
shot on sets, which gave it a most surrealistic feeling, especially when the
stage lighting is added into the mix.
I
do hope it is this version that is shown, though I won’t complain too loudly if
the ’69 version is screened instead.
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