By Ed Garea
STAR
OF THE MONTH -- MAUREEN O’HARA
July
22: At 8:00 pm, the night begins with The
Immortal Sergeant, a rather preposterous film from
20th Century Fox in 1943. Henry Fonda is a timid
Canadian corporal serving with the British in Libya. He’s taught
courage and leadership by his patrol sergeant, Thomas Mitchell. When
Mitchell is killed in battle, Fonda takes over and completes the
unit’s mission. O’Hara appears as Fonda’s love in flashbacks.
Fonda hated the picture; he had enlisted in the Navy when word got
back to Darryl Zanuck, who pulled strings to bring Fonda from boot
camp in San Diego to the Fox studios, where this classic was awaiting
his presence.
At
9:45 pm, another forgettable film airs: Buffalo
Bill, starring Joel McCrea in the title role and
O’Hara as his wife. Just as Fonda despised The Immortal
Sergeant, O’Hara hated Buffalo Bill. And she wasn’t alone
- its director, William Wellman, and writer, Gene Fowler, also hated
it with a passion. Fowler believed William Frederick “Buffalo Bill”
Cody to be the biggest fraud that ever lived, and he and Wellman set
about to write a screenplay that exposed him as a fraud. But one
evening, as Wellman recalled, Fowler phoned to tell the director that
they can’t simply cut down a man that was a hero to so many
children. So, when the fact becomes legend, print the legend, as John
Ford would point out years later in The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance. Both Fowler and Wellman held their stomachs
in check and completed this laudatory biopic of a man who was
certainly one of the biggest legends of the Old West. Wellman had no
choice but to make the film; it was part of his deal with Darryl
Zanuck. In return for allowing Wellman to make The Ox Bow
Incident, a film for which Zanuck had no use, Wellman was to
direct Buffalo Bill. Years afterward, Wellman
would knock the film to anyone that asked. In the episode of The
Men Who Made the Movies devoted to him, Wellman, spoke
about how the scene at the end that has a crippled boy stands up and
says “God bless you, Buffalo Bill,” had made him want to vomit.
He would also mention how the film was a complete waste of one of the
most talented casts he ever assembled: McCrea, O’Hara, Thomas
Mitchell, and Linda Darnell. Speaking of Darnell, she plays a young
Indian woman who teaches in a frontier school. Watch for her lines
about racism, pretty bold for the day. The film was a box office
bonanza; The Ox Bow Incident, on the other
hand, was quietly released and allowed to whither and die.
Today, it’s considered a classic while Buffalo Bill is
largely forgotten.
The
rest of the night presents us with much better fare. At 11:30 pm,
it’s O’Hara and John Wayne in the hilarious McLintock! This
1963 comedy is sort of a Western take on Shakespeare’s The
Taming of the Shrew with the last scenes lifted from Wayne
and O’Hara’s classic, The Quiet Man. It has a
good supporting cast in Yvonne De Carlo, son Patrick Wayne, Stefanie
Powers, Jack Kruschen, Chill Wills, Jerry Van Dyke, and Edgar
Buchanan. Add O’Hara at her feisty best and the Duke playing his
best-known character - John Wayne - and it’s a treat for the eyes
and ears. Wayne cast De Carlo in a featured role to help her
financially, as her stuntman husband Bob Morgan, an old friend of
Wayne’s, suffered career-ending injuries while filming How
the West Was Won (1962).
Following
at 1:45 am is another solid, albeit flawed, Western, The
Deadly Companions. Directed by Sam Peckinpah in 1961
(his first Western feature film), it was produced by Charles B.
FitzSimons as a vehicle for his sister O’Hara. FitzSimons resisted
all attempts by Peckinpah to turn it into more than the producer
wanted, even to the point of taking the final cut away from
Peckinpah. Still, it’s an interesting film, with Brian Keith as a
Civil War veteran (Union) who accompanies dance hall hostess O’Hara
as she travels through hostile territory to bury her young son,
accidentally slain by Keith, next to her late husband.
At
3:30 am, it’s John Wayne and O’Hara in John Ford’s The
Wings of Eagles, a 1957 biopic of Frank “Spig”
Wead, a pioneer aviator who turned to screenwriting after an accident
grounded him permanently. Wayne and O’Hara are excellent, but the
one to watch in the film is Ward Bond as film director John Dodge.
Bond models his performance directly after Ford and it’s funny to
watch.
Finally,
at 5:30 am, O’Hara Shines as the wife of Tyrone Power in The
Long Gray Line (1955). Power is Martin Maher, an
Irish immigrant from Tipperary who came to the Point as a waiter,
enlisted, instructed cadets in boxing, swimming and tradition,
becoming one of the most beloved officers at the Academy. Directed by
John Ford and based on Maher’s memoirs, the real star of the film
is O’Hara as the Irish lass who wins Maher’s heart and becomes
his wife. Ford originally wanted Wayne for the role of Maher, but
Wayne was off on location with another film and recommended his
neighbor, Power, to star in his place. Power holds his own, no mean
feat when working with Ford. It’s a rarely shown film and one of
Ford’s forgotten gems. As such it’s definitely worth recording.
July
29: Tonight the best comes first. At 8:00 pm is John Ford’s
classic Rio Grande (1950).
The last of Ford’s “Calvary Trilogy” (Fort Apache, She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon), it’s an engaging look at the spirit
of the Calvary during the post-Civil War days. It’s also a good
drama about the estrangement between commander Wayne and his son, new
recruit Claude Jarman. O’Hara is Wayne’s wife and has to walk the
thin line separating father and son. It was the first of five films
where Wayne co-starred with O’Hara, and for trivia fans, the film
contains nine songs, most of which are performed by the Sons of the
Pioneers (including Ken Curtis, later famous as “Festus”
on Gunsmoke).
Following
at 10:00 pm is the 1963 drama Spencer’s
Mountain, O’Hara and Fonda are a married couple with
nine children. Fonda’s dream is to build a home for his family.
James MacArthur plays the oldest child, Clayboy, who would like to go
to college, even though the family’s finances are lacking. The film
is based on Earl Hamner Jr.’s autobiographical novel, so if any of
this seems familiar, consider that Hamner later recycled the material
into the television series The Waltons.
Two
more rather unremarkable movies follow: The
Battle Of The Villa Florita (1965) at 12:15 am,
and Fire Over Africa (1954)
at 2:15 am. In the latter O’Hara is a law-enforcement agent who
infiltrates a ring of dope smugglers in Tangier.
FRIDAY
NIGHT SPOTLIGHT
The
Friday Night Spotlight, devoted to the 100th anniversary
of the beginning of World War I, continues as TCM airs some films
that were played often in the last months, and some not at all.
July
18: The evening begins with the oft-shown Lawrence
of Arabia (1962) at 8:00, followed
by Gallipoli (1981),
another oft-seen film, at 12:00 am. Then at 2:00 am is Jean Renoir’s
classic, Grand Illusion.
Finally, at 4:00 am it’s Joseph Losey’s interesting and seldom
seen King and Country (1964).
However,
the real gold mine for the cinephile can be found during the morning
and afternoon as TCM airs some of the “lesser” films about World
War I. Of those being shown, I recommend J’Accuse,
Abel Gance’s marvelous silent from 1919; Stamboul
Quest (1934) with a great racy performance from
Myrna Loy; Ever in My Heart (1933)
with Barbara Stanwyck and Otto Kruger as her German-American husband;
British Intelligence (1940)
with Boris Karloff and Margaret Lindsay (see below); Dark
Journey (1937) with Conrad Veidt and Vivien Leigh
as competing spies, and finally, Rendezvous (1935)
with William Powell as a cryptologist and Rosalind Russell as the
annoying woman out to win his heart.
July
25: Again, another day and night full of movies. Begin at
7:30 am with the intense Heroes for
Sale (1933) from William Wellman, a film that
truly takes no prisoners. They Gave
Him a Gun (1937) with Spencer Tracy and Franchot
Tone at 8:45 am is worth the time, as is The
Shopworn Angel (1938) at 12:30 pm. Jimmy Stewart
and Margaret Sullavan always make for an interesting movie. Shoulder
Arms (1918) at 3:45 pm gives Charlie Chaplin a
chance to lampoon the various absurdities of Army life. Any comedy of
military life had to walk a very thin line between hilarity and bad
taste. That Chaplin is able to pull it off magnificently is a
testament to his talent and his finger on the pulse of the public, as
the film was a huge hit. At 8:00 pm, it’s the romantic tearjerker
Random Harvest, with
Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, followed by Robert Taylor and Vivien
Leigh in MGM’s 1940 remake of Waterloo
Bridge. At 12:15 am, it’s Richard Attenborough’s
satire Oh! What a Lovely War (1969),
based on the stage hit of the same name. Then, at 2:45 am, it’s a
Garbo tour de force in Mata
Hari (1931). Watch for Garbo’s exotic dance
sequence as well as Karen Morely’s performance, which almost steals
the film. Again, the film is seldom shown, so it’s definitely worth
a peek, especially if one has never seen it before.
KARLOFF
Boris
Karloff tends to be remembered by causal movie fans as Frankenstein’s
Monster and an actor who could only play in horror films. But in
actuality he was an actor with many subtle facets, capable of a bevy
of assorted roles. Even in a programmer such as British
Intelligence (WB, 1940), which airs July 18 at
3:45 pm, he gives a memorable performance. He plays Valdar, a
scar-faced butler who works for a British cabinet minister during
World War I and who may or may not be a spy. He gets to tangle with
the alluring Margaret Lindsay, who may or may not be a double agent.
Just go along - it’s a fun ride. Director Terry Morse keeps things
going at a fast pace. Also watch for Boris in Karl Freund’s 1932
classic chiller, The Mummy (12:45
am).
CAGNEY
July
17 marks the 115th anniversary of James Cagney’s
birth, and TCM marks the occasion with a marathon of his Pre-code
films from 6:00 am to 7:30 pm. Beginning at 6 am, it’s Taxi (1932),
followed in order by Winner Take
All (1932), Footlight
Parade (1933), Hard
to Handle (1933), Lady
Killer (1933), The
Mayor of Hell (1933), Picture
Snatcher (1933), Here
Comes the Navy (1934), and finally, Jimmy
the Gent (1934).
NIGHT
OF THE SILENT COMICS
Here’s
one for the books. On July 20, TCM is showing a night of classic
silent comedies from the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd,
Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. So what’s
unusual about that? TCM often does the same exact thing on selected
nights during the year. Well, here’s the kicker, this time it’s
part of their Essentials, Jr. film series.
Hosted by Bill Hader, it seeks to introduce young children to film
classics. While I think it’s a fine and noble effort to introduce
children to the magic of classic film, parents know that it’s hard
enough to get a kid to sit down and watch a film in black and white,
much less a silent film in black and white. I
wish them all the luck in the world: it is indeed a noble effort, and
even if only one child is influenced, that’s one more than when the
series began.
INGMAR
BERGMAN NIGHT
The
evening of July 28 is being devoted to a marathon of
Ingmar Bergman films. (Even though he was born on a July 14th and
died on a July 30th.) Beginning at 8:00 pm and continuing
in order, the films are as follows: Smiles
of a Summer Night (1955), Wild
Strawberries (1957), The
Seventh Seal (1957), Through
a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter
Light (1962), and The
Silence (1964). Bergman has a reputation with
many casual movie fans of a director of extremely slow-moving and
incomprehensible movies due to all the parodies that have come down
over the years. But as one who had to fight that mindset myself in my
adolescent years, I can truthfully state that once I actually got
down to simply enjoying the films for what they were and not what I
was led to believe, they didn’t seem so formidable. I never took
the time to see one until I was in college and a double bill of Wild
Strawberries and The Seventh Seal was
showing at a revival house in a nearby town. So to those who may not
have seen a Bergman film, I would tell him or her to just relax and
record one or two to watch at one’s leisure. You’ll find it quite
a rewarding experience. Through a Glass Darkly, Winter
Light and The Silence make up Bergman's Trilogy
of Faith. (You can read about the trilogy here.) And if you’re
looking for a recommendation as to where to begin, start with Smiles
of a Summer Night.
OUT
OF THE ORDINARY:
July
23: Catherine Deneuve fans will be glad to hear that Belle
de Jour, her 1967 classic, will be playing at 12:30
am. Deneuve is spellbinding as the frigid young housewife who
alleviates her boredom by spending her midweek afternoons as a
prostitute, where she freely explores her masochistic fantasies of
being dominated. When one client takes things too far, events take a
tragic turn.
Following
is a double bill of Michangelo Antonioni. First up at 2:15 am is his
overrated “Swinging ‘60s” thriller, Blow-Up,
starring David Hemmings as a photographer who may have accidentally
snapped pictures of a murder, and Vanessa Redgrave, who wants the
film, piquing his curiosity even more. It’s followed at 4:15 by his
1961 tale of alienation, La Notte,
with Marcello Mastroianni as a successful novelist who, along with
wife Jeanne Moreau, faces the emptiness of their lives one night at a
party.
July
27: A unique tripleheader begins at 12:15 am with G.W.
Pabst’s classic silent film, Pandora’s
Box (1928). It stars Louise Brooks as the
ultimate femme fatale, destroying every man who comes near her. The
film made Brooks into an international star. Women flocked to the
hairdresser to imitate her black lacquered Page Boy hairstyle. But
Brooks ultimately became a victim of her own success and was to all
intents and purposes finished as a star by 1931. She never did take
well to Hollywood, at one point turning down a role opposite Jimmy
Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931). Her role
eventually went to Jean Harlow. By 1938, she had “retired” for
lack of film work and faded into obscurity until her films were
re-discovered in the ‘50s.
At
2:45 am comes a 1995 film from French writer-director Mathieu
Kassovitz that creates quite a stir in France when released, La
Haine. It’s a vivid and gritty portrait of life in
the “banlieue,” the suburban Paris housing projects that
are home to low-income immigrants. Three young men, of Jewish, Arab
and African descent are angered after a confrontation with the police
that left one of their companions in a coma. When they find a gun
lost in the riot, they swear revenge by looking to kill a policeman
should their friend die. It’s a fast movie film shot in stark black
and white, with documentary-style camerawork added to give it a feel
of authenticity. The film premiered at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival,
winning Kassovitz the Best Director award.
Finally, Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning (1961), closes out the
evening at 4:30 am. One of the first and best of Britain’s “Angry
Young Man” films, it stars Albert Finney as a factory worker who
lives for the weekends and who looks upon his co-workers acceptance
of their lives with distaste. What keeps this from merely being
another “Rebel Without A Clue” films is the performance of
Finney. As good as he is though, he’s matched scene for scene by
Rachel Roberts, who plays the wife of Finney’s best friend, and
with whom he has an affair that results in her pregnancy.
PSYCHOTRONICA
AND THE B HIVE
As
always, there’s a good selection in both the psychotronic and the
B-category.
July
17: The lure of the night is two classic crime films from
Howard Hawks immediately followed by their remakes. Thus, at 8:00 we
have The Criminal Code from
1931 followed at 10:00 by Convicted,
from 1950. The real fun, though, begins at midnight, as Hawk’s
classic Scarface is
followed by Brian DePalma’s 1983 remake. My advice? Stick with the
originals, although DePalma’s Scarface is
hilarious, with Al Pacino giving one of the great completely
over-the-top performances. But the Hawks original has better
supporting characters in Ann Dvorak and George Raft. One idea that’s
been suggested is to watch both back-to-back and see which leading
man chews the most scenery, Paul Muni or Pacino? If you’re on a
kosher diet, though, approach both with caution due to the amount of
ham contained therein.
July
19: At noon, it’s Roger Corman’s anti-classic, The
Wasp Woman (1959), starring Susan Cabot as a vain
cosmetics executive who hires a mad scientist who comes up with an
anti-aging formula made from wasp enzymes. Susan can’t wait to try
it on herself, and when the small does she is given fail to achieve
the desired results quickly enough, she takes it upon herself to up
the dosage dramatically. The result is a much more youthful and
gorgeous cosmetics executive. But on the minus side of the ledger,
the side effect of the enzymes is to turn her into a murderous wasp
herself. It’s typical Corman nonsense, and more to the point,
it’s great nonsense. Listening to Corman on
interviews today, we’re somehow led to believe that he conceived
the film as a satire of the beauty cult that has dominated America.
Isn’t hindsight great? I’m sure he had that very idea when he
began filming. And pigs can fly. Other brain-addled movie critics see
the film as a strong feminist statement. I see it as a low-budget
psychotronic sci-fi flick that’s a lot of fun to watch.
Having
trouble sleeping? Well, I have a sure cure: a double feature of The
Visitor (1979)
at 2:00 am, followed by Tentacles (1977)
at 3:45 am. The first is about a young girl with telekinetic powers
whose soul is being fought over by God and the Devil. An Italian
production, it is every bit as good as it sounds. Starring Henry
Fonda, Claude Akins, John Huston and Shelley Winters as four actors
in quest of a paycheck. The former film is a truly wretched exercise
in filmmaking. I don’t mind a film being bad, but it should never
be boring. It’s Jaws with
an octopus instead of a shark.
July
21: The evening is devoted to films based on the writings of
Agatha Christie, and there are some pretty good ones to choose from.
However, the first up at 8:00 pm is the one you shouldn’t miss: And
Then There Were None (20th Century
Fox, 1945). Not only is it the best adaptation of a Christie work,
but it’s also one of the best mystery films ever made. Written by
Dudley Nichols and directed by Rene Clair, it takes Christie’s
ingenious plot and builds on it with deft camerawork and intelligent
scripting. At its heart, it’s a simple story: 10 guests are invited
to a lonely island off the English coast; eight all know each other,
and the other two are a married butler and maid. Their host is
nowhere to be found, instead leaving a phonographic record keyed to a
song based on the nursery rhyme, “Ten Little Indians.” (The book
was originally published under the even more political incorrect
title of Ten Little Niggers. When it was released in
America, the title was changed to Ten Little Indians.) On
the centerpiece are 10 little ceramic Indians. Hardly has the first
victim sipped his cocktail and played a verse and chorus of the rhyme
than he keels over dead as a doornail and a ceramic Indian falls and
is shattered. Who done it? I won’t tell. Watch and enjoy.
July
26: Valley of the Dragons,
a rarely seen 1961 opus from the team of Al Zimbalist and Edward
Bernds is showing at noon. It’s a real cheapie, using leftover
jungle sets from Edward Dmytryk’s The Devil at 4
O’Clock and footage from 1940’s One
Million Years, B.C. and even the 1957 Japanese monster
extravaganza, Rodan. The plot, such as it is,
concerns a Frenchman (Cesare Danova) and an American (Sean McClory)
who are whisked off the Sahara around 1880 by a comet and dumped in a
strange world with dinosaurs running amok. Yeah, it’s aimed at the
kids.
At
8:00 pm, it’s a tribute to famed cinematographer Karl Freund with a
screening of three of his films, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927),
the Spencer Tracy escape-from-a-concentration-camp saga, The
Seventh Cross (1944), and the 1932 horror
classic, The Mummy,
which Freund directed, and which stars Boris Karloff, billed as
“Karloff the Uncanny.”
July
27: The Essentials, Jr. gives us a double feature of two of
producer Val Lewton’s best horror films, The
Cat People (1942), and Curse
of the Cat People (1944). Given practically a zero
budget and a title, Lewton had to create a film from scratch. As he
took pride in what he did, the first thing Lewton did was to throw
out the cat costumes the studio gave him (this is beautifully shown
in a scene from MGM’s The Bad and the Beautiful). The
film, about a woman named Irena (Simone Simon) with a supernatural
connection to cats, shows its monster only in silhouette. The
Curse of the Cat People has no monsters at all. Instead,
this is a beautifully written and directed film about a lonely little
girl who conjures up a vision of her late mother Irena, the cat woman
from the first film, who was her father’s first wife.
I
WAS A TEENAGE DETECTIVE: I
mentioned in the last installment that TCM was screening all four of
Bonita Granville’s Nancy Drew films. On July
19 at
10:45 am we get Nancy
Drew . . . Trouble Shooter (1939).
Nancy tries to clear one of her attorney father’s friends of a
murder charge. And on July
26,
also at 10:45 am, it’s the last in the series, Nancy
Drew and the Hidden Staircase (1939).
Nancy comes to the aid of two elderly sisters plagued by mysterious
happenings in her mansion. It’s the only film of the series
actually based on one of author Carolyn Keene’s novels, The
Hidden Staircase.
I often wonder why TCM’s The
Essentials, Jr. doesn’t
show these movies on its schedule, for these interesting little Bs
are the movies that get kids hooked. Also, how about some John Wayne
or George O’Brien Westerns from the ‘30s? Just wondering . . .
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