Cinéma Inhabituel for February 16-28

A Guide to the Rare and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

At this point, we’re midway through TCM’s annual salute to the Oscars, to which the month of February is devoted, along with the first three days in March. We received some good feedback on our special format for this festival, so we’ll continue with what obviously works.

But before we go any further, let us remind readers that the Academy Awards will air February 22, which brings us to our subject. Over the years, many special Oscars and related awards, such as the Irving G. Thalberg Award and the Jean Hersholdt Award, have been handed out to deserving recipients.

But there is one person long overdue for an honorary award. This person has done more for the movies – and the Academy – than anyone else in the last 20+ years. It’s high time this person is honored for his unique contributions to the craft of film and our enjoyment of it.

That person is none other than Robert Osborne.

Osborne has been the host for Turner Classic Movies ever since the channel went on the air back in 1994. During this time, he’s been a frequent and welcome guest in our living rooms, introducing classic movies, hosting TCM shows about movies, and reaching out to the public about movies with fan fests, cruises and bus tours. He is the face of TCM, and, unfortunately, we’re not going to have his robust presence around forever. At a time when television stations were eschewing old films for infomercials, TCM has carried the banner for cinephiles in America and abroad. TCM has become the place where movies are the only theme of the day. Whereas other movie channels such as AMC, Sundance, and IFC have deteriorated into catch-alls for recent movies and television reruns, TCM not only has remained faithful to its mission, but it’s also become part of the popular filmgoer consciousness. It’s a place where the film lover can enjoy the spectrum of movies, from Citizen Kane to The 400 Blows to even Plan 9 From Outer Space. TCM doesn’t attempt to dictate film culture as much as celebrate it, and that is largely due to the leadership of Osborne.

So listen up Hollywood. If you wish to bestow an honorary Oscar on anyone, it should be Robert Osborne.

February 16: Our choice for the day airs at 8:00 pm, the 1959 sex comedy from Universal, Pillow Talk. The plot is relatively simple: Rock Hudson is pursuing Doris Day. However, there is a very clever twist – they begin feuding with each other over sharing a party line. They later meet in real life and are attracted to each other, but do not realize who the other really is. The chemistry between Rock and Doris is great, as is the support from Tony Randall, Thelma Ritter, Nick Adams, Allen Jenkins, and Marcel Dalio. WON: Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen (Russell Rouse (story), Clarence Greene (story), Stanley Shipiro (s/p), & Maurice Richlin (s/p). NOMINATED: Best Actress (Doris Day), Best Supporting Actress (Thelma Ritter), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color (Richard H. Riedel, Russell A. Gausmam, & Ruby R. Levitt), & Best Music, Original Score, Comedy or Drama (Frank DeVol), 1960.

February 17: Even though we’ve seen it at least a gazillion times, our choice is Psycho (midnight). Need we say more? NOMINATED: Best Actress (Janet Leigh), Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black and White (Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy, & George Milo), 1961.

February 18: Billy Wilder directed and wrote many a classic for the screen, but none better than The Apartment, which airs at 8:00 pm. It’s a witty, cynical story of a corporate climber (Jack Lemmon) who loans his apartment key to various executives for their extramarital trysts. His scheme backfires, however, when he falls for his boss’s latest girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). WON: Best Picture, Best Director (Billy Wilder), Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen (Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black and White (Alexandre Trauner, Edward G. Boyle), Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell).NOMINATED: Best Actor (Jack Lemmon), Best Actress (Shirley MacLaine), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Kruschen), Best Cinematography, Black and White (Joseph LaShelle), Best Sound (Gordon Sawyer), 1961.

February 19: We’re going with a rather offbeat choice for this day, A Hard Day’s Night, which airs at 3:30 am. Until this film, rock ‘n’ roll films all followed the same template and were totally predictable. Director Richard Lester drew on his background directing television commercials, and combined with the influence on the French New Wave, gave the public a totally different take on the rock ‘n ’roll film. All the boys had to do was to be themselves, as the plot was paper-thin. Lester and the boys tried to strike gold again with a sequel of sorts, Help! However, placing the Beatles in a film where they really could not play themselves proved a detriment, as did the tired Bond spoof plot. NOMINATED: Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen (Alun Owen), Best music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment (George Martin), 1965.

February 20: Today’s recommendation is a film from the early days of sound, in the days before film crews became familiar with the new technology and just what it could do other than provide spoken dialogue. The Big House, from MGM in 1930, airs at 8:30 am and can be said to be the granddaddy of all prison pictures. It wasn’t so much that the cast spoke, no, it was what they said and how they said it. That’s what makes The Big House such a remarkable film. Credit should go to screenwriter Frances Marion, who toured San Quentin interviewing inmates with notebook in hand and ears wide open. WON: Best Writing, Achievement (Frances Marion), Best Sound, Recording (Douglas Shearer). NOMINATED: Best Picture, Best Actor (Wallace Beery), 1930.

February 21: At their height no one made comedies like Laurel and Hardy. Way Out West (1937), which airs at 12:45 pm, is one of their best. Stan and Ollie are sent to deliver the deed to a gold mine to the daughter of the prospector who worked the mine, but Stan inadvertently spills their mission to bad guy James Findlayson, who steers them to the wrong woman. Now they have to get it back to the right person, and they do so in hilarious style. The film moves along, without being waylaid by a useless romantic subplot, and we get to see Stan and Ollie do a classic soft shoe. NOMINATED: Best Music, Score (Marvin Hatley), 1938.

February 22: The great thing about TCM is that even during a month when Oscar is being saluted, we viewers can go from the sublime to the ridiculous as long as it’s nominated for an Academy Award. So, in keeping with this philosophy, we recommend the 1971 laff riot, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, which airs at 7:30 am. It’s Hammer’s silly sequel to its silly One Million Years, B.C., with Playmate Victoria Vetri taking over as head cavewoman from Raquel Welch. The film is a feast for the eyes, for besides the gorgeous Vetri, there’s the excellent stop-motion animation of Jim Danforth and Roger Dicken. The dialogue, or what passes for it in the movie, is limited to 27 words, which is 26 words too many. NOMINATED: Best Effects, Special Visual Effects (Jim Danforth, Roger Dicken), 1972.

February 23: 1939 was a banner year for movies, to say the least. And one film from that year that is often overlooked is Of Mice and Men, which will be shown at 12:15 pm. It was a breakout film for its two leads, Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr. Chaney, in what is the best performance of his life, is the tragic Lennie, with Meredith as George, who looks out for him as they drift from job to job. The film also spurred a classic animated scene from cartoon director Tex Avery, who would kid the film by placing a Lenny type character in his cartoons, usually asking Bugs Bunny, “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?” NOMINATED: Best Picture, Best Sound, Recording (Elmer Raguse), Best Music, Scoring (Aaron Copland), Best Music, Original Score (Aaron Copland), 1940.

February 24: Again we are recommending a film not usually thought of as Academy award material. But 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, which airs at 8:30 am, is a delightful fantasy starring Tony Randall as a Chinese magician who uses his magical powers and leaves a Depression-era Western town better off than it was when he arrived. Randall is magnificent in the part, with wonderful make-up by William Tuttle and special effects wizardry by Jim Danforth. It’s a film the entire family can enjoy, and since it’s in color, the kids will have no objections to watching. WON (Honorary Award): Outstanding Make-Up Achievement (William Tuttle), NOMINATED: Best Effects, Special Visual Effects (Jim Danforth), 1965.

February 25: Again, in searching for the unusual, we have come up with another underrated gem. It’s Once Upon a Honeymoon, which is scheduled for noon. Ginger Rogers is delightful as a social-climbing ex-burlesque queen who thinks she’s hit the mother lode when she marries Baron Von Luber (Walter Slezak). What she doesn’t know is that the Baron is a Nazi bigwig. It’s up to radio commentator Cary Grant to rescue Ginger from her predicament and help her escape from Europe. The film contains an interesting, and much criticized sequence, where Grant and Rogers are mistaken for Jews and briefly interned in a concentration camp, and there are some dull stretches, but overall, it’s a fascinating time capsule of the depth to which the Nazis were perceived in the early days of the war. NOMINATED: Best Sound, Recording (Stephen Dunn), 1943.

February 26: One the best political thrillers to emerge in the ‘60s was directed by Greek exile Costa-Gavras. The movie, Z, which is showing at 11:00 am, differs right at the start with its unusual version of the standard disclaimer about a resemblance to real people or events being coincidental. Costa-Gavras tells us right from the get-go that this movie's resemblances are on purpose. Based on the novel of the same name from Greek writer Vasilis Vasilikos, it’s the thinly disguised story of the 1963 assassination of Grigors Lambrakis, an antiwar and liberal member of the Greek parliament. He was also a physician and a highly popular athlete in addition to being a politician. Lambrakis was murdered in the same manner as his character in the film, known as The Deputy, and played by Yves Montand: he was bludgeoned in the head by two extremists and died from bran injuries a few days later. Over half a million people came to his funeral, and reaction from his death led to the resignation of the prime minister and the beginnings of a progressive political movement that would remain influential for years to come. The repercussions would eventually lead to a military coup in 1967 that ushered in a repressive regime. Costa-Gavras released Z in 1969, and the ruling cabal promptly banned the film. It’s a rather talky film, but entertaining nonetheless, and one certainly worth catching. WON: Best Foreign Language Film (Algeria), Best Film Editing (Francoise Bonnot). NOMINATED: Best Picture (Jacques Perrin, Ahmed Rachedi), Best Director (Costa-Gavras), Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Jorge Semprun, Costa-Garvas), 1970.

February 27: Speaking of politics, we return this day to a film made during the prehistoric days of talkies, when the microphone – and the acting – was static. But don’t let that hold you back, especially when the film is Disraeli (airing at 8:45 am), and its star is the great George Arliss. In this remake of his 1921 silent take on the subject, Arliss is marvelous to watch, and the addition of sound makes him even more appealing as the famous English prime minister, who in this film uses all his skills to prevent Russia from dominating British India, which he accomplishes by blocking the efforts of a well-placed female spy and secretly purchasing control over the Suez Canal. And if that wasn’t enough, Disraeli still finds time to play matchmaker to Charles – Lord Deeford (Anthony Bushell) and Lady Clarissa Pevensey (Joan Bennett). The great prime minister was a secret yenta. While the film itself should be taken with a grain of salt, it is noteworthy as a showcase for the many talents of George Arliss, who had played Disraeli on stage as well as film. No matter what he’s in, Arliss is always worth watching. WON: Best Actor (George Arliss). NOMINATED: Best Picture, Best Writing, Achievement (Julien Josephson), 1930.

February 28: On this last day of the month we bring attention to a film that was not only a 180-degree turn for its star, Robert Montgomery, but was also a breakout role of sorts for his starlet co-star. The film is 1937’s Night Must Fall (playing at 7:15 am). It’s the story of a young woman who slowly comes to the realization that the brutal killer stalking the countryside is none other than the genial handyman her curmudgeonly aunt had recently hired. Montgomery is terrific as the killer, Danny, who charms his way into the household of Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Whitty) by playing on her vanity. Montgomery sought the role against the wishers of his boss, Louis B. Mayer, who believed that playing a psycho killer would do his career irreparable harm. But Montgomery was tired of playing the debonair and witty leading man and was looking for roles that would provide more challenge. The film was also a breakout for costar Rosalind Russell, who until this point has been cast as the ditzy, empty-headed socialite, usually taking roles that Myrna Loy had turned down. Russell was an intelligent actress, and here gets a chance to play off that intelligence. It’s a fascinating change of pace for the co-stars and we are the beneficiaries. NOMINATED: Best Actor (Robert Montgomery), Best Supporting Actress (Dame May Whitty), 1938.

TCM TiVo Alert for February 15-22

TCM TiVo ALERT

For

February 15–Febuary 22

   

DAVID’S BEST BETS:

CAGED (February 20, 1:30 pm): Unlike nearly all the others in the unusual but often-visited women-in-prison film genre, Caged is well acted. Eleanor Parker was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar as the young innocent Marie Allen, Agnes Moorehead is great as warden Ruth Benton, and Hope Emerson was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the deliciously evil matron Evelyn Harper. Almost anything bad you can imagine happens to Marie – her new husband is killed in a robbery, she ends up in prison because she is waiting in the getaway car, she's pregnant while serving her sentence, she's victimized by other inmates and Harper, she has to give up her baby for adoption, and finally becomes bitter and hardened from all of her bad experiences. The story is similar to other women-in-prison movies minus the T&A. We still get a shower scene (no nudity as this is during the Code era) and the stereotypical prison lesbian . But there's a huge difference between Caged and the women-in-prison films of the 1970s. It's not only the excellent acting, but the powerful dialogue and actual plot – it was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar – that makes this gritty, stark, realistic film stand out among others in the genre.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (February 22, 1:00 am): There are certain 1970s crime-dramas that capture the gritty, almost completely disgusting, lives of cops, pimps, two-bit hoods and drug dealers in New York City during that decade. They include Serpico, The French Connection, The Taking of Pelham 123, The Seven-Ups and Dog Day Afternoon. Based on a botched 1972 robbery at a Brooklyn Bank, Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is about two would-be robbers (expertly played by Al Pacino and John Cazale) who are far from professionals. The entire robbery is botched seconds after it starts when a third guy gets cold feet and runs out of the bank. Also, the heist is after the bank's daily monetary pickup so there's only a little more than $1,000 to rob. The interplay between Sonny (Pacino) and the police detective sergeant (veteran character actor Charles Durning), who is the hostage negotiator, is memorable. The scene where Sonny screams "Attica! Attica!" is so good that it's worth watching the movie just for that. 

ED’S BEST BETS:

PSYCHO (February 17, 12:00 am): One of Hitchcock’s greatest films, it can be truly said to be his last great movie. Who else would kill off his leading lady before the picture was not even halfway through? It's based on the novel by Robert Bloch, who was influenced by the Ed Gein case in Wisconsin, but Hitchcock takes it to an entire new level, aided by wonderful performances by Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, and Martin Balsam. The film still holds its shock value today, including the famous shower scene where the violence was not explicit, but left to the imagination to fill in the blanks. I remember my cousin, who saw this in the theater, swearing to me that he saw Janet Leigh stabbed in the chest. Such is the power of suggestion and Hitchcock was a master at it.

THE PRODUCERS (February 21, 6:15 pm): Mel Brooks began his directorial career with a film reviled at the time by many critics, but now justly seen as one of the classics of cinema. Two Broadway producers (Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder) discover that they can make more money putting on a flop than financing a hit. All they have to do is raise more cash than they need for the play. But they just to find a sure-fire flop, for they have pre-sold somewhere around 10,000% of the play, and if it’s a hit, they can’t pay off the backers. Their vehicle is a musical titled “Springtime for Hitler,” the love story of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in song. They chose the worst director, the worst actor, and have signed the play’s author, a nutty Nazi living in Greenwich Village. I won’t say any more in case you’re one of the few that hasn’t yet seen this classic.

WE DISAGREE ON . . . GIANT (February 16, 1:00 pm)

ED. B-. Giant is one of the greatest overrated films of all time. Give people a wide, lush screen populated by plenty of beautiful people and an overwrought, rambling soapy plot, so thick the bubbles rise, and audiences think it’s profoundly wonderful. No, it’s simply Camp in its highest form. It’s the granddaddy of such soapy tripe as Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and others. Note that the actors are not so much acting as they are posing; the film is almost a series of iconic stills. Based on another self-important novel by Edna Ferber and directed by George Stevens, it’s a picture postcard with a message. And that message, in case you don’t get it, or turned it off, is that racism and sexism are bad. Very bad. Rock Hudson spends a scene driving that point home by whomping on James Dean. So, given all this, why do I give Giant the grade I do? Because it is an example of High Camp, that’s why. Besides, the picture is pretty to look at (remember that Stevens was a top cinematographer before turning full-time to directing), and the performances overall are not bad, at least during those times when they’re allowed to act. Taylor is excellent, given the scope of her part, and Hudson is finally being seen today not merely as a pretty mannequin, but as someone capable of delivering a decent performance. Dean, for his part, is not as bad as some say, but not as good as others attest. One can see that he still had a way to go before he could master his craft, and the fact that he was killed after making only three pictures leaves us wondering what he could have accomplished if he had lived. At any rate, Giant is a film one cannot take seriously in any form. It is best viewed in a small gathering with friends like Crow T. Robot or Tom Servo. I'm sure David, my partner, will trash this film, and he’s right to do so. But he misses the irony of the whole experience. For me, this is a film that any serious film buff should see at least once. More than that should be taken at your own risk. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the movie is that Liz Taylor gives birth to Dennis Hopper. Think about it.

DAVID: D+. I certainly can't argue with Ed's assessment that Giant is one of the most overrated films of all time. It's that and so much more – or more accurately, so much less. I can think of dozens of better ways to spend nearly three and a half hours including various types of torture though sitting through this film should also be considered a kind of torture. It's hard to describe how bad this film is. For such a long movie, it doesn't tell much of a story, and what we get on the screen is incredibly dull, self-important, overwrought and a rambling mess. How James Dean became a legendary actor after over-dramatic performances in three fair to poor movies is something I'll never understand. Giant is the worst of the films – and the worst of his performances. Elizabeth Taylor, who I barely find tolerable as an actress, is passable in this movie and Rock Hudson shows he's as mediocre in "serious" films as he was in those romantic comedies. The story moves at a snail's pace and isn't good to begin with. The makeup used to show the three of them aging is laughably bad, particularly for a supposed epic. It's bloated, way too long and even its attempts to deliver messages against racism and sexism fall flat.

For the complete list of films on the TCM TiVo Alert, click here.

Jupiter Ascending

Dinner and a Movie
 
Jupiter Ascending The Leopard

By Steve Herte

Thankfully this week the snow held off enough for me to go to my favorite Irish bar for karaoke, and it was fun. I usually create themes for my songs. Karaoke has a bad rap that I’m trying to clean up by singing songs properly. I’m not against people getting up there and singing (badly) for fun, because the main object is to have fun. I just want it known that there are those among us who consider music seriously and have fun singing it well. Since Valentine’s Day is this week I’ll be switching to a “Love” theme (literally hundreds of song titles to choose from). Valentine’s Day figures largely in my choice of restaurants this week and the movie made the choice easy. Enjoy!

Jupiter Ascending (WB, 2015) - Directors: Andy and Lana Wachowski (as the Wachowskis). Writers: Andy and Lana Wachowski. Cast: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Eddie Redmayne, Sean Bean, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Christina Cole, Nicholas Newman, Ramon Tikaram, Ariyon Bakare, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Frog Stone, James D’Arcy, David Ajala, & Terry Gilliam. Color, 127 minutes.

“Some say she’s from Mars, or one of the seven stars…Well she isn’t! – “Planet Claire,” the B-52s

“Technically, I’m an alien. I was born without a country, a home and a father.” – Jupiter Jones

“I’m not naming my baby after a planet!” says Aleksa (Kennedy) to Maximilian Jones (D’Arcy) the man she’s loved since they met on the banks of the Dnieper River in Russia. And Max loves Aleksa as much as he loves astronomy and his beautiful brass telescope. Suddenly, KGB agents burst in and ransack the apartment. When they take his telescope Max protests and is fatally shot for his efforts. Poor little Jupiter is born on the boat to America.

The alarm goes off at 4:45 am, we hear “Jupiter, wake up and make the coffee!” and the repeated daily schedule begins for the now young woman (Kunis) cleaning toilets for others. She hates her life and says so over and over. She shares a bedroom with her mother and aunts, all housekeepers in Chicago.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, three bounty hunters are searching for a young girl. Their leader, Ibis (Ajala) is a fearsome bluish-black skinned warrior type. His right hand gal, Diolmika Tsing (Amuka-Bird), hovers above him on a rocket powered cyber bike with a cloaking device. They are thwarted (and the third one killed) by what they call a “sky-hunter,” zipping around on anti-gravity boots.

One day, Jupiter witnesses alien beings called “Keepers” abducting her best friend. “Keepers” look like pink, naked skeletons with backward knees and can fade in and out of visibility. Jupiter learns they are really here for her when they attack, and she’s rescued by a blue-eyed man in anti-gravity boots named Caine Wise (Tatum), a genetically modified hybrid of man and wolf referred to as a “Splice,” although he never turns into a wolf, a la Lon Chaney Jr. After a wild chase through downtown Chicago involving several buildings being partially destroyed (including the Sears Tower), he successfully brings her to the relative safety of the ramshackle house belonging to Stinger Apini (Bean). The house is surrounded by a strangely beautiful assortment of wildflowers attended by thousands of bees.

Both of these men were once in a legion of Sky-Hunters, but for some unexplained reason they’ve had their wings removed (literally), and are now outcasts trying to clear their names. They know this girl is valuable to Titus Abrasax (Booth) and his brother Balem Abrasax (Redmayne), but are not sure why until the bees, which have hives both outside and inside the house are attracted to Jupiter as if she were their queen. Then they both address her as “Your Majesty.” “Bees can sense royalty.” Now Jupiter is totally confused, as is the entire audience.

After what seems to be an eternity, we finally get an important part of the plot. Abrasax Industries is an inter-galactic corporation with two major competitors (the brothers) both of who want Jupiter (who resembles their mother perfectly). Titus wants to marry her and Balem wants her to sign a contract relinquishing her rightful claim to Earth. Both belong to a kind of Corporate Royalty that has to answer to a slew of bureaucrats on the overpopulated home world of Orus. After a battle with Balem’s minions, Sargorns (fearsome, winged T-Rex-like creatures) Stinger and Caine deliver Jupiter to Titus on the planet Saturn. After going through endless channels and bureaucrats and bribing at least one, Jupiter and her “Sim” escort come to the Minister of Seals and Signets (Gilliam), who grants her the legal title of royalty and imprints a glowing seal on her forearm (with which she can now sign important documents).

Kalique Abrasax (Middleton) befriends Jupiter (but not without her own agenda), sees to it she’s dressed royally, and gives her a tour of the palace – a weird combination of Baroque and Moorish architecture. We learn later that Balem obviously prefers Gothic, which better suits his sinister personality.

The rest of the plot slowly reveals that Kalique is 14,000 years (and four months) old, thanks to the major (and only) product of Abrasax Industries, RegenX-E. It has the capability to grant the user eternal youth. The only drawback is that it’s made from people and Earth is currently ripe for The Harvest. It seems that Abrasax royalty have been “seeding” planets throughout the galaxy to develop a rapidly growing population and harvesting their “time” to keep themselves young. In the process, Sargorns created the dinosaurs – surprise!

Jupiter Ascending is a two-hour-and-seven-minute special effects playground with wildly imagined gadgets, weapons and spaceships, vast, soaring stage sets, remarkable costumes (I’ll bet they garner a nomination for them), and fabulous music composed by Michael Giacchino. The action scenes keep the audience white-knuckled when combined with the exciting music.

The story? Well, it can be described as a combination of Cinderella, Star Wars, and Flash Gordon, with a big destruction scene (almost endless) like that in Frankenstein. Several George Lucas-like “gifts” were thrown in, i.e. the “SarGORNs” – echoing the creature in the episode The Arena from the TV series Star Trek, as well as the title “Keepers” from another episode, and the elephant-headed pilot of the Aegis spaceship whose name is Ganesha (the good-luck elephant-headed god of Hinduism). The movie drops into the corny side several times, mostly in the dialogue, “Maybe it’s in my genes. I always fall for guys I can’t have.” And after suffering the bureaucrats, “I’ll never complain about the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) again.” It will never be classified as science fiction because it never leaves the realm of fantasy.

Antsy kids will love it because, like them, it rarely stops moving and it’s a great no-brainer for adults. Overall, it’s great entertainment but not great theater.

Rating: 3½ out of 5 Martini glasses.

The Leopard at Des Artistes

1 West 67^th Street (Central Park West), New York

www.theleopardnyc.com

A little over eight years ago, Helene and I dined at the Café Des Artistes on Valentine’s Day. It was lovely, especially the three-tiered chocolate dessert. Little did we know it was struggling for existence. It closed on August 30, 2009.

In 2001, Gianfranco Sorrentino, with wife Paula, opened Il Gattopardo (Italian for “The Leopard”) across the street from the Museum of Modern Art (53^rd Street, east of 5^thAvenue) with Executive Chef Vito Gnazzo. In 2011, the terrific trio reincarnated the famous space in the Des Artistes Hotel.

As it is located on the Upper West Side of New York, it took me nearly four years to experience the transformation from a premier French restaurant into a lush Italian. I was excited when I concluded that the only theater showing the movie I wanted to see at the right time was three blocks away from the restaurant I was dying to visit. 

As I approached the elegant black air-lock entrance with lit name in flowing script above the door, I hoped the famous murals inside were left intact. I entered and there they were. The beautiful nymphs were still cavorting through the flowers and trees on every wall, and the only addition was the black leopard statue in one window.

I had come prepared and dressed to impress (jacket and tie encouraged), and yet no one batted an eye when I revealed my leopard jacket and tie on New York black shirt and slacks. I was sedately – and very professionally – led to my table with a beautiful mural, a backdrop not far from the bar.

My waiter, Rares, was efficiency personified. He took my water preference, presented me with the wine list and menu, and asked if I desired a drink other than water. I ordered my favorite martini upon learning that the bar had Beefeaters gin in stock. It was supremely perfect, as was the tall pony-tailed blonde bartender who mixed it and served the second one.

Fortunately, I had perused the menu on-line and it was virtually the same, because Rares’ thick accent prevented me from understanding any of the daily specials as he rattled them off. I just nodded and oohed and ah-ed. When he returned, I told him I wanted to construct a three-course meal with a side of pasta (the only dish I hadn’t decided on). He made a suggestion and surprisingly, it was the one that caught my eye online. The meal was organized.

The wine list had an impressive arrangement. Italian wines from the North, Middle, and South were sub-categories under Whites and Reds. The wines from the South were totally unfamiliar to me and I asked Rares’ help. The 2009 “Donnachiara” Aglianico Irpinia from Campania was a tasty, slightly earthy balance of fruit and tannins in a beautiful ruby-red wine.

Another server brought the breadbasket filled with crusty Italian bread as well as foot-long bread sticks and rich dark bread, and poured a plate of virgin olive oil for dipping. A second server brought the amuse-bouche, two deep-fried rice balls flavored with lobster and Gorgonzola cheese – delightful.

Everything about the cuisine at The Leopard says “not your traditional Italian food.” This is particularly evident in the appetizer. “Battuta di Branzino” is thin sliced orbetello branzino (a Mediterranean sea bass), gently roasted with pink peppercorn and fennel salad. The delicate white of the melt-in-your-mouth fish surmounted by the just barely green, shaved strips of fennel was a work of art on a plate as well as a joy to the taste buds. I actually enjoyed the fennel, usually not one of my favorite flavors.

Next came the three large, circular ravioli filled with braised artichoke and burrata cheese in a light tomato-marjoram sauce. With a generous mound of shaved Parmesan cheese, this dish was almost gone before I took a picture of it.

The main course was decided before I left the office. The “Coniglio in Porchetta” – oven-roasted rabbit saddle filled with Italian sausage, served with porcini sauce, sautéed broccoli rabe and spinach was a tour de force. The tender, slightly gamy rabbit was sweetened by the sausage and enhanced by the mushroom sauce, while the gloriously green broccoli rabe mixed its sharp flavor with the sweeter flavor of the spinach to create the perfect balance between the two. I loved it.

Was I full after all this? You bet, and Rares could see it. He brought homemade cookies for dessert and that, along with a double espresso, finished my wonderful return to Des Artistes. It still ranks with Daniel and the Boathouse as one of the most romantic restaurants in New York. And now there are no more excuses. It’s more reasonably priced than its former incarnation. However, for those who wish to go extravagant, they do have a $4,900 bottle of wine.

For the Dinner and a Movie archive, click here.

Lizabeth Scott: In Memoriam

She's a Femme Fatale

By Ed Garea

“I didn’t want any part of her, but I kept smelling that jasmine in her hair, and I wanted her in my arms. Yeah. I knew I was walking into something.” – “Rip” Murdock (Humphrey Bogart), Dead Reckoning, 1947.

She was made for film noir: a sultry blonde with a smoky, come-hither voice who had romance on her mind and homicide in her heart. She played opposite such stars as Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, and Van Heflin. And though her heyday lasted only about a decade, her influence remains; fueled as much by her private life as by the femme fatales she played on screen.

Lizabeth Scott, nicknamed by Paramount, the studio that signed her in 1945, as “the Threat,” died on January 31 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 92. While the hospital confirmed the death, it did not list a cause, but her longtime friend Mary Goodstein stated the cause was congestive heart failure.

When Paramount signed her, the studio described her as “beautiful, blonde, aloof, and alluring.” Their plans were to cast her in the mold of Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake, two other blonde dames of noir. But critics and the public never saw her as being in the same league with Bacall and Lake; she was seen as more of a generic imitation. It wasn’t until years after her career flamed out that she was seen and appreciated for bringing something original to the hard-boiled characters she often played. In her book, Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film (1998), film historian Karen Burroughs Hannsberry called Scott “one of film noir’s archetypal femmes.”

She was born Emma Matzo on Sept. 29, 1922, in Scranton, Pa., one of six children of Ukrainian immigrant John Matzo and wife Mary (nee Pennock), who owned a grocery store. She attended Marywood Seminary, a local Catholic girls’ high school, but transferred to Scranton’s Central High School. After graduation, she spent the summer working with the Mae Desmond Players, a stock company in the nearby town of Newfoundland. That autumn she enrolled at Marywood College, but quit after six months, against her parents’ wishes, to move to New York City, where she enrolled at the Alvienne School of Drama. She took the stage name of “Elizabeth Scott,” and landed a small role with the touring company of the stage hit Hellzapoppin, where she had little to do, except to appear between sketches in stunning gowns is a series of comedy blackouts.

After the tour concluded, she returned to New York in 1942. Unable to get an acting job, she was hired as a fashion model by Harper’s Bazaar at $25 an hour. Later that year, Broadway producer Michael Myerberg cast her in a small role in Thorton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. She also understudied star Tallulah Bankhead, but had no chance to substitute. When Bankhead left the show in 1943, Scott hoped to replace her as star. But the role was given instead to Miriam Hopkins, and Scott returned to modeling. But when Gladys George, who replaced Hopkins, became ill, Scott was called back to the show and won rave reviews. She later played the lead in the play’s Boston run, also to rave reviews and good business.

Later in 1943, when she was modeling after leaving the play, Warner Brothers producer Hal B. Wallis spotted her at her 21st birthday party held at the Stork Club in New York. Wallis scheduled an interview with Scott the following day, but she canceled it when a telegram asked her to replace Hopkins in the Boston production of The Skin of Our Teeth. 


In 1944, agent Charles K. Feldman, who saw her photos in Harper's Bazaar, invited Scott to Los Angeles. After failed screen tests at Universal-International and Warner Brothers, Scott again ran into Wallis, who told her that he would hire her if he had the power to do so. She thought he was jerking her around and left for New York. But Wallis left Warner Bros. and formed his own production company, which would release their product through Paramount. He called her again, and she came out to Los Angeles, signing a contract with Paramount. She was now known as Lizabeth Scott after dropping the “E” in her first name “to be different.”

Her debut film was the Ayn Rand-scripted You Came Along in 1945, in a role originally intended for Barbara Stanwyck. Scott played U.S. Treasury flak Ivy Hotchkiss, whose job was to look after three pilots on a patriotic bond-selling tour. She falls in love with one of the pilots, Major Bob Collins (Robert Cummings), but while she’s serious, he’s lackadaisical. Despite the efforts of the other two pilots (Don DeFore and Charles Drake) to keep her in the dark, she discovers why Collins isn’t serious: he has terminal leukemia. It wasn’t a smooth shoot for Scott; she experienced problems with leading man Cummings, though these were later worked out, and she had difficulties with director John Farrow, who made no secret of the fact he wanted Teresa Wright for the starring role. Another consequence of the film was the lifelong friendship between Scott and Rand.

On the strength of this film, Wallis next cast Scott as one of the leads in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946 over the protests of top billed star Stanwyck who, in a letter, said that she would not be co-starred with any other person other than a recognized male or female star. Nevertheless, Scott wound up in third place at the top behind Stanwyck and Heflin and ahead of Douglas, appearing in his first film. Wallis, notorious for a weakness for blondes, was obsessive with his new discovery to the point of demanding director Lewis Milestone reshoot certain scenes to feature more close-up of Scott. Milestone walked out, telling Wallis that if he wanted to reshoot the scenes, he could do so himself, which is just what he did.

It was during this time that the publicity for Scott from Paramount and Wallis began to backfire. Journalists began to notice the resemblance between Scott and Bacall, which, coupled with the studio’s nickname for Scott being “The Threat” (as compared with Bacall being nicknamed “The Look”), began the critical trend of marginalizing Scott in favor of Bacall.

Scott got her next starring role as a result of a loan-out from Wallis. Columbia was about to film Dead Reckoning with Bogart and Rita Hayworth. But Hayworth was busy filming The Lady From Shanghai, so Scott was imported to fill in. The film represented Scott’s first portrayal of a hard-boiled femme fatale. She plays Coral “Dusty” Chandler, the ex-girlfriend of Bogart’s murdered war buddy who’s a singer in a nightclub run by a local gangster. She knows more about the buddy’s murder than she lets on, and to keep Bogart from finding out the truth about his buddy, she seduces him into believing that she loves him. Both the film and Scott were hits, with the film typecasting her as a beautiful schemer caught in a whirlpool of jealousy, greed, betrayal and murder, but nevertheless irresistible.

Her fourth film was Desert Noir (1947), a coming-of-age noir with Scott as the rebellious daughter of Mary Astor, whose character, a casino and bordello owner, runs the corrupt town of Chuckawalla, Nevada. The film also starred newcomers Burt Lancaster and Wendell Corey.

In December 1946, Scott began filming on Wallis’s I Walk Alone, co-starring Douglas, Lancaster, and Wendell Corey. Scott plays torch singer Kay Lawrence, who befriends convict Frankie Madison (Lancaster), returning to New York after being in stir for the last 14 years. Kay’s boyfriend is Noll “Dink” Turner (Douglas), who owns the Regent Club. However, Madison claims that he’s Dink’s partner. Dink sends Kay to sweet-talk Frankie in order to stall for time, but the truth is that Dink, having tired of Kay, intends to dump her and marry socialite Mrs. Richardson (Kristine Miller).

The film, a big hit with audiences and seen as one of the classic film noirs today, contained even more drama behind the scenes. Originally titled Deadlock, the role of Kay was supposed to be Kristine Miller’s breakout role. But Scott, having read the script, decided she wanted the role, and prevailed upon Wallis, with whom she was involved in a hot and heavy affair, to give her the part, which he did. Miller wound up with the secondary role of the socialite. Her relations with Lancaster, previously romantic (it was rumored that they were to marry at one point) cooled to the point of near hostility. After filming wrapped, Lancaster tried to break his seven-year contract with Paramount, ostensibly on the grounds that it violated a previous freelance deal. However, he also admitted that he never wanted to work with Scott again.

Scott followed up I Walk Alone with two films that refined her femme fatale image even further. First up was Pitfall (1948), with Scott playing Mona Stevens, a model who becomes involved in a hot and heavy extramarital affair with bored insurance investigator Dick Powell. Powell soon finds himself competing for her with sociopath detective Raymond Burr, who is blackmailing Mona. She followed this with a film that many critics and viewers regard as her best performance and film: Too Late For Tears (1949). In this film, Scott is the ultimate femme fatale, Jane Palmer, who discovers $60,000 that had accidentally been thrown in the back of her husband’s car. She will go to any length to keep the sudden fortune, as witnessed by the bodies that begin to pile up. Unfortunately, the film bombed at the box office, resulting in bankruptcy for producer Hunt Stromberg.

One of Scott’s problems was that, despite appearing in nine films from 1946 to 1949, she failed to achieve the level of stardom and clout necessary to maintain popularity at the box office. Her health also contributed, for in 1949 she collapsed in hysterics during the filming of RKO’s The Big Steal, with Mitchum. Her illness was such that she had to quit the film. The doctors prescribed rest. By July 1949, Scott was sufficiently recovered to star in the Princeton (University) Drama Festival’s production of Philip Yordan’s Anna Lucasta. She also legalized her stage name.

Her films in the ‘50s were a mediocre lot, attributed in large part to her falling star. Dark City (1950) was a traditional noir with Charlton Heston (in his film debut) playing a bookie who is the target of the vengeful brother of a dead man he swindled. Scott once again played the torch singer-girlfriend. Two of a Kind (1951) featured Scott as a socialite who seduces gambler Edmond O’Brien into joining a caper. In The Racket (1951), another traditional noir, Scott plays a torch singer (for the last time), based loosely on mob moll Virginia Hill, who is caught up in a struggle between big city police captain Mitchum and local mob boss Robert Ryan. Red Mountain (1951) is a programmer starring Alan Ladd as a Confederate Army captain who goes west to join Quantrill’s Raiders. Scott is the wife of Arthur Kennedy, who along with Scott, join up with Ladd after he rescues Kennedy from a lynching.

In the midst of this, Scott traveled to England in October 1951 to begin filming Stolen Face, a Hammer Studio noir directed by Terence Fisher. It’s a uniquely nutty film about plastic surgeon Dr. Philip Ritter (Paul Henreid), who is devastated when the love of his life, American concert pianist Alice Brent (Scott) leaves him and reveals she’s engaged to another man. Dr. Ritter’s not about to take this lying down, and decides that if he can’t have the real thing, perhaps he can construct a duplicate to take her place. Which is just what he does when he meets horribly scarred convict Lily Conover (Mary Mackensie). A snip-snip here, a tug-tug there, and voila! Mary now looks exactly like Alice, and Scott now takes over the role as Lily. And, of course, he marries her. Not only that, Ritter gives her the same clothes, hairstyle, and so forth, as the departed Alice. Unfortunately for the good doctor, his pet theory, elaborated in the first part of the film, that physical deformities can lead to a life of crime, and if the deformities are removed, so is the criminal’s need to commit crime, falls by the wayside when Lily returns to her criminal ways. She steals jewelry and furs, with the doctor bribing shop owners to keep it on the QT. Just when it can’t get any worse, Alice pops back into Ritter’s life, and now he’s stuck with two Lizabeth Scotts. It presages Hitchcock’s Vertigo in a way, and Scott is wonderful in the dual role.

An important footnote here is that by casting Henreid, who was blacklisted in America because of his participation with the Committee for the First Amendment, Scott and Wallis were effectively among the first to break the Hollywood blacklist.

Returning to America, Scott began work on the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis vehicle, Scared Stiff, a remake of the 1940 Bob Hope-Paulette Goddard comedy, The Ghost Breakers. Scott plays the Goddard role, an heiress who inherits a haunted castle on Lost Island, off the Cuban coast. Although Scott would claim fond memories of working on the set in later interviews, it was not without its trials. Scott found Lewis’s impersonation of her offensive and made a point of telling him. Behind the scenes, a jealous Wallis was instructing director George Marshall against letting the romantic scenes between Scott and Martin get too steamy.

Scott’s last picture for Paramount was 1953’s Bad for Each Other, a drama set in Scott’s home state of Pennsylvania. She plays avaricious heiress Helen Curtis, who has her sights on recently returned Korean War physician Colonel Tom Owen (Heston), poor but idealistic. Despite her plans to encase him in her jewel-encrusted world, treating the imaginary illnesses of her society friends, Owen opts to leave that world to minister to the impoverished community. The film was a box office failure and ended not only her Paramount contract, but also her professional and personal relationship with Wallis. Scott was now a freelancer, going on to make a Western noir titled Silver Lode in 1954 and the JD drama The Weapon, in 1956. She also attended USC, where she audited courses in political science and philosophy, and began investing in real estate.

In April 1954, Scott flew to the Cannes Film Festival, where she spent time posing for photographers, wading barefoot in a fountain and the surf. Though she left immediately after the festival’s closing for London, her visit to France would come back to haunt her, both professionally and personally, damaging her film career beyond repair, for she found herself caught in the crosshairs of Confidential.

Confidential was the premier scandal sheet of its day. There were others, such as Hush Hush, but Confidential was the most popular by far. Bogart said of it, “Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house.” The magazine developed a network of call girls, waiters, bellboys, journalists, private detectives, and even minor actors who would provide small bits of fact about celebrities. The magazine then elaborated on the facts, magnifying them with a great deal of innuendo, marked by the frequent use of puns and alliteration. Instead of stating outright that an actor had participated in a scandalous act, Confidential operated by suggesting that something scandalous has occurred. Because the stories contained a kernel of actual truth and could be attributed to reliable sources, for a time celebrities would be unlikely to sue the publication, if only because of fear of further revelations that would come out at trial. For those who found themselves splashed over the front pages, the advice was to wait it out until the scandal died down.

In September 1954, Confidential ran a story titled, “Why Was Lizabeth Scott’s Name in the Call Girls’ Black Book?” A police raid on a Hollywood bordello in 1954 uncovered some interesting evidence. A “little black book” seized on the premises contained one entry under ‘S’ that astounded the vice officers: Scott, Lizabeth (4), Ho-2-0064, Br-2-6111. According to the article, the cops could scarcely believe their eyes. “Could that name be that of the honey-blonde star they’d seen in a dozen top movies? If so, what was it doing rubbing elbows with a zesty collection of customers for a trio of cuddle-for-cast cuties?”

The magazine went on to state that when the cops questioned the older girls, all they said was “We don’t want to get anyone in trouble.” But then the article noted that one of the three girls arrested, a juvenile of 17, cracked enough to convince the cops that their first suspicions were right. Supposedly the cops called the number listed in the book, only to have Scott answering, “with her famous husky drawl giving her away.”

To this little nugget was added a myriad of suggestion and supposition. “Liz,” the article stated, “was a strange girl, even for Hollywood, and from the moment she arrived in the cinema city, she never married, never even got close to the altar.”

“Her movie career,” the article continued, “went off like a rocket” with such hits as You Came Along, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, and Dead Reckoning, but faded just as quickly. Liz “had few friends and never went out of her way to make new ones.” But now, according to the article, she “was taking up almost exclusively with Hollywood’s weird society of baritone babes.”

“Baritone babes” was the magazine’s euphemism for the Sapphic sisterhood, or what Hollywood insiders called “the sewing circle.” In what was par for the course with every Confidential story on lesbianism, Liz was linked to a Parisian lesbian named Frede: “In one jaunt to Europe she headed straight for Paris and the left bank where she took up with Frede, the city’s most notorious lesbian queen and operator of a nightclub devoted exclusively to entertaining deviates just like herself.” Well, she did visit France, taking in Cannes. Whether or not she visited Paris was of no consequence to the magazine, which was only getting started. The fact that Frede was a friend and ex-lover of Marlene Dietrich, whose own bisexualism was no secret, was enough to paint Scott with the taint of guilt by supposed association. In fact, Frede was the proprietor of the posh Parisian nightclub Carroll’s, where the stars of France performed to a mixed clientele. In her 1989 memoirs, Eartha Kitt, who began her singing career at Carroll’s in the late 1940’s, described Frede as “the most beautiful manly-looking lady in the world.” The article also quoted her as saying that she “always wore male colognes, slept in men’s pajamas and positively hated frilly feminine dresses.”

The truth about Scott was that she was a nonconformist to the core. Off screen she was fairly open about her life, loved wearing shirts and slacks, and unlike many other stars rumored to be gay, she refused the services of a studio-provided “beard” husband. When Scott saw the article she was furious, but instead of merely sitting by and waiting for the storm to blow over, she enlisted the services of lawyer-to-the-stars Jerry Geisler and sued the magazine for $2.5 million, accusing it of “holding the plaintiff up to contempt and ridicule and implying in the eyes of every reader indecent, unnatural and illegal conduct in her private and public life.” However, it is important to note that she did not sue the magazine for implying that she was gay, but rather for its allegations that she used the services of call girls. The outcome of the trial was never made public. Some reports state the suit was settled out of court, while others maintain Scott lost on a technicality.

Her movie career was in tatters, although ex-lover Wallis gave her the female lead in the Elvis Presley vehicle, Loving You (1957). She played Glenda Markle, a press agent who discovers young country singer Presley and sets him on the road to fame. Backstage rumors were that she was smitten with co-star Elvis and tried to pursue a romance. Whether or not she was successful is not known. The film did very well at the box office and Scott received favorable reviews, but for her, the joy of making movies had passed. “I simply decided there was more to life than just making films,” she said in a 1970s interview. “And, I proceeded to explore all of life’s other facets. None of us is ever too young or too old or too smart to learn or to create.” In fact, after Loving You, she would only come out of “retirement” to make one more film, Pulp, with Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney, in 1972, as a nymphomaniac princess.

Instead, she turned to other things, such as music. In 1957, she cut an album simply titled Lizabeth for Vik Records, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. The album, a mixture of torch songs and romantic ballads such as Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again,” also contains in the inner notes an interview with Earl Wilson, in which he states she is a fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson, sleeps in the nude, loves deep-sea fishing, and adores sexy clothes (possibly a counter to the Confidential article). On April 23, 1958, she made her public singing debt on the CBS program The Big Record. The album was poorly received after its release, but since has become a cult favorite.

She also kept busy with television appearances, radio shows, and television voice-overs for juice and cat food commercials. In later years, living off returns from her many real estate investments, Scott led a quiet, private life at her house in the Hollywood Hills, helping to raise funds for museums, art galleries and charities (including hemophilia research and hunger). She turned down many requests for interviews and guest appearances, save for the occasional appearance for special screenings of her films. She also attended health clubs on a regular basis, and studied literature, philosophy and languages. There were rumors that she might marry Hal Wallis, but she remained steadfastly single, with Wallis marrying actress Martha Hyer instead.

Survivors include her brother Gus Matzo of Plymouth, Mich.; and sister Justine Birdsall of Middletown, N.Y.