Cornel Wilde and Victoria Shaw in "Edge of Eternity", and "Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard" with Howard St. John and Amanda Blake

Last night we found another Don Siegel movie, "Edge of Eternity" starring Cornel Wilde, who recently stood out in "Storm Fear" (reviewed a couple weeks ago) as a bank robber on the run. He's on the other side of the law here, playing a Sheriff's deputy in Kingman, Arizona. The movie starts with a struggle. A man gets out of his car at the edge of the Grand Canyon to take in the view with binoculars. While he's doing that, another man sneaks up, releases the emergency brake on his car, and pushes it toward the first man, intending to knock him off the cliff. But the first man rolls away. The car goes over the cliff. The two men engage in a punchout, and the second man falls into the Grand Canyon. The first man stumbles away. His car is gone, he's all beat up. He ends up wandering down the road where he babbles incoherently to a prospector. This scares the grizzled Old Timer, who runs off to look for Deputy Wilde. When he finds him, clocking speeders by the highway, he tells him about the crazy sounding man.

But Wilde's heard it all before. "Oh, c'mon Eli. Is this another one of your tall tales"? "No, I swear I saw him". Just then a car speeds by, driven by a pretty woman. Wilde starts his engine. "Okay, I promise I'll take a look, right after I issue her a citation". He takes off in pursuit. The woman is a reckless driver, doing 80mph around the hairpin turns. But when Wilde pulls her over, her beauty and her charm work to her advantage. "This time I'm only gonna cite you for speeding", he says, trying and failing to sound stern. "I'll even mark it down to 45mph. But you could've killed somebody, at the very least yourself. If I catch you driving like that again I'll throw the book at you". The woman is "Janice Kendon" (Victoria Shaw), the daughter of a gold mine magnate. The scene serves to hint at a possible future romance, but also to show off her driving skills. There will be a reason for that later on.

Wilde lets her go, then heads back to the station. When he gets there, Eli the prospector is waiting for him. "That man! The one I was telling you about? He's dead! Hangin' by his neck in the mining office"! This time, Wilde believes him. He takes Eli back to the office, where a man is indeed strung up. He looks about 60 and is wearing an expensive suit, but he has no wallet and therefore no identification. To Deputy Wilde, it looks and sounds like a suicide. After all, Eli said the man sounded crazy. We know, however, that it's the man from the beginning of the movie, who got into the fight on the cliffside. Someone has likely murdered him. If it was murder, there has to be a third man involved. But who? No one knows. Wilde turns the case over to his boss, "Sheriff Edwards" (Edgar Buchanan, aka "Uncle Joe", who this time is Movin' Kinda Slow at the Junction).

The Sheriff assigns Wilde to track down the hanged man's identity. He interviews people who might've seen him in the area, including "Bill Ward", who - before he played drums for Black Sabbath - was Jack Elam, the foreman for a bat guano mine. Wilde also goes back to talk to Janice Kendon, who lets on that the man's death has something to do with gold. "There's still 20 million dollars worth sitting underground. All those open mine shafts? Sometimes the locals go down there. But it takes a lot of know-how to locate a vein. Lots of equipment, too. Still, if someone got lucky, someone else might've wanted in on his strike. The suit that guy was wearing cost a lot of money". Being a fashion plate herself, she happens to know the tailor. This establishes that the man is originally from New York. An interview with a motel clerk I.D.s him.

It's an interesting premise for a murder mystery, and this one is intercut with romance. It's also a widescreen Eastmancolor epic, where the landscape is the backdrop for the storyline. Grand Canyon gold fever is the name of the game. Deputy Cornel Wilde is now sweet on Janice Kendon, who acts like she knows more than she's telling. Her younger brother "Bob" (Rian Garrick") is a terrible alcoholic and her father the mine owner doesn't like Wilde coming around. It's not your typical case-hardened Don Siegel movie. He spends a lot of time on close ups of Victoria Shaw's dazzling smile. Things do slow down a bit during these interludes, but Siegel makes up for it with a teeth gritting finale, having to do with the bat guano mine. Though the plot takes time to develop, the last third of the movie is well worth the wait. The location photography is spectacular. There's also a subtheme about a district attorney who's up for re-election and is trying to get rid of Cornel Wilde. Were it a little tighter, it could've earned Two Huge Thumbs Up. But "Edge of Eternity" is one of those ambitious crime flicks like Taylor Hackford's "Against All Odds", where instead of sticking to the nuts and bolts of Noir, the director includes an Epic Location and a Sweeping Romance. Even the titles are similar. It's still good enough to rate Two Bigs, however, so it's definitely recommended, and the picture is Blu-ray razor sharp. /////  

The previous night's picture was a low budget - but surprisingly good - espionage flick called "Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard"(1950). Howard St. John, who played the brutal sportswiter "Al Judge" in "The Big Night" (reviewed December 9th), this time is good guy "Counterspy David Harding", who heads up an intelligence team to stop a group of American Communists, who are out to steal secrets from the Army's first ballistic missile test. When an officer at the base is "suicided" by the Commies, the Yard offers their help. They send over "Agent Simon Langdon" (Ron Randell), who goes undercover to get to the heart of the spy group. This leads him to "Karen Michelle", the secretary for the dead officer. She's undergoing psychiatric treatments for her experiences in a concentration camp. Counterspy Harding suspects there's a connection between her psychiatrist and her bosses' death, which he's certain was a murder. The screenplay here is heavily layered, something you don't often see in a 67 minute movie. There's also no fat. Intelligence techniques are realistically represented. There are stake outs, a wiretapping operation. It turns out the shrink is using narcohypnosis to extract top secret test launch information from Karen Michelle, who - as a secretary for the missile program - has clearance to know the results.

Harding and his team home in on the shrink but they need proof before they can bust him. June Vincent plays his evil secretary. The way the information is passed out of the high security base is extremely clever. I won't tell you how it's done, but Agent Langdon discovers it after donning a disguise to infiltrate the psychiatrist's office. This is about as tight a spy flick as you're ever likely to see. IMDB says that the Counterspy character originated on a radio show. There are also supposed to be other movies so I'll see if I can find them. The budget is low, but "Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard" has the hallmarks of an A-list movie. That's why I'm gonna give it Two Huge Thumbs Up. You absolutely don't wanna miss it. The picture is good, though not razor sharp, and TV tough guy John Dehner is great as an agency operative who's pretending to be an electrician. ////

That's all I know for this evening. Rams beat Cards, hooray! I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always.   xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Terry Moore and Lee Marvin in "Shack Out on 101", and "Hollywood Story" starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams

With a title like "Shack Out on 101"(1955), you've gotta click "play", especially when the star is Lee Marvin. The rest of the cast is alone worth the watch : Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Whit Bissell. Let me ask you this - have you ever seen Whit Bissell in a movie that was bad? I'll answer for you, no you haven't. And you've seen him in at least a hundred films. So right there, notwithstanding all the other actors, you know you're guaranteed a decent picture. And then, for good measure (depending on if you can stand him), you also get Len Lesser, aka "Uncle Leo" from "Seinfeld". Me? I can't handle Uncle Leo. But Lesser is more this time around.

What kind of a show are we talking about here? Hmm, I'm not really sure what to call it. Is it a Noir, is it a crime story, perhaps a spy flick or a black comedy? I'm at a loss, you'll have to categorize it yourself. It feels like a play, the way the actors read their lines, and it takes place almost all in one setting, a seaside cafe off the highway near San Diego. Lee Marvin, young and thin, plays "Slob", the joint's cook. As the movie opens, he takes advantage of "Kotty" (Terry Moore), the waitress. She's on the beach sunbathing. Slob sneaks over and gives her "mouth-to-mouth". When she pulls him off and slaps him, he acts hurt. "Aww, c'mon Kotty. I thought you were passed out". He didn't really think it, but that's the kind of guy Slob is, an animal who takes what he can get.

He seems jovial, however. When cafe owner "George" (Keenan Wynn) tells him "I'll pound you and then I'll fire you if you ever bother Kotty again", Slob shrugs it off with a grin and a sly insult. "You'll never find another cook as bad as me to make your lousy food". The next thing you know, they're lifting weights together in the dining room after closing, comparing pecs with their shirts off. So are they friends, or not? Maybe so, as long as Kotty isn't in the way. Slob calls her "the tomato". "You'd love to get your hands on her too, George, admit it". But George is more noble than Slob. His feelings toward Kottie are gallant.

As for Kottie herself, she's in love with one of the regular customers, "Professor Sam Bastion" (Frank Lovejoy) a highbrow physicist from a top secret Army base down the road. "Why can't you tell me what you do there"?, she's always asking. "Because it's classified, like the Manhattan Project", he answers. "Eddie" (Whit Bissell) is another regular. He and Professor Sam were in the D-Day invasion together. Eddie has PTSD from the experience. Professor Sam, though not a shrink, gives him advice that cheers him up. "Just keep telling me what to do, Sam, and I'll be all right. I always feel better after talking to you".

One night a guy named "Perch" (Len Lesser) comes into the cafe after closing. Slob is the only one there. Perch hands him a small object that looks like a film container. Slob stashes it in a chest he hides below his bunk (he lives in the back room). I won't reveal what it is because it's central to the end of the movie. Meanwhile, there are two other regulars, "Artie" and "Pepe" (Jess Barker and Donald Murphy). They're the delivery drivers for the company that supplies George with fresh fish, but there's something fishy about them. They always hang around till closing. "Don't you guys have to finish your run"?, Slob wonders. 

Finally, there's "Professor Claude Dillon" (Frank DeKova), Prof. Bastion's cohort. He only comes in once, then he turns up dead. His body is found washed up on the beach. Because he worked at the top secret base, his death is front page news. Slob says "it's probably suicide. Think of the pressure those guys are under". But what he doesn't know is that Kotty overheard him talking to Professor Dillon and Perch. Now, when the police interview everyone at the cafe, Slob says he never met Dillon. Kotty then does something you wouldn't expect, especially from a helpless young woman. She confronts Slob with his secret conversation. I'm not going to tell you what happens after that, but believe it or not, this isn't a full-on spy flick. As much time is spent on verbal hijinks between Slob, George and the others, with a lot of exaggerated clowning around, and again as much is spent on Slob's pursuit of Kotty, which earns him the enmity of Professor Sam as well as George, so you know there's gonna be a showdown. The spy plot is established early on but doesn't kick in until the last half of the movie.

Like me, you'll no doubt be wondering "what kind of movie is this"? At first it has the feel of a farce, or a very black comedy, and as noted it's staged like a play with the singular set (the cafe), and characters entering and leaving. But because the actors are so good - especially Lee Marvin, who was adept at light comedy - you'll find yourself glued to the screen, even if the style is unclear. Later on, there'll be no doubt it's a serious film, but before that it's a weird one. Slob and Kotty are the main characters. Terry Moore was good in "innocent-but-tough" roles like this one. Every time I see her I forget she was married to Howard Hughes. Like a lot of folks in Hughes' orbit, she's a Mormon (she's still alive at 91). They were only together from 1949 to 1956, but Moore claimed they never divorced. Hughes said the marriage was never legal in the first place. He died in 1976. Though I did think the verbal sparring went on just a smidge too long, and that the movie could use a trim of 3-5 minutes, "Shack Out on 101" still gets Two Big Thumbs Up just because it's so different. And that cast. Man what a great ensemble. It's an oddball of a Noir, it's highly recommended and the picture is razor sharp.  ////

The previous night's film was "Hollywood Story"(1951), another movie-within-a-movie, or maybe a movie about the movies. Either way, it was almost certainly based on the notorious 1922 murder of silent film director William Desmond Taylor, which was never solved. The story consumed Hollywood at the time. Suspects included famous stars like Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter. As re-imagined by our old pal William Castle, it's a stylish mystery with a sense of fun. Not too much fun, mind you. Castle was an admirer of Hitchcock, so the main element is suspense. Whodunit is what counts here, and it's more complex than a Ten Little indians, but what Castle really wants is to deliver a paean to the old days, when the studios were omnipotent, and Silents were just giving way to Talkies.

Hollywood plays itself. The main location is Chaplin Studios on La Brea, (where we met Ringo Starr when it was A&M Records). Cameos are made by Silent stars Francis X. Bushman (whose grandson was Pat Conway of "Tombstone Territory" fame), Betty Blythe, William Farnum and Helen Gibson (a suspect in the original murder case). 40s/50s star Joel McCrea also makes an appearance. 

Jim Backus narrates as "Mitch Davis", agent for Broadway producer "Larry O' Brien" (Richard Conte). As the movie opens, he meets O'Brien at the Burbank airport. O'Brien wants to break into movies. Davis takes him to a studio (the aforementioned Chaplin), where the security guard gives them a guided tour. When he regales the men with the story of the murder (the fictional director's name is Franklin Ferrara), O'Brien decides to make a movie about it. Everyone tries to talk him out of it, including his agent Davis and his business partner "Sam Collyer" (Fred Clark). "That story's old news", Collyer says. "No one cares anymore and besides, it was never solved, which means you don't have an ending". All that does is make O'Brien more determined. "Well that's even better", he declares. "We'll solve the murder ourselves! Not only will that give us our ending, but think of the publicity"! To him it's an ingenious proposition.

But first he'll need a script. To that end, he seeks out "Vincent St. Clair" (Henry Hull), a screenwriter from the Silent days who wrote the original movie. When Ferrara was killed, his career went down the tubes, as did everyone's who worked on the picture. O'Brien finds St. Clair in a shack on the beach (not the Shack Out on 101). He's all washed up, living inside a bottle, but O'Brien wants him and no one else. "You were there; you can recreate what happened". St. Clair gets his act together and takes the job. Soon production is underway. Then a guest shows up unexpectedly : "Sally Rousseau" (Julie Adams), the daughter of Silent actress Amanda Rousseau. Amanda was seen with Ferrara the night he was murdered. Sally doesn't want her late mother dragged into this. This puts her at odds with Larry O'Brien. With his money invested and production underway, there's no chance he's gonna call off the movie. Slowly, he brings her around to seeing things his way. "If anything, it'll help clear your mother's name". Sally comes to trust him, and later they fall in love, but there's another reason she doesn't want her mother mentioned. Of course I can't reveal what it is.

As O'Brien begins his own investigation, working from Vincent St. Clair's script, an aging Silent film star becomes the prime suspect. He's playing a butler in the new movie. Sally Rousseau is nervous about him. O'Brien wonders why. His business partner Sam Collyer has a grudge against the old actor. Is he at the bottom of the secret everyone's been keeping for 20 years? While the plot is not high-tension, it's convoluted enough to hold your interest. Moreover, because it's directed by William Castle, the movie looks fantastic. You might recall when we binge watched a set of his horror movies a couple years back, we remarked on his talent for composition or mise-en-scene. He's very good at arranging the frame, and his black and white photography always has a velvety texture. Like "Shack/101", "Hollywood Story" is powered by a great cast. Besides Richard Conte (one of our go-to guys of 2021), you get the tall and rather toothy Henry Hull, best known as the "Werewolf of London". You also get the beautiful Julie Adams, she of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" fame. You get Richard Egan as a smirking cop, and a little bit of Jim Backus - pre-Howell - for good measure. Because of all this - the stars and the style - "Hollywood Story" gets Two Big Thumbs Up. While we don't have a standout masterpiece this time around, and our first movie is downright odd, I'd recommend not missing either one of them. You could even watch 'em both the same night; they kind of go together in a strange way. The picture on "Hollywood Story" is razor sharp. ////

That's all for tonight. Baby it's cold outside! I hope you're enjoying the Christmas Season and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Greta Gynt in "Three Steps in the Dark", and "The Big Night" starring John Barrymore Jr.

Last night's movie was an entertaining whodunit called "Three Steps in the Dark"(1953), about a mean but wealthy old man who calls on his younger relatives to attend a reading of his will. Fave gal Greta Gynt stars as "Sophie", the niece of "Arnold Burgoyne" (Nicholas Hannen). She's a crime novelist by profession. Uncle Arnold hates her books, but she's the only member of the family he tolerates. He detests his two nephews, "Philip" (Hugh Sinclair) and "Henry" (John Van Eyssen), one of whom's a cad (P), the other's broke (H). Nevertheless, perhaps because they're men, he's planning to leave them his estate, in a certain order. Henry is first. He gets the mansion, if he can produce an heir. This will give him stability and a place to live. Uncle Arnold knows he can't fend for himself. Henry has a fiance, so the question of a scion looks promising. But Uncle Arnold says she's not who she claims to be. He's got evidence. 

The fiance, humiliated, storms out of the house. Henry follows to console her. While they're outside, gunshots are heard. Someone's blasted Uncle Arnold. Who could it have been? Henry and his bride-to-be aren't above suspicion. "Mrs. Riddle" (Katie Johnson), Uncle Arnold's maid, says the shots came from outside his window. This film is just for the fun of it, a Shortino running 57 minutes. We haven't had a short film in a while, and this one's a Ten Little Indians, but it has a great British atmosphere and a lot of canny interplay between the Inspector (Alastair Hunter) who arrives to solve the murder and Sophie, who has her own theories based on the plots of her books. It's one of those mysteries where No One Is Allowed To Leave The Premises. The Inspector leans hard on nephew Philip, who seems to have the most to gain. With Uncle Arnold dead, and Henry having not yet had a son, Philip stands to inherit the estate. He's also got a secret; the affair he's been having with cousin Sophie. Does his wife know about it? Maybe she shot Uncle Arnold. Did she do it for Philip? Maybe so, to win him back by obtaining the mansion. 

Or maybe The Butler did it. We see him on the phone. He hangs up when he notices we're watching him. And what about Greta Gynt? But what reason would she have? Yes, she and Philip have a long-standing affair, but she's trying to break it off. Well, how about this : maybe she did it in the service of a book. Maybe she's trying to write the perfect murder. You're going to like "Three Steps in the Dark". Me, I loved it. Again, it's not a movie you have to heavily invest in, it's strictly an escape, but hey - an hour of Greta? What's not to like? One caveat; the ending is abrupt. Some fans at IMDB say it's indeterminate. I disagree. I think it's pretty clear what happens, though it's very sudden and the movie ends there. If you have any trouble figuring it out let me know. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Three Steps". It's recommended and the picture is razor sharp. ////

Now then : before there was James Dean, there was John Barrymore Jr. He starred in the previous night's picture, a melodramatic Noir called "The Big Night"(1951). Barrymore plays "Georgie LaMain", a handsome but nerdy young man. He's coming home from school on his 17th birthday when some neighborhood punks rough him up. It amounts to no more than a hazing but it's a precursor of what's to come.

Georgie puts his books away and goes downstairs to his Dad's bar, where he works behind the counter. Dad (Preston Foster) is there with his business partner and their roommate "Flanagan" (Howland Chamberlin). The evening regulars are on their stools, in a homogeneous state of inebriation. Dad, a somber steadfast man, brings out a birthday cake for Georgie, who's all raw nerves. Georgie manages to blow out all the candles but one, as the barflies serenade him with the traditional song.

Then the door slams open. The meager party is over. Three men enter the bar, one older, two hoodlums. The older man, besuited and walking with a cane, orders Dad to come out and take his medicine, in the form of a vicious beating. Dad complies by removing his shirt and kneeling. The older man whomps him on the back with the cane as the bar denizens look on, glumly. Georgie cries out - "Stop"! Dad's partner Flanagan holds him down. "Don't look, Georgie, don't look". Then it is over. The thugs leave the bar. Dad hobbles upstairs to lie down in bed. His back is raised with welts. Who were those men, and who was the one who beat him? Was he a Mob boss? Did Dad owe him money? Is that why he gave in without a fight?

Well no, not exactly. The older man with the cane, crippled but savage, is in fact "Al Judge" (Howard St. John), a sportswriter. Yes you read that right. What the hell's going on? Why would a sportswriter have such (forgive the pun) clout? Maybe he's an enforcer for the Mob? Hmm, that's what I was thinking. I thought Dad was maybe late on an "insurance payment", and took his beating to avoid being killed. But that's not how things shake out, as the plot kicks in and young Georgie finds his inner Bronson. He steals Dad's gun and heads out into the night, vowing to kill Al Judge. His odyssey takes him to a boxing arena, where he and his Dad were supposed to attend the evening's fight. That was before Dad got beat up. Georgie figures Judge will be covering the match. After getting swindled out of his extra ticket by a strong-arm hood (in a scriptural red herring), he takes his seat and meets "Dr. Lloyd Cooper" (Phillip Bourneuf). Dr. Cooper is a philosophy professor who is also a lush. He seems to know why Georgie is there. "So you're gonna get Al Judge, are you? Hit him with a right, then an uppercut. But watch out for that cane of his". Again we wonder, what's going on? Who is this Dr. Cooper? Is he leading Georgie into a trap?

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you'll recall that we've hammered on about the art of screenwriting, and how - in a well done script - there is no "fat", no extraneous material or characters, especially ones the director may have favored in order to present his "vision" but who, when the end result is viewed, serve only to distract from the forward motion of the story or act as red herrings. For a perfect script, see "Taxi Driver", which wastes nothing. Every scene and line of dialogue leads into the next one, right up to the resolution of the movie. Here, in "The Big Night", director Joseph Losey seems confused. He's got a hard core Noir theme (revenge) and he's got John Barrymore Jr. knocking it out of the park as the teenage Georgie. It's too bad Barrymore Jr. went crazy in real life because he was one hell of an actor (and he was Drew's Dad, by the way). But director Losey can't choose between style and substance, and so the plot becomes a mishmash. Georgie ends up wandering through the night. He can't get to Judge at the boxing match, so he enters a nightclub, where he becomes infatuated with the African-American chanteuse. Outside, he tells her she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen : "for a.....".  He leaves out the "N" word, and then he's embarrassed. "I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! I meant you're the most beautiful woman, period"!

But it's another red herring, and really not even that. There's simply no reason whatsoever for the scene to be included, except to inject the subject of racism into the story. Yet the thing is, it doesn't fit with Georgie's character. Being a nerd who get's picked on himself, and being an ultra-sensitive young man, he seems unlikely to be the type who would use the "N" word, especially to a lady's face, and while he holds back from actually saying it, it still seems out of place. Why have Georgie, teary eyed, slather the woman with compliments, only to finish with an epithet? Well anyhow, maybe it's the kind of language he hears at the bar, and is too immature to know he shouldn't use it.

Later on, he obtains Al Judge's home address. Georgie's pretty drunk now, he's gonna walk up the stairs and shoot him. But Judge isn't home. A woman hears him pounding on the door. She's "Marion Rostina" (Joan Lorring), Judge's neighbor. She invites Georgie in and calms him down. A tentative romance evolves as the hours pass. Georgie needs Marion. She's older and represents the mother he thinks is dead. We'll find out differently later on. It turns out Marion is living with Dr. Cooper. Remember him? He's the wisecracker Georgie met at the boxing match. When he gets home, we find out he's not as nice as we thought. Georgie finds himself back out on the street. When he does finally meet up with Al Judge and confronts him about the beating of his father, Judge tells Georgie "it's not what you think". We might never have thought of it either. In the end it's for you to decide : did Dad deserve the caning or didn't he? There's evidence enough that it shouldn't be ambiguous, but because it's not a linear plot, the story seems more about Georgie's coming of age at this point than in does about Judge and his Dad.

Though it's muddled, "The Big Night" still gets Two Big Thumbs Up, due to the performance of John Barrymore, Jr. who's only nineteen here, making his accomplishment all the more impressive. Everyone knows James Dean's rebel "Jim Stark", one of the most iconic characters in motion picture history. That's the better film of the two, an undisputed classic, but I think Barrymore Jr.'s portrayal at the very least equals Dean's, and in some ways goes him one better. That's because Georgie isn't pretending to be a tough guy; deep down he knows he's a wimp, therefore his character is more defined than Dean's. Barrymore has to go through every stage of realising this lack of grown-up manhood. He's trying to stick up for his Dad and in the end he just can't do it. Two things happen that will bring him face to face with the consequences of his Big Night. I can't tell you what they are, but the ending makes up for the wayward storyline, and style-wise the movie is tremendous. It's a shame about John Barrymore, Jr., whose life you should read about on Wiki. To me, he could've been one of the great actors of all-time. We also saw him last year in "While the City Sleeps"(1957), as a hotshot conniving reporter - an entirely different type of role but with equal onscreen charisma. Joan Lorring, who was excellent as the strumpet "Bessie" in "The Corn is Green", is also very good here as "Marion" the older woman who gives Georgie respite for a short time. As with John Barrymore, Jr., she shows great range, playing a polar opposite character from one film to the other. "The Big Night", despite it's flawed plot, is very very highly recommended. Don't miss it, the picture is razor sharp. /////

And there you have it for the evening, a short-but-fun mystery and a gut-wrenching melodrama with great acting. I hope you had a nice day and I send you Tons of Love as always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)    

Lloyd Bridges and Frank Lovejoy in "Try and Get Me", and "Private Hell 36" with Steve Cochrane, Howard Duff and Ida Lupino

Last night's movie was brutal. "Try and Get Me"(1950) tells the story of "Howard Tyler", a family man down on his luck in the fictional small town of Santa Sierra, California. Howard needs a job. His wife is pregnant, his son wants a bike (wait a minute, didn't some other kid want a bike a few weeks ago?). Well anyhow, the local chemical plant isn't hiring. Howard can barely bring home a bag of groceries. In town and aimless, he walks into a bowling alley. There he observes a slick looking guy rolling strikes. "Jerry Slocum" (Lloyd Bridges) seems to have all the confidence in the world. If you watched "He Ran All The Way", and saw how fast Shelly Winters cottoned onto John Garfield (ten seconds), this partnership doesn't take much longer to form. Slocum asks Howard to hand him his shoes, the next thing you know they're fast friends.

Howard walks with Jerry back to his apartment, where he's got the finest clothes in his closet. He's got an expensive watch too. "Wow", says Howard. "You're doing alright. You must make.....what?......at least twenty dollars an hour"? "Twenty dollars"?, replies Jerry, "ha! That's chump change. I make a lot more than that when I'm working".

"Well say, where do you work? I could sure use a job". 

Jerry looks Howard over. "You know, I think I can get you in. Are you a good driver"? "I suppose", Howard says. Jerry slaps him on the back. "Alright then, lets go talk to the boss. All he needs you to do is drive for him". Long story short, there is no boss, no place of employment. Jerry is an armed robber. It is he who needs a driver, to make faster getaways. Howard says no. "I don't want to get in trouble". This is where Jerry first shows the signs of being a nutcase. He loses his temper and tells Howard to get lost. Howard dreads going home to tell his wife, yet again, that he didn't find a job, so after giving it a second thought, he reluctantly agrees to drive for Jerry. Boy will he ever wish he hadn't. 

The first stickup goes smoothly. They hit a mom and pop store. "See how easy that was"?, Jerry says as they drive away. He shows Howard the wad of cash from the register. "I told you there was nothing to worry about". That night, Howard comes home late. But instead of sheepishly sneaking his way into bed, he surprises his wife with a big bag of steaks and another of new clothes. "Oh, Howard! You finally got a job! I'm so proud of you, where is it"? "Uh, I'm working at a warehouse. I'm gonna be on the night shift, but it pays more money". His son comes out to join the celebration. "Gee Dad, can I get that new bike"? "Of course, Tommy! And that baseball glove you wanted too".

Soon Howard is bringing home tons of dough, enough to send his wife on shopping sprees. "Nothing but the best for my family"! She and Tommy rarely see him, which she finds a little strange, but Howard says he's working overtime a lot. "It's okay, honey. At least we aren't broke anymore". But one night, he and Jerry rob a liquor store. The take is only 23 lousy bucks. The law of diminishing returns is kicking in. Their next few jobs net next to nothing. Then Jerry comes up with a big idea. Howard at first is very nervous. "Um, Jerry.......you said we were only gonna do stickups". "Don't worry, pal. I haven't steered you wrong yet, have I"? 

Cut to : The driveway of a gigantic mansion. It's late at night. Howard and Jerry pull up. "Oh, Jerry", Howard says, "I don't feel good about this. How long will we have to sit here? What if someone sees us"? "Relax, will ya? There's nobody here but him. I've been watching the house all week. He leaves like clockwork at 11pm, every night. We've only got five more minutes". They wait, and a young man comes outside. He's "Donald Miller" (Carl Kent), heir to a fortune. Jerry kidnaps him at gunpoint. Howard follows in Jerry's car as they drive to an abandoned Army base. There, Jerry demands that Howard help him tie up the terrified Miller. "Wait, Jerry.....I thought you said we were gonna hold him at your place. What're we doing here"? "What're you, crazy? We can't take him to my apartment! What, and lead the cops right to us? Now just shut up and tie his legs". Jerry is getting a manic look in his eye. Howard's now as scared as Donald Miller. Jerry rolls Miller's tied up body down a hill, then he runs down beside him. "No, Jerry! What are you doing?! No, Jerry, no"!! Howard is screaming as Jerry picks up a large rock. This movie is brutal, as I told you.

"Why'd you have to kill him, Jerry? Why? Why? You said it was just a kidnap"! "What? And have him identify us later? Good thing I'm the brains in this operation, Howard. Now let's get the hell outta here".

There's another plot thread that's been previously introduced, that of a newspaper columnist who's been covering the string of robberies. His name is "Gil Stanton" (the legendary Richard Carlson). His style is alarmist, bordering on yellow journalism, but he's got a large following and sells a boatload of papers. At a dinner party shown earlier, Stanton is talking to his friend, a renowned scientist. "You're a good writer", the man tells him, "but you shouldn't lead with emotion. It fires up the public. This can have repercussions in the long run". "Ahh, maybe so", Stanton replies, "but it sure keeps my publisher happy".

Meanwhile, Jerry Slocum has cooked up a plan to deliver the ransom note, which he's pieced together, as kidnappers do, from individual letters cut from magazines. He has Jerry drive him, with two women in tow, to the next town over. "We'll mail it from there to throw off the cops. Then we're going to a nightclub, my treat. By the way, Howard, this is Judy and this is Hazel". She's Howard's blind date. When they get to the club, he's so sickened by the murder that he gets hammered, becoming even sicker. Unable to go home when they drive back that night, he crashes at Hazel's pad. When he wakes up hung over, he starts hallucinating. Hazel asks him what's wrong, and Howard confesses everything. He and Jerry are then caught and taken to jail. Enter columnist Gil Stanton, who now has something to truly inflame his readers. This is where the scientist's warning will prove prophetic : "You shouldn't lead your columns with emotion".

Stanton has Jerry and Howard convicted with his words before they ever enter a courtroom. We all know they're guilty; that's not the question. But the screenwriter is out to examine the problem of the press as it relates to mob rule. At what point do editorials lead to vigilante justice? This is some scary stuff, as a crowd gathers outside the jail. Shouts are heard. A charge is led to storm the building that reminds one of January 6th, but then things get even worse, and that's all I'm gonna tell you. "Try and Get Me" (originally titled "The Sound of Fury") is some grim, shocking stuff. Ultimately it's more about the responsibility of the press than it is about Howard and Jerry, though their story takes up the bulk of the movie. Though not an easy watch, it's got great performances by Frank Lovejoy as the remorseful Regular Joe and Lloyd Bridges as the psychopathic Pied Piper who leads him to ruin. Richard Carlson is good as the columnist Stanton, Kathleen Ryan sad and sweet as Howard's loving wife "Judy". Also noteworthy is Katherine Locke as Howard's date "Hazel". She gives a highly nuanced performance dependent on her eyes and facial muscles. It's the kind of role that wins Best Supporting Actress Oscars. Though it's not for the squeamish, I give "Try and Get Me" Two Huge Thumbs Up. According to IMDB, Martin Scorsese own the only surviving print. He made it available for restoration in 2013, so the picture is razor sharp. It's very highly recommended. ////

The previous night's flick was a hard-boiled cop story from the legendary Don Siegel, whose "The Lineup" we saw and reviewed recently. That film, you might recall, was a procedural with a TV grade plot, which didn't make it bad. It was just more about Point A to Point B police operations and less about layering in mystery or suspense, although because Siegel was the director, it did have spectacular action sequences. This movie, however, with the strange title "Private Hell 36"(1954), was an out and out crime classic with all kinds of detail in the script, perhaps because it was co-written by Ida Lupino who also stars.

Let's start at the beginning. In New York City, a thief makes off with a suitcase full of marked money, some which of which ends up in Los Angeles. Cut to : late night L.A. "Sergeant Cal Bruner" (Steve Cochrane) is on patrol. He passes a storefront that looks iffy. Stopping to check, he sees it's been broken into. He enters the joint and a shootout ensues; a punchout too. The shot guy dies. Sgt. Bruner takes the other crook to the station, bloody nose and all, and presents him to "Captain Michaels" (Dean Jagger, Mick's brother). The Captain examines his wallet and finds a Fifty Spot. "This is from that hot dough that was stolen in New York".

There was a lot more where that came from, 300 Gees worth. Captain Michaels assigns Bruner and his partner "Sgt. Farnham" (Howard Duff) to the case. In tracing the tainted Fitty, info from the bloody nose guy leads the detectives to nightclub singer "Lilli Marlowe" (Lupino). Sgt. Bruner enlists her to find the man who passed her the bill as a tip. They stake out horse racing tracks - his milieu - and fall in love in the process. Now, Sgt. Bruner is a maverick. His partner Farnham is a straight cop and family man (a similar pairing to that of Jerry and Howard in our first movie). One day at the track, a car speeds out of the parking lot. Bruner and Farnham think it might be their guy and give chase. The speeder goes off road on a dirt track near Mulholland Drive, where he rolls off a cliff and dies. Fluttering in the breeze is the 300 thousand bucks. Here's where things get dicey.

As noted, Sgt. Bruner is a lone wolf cop. He gets results but does things his way. Captain Dean Jagger (Mick's brother) gives him some leash, but partner Sgt. Farnham is wary, And now, at the crash site, as they're gathering up the blowing cash, Bruner grabs a couple bundles from the suitcase : eighty thousand bucks worth! "What in the wide world of sports are you doing"?!, exclaims an incredulous Sgt. Farnham. "Take it easy, buddy", says the cool, collected Bruner. "You can use this cash as much as I can". Thus begins the odyssey of the double dealing cops. Like Howard and Jerry before them, one is reluctant, the other the ringleader. Bruner also insinuates to Farnham that he'd better go along. "If I get caught, it won't matter what you say. Captain Jagger, you know - the brother of Mick - will believe you're in on it too".

Sgt. Farnham keeps his mouth shut but feels guilty. Meanwhile, the freewheeling Sgt. Bruner makes plans to run off to Mexico with Ida Lupino when the coast clears. Then one night the phone rings. Bruner picks it up. "Hey Sergeant. You know that funny money you turned in? Yeah, $220,000. That was a record haul, am I right? You'll probably get a promotion. The only trouble is, I know there was more in that suitcase. I know you took eighty thousand bucks. If you don't give it back, I'm gonna have to tell the teacher. You should meet me in that bar near your apartment one hour from now, with the money. Just think of me as a friend". Bruner has hidden the dough at a trailer park near the beach. It's inside Trailer 36, hence the movie's title. He and Sgt. Farnham drive there to retrieve it and that's all I'm going to tell you.

In the list of Don Siegel films, everyone knows "Dirty Harry". No one's ever heard of "Private Hell 36", which is a crime because it's just as good. You're gonna love Steve Cochrane, who - if you don't know him already - is a combination of swarthy man's man and lady killer incroyable. What makes him different from the average macho hunk is that he can really act. He brings complexity to Sgt. Bruner, who's conflicted about involving Sgt. Farnham. They're off duty friends as well as partners. Bruner tries to justify the theft to Farnham - "c'mon, Farn......we deserve it. Dealing with the worst of the worst every day for years, who else is gonna do it but cops? And what do we get paid for our trouble? Hardly more than peanuts. Just take your half and spend it any way you want. Take your wife on vacation, buy yourself a new car. You deserve it and no one's gonna know the difference. The bad guys will end up in jail and I'll handle the paperwork. Leave everything to me". He wants his partner to appreciate what he's doing, but Farnham is by the book. He only wants money he's earned. Howard Duff was also a very good actor who played a lot of tough guy roles, but his trademark was a serious face and that baritone voice. He's the perfect foil here to Cochrane, whose jutting jaw suggests overconfidence, calculation. Ida Lupino at this point was in the middle of her career and had already moved on to directing. She's excellent as the cynical singer Lilli Marlowe, who doesn't want Sgt. Bruner as much as she wants his money. I didn't know it before the film, but in real life she and Howard Duff were married. Their little daughter is in the movie too.

I give "Private Hell 36" Two Huge Thumbs Up. It's an acting triumph with one of the best Noir scripts you'll ever see. Once again we have a blog where both films are outstanding, though "36" is the more traditionally entertaining of the two. Still, don't miss "Try and Get Me", either. Watch 'em two nights in a row.

That's all I've got for the moment. I hope you had a nice day and I send you Tons of Love as always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)      

John Garfield and Shelly Winters in "He Ran All the Way", and "Million Dollar Weekend" starring Gene Raymond

Last night's movie was a crime drama/hostage flick statement-titled "He Ran All The Way", starring John Garfield as "Nick Robey", a hoodlum who bugs out after shooting a cop in a botched robbery. This one's a little weird. As the movie opens, Nicks wakes up from a nightmare. It's 11am. His Mom, who he lives with, raps on his door. "Get up Nick! Ya can't sleep all day long"! "C'mon ma", he responds, "leave me alone". His dream has hung him over. Mom looks pretty wasted herself. She's a tough looking broad and hard as nails. When she enters his bedroom (a cluttered hovel), he says "if you were a man I'd knock your teeth out". That's no way to talk to your mother, especially this one. She slaps him hard upside the head. "Is that the best you got, Ma"?, he goads. "You're losing your touch". Nice folks, these.

Then Nick remembers he's supposed to meet a friend. "Al Molin" (Norman Lloyd, who died recently at the age of 106!) is his partner in crime. The two have planned to rob a factory owner in the railroad district in Downtown L.A. They mug the guy and steal his briefcase which has thousands of dollars in cash, but a policeman drives by unexpectedly. Thanks a lot Mr. Screenwriter. In the ensuing shootout, Al Molin is wounded. Nick Robey escapes through the trainyard, and Runs All The Way, as per the title, to the Long Beach Pike amusement park, which is 30 miles distant in real life, but just down the street in the movie.

At the Pike, he blends in with the crowd. The police have a dragnet out for him, so he hides at an indoor swimming pool called The Plunge, where he meets "Peggy Dobbs" (Shelly Winters). They bump into one another in the water. You're gonna have to suspend disbelief as to how quickly they hit it off, but because it's macho Garfield playing against naive, simple Shelly Winters, you can buy it without experiencing too much discomfort. Okay, so they meet in the pool, and within ten seconds they're a couple. Garfield walks her home where Shelly introduces him to her parents (Wallace Ford and Selena Royle). At this point, no one knows anything is hinky with Nick. He's moody but Shelly writes it off and her parents are glad to meet her new friend.

Little by little, though, Nick starts coming unglued, especially when the radio broadcasts the news of the robbery. Shelly's Dad says "oh yeah,we were talking about that at the paper". He's a printer down at the local gazette (think Herald Examiner). "We heard the story this morning. I hope they catch the bum who shot that cop". Nick's standing right there when he says this. Needless to say, it causes him to get even more nervous than he was before, and when Dad and Mom return from a trip to the movies, Nick peers out the windum and sees them talking to two men. "It's the cops"!, he exclaims. Shelly Winters is stunned. "What do you mean, Nick? Those are our neighbors". But it's too late now. Nick freaks out and pulls a gun. "So now you know. I'm the guy the police are looking for. Answer the door and let your folks in. But if those other guys are cops, somebody's gonna walk away with a bullet".

This is the point where the crime flick becomes a hostage drama, and unfortunately the action slows down. The plot becomes a series of personality conflicts in which Garfield is pitted against the different family members, including Shelly Winters' little brother. They're all holed up in the Dobbs' apartment, and nobody's going anywhere until the heat is off Nick Robey. The thing is, Peggy was starting to like him before she knew he was armed and dangerous. Even now, she vows to protect him. "Just leave us, Nick. The police don't know your identity and I won't tell anyone you were here". "What about your parents"? "I won't let them tell". Later her feelings will strengthen. She'll actually ask Nick to take her with him. By this point, her Dad's had enough. Even though he's older and out of shape, he'll try to take on the muscular Nick. He'll even get a punch in.

That night, Nick - in a magnanimous gesture - springs for a big turkey dinner for the family, paid for with the robbery proceeds. It's delivered with all the trimmings. Nick lays the food out on the table. "Okay everyone, let's eat! You see, I'm not such a bad guy after all". But no one will touch the food on Mr. Dobbs' orders. "It's paid for with blood money, by the man who's holding us at gunpoint". This really makes Nick mad, as he was trying to be generous. The situation deteriorates from this point. "Okay everyone! Listen to me"!, Nick finally says. "We can't all stay in here forever or someone is gonna get shot". He allows Mr. Dobbs and Peggy to go to work the next day, but says "if any cop knocks on the door, the Missus and your little son are dead". Of course, both Dobbs and daughter Peg are tempted to report him, and that's all I'll tell you about the plot.

Here's the deal : as the movie unfolds, there's a lot of action during the robbery and the chase through the trainyard, leading to the Long Beach Pike and the pool scene. There's a lot of amazing location footage of 1951 L.A., and you're expecting a fast paced crime story. But when everyone gets stuck in the apartment, the action bogs down and the heavy drama takes over. This gives John Garfield a chance to emote, and of course he was one of the best at this kind of character. The problem is that he's a little too edgy, sometimes when the script doesn't call for it. Don't get me wrong, he's excellent throughout (especially during the dinner scene, which is chilling), but it feels like he and the director weren't always on the same page. Shelly Winters is very good, though she's doing her thing, i.e. playing dumb or "simple". That makes her attraction to Nick feel plausible (just barely), but again the romantic aspect is stretched too far. Interesting that the screenplay was, in part, written by the great Dalton Trumbo. And it's not a bad script, nor is this a bad movie - quite the opposite - it's compelling and highly watchable. It's just that the characters' motivations don't seem to add up on a consistent basis, and John Garfield, in his final film, acts as though he knows it. He died a year later at the age of only 39. Wiki says he was persecuted by HUAC on suspicion of being a Communist (and of course Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted). Garfield goes out with all theatrical guns blazing in this performance, and while he's great, the whole thing's just the slightest bit........odd? Yeah, maybe that's it. Now, we haven't had for a while a movie that needed some trimming, but "He Ran All The Way", which at 77 minutes is not long, could still use a cut of maybe 7 to 10 minutes, just to speed things up during the lengthy standoff.

After all this criticism, you may be thinking I won't recommend the movie but I'm going to. And despite what I've said, I'm even gonna give it Two Big Thumbs Up, just for it's uniqueness. It bogs down in places but then it perks up, and it's a little weird as noted but the acting is really good, and the locations and photography are excellent. The picture is so sharp that it looks like a Blu-ray, so give "He Ran" a shot and see what you think. Overall you'll probably like it. ////

The previous night we found a Noir called "Million Dollar Weekend"(1948), written and directed by Gene Raymond, who also stars. You might remember him from our recent heist flick "Plunder Road". Raymond began his career in the pre-code era and was a crooner as well as a box-office draw. He was married to early musical legend Jeanette MacDonald (of MacDonald and Eddy fame), whose sister was Blossom Rock aka "Grandmama" on "The Addams Family". I mention these connections because Hollywood history is fun. As for Gene Raymond, he was quite popular for a time but has since faded into partial obscurity. 

Here he plays "Nicholas Lawrence", a stockbroker who high-tails it to Hawaii after ripping off his firm for a cool million. With the stocks, bonds and cash in a briefcase, he hops a flight to Honolulu, where he finds himself sitting opposite a beautiful woman. "Cynthia Strong" (Ona Massen) is stunning but distraught. That's because the man in the next seat is blackmailing her for the murder of her husband. That man, "Alan Marker" (played with sneering glee by Francis Lederer) was an acquaintance of her late hubby who was present the night he died. Marker saw Cynthia push him over their balcony and is now demanding half the life insurance, but that's not all. "I want you as well", he tells her. Cynthia naturally wants Marker off her back, so when he gets up to use the restroom, she leans forward to ask Nicholas Lawrence for his help. "I'm sorry to bother you but I'm in trouble. Could you pretend you know me? That man who was sitting next to me, I want him to go away. We can pretend we're old friends. Maybe he'll leave me alone". Raymond agrees to help her, but Alan Marker doesn't buy it.

"So, you two are 'old friends' "?, he says, smirking. I'll state right off that you're gonna love this performance by Frances Lederer. He steals the movie as the smarmy, innuendo spouting blackmailer. He sees right through Cynthia's attempt to get rid of him, and wonders what's in it for Mr. Lawrence. Sure, she's beautiful, but doesn't Lawrence wonder why she's in danger? From his appearance, he looks like a middle aged businessman. Why would he stick his neck out to protect a woman he only just met? Could he be hiding something too?

It's a great set-up. The stockbroker/embezzler gets away with his heist, only to be seated by a woman who's being blackmailed for murder. Now he's pretending to be her "old friend". Alan Marker isn't that stupid, as he takes great pleasure in letting them know. When the plane lands in Hawaii, he will dog the pair at every turn, following them to their hotel, to the bar (where he will only drink Napoleon Brandy, an important clue for later on). Marker finally learns why Lawrence is on the run - which he always suspected - and now he's going to blackmail him too! "Ahhh, isn't this fun"?, he asks them.

Though the direction is flat in places, you'll still have a blast with "Million Dollar Weekend". Gene Raymond is steady as the older man, wanting to safeguard the damsel-in-distress as well as his stolen money. Ona Massen, a Danish actress that director Raymond loves to show in close-up (and you can't blame him), is touching as the weepy Mrs. Strong, who ultimately confesses to Nicholas Lawrence that she did indeed kill her husband, but in self defense. But the picture belongs to Francis Lederer as noted. As "Alan Marker", he couldn't be more entertaining as he rakes Cynthia and Nicholas over the coals. He gets an absolute kick out of teasing out their secrets and putting them on the spot, and he's downright friendly about it. He wants the audience to share in his delight, and I must say it's infectious. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Million Dollar Weekend". The picture is low contrast but watchable. It's highly recommended. ////

That's all I have for this evening. In addition to "Coup in Dallas" (the JFK book), I also started reading "Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen" by Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill. Still hard to believe he's gone, harder still that 45 years will have passed, this New Year's Eve, since the first time I saw Van Halen in concert. Man oh man, there's that weird Time Thing again. I've been listening to my new 2cd collection of the two albums by National Health. For me, this has been another year of musical rediscovery. In 2020 it was Gentle Giant. This year I got back into Caravan in a huge way, but I also rediscovered National Health, whose music I didn't completely "get" the first time around. When their first album was released in 1975, it may have been too complex or jazzy to my fifteen year old ears. I bought the album, listened to it once or thrice, then put it away. But then this year at Pearl's, I was looking for music to liven things up at breakfast time. The stuff they play at KUSC at that hour is too sedate, and I wanted Pearl to have energy to start the day. Metal was of course out of the question, as was hard rock, but then I thought "what about Canterbury"? It's progressive, melodic and light, with flutes and an English sense of humor. As it turned out, Canterbury music worked out well. It kept Pearl's toes tapping. The only problem was, we ran out of Caravan albums to listen to. So after playing them all through several times, I thought "what else can I find"? That led me to Hatfield and the North, which led me to Egg and Dave Stewart, which led me to National Health. I played both their albums at least ten times this year for Pearl and I at breakfast. Not blasting, but in the background. After listening to their music over and over again I became a huge fan. For me, besides Caravan, 2021 will always be the year of National Health, and overall of the music of Dave Stewart and Phil Miller, guitarist extraordinaire, who played for Hatfield as well as NH.

I hope you had a nice weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)       

Chames Mason and Ann Todd in "The Seventh Veil", and "Moss Rose" with Peggy Cummins and Victor Mature

Last night's movie was a melodramatic masterpiece entitled "The Seventh Veil"(1945), starring Ann Todd as "Francesca", a concert pianist with amnesia and Chames Mason as her mentor "Nicholas". Herbert Lom (who's gaining Marius Goring-like status as a tremendous actor) plays the psychiatrist trying to cure her. As the movie opens, Todd jumps from her hospital room into a river, trying to drown herself. She's distraught about her bandaged hands, injured in a car accident. She fears she'll never play again. Lom tells a team of doctors he can make her well again, using a combination of hypnosis and narcosis, the administration of a truth drug to aid the process. 

As Lom takes Francesca back in time, we learn that she was orphaned at 17 and went to live with her second cousin Nicholas, a wealthy, embittered bachelor fifteen years her senior. Their life together is shown in flashback. At first, Nicholas treats Francesca with disdain, ordering her about his mansion. It seems he had a domineering mother who treated him the same way, only to abandon him by running off with a married man. Things change when Nicholas learns Francesca is a pianist. "Let me hear you play", he says. She refuses. Earlier, Francesca revealed to Lom under hypnosis that when she was 14, a schoolteacher caned her hands for misbehavior. Her fingers were sore and swollen and she swore she'd never play the piano again, if only out of spite. "Play something"!, Nicholas repeats, his voice rising. His manner is fearsome, so she does play, and though she's a little rusty, her talent comes through.

Nicholas steps back. His mood changes. "I see......you're quite good aren't you"? It turns out he's a music lover with an encyclopedic knowledge of the classical repertoire and an innate ability to teach piano technique, though he doesn't play himself. He immediately makes plans to send Francesca off to the Royal College of Music, a world class conservatory in London. "I'll work with you in your off hours. Between your professors and myself, we'll make a concert pianist of you". In London, he's got Francesca practicing 5 hours a day. Soon, she's shredding Rachmaninoff, but inside she's miserable. In the hypnotist's chair, she tells Lom "Yes I was developing my talent. But I had no friends, no one to laugh with. There was only Nicholas, demanding more and more from me". She cuts class one night to go to a jazz club (Nicholas hates jazz and would be horrified). There she meets "Peter" (Hugh McDermott), a saxophonist. They hit it off and end up getting together for secret dates in parks and restaurants. She's afraid to tell Nicholas she's got a boyfriend, but when Peter proposes, she has no choice. Nicholas is livid. "You're going to throw away the promise of a career to marry some chap you met at a jazz club? And after all I've done to help you? I won't have it"!  Francesca fights back. "I'll do as I please! You have no say over who I marry"! "Maybe not", admits Nicholas, "but I do have a say over when you can marry. You're still only 17 and by law you're my ward. I'm in charge of you until you're 21 which means you'll need my permission, and I say you can't marry that man"!

At first Francesca is crushed, and hates Nicholas for his tyranny. But as time passes, he's as good as his word as far as her career is concerned. Francesca becomes a star. Nicholas has her booked at prestigious halls all over England and Europe. Slowly she forgets about Peter - not entirely because he was her first love - but the demands of playing and touring have now consumed her life and mostly she enjoys it. For his part, Nicholas has modified his behavior. He now treats Francesca with respect and greater care, though he still pulls rank as her manager. He's got her playing before royalty, she hobnobs with the rich and famous. One day Nicholas hires a well-known artist to paint Francesca's portrait. "Maxwell Leyden" (Albert Lieden) is a bit of a flirt. He brings out the girlishness in Francesca. As she poses for him, she feels that sense of emotional liberation she once had with Peter. Maxwell declares he's in love with her and Francesca - confused now because of her dependency on Nicholas - believes she's in love with Maxwell too. It's only infatuation, and Maxwell refuses to marry her. "Why should we do that? We have each other; isn't that enough"? I'll step in here to note that this is the first time I've seen the subject of "shacking up" broached in a mid-40s movie in such an open way. Usually it's only hinted at. But the thing is, when Nicholas hears about it, he's once again furious. "How can you say you love a man who won't even marry you"?! "It doesn't matter this time! I'll soon be 21 and you won't be able to stop us living together", Francesca tells him.

Then one night while they're driving, Maxwell runs their car off the road. Francesca wakes up in the hospital with her hands bandaged. It's deja vu all over again as she assumes her playing days are over. Maxwell visits with his arm in a cast - he's all banged up too - and tells her the damage is minor. "The doctors say your hands will heal in a few weeks". But she refuses to believe him, which leads to her suicide attempt.

This is where we came in to the movie, and now we flash forward to Francesca in the psychiatrist's office. Lom has a plan to remove "the seventh veil" from her memory. It will cause Francesca to recall her last night with Peter, years ago, before she became famous. Lom tells the other doctors, and Nicholas too, that the recovery of this memory will lead her to play piano again. It's an incredible ending to a phenomenal film, one that gets Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, our highest rating. I need to mention the pianism first. Ann Todd, besides being fantastic as Francesca, does one of the best jobs of simulating a virtuoso that I've seen. Now, the actual pianist who overdubbed the soundtrack was an Austrailian named Eileen Joyce. I'd never heard of her, apparently she wasn't well known outside of England, but holy smokes can she play. As I watched the concert scenes - in which the close-ups are of Joyce's hands - I was going "who the heck is that"? I figured when the credits rolled it'd be some legend like Clara Haskil, but the pianist wasn't listed. I finally had to consult IMDB, and when it said Eileen Joyce I looked her up on Wiki. She was considered one of the most technically advanced players of her day, but the thing that got me was her musicality. As you know, modern piano shredders like Yuja Wang do absolutely nothing for me because, as with fast rock guitarists, it's just a lot of notes. To play dynamically yet with feeling and melodicism is a whole 'nuther ballgame, and so rare. That's why Eileen Joyce got my attention. There's a box set of her complete recordings that I'll be adding soon to my collection.

Chames Mason is outstanding (as always) as Nicholas, who alternately dominates and champions his protege. He's somewhat of a tragic figure in the story, which makes the conclusion that more poignant. The movie's been restored by Criterion. As with Eileen Joyce, I'd never heard of it before either, but it's got every ingredient a great film needs : a multilayered script incorporating romance, tragedy, cruelty, perseverance and success; it's got Oscar-caliber acting by the two leads and Herbert Lom; gorgeous, full grey scale photography; and again, that musical score featuring  well known works by Greig, Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven in addition to the aforementioned Rachmaninoff. "The Seventh Veil" could not be more highly recommended. See it at your earliest convenience. ////

The previous night's picture was "Moss Rose"(1947), a Gothic romance/murder mystery set in England at the turn of the century. Irish actress Peggy Cummins stars as "Rose Lynton", a dancer whose stage name is "Belle Adair". She comes home one night to find her fellow dancer and flatmate dead. "Daisy Arrow" (Margo Woode) was last seen getting into a carriage with a tall, dark gentleman. Rose saw the same man leaving Daisy's room before she found her. She takes it upon herself to track him down, and after finding the carriage driver in a bar - by recognizing his horse - she badgers him until he reveals the dark gent's whereabouts. He's staying at a nearby hotel. Rose inquires at the desk and learns his name is "Michael Drego" (Victor Mature). When she confronts him, he (of course) denies having known Daisy, but Rose doesn't give up easily. She's got the cab driver as a witness and threatens to go to the police. Drego asks how much she wants. To his surprise, she doesn't ask for money. When she finds out he lives at a well known estate, she asks to be taken there instead. "You'll say I'm your guest. I want to see what it's like to live like a real lady (pronounced lye-dy, i.e. Cockney style). Rose has some Eliza Doolittle in her, and when she gets to the Manor (because Drego agrees to her terms), she uses her acting skills to approximate a Queen's English accent. Drego's mother "Lady Margaret" (Ethel Barrymore) takes to Rose and puts her in an upstairs bedroom, remarking "It's so nice that Michael has a new friend".

Now that Rose is in the house, she starts investigating the death of Daisy. She snoops around, looking in drawers and other rooms. She also cozies up to Michael Drego, pretending to fall in love with him. But is she just pretending, or does she have real feelings? He continues to deny being Daisy's killer. Rose wants to believe him, yet she knows he's the man she saw running out of Daisy's apartment. Complicating things romantically is the fact that Drego is engaged. His fiancee lives at the Manor also, and is becoming increasingly miffed at Drego's attentions toward Rose.

Then one night, the whole house gets a shock when a police detective shows up. "Inspector Clinner" (Vincent Price) has a few questions for Rose and takes her down to the station. Whatever she says doesn't satisfy his curiosity because he continues to snoop around. Since the butler is played by George Zucco I was tempted to think he did it. Especially when there's another murder which takes place right there at the estate.

I loved "Moss Rose" for it's atmosphere as much as it's plot, which is telegraphed just a tad though I won't reveal in what way. But the mood screams Victorian Murder Mystery, and that - plus Peggy Cummins' articulated performance - is enough to win over any fan of Veddy Brrrittish crime movies. I give it Two Big Thumbs Up. The photography and sets are lush. Add just the smallest pinch of "Psycho" and you've got it. It's highly recommended! ////

So there you have it for tonight. I wish you a great weekend and send you Tons of Love as always!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Two Gems from Genius Hugo Haas : "The Other Woman" and "Bait" (with John Agar!)

Do you remember Hugo Haas, the quirky Czech actor/director whose film "One Girl's Confession" we reviewed a few months back? If you do, you'll recall that we got a kick out of his idiosyncratic style. The movie was about a waitress who quits her job because her boss sexually harasses her, but she winds up with a half-crazy gambler. There was a lot more to it than that, and the plot was about revenge, but it was also a weird kind of morality play, in fact we compared it to an off-Broadway version of the Morality Tales of Eric Rohmer. Most importantly, we thought Hugo Haas was something of an original. He delivered his lines as himself rather than his character and spoke them offhand, like he was having a real, i.e. non-theatrical conversation. We made a mental note to look for more from Haas, then he slipped off our radar.

Well, now he's back. Last night we saw a fantastic Noir called "The Other Woman"(1954), directed by and starring Hugo Haas. He actually acts in this one, playing an artistic movie director pressured by his producer father-in-law to make a commercial hit. But that's only a subtheme. In this movie within a movie, the real game is blackmail. Haas gets set up by an extra to whom he's given a bit part. The gal flubs her lines and is dismissed from the set. It's standard Hollywood procedure due to production schedules and budgets, but she feels humiliated and swears revenge on director Haas, who she calls a "Continental phony". The extra is played by Cleo Moore, who appears to be Haas' main leading lady. She also starred in "One Girl's Confession". Besides being a blonde bombshell, she's great at playing the "wronged woman".

Stewing over her loss of the role, she sets up a blackmail scheme for the director. She shows up for the wrap party when everyone is drunk, and cadges a ride home from Haas. "I know I flubbed the part", she tells him. "It's okay, no hard feelings". When they get to her apartment she conveniently leaves her sweater in his car. He knocks on her door to return it. She invites him in for a nightcap - drugged of course - and then sets it up to look like he spent the night and slept with her, so she can threaten to tell his wife. Now, his wife's father is Haas' producer, who can make or break his career. The old man is already fed up with Haas' insistence on being an artiste. "You've got to start thinking about selling tickets"! Cleo Moore knows she can use this for a wedge.

She uses her boyfriend to insinuate blackmail to Haas. He shows up at Haas' office at the worst possible times, when he's in meetings with studio bosses. His father-in-law is there, too. The boyfriend walks in, pretending to know Haas from Cleo's pad. "Don't you remember? We met that night when you two were.....(wink wink). She's been asking about you, you oughta call her sometime (wink wink)". The father-in-law overhears what is said. "Who's the woman that nitwit was talking about"? Haas tries to downplay it. "Oh, just some actress who wants a part in the movie. You know those bit players, especially the women". Still, Dad-In-Law is suspicious. Is Haas cheating on his daughter? He's also got the success of the picture on his mind. It's looking like it's gonna be another flop. "If you were as interested in story as you are in camera angles, you might have a hit someday". Haas is in hot water. Why doesn't he just come clean? Because, a) He really doesn't know what happened that night at Cleo Moore's apartment. All he knows for certain is that he woke up there the next morning with lipstick all over his collar. Her boyfriend walked in as a witness. And b), if he can't get his father-in-law off his back, he's gonna lose his career as well as his marriage.

Things get worse when Moore ups the ante. She calls to tell him, in so many words, that she's pregnant. She hints that she'll get an abortion (no way you could say that outright in a 1954 film), "but it's gonna cost you. Fifty thousand dollars". Now, she isn't pregnant (Haas never slept with her) but he doesn't know that. Now he's panicking. "I haven't got that kind of money"! "Well then I'll just have to go to the newspapers".

With his back against the wall, his father-in-law suspicious and hounding him about the movie, Haas comes up with a plan. I can't tell you what it is, but it leads to one of the best conclusions we've ever seen in a Noir. Remember that I mentioned this is a movie-within-a-movie. The ending is absolutely perfect. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "The Other Woman". Big league stuff from Hugo Haas. The picture is a little soft, but the plot is razor sharp! It's very highly recommended.  //// 

And that's not all from Hugo. Our rediscovery of him actually began the previous night, when we found "Bait"(1954). We weren't looking for Haas movies, it just showed up as a Youtube recommendation. Once again it stars Cleo Moore, playing - once again - a waitress (as she did in "One Girl's Confession"). Co-starring, of course, is Hugo Haas himself. Those two alone would've been enough for me to click "play", but would you believe the other star is John Agar? You read that right, and think about it, fellow Agar-ians : 1) When was the last time we saw him?, and 2) Did you think we'd ever see him again? I didn't. I thought we'd mined all the Agar there was available, that we'd run out after "The Brain from Planet Arous". So I ask you to take a step back, and imagine finding a Hugo Haas movie (weird as you know it's gonna be), starring Cleo Moore and Haas himself as usual........and then with John Freaking Agar as the third star. "That's gold, Jerry! Pure gold"!

Well anyhow, I'll shut up and tell you what the movie is about. It opens, I kid you not, with an introduction by The Devil. As played by Sir Cedrick Hardwicke, he's a theater star ascending a wooden staircase. Up into the rafters he goes, pursued by his adoring fans. As they hold out their autograph books, and he signs, he explains the perils of temptation. 

Then we cut to a small town cafe. Enter John Agar, who greets the owner (Roger Corman vet Bruno VeSota). Agar orders breakfast from waitress "Peggy" (Cleo Moore), and settles in to wait for "Mr. Marko" (Haas), a man who's heard about a gold mine. Agar meets with Marko, who offers him a 50/50 split "if you'll help me locate the mine shaft", which is hidden in Bronson Canyon. With luck, they find it and head back to town, where they stock up on supplies for the winter (it gets cold and snowy in Bronson Canyon donchaknow). Of course, they keep quiet about the gold mine. "Don't want a stampede up there, now do we"? But when they start mining the gold, all of a sudden Haas reneges on his deal. "You can't do that"!, Agar cries. "You promised me a fifty/fifty split"! Well, the problem for Haas is that Agar is young and fit. He's not likely to win a fight with him, in other words. So, he cooks up an Elaborate Plan. What's a Hugo Haas movie without an Elaborate Plan, right? What he does, is to go back to town on his own. "I forgot to order bacon", he tells John Agar. "I'll give you your fifty percent - just keep digging while I'm gone".

When he gets back to the cafe, which doubles as the general store, he tells Cleo Moore about the gold mine, and offers to cut her in.......if she'll marry him! Now, Haas is middle aged and paunchy, and Cleo tells him she's "not that kind of girl". But he has another reason for proposing (or so he says). "Just think of your baby. It would have a last name". Moore has an illegitimate child, which in 1954 is a big no-no. Hmmm. She reconsiders his offer and accepts. Now Haas returns to the mine with Cleo Moore. "Meet my new wife"!, he tells Agar. But you see, the marriage was all part of his Elaborate Plan. He wants to get rid of Agar so he won't have to give him half the gold. So, he starts to set things up so Agar and Moore will cheat on him. Then he'll have an "excuse" for killing Agar which he thinks "any jury will accept".

While the script for "Bait" isn't flawless like that of "The Other Woman", and while Haas is back to playing himself (more or less) and delivering his lines ad-lib, you're still gonna love this movie. For one thing, John Agar is A-plus great. You know how in some movies he's smug, and in others he's sincere? It's one of the main reasons we love him, and if he could do everything in between, he'd have the range of Sir Laurence Olivier. Well, he may not have that capability, but in this flick he does both Smug and Sincere. How amazing is that? It's one of the greatest performances we've seen from Agar, and that's saying something, as incredible as he's been in all his other movies (and by the way, this is not backhanded or false praise. Like Agar, it's entirely sincere!). We love John Agar because - like Hugo Haas - he's a total original. And Cleo Moore, who we hadn't heard of pre-Haas, turns out to be a world-class Bad Girl. Apparently she has a cult following for her roles in these movies (and other B-flicks), and while she's a knockout, that's not her only asset; she's actually a good actress for these roles.

I'm gonna give "Bait" Two Big Thumbs Up, but more than that, I'm just gonna recommend you see every Hugo Haas movie there is. Yep, sight unseen. The three we have now watched are evidence enough that the guy's a genius in his own unconventional way. The picture on "Bait" is razor sharp. Watch it and "The Other Woman" back to back and thank me later. ////

And that's all I know for tonight. Here's a question for ya : is this the longest Indian Summer we've ever had, or what? It's December 1st and I'm still wearing a t-shirt on my nightly walk. I'm gonna head out right now. Feels like it's about 80 degrees. "That's some Weird Wild Stuff, Ed"! "You are Correct, sir"! ("That's Gold, Jerry! Pure Gold"!)

I wish you a nice evening and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)