Sanctuary, sanctuary ...

Fascinating to catch up now with THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE, the first movie version of William Faulkner's novel SANCTUARY, it makes for a terrific 70 minute Pre-Code movie, directed by Stephen Roberts in 1933, with Miriam Hopkins in full throttle as that spoilt, selfish tease Temple, wno thinks she can flirt and control her men, until she is held captive by bootleggers and raped by Jack Le Rue, and Temple finds she likes it ... eventually back home she has to testify about what really happened and who killed Trigger (La Rue) which will show her up in her true light. Miriam of course went on to VANITY FAIR in 35, the first colour main movie, and appearing a few times with her rival Bette Davis and she was very effective in later roles, mainly for Wyler, in films like THE HEIRESS, CARRIE and THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. Many indeed are the stories of her feuds with Davis and others... I particularly relish 1943's OLD ACQUAINTANCE, a delirious treat anytime.

Fascinating too to compare with the 1960 version SANCTUARY, long unseen here, directed by Tony Richardson as his first venture in Hollywood, with Lee Remick perfect as Temple and Yves Montand doing an impersonation of La Rue. Here is what I said about it last year:


"Also long unseen here, is Tony Richardson’s 1961 film of SANCTUARY which I had wanted to catch up with for Lee Remick’s performance as Temple Drake. Bradford Dillman plays her husband and Yves Montand (fresh from Marilyn Monroe and LET’S MAKE LOVE) as the bootlegger Candyman who rapes her. Blues singer Odetta is also in the cast. Remick is as fascinating as ever as the tease who takes to sex and booze, and that remote to us now 20s era of flappers and the Charleston is well conveyed. The story is bizarre though with the death of the baby – again, perhaps a reading of the book would be useful. An odd choice though for director Tony Richardson. Montand has a great 'look' with the hat and the cigarette, but back then the English language continued to defeat him. Remick though is the reason to see this, with lots of lingering close-ups of her."

Soon: the real Jeanne Eagels in THE LETTER in 1929, also compared to Bette's in 1940 and Lee Remick's in 1982, and Kim Novak as Jeanne in the 1957 meller JEANNE EAGELS

A '30s rarity: Employees' Entrance

EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE. Another of those snappy pre-Code melodramas like William Wellman’s MIDNIGHT MARY or FRISCO JENNY, this is by Roy Del Ruth and not quite in that league, but is another of the 9 films radiant young Loretta Young made in 1933.

This is about life in a big department store as tyrant manager Warren William (?) rules with a rod of iron firing anyone who displeases him. Loretta is the shopgirl who sleeps with the boss to get a job, then she and young Wallace Ford (yes he was young and quite attractive, for those who only know his older self) fall in love and marry in secret as William (who does not believe in marriage or relationships and does not really like women) has an unspoken yen for Ford whom he is grooming to be a ruthless as he is. Things come to a head when he wants Ford to move in with him as he again picks up Loretta at the annual dance. Quite intriguing with a lot of undertones maybe not realised at the time. Loretta of course is the perfect depression heroine, as mentioned before, as per label.

Blowing Wild: homage to Gary Cooper

BLOWING WILD - nice to re-acquaint myself with this nifty 1953 tough little meller, which I saw at a Sunday matinee back in the 50s. Directed by Hugo Fregonese and scripted by Philip Yordan it assembles 5 tough cookies somewhere in South America for a tale of oil riggers versus bandits. When your cast is Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn, Ruth Roman and Ward Bond then wait for the fireworks!

Coop and partner Bond have their oil digging operation ruined by bandits and have to seek work. Enter wealthy Quinn and his predatory Medusa-like wife Stanwyck who once had the hots for laconic Coop and wants him back - he though falls for new girl in town Roman, playing a nice girl here .... then the bandits come back for the final explosive shoot-out - after Stanwyck has disposed of Quinn, so like all bad girls she has to pay the price. Stanwyck and Cooper (their third teaming?) are great together.



This had made me realise how much I love Gary Cooper, particularly his later films - perhaps the most beautiful man of the 1930s (check out his two with Dietrich MOROCCO and DESIRE, and the delirious THE FOUNTAINHEAD with Patricia Neal in 1949 and he and Ingrid Bergman are perfect together in SARATOGA TRUNK in '43), he was ageing rapidly in the '50s - like Gable, Tracy, Bogart, Flynn, Power and those other early '30s hellraisers who partied hard with all that smoking and heavy drinking - most of them did not see much of their 60s or the 1960s.

He turned out lots of routine movies but I particularly like him in Wyler's still charming FRIENDLY PERSUASION, that fondly remembered hit of 1956 (Samantha the goose and Pat Boone's theme song) and then Wilder's LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON in 1957, one I did not see until lately but this one does not work for me at all, Audrey Hepburn being far too young for his ageing roue - Wilder may have intended a light souffle in the spirit of Lubitsch but not for me. Much better is TEN NORTH FREDERICK in '58 from John O'Hara, and that brace of tough westerns: Anthony Mann's MAN OF THE WEST with Julie London and Lee J Cobb, and Delmer Daves' THE HANGING TREE in '59 with Maria Schell and Karl Malden, a particular childhood memory. Rossen's THEY CAME TO CORDURA is also a tough drama with the ageing Coop and Rita Hayworth very touching here. He then made his final two in Britain for Michael Anderson - the Hammond Innes adventure THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE with Charlton Heston and a great supporting cast (Michael Redgrave, Virgina McKenna, Richard Harris etc) and the thriller THE NAKED EDGE in '61, again the cast is the thing, with Deborah Kerr, Diane Cilento, Hermoine Gingold etc but it is impossible to think Coop could be the murderer. He was clearly ill by then and died on May 13 1961, aged 60, shortly after Gable's passing a few months earlier.



Seeing Coop now always reminds me of my father as my dad was a very Gary Cooper kind of man, both in looks and manner. We will always keep watching Coop and Cary Grant and James Stewart and Bogart and John Wayne, perhaps the greatest of the great male stars - there are others like Gable, Tracy and others whom we do not see so much now, perhaps their later films were not that special and are not revived much now.

Loretta

A fabulours 1934 shot of Loretta Young - one of the most prolific stars of the '30s and '40s. She did 9 films in 1933 alone, and began as a teenager in the '20s. Her career was really over by the time I began cinemagoing,(her last film was in 1953), but she also had a major career in television with her popular tv series.

Loretta became an iron butterfly later on - there are several amusing jokes about her religious side and her swear box, but back in the '30s she was incredibly lovely in films like MIDNIGHT MARY, LADIES IN LOVE, the typical depression waif in Borzage's MAN'S CASTLE with Spencer Tracy (they had a romance but as both were Catholic could not divorce and re-marry), ZOO IN BUDAPEST, De Mille's THE CRUSADES in '35 and CALL OF THE WILD with Clark Gable, they had a location affair which resulted in a daughter which Loretta adopted. There were also seveal with Tyrone Power, and THE BISHOP'S WIFE in '48 with Cary Grant and David Niven, and her Oscar-winning role in THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER in '47. More at Loretta label. One of the most fascinating stars then.

John Kobal's 1985 book "People Will Talk" contains a lengthy interview with her which is quite fascinating as Loretta looks back over her career and life: On the studio system: "I have no regrets, but I regret its passing for those working today, because it is virtually impossible to become a lasting star. In what we call the good old days, there were never less than 20 or 30 fabulously important stars in the business at any one time. Well you can't name that many today. And those stars worked all the time. Now they tell me two thirds of the theatres are closed all over the country. In those days they were all jammed full. I think television also has a great deal to do with it because it's so easy to turn it on at home and it's free. But still to me the calibre of the motion picture, when you get a picture that is good, it does make money. Of course now they say its just coining money. Yes, it is, at a little theatre that holds 300 people. But not at the Music Hall or at the Roxy, where you had to fill it five times a day with 3,000 people."

A 30s classic: Love Me Tonight

LOVE ME TONIGHT. I just had to order this 1932 musical as I kept hearing such good reports on it. Maurice Chevalier is the Parisian tailor who sets out to visit a chateau to collect unpaid bills from aristocrat Charlie Ruggles. He meets and falls for lonely princess Jeanette McDonald who trills several numbers, and there is the young Myrna Loy as a man-mad countess (who has a great line when asked if she would go for a doctor). This fluff is inventively directed by Rouben Mamoulian and the great score is by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It is obviously creaky but it is almost 80 years old and talkies were only 4 years old.

The score and the direction is the thing – that opening of Paris coming alive in the morning (all on the back lot), and songs like “Isn’t It Romantic” which is taken up by person after person (including soldiers on a train) until it reaches the castle where Jeanette is pining on her balcony, and there’s “Lover”, “Mimi” and Maurice’s Apache number. After seeing the older Chevalier a lot lately, interesting to see him in his young prime here, Jeanette though seems far too dated for today’s tastes. With C Aubrey Smith and Ethel Griffies.

A '30s rarity . . . . I can see why

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW. Some ‘30s films are timeless classics that never date (Leo McCarey’s 1937 THE AWFUL TRUTH) while others, like this other McCarey film of the same year make the 1930s seem a very dated, remote place indeed, which seems just too far away from us now. I am afraid this tale of an old couple [Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore] who lose their home to the bank during the depression and have to separate for a time to stay with their children (who cannot take both of them) just did not involve or move me as much as I imagined it would. In a way one can almost understand the children’s point of view. Beulah Bondi's old fashioned ways are annoying to son Thomas Mitchell’s family – she disrupts the bridge class and she herself feels out of place and confused, having lived with her husband for 50 years. So how come they lose their home – has he been careless with money? And if Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter need extra income from the bridge classes how come they can afford to have a black maid? – well I suppose every family had one back then …



Modern audiences can hardly identify with Bondi when she says to the grand-daughter that people of 70 have no interest in parties or dancing any more. Bondi herself was 45 at the time but presumably back then playing 70 meant making her look ancient. There is a nice conclusion though as the reunited couple get 5 hours together (at the hotel where they spent their honeymoon 50 years earlier) before they have to part forever – she knows it but he doesn’t. Then she sees him off on the train to California (as though its only a few stops down the line) while she shuffles off into a retirement home – finally there is real pathos here. Mitchell as the only child to feel any guilt and Bainter (nicely unsympathetic) are of course excellent. It is only the car salesman and the hotel manager who treat them with respect and are kind to them....



But it for me is not as moving as Ozu or De Sica – I weep at TOKYO STORY or UMBERTO D or AU HASARD BALTHASAR or THE WORLD OF APU, as to me they are on the realistic level, and we cry at IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE '46, perhaps the best of all sentimental films [where, incidentally, Beulah Bondi plays the mother of hero George Bailey (Stewart)], but I find something glutinously sentimental about this McCarey film - that sequence where she disrupts the bridge class is just toe-curlingly gruesome comedy of embarassment; so as a depression-era tragedy it just does not work for me – and the obvious back-projections didn’t help. There is just something mawkish and grimly funny seeing Bondi shuffling around playing "old" and being irritating without realising it - its a very old- fashioned view of old people and looks so fake. She does score though in the scene where she pre-empts the son with her decision to go to the retirement home, but insists her husband must not know. So, a neglected masterpiece or a savage black comedy about an insufferably nice old couple who understandably bring out the worst in their callous children ?

1934 cigarette cards - a selection .....

Double click images to enlarge...

Christopher and his Kind - the real Cabaret ?

CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND – the BBC’s new 2011 film of Christopher Isherwood’s 1976 memoir of his years in Berlin in the early ‘30s. So this then is the real CABARET, and it is certainly a fascinating companion piece to the Fosse film. ”To Christopher, Berlin meant boys” as the book’s blurb went, and so we see here. The current DR WHO Matt Smith is ideal as the diffident upper-class Christopher who leaves repressive England in 1931 to teach English in Berlin and falls in thrall to those decadent boys (mainly straight it seems, but willing to earn money – or “gay for pay” in today’s parlance). Lindsay Duncan is ideal too as Isherwood’s icy mother, and Imogen Poots is Jean Ross – who of course became Sally Bowles – she is just right here as the not very good cabaret singer who sings tunelessly in those grubby clubs [no Minnelli-tpye star turn here...], and the rise of those Nazis is nicely conveyed. Toby Jones is the very gay Gerald Hamilton and Pip Carter an ideal W H Auden.


After a fling with (noisy!) sexy rent boy Caspar "Herr Issyvoo" falls for street sweeper Heinz, paying medical bills for the boy's dying mother, to the disapproval of her other son, Nazi Gerhardt. With Fascism rapidly rising Christopher returns to London with Heinz but is unable to prevent his return to Germany when his visa expires. Douglas Booth is Heinz, who certainly works those Keira Knightley cheekbones. There is a nice coda when they meet again years later when Isherwood is now a successful writer now resident in California, while Heinz is married with a child – a son called Christopher… with Matt Smith in the lead (and after last year's A SINGLE MAN) this should certainly attract a lot of attention, and is capably directed by Geoffrey Sax and written by Kevin Elyot. The dolphin clock used in the film was Isherwood’s own.



Soon: More 'gay movies' with the dvd release of the recent Italian comedy LOOSE CANNONS, and back to DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON and those Fassinbders like QUERELLE, FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, as well as A BIGGER SPLASH and those Francois Ozon films, then there's Bill Condon, Don Roos and Todd Haynes ...

2 more '30s curios ...

THESE THREE – the 1936 version of Lillian Hellman’s play THE CHILDREN’S HOUR makes a fascinating comparison with Wyler’s 1962 version (which has been shown a lot lately here on TCM UK). Like THEODORA GOES WILD (1930s label) it is really the 1930s in aspic as those two teachers set up their girls school and have to cope with the awful Mary Tilford and small town gossip. Wyler’s first version makes the malicious girl's lie a heterosexual one, that the doctor (Joel McCrea) is also having a relationship with Martha Dobie (Miriam Hopkins), who is the main character here. It is Martha who finds out about the stolen bracelet and goes back to confront Mrs Tilford, and of course Martha is also in love with McCrea, but stands aside so Merle Oberon (Karen Wright) and the doc Joe can be together. This just does not make any sense. The children though are much better than in the later version – Bonita Granville as Mary is the real deal. The climax here is provided by the Wicked Witch of the West as Margaret Hamilton [right] plays Mrs Tilford’s maid Agatha and when Mary starts acting up again Agatha gives her a resounding slap that must have brought cheers from the cinema audiences. Oh, and Martha does not have to hang herself, but strides off into the distance as Karen and Joe, now in Germany, can finally be together (though Germany in 1936 would hardly be a safe place…) . The 1962 version though benefits from that magisterial performance by Fay Bainter as the imperious Mrs Tilford, and Miriam playing the silly aunt. The current stage version is a hot ticket here in London, with Keira Knightley, Elisabeth Moss, Ellyn Burstyn as Mrs Tilford and Carol Kane as the aunt. It's Broadway bound too. (right: Shirley McLaine and Audrey Hepburn in Wyler's 1962 version)

This 1939 John Ford film is a comparative rarity, not a "western" as such, it depicts the settlers in the new land, fighting those hostile natives in Upstate New York around the time of the War of Independence. What makes this so striking is the vivid early Technicolor - I had imagined it would be in black and white. Henry Fonda is the young rancher with his new wife Claudette Colbert - out of her comfort zone here but she blends in nicely as the young couple settle down and then after their homestead is burned down have to go into service for widow Edna May Oliver (scene stealing as usual). Frontier life is depicted in all its harshness as those marauding indians return, and the fort is beseiged. Ford adds his usual touches of sentiment with births and deaths, and several of his stock players are present, one fears for Oliver as she lies in bed as indians enter determined to set the place on fire ... another interesting movie from that great year 1939 then.