Scotty's services

Its certainly a fascinating read! - the book they are all up in arms about ... Scotty Bowers' story of the sexual services he provided for the in-crowd of Hollywood during the 1940s and later, from his gas station in downtown L.A. - the biggest stars turned up ...

I feel I am the only one in on the joke - this is surely Gore Vidal's last throw of the dice, a gigantic spoof, on the lines of his novels MYRA BRECKINRIDGE and MYRON - that pansexual world he advocates where everyone can have sex with everyone else regardless of gender or age, and may be his final revenge on people he doesn't like ...

I can well believe Scotty really exists (he is now 88) and was pimping out not only himself but also other guys and gals at the gas station in L.A. back in the '40s - Gore certainly knew him and has taken his story and added all the star stuff - "spilling the beans" on Hepburn, Tracy and the rest. Scotty seems to get his dates mixed up quite a bit - just after the war in about 1946 he describes a lunch meeting with Hepburn and Cukor and hair stylist Sydney Guilaroff (another happy client of Scottys of course) and they are arguing over Kate's hair style in ADAMS RIB, which is a 1949 film !

Also rich famous and goodlooking stars like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott would surely have to be very careful if they needed hunky marines to spice up their relationship between all those marriages of theirs. And then there is the peculiar story of Spencer Tracy and Scotty - and Walter Pidgeon (who knew? my mother's favorite actor!) outed as an early client of Scottys! Of course closeted stars back then couldn't be seen hanging out in bars, cruising the seafront or attending George Cukor's or Rock Hudson's exotic parties - not after Tab Hunter was caught at a "pyjama party". Also a lot of these actors had lines to learn for the next day, and could not be out late at night - so a discreet service set up by a hunky ex-marine who kept his mouth shut would have been ideal.

Despite my fascination with this tawdry side of hollywood it is not gossip as such I am after, but the truth of things - it is always the work that is important to me, and they certainly worked in those days, with 2 or 3 films a year !

I don't know how the lesbian scene works but would one of hollywood's top stars like Kate Hepburn want (or trust someone to get) young girls sent to her ? Supposing they talked afterwards ... why have none of them come forward, some must still be alive. And I think Vivien Leigh was quite adept at picking up truck drivers on her own, without Scotty's help ...

The book seems very disjointed - it begins with him being an innocent arriving in hollywood in 1946 after the war - Gore's golden age, as he often wrote about - and starting work at the gas station - as if he was an innocent and knew nothing about the goings on of the early 40s ... but as he tells his story in the following chapters he is the new kid in town in the early 40s on a weekend pass from the marines, and the first guy who picks him up turns out to be Orry-Kelly ! the famous dress designer (and a close pal of Cary's - who is not mentioned then). Then George Cukor turns up and invites him to his pool party the next sunday ! Then he is having threesomes with Cary and Randy - whom I thought lived together in the mid-30s - but this was the early 40s when they were at the height of their carrers and married to women, so they were hardly living together then, so maybe Scotty is getting his wires crossed - and he says he also bartended at a party/orgy of theirs in 1950!

Oh, and he meets Katharine Hepburn at the first Cukor pool party he attends, where she comes across as a very mannish lesbian ... so was Kate a regular at George's famous pool parties then? and it turns out George hates Garland ! It seems too that these guys like Cukor and Cole Porter are only interested in oral sex -maybe back then famous gays always paid for every sexual encounter and never wanted a relationship or to live with someone, but just to suck off an endless parade of johns - what a way to live!

And it seems every man Scotty ever met wanted to have sex with him, even when he was a kid, even all the married ones! Its a great read but one can hardly believe some of it! - plus no notes or index. Trash, then - utter trash, but try putting it down ... Scotty comes across as a saint, he never charged for his services, and didn't even want a cut on the sale of (then hard to get) pornographic pictures he posed for! Of course gay liberation and the gay lifestyle did not exist back in that post-war 1940s golden era, so young guys (and gals presumably) could sleep with or provide tricks for either sex without thinking about it too much or having to label themselves ... and there wasn't that 24 hour news media, mobile camera phones, or internet or inquisitive press to spoil things - as long as the fan magazines were kept happy!

Then of course in the '50s he helps out Roddy, Rock, Monty, Tony Perkins et al, but certainly didn't like Jimmy Dean! - his view on Rock's sham marriage is certainly interesting too - she, Phyllis, was of course a lesbian. How did they get away with it?, with all the PR people and fan magazines colluding in the fantasy; that couldn't still happen today could it? An interesting companion too to that William K Mann's tome on KATE a few years ago ... which also mentions Scotty. Plus if you read it you won't ever see Charles Laughton in the same light again!
(Coming soon: all those photos of Cary and Randolph ...)

'40s kitsch with Jade and Judy, not to mention Carmen !

Sometimes its hard to get one's head around the fact that in the last desperate years of World War II while dreadful things were happening in Europe and the Far East, Hollywood was still turning out those dream factory products like MRS MINIVER, RANDOM HARVEST, MEET ME IN ST LOUIS and this piece of oriental make-believe, made in 1944. (The MINIVER film though was designed to showcase the plucky Brits and gets Americans involved, like Anna Neagle's I LIVE IN GROSVENOR SQUARE). It must have seemed a good idea at the time to get Katharine Hepburn to play Chinese - after all, Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young did in THE HATCHET MAN in '32; along here with that cast including Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead, Akim Tamiroff and Turhan Bey. Kate is Jade, a pre-feminist Chinese woman who struggles with her family for survival when the Japanese invade. Presumably audiences of the time did not mind that other races were played by well-known actors. The film made while atrocities against the Chinese were being carried out reflects the American thinking at the time, as depicted through the keen expert eyes novelist Pearl S. Buck, author of THE GOOD EARTH. It also reflects what was available to Hollywood film-makers at that desperate moment. Given the time and the circumstances, the movie does quite an adequate job. Hepburn's name on theater marquees also ensured that many more people would see the film than otherwise (like Bette Davis in WATCH ON THE RHINE). Hollywood was of course also courting the South American audience, as their films were not available in wartorn Europe, with all those Carmen Miranda films set DOWN ARGENTINE WAY...

The plot here is: Ling Tang and his family live on his prosperous farm in rural Southern China and have not yet felt the impact of the Japanese invasion in the North. Tang's two oldest sons, Lao Ta Tan and Lao Er Tan are married and hard working while youngest son Lao San Tan remains a free spirit. Er's wife Jade is also willfully unconventional and desires to exercises her literacy skills by reading books, a most unfeminine practice in 1930's China. Tang's only daughter is married to Wu Lien, a city merchant who profits from selling Japanese goods. When the dreaded invasion reaches their village, the family is scattered as the sons join the resistance while Wu Lien survives by collaborating with the enemy.
Hepburn, thankfully, is less mannered and less on display than usual - her idea of being Chinese amuses now - and as a wartime drama it holds the attention. An interesting curiosity now then.

The later 40s shows the dream factory in full force with those favourites like A LETTER TO 3 WIVES, ROADHOUSE, THE HEIRESS etc and now A DATE WITH JUDY in 1948. Another 40s dreamworld where the middle-classes have roomy comfy homes and domestic help - yes its a coloured maid here, as Jane Powell as the perky teen Judy sings at the local high school, is friends with Carol - Elizabeth Taylor, the local rich girl, and worries about her parents' marriage as it seems father (Wallace Beery) is having an affair with a woman at his office. She though is Carmen Miranda who is teaching him how to rhumba to Xaviar Cugat's music at his wedding anniversary! Carmen is a bit subdued here but adds some sparkle, Jane Powell trills some songs like "Its a Most Unusual Day"; young Robert Stack is the new guy in town working in the drugstore whom both girls have their eyes on. 16 year old Elizabeth Taylor is marvellous here, patenting her future roles as the nice rich girl with some steel when it comes to getting her man. A Joe Pasternak production directed by Richard Thorpe, it is a pleasing discovery now. Perfect late 40s entertainment, particularly when Wallace Beery shows off his rhumba skills and the girls get their beaus, and of course with Leon Ames as another paterfamilias who learns the importance of his family. And of course teens then were just younger versions of their parents until the '50s when teenagers were suddenly invented and got their own culture as rock'n'roll arrived!

Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) 1949

Finally, the great Italian drama from 1949 - RISO AMARO, or BITTER RICE (a decade before L'AVVENTURA - see below) which introduced Silvana Mangano to international audiences, an engrossing drama of life in the rice fields where thieves Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman flee to evade capture, but peasant girl Silvana (Silvana Mangano) is on to them and ingratiates herself with Doris ... then enter army captain Raf Vallone, so the stage is set for drama and tragedy. This is a great Dino de Laurentiis production and was such a hit that Mangano, Vallone and Gassman were teamed again in 1951 for ANNA (Mangano label), that torrid melodrama by Alberto Lattuada which I liked so much recently - this one too had the young Sophia Loren in the mix, in the background. A few years later in 1954 Loren had come to prominence in her own working in the rice fields drama WOMAN OF THE RIVER, which impressed me so much when I was about 12 - as mentioned before (Sophia Loren label) and it was in colour too!



Silvana though wasn't as ambitious as Sophia and was content to be cast in her husband De Laurentiis's films: ULYSSES, MAMBO (another favourite discovery of mine - Mangano label), and those two rarities I liked when young: Rene Clements' THE SEA WALL (THIS ANGRY AGE) and Lattuauda's THE TEMPEST, both 1958, and Martin Ritt's glum FIVE BRANDED WOMEN, 1960. Mangano continued thoughtout the 60s and 70s (while Loren, Vitti, Cardindale came to prominence) in comedies like IL DISCO VOLANTE and then in those Pasolini films like TEOREMA, OEDIPE RE (both '68) and for Visconti in DEATH IN VENICE, LUDWIG, CONVERSATION PIECE etc, as per my previous posts on her. It was odd seeing her popping up in the De Laurentiis production of David Lynch's DUNE in 1984, before her untimely death in 1989.



BITTER RICE though is terrific stuff and Silvana sizzles in those shorts showing her magnificent thighs and legs - she, Vallone and Gassman in their youthful prime are what movie stars are all about!

2011 discoveries including more Rene Clement

New movie-going was a bit rare on the ground for me in 2011, as from the summer on I was preparing for and getting over knee replacement surgery, so those movies I saw and reviewed in the first half of 2011 seem remote now: THE KING'S SPEECH, ANOTHER YEAR, UNCLE BOONMEE, MEEK'S CUTOFF, POTICHE, HANNA, etc (2000s label) - in fact my last cinema outing was to the National Film Theatre to see a favourite, Rene Clements' KNAVE OF HEARTS (Gerard Philipe label) on the big screen with a friend back in August. Now however dvds of those movies I wanted to see like THE SKIN I LIVE IN, TREE OF LIFE, DRIVE, WEEKEND, TINKER TAILOR... etc are just starting to come available this month, so reviews on those in due course.

It has been a year of re-discoveries then, like the previous 2 years when I loved the '58 THE SEA WALL, I WAS HAPPY HERE, THAT MAN FROM RIO, Visconti's SANDRA (VAGHE STELLE D'ORSA), THE CHAPMAN REPORT, etc, as per reviews, so the main big discoveries for me this year were the Silvana Mangano ANNA (reviewed below, Mangano label) and the Belinda Lee THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 (ditto, review below), plus those first two Antonioni films on brillaint new divds: CHRONICLE OF A LOVE AFFAIR and THE LADY WITHOUT CAMELIAS (Antonioni label), De Sica's GOLD OF NAPLES (Italian/De Sica/Loren/Mangano labels), Duvivier's CHAIR DE POULE (Jean Sorel/French labels) and now Rene Clements' LES MAUDITS from 1947, along with his 1956 GERVAISE (Clement, French labels).

Silvana Mangano as ANNA; THE LONG NIGHT OF '43

LES MAUDITS (THE DAMNED), 1947: Rene Clement directs an exciting U-boat drama that focuses on a group of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers fleeing in a submarine to South America as World War II draws to a close. There is one reluctant passenger, a doctor (Henri Vidal) kidnapped to tend to Florence Marly who bangs her head and falls into a temporary coma early on. She is the wife of an Italian who tolerates her openly sleeping with a German general, also on board. The ringleader of the group is a vicious, not-so-secret homosexual (Jodest) with a young companion Willy (Michel Auclair), who has his own agenda. Top billed is Marcel Dalio (just Dalio here), but he only appears briefly and has a great death scene. It's an exciting drama, nicely shot capturing the claustrophobia of the submarine - rather an old tin can one here - as the seas rage and the inmates turn on themselves. Henri Vidal was a very attractive guy too - like my other discovery Gerard Philipe he also died young (a heart attack at 40!) in 1959. He is good with Sophia Loren in the Anthony Quinn ATTILA (1954) and with Bardot in the '57 LE PARISIENNE (a treat on YouTube).



LES MAUDITS though is another terrific Rene Clement discovery, along with the engrossing GERVAISE, and THE SEA WALL (THIS ANGRY AGE), PLEIN SOLEIL, LES FELINS, IS PARIS BURNING? etc, as per my previous posts at Rene Clement/French/Alain Delon labels. I already wrote about that favourite KNAVE OF HEARTS (MR RIPOIS) where Clement, five years before the New Wave, was shooting with Gerard Philipe and Joan Greenwood on the streets of London with mobile and hidden cameras. An essential French director then, before the New Wave, but not as old as those '30s masters... Henri Vidal, right.

Next discoveries will be Mangano's RISO AMARO (BITTER RICE) and a batch of Gerard Philipe films: THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK, POT BOUILLE, LES FEMMES DE NUIT, FANFAN LE TULIPE, LA RONDE, LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES ... and 2 more Antonioni rarities; plus a handful of Catherine Deneuve films!

Lucy Schmeeler: "She's a grand girl"!

Let's end the year by picking up some sailors, going on the town and celebrating a great comic talent. Happy New Year !

Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce) is the super-plain room-mate of Brunhilde Esterhazy (Betty Garrett) in the 1949 MGM musical ON THE TOWN, a perennial favourite I can enjoy anytime. I do not know Leonard Bernstein's original but it seems some of the songs were junked for the movie (but doesn't that always happen, as in FUNNY GIRL or CABARET?).

We enjoy following our 3 sailors on shore leave in late 40s New York, and the real locations help. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchin zoom around the city and the underground train system, Gabe (Gene) sees and falls for "Miss Turnstiles" (a monthly pin-up) whom he imagines is a celebrity, while she (Vera-Ellen at her loveliest) turns out to be from the same small town as his! Jules gets entangled with ritzy Ann Miller who has a thing about "Prehistoric men" and Jules' face fits just right, as they cause havoc at the museum and the dinosaur (or Dinah Shore!) collapses! Frank teams up with taxi driver Brunhilde - Betty Garrett who woos him back to "my place" - where Lucy Schmeeler ["she's a grand girl" says Betty with vitriolic sweetness...] is staying in with a cold. Betty finally gets to her leave so she can get close to Frank. They are supposed to be looking for the elusive Miss Turnstiles, but Gabe finds her at the rehearsal halls and they do that lovely dance to "Main Street" ....

Later they all team up at the top of the Empire State Building and head off "On The Town", this sequence is bliss as they visit one crowded nightclub after another where the revue girls always sing "thats all there is folks, and goodnight to you, we hope your enjoyed our .... revue" as the last girl always shoves her rear end in their faces... Miss Turnstiles has to flee though to her late night job as a coochie dancer at Coney Island, after Gabe gets stuck with Lucy Schmeeler who joins them for a riot of a number and some other sailors from the ship mistake her for Gabe's girl, so they will have a lot to tell the other guys back on the boat ... Gabe takes Lucy home and has to let her down gently as he is in love with Vera --- poor Lucy is back to her laundry lists and won't wash for a week after Gabe kisses her! Her plain character is being patronised of course but its part of the fun here.



Things work out ok at Coney Island and the 3 girls see off the 3 gobs back on their boat, as another flock of sailors disembark to explore "New York New York its a wonderful town"!. That's it in a nutshell, but it is so infectious and a sheer delight from start to finish [screenplay by Comden & Green] - a key musical then with Kelly and Stanley Donen co-directing, paving the way for all those 50s musicals ... including SINGING IN THE RAIN and IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER (see post at musicals label) where their partnership broke up!



Alice Pearce's Lucy is a scream - Alice was a terrific comedienne, she was also Olga the "Jungle Red" manicurist spreading all the gossip in THE OPPOSITE SEX in 1956, [Dolores Gray label], that delicious musical remake of THE WOMEN, which I like so much. She was highly regarded also on tv, appearing in the BEWITCHED series, but she died aged only 48 in 1966. She also played Lucy Schmeeler in the original Broadway production of ON THE TOWN.
That iconic shot of Donen (below) with Kelly & Sinatra ...

Seasons Greetings !

I never tire of David Lean's classic 1946 GREAT EXPECTATIONS and that great double act of the great Martita Hunt and Jean Simmons as Miss Havisham and Estella. I never saw that 1974 version which was meant to be a musical and then wasn't but Margaret Leighton [right] must also have been a terrific Havisham [and favourites Sarah Miles a spiteful Estella, Michael York an earnest Pip and James Mason suitably grim as Magwich - Ray Winstone in this new version]. The jilted Miss Havisham has also been played by Charlotte Rampling in 1999 (left below) and now by Gillian Anderson [left] in a new BBC production this christmas, as a much younger almost alluring recluse - Jean Simmons in her later years even played her for some long forgotten tv version! Happy holidays!

Coming up: more Italian and French rarities, more gay interest titles, more cult classics, more trash, more 'people we like' [Peter Finch, Alan Bates, David Warner, Vera Miles, George Sanders, Brandon De Wilde], more on Deneuve, Romy Schneider, Anouk Aimee, Gerard Philipe and some new movies too - starting with those popular choices BRIDESMAIDS and THE INBETWEENTERS MOVIE! How I spoil you.

Its that time: Christmas in Connecticut or France ?

Some seasonal viewing: a '40s Hollywood christmas tale, or a recent French look at another dysfunctional family during the holiday season ?

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT: Released the last year of WWII in 1945 (I was born that December), the film is full of subtle patriotic gestures and holiday nostalgia but never sinks to sentimentality. Stanwyck is sexy and sassy as always and is a lot of fun here. She is a cooking columnist who's built up this whole image of living on a small Connecticut farm with husband and baby cooking all these marvelous delicacies. Trouble is she's unmarried, childless, writes her column from her apartment in New York and doesn't know how to boil water. But her writing is a hit with the public. Trouble comes when she's hijacked into cooking a home Christmas dinner for a war hero sailor played by Dennis Morgan who gets to sing a couple of songs as well. Her publisher Sidney Greenstreet likes the idea so well that he invites himself to the dinner. So with borrowed farm, baby, and Reginald Gardiner who'd like to make it real with Stanwyck she tries to brazen it through. S.Z. Sakall adds a great deal of Hungarian malaprop & double-entendre humor in support as Babs' true source of culinary talent & Una O'Connor is hilarious as Gardiner's obnoxious Irish housekeeper. A nice treat then.


A CHRISTMAS TALE: Fancy another French family dysfunction drama? Rather like Assayas's SUMMER HOURS (reviewed at French label), only this one is two and half hours long in the company of some unsumpathetic people as the Vuillard family gathers: parents Junon and Abel, a daughter Elizabeth and her son Paul, Henri and a girlfriend, Ivan, his wife Sylvia and their young sons, and cousin Simon. Six years before, Elizabeth paid Henri's debts and demanded he never see her again or visit their parents' home. Paul, at 16, has mental problems and faces a clinical exam. Junon learns she needs a bone marrow transplant if she's to live beyond a few months: thus the détente bringing all together. Two family members have compatible marrow, but the spats, fights, cruel words, drunken toasts, and somewhat civilized bad behavior threaten all; plus Junon may simply refuse treatment.

It turns out to be an overly long and incredibly talky dysfunctional family drama, by Arnaud Desplechin, led by a chilly Catherine Deneuve as the dying matriarch (such a contrast to her sunny role in the delicious POTICHE (yes, also reviewed recently at French label). She's dying of a rare kind of cancer, and the spectre of that eventuality plus the proximity of brothers and sisters who haven't seen each other for a while and have scores to settle puts everyone in a reflective mood. It rather strikes home if you too have brothers and sisters who do not see or have much contact with each other .... Melvil Poupaud (so effective in Ozon's TIME TO LEAVE - yes, its at the french label) scores as the youngest son.



We also of course have the perennial IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE with Jimmy Stewart running through Bedford Falls in the snow as he gets his life back, and THE MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (the Maureen O'Hara-Natalie Wood one) and '54's WHITE CHRISTMAS though how many times can one watch that? and of course theres always those recent christmas perennials like ELF and BAD SANTA and GREMLINS. I was pleased to catch up with favourites Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury in the glutinously sentimental tv film A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE GIFT OF LOVE from 1982, and dear Loretta in CHRISTMAS EVE one of her final roles in '85, as the rich old lady with not long to live re-uniting her family, assisted by ailing Trevor Howard. If that does not get you crying for christmas nothing will ! Perfect viewing anytime though, and particularly at this time of year, is the 1952 film of the play THE HOLLY AND THE IVY, a perfectly British treat with Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson all sublime (and yes see Richardson, Leighton or Johnson labels for review); and let's not forget the lovely if rarely seen HOLIDAY AFFAIR from 1949 with Janet Leigh having to choose between Robert Mitchum or Wendall Corey! It should be a holiday staple too.