Movies I Love: River Of No Return

RIVER OF NO RETURN is a western I can watch anytime - though it is hardly a Western at all, more of a Canadian ... filmed in Canada in 1954, that magic year for me - by Otto Preminger it moves along at a cracking pace, Monroe and Mitchum are great together - just like Mitch and Deborah Kerr in that 1957 John Huston classic HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON - another great Fox Scope movie (and another Movie I Love - see Mitchum label). (Apparantly Mitchum had been in the army with MM's first husband, and had seen photos of the young starlet then ...) - actually MR ALLISON is about a marine and a nun in the wilderness (or a remote tropical island), so it shares similarities with this - there they catch that unfortunate turtle, here it is a moose; plus are holed up in a cave with marauders on the loose ..
1954 was that year I began going to the movies when about 8 - JOHNNY GUITAR, DRUM BEAT, SITTING BULL, THE COMMAND - RIVER OF NO RETURN was another western that year, while Raoul Walsh was also making SASKATCHEWAN with Alan Ladd and Shelley Winters in Canada that year. (Shelley and Marilyn had of course been room-mates at one stage...). Here Marilyn is Kay, a saloon singer who is entangled with no-good Rory Calhoun who has cheated his way to a gold mine and needs to get to Carson City to file the claim. Mitchum is the farmer who comes to the tent city after a stint in prison, looking for his son - Tommy Rettig, who is friends with Kay. Later back on the farm father and son rescue Calhoun and Kay who are going downriver on a raft - but Calhoun has his own plan and takes the farmer's horse and gun, leaving them at the mercy of marauding indians, so there is nothing for it but for father, son and Kay who has stayed behind to head down the river themselves on the raft. The Canadian wilderness (Alberta and Banff area) looks great here, and I love the music for whenever the redskins appear ... it is a great soundtrack too.



Exciting fare then, and the back projections with the raft and the stunt doubles are well done. I like the sequence where Mitch takes the frozen wet Kay to a cave, wraps her in blankets and massages her back to warmth as their warring characters begin to respond to each other as the scene melts into the shot of the warm flames. MM and Mitch spar well together and she copes well with the rough stuff. I love how Marilyn looks in 1954, here and in THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS, after that break-out year 1953 for her. Her Kay is pure peaches and cream, and she sings marvellously too. She had developed so much as an actress and performer since those early small parts in 1950 just a few years earlier ...


People tend to forget what a great vocal artist she was. When I was a teenager one of the first record albums I had was "Marilyn" the soundtrack to the 1963 compilation film Fox were quick to put out about her, and it included those songs from the film on it - the theme "River of No Return", "One Single Dollar", "Down in the Meadow" and the terrific "I'm Gonna File My Claim" which she sings in the saloon to the understandably dazed audience. This film has all those Fox Monroe touches: her costumes by Travilla, choreography by Jack Cole, and the songs with lyrics by Ken Darby and music by Lionel Newman. Preminger keeps it going well - he also did CARMEN JONES the same year in that busy decade for him before his Jean Seberg films (we also like BONJOUR TRISTESSE (see Deborah Kerr label) and he finished the decade with ANATOMY OF A MURDER, before his early 60s big hitters). So, its a fun western, an enjoyable movie I can happily re-watch any time its on - I love the bit where the redskin gets onto the raft to rip her blouse off (before being despatched) so she has to face the rapids in her camisole. It may be symbolic but why at the end does she throw her red shoes away - she is going back to the burnt out cabin in the wilderness with no proper clothes or shoes!
In the Monroe filmography RIVER though is regarded as a studio programmer she had to do in 1954, but it actually stands with the best of her Fox films and Kay is one of her best roles.

1954 - what a year for leading ladies: Marilyn's 2, Elizabeth Taylor's 4 including THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, Ava's THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, Audrey as SABRINA, Grace in 5 films including REAR WINDOW, THE COUNTRY GIRL and GREEN FIRE, not to mention those other busy ladies like Shelley Winters, June Allyson, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Anne Baxter etc.... and Kay Kendall in England; and in Europe: Alida Valli in SENSO, Sophia Loren in WOMAN OF THE RIVER, Silvana Mangano in MAMBO; more at 1954 label. (By 1957 the new crop like Lee Remick, Shirley McLaine, Joanne Woodward, Eva Marie Saint and the grown-up Natalie Wood had arrived, along with those second tier names like Vera Miles, Martha Hyer, Dorothy Malone and the B-girls Rhonda Fleming, Virginia Mayo, Arlene Dahl, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget ... while Ingrid Bergman was back, and the '40s gals like Lana, Rita, Susan were pretty busy too, as indeed were the '30s lot!

Genius: Alan Turing

Alan Turing's genius ushered in the digital age. Britain could have been at its centre, had it not treated him so cruelly, according to a report by Michael Hanlon in today's "Sunday Times". Turing's story is of course too well known to go into detail here but briefly he was the breaker of the Enigma code and credited with shortening the second world war by two years - but life for a gay man in post-war Britain was a furtive affair, homosexuality was still illegal. I remember being a child in the early 50s and reading about that court case involving Peter Wildblood and Lord Montagu and trying to understand why what they had done was so bad. Turing had met a young man whose friend had burgled his house so the naive professor reported him to the police - as a result one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century was arrested and charged with gross indecency. He was given a choice between going to prison or having treatment for his condition - which turned out to be chemical castration. He chose the latter and never truly recovered, committing suicide in 1954 by eating a poisoned apple (he had seen SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES several times!). It wasn't until 2009 the the British government, after a petition, made a formal apology for the appalling way he had been treated.

It now seems evident that Turing, Britain's almost forgotten genius, may have been nearly single-handedly responsible for the shape of the modern world, as well as aiding the end of the last war. Had he lived he may have been able to have jump-started a new industrial revolution. Google now says "without Alan Turing we would never have had Google, we would never have had the whole IT revolution; all the principles of computing go back to Alan Turing". So all modern computing: internet, mobile phones, laptops, email, Facebook, YouTube etc are a result of ideas published in his 1936 paper which showed how the manipulation of binary code using a series of simple logical operations could be put to an infinite number of uses, from computing prime numbers to forecasting the weather! No other technology has enriched more people more quickly in less than a generation. Turing thought that one day computers would become common and small enough to be carried around.

Of course the development of computing would have happened without Turing, but it would have happened later and far more slowly. It is fascinating to ponder what might have happened if he had lived - and such a shame his own life was so wasted. Like Oscar Wilde dying in his 40s in 1900 - if he had lived to enjoy old age he would have been a media star on radio and film, so too one can imagine an older Turing a flamboyant, confident pundit on television and perhaps the founder of a British Google or Apple ? but this brilliant, charming, odd, driven workaholic had a different fate. At least he is now being celebrated.

People We Like: Clifton Webb

Clifton Webb [1998-1966] was a phenomenon. A famous dancer in the ‘20s, he became a leading man in the ‘40s and ‘50s when audiences loved his acerbic waspish persona. He led several box-office hits, was friends with all the in-crowd (the Oliviers, Coward, the Bogarts, the Lufts as per all those photographs) while remaining, in that conservative era, a “confirmed bachelor” who famously lived with his mother, Maybelle.



In his twenties he was a professional ballroom dancer and appeared on the stage and in silent movies (which came in useful later in his 1953 comedy DREAMBOAT). His theatre career is fascinating too. LAURA in 1944 was his first big success as the effete Waldo Lydecker in Preminger’s hit thriller, a movie that endures and remains fascinating anytime. Then there was his vain snob Elliott Templeton in THE RAZOR’S EDGE in ’46 – both of which won his Oscar nominations. Then there was Mr Belvedere, his fastidious, finicky, fussy, abrasive and condescending baby sitter in SITTING PRETTY, ’48. I saw that at a Sunday matinee as a kid in the ‘50s, its one we need to see again, there were several more MR BELVEDERE films.







Other popular hits saw him as fathers with large families in the likes of CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN and BELLES ON THEIR TOES. DREAMBOAT saw his as the ex-silent star, now a sedate college professor, whose old silent movies are revived on tv, with Anne Francis and Jeffrey Hunter as his daughter and her beau. Negulesco cast him opposte Stanwyck on that 1953 version of TITANTIC, where he does the noble thing. Young Robert Wagner, whom he seems to have mentored, was the juvenile lead. He was also Sousa in MARCHING ALONG.



The 1950s saw those successes THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, ’54 though I do not care for his role in this – he is perfect though as Ernest Gifford, the motor magnate in WOMAN’S WORLD, also for Negulesco, in ’54 (see separate post below). THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS was a success in 1956, where he masterminds this plot to fool the Nazis, and was followed by another successful Negulesco film, my childhood favourite BOY ON A DOLPHIN, as Victor Parmalee the avid art collecter who wants the statue that Greek diver Sophia Loren finds. He and Loren play nicely together, and the film, a programmer really, still plays nicely today – this is the one that introduced Loren to international audiences, emerging from the Aegean in that wet dress …



THE REMARKABLE MR PENNYPACKER and HOLIDAY FOR LOVERS (on vacation with wife Jane Wyman and daughters Jill St John and Carol Lynley) followed in ’59, pleasant holiday fare really. His last film was SATAN NEVER SLEEPS in 1962, which I have not seen, where he and William Holden are priests in China, for Leo McCarey. Clifton lived with his mother until her death aged 91, six years before his own death in ’66. He remained a star to the end and is always eminently watchable now.

Jean Negulesco

Off on the Titanic, 1953: Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, Thelma Ritter...
and those MILLIONAIRE gals!

Jean Negulesco – a director whose life [which spanned the 20th century] is more interesting than any film! Born in Romania in 1900 he died in Marbella, Spain aged 93, in 1993 and was a director of note in the 1940s and 1950s, providing us with some interesting ‘40s noirs and those polished star-studded entertainments of the ‘50s. (Right, Negulesco with Sophia Loren and her stand-in Scilla Gabel, in 1957 on BOY ON A DOLPHIN, one of the first movies set in Greece - I love that little Greek travelogue at the start .... Greece was so undiscovered then!).

It reads like something devised by Hemingway, or as colorful as Hawks or Huston: He left home at 12, washed dishes in Paris, and worked in a field hospital on the Western Front in World War I. Then he returned to Paris and his art studies becoming an accomplished painter.

In the ‘20s he travelled across the United States, financing himself by selling his paintings and then he arrived in Hollywood and was soon at work in the movie industry as a sketch artist and technical advisor. He worked up to assistant director on movies like CAPTAIN BLOOD and signed a contract with Warners in 1940. His first feature was THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS in ’44 with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Negulesco's experience as an artist had provided him with a keen eye for effective shots and the ability to set a scene to create atmosphere. His HUMORESQUE was another vivid hit (a triumph of style over content) with great roles for Joan Crawford (one of her greatest) and John Garfield. He also directed Jane Wyman’s award-winning role in JOHNNY BELINDA, 1948.



He then became a contract director at 20th Century Fox – ROADHOUSE is a terrific little noir, which I first saw at a Sunday matinee sometime in the '50s and it remained a key movie for me, Ida Lupino is terrific as the hard-boiled chanteuse who is hired by the deranged Jefty (Widmark) to sing at his roadhouse, but once she falls for Cornel Wilde, it gets very tense indeed. He directed THE MUDLARK in England, and then that early TITANIC in ’53 with Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner and Thelma Ritter. He then reinvented himself as the director for glossy entertainments, mainly Fox’s “3 girls sharing an apartment and looking for love” movies.



Like Rex Harrison with Mankiewicz, Clifton Webb was the ideal actor for Negulesco. He leads the cast in THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, a massive hit in 1954 – but before that was HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, one of the first CinemaScope movies and a super hit cementing Marilyn Monroe as the new Fox star, and she proves a delightful comedienne here - MM in that red swimsuit was my first introduction to her. Then of course WOMAN’S WORLD in ’54, with Webb again leading a terrific cast [see next item]. I didn’t care for DADDY LONG LEGS, but simply love BOY ON A DOLPHIN, one of my key 1957 movies, where Sophia Loren dazzles as Phadrea – her scenes with Clifton as Mr Parmalee, the millionaire who wants the statue show them both to good effect. I first saw this when I was 12... a lot more on these are at MM, Loren, Bacall, 1957 labels..




A big hit in 1959 was THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, also written about here previously, as labels, with those 3 girls (originally 4 - Martha Hyer was almost snipped out) in the '50s Manhattan publishing world, with Joan Crawford "as Amanda Farrow" terrorising the typists in the typing pool. I love those moments with Hope Lange and Suzy Parker and those CinemaScope images....its a lush soaper on the level of IMITATION OF LIFE or A SUMMER PLACE.


His later films are best forgotten; he had moved to Spain in the '60s, to paint and collect art. THE PLEASURE SEEKERS (Ann-Margret, Pamea Tiffin, Carol Lynley and a reappearance by Gene Tierney) was his last interesting film in '64. Right: Carol Lynley & Gardner McKay. Other credits include JESSICA, A CERTAIN SMILE, COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR - the Lana Turner/Burton one.

His biography “Things I did and things I think I did” in ’84 should be an interesting read - and I have just ordered it!

Back to the delirious '50s: WOMAN'S WORLD

WOMAN'S WORLD. For me this 1954 Fox movie is the '50s in aspic. Its a fabulously entertaining variation on the '3 girls sharing an apartment and looking for love' genre that Fox and director Jean Negulesco did so well (HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, 3 COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING) - here the 3 girls are married and visiting New York - cue great views of 50s Manhattan - as Clifton Webb, the head of a motor company, has to choose a new general manager and the wives are being vetted too to see if they are suitable material for company events.



The 3 couples are out-of-towners Cornel Wilde and ditzy (or is she?) June Allyson, sophisticates on the point of divorcing Lauren Bacall and Fred McMurray, and ambitious Van Heflin and Arlene Dahl who will go to any lengths to get her man the position. The gals get to wear to some marvellous frocks, Allyson and Bacall play their usual personas so the unknown quantity here is Dahl who steals the film - particuarly when she enters in that green clinging sheath with a divine little fur-trimmed bolero which she knowingly removes as she puts the make on Clifton and lets him see how grateful she will be if Van is the man. June spills coffee on her cocktail dress so she can get to be alone with Clifton's all-wise sister Margalo Gilmore (who is advising him), while Bacall gets the measure of Dahl: "have a cookie, cookie"!

Finally, once the manager is announced (right man, wrong wife - but that is soon rectified) they can all eat dinner! Clifton is in his element here and even seems to be (can it be possible in '54) a coded gay as he is not married and seems devoted to his general managers. Whatever, its an absolute treat to see anytime, a nice contrast to that other '54 star-studded executive drama EXECUTIVE SUITE.



Its one of a dozen or so '50s movies I simply adore - not classics like EAST OF EDEN, SUNSET BOULEVARD, ALL ABOUT EVE or A STAR IS BORN, but simple splashy, star-studded entertainments where fabulous gals wear fabulous clothes and live the high life, or the most delirious costume epics [more on them at Glamour label]. As well as WOMAN'S WORLD, bring on THE OPPOSITE SEX, DESIGNING WOMAN, LES GIRLS, THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, JUPITER'S DARLING, ITS ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER, QUENTIN DURWARD, MOONFLEET, THE PRODIGAL, THE EGYPTIAN ... i enjoyed all those as a kid, and still do now.
Next: People We Like: Clifton Webb, the films of Jean Negulesco.

Movies I love: A Star Is Born (for Stanley and Gary)

The 1954 one of course!

Like JOHNNY GUITAR, A STAR IS BORN is another from my first year of movie-going, aged 8. It must have been one of the first films I saw,
(my parents must have taken me, my mother and I went to I COULD GO ON SINGING later) again I was fascinated by the widescreen images, that beach house with the sea reflected in the windows as the man goes into the sea, and that slap scene at the awards. Over the years it's richness and complexity have got to me, that lustrous rich Warnercolor, and George Hoyningen-Heune's color co-ordination (a Cukor regular). I do not see it as a musical as such, but as a drama with music. For a big film it is surprisingly intimate - there are really only 5 people in it: Esther/Vicki and Norman Maine, Charles Bickford as Oliver Niles the avuncular head of the studio, Jack Carson as Libby the vicious press agent, and Tommy Noonan as the bandleader who is also there for Judy. The Cinemascope images still dazzle, that movie premier, Norman being drunk, then when he takes the lipstick and makes the heart symbol on the wall, and later when he awakes and sits up in bed remembering .... that amusing scene where he is on the prowl in the nightclub and then busting in on "The Man That Got Away", and the lovely scene at the studio in the morning where Esther is getting ready for her screen test after being made over by the experts and he wipes away all the gunk off her face and a radiant lovely Estehr emerges. Later we have Judy's "I am discovered on a rather simple divan" for the "Somewhere there is a Someone" number, and of course during "Born in a Trunk" the drunk interrupting with "sing Melancholy Baby" and the agent going "Yes!" to Judy's "No!" as she does the rounds. Then at the studio "We can see your face" as she plays an extra, and "Go to L" when Esther signs on for her paycheck only to find she is now Vicki Lester! So, a film of great moments, from the Moss Hart screenplay, the Harold Arlen songs and that marvellous look of the film. Then those dramatic scenes later on, as Vicki begs Oliver to give Norman one more chance, and her appearance at his court hearing...

My best friend Stan had the soundtrack album which we played a lot, and then in 1970 my 1963 "Films and Filming" penfriend Gary from Brisbane arrived in London and took me to a screeing at the old Starlight Cinema at The Mayfair Hotel - it was marvellous seeing it on the big screen again, as back in that pre-video/dvd age one only saw movies at cinemas or on small black and white televisions!

So I relished the 2-disk dvd release with the restored scenes which make more sense of the story, and those 3 alternate versions of "The Man That Got Away" all as brilliant as the version in the film, with great Scope compositions and Judy being a powerhouse as ever. I was never a total Garland fan, but this and I COULD GO ON SINGING are two special films for me. It is actually Mason who is astounding here - it is a multi-layed marvellous performance, if it hadn't been Brando's year, James should surely have been best actor. That scene where he overhears Bickford and Garland talking about him is so brilliantly realised, the irony of course being that it was Garland who was the ravaged self-destructive star who was really all washed up in Hollywood by 1954. One only hopes all the early admirers of the film got to get the dvd restoration, as they will love it even more (particularly David McGillivray, author of "The Hollywood Musical"). Bob Willoughby's photographs [above] from the set are terrific too, as per his book "The Hollywood Special".

Of course I went to the Streisand version in 1976, and of course loathed it - that finished my Streisand fandom for a very long time, even Pauline Kael her great admirer was appalled. Suddenly it was A STAR IS BORING. Beyonce (going by her show at Glastonbury) could be marvellous with the right co-star if the new proposed version by Clint Eastwood goes ahead .... but we will always have Cukor's definitive version.
One can see now though why classy new girl Grace Kelly won the best actress Oscar that year (for looking dowdy in a cardigan) - Judy at 32 was considered an old-timer and difficult, it seems Jack Warner lost faith in the movie, which was a difficult shoot, and cut it to fit more screenings. Judy's weight and looks vary from scene to scene, but that slim look of hers in the award scene in the movie was something that I just found totally fascinating...



Another marvellous item on the restored dvds is the premiere footage, including that one in LA when everyone came out for Judy, one realises what a big event the film was and they all wanted Judy to be a hit. There's Doris Day, Peggy Lee waiting to be recognised, Debbie and Eddie, Tony and Janet, Liz and Wilding, Joan Crawford joshing with her old MILDRED PIERCE co-star Jack Carson, who was the MC, and all hollywood's hot shots, including Lauren Bacall [the woman who knew everyone] lighting up a cigarette next to Judy and Jack Warner - oh, and a bashful Raymond Burr "just back from Korea" with a cute young marine in tow!. Fascinating stuff ... I want to see it all again now. A STAR IS BORN will always be in my top 10.