Watch List for 5/13/2024

 

Watched: The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, The Impossible Years, One of Our Spies is Missing, and The Private War of Major Benson

THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING (1955) --- I learned from IMDB that Marilyn Monroe turned down this opportunity to play Evelyn Nesbit, object of early century scandal when her husband shot and killed Evelyn's former lover in a crowded restaurant. We’ll never know excitement all this caused (happened in 1906), but plenty oldsters who attended The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing did recall the event and subsequent trial. So how many among youth cared? Not enough apparently, because Fox’s Cinemascope outlay ($1.7 million spent) lost them a million once beans were counted. Maybe it was figured the sex would sell, but in floor length dresses that were Code contained besides? Monroe likely sensed this and reasonably said no. Joan Collins plays Nesbit as a good girl steered wrong, Ray Milland the rake who deflowers her, plus Farley Granger spurned and unbalanced with a gun. The trial can’t help but play anti-climactic, and we don’t get what ultimately became of Nesbit. She copped a credit for consultation, and maybe that’s why the character skirts are so clean.

Nesbit was dynamite looking in her teenage prime, frankly more so than Collins, and radiated steam sufficient to fill a thousand headlines. Red Velvet indicates fall of grace for the fade, Nesbit reduced to degrading variety work, though fact in real-life was her having a profitable run at vaudeville, then sing/songs for clubs far flung as Havana. There is You Tube footage of her performing there in the early thirties, a spoof of torchy tunes Evelyn knew too well from life if not art. Creepy in unplugged way, here is evidence of what happens when celebrity is too long clung to. Evelyn stayed around however, excelled at ceramics, taught them successfully, died in 1967. Book and movie Ragtime dredged her up yet again, but by then, there was no more memory of Nesbit or the killing than lore from the Boer War. So long as there are Google images however, we’ll not lose sight of passions such an extraordinary looker as Evelyn Nesbit roused in Edwardian men. Just too bad Fox didn’t have an actress on hand that could rise to her level (closest? I say Debra Paget). The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing plays HD at Vudu, also at Amazon Prime. Disney will allow it on Blu-Ray when I win the Irish Sweepstakes.

THE IMPOSSIBLE YEARS (1968) --- So far as parents were concerned, the ratings system arrived not a moment too soon, but what began with promise came a cropper when likes of The Impossible Years went out "G" labeled. That stink rose from cavern of Radio City's Music Hall, where families mistook Metro's sex farce for a Christmas package with Disney-like whimsy inside. Came the complaints from mortified Moms and Dads --- if anything merited an "M" at minimum rating, it was this smutty send-up of teen groping habits and lost virginity. The adapted-from play had been a hit, written by middle-age men (one of them Groucho's son Arthur Marx) and yes, the concept was leering and smarmy as after dinner speeching at the Friar's Club. The Impossible Years wasn't alone for getting an unlikely "G": there was Dracula Has Risen From The Grave similarly rated, eyebrows aloft as well when the Monkees' Head passed for all audiences. This would suggest liberal lean on MPAA part, and that indeed was case for these first titles submitted, but outcry would tighten screws, final outcome being nanny standard applied today, where smoking a cigarette onscreen might buy you a hard "R." To that last, Christina Farrare as teen cause of travail in The Impossible Years is seen lighting up to no objection from David Niven and Lola Albright, their problems with her about to get a lot worse as story thickens.

Niven had sure hand for comedy --- who better to fall off bridge between the generations? He's a college prof here, campus setting a retro reprise of what Jerry Lewis concocted for The Nutty Professor. It surprises us, then, to see "protesters" hauling signs after comic opera fashion, The Impossible Years safely ahead of Kent State and events that make such demonstration a scary prospect. Here it's all for laughs and kids will be kids, no more serious than Elvis and pals being hauled to hoosegow for over-exuberance in Girl Happy. There's nary mention of Vietnam or social injustice or whatever occupied real-life activists at the time. The Impossible Years would tread cautiously over establishment eggshells, this after all a bid for entire family attendance, even as individual elements alarm in hindsight --- but who knew the "Bartholomew Smuts" character, a bearded party crasher with artistic pretensions, would later remind us so of Charles Manson? It took only months for The Impossible Years to hopelessly date ... in fact, it was so before cameras began rolling. Critic duty obliged me in 1968 to pen a review for our local sheet, which to my look-back surprise gave The Impossible Years a “Grade A,” noting also that the Liberty “held it over, and pricked off a day from The Pink Jungle.” I did return that week to review The Pink Jungle, but how could it hope to surpass The Impossible Years?

ONE OF OUR SPIES IS MISSING (1966) --- Time again to cry U.N.C.L.E for paying admission to a feature cobbled from TV episodes of the spy series, a deceptive art perfected by Metro after discovery that paste-ups could gross ahead of bombs they were dropping into theatres during very bad seasons that were the mid-60's. One of Our Spies is Missing was actually a fourth fake of eight the U.N.C.L.E. team spat forth, and a first to be restricted to overseas release. An initial three had grossed well, astonishingly so in foreign playdates, so that's where effort would be concentrated. One of Our Spies is Missing had been built for $108K, which was TV's two-part episode cost plus expense of added footage and reshoots for Euro theatrical. What came back was $1.7 million in offshore rentals, better money than Metro realized on any number of clucks they had in circulation. Spies is sold on DVD by Warner Archive along with the seven other U.N.C.L.E.'s, and noteworthy is fact it crops nicely to 1.85, clear being fact they framed the show for eventual theatrical use. Challenge comes of 100 minutes doggedly done on dull MGM backlot as dressed for London or Paris. Leave them face it in 1966: One of Our Spies is Missing was a cheat in any man's language. There's an outstanding article by Craig Henderson on production/release of the film in Issue # 12 of Cinema Retro.

THE PRIVATE WAR OF MAJOR BENSON (1955) --- Released mere months before Rebel Without a Cause, but what era-book-ends these make. Youth as potential adult with maturity and discipline that implies was a dream to fast vanish once JD’s and rock-roll defined teens figured now to stir trouble. The Private War of Major Benson is set at a military academy, Charlton Heston the martinet assigned there for his own bad attitude, focus on boys of varied age from whom he’ll learn patience and humanity, stock stuff as Universal-International was so gifted at dispersing. Heston found the property, was eager to do comedy to relieve severity of ten commanding. Principal tyke is Tim Hovey, cherub star of this and other U-I’s and fated to future horrors like child stars as unfortunate. Same for Sal Mineo, here where Benson and Rebel intersected, Sal in Benson as model boy any Dad or Mom would embrace, us to wonder if any of Mineo was like this or was he altogether sad Plato of Rebel placement. So why go see The Private War of Major Benson … for Heston? He is romance-teamed with Julie Adams, as in why feature two big names to whom you must bestow percentage when contract staff does as well. Youth in addition to Hovey and Mineo amounts to faceless plus Tim Considine, a survivor and smart for being so, his future with Disney (was he “Spin” or “Marty,” or neither?), much other TV, getting smacked by George Scott as Patton, and finishing up as dispenser of fifteen-dollar autographs at Hollywood Collector Shows. No martyr to decaying culture he. The Private War of Major Benson fascinates on levels not imagined in summer 1955, a celebration at twilight of "good" boys that only Buena Vista or Pat Boone would eventually stand up for. Of movies invisible since syndication day, Benson stands tall. I’d seen it nowhere since Channel 9-Charlotte 60’s day, TCM the digger-up for a Heston night, transfer stale, not 1.85 and HD as hoped, but as with much that is vintage/obscure, let’s not ask for the moon.

Gary Cooper Crossing the Lines

 

War is Distinctly Not Hell in Only the Brave

Only the Brave was progression of, also departure from, long and noble line of Civil War melodrama going back to first shots fired in 1861. Never did theatrical stages get such hypo as shooting conflict between the states, being everyone’s urgency and a most American sub-genre to so far fire footlights. Narratives dealt mainly with impact on individuals, seldom if ever focused upon larger issues, let alone reasons for the strife itself. Civil War melodrama was essentially romance set against landscape of neighbor against neighbor, often brother opposed to brother, theme at center being all of us as essential one, postwar a healing process plays sought to salve. Consider recounts over the seventy years prior to Only the Brave in 1930, variations endless. How then to freshen approach? Keene Thompson was a writer on staff at Paramount, born 1885, so he undoubtedly grew up on Civil War drama, be it lavish or done threadbare by small traveling troupes. Those born of latter half of a nineteenth century would know the format backwards, its cliches, expected bumps, and inevitable outcomes. Thompson, adaptor Agnes Brand Leahy, and scenarist Edward E. Paramore, Jr. took an essentially tired formula and upended it, Only the Brave emerging as sly spoof of whole institution that was warring between the states on pretend terms. I’ve got a feeling Only the Brave raised a lot of laughs in 1930 houses, viewership having been weaned on content done earnest and more than ready for Hollywood to give tradition a kick in the rear. We can’t appreciate Only the Brave a same way but can have fun watching what witty writing and a game cast does with material they all knew was ripe for parody.

Here was convention among many to be burlesqued: Stalwart Union officer (Gary Cooper), heartbroke by a faithless fiancée (Virginia Bruce), accepts a suicide mission because, after all, life means so little now. He’ll don Confederate uniform and carry false dispatches into Southern stronghold that is honey dew plantation occupied by belle Mary Brian and guest suitor, a jealous one, enacted by Phillips Holmes. You see, Cooper wants to be captured, the enemy misled by “concealed” orders so they will ride off en masse to assured defeat. It wasn’t necessary for director Frank Tuttle to gag up proceedings beyond obvious opportunity the set-up supplied. Viewership would have known early that here was a yarn not to take seriously, least wise not by veteran viewers of drama done good, bad, or indifferent by everyone from David Belasco, William Gillette, to school mates in ill-fit blue-gray brandishing their wooden swords. Hollywood had by 1930 poked fun at old-style board- trodding, as witness Buster Keaton in uproarious takeoff that was Spite Marriage in 1929, him as stagestruck yokel who through guile becomes a soldier extra in small town rendition of North-South dispute. It was a modern sign of sophistication to look askance upon any Civil War situation done straight, for hadn’t most spent a lifetime giving such stuff the horse laugh? This may have been at least partial reason why much of Hollywood doubted Gone With the Wind as screen prospect, for how could anyone sit still for yet more “epic” treatment of a war lost and won within countless auditoriums over what seemed infinite years?

Movies had themselves ground the conflict to as much powder. There were enough single reel silents to float a boat, or an ironclad. D.W. Griffith warmed up to The Birth of a Nation with a plethora of pocket dramas that explored many aspects of Civil warring, while live theatre stayed with the subject to what surely was exhaustion for watchers. Ground rules, if unwritten, did apply, as in drama must strike a conciliatory tone. War being long over, but scars still healing, meant we must explore that past on surface emotion terms, as in will love overcome patriotism, can a girl of the Confederacy shield her lover who is spying for the Yanks? Only the Brave had fun with the well-worn theme, not to extent of tampering with a happy ending everyone still preferred, but exposing whiskers grown on a story too oft-told. Director Tuttle, who himself had written for the stage, was a Yale man who understood convention and how to spoof it, appreciated comedy as brought to bear by Keene Thompson and helper scribes. Tuttle lived into the sixties and by that time worked less, so took occasion to pen a memoir of life behind cameras, his daughters saving the manuscript and enabling publication via Bear Manor Books in 2005. They Started Talking is first-hand account of a studio career first at silent forge, then learning process of sound and how to master it. We could wonder after reading Tuttle’s colorful recall how many former directors left life stories in attics that might yet be extant, waiting for descendants to come across them. Tuttle talked about Only the Brave in terms of comedy intended from the start. We might “get” the humor sooner had we slogged through as many Civil War dramas as folks in 1930, and yes, it does take Only the Brave a little time to reveal its farcical face, that coming I’m sure as delightful surprise for viewers in 1930, as hopefully they would today.

Gary Cooper does sly variation on his slow-talk cowpoke. Is he up to subtlety of spying, one asks? --- except that hardly matters, as this loser-at-love spy seeks to fail, even be shot, an unlikely quest, for what woman would betray Gary Cooper on romantic terms? Opener reel where Virginia Bruce swaps Coop for a “pansy” is good as any tipoff that Only the Brave will thereafter unfold in fun. Tuttle reported female co-workers’ fascination by Cooper’s “detachment” and limited way with words on set. “Where the ladies are concerned, a retreating male back seems to create an almost irresistible challenge,” said Tuttle. Seems all of femmes wanted to know from the director what was behind the charming, but “temperamentally somewhat aloof” façade. Tuttle finally in frustration told them “truth” that the star was “probably looking for a set with a bed in it, so he can lie down and take a nap,” this confirming Cooper’s reputation for being able to sleep on a tack between takes. Mary Brian was the leading lady. She would survive to recount for many what it was like to toil at Paramount, one job merging unto others like water flowing toward common reservoir. There was Brian and increasingly less others to answer queries and bear witness to an era irretrievable otherwise. Indeed, she would outlive Only the Brave castmates Cooper and Philips Holmes by forty-one and sixty-one years, respectively. Only the Brave played syndicated airwaves after late fifties TV release. Present day streaming options are nil, no Blu-Ray in sight (“too old” a likely argument against release), Only the Brave extant only on bootleg discs a dealer might tender.