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Monday, November 18, 2024

How Long Will a Cutting Edge Still Cut?

 


Hep As Was and Maybe Still Is

From Mark Vieira’s book, Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950, here is thought expressed by critic John T. McManus for PM magazine, circa October 12, 1944: “That ultra-aware modernism, “hep,” is a very handy word to have around for a picture like To Have and Have Not.” So what was it to be hep? Simplest definition suggests awareness of what is fashionable or new. Hep itself is progenitor to things or people we now call “hip,” or more often, “cool,” latter used enough to now be tiresome. Hep as descriptive goes back over a century. Jazz musicians kept it among a slang arsenal. As for application to movies, I would say hep is more knowing not only what will amuse today, but what will amuse for generations to come. Does anyone luck into being hep? Chances are better they are clairvoyant with eyes toward the future for what they and those to come will find funny. Hep then has everything to do with humor, for where are/were hep dramatists? McManus sees the future of To Have and Have Not when he refers to its “ultra-aware modernism,” latter to embody “modern character of quality of thought, expression, or technique.” McManus went on to credit To Have and Have Not for knowing “all the angles,” hepness “all over it.” He cites “healthy, democratic flesh tone, and it is not only skin deep.” Here was a critic eighty years ago who I believe was on to something. He “got” an entertainment that others then and since appreciate on “skin deep” and deeper levels. Does To Have and Have Not for us play ultra-aware modern as McManus proposed? It stays funny in ways we expect from Howard Hawks, and there’s no better “Bogie” to service his cult (assuming one remains), but hold … the Bogart cult at student level is no more. Does that rob To Have and Have Not of hep? We could say no for movies no longer cultish at colleges, for when are movies, any movies, projected to gathered groups on campus? To Have and Have Not nevertheless strikes me still as hep. TCM thrives on it, as do streamers and those who collect Blu-Ray. Question becomes who or what else is hep, long ago plus now? A list I’ll propose is short, coming down, and not surprisingly, to a single name which for me exemplifies not only hep, but exclusive membership to American folklore shared by no one else film-bred. Can anyone else guess who I mean?


As stated, hep in Greenbriar quarter equates with humor. That unfortunately lets out most of those we associate with drama. A hep movie need not be comedy, but must, I’d propose, have aspects of levity. Bonnie and Clyde is funny, more so violent, everything that happens still somehow unexpected. Bonnie and Clyde is in short hep. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is on the other hand un-hep for being self-aware hep, my impression of it since 1969. Film noir as a genre was defined late as such and so is hep by default, even where member titles are not necessarily so. Billy Wilder made hep noir with Double Indemnity but would not commit further, his Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole less clever than caustic. Laura is hep for clever plus caustic, and not self-congratulatory as to either. Few from the forties please in such modernist ways as Laura. Robert Mitchum, also of noir incubation, seems hep to a fault in Out of the Past, but less so after his reefer bust and a coming decade where a hipster stance seemed more studied, though I’ll credit him with great hep stand that was His Kind of Woman in 1951. Dick Powell relied on Chandler and Philip Marlowe to seem hep in Murder, My Sweet, being more so in the later Cry Danger, his last feature stand in noir category and a repository of wit as applied to otherwise familiar content. A truest hep of Classic Era stars may have been William Powell, who surprises still those who’d call past personalities irrelevant. I’ve mentioned before a 1973 classroom run of The Thin Man to apx. 30 in attendance expressing delight that any actor as long past could come across so pleasingly modern. I’d not hesitate calling Powell hep for now and whatever future most of us have left.


Steve McQueen seems hep until you factor out Bullitt and The Great Escape. Like Paul Newman, McQueen did not appear in enough hep movies to rank hep for the ages. What both did offscreen, racing cars, cycles, and such, helps maintain the image in still-capture sense, as is also a case for one woman I might rank as hep, Louise Brooks, membership more for style and miles-high stack of portraits, which will have to do because so little of her survives in motion. Notice no Clara Bow as hep for her belonging resolute to an era she thrived in, but could not vault beyond. Women who did comedy stay in “screwball” category for a most part, and that dates the whole of them. Women in drama are dealt out surely as men given to same pursuit. Bette Davis, Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, would not have cared to qualify as hep even if extended the laurel, just as Gable, John Wayne, Cooper, certainly Brando and Clift to come … hep crown to set uneasily upon these brows, however others read them (did Brando wish to be cool even where celebrated so?). Cary Grant can delight, even seem modern for being timelessly appealing, but I’d not call him hep. There never was a Cary Grant cult, perhaps for his being so continuously and mainstream popular. There are moments however when Grant plays modern to startling degree --- look at North by Northwest in a crowded house, Grant registering in ways to still surprise, or maybe not, because audiences expect Cary Grant to deliver as if he was doing his act just yesterday. Maybe then we should call him hep/hip. Fred Astaire strikes me as a performer very hep once you get to know him. Anti-heroes might emerge hep even where not expected, let alone intended, like Paul Newman as Hud, James Dean as Jett Rink, others. Among horror icons, there is Vincent Price who was distinctly hep, ultimately cool, for knowing we saw through his act and appreciated his knowing. Was there ever a westerner who was hep? I might nominate The Man With No Name as embodied by Clint Eastwood, but it’s mainly the third one of those (Good, Bad, Ugly) to get that job done. As to hep born of television, and in western guise, could anyone apart from possibly James Garner as Maverick hope to qualify? But then Maverick was long ago, and not much seen today, so however hep he seemed in 1958, that was 1958.


Committed comedians were too often fall guys to be hep. Chaplin disqualified himself for pathos signaling. Harold Lloyd was so twenties entrenched as to seem quaint by the forties, another Clara Bow and then some. Harry Langdon was too strange to be anything other than object of niche devotion and baffled curiosity otherwise. W.C. Fields looked for awhile like a heppest clown around, but something skidded after protest times were passed, and now it seems we can’t give him away. Abbott and Costello, forget it, too forties if seeming wildly fresh upon then-arrival. Laurel and Hardy endure within their fully committed fanship, hepness or not a non-issue for devotees. None of Three Stooges seem hep, Shemp coming closest, Ted Healy too, the more so Ted, maybe a most modernist of long-gone comics. Bob Hope is another to belong too much to then, even as he tried swimming in streams that ran to seeming infinity, but think if Bob had gone down with one of WWII troop carriers he hitched rides on. He’d be a hep legend snatched from us in prime. The Marx Brothers seem obvious choices for hep placement, Groucho to rank prominent, his siblings just odd w/o him. The Marxes seem also to have fallen from current grace, or maybe it isn’t reasonable to insist on their continuing as favorites, like demanding students again swallow goldfish or jam into phone booths. One can go on speculating … argue even for Walter Catlett or Roscoe Karns as somehow hep, indeed make an argument for anybody, but comes now reveal of that name I earlier said was hierarchy of hep, one beyond comedy, beyond approach in fact by any other film personage, the single likeliest figure to sit everlasting upon Olympus that is popular culture, except he’s beyond mere “popular” and more like forever spirit capture of creative man. So who's this at summit of hep and so much else? I say Buster Keaton.

12 Comments:

Blogger Reg Hartt said...

Buster is the hepest.

7:33 AM  
Blogger Scott MacGillivray said...

Very thoughtful post, John. You had me guessing as to who was still hep (Clint Eastwood, just for still being with us and attracting paid admissions?) but I have to agree with your "final answer" of Buster Keaton.

Let me ask, though: do Gen-Xers and other people born since 2000 even know who Buster is? They aren't exposed to him steadily. They don't receive Blackhawk Bulletins, they don't get daily doses of him as once dispensed by Laurel & Hardy and the Stooges, and there isn't a Buster Keaton channel on a streaming service. If these younger audiences are the ones who decide who's still relevant (they wouldn't use the term "hep"), Buster Keaton is probably a question mark.

7:51 AM  
Blogger Ken said...

Thoroughly enjoyed your piece on who seems to have staked a permanent claim on hepness and whose coolness passports appear to have expired. I certainly agree that - as a film - "To Have and Have Not" remains a standard bearer in the field. And I chuckled happily at your unexpected inclusion of Walter Catlett in the conversation. Agree that Harry Langdon's utter strangeness disqualifies him but count me among those who absolutely adore the guy, at least in silents. Keaton's fearless, creative and prolific but I've never really felt a bond with him. And - as far as I'm concerned - his magic basically evaporated with the coming of sound.
Though I can imagine objections coming, I'd propose another female candidate. If hepness and exotica can be mutually compatible, then how about Marlene Dietrich? Languidly knowing (did anything ever get past her?), she always seemed capable of correctly sizing up anybody on sight
Then navigating the situation with just the right combo of allure and aloofness. A certain detachment always seems like a vital ingredient
in any recipe for hepness. In Dietrich's hands, (say, In the wild fadeout to "Morocco"), even extravagantly emotional behaviour registers with a
stunning cool factor.
Since you included a tip of the hat to Walter Catlett, may I also propose some of those mainly sideline ladies who made lovely careers out of being
coolly affable cynics? I nominate Helen Broderick, Glenda Farrell, Eve Arden, Thelma Ritter, all ladies over whose eyes no wool was ever pulled. I'd say modern audiences lucky enough to encounter their work are likely to give them all the hepness seal of approval - or something darn close to it.

9:08 AM  
Blogger Scott MacGillivray said...

I like Ken's nomination of Glenda Farrell.

I noticed, John, that you made no mention of Mae West. Given the timeless nature of her stock-in-trade (the running theme of sex, and women holding their own opposite men), would she be a candidate for hep, or is she too much a product of her time like Clara Bow? Maybe the latter, since she was washed up in pictures after 1938, with various comeback attempts.

I think The Three Stooges are still hep, as far as New Age recognition goes. Younger fans can still enjoy them and embrace them as their own.

10:51 AM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Mae West seems to me to belong more to the era her films were largely set in, that is a gay-nineties before hepness ever occurred to anyone. With regard the Stooges, you're so right that they are still enjoyed, probably more so than any comedy team of their vintage, even if they don't necessarily register with me as hep, though again I'll say Shemp comes a closest for overall attitude he conveys, and Ted Healy, who is my favorite of comic anti-heroes. His character in SAN FRANCISCO is hep gone back in time to 1906, humbled only after the earthquake brings his curtain down.

Re Keaton and not being known by latter generations, I agree with what you said, but would venture (at least hope) that anyone seeing him for the first time, courtesy You Tube or other free spots, is likely to be impressed if not astonished by his sheer physical grace and comedic skills. Modern following Buster has is among most enthusiastic I've seen at You Tube, various fan sites, with mostly young people singing his praises.

11:43 AM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Dan Mercer considers hepness and who qualified for membership:

You’ve written quite an interesting piece with a perspective I hadn’t considered before, especially regarding Bogart.

“To Have and Have Not” fits in with this concept of “hepness,” but the Bogart discovered by my own generation, now fading away, was the Rick of “Casablanca,” somewhat cynical and aware of the games played by others, but in his heart of hearts wanting to play it straight, especially in the way of romance. Young college men would leave a showing of the film prematurely aged and world weary, more than a little bitter, especially after the outcome of that last telephone call they’d made to the coed dormitory, yet still with the desire to find something good and noble in the world to fight for, whether a cause or a woman.

The sort of hepness represented by the Harry Morgan character in “To Have and Have Not” is more like a flensing knife that parts the flesh and bones of society, its edge found in a certain glance or a chuckle. It suggests a special knowledge that allows him to transcend the particular time in which the story is set. If he seems “modern,” then, it is because he is timeless. Even for Harry Morgan, though, that would be true only if the conflicts or struggles or the ultimate goals in which that knowledge is revealed were also timeless. Were men and women no longer beings but merely identities, to be donned or discarded like an article of clothing, the circling dance of Harry and Slim would be a good deal less engaging. It might even be considered “dated.”

The potent appeal of Louise Brooks, however, suggests that such a time might never occur, since it is nothing if not a play upon the mysteries of sexual relationships.

But how well you summed up the place of one comic:

“Harry Langdon was too strange to be anything other than object of niche devotion and baffled curiosity otherwise.”

“Baffled curiosity” was certainly my initial reaction to “Three’s a Crowd,” watching the careful set-ups of gags that were simply abandoned, then realizing that this was the joke, to take something that everyone would be familiar with and to arouse their expectations, only to confound them. You might find an illustration of hepness in such a deconstruction of social manners, at least as they pertain to comedy, but Langdon was indeed too strange to be admired for this. His devices were more the posture of someone who didn’t understand the world or have an awareness of the way it worked, other than for its potential danger, which had to be kept at a distance. Anyone who grew up shy and unhappy would appreciate that necessary distance which must be kept between him and other people.

Keaton is for me as you’ve described him, the “forever spirit of creative man.” He’s like an acrobat making his way through the interstices of society, being deterred only to find, with a bold, deft movement, some other way towards an uncertain destination.

1:27 PM  
Blogger DBenson said...

Is broad-based hep really possible any more, now that almost every audience is "niche"? Self-identified hep today can mean Marvel superhero fans who like only SOME of the movies, or reject them all in favor of the comic books.

The Three Stooges are not so much hep in themselves as a claimed attribute of a certain kind of male. To love the Stooges is to signify rough tough manliness (even by those lacking roughness and toughness), gloating that eggheads and womanfolk will never Get It. How many icons are revered less for their own sake than for what they say about their faithful?

The Beatles started out hep, and mostly stayed hep by getting sick of their original act before their fans did, shedding their look and constantly experimenting with their sound. Over time they dispersed and eased out of relevance, and individual reputations suffered, but were they ever really uncool? They and their history seem to exist outside of hep and un-hep.

Walt Disney was hep very briefly. By WWII his company was firmly in the comfort food business, dishing out smiling reassurance while Warner and others dispensed hard-edged comedy for a hard-edged world, and then nervous comformity. Over time anything Disney became the anti-hep, something kids grew out of, and sometimes re-embraced as a rejection of a less complaisant age. Now devotees of any niche of the Disney empire regard themselves as hep -- more so than ordinary consumers of Disney product.

3:22 PM  
Blogger Filmfanman said...

Hep movie stars?
James Coburn might qualify, but he's too "small", that is to say, not well enough known now. His movie roles all remain pretty hep, though. A hep star of the 1970s, perhaps, along with Jack Nicholson.
Bill Murray was very hep in the 1980s, and is still pretty hep today, but his demographic is aging along with him. Yet he's out there still working from time to time, and he seems to spark most anything he's in.
The current movie star I'd vote for having the most "under the radar" hepness is that other Keaton - Michael Keaton. He's assembled a nifty little filmography over the years, hitting both commercial and critical high notes along the way. Still, he's under the radar - which is pretty hep in and of itself, come to think on it.

4:23 PM  
Blogger Randy Jepsen said...

No mention of Sinatra or Dean Martin?

1:56 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Good question I'd put to all ... SHOULD they be included?

2:38 PM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

Frank and Dino were gaining a following among younger people 20 or so years ago around the time of the "bachelor music" craze that came and went. There's a certain kind of young male today who love the Rat Pack ethos -- smoking, drinking, objectifying women, casual "funny" racist jokes -- that doesn't fly with their peers, though.

As for Glenda Farrell -- I think the only actress similar to her today is Kate McKinnon, one of the funniest women ever on Saturday Night LIve. Similar in that they're both attractive character actors who don't mind goofing around with their looks when necessary. Unfortunately, Glenda's kind of movies -- leading roles in B's -- just aren't made anymore. As talented as Kate is, I don't see her having a strong movie career other than supporting roles.

I'll offer another nomination for hip: Zeppo Marx. Runs around Chicago with a gun and steals cars when he's 12 years old. Gets the short the end of the stick for years from his older brothers before breaking free to make more money than all of them (possibly combined) without their help. Works with some of the biggest names in the entertainment world. Plays cards like a real shark. Is on a first name basis with the A-list of West Coast gangsters like Meyer Lansky. Dates younger women until the end of his life. Zeppo was the original O.G.

5:47 PM  
Blogger Razzopara said...

Really interesting take on the durability of film actors. Some of them become archetypes, but they are very rare. One way of testing this is to rewatch a film every 20 years or so. You will find that quite often the magic and mystery is dissipated with time. When I first saw ‘To Have and Have Not’, it seemed quite a complex but dull adult story to my younger eyes. A quick glimpse of it in recent years cemented the opinion. A complete rewatch in middle age, give me a completely different impression. It now seems rather obvious, and strangely lacking the mystique it seemed to exude. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good movie, but from the same period I might choose ‘Key Largo’ for pure entertainment if I wanted Bogart. Even when Curtiz made ‘The Breaking Point’, he struggled to convey Hemingway on the screen. That made for a fairly indifferent film too, again entertaining but, nothing that hadn’t been done before. It certainly didn’t atone for divergences made with the earlier films and material based on Hemingway. The secret is of course to make a great deal out of nothing, just as in every good novel, the things that mean the most are often not said or seen.

4:28 PM  

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