A Bob and Ray motto

Bob and Ray did much to foster my youthful appreciation of incongruity and silliness. When I see an ad for prune shakes or read about tie slimming, I think of Bob and Ray.

A photograph of Bob and Ray’s stationery in David Pollock’s Bob and Ray: Keener Than Most Persons (Milwaukee: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2013) shows a company motto:

PUISSANCE WITHOUT HAUTEUR

Words to live by!

Here is a photograph of a Bob and Ray letter to a young Keith Olbermann. Motto top left.

Related reading
All OCA Bob and Ray posts (Pinboard)

[Of course, using the word puissance might be the very essence of hauteur.]

Bob Elliott (1923–2016)

Bob Elliott: as in Bob and Ray. I somehow caught on while still in high school, when Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding were doing an afternoon show on New York’s WOR. I remember my Spanish teacher telling me that they had mentioned my name on the air. I must have written to them, and my teacher must have listened while driving home. When I began my life as a college commuter, listening to Bob and Ray turned the late-afternoon crawl to the George Washington Bridge into a pleasure of sorts. Yes, I may have been stuck in traffic. But I was stuck in traffic while listening to Bob and Ray.

There are some scattered references to Bob and Ray in these pages. The one that a fan will appreciate is this one, with a letter from the Bob and Ray character Mary Backstayge. That such gentle lunacy flourished on the airwaves is a wonder.

The New York Times has an obituary.

Mary Backstayge marigold seeds

[8½" x 7". Click for a larger view.]

I’m not sure how I caught on to Bob and Ray, but I did. From 1973 to 1976, Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding did a four-hour weekday-afternoon radio show on New York’s WOR. When I became a commuting college student, listening to that show was one of the perks of being stuck in traffic in the late afternoon.

“Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife” (a running spoof of a radio serial) was my favorite Bob and Ray bit. The show had its own writer, the Bob and Ray character Chester Hasbrouck Frisbee. The Backstayges, Mary and Harry, were theater people living in Skunk Haven, Long Island. They were best known for their work in Westchester Furioso. Other cast members: the stage doorman Pop Beloved, the Backstayges’ neighbor Calvin Hoogavin (played by Webley Webster, another Bob and Ray character), and Greg Marlowe (“young playwright secretly in love with Mary,” as he was always introduced). That just two people were responsible for all these characters — and for everyone else who might turn up in a given episode — was and is a wonder. Especially wonderful: hearing Ray Goulding as both Greg and Mary, out in the kitchen, Greg muttering and Mary giggling. Greg would always offer to help when Mary made cocoa.

In the spring of 1974 Mary offered free marigold seeds to her fans. I wrote in of course. I had no idea what had happened to Mary’s (mimeoed or photocopied) reply until I found it in the recently rediscovered file folder that’s been pulling me into the past.

Here, courtesy of YouTube, is a small sample of the WOR show in two parts — one, two — of the WOR show, the first with a “Mary Backstayge” cliffhanger.

From this same file folder
Aglio e olio
The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Boston
Coppola/“Godfather” sauce
Jim Doyle on education
A Meeting with Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tile-pilfering questionnaire

Prune latte

M’m! M’m! Good? Behold the prune latte.

Many years ago, Bob and Ray had a bit about Bob and Ray’s House of Toast. The Backstayges ran a House of Toast in Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife, serving toast (buttered on the far side or the near side) and prune shakes.

And yes, there once were prune shakes.

Thank you, Elaine, for sending the recipe my way.

Related reading
All OCA Bob and Ray posts (Pinboard)

Bob and Ray and Komodo dragons

News of a new Komodo dragon exhibit at the Bronx Zoo made me think of Bob and Ray.

[From 1973 to 1976, Bob and Ray were on New York’s WOR for four hours every weekday. I was a regular listener.]

Five radios

1
I remember my first transistor radio, a Zenith with a leather case and an earphone that looked like a hearing aid. I think that I received this radio as a present for First Communion (halfhearted Catholic childhood). My most vivid memory of this radio involves summer and a "beach chair" (lawn chair) on which I sat in front of my grandparents' house, one leg elevated, listening to WABC and WMCA (the Beatles, the Four Seasons' "Rag Doll"). I had bruised my leg very badly trying to jump up the steep steps of my stoop, two steps at a time.

2
I remember my parents' FM radio, which sat on their bedroom dresser. This radio took several minutes to warm up, and I liked seeing the red-orange warmth as the tubes came to life. In early adolescence, I listened to hours of blues from the twenties and thirties on this radio, via Columbia University's WKCR. Yes, those were my Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

[ ]
I don't remember a second transistor radio, but I must have had one, because I do remember listening to Jean Shepherd on WOR when I was in high school. I listened in bed with an earphone and never fell asleep.

3
I remember the kitchen radio, AM-FM, always tuned to WOR in the morning ("Rambling with Gambling") or to news station WINS ("You give us 22 minutes; we'll give you the world").

4, 5
I remember the AM radios in the family station wagon (a Ford Torino) and my first car (a Honda Civic 1200). As a college commuter in those cars, I listened to Gambling in the morning (with helicopter reports on traffic) and Bob and Ray in the afternoon. Being stuck in traffic on the approach to the George Washington Bridge was a lot more bearable with Bob and Ray, Mary and Harry Backstayge, and Wally Ballou ("-ly Ballou here").

[Reading about WKCR in the New Yorker prompted me to write this post. My model is Joe Brainard's I Remember, a book with a simple and brilliant premise.]

[Update, May 29, 2008: I just found a photograph of the Zenith on Flickr: Zenith Royal 12.]

“Anthony! Anthony!”

Mary Fiumara was the voice in the Prince Spaghetti commercial.

That commercial sticks in my head because Bob and Ray made use of Mrs. Fiumara’s signature line. We would now say that they sampled it: “Anthony! Anthony!” followed by Bob and/or Ray saying something like “Will somebody stop that kid?” Yes, an imaginary Anthony was running through the Bob and Ray studio.

The toast sandwich

I just learned about a bit of cookery that sounds like something from a Bob and Ray sketch: the toast sandwich. The ingredients: bread, butter, toast, salt, pepper. In November 2011 the BBC reported on this sandwich, billed as the United Kingdom’s cheapest meal. As the BBC notes, the recipe may be found in Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), which happens to be at Google Books:


[From The Book of Household Management; Comprising Information for The Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper And Under House-Maids, Lady's-Maid, Maid-of-All-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nursemaid, Monthly, Wet And Sick Nurses, Etc. Etc. Also, Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda; with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of All Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort. (London: S.O. Beeton, 1861).]

Here’s a review, from a writer who dubs the sandwich the BBC Austerity George Osborne Toast Sandwich.

A related post
Beeton on French coffee

[The BBC does not mention that the recipe comes from the chapter “Invalid Cookery.” Bob and Ray’s Harry and Mary Backstayge ran for a time a House of Toast, which offered toast, buttered on the far side or the near side, and prune shakes. The toast sandwich would have been a fine addition to the menu.]

“GEEK WANTED IMMEDIATELY”

“You got a spare fin, kid?”

“No. Let’s get on back to the tent. You got the new Billboard to read. Zeena left it under the stage.”

William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (1946)

Nightmare Alley is a thus-far terrific novel detailing the rise and fall of carny worker Stanton Carlisle. (I’m eighty-eight pages in.) The novel begins with a description of a carnival geek, the wild man whose act involves biting the heads off chickens and snakes. In an introduction to the 2010 New York Review Books reprint of Nightmare Alley, Nick Tosches notes that as late as 1960, Billboard ran geek-wanted ads in its carnival section. Yes, Billboard had a carnival section. So off I went to Google Books.

Here are three geek-related Billboard ads. The definitions that follow the ads are from Conklin Shows’ Carnival Dictionary, which distinguishes between two kinds of geek:

Geek: A snake-eating wild man. The snake is pushed into the geek’s face who bites its head off and spits it out. He doesn’t actually eat the snake.

Glooming Geek: A geek who uses his hands to glom [look at] the thing he is going to eat instead of having it pushed in his face. He appears to like it and chews it up well, not spitting it out like an ordinary geek.

(Note: it’s usually glomming geek.)

[“To join at once capable Grinder for Geek Show. Best Geek on road. Want sober Agent for new Race Track and Blanket Wheel, join immediately. Man and Woman for flashy new Two-Headed Baby Show. Doral Dashan wants Ticket Seller who can grind, also Female Impersonator. All people who can stand prosperity and sober. Use couple more Slum Agents, Man for Ball Game, Hit & Miss.” Billboard, July 6, 1946.]

Grinder: “A person who has a certain ‘set spiel’ or sequence of words that he delivers from the front of a midway attraction as long as the show is open.” Slum: “Cheap merchandise, on the smallish side, such as jewelery or gilded plaster bookends, sold at stands or given as prizes in games of chance or skill.” Agent: “The concession clerk.”

[“CONCESSIONS — Can place Hi-Striker, String, American Camp only, and another other Legitimate Concessions. SHOWS — Can place Wild Life, Arcade, Iron Lung, or any other Shows not conflicting. RIDES — Can place WHEEL for Duals, Fly-o-Plane or Spitfire. HELP — Can place Second Men on all Rides who drive. Chuck Watkins, Schoonmaker, come on. GEEK WANTED IMMEDIATELY FOR SNAKE SHOW. COME ON. GIRLS — Jack Chickerelli can place Girls for Revue and Posing Show. Can also place one Colored Girl Dancer for Harlem Revue. AGENTS, ATTENTION — Lew Bernstein can place Agents for Count Store, 1 Pin Agent, 1 Skillo, and 1 Wheel Agent. Must be sober and able to cut it.” Billboard, August 12, 1950.]

Did you notice the shout-out to Chuck Watkins and Schoonmaker? These ads often function like a message board or Twitter. Again and again, there are exhortations to come on: “Bob and Little Mac, come on.” “Lee McDaniels, come on.” “Chuck (Pop) Wilson, come on.” And at least one ad offers reassurance that a particular carny has already come on: “Filipino Jimmy is here.” Which meant what?

The Hi-Striker is what you think: the familiar ring-the-bell-and-win-a-prize attraction. String: “An open-front show with a long line of canvas banners.” The Iron Lung seems to have been just that: a man or woman in an iron lung.

[“This show has 15 proven fairs in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. Want flashy Bingo, Grab, Hanky Panks of all kinds, Bear Pitch, Novelties, Age & Weight and Long and Short Range Galleries. Will book Girl Show, with or without own equipment, white or Colored. Want Talker for newly framed Geek Show. Have first-class Geek ready to operate. Want Foremen for Roll-o-Plane, Chairplane and Merry-Go-Round and Ride Help who can drive semis.

We have capable Skillo Agents, no head. Brownie Cole, contact. Also want Man and Crew for Line-Up Store. Can place 3 good Men on Grind Store for soldiers’s pay day in Guthrie. Ray Bona, answer. Want Girls for Girl Show, salary and bonus. Need 6-Cat Gunner and Ball Boys who also up and down concessions. Following contact me: Norfolk, James Moore and Lightning. Have five good spots for you. Also want Colored Girl Show to join first week in August.” Billboard, July 21, 1956.]

Grab joint: “A centrally located snack stand.” Hanky-pank: “A game of skill that caters to young and old alike; small prizes. ” Gunner: “One who operates the device which controls the game.” Line-up: “A store or joint in the line, as opposed to one in a central position. ” A joint is “any kind of carnival stand.”

[Billboard, April 18, 1942.]

[Billboard, May 1, 1943.]

So much of the recent American past in these ads: polio, World War II (women taking over jobs), and of course Jim Crow and de facto segregation. Carnivals in many states must have been racially segregated, as these home movies appear to suggest.

William Lindsay Gresham also wrote Monster Midway: An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny (1953), now out of print. (NYRB, how about it?)

A related post
Nightmare Alley (the film)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

Double Jeopardy (dir. R.G. Springsteen, 1955). The story begins with a hapless drunk (Robert Armstrong) and his two-timing wife (Gale Robbins), then shifts abruptly to the digs of a posh executive (John Litel), his daughter (Allison Hayes), and her fiancé, who is also the executive’s lawyer (Rod Cameron). A blackmail scheme links the two worlds. The most interesting thing about the movie: the near-look-alike couples on the two sides of the class divide, Hayes and Cameron, and Robbins and her used-car salesman boyfriend (Jack Kelly). ★★ (YT)

*

Cloudburst (dir. Francis Searle, 1951). John Graham (Robert Preston), a Canadian cryptographer working for British intelligence, seeks vengeance for his wife’s death in a hit-and-run accident. I liked the scenes of the code room, with men and women toiling away with primitive tools (paper and pencil). And I liked seeing Robert Preston (!) playing a character bent on killing those who have wronged him, whatever the consequences. And I liked the British emphasis on duty that, finally, takes over the story. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Deep Valley (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1947). Ida Lupino is Libby Saul, a young woman living with her estranged parents (Fay Bainter, Henry Hull) in rural isolation and poverty. Libby is damaged: she’s spoken with a stutter ever since she saw her father hit her mother, and there’s at least a hint that she’s been the target of someone’s unwelcome advances. Into Libby’s life comes an escaped convict (Dane Clark) — and love. A variation on High Sierra (which paired Lupino with Humphrey Bogart), with great performances by the two principals, beautiful contrasts of light and darkness by cinematographer Ted McCord, and a particularly bitter kind of tragedy in the ending. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Lizzie (dir. Hugo Haas, 1957). From a novel by Shirley Jackson, who, despite what you might read at IMDb, was not unhappy with the movie. Eleanor Parker is Elizabeth Richmond, a quiet, asocial museum employee receiving threatening notes signed “Lizzie.” Figuring out who Lizzie is requires the uncovering of what Elizabeth’s psychiatrist (Richard Boone) calls “multiple or disintegrated personalities” and the exploration of very dark territory in Elizabeth’s childhood. A brave film of modest proportions, released several months before The Three Faces of Eve, with great shots inside the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, two songs by Johnny Mathis (huh?), and only occasionally appropriate comic relief from Joan Blondell as Elizabeth’s aunt and director Haas as a platonic pal next door. ★★★ (YT)

*

Knock on Any Door (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1949). “Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse”: so says Nick Romano (John Derek), a young punk on trial for murdering a policeman, defended by a lawyer (Humphrey Bogart) who takes a special interest in his case, prosecuted by a vengeful DA (George Macready, with lighting and camera angles forever accenting the vicious scar on his right cheek). The courtroom histrionics go on too long, and the movie’s resolution is disappointing in its obviousness. Look for Jimmy Conlin (of a zillion movies), Sid Melton (The Danny Thomas Show), Allene Roberts (The Red House), Houseley Stevenson (Dark Passage), and in a nightspot, in the distance, at a piano, Dooley Wilson. ★★★ (CC)

*

The Case of the Howling Dog (dir. Alan Crosland, 1934). Perry Mason makes his screen debut as the head of large legal operation, with two switchboard operators, countless secretaries, and detectives and sous-lawyers galore. As Mason, Warren William is sharp, suave, and underhanded. His relationship with Della Street (Helen Trenholme) might be filed under F, for Friends with Benefits. Our household gave up on trying to follow the (bewildering) plot early on and enjoyed the clothes, the furniture, the presence of Mary Astor, and a wild scene in which a radio playing the song “Dames” is the background music for a murder. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Seventh Victim (dir. Mark Robson, 1943). Still one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen. Two years after a first and only viewing, I was surprised by how many scenes I could anticipate. Perhaps the strangest one this time around: the noisy crowd of actors, still in costume, exiting a theater and making their way to a tavern. The eeriest: the abrupt, startling ending. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Whirlpool (dir. Otto Preminger, 1950). The Laura overtones are strong — Gene Tierney’s presence, a portrait on a wall (though not of Tierney), a disembodied voice playing on a sound system at the movie’s end — but it’s a very different story, focusing on relationships between a scheming astrologer/hypnotist (José Ferrer) and his former and present clients (Barbara O’Neil, Tierney). Richard Conte is not entirely convincing as a psychoanalyst; Charles Bickford is entirely convincing as a police detective. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Backfire (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950). A mysterious visitor (Viveca Lindfors) comes to a hospital to tell Bob Corey (Gordon MacRae), a WWII vet recovering from surgery, that his friend from the service, Steve Connolly (Edmond O’Brien), is in pain and peril. As Bob questions people to find out what happened to Steve and where he can be found, the movie moves from one flashback to another. And in present time, one person after another is being knocked off by a mysterious assailant. With Ed Begley, Dane Clark, Virginia Mayo, and other possibly familiar faces. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Craig’s Wife (dir. Dorothy Arzner, 1936). From a 1925 play by George Kelly. Rosalind Russell is Walter Craig’s wife Harriet, a woman intent on exercising panoptic control over her husband (John Boles) and her household servants (including Jane Darwell). A cold, terrifying picture of a marriage. Keep your eye on the vase. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Harriet Craig (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950). Now with Joan Crawford and Wendell Corey as Harriet and Walter, in an even darker picture of a marriage. This time Ellen Corby is among the servants. Lucile Watson provides welcome relief as a party guest, cheating at cards and, later, telling an important truth. Hard question: to what extent, if any, do these movies invite an audience to feel compassion for Mrs. Craig? ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Garment Jungle (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1957). Overtones of On the Waterfront: a garment manufacturer (Lee J. Cobb) is determined to keep the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union out of his shop by any means necessary. His son (Kerwin Mathews), who comes back home after several years abroad and is forever a cipher, sees things differently. I was most struck by the performances of Robert Loggia as a pro-union worker, Gia Scala as his worried wife, and Richard Boone (from Lizzie) as what they used to call a legitimate businessman: “Everything for the Needle Trade.” ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

The October Man (dir. Roy Ward Baker, 1947). A young woman is murdered, and her neighbor in a residential hotel (John MIlls) is suspected. He’s recovering from a brain injury suffered in an accident, and it’s not certain that he’s “all right.” The greatest pleasures in this movie come from the depiction of life in the cozy, claustrophobic Brockhurst Common Hotel, whose residents snoop, play cards, and complain about the cold and the absence of marmalade. The question of whodunit is answered early on, and the pacing is erratic: after interminable trips to and from the police station, the chase near the movie’s end feels comic. ★★★

*

Sleepers West (Eugene Forde, 1941). The sleepers are train cars, going to San Francisco, and they carry, among other folk, private detective Michael Shayne (Lloyd Nolan), shepherding a surprise trial witness (Mary Beth Hughes) who’ll reveal a web of political corruption. Along for the ride are Mike’s ex (what a coincidence), her fiancé, a businessman on the lam, an inquisitive porter, an engineer determined to make good time on his final run, and a would-be hit man. Lots of variety, with shifting story lines as we move from compartment to compartment. Look for George Chandler (Uncle Petrie from Lassie), whom the IMDb identifies as “Yokel.” ★★★

*

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (dir. Nathan Hertz, 1958). Her name is Nancy (Allison Hayes), and her husband Harry (William Hudson) is interested only in her money and his Honey, his girlfriend (Yvette Vickers). A chance encounter with an extraterrestrial orb turns Nancy into a giant, with an Achilles-sized rage. Guess where she’s going with it. A great pop-culture document of female anger, its suppression (chains, tranquilizers), and its flowering. ★★★★

*

Cause for Alarm! (dir. Tay Garnett, 1951). Search YouTube for recently added film noir and you’ll find all sorts of worthwhile movies — that have nothing to do with film noir. This one is melodrama, a tour de force for Loretta Young as Ellen Jones, a desperate housewife trying to retrieve a letter that her just-died husband sent to the district attorney, accusing his doctor and Ellen of plotting to kill him. A drama of postal procedure? The premise may sound ludicrous, but the result is genuinely compelling. ★★★★

*

Outrage (dir. Ida Lupino, 1950). Between 1949 and 1953, Ida Lupino wrote and/or directed several socially conscious films, treating such subjects as bigamy, polio, and unwed motherhood. Here the subject is rape, with Mala Powers giving a great performance as Ann Walton, a bookkeeper, engaged to be married, who is raped after she leaves work. Ann flees her family and fiancé and as “Ann Blake” finds herself among compassionate (though clueless) people at an orange ranch, where she meets a vaguely mystical minister (Tom Andrews) who gives her good counsel. Frank and unnerving, and when the rapist stalks Ann through a deserted industrial area, terrifying. ★★★★

*

History Is Made at Night (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937). The movie starts out as romantic melodrama, with vengeful husband Bruce Vail (Colin Clive), his desperate wife Irene (Jean Arthur), and “the world’s greatest headwaiter,” Paul Dumond (Charles Boyer), who happens to be nearby when Irene is in danger. Things then take a turn toward comedy (the restaurant scenes are priceless), then back to melodrama, before ending up as a proto-disaster story. Clive looks ghastly (he died in 1937); Arthur and Boyer are a wonderful comic duo (there’s much more to Charles Boyer than I might have thought). Honorable mention to Leo Carrillo for his comic contributions as Cesare, Paul’s pal and “the world’s greatest chef.” ★★★★

*

Two more by Mitchell Leisen

Hands Across the Table (1935). Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray star: she, as Regi Allen, a manicurist looking to marry rich; he, as Theodore Drew III, a broke heir looking to do the same. Gee, will they ever be able to get together? Snappy patter and glorious sets: even a zillionaire’s wheelchair is Art Deco. My favorite scenes: the phone prank, the roof. ★★★★

Remember the Night (dir. Mitchell Leisen, 1940). Fred MacMurray again, as Jack Sargent, a Manhattan prosecutor who takes shoplifting suspect Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) back to his Indiana home when her trial is postponed for the Christmas holiday. The screenplay is by Preston Sturges, so there’s plenty of arch comedy, but also great pathos when Lee attempts to reconnect with her mother, and considerable tenderness when Lee shares the holidays with the Sargent family. With Beulah Bondi as Mrs. Sargent, Elizabeth Patterson as Aunt Emma, Sterling Holloway as Cousin Willie, and Thomas W. Ross with a great turn as a looney-tunes defense attorney. Watching this movie, I found it impossible to imagine the leads as Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity ). ★★★★

[Barbara Stanwyck as Lee Leander, Beulah Bondi as Mrs. Sargent.]

*

It Should Happen to You (dir. George Cukor, 1954). Gladys George (judy Holliday) is a nobody, a model who wants to be famous; Pete Sheppard (Jack Lemmon), another nobody, is an aspiring documentarian filmmaker. Gladys’s desire to be a somebody moves her to buy a billboard to fill with her name, and her efforts draw the attention of playboy and soap magnate Evan Adams III (Peter Lawford). With a sharp, witty screenplay by Garson Kanin, and beautiful on-location scenes of Manhattan as a mid-century playground for lovers. My favorite scenes: Holliday and Lemmon singing and humming Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Let’s Fall in Love”. ★★★★

*

Party Girl (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1958). I first saw Party Girl in 2016, and my judgment hasn’t changed: the movie looks at first like a bit of CinemaScope song-and-dance fluff, but it turns out to be much more, with moments of deliriously theatrical violence. In 2021 I find new and surprising overtones in the relationship between crime boss Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb) and his lawyer-fixer Tommy Farrell (Robert Taylor), which strongly resembles the relationship between a recent president and his lawyer-fixer. Which makes dancer Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse) the future Mrs. Michael Cohen? A further complication: Corey Allen’s Cookie La Motte bears an eerie resemblance to Anthony Scaramucci. ★★★★

*

I See a Dark Stranger (dir. Frank Launder, 1946). The premise is not as daft as it might seem: Bridie Quilty (Deborah Kerr), a young Irish woman with a fierce hatred of all things British, joins up with an effort to free a Nazi spy from a British prison. Trevor Howard is a British officer who becomes smitten with Bridie. This movie goes off in all directions — genuine suspense, light comedy, bizarre slapstick — and it’s difficult to know whether Bridie is here to be hated, pitied, laughed at, or adored (Howard has no problem making up his mind). I think the movie aspires to be a Hitchcock, but it never hits the mix of suspense and comedy needed to succeed. ★★★

*

Hunt the Man Down (dir. George Archainbaud, 1951). A Detour-like premise: a fellow (James Anderson, Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird) walks into a bar, spills a drink, takes up with seven new-found acquaintances, entertains them with his piano skills, and soon finds himself charged with killing one of them. He improbably escapes police custody, but years later an act of heroism puts his picture on the front page — and back to jail he goes. Gig Young stars as a public defender tracking down the six long-lost acquaintances to establish that the accused is not guilty. A highly watchable B-picture. ★★★

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Fandango, TCM, YouTube.]

The Harder They Come (dir. Perry Henzell, 1972). When the grandmother of a Jamaican country boy (jimmy Cliff) dies, he comes to Kingston in search of a job. And a dream comes true: he gets to record a song of his own, “The Harder They Come.” Reggae plays in or underneath scene after scene, but the movie is in the end about capitalism and its discontents: economic exploitation in the music business and the ganja trade, and the paucity of opportunity that might prompt someone to seek fame as an outlaw. With handheld camerawork, many non-actors, and strong echoes of American movies — Little Caesar, High Sierra, Gun Crazy, and Bonnie and Clyde among them. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Grand National Night, aka Wicked Wife (dir. Bob McNaught, 1953). British horse racing is part of it, but the movie focuses on domestic turmoil: horse-centric husband Gerald (Nigel Patrick) and his horse-hating, philandering wife Babs (Moira Lister). When the partners clash and Babs is accidentally killed (trust me, that’s not a spoiler), suspicion falls on Gerald, who insists that his wife wasn’t home that night. This movie begins well, but its human interest drains away quickly. A trick at the end turns the story into something like a lesser episode of Murder, She Wrote. ★★ (YT)

*

Uranium Boom (dir. William Castle, 1956). In Colorado, prospectors Brad and Grady (Dennis Morgan and William Tallman) fight, make up, forge a friendship, and part ways when Brad marries Grady’s girlfriend Jean (Patricia Medina). Grady plots revenge, but everyone lives happily ever after. Unnecessarily snappy patter — “The old do-re-mi, that’s what I want, and plenty of it” —enlivens this rather dopey movie. My favorite line: “Bad day at Yellow Rock.” ★★ (YT)

*

The Midnight Story (dir. Joseph Pevney, 1957). A priest is murdered in a San Francisco alley, and Joe Martini (Tony Curtis), a rookie traffic cop and the priest’s best friend, resigns from the force to solve the crime. To do so, he ingratiates himself with the man he’s identified as a suspect, Sylvio Malatesta (Gilbert Roland), working for him and living in an extra bedroom in his house. And thus Joe falls in love with Sylvio’s sister Anna (Marisa Pavan). All three leads are excellent: Roland is especially strong, giving little indication of whether he is or isn’t the killer. The ending is quite a surprise. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Choppers (dir. Leigh Jason, 1961). Inane junk that’s not quite bad enough to be good. We’re meant to understand that a gang of teenaged boys can siphon the gas out of a car, put back just enough gas to make the car run out on a deserted road, strip the car when the driver walks to a gas station, and sequester what they’ve stripped in the back of a poultry truck while one teen watches from a distance and warns of danger via walkie-talkie. My favorite line, apropos of nothing else in the movie: “She never puts anything on a sandwich to make it swallow easy — no butter, no nothin’.” These young hoods would pair well with the girl gang of The Violent Years. ★★ (YT)

*

Bodyguard (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1948). Lawrence Tierney was already known for off-screen brawling, so it’s no wonder that the movie begins with his character, suspended police detective Mike Carter, slugging his lieutenant and shouting “I can explain!” as his fellow cops restrain him. The story is thin: the suspended Carter serves as a bodyguard for the endangered head of a meatpacking company, and mayhem ensues. Much of the backstory speeds by in a few lines of dialogue, and the movie seems to have suffered significant cutting, reducing its coherence and removing what was likely a gruesome ending in a meatpacking plant. Priscilla Lane is on hand as Mike’s resourceful girlfriend Doris Brewster, though how she puts up with her feral beau is an open question. ★★ (TCM)

*

Goodfellas (dir. Martin Scorcese, 1990). I’m not a great fan of Mafia movies, but the dark comedy of this one suits me. Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino star in the story of a Brooklyn youth, Henry Hill (Liotta), who becomes a somebody in the world of crime before ending up a nobody — but an alive nobody. What led me to watch this movie for the first time in many years: a clip of Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito, telling a story in a way that I suspect spoke strongly to Donald Trump, who has named Goodfellas among his favorite movies. The picture of gangsterhood this movie presents, of outer-borough men who do whatever they want, take whatever they want, and brook no opposition would no doubt speak strongly to the disgraced ex-president. ★★★★ (F)

*

Jennifer (dir. Joel Newton, 1953). Undeservedly obscure, I think. Lonely Agnes Langsley (Ida Lupino) signs on a caretaker to a deserted estate whose last caretaker, Jennifer, seems to have disappeared, leaving behind a diary and other personal effects. What happened to Jennifer, and what might the estate’s owner (Howard Duff) or a schlubby grocery clerk (Robert Nichols) have to do with it? A modest, spooky production with strong Rebecca vibes and brilliant cinematography by James Wong Howe — just look at that shadow creeping snakelike up the steps. ★★★★ (YT)


*

Trial (dir. Mark Robson, 1955). Glenn Ford plays David Blake, a law professor who is told to beef up his credentials with some courtroom experience; thus he ends up defending Angel Chavez (Rafael Campos, Morales in The Blackboard Jungle), a Mexican-American teenager accused of causing the death of a white girl who fled and died of a heart attack after she and he necked. Racism and legal corruption are at the heart of the story, with Blake’s new employer (Arthur Kennedy) looking to exploit the case by turning Chavez into a found-guilty martyr to be exploited by an American Communist organization. I wonder whether Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) influenced Don Mankiewicz’s novel Trial (1955) and this screenplay: the picture of an organization exploiting and abandoning is unmistakably similar. With Dorothy McGuire as a sharp secretary and Juano Hernandez as a judge who takes no guff from anyone. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Gambit (dir. Ronald Neame, 1966). An amusing game of cat and mouse and cat and mouse and cat and mouse. Michael Caine is an aspiring criminal who hatches a plot to steal an ancient bust of a Chinese empress with the help of a showgirl (Shirley MacLaine) who bears a remarkable resemblance to the dead wife of the bust’s owner (Herbert Lom). The pleasure in this movie comes from seeing the many differences between the perfect criminal scheme, as Caine’s character envisions it, and its execution. Tricks abounding, all in an Orientalist “East.” ★★★ (TCM)

*

Convicted (dir. Henry Levin, 1950). “A man’s dead — somebody’s gotta pay for it”: that would be Joe Hufford (Glenn Ford), who killed a politician’s son in a bar fight and gets sent up for manslaughter. Joe’s life becomes more interesting when the DA who prosecuted him (Broderick Crawford) becomes the new, remarkably benevolent warden, and the DA’s adult daughter (Dorothy Malone) comes along to live on the prison premises (what?). The prison parts of the picture are solid, with Millard Mitchell as an inmate with nothing to lose. But long before the story is over, it spirals into romantic ridiculousness. ★★ (YT)

*

The Locket (dir. John Brahm, 1946). Childhood deprivation and humiliation help shape the adult Nancy (Laraine Day), a beautiful woman with a deeply disordered personality. She’s a destroyer of lives, one after another, in a story that takes shapes as a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. Robert Mitchum shines as a painter and Cassandra (unheeded prophet). Extraordinary noir cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca. ★★★★ (TCM)

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Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVD, TCM, YouTube.]

Junebug (dir. Phil Morrison, 2005). One cannot live by film noir alone. A lovely, understated movie, in which Madeleine and George (Embeth Davidtz and Alessandro Nivola), a recently (and hastily) married couple, drive from Chicago to visit George’s family in North Carolina. It’s a crowded, difficult house, with patriarch Eugene (Scott Wilson) nearly inarticulate, matriarch Peg (Celia Weston) burdened with responsibilities, George’s brother Johnny (Ben McKenzie) reluctant about impending fatherhood, and George’s wife Ashley (Amy Adams), a firecracker, as her mother calls her, all agog with plans for the baby. Madeleine’s presence is the final complication: is she here to meet her husband’s family, or to snag the work of a nearby Howard Finster-like artist for her gallery? ★★★★ (CC)

*

She Played with Fire (dir. Sidney Gilliat, 1957). Brit noir with Gothic overtones: a minor fire brings insurance adjuster Oliver Branwell (Jack Hawkins) to a great manor house, where he is surprised to meet up with a woman he loved years before, the now married Sarah Moreton (Arlene Dahl). And then things get complicated — not because of adultery but because of another fire, and forgery, and telltale herbal cigarettes, and a strong touch of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques. Why not four stars? There’s a large problem with the plot, because of an obvious question that’s never asked or answered. ★★★ (YT)

*

Crossroads (dir. Jack Conway, 1942). It’s 1935 (no war), and William Powell is David Talbot, a member of the French diplomatic corps, recently married to Lucienne (Hedy Lamarr) and the likely choice to serve as ambassador to Brazil. But something goes wrong: a threatening letter arrives in the mail, and David Talbot finds himself blackmailed for crimes committed when he was Jean Pelletier, before a case of amnesia wiped out his criminal past. Aside from an opening scene that is almost from pre-Code days, Lamarr has little to do. Also with Basil Rathbone, Claire Trevor, H.B. Warner (Jesus, Gower the druggist, and one of Sunset Boulevard’s waxworks), and Felix Bressart, who steals the movie as a wise, funny psychoanalyst. ★★★ (TCM)

*

A Woman’s Secret (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1949). Okay, but which woman? And when a shot rings out, whose account of what happened is to be believed? At the center of the story is a friendship — “an odd friendship,” one observer calls it — between a former singer turned manager (Maureen O’Hara) and her protege (Gloria Grahame). The implications are unmistakable, even if the movie takes everything back at the end. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Dark Corner (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1946). It was better on a first viewing in 2010. This story of a private detective (Mark Stevens) being stalked (it’s complicated) by another private detective (William Bendix) is super-stylish, with lavish sets (that art gallery!) and slick cinematography by Joe MacDonald. Despite loads of snappy banter, there’s little chemistry between Stevens and his hopelessly devoted secretary (Lucille Ball, who reportedly hated the way the director treated her); the two standouts are Bendix and Clifton Webb as the effete owner of an art gallery. As Elaine said, it’s a good thing that Ball found her true home in comedy. ★★★ (CC)

*

Waiting for Guffman (dir. Christopher Guest, 1996). I wish I could remember who told us, years ago, to watch this faux-documentary about a midwestern town’s effort to celebrate its sesquicentennial. In Blaine, Missouri, the high-school drama teacher, NYC-refugee and gay caricature Corky St. Clair (Guest) is enlisted to stage a musical celebration of the town’s patchy history: founded by travelers who thought they had reached California, Blaine became the Stool Capital of the World and was later visited by ETs who probed several locals. Many types here: a resentful band director (Bob Balaban), a futureless Dairy Queen employee (Parker Posey), a dentist who feels the urge to entertain (Eugene Levy), and the inveterate amateurs whom Corky calls “the Lunts of Blaine" (Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard). When news comes that a producer from the New York theater world, Mort Guffman, is coming to view Red, White, and Blaine, the need to do well becomes urgent, as Corky and his cast believe that Broadway might be in their future. A hilarious and poignant picture of people doing their best, and dammit, the songs are good, though the best number, “This Bulging River,” is only available as a DVD extra (or from YouKnowWhere). ★★★★ (DVD)

[If you live in a little town, you probably already know what sesquicentennial means.]

*

Gaslight (dir. George Cukor, 1944). A small cast — Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotten are the principals — along with a townhouse that grows smaller and more claustrophobic as the story develops. The principals give brilliant performances — Bergman as an apologetic, self-doubting bride, Boyer as her suave, dictatorial husband, Cotten as a protector watching from afar. And then there’s Angela Lansbury, in her first screen performance, as a nasty servant. Joseph Ruttenberg, a remarkably versatile cinematographer, gives the story a strong infusion of noir. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Mr. District Attorney (dir. Robert B. Sinclair, 1947). Based on a long-running radio serial, with Adolphe Menjou as a hard-driving DA (he’s to the law what Julian Marsh of 42nd Street is to the theater), Dennis O’Keefe as his ethically wavering assistant, George Couloris as a white-collar criminal, and Marguerite Chapman as an inscrutable love interest. Chapman makes the movie, with a role reminiscent of Jane Greer’s Kathie in Out of the Past. With genuinely surprising and suspenseful moments as the movie nears its end. The radio DNA is most noticeable, I think, in the wisecracking by investigator Harrington (Michael O’Shea). ★★★ (YT)

*

What Happened Was . . . (dir. Tom Noonan, 1994). From a two-person play by Noonan, with Noonan and Karen Sillas as Michael and Jackie, co-workers having dinner in Jackie’s apartment on a Friday night. I can’t agree with one reviewer that the movie shows “how people actually behave on a date,” for at least two reasons: it’s not clear to both parties that this meeting is a (first) date, and most people are not Michael and Jackie, and would likely not find themselves engaged in the painful truthtelling that happens in the course of this evening. My favorite moment: the story of the book, which is more than a little heartbreaking. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Midnight Limited (dir. Howard Bretherton, 1940). I’m not a fan of train travel, and least not in its Amtrak incarnation, but I’m a sucker for a train movie: Berlin Express, The Lady Vanishes, The Narrow Margin, Night Train to Munich, North by Northwest, Sleeping Car to Trieste, The Tall Target, Terror by Night. I did not expect much from the low-budget effort (Monogram Pictures), but I found even less: ultra-cheap sets (not a single shot showing the window of a train compartment), wooden acting, and a preposterous plot. Hint to the detective: when a man on a train is robbed of $75,000 in diamonds, start by finding out who knew he was on the train. The one redeeming element of weirdness: George Cleveland (Gramps from Lassie) as a seedy “professor” who bears an at least passing resemblance to Joe Gould (two years before Joseph Mitchell’s New Yorker profile “Professor Sea Gull”). ★ (YT)

*

Crime and Punishment (dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1935). I’m not a fan of the novel, which seems to me the work of a writer trying to figure out something new to drop in, chapter by chapter. So in a perverse way, I like this highly condensed adaptation, with fine performances by Peter Lorre as Roderick (!) Raskolnikov, Edward Arnold as Porfiry, and Marian Marsh as Sonya. Condensation aside, we end up with the novel’s sentimentality all the same. Look for Johnny Arthur (father to Darla in Little Rascals shorts) and Michael Mark (the bereaved father in Frankenstein) in small roles. ★★★ (YT)

*

Fear (dir. Alfred Zeisler, 1946). A low-budget (Monogram Pictures) uncredited adaptation of Crime and Punishment, with Raskolnikov turned into Larry Crain (Peter Cookson), a contemporary American college student who loses his scholarship, pawns his father’s watch, and — well, you probably know what’s coming. Here, too, much of the Dostoevsky world is missing. Warren William (the first Perry Mason) is the investigator who dogs Larry; Anne Gywnne is a Sonya sans family, sans sex work. A surprisingly good movie on its own terms, and its full weirdness only becomes clear at the end. ★★★ (YT)

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Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

The Reckless Moment (dir. Max Ophüls, 1949). Unlike so many YouTube offerings labeled film noir, this film really is one, with a mother, Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett), front and center, protecting her daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) from a shady older man. After that man falls to his death (an accident), Harper must contend with a blackmailer (James Mason) who threatens to pin the death on Bea. Kids! With no one but herself to rely on, Bennett’s character is as indefatigable as a mother bear protecting a cub. ★★★★

*

The Whole Town’s Talking (dir. John Ford, 1935). One swell comedy, a tour de force for Edward G. Robinson, who plays bank robber Killer Manion and mild-mannered clerk Arthur F. Jones, who looks just like Manion. The scenes with both characters are just wonderful. Jean Arthur is Jones’s co-worker: do you think they could possibly fall in love? A bonus: Etienne Girardot and Donald Meek play a pair of fussy little men — near-doubles. ★★★★

*

New York Confidential (dir. Russell Rouse, 1955). To paraphrase Rick Wilson’s comment on another mob boss: everything Lupo touches dies. The film stars Broderick Crawford as mob boss Charlie Lupo and Richard Conte as his new hit man Nick Magellan, improbably included in discussions of strategy at the highest levels (even with respectable politicians). Anne Bancroft plays the boss’s daughter Kathy, trying to make a life away from the father whose criminal enterprise fills her with shame. Mike Mazurki adds appropriate atmosphere. ★★★★

*

Storm Center (dir. Daniel Taradash, 1956). “I’ve often said, ‘A librarian is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by a city council’”: thus Alicia Hull (Bette Davis), librarian. This modest cautionary tale, shot on location in Santa Rosa, California, weaves together the love of reading, small-town friendships, political opportunism, a family in conflict (bookish son, “cultured” mother, tough-guy father), censorship, groupthink, and the Red Scare. With good performances from Kevin Coughlin, Kim Hunter, Brian Keith, and Paul Kelly. Look closely: the library is Santa Rosa’s, just as in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. ★★★★

*

The Slender Thread (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1965). Extraordinary aerial views of Seattle begin the story of a telephone call to a crisis center, with Sidney Poitier as a student volunteer trying to keep Anne Bancroft’s desperate housewife awake and on the line (she’s taken pills) while her call is traced (and flashbacks show us recent events in her life). Phone fanatics will appreciate the details of the trace (collected in this YouTube clip); non-fanatics will appreciate the acting, though Poitier sometimes goes a bit overboard. Everyone will appreciate the utterly awkward discotheque scene. The screenplay is by Sterling Silliphant, so any Naked City or Route 66 fan already has a reason to watch. ★★★★

[The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).]

*

Walk on the Wild Side (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1962). From the Nelson Algren novel, though I can’t say how faithful the adaptation is. Life in a New Orleans bordello, with Laurence Harvey as Dove, a drifter in search of Hallie (Capucine), an artist who now works (why?) in the bordello, which is run by Barbara Stanwyck’s Jo, who wants Hallie for herself. With Anne Baxter as a Mexican café owner and Jane Fonda as a drifter and novice prostitute. Over-the-top dialogue, rampant improbability (Dove and Hallie?), and great titles by Saul Bass. ★★★

*

The Blue Gardenia (dir. Fritz Lang, 1953). Telephone operator Norah (Anne Baxter) goes on a last-minute date with a pin-up artist (Raymond Burr), resists his advances, swings a fireplace poker, and fears she’s committed murder. Many familiar actors here: Richard Conte, as a newspaper columnist looking to monetize the story; Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell, as Norah’s sassy and nerdy apartment-mates; George Reeves, as a mustache-wearing police detective; and Nat “King” Cole, as himself, singing “Blue Gardenia.” Two of the more interesting elements of the movie: its depiction of three women sharing an apartment in post-war Los Angeles and its depiction of grownups on a “date” — with plenty of alcohol and risk. Plot-wise though, things are pretty thin. ★★★

*

Bonjour Tristesse (dir. Otto Preminger, 1958). Raymond (David Niven) is an indolent playboy; Cécile (Jean Seberg) is his indolent daughter, who calls him Raymond and kisses him on the lips, often; Elsa (Mylène Demongeot) is his young lover; Anne (Deborah Kerr) is a friend of his late wife, and a new, more serious presence in his life, one Cécile does not appreciate. Seberg’s Cécile, almost always in shorts or swimsuit, is a dazzling, soulless figure on screen. Glorious cinematography on the French Riviera (Georges Périnal), in black and white and color, but the film amounts to little more than its beautiful surfaces. My favorite moment: Juliette Gréco singing “Bonjour Tristesse.” ★★★

*

Hell’s House (dir. Howard Higgin, 1932). Bette Davis and Pat O’Brien are the nominal stars, but the film belongs to two actors nicknamed Junior: Durkin and Coghlan, as Jimmy and Shorty, prisoners and best pals in a reformatory. See, Matt — that’s Pat O’Brien — he’s a flashy bootlegger, a pretty slick guy, only Jimmy — that’s Junior Durkin — he don’t know about the bootleggin’, so when the cops find liquor at Matt’s place, Jimmy takes the rap, thinkin’ Matt’s been set up, and guess what? — Matt lets him do it, the dirty bum. That don’t sit well with Bette Davis — I mean with Peggy, she’s Matt’s girl — and, boy, what a dish. Okay, I’m done: socially conscious and surprisingly good, with the actors mostly unstilted. ★★★

*

Red Light (dir. Roy Del Ruth, 1949). George Raft — such a gifted dancer, but such a wooden actor. Here he’s the head of a trucking company, searching for the hotel-room Bible that holds the secret that will enable him to exact vengeance for — wait, no spoilers. I l enjoyed the cheap, grimy interiors — not just a bowling alley but the bowling alley’s men’s room! — and the parade of familiar faces: Raymond Burr, Gene Lockhart, Virginia Mayo, Harry Morgan. Two moments that make the movie worth watching: the truck, the neon sign. ★★

*

And when I die, I won't stay dead (dir. Billy Woodberry, 2015). A documentary about the Beat poet Bob Kaufman (1925–1986), famed for taking a ten-year vow of silence after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The film is marred by carelessness (typos in the intertitles) and a lack of narrative coherence, shifting, halfway in, to the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and then to Kaufman’s earliest years. It’s exciting to see archival footage of beatniks in San Francisco (Kaufman is said to have coined the word beatnik). But the poetry, to my ear, is just not enough: “Mulberry-eyed girls in black stockings, / Smelling vaguely of mint jelly and last night’s bongo drummer.” ★★

*

Little Fugitive (dir. Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, 1953). An affecting bittersweet comedy, with a cast of almost all non-professional actors, filmed in a stellar low-budget semi-documentary style. A mother leaves her sons for a day to care for her ailing mother, and a cruel prank prompts younger son Joey to run off and hide out at Coney Island. For a Brooklynite of a certain age, the scenes on the beach and on and under the boardwalk will be beyond evocative. With a musical score for chromatic harmonica, composed and performed by Eddy Manson. ★★★★


[Joey (Richie Andrusco), collecting and turning in empties to finance more pony rides. You should really see Little Fugitive. Click for a larger view.]

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Twelve movies

[No spoilers.]

La Bête Humaine (dir. Jean Renoir, 1938). Jean Gabin (of Grand Illusion) as Jacques Lantier, a railroad engineer whose genetic inheritance causes him to suffer moments of murderous rage. He is one figure in a tangle of relationships, murderous and otherwise, that play out against an exhilarating backdrop of trains and more trains.

*

I'll Be Seeing You (dir. William Dieterle, 1944). As my mom would say, "I never heard of it." It was in our Netflix queue because Joseph Cotten stars. A surprisingly frank movie about a guarded romance between people with secrets. Cotten is a veteran suffering from what we can recognize as PTSD; Ginger Rogers is a woman who — well, you'll have to watch. Shirley Temple provides comic relief and creates complications as Rogers’s teenaged cousin. I especially liked the scenes of the dowdy world: a soda fountain, a train-station newsstand, a kitchen with white enamel cookware. Please pass the mashed potatoes.

*

Undertow (dir. William Castle, 1949). An ex-mobster (Scott Brady) travels home to Chicago, where he’s promptly framed for murder. A detective friend (Bruce Bennett) and a plucky schoolteacher (Peggy Dow) help him to see his way clear. Surprisingly good, with some scenes shot in Chicago. At YouTube.

*

Please Murder Me (dir. Peter Godfrey, 1956). Angela Lansbury as an unhappily married woman, Raymond Burr as her lawyer, in a story that owes everything but a couple of plot twists to Double Indemnity. Crazy good to see Burr’s character with the same courtroom manner as Perry Mason. And fun to see Dick Foran (Ed Washburne of the Lassie world) in film noir. Indeed, this film puts the noir in film noir: just one scene, in a painter’s studio, has any daylight, and that light becomes a subject of conversation. Got meta? At YouTube.

*

Harry and Tonto (dir.Paul Mazursky, 1974). Art Carney’s shining hour, as Harry Coombes, a retired teacher displaced when his Manhattan apartment building is torn down to make way for a parking lot. Where to go? On a journey, with his cat Tonto. Two things strike me about the United States depicted in this film: the variety of its inhabitants, and the way a three-TV-network world provided some semblance of a shared culture. Say, did you watch Ironside last night? Harry and Tonto would pair well with De Sica’s Umberto D.

*

I, Daniel Blake (dir. Ken Loach, 2016). A widowed Newcastle carpenter (Dave Johns), still recovering from a heart attack, navigates a bureaucratic maze to attain his Employment and Support Allowance. Along the way, he befriends a young single mother (Hayley Squires) and her two children. Often funny, often infuriating, and always deeply moving. Most heartbreaking scene: the food bank. This film too would pair well with Umberto D. or Stéphane Brizé’s The Measure of a Man.

*

Wonder (dir. Stephen Chbosky, 2017). R.J. Palacio’s 2012 novel (recommended to me by my daughter) is a beautiful and moving narrative for young readers — with multiple narrators, no less. The film version simplifies and sweetens and upscales the novel, which tells the story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences who enters the fifth grade after a childhood of home schooling. I’ll quote another fifth-grader, Sol Ah, who appears in the documentary The Hobart Shakespeareans: “Even if the movies they make are good, they won’t be as good as the book.” The elementary and high-school kids in this film are impossibly, annoyingly photogenic. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson seem utterly miscast as Auggie’s parents. Read the novel instead.

*

California Typewriter (dir. Doug Nichol, 2016). A then-struggling typewriter shop in Berkeley gives this documentary its name. But the scope is wider, bringing in an artist, a streetside poet, a singer-songwriter, well-known writers, a collector of nineteenth-century machines, and a Hollywood mega-star who owns hundreds of typewriters. That would be Tom Hanks. The claims we hear some of these people make — that the typewriter is magical, that it allows the perfect emotional distance from words, that the text it produces has a permanence that other written text lacks — are, plainly, the claims of lovers who have lost all objectivity about the objects of their desire. And it’s wonderful, even if trying out your old machine leaves you wondering what all the fuss is about.

*

Batman & Bill (dir. Don Argott and Sheena N. Joyce, 2017). The life, death, and posthumous story of Bill Finger, the comics writer who devised many crucial elements of the Batman story, a story long credited to Bob Kane alone. Among Finger’s contributions: Batman’s costume, the names Bruce Wayne and Gotham City, the characters of the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, and more. “Bill was Batman’s secret identity,” children’s author Marc Tyler Nobleman says, and this documentary follows his efforts to get Finger’s contributions known and credited. A heroic story of creativity, business ethics, familial struggles, and the sleuthing that the Internet makes possible. Nobleman is aptly named.

*

Elevator to the Gallows (dir. Louis Malle, 1958). Malle’s first film follows the unexpected consequences of a murder plot gone awry. Julien (Maurice Ronet) spends most of the film attempting to escape from a stuck elevator. Florence (Jeanne Moreau) is a spoof existentialist, interior monologuing as she wanders through the Paris night. Louis (Georges Poujoly, from Forbidden Games) and Véronique (Yori Bertin) seem to have watched Gun Crazy one too many times. The plot is both wobbly and clever, the characters’ plights both amusing and suspenseful. A Hitchcock-like delight. Music by Miles Davis.

*

Freaks (dir. Tod Browning, 1932). Moviegoers of a certain age may recall seeing Freaks in the form of a “midnight show.” Now the movie plays on TCM. What makes the film bizarre is not the cast of sideshow performers but the scarcity of plot, which surfaces here and there between vignettes of circus life and has its violent conclusion off-screen. The most compelling scenes are those in which the so-called freaks, those at whom others stare, turn their gaze on those others — in particular the scenes in which Angeleno (Angelo Rossitto) peers through a window and Johnny Eck and company watch and wait beneath a circus wagon’s steps. “One of us! One of us!”

*

Shattered Glass (dir. Billy Ray, 2003). The short unhappy career of the journalist Stephen Glass, who created fake article after fake article for The New Republic from what seem to have been considerable imaginative resources. As Glass, Hayden Christensen is a brilliant chameleon, cocky, concerned, defensive, contrite, either playing to his editors and fellow writers or playing the one group against the other. And he is quick-thinking, always, inventing fresh explanations each time one of his falsehoods is exposed. I think what explains Glass is what explains those who engage in academic misconduct: they count on getting away with it.

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Ten movies, two seasons

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

Lou Grant (created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds, 1980–1981). Among the topics in season four: sexual harassment, chemical dumping, a police killing, rape, the rights of birth parents and adopted children, survivalists, migrant workers, and mudslides. One weakness of the series: the parceling out of different points of view sometimes requires that someone play the City Room idiot, as when Billie Newman dismisses the reality of sexual harassment in the workplace. “Rape” is an especially powerful episode, with Lynne Moody giving a standout performance (one of her two appearances in the series). The other standout: Nancy Marchand’s portrayal of newspaper owner Margaret Pynchon as a stroke victim (in “Stroke”). ★★★★ (YT)

Lou Grant (1981–1982). I know that Ed Asner insisted that the series was cancelled because of his political activity, but I think the writers were beginning to struggle for new ideas. In this final season we have friends and relations who appear out of nowhere (à la Murder, She Wrote) and story lines that go into the past: WWII concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, the HUAC hearings and the blacklist. One great episode: “Hometown,” in which Lou visits Michigan and meets an old love. Better still: “Jazz,” with Louie Bellson, Ray Brown, and Joe Williams, who prove themselves capable actors. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Two by Cyril Endfield
The Argyle Secrets (1948). A low-budget Maltese Falcon-like story, with the Argyle Album, a dossier on Nazi collaborators in the United States, as the object of interest. Newspaperman Harry Mitchell (William Gargan) searches for the album (not knowing at first what it is) and encounters other searchers: a Mary Astor type (Marjorie Lord), a Sydney Greenstreet type (John Banner), and another Sydney Greenstreet type (Jack Reitzen). Emulating Sam Spade, Mitchell even mails an envelope to himself. Funnest scene: dropping in on the boy practicing the violin. ★★ (TCM)

The Underworld Story (1950). The premise is not complicated: amoral newspaperman Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) gets paid off by a crime boss and uses the money to buy a small-town paper. And lo, there’s corruption in Lakeville, as in the big city, with a Black maid being set up to take the rap for a murder committed by the son of an wealthy white father. I liked the cinematography and the depiction of little Lakeville, a New England town with narrow brick sidewalks and an Old English Bookshop. The weak point is Dan Duryea as Reese, who changes for no apparent reason from bad guy to good. ★★ (TCM)

*

More evenings with Dan Duryea
Black Angel (dir. Roy William Neill, 1946). It turns out that we’d seen it in 2015, but it wasn’t until we were forty minutes in that it looked familiar. When a poor unsuspecting sap is sentenced to death for murder, his singer wife (June Vincent) and the dead woman’s ex-husband, an alcoholic songwriter (Dan Duryea), attempt to find the real killer. Honestly, this movie is much better than it might sound, with spiffy production, memorable bit parts (Wallace Ford, Hobart Cavanaugh), and Peter Lorre as a sinister nightclub owner. And then there’s the repeating phonograph. ★★★★ (YT)

‌Johnny Stool Pigeon (dir. William Castle, 1949). A federal agent (Howard Duff) enlists a convict (Dan Duryea) in an effort to infiltrate an international narcotics ring. The story begins in semi-documentary style but switches to straight drama when Shelley Winters appears as a romantic interest. Stealing the movie: John McIntire, as a deceptively cheery cowboy-hatted drug dealer. Best moment: Duryea, in the gutter, whining: “Copper! Copper!” ★★★ (YT)

*

Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986). I must have smartened up in the last thirty-five years — or else I’ve just watched more movies. I remembered Blue Velvet as bizarre and incoherent; now it looks like a wonderful entertainment, a stylized noir-like exploration of small-town seaminess and sadism via a magic bag of movie tropes. With Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, and Dean Stockwell. I am imagining the bag of tropes as made of blue velvet. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Klute (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1971). John Klute (Donald Sutherland), a detective investigating the disappearance of a businessman, finds his way to Bree Daniel (Jane Fonda), call girl and aspiring actress. It turns out she’s being stalked by — who? Fonda gives a great performance, self-assured when she’s turning a trick, less confident when she’s auditioning for an acting role. Essay assignment, 2 1/2 pages: What does it mean that the movie is titled Klute and not, say, Bree or Daniel? ★★★★ (YT)

*

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (dir. Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz, 2020). Though she enjoyed little commercial success in her lifetime, Karen Dalton (1937–1993) is now recognized as a distinctive, influential singer. I have to admit that I don’t hear what other people hear in her voice, and I find the favorable comparisons to Billie Holiday baffling. But I enjoyed this well-made documentary, filled with archival photographs and contemporary interviews with Dalton’s daughter and denizens of the folk-music world. The strangest thing about listening to Dalton: one of her ex-husbands was a one-time co-worker of mine, and I had no idea. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978). On Thanksgiving Day 1976, at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, the Band gave a farewell performance with a host of guests, including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. The music is fine, though several guest spots feel like perfunctory interruptions. Also detracting from my enjoyment: the enormous Confederate flag on display in one interview segment, the toxic masculinity on display in many interview segments, and the obvious presence of various substances in various musicians’ bloodstreams. My favorite moments: “Mannish Boy” (Muddy Waters and the Band), “The Weight” (the Staple Singers and the Band, in an added studio performance). ★★★ (CC)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Billy Wilder’s 1940s
Five Graves to Cairo (1943). What a beginning: the Second World War is on, and a tank full of dead Brits rolls through the Egyptian desert, one corpse’s foot still pressed to the gas. A lone survivor, John Bramble (Franchot Tone), climbs out and finds his way to a recently bombed hotel that houses only its owner (Akim Tamiroff) and a maid (Anne Baxter). When German officers arrive, Bramble assumes the identity of a dead servant and ingratiates himself with the enemy. Chills, thrills, Casablanca overtones, the mysterious “five graves,” and Eric von Stroheim (as Erwin Rommel) make for a satisfying night at the movies. ★★★★ (CC)

A Foreign Affair (1948). A romantic triangle in post-war Berlin. Jean Arthur is Phoebe Frost, a prim member of a congressional delegation investigating troop morale in the city; John Lund is Captain John Pringle; Marlene Dietrich is Erika von Schlütow, a cabaret singer of interest to the investigators. Lubitsch-touch comedy amid the ruins of a city: it’s a bizarre, compelling premise. My favorite moment: pursuit and escape amid file cabinets. ★★★★ (CC)

[The other movies in the Wilder feature: Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945).]

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

[About The Last Waltz: a chunk of cocaine in Neil Young’s nose was obscured in post-production. I don’t think of “Mannish Boy” as an instance of toxic masculinity: to my ear the song sounds like comic sexual boasting and a serious affirmation of adult personhood: “No B — o, child — y.”]

Sherwin and Zerbina and Bert and Harry

[“Plotz,”Zippy, November 6, 2013.]

Yes, that’s a tabletop’s worth of Ding Dongs.

New Yorkers of a certain age will recognize the fellows on the television screen as the Piel brothers, Bert and Harry, cartoon spokesbrewers for Piels Beer. Their voices were provided by Bob and Ray, Bob Elliott (Harry, on the right) and Ray Goulding.

YouTube has at least four Bert and Harry commercials: one, another one, still another, and one more. A website for collectors of the past has a piece of original art that might have served as the model for what’s on the television.

I like Bill Griffith’s approach to things. Does he worry whether people will get it? No. But someone will. Or maybe they’ll find this post.

Related reading
All Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Susan Sontag: “To collect is by definition to collect the past.”]

Bob and Ray’s House of Toast

[From A Night of Two Stars (1984).]

I remember the House of Toast from episodes of Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife. The Backstayges, Calvin Hoogavin, and Pop Beloved were operating a House of Toast. Toast, buttered on the far side or the near side, and shakes. What flavors? Just one. You’ll have to listen to find out.

Also from Bob and Ray
Mary Backstayge marigold seeds : “Puissance without hauteur”

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVD, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (dir. Tim Burton, 1985). I was surprised, having never seen it, that it’s less transgressive than Pee-wee’s Playhouse, but I suppose that’s because the movie came first. It’s silly fun, with Paul Reubens as a man-child whose quest to recover his stolen bicycle takes him to the Alamo, a rodeo, a biker bar (home of Satan’s Helpers), and a movie studio. My favorite bits: breakfast à la Rube Goldberg, “Tequila” à la Pee-wee. With Milton Berle, James Brolin, Morgan Fairchild, Ed Herlihy (from the world of newsreels), Prof. Toru Tanaka (the professional wrestler), and many more. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Voice in the Mirror (dir. Harry Keller, 1958). Richard Egan stars as Jim Burton, a commercial artist and, since the death of his daughter, a deeply invested alcoholic. Though the movie never mentions Alcoholics Anonymous, the story is more or less a version of how that group began: with Burton and Bill Tobin (Arthur O’Connell) helping each other and, later, others. Julie London is Ellen Burton, a long-suffering and infinitely patient wife (and wage-earner); Walter Matthau is a doctor skeptical about what Jim’s chances of success. Strong atmospherics: real streets and bars, and what looks like a real and really grim apartment. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Man on a Tightrope (dir. Elia Kazan, 1953). “It’s one of two things: it’s the end for us, or it’s the beginning”: so says a circus master in Communist Czechoslovakia as he schemes his troupe’s way to freedom. Fredric March is Karel Černík, the circus master; Gloria Grahame is his indolent wife; and many circus folk play versions of themselves. Things sometimes get a little too contrived, a little too corny, but the fear and suspicion that permeate life in a police state are chillingly on display, and the grim black-and-white cinematography makes this movie feel unmistakably European, or at least not American. With Paul Hartman (Mayberry’s Emmett Clark), Pat Henning (Kayo Dugan of On the Waterfront) Adolphe Menjou, and Terry Moore (Marie of Come Back, Little Sheba). ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Gentlemen’s Agreement (dir. Elia Kazan, 1947). Philip Green (Gregory Peck), a writer asked to write an magazine exposé of antisemitism in America, decides that the only way to do so is to pretend he’s Jewish and experience discrimination firsthand — which he does, though it’s always of a genteel, mannerly variety. The movie leaves antisemitism as something to be fought with individual acts of conscience: speaking up when someone says something offensive, making a call to ensure that a landlord or employer doesn’t discriminate. Running through the movie is a love story that joins — it’s no spoiler — Peck and Dorothy McGuire, but I think Celeste Holm’s witty Anne Dettrey would be a much more interesting partner. Screenplay by Moss Hart, and also starring John Garfield, June Havoc, Anne Revere, a young Dean Stockwell, and Jane Wyatt. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Greatest Night in Pop (dir. Bao Nguyen, 2024). Well, maybe — I think that the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is a worthy contender. But this documentary is about a night, literally, the one during which “We Are the World” was recorded, a night stretching into the small hours of the morning. The song has never impressed me (“We’re saving our own lives”?), and the documentary is more than a bit self-congratulatory, but the details of how the project came together are endlessly fascinating. For instance: Stevie Wonder taught a helpless Bob Dylan how to sing his line, and Prince wrote a song about his non-participation: “Hello.” ★★★★ (N)

*

The Whole Gritty City (dir. Richard Barber and Andre Lambertson, 2013). Made in New Orleans: a documentary following the directors and student-musicians of three marching bands as they prepare for Mardi Gras. There’s childhood humor — two boys arguing about whether one of them can march for 29,000 hours; adolescent determination — a drum major giving his all for a dead teacher (killed in a drive-by shooting); and adult sorrow — a teacher, perhaps forty, who is now the only surviving member of a circle of eight friends: “I’m the last one living.” Running through the movie is a dedication to the joy of music despite all odds. But as you watch, you wonder what might be about to happen every time a car comes down the street. ★★★★ (DVD)

[I borrowed a DVD from a library, but the movie can be found onYouTube, free with ads.]

*

Island of Doomed Men (dir. Charles Barton, 1940). Peter Lorre plays a crazy man: Stephen Danel, the sadistic, ethnically ambiguous, vaguely gay owner of Dead Man’s Island, who purportedly gives jobs to paroled cons but in truth uses them as slave labor. Danel and his wife Lorraine (Rochelle Hudson) live on the island, in a house surrounded by an electric fence — Lorraine too is a prisoner. Things begin to change when “John Smith” (Robert Wilcox) shows up: he’s a wrongfully convicted, now paroled undercover agent (Agent 64) whose recommenced assignment is to smash Danel’s operation. Nagging question: If the authorities already know what Danel is up to, why send one person to infiltrate the island to begin with? ★★ (YT)

*

The Miami Story (dir. Fred F. Sears, 1954). The improbable premise: when Miami is overrun with mob activity, city council members tap a former gangster (Barry Sullivan) to clean things up by pretending to move in on the established rackets. While so doing, our hero also finds time to pursue a romance with a crime boss’s girlfriend’s sister (Beverly Garland, later of My Three Sons). Sullivan gets top billing, but it’s Luther Adler’s movie: as the head of the rackets, he is all brutality, with a girlfriend (Adele Jergens) who’s equally tough. A crime story told in the always appealing semi-documentary style, complete with an introductory talk by a Florida senator. ★★★ (YT)

*

Main Street After Dark (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1945). A blue star hangs in the window, a mother knits, and a telegram arrives, with the news that a son is coming home — but from prison, not from the war. And when that mother listens to the police radio as she knits, you know you’re in for a darkly funny movie. This one’s about a small-time crime family, led by Ma Dibson (Selena Royle), preying on servicemen in a city’s nightspots. Edward Arnold is a delight as a police lieutenant who, like Porfiry Petrovich, is always showing up; Dan Duryea as Posey Dibson (Posey!) and Audrey Totter as Jessie Belle Dibson are two of Ma’s surly minions. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Houston Story (dir. William Castle, 1956). They were never going to run out of cities: here the crime is a plot to siphon oil from wells and sell it to shady distributors. We wanted to watch this one for Edward Arnold. and his performance as a second-tier crime boss satisfies — shifty eyes, sudden outbursts. But much of this movie remained a muddle, with a leading man and antagonist (Gene Barry and Paul Richards) who looked too damn similar. Adding value: Barbara Hale as a platinum-blonde singing “Put the Blame on Mame.” ★★ (YT)

*

The Barber of Little Rock (dir. John Hoffman and Christine Turner, 2023). A short Oscar-nominated documentary about the good works of Arlo Washington, a young Black Little Rock barber who created a barber school and People Trust, a 501c3 financial institution making small loans to community members. It is the only financial institution on its side of the interstate that divides the city, a point that makes the filmmakers’ larger point about the wealth gap between Black and white Americans. I was moved by the scenes in which residents explain their need for a loan and what what they hope to accomplish with the money. And then we see a mechanic working in his own shop, a beautician walking into her own salon. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Ministry of Fear (dir. Fritz Lang, 1944). From a Graham Greene novel, starring Ray Milland as a man who stops by a village fête, walks away with a cake that was meant for someone else, and finds himself in big trouble. An excellent noirish thriller, with a séance, spies, a great scene on a train, and strong overtones of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. This film makes conspicuous use of doors — one after another, each opening onto new trouble. My favorite moments: the man crumbling cake, Martha Penteel’s doorbell, light shining through a bullet hole. (These sentences mostly borrowed from a 2017 post.) ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is the work of Lars G. Doubleday, who might be a Bob and Ray character if he were not, in truth, Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber. I thought at first that I was in for another Saturday debacle. See 1-D, five letters, “Confound.” But this puzzle proved to be doable and highly enjoyable.

My starting point was 6-D, seven letters, “Authorities on diamonds,” which gave me most of 6-A, eight letters, “In defiance of warnings, say,” and 18-A, eight letters, “Cooperate.” And between 6-A and 18-A, sat 16-A, eight letters, “Curser of Capulets and Montagues.” My reading of another poet, Geoffrey Hill, gave me 40-A, eight letters, “Holy Week candle-snuffing service.” I took a guess at 4-D, fifteen letters, “Pitch dismissal,” and it turned out to be right. And the parts of the puzzle fell into place, with the southwest corner bringing a final bit of difficulty. A happy solving experience.

Clues I especially liked: 24-A, four letters, “Tip of Italy,” a nice way to make a piece of crosswordese more interesting. 30-A, eight letters, “Frequent I Love Lucy sight.” 55-A, eight letters, “Light pop style.” And for sheer over-the-top idiosyncrasy, 10-D, fifteen letters, “Koi pond filler and filter.” If you say so.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.