Another Lassie–MTM connection

[Florence Lake as Martha Dudley. Click for a larger view.]

I somehow discovered that Florence Lake played Martha Dudley in the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Lou’s First Date” (November 3, 1973). A mix-up pairs her with Mr. Grant for a broadcasters’ dinner.

“Who is Florence Lake?” you may ask. None other than the actor who played Jenny, the Calverton telephone operator on the television series Lassie. Lake appeared in eighteen Lassie episodes between 1954 and 1962 and was the only cast member to serve for the duration of the show’s Calverton years. Her off-screen character was spoken to in many, many more episodes: “Hello, Jenny? This is Ruth. Would you ring Doc Weaver?” Jenny’s most prominent Lassie appearances: “Party Line” (December 23, 1956) and “The Phone Hog” (April 3, 1960).

[Florence Lake and, of course, Lassie, in “Party Line.” Click for a larger view.]

Florence Lake started in pictures in 1929. Her last appearance was in television’s Most Wanted in 1977. Here’s her IMDb page. Two fun facts via IMDb: Lake appeared with Ed Asner (who played Lou Grant) in The Girl Most Likely to ..., a 1973 made-for-TV movie, and

In a mid-70s interview, Mary Tyler Moore remembered the cast becoming exasperated with Florence Lake. It seems she didn’t see the character as elderly and feeble as written. Moore said Valerie Harper took special time with Ms. Lake to get the performance needed from her.

“Why another Lassie-MTM connection?” you may ask. Because Ted Knight (Ted Baxter) appeared as a traveling entertainer and World’s Greatest Ventriloquist in an episode of Lassie. And the dog-puppet from that episode showed up in a Mary Tyler Moore episode.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

[I loved Lassie in boyhood and love Lassie now. Straight outta Calverton.]

Ten movies, two seasons

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

The Devil Doll (dir. Tod Browning, 1936). An extraordinarily well-made movie from the director of Dracula and Freaks. The premise is simple and bizarre: Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore), a banker wrongfully convicted of murder and robbery, escapes from prison along with a scientist who created a process to shrink human beings (and thus reduce the dangers of overpopulation). When the scientist dies, his widow (Rafaela Ottiano) and Lavond join forces, creating miniature humans to kill the men who framed Lavond. The special effects are spectacularly good, as is Barrymore’s work in his disguise as Madame Mandilip. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Corpse Vanishes (dir. Wallace Fox, 1942). A plucky society columnist (Luana Walters) gets to the bottom of the evil machinations of Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi), who knocks out brides and uses their precious bodily fluids to keep his wife from aging. What makes the movie worth watching: Dr. Lorenz’s male assistants, Frank Moran of the Preston Sturges world and Angelo Rossitto of Freaks. Also adding value: an unintentionally hilarious scene of theft. So bad, so good, and fit for SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre. ★★ (TCM)

*

Underground (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1941). Even if they say so themselves, Warner Bros. did lead the American movie industry’s opposition to Nazism and fascism. Underground is a Warner Bros. B-movie (no big stars) about German anti-Nazi radio broadcasts, sibling conflict, and the state’s brutalization of its citizens. It’s suspenseful and unflinching, always. This movie makes me wonder how many genuinely great movies from the 1940s are still unknown to me. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Being Mary Tyler Moore (dir. James Adolphus, 2023). A documentary that draws upon interviews, home videos, television and film clips, and recollections of friends and collaborators. If you know Mary Tyler Moore mainly as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, you’ll be surprised (as I was) by how much work preceded and followed each of those roles. The home videos are especially revealing: in one, Moore, at home with friends and inebriated, topples onto a floor; in others, she seems determined to show how happy she was in her final marriage. In 2023, the debate about whether Moore was an enemy of feminism (represented here by Gloria Steinem) seems mistakenly sad: that she calls her boss “Mr. Grant” seems to me a marker of Minnesota nice, not subservience. ★★★★ (M)

*

In Which We Serve (dir. Noël Coward and David Lean, 1942). I’ve had this film on a to-watch list for years, and there it was, on Memorial Day: the story of the HMS Torrin, a WWII British Navy destroyer, its captain (Coward, and he’s convincing), and a handful of crew members, whose stories are told in flashbacks (sans voiceover narration) as the men drift in a life raft after the Torrin is hit by German bombers. The juxtapositions of past and present, peace and war, land and sea, are poignant and harrowing: there’s no looking away from the agony of battle here. And throughout we see men and women meeting the most difficult circumstances with an understated stoic courage. With Joyce Carey, Celia Johnson, Bernard Miles, John Mills, Kay Walsh, and many more. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Succession, fourth season (created by Jesse Armstrong, 2023). Lukas Mattson on the Roys: “”It’s basically just, like, money and gossip.” And Roman Roy: “We’re bullshit.” I agree, and I’m happy to be done with the arch looks, flip zingers, sibling rivalries, and the New York Times articles about the clothing in each episode. But I’ll grant that the election-night episode “America Decides” was enough to elicit something approaching post-traumatic stress. ★★ (M)

*

Somebody Somewhere, second season (created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, 2023). The season focuses on the joys and sorrows of friendship: as Fred (Murray Hill) plans his marriage and Joel (Jeff HIller) finds himself in a new relationship, Sam (Bridget Everett) begins to feel awkwardly alone. Happiest moment: “Gloria”; saddest: “Take your windbreaker and go”; most ineffable: the mention of love during the singing lesson. This show, so full of humanity, and so deserving of a much larger audience, has been renewed for a third season. Now there just needs to be fair compensation for those who will write it. ★★★★ (M)

*

L’Innocent (dir. Louis Garrel, 2022). A thriller with comic overtones and some wonderful blurring of the real and the fictive. Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), an acting teacher working with prison inmates, marries one of her students, Michel (Roschdy Zem), and upon his release, they set up a flower shop together. Sylvie’s son Abel (Garrel) doesn’t trust Michel and begins to shadow him with the help of his friend Clémence (Noémie Merlant). Complications ensue, and Abel and Clémence are drawn into a criminal scheme that requires them to do a bit of acting themselves. The spirit of Pedro Almodóvar seems to preside over the action, with strong touches of Diva, Next Stop Wonderland, and Vertigo. ★★★★ (CC)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Masc feature

No Ordinary Man (dir. Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, 2020). The life of Billy Tipton (1914–1989), jazz musician, transman, husband, father. I remember when Billy Tipton’s story first made the news, as a matter of a musician who went undercover, so to speak, in order to make a living in music. The truth was another matter, as this documentary makes clear. In it transmen and -women speak, eloquently, about identity and categorization, but I wish there more about Billy Tipton’s life and music, and less of interviewees playing him in scripted scenes. ★★★ (CC)

*

Three from the Criterion Channel’s Method Acting feature

The Naked Spur (dir. Anthony Mann, 1953). It’s 1868, and Jimmy Stewart is Howard Kemp, a bounty hunter in the Rocky Mountains. With the help of a prospector (Millard Mitchell) and an ex-cavalryman and rapist (Ralph Meeker, who looks and talks as if he stepped out of, say, Easy Rider ), Kemp finds Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan), who killed a marshal back in Kansas, and Ben’s traveling companion (Janet Leigh), the daughter of Ben’s dead bank-robber friend. Strong overtones of the Odyssey, Moby-Dick, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Vandergroat: “The longer we ride, the more things that can happen.” ★★★★ (CC)

The Goddess (dir. John Cromwell, 1958). Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay is loosely based on — or is it cruelly appropriative of? — the life of Marilyn Monroe. Kim Stanley, who did most of her work on the stage, is the goddess, beginning her life as Emily Ann Faulkner, the child of a mother who gives her away to relatives; two dysfunctional marriages later, Emily becomes the Hollywood star Rita Shawn, drinking, taking pills, and hopelessly dependent on a Nurse Ratched-like assistant who calls Rita “Baby.” The acting is fine (John Power and Lloyd Bridges as Emily’s wildly different husbands are especially good), but the script is overwrought. I’m surprised to see that I know Kim Stanley’s work in film in two ways: she starred in Séance on a Wet Afternoon and was the voice of the adult Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. ★★★

Rachel, Rachel (dir. Paul Newman, 1968). Joanne Woodward is Rachel Cameron, a thirty-something second-grade teacher, painfully self-conscious and socially averse, living with her mother (is that her voice calling in the title?) above the funeral home that the late Mr. Cameron once owned. Into Rachel’s life comes Nick Kazlik (James Olson), a high-school classmate, now a high-school teacher in New York City, visiting his folks for the summer and looking for “some action.” What follows is a complicated meeting of innocence and experience, with all the awkwardness and misunderstanding and exhilaration that such a meeting might yield. And to think that Joanne Woodward didn’t receive the Academy Award for this performance. ★★★★ (CC)

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I let a song get into my head

I caught myself singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” the other night. How did that happen?

We were having a tuna casserole. I thought casserole — cream of mushroom soup — midwest — Minnesota — The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

And that’s how I found myself singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”

A somewhat related post
“Monkey, monkey, underpants”

Mary’s and Rhoda’s apartments

Computer-modeled tours of Mary Richards’s and Rhoda Morgenstern’s apartments. The presence of elements never seen on The Mary Tyler Moore Show itself — bathrooms, a fourth wall — makes me want to call the Epistemology Help Line.

Thanks, Steven.

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All OCA MTM posts (Pinboard) : I envy Mary Richards

Lassie and Ted

TV intertextuality: Ted Knight appeared as Mr. Ventrilo, a traveling entertainer, in a 1959 episode of Lassie. Mr. Ventrilo’s puppet dog reappeared on the hand of a ventriloquizing Ted Baxter in a 1973 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

But wait, there’s more. From the MTM episode “The Ted and Georgette Show” (January 22, 1977). Georgette has some bad news to tell:

Ted: “Nothing you could say to me could affect my performance out there.”

Georgette: “That’s not true. Remember the time Murray told you, just before the news, that Lassie was three different dogs? And you had to have ice pressed against the back of your neck before you could go out?”

In Mr. Ventrilo’s time, Lassie was indeed three dogs. From The New York Times:

There was the main Lassie, of course. But there was also the stand-in used in rehearsals, and a stunt double and the fighter dog (the dog who rough-housed with the main Lassie when the script called for a fight scene).

One more Lassie–MTM connection: Cloris Leachman, who played Phyllis Lindstrom, was the original Ruth Martin. Jon Provost, who played Timmy Martin: “Cloris did not feel particularly challenged by the role.”

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[An Oxford comma would make it clearer that the Times sentence is about four dogs, one of them not Lassie.]

A merger in Minneapolis

It’s the wine-whine merger. From the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “The System” (January 11, 1975). Mary wonders why Lou bets on football games:

“I just wondered why you put yourself through this agony week after wheek.”

Odd to find a /hwēk/ where there’s no wh. I think it’s meant to add emphasis.

You can hear the merger here.

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You and Your Vocabulary

From the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Mary Richards: Producer” (January 4, 1975). Ted (Ted Knight) is increasing his vocabulary. Murray (Gavin MacLeod) is skeptical.

Ted: “Say, the newsroom is certainly redolent of coffee this morning.”

Murray: “It’s what?”

Ted Baxter: “And you call yourself a writer? Redolent, redolent of coffee. It means it smells.”

Mary: “Ted, what’s the book?”

Ted: “You and Your Vocabulary. I’m planning to work in a few words to every newscast to give it a little class. What do you think of the idea, Mur?”

Murray: “I think it’s redolent, Ted.”

Murray refuses to work any of Ted’s vocabulary words into his copy. But that night, on the news:

Ted: “Monsignor Walter O’Rourke is dead at eighty-seven. Until his retirement in 1958, Monsignor O’Rourke served the Twin Cities diocese, where he was much beloved. Let me just say this: I didn’t know the monsignor personally, but I’ll bet you he was never lethargic, redolent, bellicose, or lascivious.”

From the Garner’s Modern English Usage essay on sesquipedality : “Build your vocabulary to make yourself a better reader; choose simple words whenever possible to make yourself a better writer.”

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The world and the corner

From the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Not a Christmas Story” (November 9, 1974). Murray (Gavin MacLeod) has written a new opening for Ted (Ted Knight):

“Good evening. This is Ted Baxter, with news from around the world and around the corner.“

But Ted thinks it would be better the other way around:

“Good evening. This is Ted Baxter, with news from around the corner and around the world.“

And, of course, an argument follows. Perhaps the show’s writers themselves had disagreed about how the line should go.

Who do you think has it right — Murray, or Ted? Which opening sounds better to you, and why? Anyone teaching a writing class: you might bring this question in and ask your students which and why.

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[The episode is at YouTube. The first scene has the argument, but the line is a subject of discussion as the episode continues.]

Yellow Ticonderogas

Eberhard Faber Mongols were on the job in the WJM newsroom during the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. After that, it’s Dixon Ticonderogas and no-name pencils. A great loss for Mongol fans.

Perhaps one of the writers was using a Ticonderoga when working on the episode “Mary Richards and the Incredible Plant Lady” (March 3, 1973). The premise: Rhoda (Valerie Harper) has borrowed money from Mary to open a plant shop, and she’s taking her time about paying back. The reason: she’s secretly using her earnings to buy Mary a new car, a yellow Mustang convertible. Rhoda knows that Mary has had her eye on a Mustang. But it turns out — uh-oh — that Mary hates yellow. She and Rhoda and Georgette (Georgia Engel) sit in the newly purchased car in the dealer’s showroom:

Georgette: “Yellow’s a lovely color, Mary. It’s the color of the sun, and wheat fields.”

Mary: “Yeah.”

Rhoda: “Ticonderoga pencils.”

Georgette: “And daffodils, and lemons — whoops, I shouldn’t have said that.”

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Ted and Suzy and Fluffy

In the 1950s, Ted Knight was a children’s television host, adept with puppets and ventriloquism. That work must have brought him to the attention of the producers of Lassie, where he appeared in a single episode as Mr. Ventrilo, a traveling entertainer and The World’s Greatest Ventriloquist. His dog-puppet is named Suzy. Lassie thinks she is real.

[Ted Knight as Mr. Ventrilo, with Suzy and Lassie. From the Lassie episode “The Puppet,” March 29, 1959. Click for a larger view.]

For a Lassie fan (like me, from childhood’s hour), the appearance of Mr. Ventrilo’s dog-puppet (now named Fluffy) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show is a wonderful moment of TV intertextuality.

[Ted Knight as Ted Baxter, with Fluffy and Mary Tyler Moore. From the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Murray Faces Life,” February 10, 1973.]

There’s no explanation of why Ted Baxter has a dog-puppet in his apartment. But why not? Ted says that it cheers up the stewardesses (sic ) in his apartment building when they’re feeling down.

You can find both episodes at YouTube: Lassie, TMTMS.

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[Almost every post now is a respite from current events.]

Two seasons, ten movies

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

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, seasons six and seven, 1975–1977).

Six: Phyllis has disappeared, gone to San Francisco, and she misses Lars (he’s dead, as you would only know from watching the spinoff Phyllis). Meta: in the season’s second episode, Mary comments on how predictable every element in her life is (including all the newsroom bits), and she packs up and moves to a larger (and weird, and ugly) apartment, where Penny Marshall shows up as a neighbor and John Ritter pops in as a newly ordained minister, performing a wedding in tennis wear. Chuckles the Clown dies at the hands, so to speak, of an elephant, and Robbie Rist (cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch ) appears as a cute kid. ★★★ (H)

Seven: I think the writers were beginning to run out of good ideas: Johnny Carson (really?) shows up (sort of) for a party; Ted and Georgette host a talk show; Mary dates Murray’s father (Lew Ayres!); Lou, Murray, and Ted imagine what it would be like to be married to Mary; Mary dates Lou. There’s even an episode full of entertainment, à la The Dick Van Dyke Show, with Georgette dancing, Ted ventriloquizing, and Mary singing a hilariously prim “One for My Baby.” Sexism in the office seems to worsen, with Lou as the worst offender. The final episode doesn’t make everything right, but it sure makes the tears fall. ★★★ (H)

*

Mary and Rhoda (dir. Barnet Kellman, 2000). Mary (now widowed) and Rhoda (twice divorced) meet in Manhattan after being out of touch for years. Each is an older woman struggling to find a spot in the working world (Mary as a television producer, Rhoda as a photographer); each has a daughter in college in the city (Mary, Rose; Rhoda, Meredith). But the chemistry that made TMTMS a joy is missing, and it’s painful to see Moore’s face so distorted by cosmetic surgery. Worst scene: when Mary’s compassionate report about a young killer and his family airs on a bar’s TV, Mary and Rhoda stand by as the patrons (who don’t know Mary or that she produced the episode) gather round, watch in silence, and applaud — and the bartender tears up. ★★ (YT)

*

The Pretender (dir. W. Lee Wilder, 1947). Albert Dekker plays Kenneth Holden, a not-so-suave financial manager borrowing from the trust of Claire Worthington (Catherine Craig), the woman he’s scheming to marry. When Claire announces her plans to marry another man, Holden arranges with a go-between for a hit man to kill the guy: the killer will know his target by seeing an engagement photo in the paper. When Claire drops her fiancé for Holden, and his picture appears in the paper, it’s trouble, because the go-between has been shot to death, and Holden, with no way to contact the unknown hit man, now fears for his life. Directed by Billy Wilder’s brother, this movie is truly, deeply weird in plotting and execution (no pun intended), partly redeemed by Paul Dessau’s music (which includes a nearly atonal pianist playing in a nightclub) and John Alton’s cinematography. ★★★ (YT)

*

The French Dispatch (dir. Wes Anderson, 2021). An homage to The New Yorker Past, in the form of several stories from The French Dispatch, published in Ennui-sur-Blasé as a magazine supplement to a newspaper, the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. It’s a highly inventive movie, with all kinds of clever visual effects and an outstanding cast. But it’s all surface, surface after surface, none of it adding up to very much. I expected to love this movie but was enormously disappointed. ★★ (HBO)

*

The Lost Weekend (dir. Billy Wilder, 1945). When I last saw it, in 2016, I wrote a three-sentence review. This time around I thought of looking for Lubitsch touches, and I think I found them: in the initial tracking shot, ending with a bottle hanging on a rope outside an apartment window; in the singer-pianist at Harry and Joe’s (played by Harry Barris, who wrote “I Surrender, Dear,” among other songs); and in the joke about Yom Kippur and St. Patrick’s Day. Ray Milland gives a great performance as Don Birnam, by turns suave and desperate, capable of any deception that will give him the chance to be alone and drink. The other standout is Doris Dowling as Gloria, barfly, escort, and slang specialist. ★★★★ (TCM)


*

When the Clock Strikes (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1961). A man is about to be executed for a crime he may not have committed. A witness who testified against him (James Brown) and the convicted man’s wife (Merry Anders) are at a nearby lodge, awaiting the execution. But they’re doing more than watching and waiting: they’re trying to figure out how to get hold of $160,000 that the convicted man stashed away — but where? Often inert, but the pace quickens and the movie becomes more interesting toward the end. ★★ (YT)

[In 2022 money, $160,000 = $1,518.212.71.]

*

My Cousin Vinny (dir. Jonathan Lynn, 1992). Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci), a personal-injury lawyer, travels from Brooklyn to Wazoo City, Alabama, with his girlfriend Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) to defend two college kids, his cousin (Ralph Macchio) and his cousin’s friend (Mitchell Whitefield), both charged with murder in a case of mistaken identity. Fred Gwynne appears in his last role as a judge who may or may not figure out that Vinny has been telling lies about his legal background. Everything about this movie is funny and wonderful, from the diner menu to Vinny’s courtroom apparel to the search for a quiet place to sleep to Mona Lisa’s turn on the witness stand. My favorite line: “Yeah yeah yeah,” because that’s exactly how we said it in Brooklyn. ★★★★ (HBO)

[Bonus: spot the copy of The Elements of Style (third edition) in the judge’s chambers.]

*

People Will Talk (dir. Joseph l. Mankiewicz, 1951). It’s a strange movie, a cross between serious commentary on current events (McCarthyism) and light romantic comedy, and it’s all about secrets. Dr. Noah Praetorius (Cary Grant) has one: how was he earning a living before teaching at a medical school? Shunderson, just Shunderson (Finlay Currie) has one: why is he — a servant? a friend? — always following Dr. Praetorious around? Deborah, just Deborah (Jeanne Crain) has one: why has she fainted while sitting in on an anatomy class? Secrets left unexplained: how they got the word gynecologist past the censors, and whether Hume Cronyn, the little investigator of the story, is meant to resemble Roy Cohn. ‌★★★ (CC)

*

Three from Republic Pictures

Strangers in the Night (dir. Anthony Mann, 1944). It’s from Republic Pictures, so it’s low-budget effort, but it’s by Anthony Mann, so let’s give it a try. It’s an ultra-bizarre story, with an old woman, Hilda Blake (Helen Thimig); her paid companion Ivy Miller (Edith Barrett); a modern woman of medicine, Dr. Leslie Ross (Virginia Grey); and a Marine back from war, Johnny Meadows (William Terry). And watching over them all, a portrait of Mrs. Blake’s daughter Rosemary, who inscribed a copy of A Shropshire Lad that found its way to Johnny overseas. I can’t say more without giving away the whole thing, but it’s sure worth fifty-six minutes of your time. ★★★★ (YT)

[A discovery after watching: Philip MacDonald, who wrote the story, was a screenwriter for Rebecca.]

Hoodlum Empire (dir. Joseph Kane, 1952). War veteran Joe Gray (John Russell) and a couple of army pals run a happy little gas station and café, with just one problem: Joe has an unsavory backstory, with a mobster uncle (Luther Adler) and his associates, and they’re now trying to pin their racketeering on Joe. Brian Donlevy, Claire Trevor, Forrest Tucker, and Grant Withers are among the supporting players in this modest but absorbing Republic Pictures effort. Adding interest: the story is told largely in flashbacks from different characters’ perspectives. Yet another movie in which mobster talk and tactics make me think of a defeated former president. ★★★ (YT)

Storm Over Lisbon (dir. George Sherman, 1944). It’s a Republic foray into Casablanca territory, with a white-jacketed nightclub owner, Deresco (Erich von Stroheim), an intelligence-carrying American agent, John (Richard Arlen), and a beautiful dancer, Maritza (Vera Hruba Ralston, who can neither dance nor act well). Republic must have gone all out with this one: the sets are impressively elaborate. But the plot seems like the imaginings of kids: the dancer held prisoner in a nightclub, the agent hiding out in a wine cellar, the dancer and agent escaping by running off the nightclub floor. My favorite moment: everyone suddenly — and I do mean suddenly —materializes in the cellar with Maritza and John: Deresco and associates, police, and the streetsingers who have strolled through scene after scene. ★★ (YT)

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Nancy and Sluggo and Ted

From The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “Just Around the Corner” (October 28, 1972). Mary and Murray (Gavin MacLeod) have been talking about newspapers. Ted (Ted Knight) jumps in:

“Oh [clears throat ], I don’t care much for them myself.”

Murray: “Ah, he’s very blasé now, but you shoulda seen him run and grab the paper when he heard Nancy and Sluggo broke up.”

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[Yes, Ernie Bushmiller described his readers as “the gum chewers.” But Nancy is not for dopes alone. I’ve seen nothing more about Ted and Nancy, but a later episode identifies him as a Three Stooges fan.]

A sit-com trio

Most of the one-off characters in The Mary Tyler Moore Show are played by actors who are, for me at least, unrecognizable. But there are exceptions. Three familiar faces appear in the episode “His Two Right Arms” (March 4, 1972).

[Bill Daily as Pete Peterson, a hapless city councilperson.]

[Isabel Sanford as Mrs. Wilson, mother of Peterson’s aide.]

[Davis Roberts as a citizen asking a question.]

Daily and Sanford should be immediately recognizable to anyone of a certain age who’s spent time in front of a television. Roberts might be less recognizable: he appeared in Sanford and Son as Dr. Caldwell, the cigarette-smoking “doctor” who works in the post office. Catchphrase: “I don’t know.”

Familiar faces in new arrangements: one of the pleasures of television.

Seven movies, five seasons

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

Big House, U.S.A. (dir. Howard W. Koch, 1955). Wide open spaces (Royal Gorge, Colorado) and a claustrophobic cell are the settings for a tale of two crimes: a kidnapping and a jailbreak. Ralph Meeker plays the Iceman, whose ransom plot gone wrong lands him in a cell with a pimp (Lon Chaney Jr.), a “pervert” (Charles Bronson, reading muscle magazines), a psychokiller (William Talman), and a criminal mastermind (Broderick Crawford). Reed Hadley is the FBI man determined to bring the Iceman and company to justice. Several scenes of brutal violence and a unexpected plot twist add grimness and suspense to the proceedings. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Turning Point (dir. William Dieterle, 1952). A prosecutor (Edmond O’Brien) enlists a newspaper reporter (William Holden) in an effort to bring a businessman/crime boss (Ed Begley) to justice. Personal relationships complicate things: the reporter is attracted to the prosecutor’s significant other (Alexis Smith), and the prosecutor’s cop father (Tom Tully) might not be on the right side of the law. Many Los Angeles locations, including Angels Flight, and a long, harrowing scene with a hit man at the Olympic Auditorium. Any similarities between the businessman/crime boss and any other businessman/crime boss are purely coincidental. ★★★★ (YT)

*

[Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit in Parallel Mothers. From the film’s website. The shirt says “We Should All Be Feminists.”]

Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2021). It’s an extraordinary movie, and to my mind the best Almodóvar ever, about motherhood, friendship, trust, betrayal, secrets, lies, memory, truth, and documentation. Almodóvar joins the emotional intensity of Douglas Sirk’s “women’s pictures” to an exploration of Spain’s brutal fascist past. It’s a women’s picture indeed, with just one significant male character (Israel Elejalde), and Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Rossy de Palma, and Julieta Serrano front and center. The final scene moved me to tears, and I can only imagine the effect on a Spanish audience. ★★★★ (T)

*

Cornered (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1945). As confusing a movie as I think I’ve ever seen — it makes The Big Sleep seem coherent. Dick Powell plays a Canadian pilot and former POW trying to track down the killer of his wife, a member of the French Resistance. A lead takes him to Buenos Aires, where all kinds of deception and double-crossing take place. Walter Slezak does good work as a man in a white suit and Panama hat (Sidney Greenstreet-esque). At some point I gave up on trying to follow the plot and settled for the Harry J. Wild’s cinematography: shadows and more shadows. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Woman on Pier 13 (dir. Robert Stevenson, 1949). It might be called an anti-Communist film noir (first titled I Married a Communist ). Robert Ryan plays Brad Collins, a just-married executive whose youthful dalliance with Commie Christine Norman (Janis Carter) and the Party comes back to haunt him. The plot is preposterous, with Thomas Gomez and William Talman adding some gangster flavor. What really adds some value: Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography. ★★ (TCM)

*

Dark Days (dir. Marc Singer, 2000). A black-and-white documentary about a loose community of people living underground in a stretch of a Manhattan railroad tunnel. They go to extraordinary lengths to construct and maintain their houses, built with salvaged plywood, salvaged sheet metal, salvaged doors, and salvaged everything else. They light their living spaces with borrowed electricity, cook on hot plates and over open fires, scavenge the city’s garbage cans and dumpsters, and devote considerable attention to personal cleanliness, sweeping out spaces, showering under a broken water pipe, shaving with an electric hair trimmer and a piece from a broken mirror. Drug abuse (crack) and horrific backstories abound, and it would all be unbearable save for the film’s last minutes. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Stations of the Elevated (dir. Manfred Kircheimer, 1981). Forty-four minutes of (mostly) graffiti on trains, shot outdoors, in brilliant sunlight, with many great glimpses of whole cars painted by LEE, SLAVE, and other artists. Didactic juxtapositions of trains and billboards pose a question about urban blight: is it exuberant youthful self-expression, or hyper-realist images selling alcohol, cigarettes, and suntan lotion? There’s too much randomness in the movie: shots of kids, neighborhoods, green areas, and Attica State (I think), with no clear sequencing. Music by Aretha Franklin (“Amazing Grace,” briefly) and Charles Mingus, with no identification or pieces or musicians. ★★★ (CC)

*

Five seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, 1970–1975)

One: Escape to a pandemic-free world of manual typewriters, tiny television sets, shag carpeting, and Scotch in the boss’s desk drawer. The writing is sharp, with almost every line still landing, in Mary’s apartment and in the third-tier newsroom. And such vividly drawn personalities: Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman), Lou Grant (Ed Asner), Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), and Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod). And Mary Richards, who is such a goody-goody: when she does something that’s plain wrong, like telling Rhoda that an open position at WJM-TV is already filled, it’s utterly shocking — and that doesn’t happen until season two. ★★★★ (H)

Two: Something that surprised both Elaine and me: Lars and Phyllis Lindstrom don’t own the house they and Mary and Rhoda live in. The Lindstroms are building managers. Who knew? Another surprise in season two: an episode that turns out to be about anti-Semitism. Its title: “Some of My Best Friends Are Rhoda.” ★★★★ (H)

Three: Sex finally enters the picture, with a date asking Mary if he can spend the night (no), Mary’s parents Dottie and Walter (Nanette Fabrey and Bill Quinn), who have relocated and live just around the corner, sussing out that Mary got home from a date at 8:27 in the morning, and both Mary and Dottie responding to Walter’s reminder: “Don’t forget to take your pill.” Georgette Franklin (Georgia Engel) enters the story, with Mary steering her to a more equal relationship with Ted. Rhoda wins a beauty contest at her department store, a brief respite before she returns to faux-frump. A gay character appears, briefly (Rhoda even uses the word gay ), and there are Nixon and Agnew jokes: the times were changing. ★★★★ (H)

Four: Mary has a new shorter hairstyle; her parents are never mentioned; and her apartment now has a bookcase, plant shelves, a larger writing desk, and a cute little table for two by the window. Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) enters the story line and bags her first partner (Phyllis’s husband Lars) in the season’s first episode. Lou and Edie separate; Ted plagiarizes Mary’s creative-writing assignment; Henry Winkler shows up briefly as Rhoda’s fired co-worker; Rhoda disappears from the series; and Pete, a frequent figurant (J. Benjamin Chulay) gets a chance to speak a line. ★★★★ (H)

Five: With Rhoda gone (and we hear nothing about her until an episode in which Mary heads off to the wedding in New York), the series focuses almost entirely on the people of the workplace. Lou begins a relationship with an “experienced” lounge singer; Murray toys with the possibility of an affair; Sue Ann fends off an incursion by an All About Eve-style stand-in; and Mary becomes more assertive at work and at home: “Phyllis, you’re making me nauseous.” But the series weakens, with stunt episodes (Lou moving into Rhoda’s empty apartment) and endless recyclings of the same scenarios: Mary walking into Lou’s office; Lou talking to Mary and Murray while Ted begs to be included; people knocking on Mary’s door at all hours to talk about their problems. Best episodes: “Not a Christmas Story,” in which a grumpy newsroom has Christmas dinner in November on Sue Ann’s set, and “Ted Baxter’s Famous Broadcasters School,” which approaches the surrealism of Seinfeld. ★★★ (H)

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WJM Mongols

It’s always a treat to see an Eberhard Faber Mongol on camera. These screenshots are from the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The first two: from “Second Story Story” (January 23, 1971). The last two: from “Smokey the Bear Wants You” (February 27, 1971). Pretty strong evidence that the WJM newsroom was a Mongol newsroom, at least for one season.

[Mary Richards (Moore) has a Mongol. Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) doesn’t. “I never write anything,” he brags in season two..]

[Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) has a Mongol.]

[Lou Grant (Ed Asner) has a Mongol.]

Elaine and I began to wonder whether the newsroom had more than one pencil. Was WJM an a Mongol newsroom? The next screenshot answers that question.

[Click any image for a larger view.]

So they had at least two pencils.

Elaine: “They probably had a whole box.”

I’m not sure if the Mongol appears beyond the first season. Four episodes into season two, it’s nothing but Ticonderogas and no-names.

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Cloris Leachman (1926–2021)

The most abiding image: as Phyllis Lindstrom in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The most striking: as Christina Bailey, running down the highway in nothing but a trenchcoat in Kiss Me Deadly. The strangest: as Ruth Martin in Lassie, pre-June Lockhart. Jon Provost: “Cloris did not feel particularly challenged by the role.”

The New York Times has an obituary.

Domestic comedy

[We were watching The Dick Van Dyke Show, with Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) calling her husband “darling,” over and over and over.]

“Why doesn’t she just call him Rob?”

“For the same reason Sally is the typist.”

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[In the writers’ office, Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) is the one who types.]

Valerie Harper (1939-2019)

The actress Valerie Harper, best known as the character Rhoda Morgenstern in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, has died at the age of eighty. The New York Times has an obituary.

I like what Harper is quoted as saying about Rhoda: “Rhoda, like most of us, was a victorious loser.”

Work advice

Roger Rosenblatt:

You are likely to work for some company or other, but keep a safe distance. There is no contempt as bitter as that felt by compromised minds for the independent ones that have joined them. Grin broadly at the water cooler, and go home to where you live.

“Speech for a High School Graduate,” Time (June 9, 1997).

Years ago I clipped these sentences and pasted them into a commonplace book. I think they offer good advice for any worker, despite the scornful tone (“compromised minds”), despite the possible absence of a water cooler. It’s necessary to have a life apart.

It just occurred to me that the economy of television storytelling often makes co-workers and social circle just about identical. Think, for instance, of The Mary Tyler Moore Show . You work all day, and who comes over to your house? Mr. Grant, or Ted. Life should be larger than television.

Glenn Gould on watching television

Glenn Gould, in a 1959 interview:

“I don’t approve of people who watch television, but I am one of them.”

Quoted in Kevin Bazzana’s Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003).

Bazzana reports that Gould pronounced himself a “vidiot.” One of his favorite broadcasts: The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

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