Spending a Good Evening at Black Rock

Bad Day at Black Rock is by no means a small movie. This 1955 MGM western, shot in color and Cinemascope, features three past Academy Award winners: Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, and star Spencer Tracy. Also prominent in the film are Oscar nominee Robert Ryan and two rising talents who would win future Oscars, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. Director John Sturges, a former editor, would go on from Bad Day at Black Rock to helm The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. The film’s wide-screen cinematography beautifully emphasizes the wide open spaces of the Lone Pine locales, and the mood is enhanced by André Previn’s haunting score.

  So this is hardly a modest indie. And yet it contains many of the elements I’ve learned to admire in B-movies. For one thing, it’s short and tight, coming in at a mere 81 minutes. Locations are limited; dialogue is clipped and to the point; tension is strong; bursts of action are prized. A mystery bubbles beneath the surface. There’s also, along with moments of dark humor, a subtle strand of meaningful social commentary. (I’m certain my former boss, Roger Corman, deeply admired this film, which captures many of his own aesthetic and social values.)

 Set in the California outback, circa 1945, the film begins with a passenger train arriving unexpectedly at a rural outpost. It disgorges a stocky man in a black suit and fedora, carrying a briefcase. The lounging locals are suspicious, especially when they notice the new arrival has only one arm. As played by Spencer Tracy, he is taciturn and unflappable, even when faced with a decided lack of hospitality. He’s hard-pressed to get a room at the one hotel, even though it clearly lacks for paying guests. When he introduces himself as John J. Macreedy of Los Angeles, and explains that he’s looking for a homesteader named Komoko, everyone becomes icier still. The cowpokes and ranchers hanging around the hotel lobby all seem to be sharing a secret. Down the town’s one main street, the sheriff (Jagger) appears to be drinking himself into oblivion. The veterinarian/undertaker (Brennan) lets slip that Komoko is no more.

 Managing with some difficulty to rent a Jeep, Macreedy heads over the hills toward the burnt-out mess that was once Komoko’s homestead. But the town’s unofficial boss, Reno Smith (Ryan) is not about to leave this intruder to his own devices. He sends the sadistic Coley Trimble (Borgnine) in pursuit, leading to a taut action sequence.

 It would be unfair of me to spell out precisely what happens next. Suffice it to say that eventually we learn what happened to Macreedy’s arm, why he’s so eager to find Komoko, and who among the townfolk eventually come to his aid. I’ll say also that this is covertly a story about the effects of racism and xenophobia, in the wake of World War II. And that, after all the anger and mistrust, the film ends in a moment of modest but genuine hope for a better future.

 The year 1955 was a great one for American dramas, many drawn from the Broadway stage, including Mr. Roberts, Picnic, and The Rose Tattoo. Two of James Dean’s three starring films, Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, were also released. Ironically, Borgnine’s supporting turn in Black Rock was eclipsed by his Oscar-winning good-guy role in Marty, which was also named Best Picture. Though Black Rock was nominated for its script, its direction, and Tracy’s performance, it went home empty-handed. Still, it will live on, in my memory banks and (since 2018) on the National Film Registry.

 

 

 

 

 

A Clue or Two

Video games are hardly my thing. Old-fashioned though it may be, I continue to be fond of board games, especially those that are clever or silly. From childhood onward, I’ve loved the Parker Brothers game, Clue. It was apparently devised in 1943 in Britain, where it was called Cluedo, and advertised as “The Great New Sherlock Holmes’ Game.” I don’t know the year of my parents’ set, the one I still have, but a note at the end of the instruction pamphlet politely tells the purchaser that “any question regarding the rules of ‘Clue’ will be answered gladly if a 3 cent stamp is enclosed.”

 Clue, for anyone who doesn’t know it, comes with a gameboard presenting the layout, room by room, of an English country manor. There’s a ballroom, a kitchen, a conservatory, a dining room, a billiard room, and a study, along with a few secret passageways. In my parents’ version, all these rooms are shown from above in sketch-like fashion: the billiard table once baffled me, and I decided it was a kind of very grand bathtub, with various round things floating in it. As a matter of fact there are no bathrooms at all in this stately home, nor bedrooms, for that matter. But we’re told that poor Mr. Boddy has been murdered. The job of the game players is to figure out (via the cards in players’ hands)  in which room the murder occurred, and with which weapon (a rope? a knife? a candlestick?) And of course, who was the murderer: the dashing Colonel Mustard? The glamorous Miss Scarlett? Wise old Professor Plum?  The dowager known as Mrs. Peacock? What I’ve discovered on the invaluable Wikipedia site is that the game has had many permutations over the years, with—for instance—England’s Reverend Green turning into a middle-aged businessman, then (in the most recent American editions) a handsome playboy. 

 I’ve been thinking about the game of Clue ever since I saw, this past summer, a presumably Broadway-bound production of a stage version that is both very silly and a great deal of fun, with lots of mistaken identity and an elaborate twist ending. This new play is an homage both to the game and to a movie that came out in 1985 and is still remembered fondly, at least by some. (Best in-joke in the play: as the characters are running madly from room to room in pursuit of the killer, someone says, “Who designed this house anyway? Answer: The Parker brothers.)

 That 1985 movie was blessed with a lively cast, including Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Michael McKean as Mr. Green, Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, and the toothsome Lesley Ann Warren as a no-better-than-she-should-be Miss Scarlett. (One of the film’s best mysteries: how does her VERY low-cut dress keep from falling down?) There’s also Tim Curry (he of the Rocky Horror Picture Show) as a complicated new character at the center of the plot. All seem to be having a grand old time spoofing the murder mystery films of yore. But there’s also a gimmick that sets Clue apart. Three different endings were filmed, each of which identifies a different murderer, with different methods and motives. Presumably, audiences were supposed to be so jazzed by the idea of seeing variant endings that they’d show up at the cinemaplex more than once. It didn’t happen, but when the film came out on video, all three endings were available to be seen. And some people now regard this crazy little flick as a cult classic. 

 

Stan Berkowitz, Bat Scribe

I first met Stan Berkowitz in the rather grubby offices of the UCLA Daily Bruin. I was a grad student who thought it would be fun to write about movies for my fellow collegians, while continuing to crank out serious literary papers for my profs. And Stan was my oh-so-amiable editor. Decades later we re-connected, when he showed up at one of my book signings. I found out then that—like me—he’d eventually gone Hollywood. In fact, he insisted that, post-college, he was a candidate for the same Roger Corman job that ultimately changed my life. As a graduate of UCLA’s film school Stan doubtless had far better credentials than I did for making B-movies, Corman-style. After all, he was a budding filmmaker, not an English major. Still, I was female, which doubtless helped me get Roger’s nod. Stan instead found work with Russ Meyer, the auteur behind such deathless sexploitation flicks as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!  Meyer, unlike Roger, didn’t want women doing challenging work in his offices or on his sets. He wanted them in front of the cameras, flaunting their “Guns of Navarone” bazooms, leaving his all-male crews in a permanent state of arousal.

 Following his Russ Meyer stint, Stan eventually found his way into television, He started out writing for crime dramas like T.J. Hooker, then eventually discovered his niche in the wonderful world of superheroes, crafting shows like Batman Beyond, The New Batman Adventures, Superman: The Animated Series, and Justice League Unlimited, ending up with two Emmys on his shelf. Now that he’s old enough to be considered an expert in his field, he’s decided to share his wisdom in a charming little volume called Beyond the Bat: Secrets of a Superhero Scribe.

 In thirteen lively essays, Stan bares his insights on how to succeed in Hollywood. He describes working with a closet racist, trying to create a show for Middle Eastern audiences that featured Muslim superheroes, and struggling to incorporate Old Testament stories into an animated series for the Christian market. (That chapter is titled: Written by Stan Berkowitz . . . and God.”) He dishes about what it’s like to butt up against a superstar’s vanity. (William Shatner, here’s looking at you!) In one hilarious chapter, he reveals how to get attention for your student film. This involves a curvaceous unclad lass and a whole lot of donkeys.

 Chapter 3, titled “The Green Group,” struck a chord with me by merging a story from Stan’s early life with a discussion of why some people are attracted to superhero characters. Back in the first grade, when learning to read was at the top of the agenda, Stan’s teacher automatically assigned “the little bespectacled kids” to the Blue Group, on the assumption that they would be fast learners. Stan, though, was among the “big, oafish-looking kids” stuck at the Green table, where they were clearly being identified as slow. Fortunately, he and his buddy Gregory (also a Green Group-er) fought back, via their parents, and eventually got moved up to the smart kids’ table. The episode convinced young Stan to distrust the judgment of those in power, and his anti-authoritarian streak has stayed with him from that day to this. No wonder he has gravitated toward characters like Batman and Superman who are essentially vigilantes, going over the heads of elected officials to clean up crime and save the world on their own terms.

 If you think the world of TV production is glamorous, Stan provides a healthy reality-check. And his book, amusingly illustrated by Dan Riba, is a ball to read.  

 

From Your First Cigarette to Your Last Dying Day: “The Outsiders”

 When I was growing up, youth cliques and gangs were a hot topic. West Side Story made it big on Broadway in 1957, and became a must-see film in 1961. It was five years later that S.E. Hinton (Susie to her friends) published a Young Adult novel called The Outsiders. It looked squarely at the lives of teenagers who, because of their looks or family situations, were regarded as social outcasts in their Oklahoma hometown. In the world of this story, teens are divided into two groups. The Socs (pronounced “soshes”) were more affluent, dressed better, and had cool cars with fins. The Greasers worn grubby jeans and T’s, started smoking at a very young age, and didn’t have much use for school. Hinton—who, remarkably, published the novel when she was sixteen—empathized almost entirely with the Greasers, whose underlying pain and sensitivity she understood. The narrator of her novel, Ponyboy Curtis, is a fourteen-year-old who—in the absence of parents—shares strong bonds of loyalty with his three older brothers. Though he's at the fringes of some brutal situations, like a rumble in a local park, he’s basically a good kid who’s polite to girls, loves sunsets, and ruminates over a poem by Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

 Following his acclaimed release of two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now, director-producer Francis Ford Coppola turned his talents to The Outsiders, after a librarian and her students at Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno, California brought the novel to his attention. Now his goal was to find a troupe of very young actors who could embody Hinton’s characters on the screen. C.Thomas Howell, then fifteen, appealingly played Ponyboy. His brothers—the tortured Dally and the take-charge Darrel—were Matt Dillon and Patrick Swayze. Other rising young actors in the cast were Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and (in a small part) Tom Cruise. A key role, that of a very young Greaser who proves himself both a hero and a martyr, was played by Ralph Macchio, just before he became The Karate Kid. (He apparently was 20 at the time, but convincingly looks about 13.) The film’s final moments, in which a close-up of Macchio is superimposed upon an image of Ponyboy writing his story is either hugely poignant or hugely corny, or both at once.

 As a movie, The Outsiders makes an interesting contrast to the much-beloved West Side Story. Its rivalries are purely social rather than ethnic. West Side Story of course pits Puerto Rican immigrants against white kids whose ancestry is probably not far removed from Ellis Island. But in The Outsiders the divide is almost entirely along economic lines. And, of course, there’s no singing and dancing in this film. Being a Greaser doesn’t seem nearly as much fun as being a Jet. The rumble in which most of the characters participate is less picturesque than grubby, fought in the mud during a driving rain.

 At my L.A. public high school there was not the kind of stark social divide portrayed in the film. Though I never heard anyone called a Greaser, we definitely had Soshes, who vied to gain membership in exclusive social clubs. A more innocent version of the kind of divide portrayed in The Outsiders shows up in both the stage (1971) and the film (1978) versions of a box-office hit, Grease. Hinton’s novel could have been an inspiration for that show, but I suspect there was something in the culture that inspired both projects. Ironically, a version of The Outsiders landed on Broadway in 2024, taking home the Tony Award for best musical.