The play’s NOT the thing in “Clash by Night”

It was while exploring the mid-century American films of Fritz Lang that I recently saw Clash by Night. I had previously watched two RKO films directed by Lang and starring the great Edward G. Robinson. The Woman in the Window (1944) turned out to be an influential early noir, with the kind of “surprise” ending that in retrospect seems more than a bit cheap. I enjoyed it, despite its predictability, much more than I liked Scarlet Street (1945), which supposedly is the first Hollywood movie in which the creep who fries in the electric chair is NOT in fact the killer. The third Lang film I watched starred the always interesting Barbara Stanwyck along with burly Paul Douglas and Robert Ryan, of whom critic Manohla Dargis has written, “[he was] born to play beautifully tortured, angry souls.”  During the opening credits I was surprised to find this film was adapted from a Broadway play by Clifford Odets.

 The Odets connection made me turn once again to my personal Odets expert, Beth Phillips. Beth, who is finally close to finishing a monumental biography of Odets, reminded me that, though Odets wrote some marvelous original screenplays (like Sweet Smell of Success), none of the Hollywood films adapted from his groundbreaking plays had the benefit of Odets’ input. When approached by studios, “he just took the money and ran.” So it’s no surprise that the screen version of Clash by Night differs hugely from the stage version: the location is switched from Staten Island to Monterey, California; a key ethnicity shifts from Polish to Italian, so that Lang can shoot a big fat Italian wedding scene. More importantly, as was typical in this era, the stage play’s brutal ending is considerably brightened in the film, with Stanwyck’s character finally embracing domesticity and the husband who loves her beyond reason.

 Beth is hardly a fan of the original Clash by Night, which she calls “probably Odets’ worst play, a blatant melodrama” without much in the way of social ideas behind it. Not knowing any of this, I found the film interesting to watch, mostly because the central characters were well realized. I liked the film’s opening, with ocean waves dramatically crashing on the shore, and I suspect Lang enjoyed filming some of the gritty on-location introductory scenes, full of fishing boats and women earning their pay in a sardine cannery. (Yes, that ‘s Marilyn Monroe, in dungarees, toiling over a trough full of wriggly fish.)  

 Within the central love triangle, I was most impressed by Paul Douglas as the good-hearted but not too bright Jerry D’Amato, who certainly deserves better than he gets from Stanwyck’s Mae.  Stanwyck herself is notable as always, playing a dame (that’s got to be the right word for her!) who can never be satisfied by the life she leads. Robert Ryan, the third side of this triangle,  effectively conveys his general bitterness toward the world in which he finds himself. Still, I had some gripes. Monroe’s character, the soon-to-be fiancée of Stanwyck’s fisherman brother, doesn’t make a lot of sense in her continued admiration for Stanwyck, despite it all. And I have a special grudge against “Where’s the baby?” movies. Supposedly, both Douglas’s and Stanwyck’s characters are deeply affected by the love they feel for their infant daughter, Gloria. So—while Douglas is at sea, how can Stanwyck and Ryan sneak off to spend hours enjoying themselves at a local carnival, apparently leaving poor Gloria all alone in her cradle? The carelessness suggested by this kind of plotting speaks to me of a film that was hustled to completion.

 

 

A Star is Born (Again)

Why, exactly, do we love movies about the making of movies? Showbiz seems like a glamorous , mysterious world that most of us aspire to enter. Many of us nurse private fantasies about a stardom we know we’ll never achieve, and there’s a perverse comfort in discovering that show business has its seamy side—and its tragic side—as well.  

 Curiously, in the early days of sound movies, most of the showbiz stories on the screen—pictures like Busby Berkeley’s 42^nd Street and Footlight Parade as well as chestnuts like Stage Door—were devoted to the challenge of putting on a theatrical production. It was Broadway that seemed most glamorous back then. Berkeley’s famous musical numbers, like the “By a Waterfall” extravaganza from Golddiggers of 1933, contained elements like scantily-clad chorines swimming in formation, gliding underwater, or sliding down waterfalls into welcoming lagoons. Such moments were often shot from above, and the joke was that they couldn’t possibly work in a Broadway theatre.

 Despite moviedom’s ongoing fascination with success on the Broadway stage, the 1930s also saw two popular flicks that chronicle a newcomer’s overnight rise to Hollywood stardom. In 1932, George Cukor directed Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood?, the saga of a waitress who’s discovered by a film director with a drinking problem. She quickly achieves fame and fortune, while he spirals downward, with romantic complications galore. It was briefly popular, though no one pretended it was a realistic look at the film industry. A mere five years later, William Wellman directed Janet Gaynor and Frederic March in A Star is Born, which is quite similar to What Price Hollywood ? in its plotting, but adds the complication that Vicki Lester (née Esther Blodgett) loves and marries her champion, fading actor Norman Maine. The lavish production, which some say mirrored the troubled marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay, was enormously successful.

 Almost twenty years later, in 1954, Cukor took another crack at the material, which was to be his first musical and first Technicolor film. This version of A Star is Born showcases the powerful singing of Judy Garland, who was looking for a career comeback, as well as the dissolute complexity of the ageing thespian played by James Mason. (In his George Cukor’s People, film historian Joseph McBride calls this film, despite its studio butchering, Cukor’s very finest effort.)  The restored version I’ve just finished watching is 178 moments long, and there are some unusual tonal shifts from cheery musical comedy hijinks to downright tragedy, but this is the version to see. And hear: Garland belting “The Man That Got Away” is a moment not to be missed. (It was nominated for a Best Song Oscar, but—unthinkably—lost to the sweet, syrupy “Three Coins in the Fountain”).

 Making Esther into a singer opened the door for two further remakes featuring pop legends of the moment. The 1976 film, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, shifts the familiar story to the world of rock ‘n’ roll, adding onscreen sex, a soupçon of infidelity, and a really memorable poster.  The year 2018 saw Bradley Cooper’s re-imagining of the story, with Lady Gaga garnering raves for her first serious acting role.

 Who knows when the next version will show up? Maybe—why not?—it could involve an older female star and an appealing young male newcomer. After all, there’s nothing that says that the woman can’t be the knowledgeable veteran of Hollywood. But we as audience members wouldn’t easily accept that as anything but grotesque. See, after all, Sunset Boulevard. 

 

Seeing Double (Indemnity)

The Best Picture Oscar for 1945 went to a sentimental 1944 confection called Going My Way, full of lovable priests, scrappy orphan kids, and Bing Crosby crooning “Swinging on a Star.” (I just learned Going My Way was largely filmed not far from me, in Santa Monica’s own venerable St. Monica’s Catholic Church.) The film won eight Oscars, including a Best Actor statuette for Crosby at his laid-back best. Ireland’s Barry Fitzgerald copped an Oscar too: remarkably he was nominated both in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories, prompting a key rule change.

 I suspect that in early 1945, with World War II finally drawing to a close, both critics and audiences (not to mention Academy voters) were eager to reward movies that always  looked on the bright side. In competition with Going My Way for its various Oscar honors were soppy tearjerkers (Since You Went Away) and some of Hollywood’s grandest, darkest takes on crime and punishment. This was the year of Gaslight, Laura, and a noir classic, Double Indemnity. None of these, surely, was designed to cheer the war-weary, but they still appeal to all of us who like our entertainment with a frisson of danger.

 Double Indemnity was nominated for seven Oscars, but nabbed nary a one. It essentially launched Billy Wilder’s brilliant directing career: he was nominated for his direction of the film, and also for the screenplay on which he collaborated with none other than Raymond Chandler, adapting a novel by James M. Cain.  His leading lady, the dangerously sultry Barbara Stanwyck, was a Best Actress nominee for Double Indemnity, but lost as she had before and would again. The film’s two key males, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson, gave brilliant performances but were entirely overlooked by members of the Academy. In later years, MacMurray would find his greatest success in Disney comedies and as a fumbling father in My Three Sons. I would never have guessed, when watching him be avuncular in Son of Flubber, that he’d make such a memorable heel.

 Filmmakers used to love casting Stanwyck as a smart, conniving dame falling for an innocent, good-hearted guy. (See, for instance, her pairing with Gary Cooper in Wilder’s Ball of Fire.)  In Double Indemnity she’s still smart and conniving, but her leading man, MacMurray, is no innocent.  As insurance salesman Walter Neff, he’s clearly proud of his conquests, actuarial and otherwise. He’s making time with Stanwyck’s unhappy housewife from the get-go, and he’s quick to come up with a “double indemnity” scheme that will help all of her marital problems go away, while leaving the two of them rolling in dough. The trouble with Walter: he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. The plot goes off without a hitch . . . until it doesn’t. And I don’t feel required to add a spoiler alert, because – through the film’s classic use of voiceover narration -- we know from the start who did what to whom. There is, of course, a sly final wrinkle we probably didn’t see coming.

 Wilder’s touch can be found in the film’s crackling dialogue, and also in some effective directorial flourishes. My favorite involves the connection between MacMurray and Robinson as his crusty but tender-hearted boss. Throughout the film, MacMurray has been quick to strike a match, lighting Robinson’s ever-present stogie. Then, as all hope fades for our hero, it’s Robinson’s Barton Keyes who supplies the flame for the cigarette of his failed protégée. If only Neff had had his mentor’s clear-eyed vision . . . but then we’d be without this great film.  

Great Balls of Fire! (Barbara Stanwyck Meets Gary Cooper. and Sparks Fly)

There’s something about a patriotic holiday like 4^th of July that makes me want to go back in time, at least when it comes to my movie-viewing. (It’s easy, on the day of our nation’s birth, to settle on the perfect audio choice: the classic—and still hilarious—1961 comedy album, Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America: The Early Years. But I digress.) This past weekend, when it came to picking a movie, I settled for a screwball comedy with a title that sounds like a fireworks display: 1941’s Ball of Fire. Frankly, this title has nothing to do with the story that unfolds onscreen. But it suggests a blaze of romantic fireworks, which this movie delivers in spades.

 Ball of Fire has quite a pedigree. It was written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, just before the latter decided it was time to start directing his own screenplays, resulting in such masterworks as Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend. It was directed by Howard Hawks, coming off the sparkling His Girl Friday and the patriotic Sergeant York. On Sergeant York, the true-life story of a soft-spoken country boy who became a World War I hero, the leading role was played by Gary Cooper, who won an Oscar for his iconic strong-silent-type performance. In Ball of Fire, he would pivot to the comedic role of a naïve academic, Professor Bertram Potts. Also in 1941 the always-memorable Barbara Stanwyck was having a banner year, appearing in five films, including The Lady Eve and Meet John Doe, along with her sexy role as Sugarpuss O’Shea in Ball of Fire. With all this talent, plus a boat-load of memorable character actors like S.Z. Sakall and Oskar Homolka, the film proved to be a hit with both critics and the public. It was nominated for four Oscars (one for Stanwyck’s performance), and in 2016 was chosen for the National Film Registry.

 So what’s this slight but very funny film all about? It’s part of a time-honored Hollywood genre in which a good-hearted but naïve young man is transformed through his interaction with a woman of the world. How curious! We know Hollywood (both then and now) to be a place where the sharks are predominantly male, and innocent young ladies proceed at their own risk. Still, viewers in the 1940s seemed to love movies (whether romantic comedy or film noir) in which the man is an innocent, someone who faces and succumbs to the dangers posed by a predatory dame. A comedy classic of this ilk is Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, in which it’s Henry Fonda, not Gary Cooper, who’s  an unworldly academic falling prey to Stanwyck’s charms. The Lady Eve is a far more complicated movie than Ball of Fire, with a more ambiguous ending, and a film buff of my acquaintance vastly prefers it. Double Indemnity carries the same trope into  darker territory, with patsy Fred MacMurray lured by Stanwyck (now a blonde bombshell) into a deadly scheme for which he’ll ultimately take the fall. Clearly Stanwyck is a lady who shouldn’t be trusted . . . but Ball of Fire also hints at her softer side.

 It’s said that one of the major influences on Ball of Fire is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Cooper’s character, you see, is a grammarian who – along with seven crochety scholars from various fields – is working on a ground-breaking new encyclopedia. All unmarried, they live together in a big house, pursuing their arcane research. Then Sugarpuss shows up and teaches them to dance the conga—and hilarity ensues.