Dealing with The Cincinnati Kid

 Last spring I was honored to appear on Kelsy Norman’s podcast, Speeding Bullitt, which deals with all things Steve McQueen. Though  I don’t pretend to be a McQueen expert, I was invited to speak about my book on The Graduate, because of Steve McQueen’s unlikely reaction to seeing Dustin Hoffman catapulted into stardom via his hang-dog portrayal of Benjamin Braddock. (Five years later McQueen and Hoffman starred together in Papillon. It was not a match made in heaven.)   

 Like the rest of the world, I’ve seen a fair share of Steve McQueen films, including The Magnificent Seven, The Thomas Crown Affair, and of course Bullitt. But I’d never seen The Cincinnati Kid (1965) until yesterday, when I plucked a DVD off a library shelf. No motorcycles here, but otherwise it contains a fair sampling of what McQueen is all about: stoicism, machismo, a glint of humor, a fierce determination to come out on top. And, underneath, a small hint of potential for tenderness.   

 The Cincinnati Kid is about high-stakes poker players trying to best one another in New Orleans. I’ve seen the film compared to The Hustler (1961) if you swap McQueen for Paul Newman and a desk of Bicycle cards for a pool cue. I’m hardly a poker player, and can’t tell a full house from a straight flush, so it was hardly easy for me to appreciate the subtleties of the on-screen game. But what really set my mind buzzing was the film’s supporting cast, which seemed to encompass the whole history of Hollywood.

 In The Cincinnati Kid (with McQueen of course playing the title role), the kid’s #1 card-playing nemesis is Lancey “The Man” Howard, played with panache by none other than Edward G. Robinson. Robinson, who’d starred as a Capone-like crime boss in Little Caesar back in 1931, was then 72, near the end of a long and distinguished career. (His last film was Soylent Green, filmed just before he died in 1973). I won’t soon forget Robinson’s dignity as well as the deep, resonant voice he brought to this film. Caught somewhere in the middle is another card player, Shooter, played by the great character actor, Karl Malden. Malden had won a Supporting Actor Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire and was nominated for another for On the Waterfront.

 Among the additional players at the table during the Big Game are Jack Weston as Pig, Cab Calloway as Yeller, and Jeff Corey as Hoban. Weston is a familiar face, a specialist in playing nebbish-y roles. Calloway, mostly known as a singer and band-leader, once ruled the airwaves with his “Minnie the Moocher,” though he doesn’t sing here. Corey, blacklisted during the HUAC years, was later famous throughout Hollywood as an acting coach whose students included some of the industry’s biggest names. And the sinister card shark determined to take down his rivals by any means necessary was portrayed by one of Hollywood’s most sinister bad guys, Rip Torn.

 Then there are the women. Pretty blonde Tuesday Weld was about 22, near the beginning of an up-and-down career, when she played the Kid’s main squeeze, the loving and innocent Christian. Ann-Margret, not long after her breakout role in Bye Bye Birdie (1963) but long before her Oscar-nominated performance in Carnal Knowledge (1971) is the sultry, dangerous Melba, a vamp if there ever was one. But for me one big thrill was the presence of former-cutie Joan Blondell, who’d made her screen debut back in 1930. Her part isn’t large, but as a dealer nicknamed Lady Fingers she’s a pleasure to watch flipping those cards.

 

 

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.  

Time Bound: Orson Welles’ The Stranger

The Stranger is the title of more than 20 motion pictures from around the globe, some of them dating back to the silent era. While sheltering at home in the wake of COVID-19, I happened on one of them, the 1946 feature that was Orson Welles’ third film. Ironically enough, The Stranger was far more successful at the box office than Wellesian masterpieces like Citizen Kane. True, it had a somewhat flawed production history—Welles himself felt that script changes mandated by producer Sam Spiegel undermined the gravity of the project—but the film’s air of creeping menace seems right at home today. What’s different now is that the danger we feel is invisible, an eerie manifestation of the dark side of the natural world. In The Stranger, danger has all too human a face.

The setting of The Stranger, immediately following World War II, is key here. The action takes place in an idyllic American town where no trace of the ravages of war can be discerned. The only aspect of town life that seems to be amiss is that its venerable church clock, a relic (complete with revolving figures) that was long ago imported from Europe, no longer works. But a professor at the distinguished local prep school, a great lover of old clocks, has been hard at work to bring it back to life.

What nobody knows is that the good professor, known locally as Professor Charles Rankin, is in fact Franz Kindler, a dedicated Nazi who had recently presided over a death camp. Though he fits in nicely in this small American town, to the extent that he’s marrying the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice, he will stop at nothing (including murder) to keep his former identity a secret. Director Welles plays Rankin with his usual bravado: he’s the kind of man you love to hate. Also toplined in the cast are Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. She, as Rankin’s new wife, is a pretty but vacuous presence, one who rather surprisingly accepts her husband’s excuses and keeps his secrets—until, at last, she doesn’t. Robinson, plays the role of a newcomer to town, a war crimes investigator following a trail that leads to Rankin. It’s surprising to learn that Welles himself wanted this role to be played by Mercury Theatre regular Agnes Moorehead, feeling she’d be a more unlikely and thus more interesting sleuth on Rankin’s trail. But of course the acerbic Robinson is always fun to watch.

Welles decked out The Stranger with the trappings of film noir. He also lavished on this production the kind of bravura camera work and editing that make Citizen Kane so spectacular. Perhaps it’s fair to say that he goes a bit overboard here, with all manner of mirror shots, Dutch angles, and moments of deep focus. Especially during the climax that (of course) takes place in and around that clock tower, he pulls out all the stops. (The tower itself makes the one used by Hitchcock in Vertigo seem a wee bit bland by comparison.) Detracting from the overall effect are plot holes through which you could drive a Sherman tank. Or maybe I’m the only one annoyed by how many people can successfully go up and down a sabotaged ladder.

In one respect, realism prevails. The Stranger was the first feature film to incorporate actual Nazi concentration camp footage, which is screened by Robinson’s character to establish Rankin’s culpability. It’s not the most horrific footage that would eventually be revealed to the  American public, but it’s good to see truth having its day.