At the climax of Frank Borzage's soaring romance HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, a ship suspiciously like the Titanic collides with an iceberg and the passengers sing "Near-er, My God, To Thee." When Borzage decides he wants to film specific extras singing and crying, there's the chance for them to earn an extra two dollar fifty adjustment in their salaries ~

"[Second unit director] Ripley said, 'How many of you can cry?' We all held our hands up and he said he would try us out, one at a time. He started testing at the opposite end of the line. I was so nervous I ran out to the toilet. While I was there, I noticed the bar of Lux soap which was furnished to all studios in exchange for publicity photos of the stars using Lux. I scraped  my fingernails across the soap, lodging enough Lux under my nails to keep me crying for a week. When I got back to the set, Ripley and [dialogue director Joshua] Logan were having a rough time. They had found only three genuine criers. The rest were poking themselves in the eyes and thinking about their dead mothers, the Depression, the loss of the two-fifty adjustment, and any other sad thoughts that might bring on tears. When my turn came, I squeezed some soap into my eyes and burst into song -- 'E'en tho' it be a cross, near-er to Thee -- near-er my God to Thee, near-er to Thee...'The tears flowed, the cameras rolled, and Frank Borzage's reputation as a sentimental director was intact."

~ from Growing Up in Hollywood by Robert Parrish.

I always thought it kind of weird that this movie, which begins with some of the most fabulous romantic stuff in all of '30s Hollywood cinema (a fairly romantic time and place even at its worst), should end as a kind of disaster movie. Apparently the film was being rewritten during the shooting, but that doesn't explain anything much -- the sinking ship was obviously always part of the plan. Maybe the last-minute rewrites prevented the five writers involved from establishing the clues that would have made such an ending inevitable as well as surprising (traditionally an ending is supposed to be both). True, Colin Clive (in one of his last roles) is established as an ocean liner magnate early on, but it doesn't seem that important.

Would you sail in an ocean liner built by Doctor Frankenstein?

I must watch the film again though, because (a) I still think the first half is astonishingly good, with really dynamite work from Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer, two actors who are always good but prove to be exceptionally good together and (b) now that I know it's coming, the sinking ship probably won't bother me at all.

Borzage, the presiding genius, does manage a plot twist with his version of TITANIC that James Cameron would never have dared -- the ship doesn't sink! I admire very much the cheek of that.

I mainly wanted to see Rhythm on the River because of Oscar Levant. Yes, I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again: I love him. Even though he's more of a personality than an actor, he's still one of my favorites. With the exception of one or two movies, I think I've seen most of his filmography.

Rhythm on the River (1940) is a cute little movie, and surprisingly it's co-written by the great Billy Wilder. It's plot revolves around a "brilliant" singer-songwriter named Oliver Courtney (Basil Rathbone), who in reality, can't write music or lyrics to save his life. The real geniuses behind his popular hits are Bob Sommers (Bing Crosby) and Cherry Lane (Mary Martin). Of course, neither know each other exist and when the finally meet, they fall in love. Together, Bob and Cherry defect from Courtney's employment and try to strike out on their own, only to be rejected by every publisher in town because their songs sound too much like Courtney's. Oscar Levant plays Courtney's musical assistant, Starbuck (when you needed a sarcastic, wisecracking piano player, Levant was your man) and there's a cute little joke revolving around a bed and breakfast inn that Crosby's folks own called, "Nobody's Inn." Get it? Nobody's In? Ha ha! Anyway, Rhythm on the River predates Holiday Inn by two years, so it seems like they took the idea from this movie and just expanded on it.

Besides Oscar, it was Mary Martin who intrigued me the most. While she's a good singer, I didn't find her to be an outstanding actress. But she's cute enough and the interaction between her and Bing was realistic. However, the most striking thing about her was her resemblance to Jean Arthur.

Back when the lovely and talented Ms. Arthur was TCM's Star of the Month (in January '07, I believe), I bought a biography on her called The Actress Nobody Knew by John Oller. It was certainly a page-turner, filled with all kinds of interesting information that spanned her entire career. Believe it or not, she and Oscar Levant were once an item in the late 20's! Jean had called him, "The only brain in Hollywood" and when they went out, he accompanied her to speakeasies and prize fights, that is, if they weren't cozied up in the corner at a party.

However, one of the most interesting stories in the book is her supposed relationship with Mary Martin. They first met in 1939 at a small dinner party, shortly after Mary came to Hollywood. The meeting wasn't exactly a happy experience for her--Jean spent the evening in deep conversation with Paramount story editor, Richard Halliday and completely ignored Mary. Despite this, Halliday married Martin a short while later and soon enough, they became good friends and neighbors to Jean and her husband, Frank Ross.

The friendship between Jean and Mary quickly grew. Not only did they spend a great deal of time together, but they also shared an obsessive love for Peter Pan. The women would endlessly discuss their dream of playing the character one day and when they planned to attend costume parties, Jean and Mary would fight over which one would get to dress up as Peter Pan. Both ladies would get to play the part: Jean would play it on Broadway in 1950, and Mary in 1954 but through the years, it's Mary who's mostly associated with the role.

Hollywood gossips noted the close friendship between the two ladies, and soon enough, rumors that they were romantically involved began to swirl around town. Not helping matters was Mary's startling resemblance to Jean! If you're a classic movie fan with only a smattering of knowledge, you may think that it's Jean Arthur in Rhythm on the River, not Mary Martin! And if that weren't enough, Mary's career seemed to follow Jean's: both ladies would play female western legends (Jean was Calamity Jane, while Mary was Annie Oakley on stage) as well as the Billie Dawn role in Born Yesterday (Jean briefly played it on stage, while Mary did the tv version).

In late 1966, Hollywood thought the rumors were practically confirmed when an obscure publisher released a novel entitled, The Princess and the Goblin (not having anything to do with the fairy tale of the same name). Written by Paul Rosner, the story described the intertwining lives of two actresses, Maureen and Josie. Like Mary, Maureen was a star on Broadway and arrived in Hollywood in the late '30's. She then falls in love with Josie, her female idol. Josie, like Jean, is a publicity shy actress, whose husky voice and comedic talent elevated her as one of Hollywood's top leading ladies. The two women soon have an affair, which causes Josie to have a nervous breakdown and therefore become a recluse. After its publication, the rumors spread like wildfire. Everyone in Hollywood assumed that Rosner was confirming the gossip about Jean and Mary (it doesn't help that their fictional characters even share the first initial of their names!).

But there was one glitch--Rosner had created a total work of fiction. Yes, he had based the character of Josie on Jean and Maureen on Mary, but only through his own viewing of Jean's films and his observation on how Mary had seemingly usurped Jean's identity. When Rosner saw Mary as Peter Pan, a light bulb clicked. The physical similarities (minus the husky voice) between Jean and Mary were downright eerie. After the novel's publication, he was surprised by the amount of phone calls and feedback he received: people had assumed that he was writing a thinly veiled story of truth, not fiction. Rosner once commented, "I had no way of knowing when I wrote it that any of it was true."

If Jean knew about the book, she never let anyone know. The only reference she made towards it's existence was during her teaching days at Vassar college in the early 70's. While heading a drama class, Jean had her students recreate a scene from Lillian Hellman's controversial play, The Children's Hour, in which a vicious child falsely accuses her two female teachers of being lovers. When the students finished the scene, Jean was visibly upset and explained to her class on how gossip can ruin one's life. Was she referring to The Princess and the Goblin and/or the Mary Martin rumors? No one will ever know. While many books written after her death state that Jean was a lesbian (despite being married to Frank Ross for seventeen years!), it seems as though she was asexual. In a 1975 interview, Jean stated that sex was something she could live without. Her friend and one time agent, Helen Harvey, claimed that Jean's passions were more geared towards her strict ideals, while another male friend said that she had little interest in romance, since most of the time her head was in the clouds. Jean's world wasn't one that was firmly rooted in reality. She chose her own path and did her own thing. And for some reason, people love to speculate about those who are uninterested in following the standards of society--especially if an unmarried woman chooses to live her life alone.

As for Mary Martin, she was married twice--first to Ben Hagman, before marrying Richard Halliday, whom she remained with until his death in 1973. Despite this, rumors about her sexuality have always dogged her, even claiming that the great love of her life was actress, Janet Gaynor. The two women were close friends, and both were involved in a tragic car accident that occurred in 1982. While it left Mary bruised and injured, Janet was critically hurt and the multiple injuries led to her death in 1984.

What I always find odd about classic Hollywood rumors are the fact that they seem to come out after a person has died. It tends to be awfully convenient, since it's hard for a ghost to defend itself. I'll be the first person to admit that I enjoy reading about my favorite actors and actresses, and yes, that includes the gossipy bits. I don't think this makes me less of a fan though--I'm just a nosy person! Still, I don't base my love of certain actors/actresses/directors on gossip. I judge them by their performances. For example, I dislike Grace Kelly not because of all the men she hopped into bed with, but because I think she's mostly a lousy actress (Dial M For Murder an exception - please direct all your hate mail to the email address at the top of the sidebar! Thank you!).

In Rhythm on the River, I admit that I loved Oscar Levant's Starbuck character the most, but since that was to be expected, I can also add Mary Martin to my list. As I mentioned before, I don't think she was an outstanding actress, but she was pleasant to watch. I've read some fan postings which claim that her talent never translated well to the big screen and in order to really see her shine, one had to see in her element--that is, Broadway. I can fully understand that. Most stage actors don't translate well to motion pictures, which is why they stay on the stage. Still, if I saw Mary Martin's name in the opening credits of a film, I certainly would watch. Mary's acting style was fun and cute and for the type of breezy musical comedies Paramount cast her in, her personality was a perfect fit.

Brief Review:

Another Capra movie. The list seems to go on and on. :) Yet another Black & White movie. This movie was beautiful and I totally loved it. The concept the movie tries to portray comes once again as wonderful. Full marks to Capra for that.

The movie stars the by now regulars in Capra movies - Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore (Drew Barrymore's grandfather),  Edward Arnold and others. There is actually a reason to this and I shall be covering that in a post later on.

The best thing about the movie and all Capra movies in general is that they all portray things that make sense. Things we should not be dismissing a silly and taking more seriously. Instead we seem to think such things exist only in movies. How wondrful it would be if we could all pursue our passions without actually having to worry about the money we make or starvation. How wonderful it would be to pursue your interests instead of working for someone and working at something you are not interested in. These are the questions the movie begs the viewers to ask themselves.

Also equally importantly portrayed is the need to love your neighbours and be nice to them. While this may seem cliched by now, it actually is not. It is still the one fundamental thing that would make our lives more pleasurable. Something we think once again exists only in fairy tales and Capra movies. Believe me, you and I can do it too and we should. :)

a-17

Funny scene from KUNG FU HUSTLE, directed by and starring Stephen Chow, suggested by film student and action movie enthusiast Rehan Yousuf.

Reehan is rendered EXTREMELY VOLUBLE by all action-related thoughts. John Woo is his God. He is a spiritual brother to Nick Frost's character in HOT FUZZ. Yet I feel he is redeemed by his affection for Jean Arthur.

Though never really wooed by Woo (I get TIRED of blood capsules and slomo), I admit to admiring Stephen Chow enormously. PRINCE OF BEGGARS is fun, SHAOLIN SOCCER is lots of fun (my friend Garry Marshall's three little kids thought the goalkeeper having his clothes blasted off by a supercharged football's aftershock was THE FUNNIEST THING EVER), and KUNG FU HUSTLE is possibly the best live-action Warner Bros cartoon ever. It shouldn't be possible to sustain a feature without any respect for the laws of physics, but Chow gets away with it, partly by keeping his central character on the sidelines for so long (and acting as a BAD GUY), and partly by sheer invention. Apart from the grotesque exaggeration of much of the action (like the guy who mutates into a toad thru Kung Fu), mostly this is done by clever stuff of the kind seen here: unusual visual gags of the kind nobody's really thought to try before.

I love the way the knife handle sticks to her face.

Best of all, apart from a spot of axe-related unpleasantness at the start (setting up the Big Bad Guy's Big Bad Guyness), the film is enjoyable innocent and not really violent in a Bruce Lee or even a Jackie Chan way. It's a lovable action movie.

Start looking forward to the next Chow NOW: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0940709/

Above is a very rare clip featuring director Mitchell Leisen (and star W.C. Fields). The only other footage of Leisen I know of is the start of HOLD BACK THE DAWN, where Leisen plays, basically, himself, a top Hollywood director making a wartime romance with Brian Donlevy and Veronica Lake (I WANTED WINGS, a real Leisen film from the same year, 1941).

Leisen has been either ignored or devalued for too long. Billy Wilder, who didn't much enjoy writing for the director, spent fifty years denigrating Leisen at every opportunity ("I don't knock fairies. Let him be a fairy. Leisen's problem was he was a stupid fairy," gives you the tone of the debate). The legend grew that Wilder was compelled to become a director because Leisen mutilated his scripts. But the films he co-scripted for "Mitch", MIDNIGHT and HOLD BACK THE DAWN, and at least the first half of ARISE, MY LOVE, are far stronger films than Wilder's first couple of Hollywood movies as director, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR and 5 GRAVES TO CAIRO. Both filmmakers made great films, and a good Leisen film is clearly better than a middling Wilder film.

There's a resurgence in Leisen's reputation now, with retrospectives in recent years at San Sebastian and Edinburgh. Leisen is finally on the rise, and this may actually lead to a slight downgrading of Wilder's standing, although I would expect that films like SOME LIKE IT HOT and THE APARTMENT have a secure place in film-lovers' affections that cannot be dented.

The reason Leisen's rise might bring about a dip for Wilder is found in one film, SWING HIGH, SWING LOW, from 1937. Fred MacMurray plays Skid Johnson, a trumpet player with an alcohol problem. The film details his affair with Carole Lombard's Maggie King, a singer (Lombard and MacMurray had already starred together in Leisen's HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE two years earlier). There's a scene later in the film where Skid hits the skids, raggedly walking the real streets of New York and pawning his trumpet to buy more drink. This may surprise anybody who bought the line that Billy Wilder's THE LOST WEEKEND, seven years later, was the first talkie to take alcoholism seriously. The sequence in that film where Ray Milland goes to pawn his typewriter closely echoes Leisen's earlier movie.

That would be of only minor interest if SH,SL were a minor film, but it's a rich and fascinating work that easily stands up to Wilder's more celebrated film. Starting as a romantic comedy about bohemian musicians in Panama (with a hypochondriac pianist friend, a wisecracking older broad, and a pet chicken), it slides, without us noticing, into romantic tragedy, as MacMurray Makes it Big in the Big Apple, is seduced away from Lombard by an impossibly sultry young Dorothy Lamour, lets success go to his head and falls from grace as the booze goes to his liver. All this happens over the course of a substantial two-hour running time, allowing us a rare feeling of nostalgia for the early, happy part of the film, when the characters were poor and struggling but hopeful. It's like the contrast between the two parts of LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS.

Leisen was a marvel at managing these tonal shifts: REMEMBER THE NIGHT, scripted by Preston Sturges, flips from urban screwball comedy to bucolic sentimentality, slipping smoothly into romantic tragedy at the end, with a couple of other detours on the way -- Barbara Stanwyck's mother lives in a Gothic noir house and extinguishes the only lantern when her daughter leaves: to use a great line from Bruce Robinson, she lives "mainly in the dark, like a tongue."

Similarly, nifty rom-com HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE features a moody, low-key nocturne in its second act, with low key-lighting, much pensive cigarette smoke, unresolved sexual tension, and an early example of the psychological track-in, as Leisen glides towards Fred MacMurray (his favourite leading man), creating a slowly mounting romantic tension. This kind of camera movement probably originates with Murnau, but is otherwise not much seen until the 'forties, and rarely then. It became a bit of a tic with Spielberg in the 'eighties, and was hyped up to new levels by Sam Raimi, who uses it almost musically.

Leisen presents a modest challenge to auteurist critics because his work is disparate, crossing genres and tones, often in the same film. But the same can be said of even as consistent a filmmaker as Hawks. Leisen's best work falls into three main categories:

1) Melodrama. Leisen's "women's pictures" include TO EACH HIS OWN (winning an Oscar for Olivia DeHavilland), a tear-jerker about a girl who, separated from her illigitmate child, struggles for years to win him back. Charles Brackett's script (unlike his partner Wilder, Brackett had no problem working with Leisen again) leavens the intense sentiment with bitter elements, as DeHavilland tries to take her son back by blackmailing his adoptive parents. Leisen managed to persuade the censors to allow the use of the word "bastard" in its technically correct sense, then dropped it when Olivia couldn't say the line without laughing. This willingness to change dialogue on the floor is what pissed Wilder off.

2) Comedy. Leisen's work includes oddities like THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1937, but it is in romantic comedies like EASY LIVING (scripted by Sturges) and MIDNIGHT (Wilder and Brackett) that he showcases his skill with light comedy, broad comedy, and elegant design and filming (Leisen began as costume designer and then production designer on DeMille's THE SIGN OF THE CROSS and Walsh's THIEF OF BAGDAD).

EASY LIVING features the world's most beautiful automat, scene of an escalating slapstick food fight that gave employment to every pratfall specialist in Tinseltown, as well as Jean Arthur in an accidentally acquired fur coat ("Kismet!") causing a run on the stock exchange despite a complete innocence of financial matters.

3) Camp. Which of course can combine elements of 1) and 2), but in Leisen's case also introduces historical and musical elements. MURDER AT THE VANITIES is a boisterous backstage mystery with ludicrous, gorgeous musical numbers, such as "Marijuana", in which a cactus-like pot plant sprouts naked girls. The song is interrupted by a screaming showgirl as blood drips from the rafters onto her bare bosom*, which should give you some idea.

Although Leisen's oevre crosses genre boundaries, sometimes in the same film, he does have themes and motifs that spring up again and again: psychoanalysis (Leisen was an ardant devoteeof the couch); Mexico and Central America; gay characters (Richard Hayden in NO TIME FOR LOVE is the rom-com's best-ever Gay Best Friend); impostures (especially in the comedies, Shakespeare-style, but NO MAN OF HER OWN, Leisen's sole noir, uses the device for suspense and pathos); abrupt mood swings (see above); elaborate design of sets and costumes (a virtue with which the director has often been beaten by homophobic Wilderists); love stories in which one lover is virtuous, the other shiftless or untrustworthy (this may have had an autobiographical component).

David Melville's Great Directors essay, online at Senses of Cinema (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/05/leisen.html), should be your first port of call for more information and analysis (after the films themselves, slowly becoming available on DVD).

David Chierichetti's HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR, available secondhand, is an interview book and critical study: Leisen, retired and in ill-health, cooperated fully, hoping to salvage his reputation. Maybe it's finally working.

*According to psychologists advising the British Board of Film Censors, the sight of blood on breasts acts as a Rape Trigger in some male viewers, but the intended audience of MURDER AT THE VANITIES is perhaps immune to such auto-suggestion.

• DVD Title: You Can't Take It with You DVD
• Genre: Comedy / Romance
• Info: Widescreen
• Rating: PG
• Release Date: 1938
• Running Time : 126 min
• Total Cost : USD $24.99
• Director : Frank Capra
• Writer : George S. Kaufman (play) and
  Moss Hart (play) .
• Actors: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, and Edward Arnold
• UPC : 043396085688
  
• In Stock, Next Day Dispatch

Synopsis: You Can't Take It with You DVD - A good-natured but decidedly eccentric family meets a new friend. You Can't Take It with You DVD.

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