4th Luso World Cinema Blogathon–Favorite Mary Astor Performances

The Luso World Cinema Blogathon is an annual event hosted by Spellbound with Beth Ann and Critica Retro. I’ll admit that I didn’t know anything about Luso cinema, in fact, I didn’t know what “Luso” meant. Research revealed that “Luso” is a prefix used in relation to Portugal and Portuguese culture. From reading through the list of actors/actresses of Portuguese heritage, I learned that one of my favorites, Mary Astor, fits this description.

Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke in Quincy, Illinois on May 3, 1906. Her father was German and her mother was American. Mary got her Portuguese heritage from her mother. Mary was homeschooled by her mother until 1919 when she sent a photo of herself to a beauty contest and became a semi-finalist. When she was 15, she began taking drama lessons and appearing in local productions. Mary submitted her photos to other beauty contests, eventually catching the attention of an employee at Famous Players-Lasky. She was then signed to a six-month contract at Paramount. Mary would eventually make her screen debut in 1921 at the age of 14.

Mary’s career in silent film had its ups and downs. In 1929, she briefly found herself out of work as her voice was deemed too deep for talkies. However, she appeared in a play with her friend Florence Eldridge (wife of Fredric March) which ended up getting her back into films. She started being cast in films again and was on her way to stardom. In 1935, Mary had an extra-marital affair and was later embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with her ex-husband. In many cases, an adulteress’ career would be over, but the scandal seemed to have little effect on her career. Mary would eventually win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1941 for her role in The Great Lie.

Mary Astor’s career reached its peak in the 1940s with her Oscar win and appearance in the film noir classic, The Maltese Falcon, as Brigid O’Shaugnessy. As what happened with a lot of actresses back then, as soon as Mary hit 40 she was seen as a “mother” figure and was often cast in more matronly roles such as matriarch Anna Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis and Marmee in Little Women. Some of Astor’s best roles however come during this time when she took on against-type parts, such as playing a prostitute in Act of Violence or a madam in Desert Fury. Mary made her final appearance in 1964 in the small, but important role of Jewel Mayhew in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.

Mary Astor had a lot of great roles in her long career. Here are my top 5 favorite Mary Astor performances:

Walter Huston and Mary Astor in “Dodsworth.”

#1 Dodsworth (1936). In this film, Mary plays “the other woman,” a role which typically isn’t sympathetic and is usually villainous. However, in Dodsworth, Mary’s performance as Edith Cortright and relationship with Walter Huston’s Sam Dodsworth is so beautiful that she is seen as the woman that Sam deserves. In this film, Sam and his wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton)’s daughter is all grown and married. Fran cannot accept being old enough to have a grown and married daughter. Sam retires and hopes to live a life of leisure with Fran. They’re planning on starting their retirement with an extended European vacation. While on the ocean liner, Sam meets Edith and Fran meets a young Englishman (David Niven) with whom she flirts. Sam ends up spending much of his time on the boat with Edith. While in Europe, Fran wants to be part of the jet set, spending her time living the high life while pretending to be much younger. Sam just wants to see the sights. As the Dodsworths find themselves growing apart, through a chance encounter, Sam reunites with Edith.

Mary’s performance in Dodsworth is very charming and sweet. She is what the film needs to offset the vain and materialistic Fran. While she is the “other woman” so to speak, Sam is such a nice guy and Fran is so awful, that we as the audience want Sam and Edith to be together.

Mary Astor and Joel McCrea in “The Palm Beach Story.”

#2 The Palm Beach Story (1942). Mary Astor’s performance in this film is unlike any other part that I’ve seen her play. While she doesn’t seem like the obvious choice to appear in a Preston Sturges screwball comedy, Mary is right at home. In this film, she plays the oft-married Princess Maud Centimillia. At the start of the film, she’s on her way home to Palm Beach, FL with her latest conquest, Toto. She pulls up to the dock in her yacht and immediately wants to drop Toto for Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea). Tom is in town looking for his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert) who has traveled to Palm Beach from New York. While on the train to Florida, Gerry meets the Princess’ brother, John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee). John is instantly smitten with Gerry and takes her back to his home to give her a place to stay.

Mary Astor’s performance as the Princess is hysterical. Even though she’s taken Toto as her lover, she wants nothing to do with him as soon as she spots Joel McCrea. Her disdain for Toto is so clear and obvious, but he’s a dope and doesn’t pick up on it. The Princess constantly has to think of errands to send Toto on so she’ll go away. She’s also very funny when Gerry introduces her husband as “Captain McGlue” in an effort to hide the fact that he’s her husband. When Tom later reveals that he is not Captain McGlue, the Princess says: “Thank heaven for some things. That name!”

Clark Gable and Mary Astor in “Red Dust.”

#3 Red Dust (1933) In this film, Mary plays Barbara Willis, the wealthy wife of Gary (Gene Raymond) who is sent to oversee a rubber plantation in French Indochina. The manager of the rubber plantation is Dennis Carson (Clark Gable). Another visitor to the plantation is Vantine (Jean Harlow), a young prostitute on the lam. Vantine is instantly smitten with Dennis and he seems interested in her until he sees Barbara. Barbara is the polar opposite of Vantine. She is brunette, more classy and ladylike. In contrast, Vantine is a bleached blonde, a brash, and outspoken. Gary ends up coming down with malaria, which puts him out of commission and more importantly, away from Barbara. Dennis spends the week of Barbara’s visit seducing her until she finally succumbs to his advances. Meanwhile, Vantine looks on with intense jealousy.

This is a very sexy part for Mary Astor. She is given the chance to have the hot and heavy affair with the hunky Clark Gable. The entire film is sweaty and it feels sweaty. At one point, Barbara is caught in the rain and is drenched. She then shares a sexy kiss with Gable.

Mary Astor and John Barrymore in “Midnight.”

#4 Midnight (1939) In this film, Mary plays the wealthy Helene Flammarion, the wife of Georges Flammrion (John Barrymore). She is very openly having an affair with ladies man, Jacques Picot (Frances Lederer). At the beginning of the film, Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) crashes a concert attended by members of the Parisian high society. She ends up running into Marcel Renaud (Rex O’Malley) who invites her to play bridge with himself, Helene, and Jacques. Eve introduces herself as “Madame Czerny.” Georges enters the room and sees Eve. He pretends to recognize Madame Czerny.

Georges comes up with a scheme to break up his wife and Jacques. He proposes to Eve that she try and break up Jacques and Helene. If she succeeds, Georges will give her a good payoff to reward her for her efforts. He will also give her 50,000 francs and invites her to his and Helene’s home in Versailles for the weekend. Georges also puts Eve up in a suite at the Ritz and buys her a new wardrobe, worthy of her persona as Madame Czerny. Meanwhile, cab driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) is looking for Eve, having fallen in love with her while her drove her around town. When he finally finds her, he is amused that she’s taken on his surname as her fake royalty name.

While Mary Astor is more of a side character in this film, she is very funny in her part as John Barrymore’s unfaithful wife. She has absolutely no discretion in her affair with Jacques. Mary excels in these parts playing a bit of a goody two shoes, but also classy and a bit rigid. She’s also great at delivering her lines with a bit of bitterness, cynicism, while also being very funny.

Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon”

#5 The Maltese Falcon (1941). This is perhaps Mary Astor’s most famous role, that of femme fatale Brigid O’Shaugnessy in John Huston’s directorial debut and Humphrey Bogart’s breakout role. In this film, Brigid introduces herself to Bogart’s Sam Spade as “Miss Wonderly,” but he soon figures out that she’s lying about her identity. She comes to Sam wanting help in finding out the whereabouts of her missing sister. All Brigid can say is that she came to town (San Francisco) with Floyd Thursby. Sam puts his associate, Miles Archer, on the case. Miles is murdered while investigating Thursby’s whereabouts.

Sam sets out to investigate Archer’s death, but is soon thrust into an even larger (more interesting) mystery. He goes to Brigid, now calling herself Brigid having abandoned the “Miss Wonderly” moniker, to find out more information about Thursby. Brigid confesses that she made up the story about her sister and revealed that Thursby was her partner. She also puts forth the theory that Thursby probably killed Archer. When Sam returns to his office, he encounters Joe Cairo (Peter Lorre) who is wanting help looking for a statue of a black bird.

The black bird investigation proves to be a lot more interesting, especially when it turns out that Brigid is acquainted with Joe Cairo. Sam also learns that Cairo and Brigid are part of a gang led by Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.) is Kasper’s gunsel and eventual fall guy. The ending of the film where Sam calls Brigid out and says she was responsible for Archer’s death. This is Mary Astor’s time to shine. In the scene, she is heartbroken that Sam Spade, with whom she thought she was in love, sends her up the river. She pleads with him to not turn her over to the police, but to no avail. He “consoles” her stating that she’ll probably be out in twenty years. As she descends in the elevator, Brigid’s face is covered by the shadows of bars on the windows.

3rd Annual Agnes Moorehead Blogathon: Dark Passage (1947)

SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen “Dark Passage,” the ending will be spoiled in this article. It is impossible to talk about Agnes Moorehead’s role in this film without discussing the ending. In a happy coincidence, “Dark Passage” is scheduled to air on TCM’s Noir Alley this Saturday, May 4th at 9:15 pm (Pacific) and on Sunday, May 5th at 7:00am (Pacific).

BOB (to MADGE): Why don’t you leave people alone? You’re not satisfied unless you bother people. Either it’s your family or your friends, people you don’t know…No feelings for you. No feeling at all, except I’m annoyed whenever I see you.

Bruce Bennett as “Bob” and Agnes Moorehead as “Madge Rapf” in Dark Passage (1947)

This quote pretty much sums up every character in Dark Passage‘s relationship and feelings about Madge Rapf, portrayed by the brilliant Agnes Moorehead. She is the town busy body, known to everyone and liked by no one. She gets on everyone’s nerves with her persistence, suspicion, and tendency to insert herself into everyone’s business.

Madge Rapf is the ultimate woman scorned.

At the start of the film, Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart, whose voice is heard, but isn’t shown until about halfway through) escapes from the notorious San Quentin prison. As the audience, we only see the events transpire from Vincent’s perspective. He is picked up by a passing motorist, who soon starts to ask too many questions and is knocked unconscious by Vincent. Another motorist, Irene Janson (Lauren Bacall) picks Vincent up and smuggles him past the police roadblock and takes him to her apartment in San Francisco. Irene explains that she followed his case closely and knew who he was when she spotted him. She further explains that her father had been falsely convicted of murder, something that she believes has also happened to Vincent. Irene states that her father’s false conviction has inspired her to take an interest in instances of injustice.

Madge annoys Bob one too many times while Irene looks on.

Here’s where Madge comes into the story. Madge, it turns out, is acquainted with Irene and Bob (Bruce Bennett). Bob is a friend of Irene’s who wants to be romantically involved with her. How Madge knows Irene isn’t made clear, but she knows her, because she seems to know everyone. It is also revealed that Madge is well acquainted with Vincent and was the star witness at his trial. Her testimony, in which she claimed Vincent’s late wife had identified him as her killer, is what clinched his guilty verdict and placed him into a cell at San Quentin. Madge had made romantic advances toward Vincent, and when he rejected her, she delivered the false (but incriminating) testimony out of spite. She has resented Vincent ever since. When Madge hears about his escape and then thinks she hears his voice in Irene’s apartment, she becomes convinced that Vincent is going to murder her.

Vincent, needing to hide in plain sight from the police, takes the advice of a cab driver to visit the office of a disgraced plastic surgeon. At around 3am, Vincent arrives at the surgeon’s office and receives a “new look.” The new look is obviously the face of Humphrey Bogart, so that he can be seen in the film. There is an amusing scene earlier in the film where a photo of Vincent Parry is seen in a newspaper article. The man in the photo looks absolutely nothing like Bogart, which just goes to show how skilled the plastic surgeon is.

Bacall nurses Bogie back to health.

Before getting outfitted with a new face, Vincent had visited the apartment of his friend George, who lived near the doctor’s office. He asks George for a place to stay while he recovers from the surgery. Upon Vincent’s return, he finds George dead on the floor–a victim of murder. Vincent eventually ends up at Irene’s apartment. She assists him during his recovery and helps him with his new look and gives him a new name. Because this film stars married couple Bogie and Bacall, their respective characters start to develop romantic feelings toward one another.

Eventually, Vincent becomes suspicious of Madge, knowing that she has been hanging around Irene’s apartment. He also knows that she knows he’s around somewhere. Vincent shows up at Madge’s apartment to confront her over the deaths of both his wife and George. He presents a document outlining his accusations towards Madge and attempts to coerce her to sign it, which would serve as her confession. Madge refuses, knowing that without her confession, Vincent has no proof of his claims. Madge, still the woman scorned, is also upset that Vincent is in love with Irene.

MADGE to VINCENT: I’ve cried myself to sleep at night because of you. She’s (Irene) got you now. She wants you very badly doesn’t she? She’s willing to run away with you and keep on running and ruin everything for herself. But she wouldn’t care because she’d be with you and that’s what she wants. Well she doesn’t have you now. She’ll never have you. Nobody will ever have you! And that’s the way I want it! You’re nothing but an escaped convict. Nobody knows what you wrote down. They’ll believe me! They’ll believe me!

Agnes Moorehead as “Madge Rapf” to Humphrey Bogart as “Vincent Parry” in Dark Passage (1947)

Madge about ready to leap, she sure showed him!

Then, in the ultimate power play of a woman scorned, Madge jumps out the window and falls to her death. Vincent has a throwaway line where he tells Irene that Madge “stumbled and fell out the window,” however, it is fairly obvious that Madge jumped on purpose. Before she falls, she is seen grabbing something from the desk, presumably something with which to break the window. Then, she jumps. The window was closed and Madge wasn’t very far from it when she “fell.” There’s no way that Madge would have stumbled with such force that she would have broken the glass. The production code prohibited villains from getting away with their crime through suicide. Presumably, including the dialogue about Madge falling out the window was the film’s way of circumventing the production code.

Can you imagine someone hating you so much, they’d jump out a window to their death to avoid helping you?

The ending scene of Madge’s wrath is expertly performed by Agnes Moorehead. The contempt she feels towards Bogart’s character is so well acted and is felt by the audience. I also appreciate that she’s a bit over the top so that we can safely conclude that this woman is a bit bonkers so we don’t feel too bad for her that she dies. I love movies with scenes that come out of left field. The first time I saw Dark Passage, I didn’t expect Madge to jump. With Bogart there, it seemed like shooting Madge would be the obvious solution. For her to dramatically jump out the window instead, right after her speech where she explains that she won’t do anything to help him, was incredibly shocking and awesome.

6th Golden Boy, A William Holden Celebration Blogathon: Sunset Boulevard (1950)

My post for this event is coming a little early, as I am leaving for the TCM Film Festival in Hollywood tomorrow night! I wanted to make sure I got my article finished before I leave, as I probably won’t have time to do so while I’m in California. I hope to see William Holden in Sabrina while I’m at the festival, but we’ll see. But I digress, today I am not talking about Holden in Sabrina, I am talking about Holden in his breakout role in Sunset Boulevard.

Prior to 1950, Holden’s career was languishing. His first starring role came in 1939’s Golden Boy, co-starring Barbara Stanwyck. Despite Stanwyck’s enormous help and use of her star power to keep Holden from being fired from the production (a kindness that Holden never forgot and repaid his gratitude by sending her flowers every year on the anniversary of Golden Boy‘s first day of production), this film did not prove to be the breakout hit Holden needed to be considered a movie star. He did appear in films with A-list actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, Veronica Lake, to name a few, but none of these films would provide Holden with an opportunity to breakout.

William Holden at the start of Sunset Boulevard

After returning from serving in World War II, Holden was placed in a variety of smaller films, where he played what he called “smiling Jim” roles. Holden grew weary of such films and wanted something that would actually challenge his acting ability and give him a different type of role to play. He found that in 1949 when he was offered the role of Joe Gillis, a down on his luck screenwriter in Billy Wilder’s next film, Sunset Boulevard. Wilder’s first choice, Montgomery Clift, had dropped out of the film’s production. Holden wisely saw Wilder’s film as his opportunity to do something different and accepted the role.

My favorite Sunset Boulevard poster.

Sunset Boulevard was the perfect showcase for what would become Holden’s trademark onscreen persona–the handsome and charming, yet flawed man who was cynical of the world around him. His persona is similar to Humphrey Bogart’s except that Holden was classically handsome and could charm anyone with a flash of his smile. Both Bogart and Holden’s characters were often cynical, but Bogart often imbued his performances with a vulnerable quality. Holden’s characters tended to be more heroic and called upon to do the right thing, even if he himself didn’t believe in it. In ‘Sunset,’ Holden ultimately has to do what’s right for Betty Schaefer and his friend (and her fiancé) Artie–even if it’s not what he would have wanted for himself.

Wilder’s film features a very unusual and somewhat macabre framing device–the story’s narrative is told by the corpse of Joe Gillis (Holden), who at the beginning of the film, is seen floating facedown in the pool at silent film star Norma Desmond’s mansion. Wilder’s previous film noir, Double Indemnity, also used a narrator who recounted the previous events leading to that moment. Except in that film, the narrator, Walter Neff, is still alive and is dictating his story into his boss’ Dictaphone. In ‘Boulevard,’ we see the lifeless frozen in time face of Gillis as he goes into his story:

JOE: Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It’s about five o’clock in the morning. That’s the homicide squad – complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block. You’ll read about it in the late editions, I’m sure. You’ll get it over your radio and see it on television because an old-time star is involved–one of the biggest. But before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion, before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it, maybe you’d like to hear the facts, the whole truth. If so, you’ve come to the right party. You see, the body of a young man was found floating in the pool of her mansion–with two shots in his back and one in his stomach. Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a couple of B pictures to his credit. The poor dope! He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool–only the price turned out to be a little high. Let’s go back about six months and find the day when it all started.

William Holden as “Joe Gillis” in Sunset Boulevard

The film then segues into the beginning of the flashback. Joe Gillis is at Paramount trying to sell a story idea he’s written, hoping that the studio will buy it and hire him to write the screenplay. A studio “reader,” Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) is already in the office talking to the studio head, advising him to turn down the story. Unfortunately for Betty, Joe overhears the conversation and is upset. Later, when returning home, Joe notices that he’s being followed by a pair of men looking to repossess his car. Trying to outrun and hide from the men, he turns into the driveway of a seemingly deserted mansion, and hides his car in the garage.

JOE: Wait a minute, haven’t I seen you before? I know your face…You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
NORMA: I *am* big, it’s the *pictures* that got small.

William Holden as “Joe Gillis” and Gloria Swanson as “Norma Desmond” in Sunset Boulevard.

However, the mansion is not deserted! It in fact belongs to former silent film star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Norma hasn’t made a film for over twenty years, but still believes she’s every inch the major Hollywood star. She ambles around in her cavernous mansion, filled with luxurious and expensive decor. Photographs of Norma (real photographs of Swanson during her silent film career) in her heyday are prominently placed throughout the home. Evenings are filled with Norma watching herself perform in her films. Norma is determined to make a comeback, despite hating the word “comeback.” She prefers to think of it as a “return,” a return to the millions of people who won’t forgive her for deserting the screen. Norma’s comeback is set to be a new adaptation of Salome, a script that she has written for herself.

The very bizarre monkey funeral sequence.

Norma’s butler, Max (Erich von Stroheim), exists solely to feed into Norma’s disillusions about her level of celebrity. He gives into her every whim, whether it’s holding a funeral for her dead monkey or organizing a New Years Eve party, complete with an orchestra, for no guests. Max to his credit, is cognizant of Norma’s mental state and takes precautions, such as removing the door knobs so that she cannot lock herself inside when she decides to harm herself. Despite how crazy and funny Norma seems on the outside, inside this is a woman who is struggling and is in desperate need of some therapy and mental help. Norma is a tragic figure in this film.

Having heard that Joe is a writer, Norma hires him to help her with her Salome script. Joe finds the writing abysmal, but with his car about to be repossessed, and his rent in arrears, he realizes that he cannot afford to turn her offer down. Norma has Max set up a room for Joe and soon he’s part of Norma’s life. Norma is ecstatic having Joe around and treats him to champagne, and invites him to engage in one of her favorite pastimes–watching her own movies.

NORMA: We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!

Gloria Swanson as “Norma Desmond” in Sunset Boulevard

Norma entertains Joe with her delightful Charlie Chaplin impression.

The deserted mansion implies that Norma is a bit of a recluse. She does have some visitors, such as “the Waxworks” i.e., her silent film friends who come by once a week to play bridge. This is such a fun sequence, if only to see Buster Keaton, who was known to be an excellent bridge player. He memorably says “Pass” twice during the game. Joe’s continued presence in the home inspires Norma to have Max dust off her old car, a 1929 Isotta Fraschini. By this point, Joe’s work on Norma’s script is long done, and he continues to live with Norma, indulging her fantasies and delusions. She’s tired of Joe’s “dreadful” shirt, his boring sports jacket, and his baggy pants. Norma takes Joe shopping for a brand new wardrobe, and this is the scene that cements Joe’s new status in Norma’s life–kept man. The salesman at the men’s clothing store has a memorable line that sums up Joe’s entire situation when he’s hesitant to allow her to buy him an expensive Vicuna overcoat over the less expensive camel’s hair:

SALESMAN: As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?

This scene always makes me laugh.

Joe does take the Vicuna and with that starts the second act and one of the most memorable sequences in the film, Norma’s New Years Eve party. She has Max hire an orchestra, put together an enormous spread of food and champagne, everything that would make for a great party. Joe comes down the grand staircase in a beautiful tuxedo with tails and marvels at the scene. He takes Norma’s hand and while dancing, he innocently asks where the other guests are. There are no guests she exclaims, gleefully. Joe realizes that Norma has fallen in love with him. Hmm. Apparently he didn’t realize that when she bought him a brand new wardrobe? Then comes one of my favorite Norma Desmond quotes when she tries to offer Joe a New Years Eve gift:

JOE: Norma, I can’t take it. You’ve bought me enough.
NORMA: Shut up! I’m rich. I’m richer than all this new Hollywood trash. I’ve got a million dollars.

William Holden as “Joe Gillis” and Gloria Swanson as “Norma Desmond” in Sunset Boulevard.

Perhaps the only time we ever saw Jack Webb smile.

Joe eventually leaves and heads to the New Years Eve party of his friend, Artie Green (Jack Webb). As an side, I think this film is the most animated performance I’ve ever seen from Jack Webb. But I digress. Artie’s party is definitely a more raucous and less refined affair than Norma’s party for two. While at the party, Joe runs into Betty again and learns that she’s Artie’s fiancée. However, the two start talking “shop” and discussing Joe’s story idea. Betty comes up with a concept that works with Joe’s idea but changes the setting and characters’ occupation. The two seem to develop an affection for one another as they discuss Joe’s story and get excited by its potential. Eventually though, Joe has to leave and return to Norma.

This scene sets up the overall main conflict of the film: Norma’s obsession with Joe versus Joe and Betty’s burgeoning love affair. When Joe returns home from Artie’s, he learns that Norma attempted suicide over his leaving. Feeling guilty, Joe goes to Norma’s room and ends up wishing her a Happy New Years and kisses her. Talk about mixed signals.

Throughout most of the remainder of the film’s running time, Joe is secretly leaving Norma’s home in the evenings and meeting up with Betty at Paramount. The two are excitedly working together on a story treatment that they hope to sell to the studio. Betty tells Joe about her dreams and past which only endears her to him. She also wants to be a screenwriter and hopes this story may earn her a promotion from reader. Joe is endeared by Betty’s youth and optimism and finds himself falling in love with her. This causes him to feel conflicted, as he doesn’t want to steal his friend’s girlfriend.

JOE: How old are you anyway?
BETTY: Twenty two.
JOE: That’s it–there’s nothing like being twenty two. Now may I suggest that if we’re ever to finish this story you keep at least two feet away from me…now back to the typewriter.

William Holden as “Joe Gillis” and Nancy Olson as “Betty Schaefer in Sunset Boulevard.

Norma returns to Paramount to see Cecil B. DeMille.

Norma’s opportunity to make a “return” seems to come when she’s contacted by Gordon Cole at Paramount. He wants Norma to come down to the studio and talk about Cecil B. DeMille’s next film. Norma had Max deliver her completed draft of her Salome script to DeMille, so naturally, she thinks that Mr. Cole wants her to come down to discuss it. Norma makes her triumphant return to Paramount, despite only being allowed in because the old studio guard recognized her. When she arrives, DeMille is in the middle of shooting a scene for his next film. He has her sit down and while she waits, the lighting man recognizes her and shines a spotlight on her. Then other employees are heard in succession, saying Norma Desmond’s name. This sets up one of my favorite lines in the movie:

PARAMOUNT SECURITY GUARD: Why I thought she was dead!

Betty and Joe start to fall in love.

The final act of the film is where Norma’s obsession with Joe and Joe and Betty’s late night story writing plot lines come to a head. Norma begins to become suspicious of Joe’s late night trips. She finds out about Betty and becomes extremely jealous and telephones her over and over. Joe overhears Norma talking to Betty and interrupts the call. Knowing that he needs to end things with Betty as to not hurt Artie, he tells her to come over to Norma’s home. When he does, he essentially explains to her that he’s the kept man of Norma Desmond and runs her out of his life by pretending to brag and gloat about the lavish lifestyle he’s living with Norma. While we’re led to believe that Joe is just saying these things to drive Betty away and back to Artie, one has to wonder if he truly believes his lie. Despite thinking Norma was nuts at the beginning and just accepting what he thought would be easy money, Joe seems to enjoy his time with Norma. He lives lavishly, enjoys nice food, champagne, her pool, she has everything he wants. It’s easy to see why Norma would be in love with him. He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s charming, he has everything an aging woman would want. I could write a whole article about how Norma Desmond is truly the victim of Sunset Boulevard, despite murdering Joe. But that’s for another day.

Norma’s 1929 Isotta Fraschini

Max finds out the truth about why Paramount wanted to see Norma on the lot. It wasn’t for Salome, but rather they wanted to use her car in a film. Upon hearing the reason, Cecil B. DeMille cannot in good faith hurt Norma’s feelings and tells Gordon Cole to find another car. Once again the people in Norma’s life protect her from the truth. Joe FINALLY grows a back bone and some self-respect and decides to leave Norma’s home. Except she’s a woman scorned and she will not let him leave. While walking past the pool, Norma shoots Joe three times and he collapses, face first into the pool. That brings us back to the beginning of the film.

JOE: Well this is where you came in. Here’s that pool again, the one I always wanted.

William Holden as “Joe Gillis” in Sunset Boulevard.

Norma Desmond’s final scene in Sunset Boulevard is spectacular. The police are on the scene, ready to take Norma in for murder. Hedda Hopper is there, wanting her paper to take her story direct, live from Norma’s bedroom. Reporters with newsreel cameras, to capture Norma’s arrest are huddled around. Every one is there, except Norma’s grip on reality. Her madness has finally reached its peak. Max, no longer complicit in maintaining Norma’s fantasy life, uses her delusions of grandeur against her to lure her into the waiting police car. As Norma’s former director, Max positions himself amongst the newsreel cameras, telling Norma that they’re here to start shooting Salome.

Norma’s descent down the stairs is completely surreal. As she makes her way to the bottom, everyone else in the scene remains completely still. Norma makes her way towards Max, arms reaching out towards the camera. She’s ready to make her triumphant return. Norma makes a speech about how happy she is to be back in front of the camera. She looks completely bonkers as she finally makes her way to her mark to start filming her scene. Reaching out one more time towards the camera she says in an oft-misquoted line:

NORMA: All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

Gloria Swanson as “Norma Desmond” in Sunset Boulevard

Favorite Stars in ‘B’ Movies– Steve McQueen in “The Blob” (1958)

Beware of the blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of the blob

“The Blob” performed by The Five Blobs in “The Blob” (1958)

And so begins the greatest movie theme song of all time–the theme song to the 1958 sci-fi classic, The Blob. The theme song was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David. Bacharach of course would later go on to win two Best Song Oscars, most notably for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However, for my money, “The Blob” is his best tune, an earworm so catchy that it’ll stay with you days, even weeks after watching the film. My husband and I saw this film at The Hollywood Theatre on our 11th anniversary a couple years ago. It was awesome seeing it up on the big screen.

The Blob starts out like many other 50s sci-fi films. A pair of teenagers, Steve (Steve McQueen, in his screen debut) and Jane (Aneta “Miss Crump from The Andy Griffith Show” Corsaut) are necking at lover’s lane. They see what appears to be a meteorite cascading through the sky and hear it crashing. Steve and Jane drive off to see what it was, but an old man and his dog get to it first. The old man finds the meteor and pokes it with a stick. When he does, it splits open and a mysterious bloblike creature (i.e. “the blob”) escapes and attaches itself to the man’s arm. In pain and unable to get the blob off, the man runs out into the road, nearly being hit by Steve. Steve and Jane take the man to see Dr. Hallen.

In a moment of desperation before her inevitable consumption by the blob, Nurse Kate tries to subdue it with a glass of water.

Dr. Hallen subdues the man with an anesthetic and sends Steve and Jane back out to the site and look for information. While Steve and Jane are gone, Dr. Hallen decides that the old man’s arm must be amputated. During this entire time, between the blob’s escape from the meteor and staying at Dr. Hallen’s, the blob has grown in size. Before Steve and Jane return, the blob fully absorbs the old man, Dr. Hallen, and his nurse Kate. This scene features a lot of delightful screaming by Kate. Screaming, while standing completely motionless and not trying to escape at all, is a common trope in 50s sci-fi. The blob grows and becomes more red with each subsequent victim.

At this point, Steve, Jane and his other “teenage” friends try to warn the police about the blob. I am not convinced that any of the teenagers in this film are actually teenagers. Steve McQueen was 28 and looks every inch of it. Aneta Corsaut was 25. I can see why McQueen wanted to avoid discussing this film. His screen debut is not flashy, it’s not a star-making role. McQueen doesn’t really do anything in this film other than warn the adults about the blob. The real star of this film is the blob. He should have gone onto bigger and better things.

But I digress. The police investigate Steve’s claims but are unable to locate the blob or any victims. They assume that Steve is playing a prank on the police and ignore his subsequent warnings. As these films tend to go, Steve and Jane have continued run-ins with the blob and find more and more victims. The police continue to ignore them until they have their own encounter and see the blob with their own eyes.

The blob oozes through the front doors of the Colonial Theater.

In The Blob‘s most famous sequence, one that is also featured in Grease, another film that features near-30 year olds playing teenagers, the blob is seen creeping through the vents in the projection booth of the local Colonial Theater. Steve and Jane continue to warn everyone of the danger, but to no avail. They are vindicated when the blob completely absorbs the projectionist, and then takes over the theater. The crowd flees the theater in panic, while the blob oozes through the front doors. As an aside, at the annual Blobfest in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, people can participate in a reenactment of this scene. Participants can run screaming, out of the now-restored Colonial Theater, trying to escape being consumed by the blob.

At the film’s conclusion, the now enormous blob completely absorbs a diner, complete with customers inside. The police, now finally believing Steve’s claims, try to figure out how to take the blob down before he consumes the entire town. They try to electrocute the blob, but all that accomplishes is setting a fire elsewhere. Steve notices that the blob recoils when coming in contact with the cold CO₂ fire extinguisher liquid. He comes up with a plan to acquire as many fire extinguishers as possible from a variety of sources. Copious amounts of fire extinguishers in hand, the firefighters, police and students spray the blob. Now frozen, the Air Force is contacted to carry the heavy frozen blob to the Arctic. However, he’s not dead.

The best thing about this film is the blob. He’s some sort of alien that crashes to earth. His only way to stay alive is to eat people. With every person consumed, the blob grows in size and becomes more and more red. At the beginning of the film, he was a tiny blob, maybe 5″ in diameter and was semi- translucent. By the end of the film, he’s grown to gargantuan portions and is a deep deep red. I love that the film has no resolution. The blob, while frozen, is not defeated. Freezing him was a temporary solution.

The film warns that the blob will stay away as long as the Arctic stays cold. Oops. With the arctic melting, are we in danger of the blob’s imminent return? The answer is a resounding “yes,” because apparently at the aforementioned “Blobfest” in Pennsylvania, fans of the blob can meet the star of the movie, the blob himself, in person! It’s only a matter of time before he wrecks havoc again.

The Second Master of Suspense Blogathon–“The Birds” (1963)

I first saw The Birds in the 90s when I was in middle school. It was supposedly “very scary” but I didn’t find it scary in the slightest. In fact, back then and even now, I find parts of it very funny. Because of Hitchcock’s known fondness for macabre humor, it’s hard to know whether Hitchcock purposely intended for these scenes to be funny. There are also parts of this film that I find very bewildering. I also love the birds in The Birds and think that they are 100% the heroes of the film.

The peach-faced lovebirds are adorable and need their picture in this article.

The Birds, based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story of the same name, starts with socialite and known party girl, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in a San Francisco pet shop. She seems to just be browsing. The shop proprietor, Miss Inch from The Parent Trap, steps away for a second. While she’s out of earshot, lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) enters the shop looking for a pair of lovebirds for his sister Cathy’s (Veronica Cartwright) birthday. Mitch recognizes Melanie as the party girl whose picture he saw in the newspaper. It seems she had been arrested for pulling a practical joke and due to her notoriety as a raucous socialite, she made the local newspaper. Knowing that she doesn’t work at the pet shop, Mitch pretends to mistake her as an employee and asks her technical questions about birds. She tries to pretend that she knows about birds, but fails. Mitch tells her that he knows about her and leaves. Resenting that Mitch made her out to be a fool, Melanie purchases the lovebirds and decides to deliver them to Mitch herself.

Mitch and his mother (or lover?) Lydia

Melanie ends up following Mitch to his weekend home in Bodega Bay, about an hour outside of San Francisco. When she arrives in town, she asks around town for the location of Mitch’s home as well as the name of his sister. She’s directed to the home of the local school teacher, Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) who is Cathy’s teacher. In addition to learning Cathy’s name, she also learns that Annie is Mitch’s ex-girlfriend who broke up with Mitch over his overbearing mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy). Melanie also earns an invitation to stay with Annie at her home. As an aside, the whole Mitch/Lydia dynamic is odd. First of all, she seems much too old to be Cathy’s mother. It would be more believable if Cathy were Mitch’s daughter. This change in the storyline wouldn’t affect the plot. But aside from that, there are also scenes between Mitch and Lydia, where they oddly seem like romantic partners versus mother and son. I find some of their scenes strange.

Anyway, Melanie ends up renting a boat and rowing across the bay to Mitch’s farmhouse. She breaks into his home and delivers the lovebirds. She then returns to her boat so she can wait for Mitch to enter the home and find the lovebirds. He does and quickly finds Melanie. When Lydia meets Melanie, she is cold to her, because she resents any woman in her son’s life. She is very much the jealous lover even though she’s Mitch’s mother. Anyway, it is after Melanie’s burglary of Mitch’s home is when the birds start attacking!

The birds assemble on the jungle gym, ready to make their move.

Melanie is hit by a seagull upon returning to shore to return the boat. Mitch sees her and tends to her injury. Later, the children at Cathy’s birthday party are attacked by a flock of birds. Throughout the film, there are random bird attacks, which are unexplained. Never once in Hitchcock’s narrative does he try to offer a rational explanation for the bird attacks. The randomness and severity of the attacks is what lends the horror to The Birds. Hitchcock also opted to not use any sort of soundtrack or score, instead choosing to only utilize the sound of the birds to punctuate the action in the film. There are also large chunks of the film where there is no sound at all, except the diegetic and ambient sounds present within the film.

The birds finally do what the audience wanted to do–put an end to that god awful song.

The absolute best example of Hitchcock’s use of silence and specific diegetic and ambient sounds is in the climactic scene when the birds attack the children at the school. To get this off my chest, I have to say that the song that the kids sing is so annoying and so awful, that I don’t blame the birds for attacking. The birds were doing the audience a favor. That song is irritating. I applaud the birds for putting an end to it. This is why they are the heroes of the film. Hitchcock also uses silence and diegetic sound very effectively at the film’s end, when the Brenner family walks an injured Melanie out of the house into the car, while the birds sit perched in silence. It’s very eerie and uncomfortable.

The hysterical mother in the diner.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned there are scenes that I find funny. Some scenes I think are intentionally funny, like the lovebirds leaning into every curve while Melanie is driving. One scene that I doubt is supposed to be funny but is funny is the scene when Mitch and Melanie are trying to find Cathy after the bird attack at the school. They go to Annie’s home and find Annie dead on the stairs, victim of the bird attack. Then, Melanie asks “Where’s Cathy?” Suddenly, Cathy pulls open the curtains and is sobbing in the window. For whatever reason, Cathy’s hysterical crying combined with the dramatic curtain pull makes me laugh. I know that’s probably terrible. Unfortunately, I cannot find a photo of Cathy in the window to support my statement. The other part that makes me laugh is the distressed mother in the diner. I also love that the other diners, like the bird lady, casually discuss the murderous birds. The distressed mother’s children are unaffected by the talk, but the mother is determined that her children are scared to death. I choose to believe that this mother deserves the stress as payback for wrecking Henry Fonda and Vera Miles’ lives with her false accusations in The Wrong Man.

Melanie in the phone booth

One of the highlights of The Birds is the big explosion at the gas station. The birds attack a gas station attendant and he and the other employees run inside. Because of the attack, the gas attendant drops the gas hose on the ground, leaving a trail of gasoline. The birds start to attack and Melanie takes refuge in a phone booth. The scene of Melanie in the phone booth with birds hitting the glass walls is one of the famous scenes in the film. This scene concludes in spectacular fashion with a customer lighting a cigar at the gas station, igniting the massive trail of gasoline. A huge explosion levels the gas station. Melanie returns to the diner. Then, the distressed mother launches into her diatribe, accusing Melanie of bringing about the bird attacks and being evil.

MOTHER: Why are they doing this? Why are they doing this? They said when you got here, the whole thing started. Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? I think you’re the cause of all of this. I think you’re evil. EVIL!

Doreen Lang as “Hysterical Mother in the Diner” in The Birds (1963)

I love that The Birds does not have a resolution. As far as we know, the birds are still out there, running Bodega Bay.

The birds reign supreme at Bodega Bay

The Mismatched Couples Blogathon– Grumpy Old Men (1993) & Grumpier Old Men (1995)

Grumpy Old Men and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men, are more or less The Odd Couple 25 years later. Felix and Oscar are no longer roommates in New York City. They’re now neighbors living in the small midwestern town of Wabasha, Minnesota. Felix and Oscar are still alone, but are single and ready to mingle. The two men are polar opposites in every way, but are friends despite how incompatible they seem on the surface. They are the epitome of a “mismatched couple.”

Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men are more or less one film, as the second film continues the story a few months after the events in the first film. Grumpy Old Men spans winter and spring and Grumpier Old Men covers summer and autumn. My family always watches both these films on Thanksgiving after our annual viewing of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Grumpy Old Men features Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we’ve found we can’t watch the first film without immediately watching the other. I have always accepted the events of both films taking place over a calendar year, despite the actual films being released two years apart. Both films are chock full of mismatched couples, covering a wide span of relationship types, from friendship to romance.

Jack Lemmon and Burgess Meredith as John and John Sr.

In the Grumpy Old Men series, Jack Lemmon plays John Gustafson, a widower and former teacher living alone in his beautiful Craftsman home in Wabasha. He survives off frozen meals and canned food and doesn’t seem thrilled about it. His daughter, Melanie (Darryl Hannah) and granddaughter come to visit often. His daughter’s relationship with her husband is on the rocks, and John isn’t upset to see it fall apart. John’s father, John Sr. (Burgess Meredith) is in his 90s and spends much of his time settling feuds between John and Max. John, Sr. is the polar opposite of his son. He eats unhealthily, smokes, and uses crass language. John’s biggest struggle in this film is that he owes a large sum of back taxes to the IRS and spends much of the film trying to dodge the collector.

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as John and Max.

Meanwhile, John’s neighbor and exact opposite Max Goldman (Walter Matthau), also a widower, spends his time in his messy home watching television, happily eating frozen and canned food, and terrorizing John by playing pranks on him. Even Max and John’s pets are contrasting. Max’s dog is a drooling, smelly, one-eyed bulldog named Lucky who is regularly encouraged to terrorize John’s cat named Slick. Max’s son, Jacob (Kevin Pollak) is running for mayor. He is also the opposite of Melanie, John’s daughter. Aside from the obvious male/female difference, Melanie is tall, Jacob is short. He also harbored a crush on Melanie as a child and sees his golden opportunity when her marriage falls apart.

Walter Matthau and Ann-Margret as Max and Ariel.

Tensions between John and Max heat up when a new neighbor, Ariel Truax (Ann-Margret) moves to town from California. She purchases a home catty corner from John and Max. Compared to the more conservative residents of Wabasha, Ariel is a breath of fresh air and a curiosity to the other residents in town, specifically the men. She purchases all kinds of exotic homeopathic medicines and remedies from the local pharmacy–so exotic in fact that they have to be mail-ordered. Ariel paints, sculpts, cooks exotic foods, and zips around town on her bobsled. She runs outside in her leotard to make snow angels and overall has a zest for life. She always wants to take chances and risks on anything that is a new experience. John and Max both seem resigned to letting things happen to them, versus making things happen for them. The men are both enchanted by Ariel, because duh it’s Ann-Margret, so she’s also gorgeous, and try to do their best to woo her. In the end, John wins and Max is upset and disappointed.

The tension over Ariel brings to light the root cause of John and Max’s feud–after high school, John married Max’s high school sweetheart. John tries to smooth over the situation by saying that his wife ended up cheating on him and was not a prize. He further reiterates to Max that he lucked out with the woman he eventually married. However, Max is still hurt that once again, John has ended up with the woman he was interested in. Despite being opposites, Ariel’s interest in John ends up being a boon to his life as her love for life leads him to try new things and helps pull him out of his rut of loneliness that he was experiencing throughout much of the beginning of the film.

Sophia Loren as Maria

However, Max might have lost out on Ariel, but he has a happy ending yet to come in Grumpier Old Men. His polar opposite, an Italian woman named Maria Sophia Coletta Ragetti (Sophia Loren), the cousin of local resident “Spaghetti Ragetti,” opens up a “ristorante” in Wabasha. Because it’s Sophia Loren, she is of course absolutely gorgeous and turns the heads of every man (and woman) in town. She’s also of course, European, which also makes her standout in this small midwestern town. Maria arrives during the summer in Wabasha and purchases the now vacant bait shop. The bait shop’s proprietor, Chuck (Ossie Davis) had passed away during the winter, in Grumpy Old Men. Both John and Max are upset that their beloved bait shop is being converted into a restaurant. Presumably they are upset as this forces them to accept that their friend Chuck is really gone.

John and Max do their best to ruin Maria’s restaurant. They switch out her red paint with yellow while she’s repainting, they change around signage to divert drivers away from the restaurant, everything they can to ruin it. Their efforts almost succeed when Maria has no customers on her opening night; however, when Ariel hears about what they’ve done she forces them to apologize. As one can imagine, this behavior does not present Max in the most appealing light, but he eventually charms Maria into going out on a date with him. Here is this man, definitely not conventionally attractive, with this gorgeous sophisticated Italian woman. Max buys her cheap jewelry (unaware how cheap it really is), tries to cook dinner for her but ends up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and really puts forth an effort. They keep up an antagonistic front, with Maria calling Max an “ox” and him calling her a “nag.” In the end they fall in love and their name-calling transforms into “ox” and “nag” being pet names for one another.

Despite all the differences between the various couples (friendship, family and romantic) described within this article, the core commonality they all have is love. John loves his father, John Sr. Max and John love each other despite their feud. When John has a heart attack and is hospitalized on Christmas Eve, Max is at the hospital to see him. When the nurse asks him if he’s a friend or family, Max hesitates and then says poignantly, “friend.” Ariel is at John’s beside pleading with him to stay with her. John and Max love their respective kids and each other’s kids. Melanie and Jacob eventually fall in love and elope. John and Max love their respective spouses, Ariel and Maria, despite the rocky starts both couples had. Even John Sr. finds love when he starts wooing Maria’s mother, “Mama,” (Ann Morgan Guilbert) a very conservative traditional Italian woman. At first she’s put off by John Sr.’s crass pick-up lines and innuendo, but eventually finds him charming. At the end of the Grumpy Old Men films, love triumphs over anything else.

JOHN: Moron!
MAX: Putz!

The Marathon Stars Blogathon–Paulette Goddard & Bob Hope

Paulette Goddard

When I saw this event announced, it took me a bit to decide who I wanted to marathon for this event. The no more than three films viewed requirement also caused further deliberation. No binging a favorite, I needed to pick a rarely viewed star whom I wanted to watch. As I thought more and more about some of my favorite performers, I thought about Paulette Goddard. I’d only seen her in three films: Modern Times (1936), The Women (1939), and Hold Back the Dawn (1941). I loved her in each film. Goddard’s films, with the exception of the ones I’d previously watched, rarely air on TCM. I believe this is most likely due to Goddard being under contract to David O. Selznick and later Paramount. Both of these studios’ output is outside of the Warner Brothers film library to which TCM has access. The film library is made up of the output of Warner Brothers, RKO, and pre-1985 MGM films. As a result, stars under contract with the aforementioned studios are more likely to have a stronger presence on TCM.

Bob Hope & Paulette Goddard

But I digress. I selected Paulette Goddard, as I had handful of her films available in my home library and had a couple of her films recorded. As I reviewed my choices for this marathon, I realized that 3/5 Goddard films also featured Bob Hope. Hope was another Paramount contract player with a long film career. As I thought about which of his films I’d watched, I realized that I’d only seen a couple of his films as well. I decided to add Hope to my entry for this blogathon event.

Paulette Goddard

Dramatic School (1938)

This film is reminiscent of Stage Door (1937) and Finishing School (1934). All three films are about a group of women either living or working together–all involved in the same pursuit, whether it’s living at the Footlights Club boarding house for aspiring actresses (Stage Door), attending the same finishing school (Finishing School) and in the case of Dramatic School, it’s a group of women attending the same, you guessed it, dramatic school. The humor and drama from the film comes from the women’s interactions with one another and their various rivalries when it comes to men and desired acting roles.

Luise Rainer plays the star student, Louise Mauban, who spends her evenings working in a factory to pay for her drama lessons. Due to burning the candle at both ends, Louise is constantly late. To avoid revealing her evening job to her classmates, Louise concocts a lie about spending her evenings being wined and dined by her boyfriend, the Marquis Andre D’Abbencourt. Louise’s classmates begin to suspect that she’s lying, as the stories seem a little too fantastic to be true. Paulette Goddard plays the ringleader, Nana, who comes up with a scheme to reveal Louise’s lie and embarrass her in front of her classmates. It is obvious that Nana and the other girls, one of whom is played by Lana Turner, want to knock Louise down a peg.

Nana’s scheme is to invite Andre and Louise to her birthday party, and bring up one of Louise’s stories in front of Andre. Nana assumes that Andre will inadvertently spill the beans about not dating Louise, which will expose Louise as well as embarrass her. However the plan backfires when Andre is somehow charmed by the stories about him and Louise’s dates, and decides to play along. Then they become a real couple.

Despite being second billed, Paulette really doesn’t have a huge role in the plot. This is more or less Rainer’s film. However, I don’t want to focus on Rainer, because frankly I would have much rather seen more Paulette. Her character is more or less the villain of the film, as she wants nothing more than to humble Louise. I wish her scheme had gone off as she’d planned, it would have made the movie a lot more interesting to watch. Dramatic School was pretty much a dud, but Paulette managed to breathe some life into it every time she was on screen. Her vivacious personality added some nice levity and livened things up, and believe me this film needed all the life it could get.

The Crystal Ball (1943)

This was a blind buy I’d actually purchased from Classic Flix during a previous sale. I’d never heard of this film before, but it sounded fun and I was intrigued by the cast: Goddard, Ray Milland, William Bendix, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys George? I finally watched the film for this blogging event and I’m glad I did. It was a lot of fun.

In this film, Goddard plays Toni Gerard, a young woman who moves to New York from Texas. Homeless and desperate for a job, she reluctantly takes a job as a decoy for a local shooting gallery, run by Pop Tibbets (Kellaway). Having revealed in a conversation with Madame Zenobia (George) that she was a sharpshooter back home, Toni is referred to the shooting gallery for a job. After showing off her shooting skills, Pop hires her. Her job is to pretend to be a random passerby who chooses to try her luck at the shooting gallery. She’ll hit all the targets and attract other customers to try their luck. Then Toni leaves and comes back later when a new batch of potential customers are around.

Madame Zenobia is part of another scam with her colleague, a woman who obtains work as a maid at the homes of wealthy clients. After working for the client for awhile, she determines a piece of jewelry or something else of value that the client loves and would notice if it went missing–or she makes a point of making sure the client knows it’s missing. At the beginning of the film, the maid’s target is wealthy widow Jo Ainsley (Virginia Field). She takes one of Jo’s prized rings and drops it down the drain pipe. She then cries to Jo that her ring is missing and puts on the crocodile tears, feigning distress about her client’s lost property. The maid also cleverly deflects any sort of blame or suspicion. She then convinces Jo to visit a psychic who could tell her the location of her ring. Then of course, before Jo’s visit, the maid has gotten to Madame Zenobia to reveal the location. Jo’s confidence in psychics is affirmed when Madame Zenobia tells her the location and it turns out to be true.

Eventually, Madame Zenobia is injured and Toni has to fill in. She runs both the shooting gallery and psychic scams. Toni also lives at Madame Zenobia’s store. One evening, she spots Jo and her boyfriend, government lawyer Brad Cavanaugh (Milland) entering Madame Zenobia’s store. His chauffer, Biff Carter (Bendix), waits outside. Toni is instantly smitten with Brad and decides to use her new position as the psychic to break up Brad and Jo so she can have him for herself. This scheme is the start of a highly questionable impression that Toni does when she pretends to enter the spirit of Brad’s deceased Native American friend. Toni uses a lot of bad Native American stereotypes and the “injun” slur. This would NEVER go over today. It definitely goes on a bit long too, I think it could have been edited down a smidge.

Regardless, Goddard and Milland have fantastic chemistry–a chemistry that would carry them through four films together. She also has a lot of great comedic moments and gets to wear a few great dresses, including an one shouldered sequin gown that is reminiscent of the one she wears in The Women. Goddard looks absolutely gorgeous in this film and even though the ending kind of doesn’t make sense, we know that she and Milland will end up together.

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Paulette Goddard & Bob Hope

The Cat & the Canary (1939)

This was a really fun horror-comedy film starring Paulette Goddard and Bob Hope. Goddard and Hope made three films together and I watched all three. ‘Canary’ starts with a familiar horror movie premise: a group of people are invited to come to a large estate. The guests are familiar with the host, but don’t know each other. Typically the guests are either offered an incentive to stay (House on Haunted Hill), or are stuck there due to circumstances (The Old Dark House), or in the case of The Cat and the Canary, the guests are there to witness the reading of the deceased homeowner’s will. In this film, the deceased Cyrus Norman’s will stipulated that the heir to his estate and fortune could not be revealed until 10 years after his death. 10 years is up and that is the start of our film.

Goddard plays Joyce Norman, the only actual direct relative of Cyrus’ and the sole heir. However, he has named a first runner-up heir, should the sole heir not be able to live up to the terms of the will–specifically not to go insane within the first 30 days. It’s a weird clause, but it’s well established that Cyrus was an eccentric individual. The runner-up heir’s name is not revealed, which sets up another typical horror film trope–the guests turning against one another. Bob Hope plays another relative of Cyrus’, Wally Campbell. He however, is not related to Joyce. Other guests include Cyrus’ aunt Susan (Elizabeth “Miss Trumbull” Patterson) and a mousy relative named Cicily. Then there are two men, Fred Blythe and Charles Wilder, who seem to resent not being named heirs.

It can be expected that a bulk of the film will involve the other potential runner-up heirs, save for Wally, trying to torment Joyce and drive her insane. Wally makes it a point to be on Joyce’s side and keep an eye on her and keep her safe from the other guests. When I got through Hope and Goddard’s other two films, I noticed that a common plot line was Hope being in love with Goddard. This film was no exception. Hope and Goddard have a nice rapport and chemistry with one another and I enjoyed their three films immensely.

The Ghost Breakers (1940)

This was Paulette Goddard and Bob Hope’s second film together and ended up being my favorite of the three. In this film, Hope plays Lawrence “Larry” Lawrence Lawrence, a radio broadcaster who uses his show as a platform to expose the crimes of local gangster, Frenchy. Goddard plays Mary Carter, a woman staying at the same Manhattan hotel as Frenchy. During the broadcast, Mary is visited by Cuban solicitor Parada (Paul Lukas), who is delivering the deed to a plantation and mansion in Cuba that she’s inherited. Parada wants to take the property off her hands and buy it, but Mary refuses. Another Cuban, Ramon Mederos (Anthony Quinn), calls Mary and warns her not to sell her property. After the radio broadcast ends, Larry is invited by Frenchy (who heard the program) down to the hotel.

Larry arrives at the hotel with a gun, thinking that Frenchy inevitably will try to kill him. At the same time, Ramon arrives as Parada is leaving. Larry, Frenchy, Ramon and Parada all end up in a shootout with Ramon killed in the fracas. Larry thinks he may have accidentally killed Ramon. He ends up hiding in Mary’s steamer trunk, hoping to escape. The plan goes off and he ends up on an ocean liner to Havana with Mary. On board, Mary and Larry end up meeting Geoff (Richard Carlson), an acquaintance of Mary’s. Eventually, Mary and Larry make it to the property that she inherited.

This film was a lot of fun and I attribute its success to the wonderful rapport between Paulette Goddard and Bob Hope. This was another film where Hope fell in love with Goddard. She has such a delightful presence in her films, as she brings some humor imbued with glamour and charm. Hope pretty much plays the same type of guy in a lot of his movies–the wisecracking everyman, but it works. I loved this film and actually found the ending to be surprising.

Nothing But the Truth (1941)

This film was Paulette Goddard and Bob Hope’s last film together. In this film, Hope plays stockbroker, Steve Bennett, who moves to Miami to take a new position—working for TT Ralston (Edward Arnold). On his first day, TT’s niece, Gwen Saunders (Goddard) shows up, in need of money to cover a $40,000 pledge she’s made to a charity. TT promised Gwen that he’ll cover half of her pledge if she can come up with the other half. It either wasn’t clearly stated, or I missed this minor plot point, but it seems that the charity gave Gwen $10,000 and she promised to increase it to the $40,000. The charity’s manager, Mr. Bishop (Grant Mitchell) appears throughout the film trying to find out the status on his $10,000. Gwen appeals to Steve to invest her $10,000 and double it. The catch? She only has 24 hours to give Mr. Bishop the $40,000 pledge, or return the $10,000 otherwise he’ll have her arrested for embezzlement. It seems like it’d be easier to return the $10,000, but we wouldn’t have a movie if she did.

At the same time, Steve tells TT and his other colleagues that he doesn’t approve of their procedure to push bad stocks onto unsuspecting clients. He insists that they could be just as successful telling the truth versus lying. TT and the other men think Steve is crazy, but make a bet with him that he can’t tell the truth for 24 hours. TT puts up $10,000 and Steve puts up Gwen’s $10,000. With $20,000 on the line, we have the main plot of our film. There’s a very funny scene later in the film when Steve’s honesty is tested when he converses with a “mature” woman who insists she looks 30.

Again in this film, Bob Hope’s character is in love with Paulette’s. They have some very funny scenes together. Hope has some great scenes where due to circumstances, he has to try and sneak around on a yacht wearing a dressing robe, belonging to Linda, an exotic dancer.

Bob Hope

Bob Hope

Road to Singapore (1940)

Surprisingly, I had never seen one of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s “Road” movies. I decided to watch their first film together and enjoyed it very much. There was obviously some humor and situations very of their time, but overall it was an enjoyable film. Hope plays Ace Lannigan, the best friend of Crosby’s character, Josh Mallon. At the beginning of the film, the two men work on the same ship. Upon disembarking the ship, Ace and Josh notice the mistreatment their colleagues receive at the hands of their wives. Ace and Josh vow to never get involved with women. That vow lasts all of five minutes when they return to town and meet up with Josh’s father (Charles Coburn) and his apparent fiancée, Gloria (Judith Barrett). Mr. Mallon, a rich shipping magnate, wants his son to settle down, marry the right girl and assume a proper role in the family business.

Not wanting to settle down, Josh and Ace head for Hawaii, then later Singapore. In Singapore, they meet Mima (Dorothy Lamour), a local woman who is involved in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend and dance partner, Caesar (Anthony Quinn). Josh and Ace allow Mima stay with them. This sets off some funny scenes where Mima tries to clean the men’s home and cook them proper meals. She also decorates their shack to make it more homey. At first Ace and Josh resent Mima “feminizing” their space, but it is obvious that they secretly like it–and Mima. Eventually they run out of money and Ace comes up with a scheme selling a cleaning product. He assumes the role of snake oil salesmen when he tries to promote this product to the native population, but the sales pitch does not go well. Eventually, Mr. Mallon and Gloria find their way to Singapore to bring Josh back.

It’s obvious why Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were so successful in their road films. The two men were best friends in real life and their friendship extends on screen as well. Dorothy Lamour also co-starred in the “Road” films and she is a good extension to the team. Her character fits well without her seeming like she’s the third wheel, or just shoehorned in. Hope and Crosby’s characters play to their strengths, with Hope having a lot of comedic parts and Crosby singing. Lamour was a dancer and singer and her strengths are allowed to be showcased as well. I haven’t watched the other “Road” movies yet, but I look forward to seeing the next one.

Boy, Did I Get the Wrong Number! (1966)

This movie is one of Bob Hope’s 1960s sex comedies. I am not sure how he ended up in these types of films, but for whatever reason they work for me. I quite enjoy his 1961 sex comedy, Bachelor in Paradise, co-starring Lana Turner. In ‘Number,’ Hope plays married man, Tom Meade, a California businessman who sinks a fortune into a remote lakeside cabin in Rocky Point, Oregon. He thinks that he’ll easily be able to resell it for a profit, but the cabin turns out to be a money pit. It also turns out that the cabin is too rural and not in a desirable place to live.

At the same time, French actress, Didi (Elke Sommer), is tired of playing a sexpot who is renowned for her sexy bathing scenes in her films. When her director/lover insists that she take yet another sexy bath, Didi protests, gets into her car and drives off. In a plot point that doesn’t really make sense, but we’re going with it, Tom makes a business call and is accidentally connected with Didi. She explains that she’s holed up in a nearby hotel and is in need of food and water. Tom tries to covertly sneak out of the house to deliver food and water to Didi’s hotel, but his housekeeper, Lily (Phyllis Diller), catches on and soon she’s involved in the scheme as well.

Seeing his opportunity to profit off this situation, Tom offers Didi the use of his Oregon cabin. Knowing that there’s an intense manhunt for her, Tom thinks that by allowing Didi to stay at his home, he can market it as the cabin in which she hid out. Didi takes Tom up on the offer and relocates to Southern Oregon. As a native Oregonian, when scenes at the the cabin were shown, I could tell from the landscaping that they were not in Oregon. I was right. The “Oregon” scenes were filmed at Lake Arrowhead in California. This film definitely was not the type of film where realism mattered, the extra expense to film on location in Oregon wouldn’t have made a difference.

The main conflict of the film comes when Tom’s wife, Martha (Marjorie Lord) wants to spend a romantic weekend at the cabin. He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, as he obviously can’t tell Martha the truth. Tom and Lily arrive ahead of Martha and find Didi nearly unconscious from sleeping pills. They manage to move her to a bedroom just in time for Martha’s arrival. This sets off a comedy of errors with Tom needing to move Didi from room to room to keep his secret from Martha. Phyllis Diller has some very funny scenes, including multiple scenes with her driving a motorcycle. I particularly liked the scene when she mowed down all the Boy Scout tents. Hope and Diller had fantastic chemistry. Their chemistry was so good in fact, that it almost makes Martha and Didi secondary characters. As an aside, Marjorie Lord has the absolute worst hairstyle in this film. I know the 60s were about beehives and tall hair, but Lord’s hair is completely absurd. It looks like she placed Agnes Moorehead’s Endora wig on top of a dutch boy haircut.

What is this hair?

10th Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon–“Our Hospitality” (1923)

Last weekend, on February 25, I had the opportunity to see Our Hospitality, starring Buster Keaton, for the first time at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR. My husband and I are members of the Hollywood and regularly see films there as we get in free with our membership. We also get free popcorn! We primarily go for one of their three classic film oriented series: Cinema Classics, Hollywood Babylon (pre-code), and their Pipe Organ Pictures (silent film).

A photo of the Hollywood Theatre that I took while waiting in line to get in!

The organ at the Hollywood Theatre

The Pipe Organ Pictures productions are a collaboration between the Hollywood Theatre and the Columbia River Theatre Organ Society (CRTOS). The CRTOS’ main mission is to preserve and promote theatre organs. Through fundraising events (such as the Pipe Organ Pictures series at the Hollywood), donations, classes, and volunteers, they’ve been able to fully restore and maintain at least two working theatre organs in the Portland, OR area–one of which lives at the Hollywood Theatre! Each Pipe Organ Pictures production features a professional musician who composes his own score and performs it live.

Buster Keaton and his loyal dog friend meet a Canfield.

Our Hospitality was the latest production featured by Pipe Organ Pictures. Buster Keaton events at the Hollywood Theatre are always packed and this one was no exception. Our Hospitality is a re-telling of the famous 19th century feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. In Keaton’s film, the feuding families are the Canfields and the McKays. Our Hospitality also features a Romeo and Juliet storyline that occurs when a Canfield and a McKay fall in love.

The film starts in 1810, with a mother and her one year-old son, Willie (Buster Keaton, Jr.) sitting at home late at night, waiting for her husband, John McKay to come home. Except he doesn’t. During the evening, he ends up in a deadly feud with his nemesis, James Canfield, which results in the death of both men. Mrs. McKay vows to take her son away from the violence and drama and leaves for New York where her sister lives. James’ family on the other hand, vow to avenge his death. Keep in mind that neither the living relatives of the Canfields nor the McKays have any idea why they’re in a feud. All they know is that there is a feud, per tradition. In other words, this feud is pointless and dumb.

Fast forward 20 years and a now grown Willie (Buster Keaton), learns that he’s inherited his late father’s country estate. Willie pictures an opulent mansion and jumps at the chance to redeem his inheritance. Mrs. McKay has since passed and her elderly sister gives Willie the lowdown on the McKay and Canfield feud, as a means to keep him from leaving. Undeterred, Willie boards a train headed for his father’s Southern home.

I can’t get enough of this train.

The train that Willie rides is hysterical. Based on Robert Stevenson’s 1830 Rocket train, the train is tiny, with an engine in the front, a car full of wood, three passenger coaches and a caboose. The passenger coaches resemble the type of coaches that would normally be hauled around by horse. The train is hysterically small and slow. The man on the caboose alerts the engineer of potential dangers by yelling into a long horn. The track is also funny, as it moves around, is placed on top of and around landscaping, versus the land being leveled for the track. At one point, there’s a donkey close to the track and the crew opt to simply pick up the track and move it, versus dealing with the donkey. At another point, the train is completely off the track and cruising around as if it were a car. Finally, at another point, the track switch fails, and the caboose ends up in front of the engine.

While on the train, Willie meets a young woman, Virginia (Natalie Talmadge, Keaton’s real-life wife). The two form a close bond as they endure the hilarious train trip and by the time they reach their destination, they are close friends. When Virginia disembarks the train, we learn that she is part of the Canfield family. Willie, unaware of Virginia’s heritage, innocently asks a man where John McKay’s home is. That man turns out to be Virginia’s brother and he quickly figures out that a McKay is in town. Later, Virginia and Willie meet-up again and she invites him over for dinner. When he shows up, Virginia’s brother puts two and two together and informs his father and brother that their sister is seeing a McKay.

Buster Keaton and his wife, Natalie Talmadge

The remainder of the film depicts the Canfields chasing Willie and trying to kill him. The scene at the Canfields’ home is funny as father Canfield reminds his sons that it’s against family rules to kill someone inside their home. This starts a cat and mouse game where the brothers continually try to lure Willie outside. Willie picks up on the family rule and hilariously keeps getting back into the house to avoid being killed. His final escape is hysterical. Eventually the chase takes Willie and the Canfields to a mountainous terrain.

Buster Keaton’s stunts are always the highlight of his film and Our Hospitality is no exception. He has a spectacular stunt on a waterfall where he has to save the life of Virginia who will soon go over the side of the waterfall if something doesn’t happen quickly. Keaton’s waterfall maneuver actually elicited applause from the audience when it was pulled off successfully. This scene was absolutely insane. I cannot believe that anyone would do that stunt now, let alone in 1923. Though nowadays, CGI could be used to make it look like someone performed that stunt. Keaton didn’t have that luxury and completed the stunt himself.

Buster Keaton rides the velocipede.

Finally, in addition to Keaton’s stunts, this film also featured unique forms of transportation. Keaton was always interested in machines, especially in trains. Aside from the hysterical Rocket train, Keaton is also shown riding a Velocipede, which even by 1830 was outdated; but was used because it was funny. This bicycle is essentially a Flintstones version of a bicycle, in that it was powered by the rider’s feet. The Velocipede was referred to as a “pedestrian curricle,” a “dandy horse,” or “hobby horse” and was an invention that was designed to replace the horse. This invention was a response to the 1816 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which led to massive climate changes. 1816 was known as the “Year Without Summer” in which temperatures dropped severely, causing crop spoilage and food shortages. A large population of horses died due to starvation or were killed for food and their hides. Eventually, rotary cranks and pedals were added to the Velocipede, which led to the eventual invention of the bicycle.

So Bad, It’s Good Blogathon–“Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” (1958)

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, despite rating a 5/10 on imdb and being known as “one of the worst movies of all time,” is actually an excellent film (based sheerly on entertainment value) and is the epitome of “so bad, it’s good.” This is a low budget film. There is no doubt about that. The 50 Foot Woman’s enormous hand is obviously papier-mâché. For being a wealthy woman, her house isn’t really that nice. As the audience, we only know she’s rich, because the movie tells us she is. The alien’s spaceship is a weird semi-translucent circle. The alien is also played by the bartender. The 50 Foot Woman is clearly a projection in some scenes, in others she’s transparent, finally in other scenes, the quality is better and the actress is actually being filmed in the scene, albeit with a bumpy papier-mâché hand.

Regardless, I love this movie.

One of the all-time greatest movie posters. It’s disappointing that nothing like this happens in the film.

At its heart, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a film about a woman scorned. At the beginning of the film, the wealthy Nancy Fowler Archer (Allison Hayes), heiress to the $50-million Fowler family fortune and owner of the largest diamond in the world, spots a satellite while driving late at night through a desert. After a glowing sphere (i.e., the satellite) lands on the highway in front of Nancy, she veers off the road. An alien emerges from the satellite and tries to reach for Nancy, but she escapes.

When Nancy returns home, she tries to tell everyone what she saw and nobody believes her–including her husband Harry (William Hudson). Her credibility is shot as she was recently released from a mental institution and is known to have a drinking problem. Harry is no saint, as he’s openly involved in an affair with the town floozy, Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers). The lovebirds do not try to hide their relationship at all–they openly neck in the booth at the local roadhouse. The deputy sheriff gives Harry updates about Nancy in the roadhouse, in front of Honey. There is no discretion. The lovebirds do their thing while the other locals dance the “Carolina Shag.” As an aside, I didn’t know until my recent rewatch of this film, but Attack of the 50 Foot Woman would make a great companion to the 1989 film Shag, as both feature the “Carolina Shag.”

The town floozy, Honey Parker, played by Yvette Vickers.

Anyway, Harry doesn’t care he’s cheating on Nancy and has no issues talking trash about her to Honey. Honey doesn’t seem to care much that she’s carrying on with a married man. Neither Harry nor Honey seem to care that they live in a small town and word gets around. One might ask “if Harry hates Nancy so much, why doesn’t he divorce her?” the answer to that would be money. Nancy has a lot of money and Harry wants it. His and Honey’s plan is to wait for Nancy to “snap” again so that she’ll be committed. He then will legally have control of her estate, which leaves he and Honey set for life.

Wanting to prove her sanity once and for all, Nancy convinces Harry to take her out to the desert where she saw the first satellite. She says that if there isn’t a satellite, she’ll voluntarily commit herself. However, Nancy does see the satellite. An alien emerges and seemingly abducts Nancy. Harry, being that manly man he is, drives away and leaves Nancy to fend for herself. She is later found on the roof of her pool house and is sedated by the family physician. After examining Nancy and the scratches on her neck, the doctor deduces that she was exposed to radiation. Nobody else in the home seems concerned about potentially also being exposed to radiation by being in the same vicinity as Nancy.

This ridiculous hand.

The doctor keeps Nancy doped up on morphine and instructs his nurse to be very careful when filling the syringe. Too much morphine could cause Nancy to overdose. Harry’s ears perk up when he hears about the possible overdose and manages to steal some morphine and a syringe from the nurse while she’s asleep. Filling the syringe with a large dose of air and morphine, Harry is ready to make his move when he discovers that his wife has now grown to gargantuan size. We only see her giant hand in the room and have to suspend disbelief that despite being larger than the home, Nancy still fits inside while resting.

The 50 Foot Woman’s fashionable two piece made of bedsheets.

Eventually Nancy comes to and breaks free. Fashioning a chic looking bikini top and skirt from bedsheets, the now 50-foot Nancy slowly walks through town, looking for her philandering husband. She reminded me of Ursula the Sea Witch in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, when she obtains King Triton’s trident and makes herself giant and ruler of the ocean. Ursula’s voice is deeper as she proclaims that she’s “all powerful.” As Nancy searches for Harry, her deep voice booms as she yells “HAAAAAAARRRRY.” She of course finds Harry and Honey at the roadhouse, because heaven forbid they take a break while Nancy is supposedly ailing at home. With her target in view, Nancy rips the roof off the roadhouse and throws it on top of Honey, killing her instantly. Then she grabs Harry and carries him through town until she’s electrocuted by an exploding powerline. Both Nancy and Harry are dead.

“She finally got Harry all to herself.”

Frankly, Nancy could do better than Harry. I think she could have really made it as a 50 Foot Woman. The radiation gave her a fresh blond wavy haircut, a definite upgrade from the mousy brunette ‘do she sported earlier. She definitely could have tried to make a go of it with the Amazing Colossal Man. But I digress. We never know if the alien gets away with all the diamonds. It seems that the sheriff figured out that the alien powered his ship with the diamonds and then he just ran away. Nothing ever comes of it. That whole storyline didn’t add anything to the story. It’s somewhat absurd considering the Sheriff has the butler come with him and not his deputy. Though the deputy was kind of a dope, so maybe the butler was a better choice. In the roadhouse, Harry asks the Sheriff to hand over his gun AND HE DOES. At 50 feet tall, I think Nancy could have had a real shot at becoming the new sheriff. She definitely could have cleaned that place up.

The templar knight enthusiast alien.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a hysterical example of the 50s sci-fi craze. It premiered right after Russia sent Sputnik to space. The alien spaceship in this film is referred to as a “satellite” because the scriptwriter thought any spherical-shaped spacecraft was a satellite. The alien in this film, much like the alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still, looks human and in the right clothing, would blend into the general population easily. In Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the alien is inexplicably dressed as a templar knight. We can only assume that he is a medieval enthusiast. The alien is definitely not as suave and sophisticated as Michael Rennie in the aforementioned The Day the Earth Stood Still.

But I digress. Despite its negative reviews and ratings, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is one of the all-time greatest 1950s science fiction films. It features every trope that fans of low-budget science fiction love–improbable plots, cheesy special effects, bad acting, bad props (the satellite in this film had a string hanging from it, e.g.), over-the-top deaths, a terrible looking alien, bad lighting, everything. I highly recommend this film to anyone who enjoys this era of filmmaking. Keep in mind, this recommendation is coming from someone who typically does not enjoy science fiction. However, I love low-budget 1950s science fiction.

“I know where my husband is! He’s with that woman!”

100 Years of Warner Brothers Blogathon–Favorite Looney Tunes Shorts

Better late than never, right? I probably shouldn’t agree to participate in events so close to Christmastime. Anyway, I wanted to at least finish this post. So here goes.

I love Looney Tunes, I remember watching them on TV back in the day. I used to watch The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show every Saturday morning. Then, I remember also watching Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network and probably other channels. Then there was Tiny Toon Adventures which featured the “grown” Looney Tunes characters teaching the tricks of the trade to their younger counterparts. That show was a lot of fun. More recently, Cartoon Network featured The Looney Tunes Show, a sitcom-style cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The premise of the show is that Bugs has retired and is living large after inventing a revolutionary carrot peeler. He no longer lives underground and instead lives in a nice home in a suburban neighborhood. Daffy Duck is Bugs’ roommate who moves in after falling on hard times and in need of support in every sense of the word. Daffy is a mooch who leeches off of Bugs’ money. For whatever reason, Bugs won’t kick him out. Despite my skepticism, The Looney Tunes show is actually very funny and clever. 

I own all of the Looney Tunes Platinum volumes, as well as the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection, and am so excited that Warner Brothers is releasing more volumes of Looney Tunes shorts. During this past April at the TCM Film Festival, my husband and I attended a panel celebrating Looney Tunes, specifically their Oscar-winning shorts. While we’d seen most of the shorts before, it was still a lot of fun and I love that Looney Tunes are still beloved today as they were decades prior. I think my love of classic film has definitely added to my enjoyment of the Looney Tunes. Since these shorts were originally created to air alongside the feature film, they were produced for adults as well as they lampooned the stars of the day. Where else but Looney Tunes would a classic film fan be able to identify a caricature of Ann Sheridan or Cesar Romero? Looney Tunes used spoofs of classic Hollywood stars for their basic character archetypes. A character resembling Edward G. Robinson was often a gangster, whereas someone resembling Humphrey Bogart might be a detective. Peter Lorre’s image was often spoofed whenever a strange character is needed, such as a mad scientist.

Michigan J. Frog hilariously won’t perform in front of strangers–only for his owner.

These are my Top 5 Favorite Looney Tunes shorts:

1. “One Froggy Evening” (1955). A one-time appearance for what would eventually become Warner Brothers’ mascot, most memorably on the WB Network for a decade starting in 1995, before the channel changed branding and renamed itself the CW. “One Froggy Evening” starts with a man finding a box beneath the rubble at a construction site. After opening the box, the man finds a document dated 1892 and a live frog inside. Seeing daylight, the frog grabs his top hat and cane and starts singing and dancing to “Hello, Ma Baby!” Seeing his chance to make millions, the man starts marketing the singing and dancing frog. The only issue? The frog will only sing and dance when he and the man are alone. When other people are present, the frog acts like a regular frog. Throughout the short, the man’s life is slowly ruined as attempt after attempt to extort the frog fails. He reaches rock bottom when he’s arrested for disturbing the peace. The man is now homeless, living on a park bench, with the frog singing opera. When he tries to blame the noise on the frog, the policeman has the man committed. The funniest part of this entire thing comes at the end, when the frog is in the window of the sanitarium, caressing the bars and singing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone.”
   
   
2. “What’s Opera Doc?” (1957) Elmer Fudd is trying to hunt down Bugs Bunny once again, but this time, he’s dressed as the heroic figure, Siegfried, from the Germanic legend. He sings “Kill the Wabbit” to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries.” This then evolves into a full opera, with Bugs Bunny dressed in drag as Valkyrie Brunnhilde. ”Siegfried” and “Brunnhilde” dance in the opera as the hunt pursues and the story of the opera unfolds. This entire thing is hysterical as well as very well done. I recognized the music but had to look up the names of the characters. I am not up on my German operas. This short was eventually inducted by the Library of Congress into the National Film Registry.
   
   
3. “Hollywood Steps Out” (1941). This is a short film featuring a cavalcade of Hollywood stars spending the evening at the hot nightclub, Ciro’s. This film is a “who’s who” of classic Hollywood (in 1941) and an absolute treat for any fan of classic Hollywood. Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche are seen at a table, then Adolph Menjou and Norma Shearer. Cary Grant is sitting alone and name drops three of his films. Greta Garbo is working as a cigarette girl, lighting matches with her enormous feet. “Oomph Girl” Ann Sheridan is heard saying “oomph” over and over again. Johnny Weissmuller is seen checking his coat and is decked out in a formal version of his Tarzan costume. Famous bubble dancer, Sally Rand, performs. Famous film gangsters, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and George Raft are playing some sort of game with pennies. We observe Clark Gable and his enormous ears chasing a mysterious woman around the club. Other stars, including Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Tyrone Power, James Stewart, Errol Flynn, Henry Fonda, and dozens more are seen. The big reveal is when Gable finally catches up to the “mysterious woman.” 
   
   
4. “Hair-Raising Hare” (1946). This short features Bugs Bunny being hunted by an evil scientist (who looks a lot like Peter Lorre). The scientist wants to serve Bugs to his monster, Gossamer. Gossamer is orange, large, and wears sneakers. Using a female rabbit robot, the scientist lures Bugs to his castle. Eventually Bugs is locked inside the castle after learning that the female rabbit was in fact, a robot. This starts a cat and mouse game between Bugs and Gossamer, which features the hilarious scene of Bugs pretending to be a gossipy manicurist. He says to Gossamer, “I bet you monsters lead interesting lives…and I’ll bet you meet a lot of interesting people, too. I am always interested in meeting interesting people.” This whole cartoon is hysterical. In The Looney Tunes Show, Gossamer is one of Bugs Bunny’s neighbors and he’s the same size, but he’s a child. Daffy Duck helps him run for class president using the slogan “Gossamer is Awesomer.”
   
   
5. “Three Little Bops” (1957). This is a short that tells the story of the Three Little Pigs, except this time they’re jazz musicians. The Big Bad Wolf desperately wants to be part of the band, but he’s too square. Each time the wolf makes his appearance, the Bops are playing a different gig–House of Straw, House of Sticks, and House of Bricks. Each time the Bops throw the Wolf out of the band for being lame, he retaliates by blowing the club down, using his trumpet. The Big Bad Wolf finally makes the cut when he dies, goes to Hell, thus is “hot,” his trumpet playing improves and now can play “cool.” His ghost joins the band. This is such a fun short. I love the music and the creative re-telling of the fairy tale.

Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera Doc?”