El Dorado (1966)

Film: El Dorado (1966)

Stars: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan, Charlene Holt, Paul Fix, Arthur Hunnicutt, Michele Carey, Ed Asner

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on John Wayne: click here to learn more about Mr. Wayne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're making a pretty big jump today in Wayne's career (particularly given we have two more Saturday's left this month) going from 1949 to 1966.  During that time frame, Wayne started to see a shift in his career.  The Duke had a work ethic that bordered on manic, and throughout the 1950's and early 1960's he worked constantly, and this resulted occasionally in bad decisions by Wayne, giving up several major westerns that we've covered for other actors this season of "Saturdays with the Stars" like The Gunfighter and Seven Men from Now.  But during this time, Wayne began to star in some of the best films of his career, movies that would define his persona.  These include The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and today's film, El Dorado.  We'll talk a little bit more about Wayne's reputation as an actor next week, but it has to be said that this is a really impressive run of movies, and it sometimes gets forgotten with Wayne (who made a lot of crap in his career during this time like The Conqueror) just how many classics he was able to get out.  Gene Autry & Roy Rogers were in dozens of westerns too...but they were never in movies this good, which is why Wayne is the actor synonymous with the western to modern audiences.

(Spoilers Ahead) El Dorado takes place in two acts, the first being between two renowned gunslingers, Sheriff JP Harrah (Mitchum) and his old buddy, gun-for-hire Cole Thornton (Wayne).  Thornton is working, he soon realizes, for the bad guys, a rich landowner named Bart Jason (Asner), who is trying to run the MacDonald family off of their land.  Thornton chooses to not work for Bart Jason, but during the confusion of which side he's on, one of the MacDonald sons, still pretty green about the way of gunfighting, shoots at Thornton, and Thornton mortally wounds him.  Another of the MacDonald's, their daughter Joey (Carey), shoots him, and lodges a bullet in his back, which causes him to have paralysis.  Months later, he still hasn't had this bullet removed, and we pick up the saga with us realizing that JP Harrah has become a drunk, a laughingstock who has let Jason's men run roughshod over El Dorado.  Thornton, along with his new sidekick Mississippi (Caan) have to not only fend off Bart's men once-and-for-all, they also have to find a way to sober up JP Harrah enough for him to gain back the respect of the town (and his own self-worth).

El Dorado is interesting for a variety of reasons.  At this point in Wayne's career, while he would never be "hip" he had found ways to upend the stereotypes of the western that he had established in Stagecoach by playing a hero-turned-villain in The Searchers and showing the pessimistic side of the western legend in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  El Dorado is not doing what these films do.  There is a moment in the middle where it feels like it might.  There's a heartbreaking scene where Mitchum realizes that not only is he a drunk, but he's also a laughingstock, a man who prided himself on a rough reputation has become no different than the men whom he used to laugh at at the saloon.  This could've been groundbreaking, but they largely brush it aside even if Mitchum's clearly willing to give it a go in terms of breaking stereotypes.

But El Dorado is instead one of the last classic westerns.  Mitchum & Wayne are in the mold they set in the 1940's, not the mold they would upend in the 1950's.  This isn't meant as an insult-I love the westerns of the 1940's, and El Dorado is extremely well-structured, well-lensed, and while Wayne isn't breaking new mold, Mitchum's giving a strong performance.  At the time it would've been easy to call it old-fashioned, but with the benefit of time, it plays less as out-of-date and more as a swan song for these two men.  Wayne would continue to act, and we'll get to the how's and why's of that in the next two weeks, but this was a good encapsulation of his career at this point-people didn't want anything new from the actor.  He was still a movie star in 1966, frequently a big one (this was a hit), but the brief bit of trailblazing he'd done in the late 1950's & early 1960's in the western was being done by younger, New Hollywood actors.

OVP: Ball of Fire (1941)

Film: Ball of Fire (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Dana Andrews, Oskar Homolka, SZ Sakall, Henry Travers, Dan Duryea

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actress-Barbara Stanwyck, Score, Sound, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are running behind again this month (I'll try to be more timely in 2023, as we'll be kicking off our fifth season in the next week), but I'm going to attempt to do two Stanwyck movies today and get ahead of her films in the coming days so we have a full five movies in December (she's too big of a star to skip one of our Saturday's).  We're going to start with a conversation about 1941, inarguably the best year of Barbara Stanwyck's career.  We last left Stanwyck with Baby Face, which was a hit during the Pre-Code era for its saucy content, but by the early 1940's Stanwyck didn't need gimmicks to get people into their movie seats-she was a headliner in every aspect.  She got her first Oscar nomination for the 1937 weepie Stella Dallas, and despite not having a studio contract during this era, was in such demand (and so well-respected) that she was cranking out major hits, including three iconic ones in 1941: The Lady Eve, Meet John Doe, and Ball of Fire, for which she won her second Oscar nomination and which is our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie has a rather preposterous setup for a romantic comedy, even by rom-com standards.  Gary Cooper plays Bertram Potts, a grammarian who along with a number of other dotty professors (seven, to be exact, mirroring the seven dwarves), are writing an encyclopedia.  Through a chance encounter, they come across Sugarpuss O'Shea (Stanwyck), a nightclub performer who is involved with a gangster named Joe Lilac (Andrews).  As Lilac is wanted by the police, she goes into hiding for a few days to stay out of sight, during which time she stays with Potts, who is studying her vernacular to try to include modern slang in the encyclopedia.  They start to fall for each other, but Sugarpuss has a problem-Lilac wants to marry her, not out of love but so she can't testify against him, and he eventually kidnaps all of the professors to blackmail her into it.  Thankfully, through ingenuity, they free themselves, save the day, and Bertram & Sugarpuss end up together.

The movie is cute, as cute as you'd assume given those involved and the silliness of the plot.  Though they're all interchangeable, the old men who are, even in their advanced age, shellshocked by the appearance of a beautiful woman and encouraging of the relationship Bertram can have with her, steal a lot of scenes.  The movie, though, never rises to the level of a classic-this is a good movie, not a great one, not as sharp as it should be or quite as funny as it ought to be (it's not The Philadelphia Story).  I think, like so many films like this of the era, the nominations for Sound & Score are fine.  There's nothing special there, but it got in because everyone else did (they would have over 20 nominees in some categories, including in Best Score for Ball of Fire's year, so a lot of middling amongst the genius).  The Story nomination makes more sense, especially over screenplay, as the idea behind it is far cuter than the execution.

With Stanwyck & her "year of classics," while I will admit that The Lady Eve is the best of these three (both in terms of the actual movie and in terms of what Stanwyck was doing onscreen), Ball of Fire is some great stuff from Stanwyck.  She plays well off of an against-type Cooper, and has such sass & pizzazz that this would've made a fine win for her.  I partially wonder if Stanwyck missed with Oscar overall because she didn't have a studio rooting for her to get a trophy in the way that Ginger Rogers or Jennifer Jones would've in the same era, but in 1941, I honestly think the only people who were going to take trophies were the De Havilland's.  Oscar made a huge stink about Olivia & Joan competing against each other, and it delivered in both of their star legends for the decades to come as the sisters...did not handle it well when the younger Joan beat her big sister for the statue.

OVP: Sergeant York (1941)

Film: Sergeant York (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, George Tobias, Margaret Wycherly

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: 11 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Gary Cooper*, Supporting Actor-Walter Brennan, Supporting Actress-Margaret Wycherly, Original Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing*, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Walter Brennan: click here to learn more about Mr. Brennan (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Walter Brennan only lost one Oscar in his whole Academy career.  By 1941, it had become something of a running joke with the Academy giving Brennan trophies every year.  His statue for The Westerner, in particular, was considered a big upset against films like Foreign Correspondent and The Great Dictator which had gotten more Academy love.  His one loss, oddly enough, came for the film that would be the most-lauded of his quartet of nominations, and indeed perhaps the most honored film (in terms of Oscar) of Brennan's whole career: Sergeant York.  Made in 1941, Sergeant York was a gargantuan hit, getting Warner Brothers the #1 movie of the year, and was nominated for 11 Oscars, making it one of the frontrunners for the trophy that would eventually go to How Green was My Valley (and famously not Citizen Kane).  This is also a weird collective moment for me, as this is one of the first original "extended" lineups that I have finished watching for Best Picture (the plethora of Best Song & Score nominations those years cover up that I've seen most of the major movies of 1941).  I was intrigued given its reputation as one of the signature war films of this era what Sergeant York would end up looking like as I finished up both Oscar's Best Picture lineup that year and their romance with Brennan, who despite working another 25 years in Hollywood would never be cited again.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is unusual for a war film in that it focuses for most of the movie on Alvin York's (Cooper) life outside of World War I.  We see his humble beginnings, first as a wastrel who is raised by a pious mother (Wycherly) who then finds god under the guidance of Pastor Pile (Brennan), and aspires to make a life for himself on a farm.  When World War I breaks out, he enlists, though before that he becomes engaged to his sweetheart Gracie (Leslie), and though he is a conscientious objector at first on religious grounds, decides ultimately to become a soldier who uses his gun.  This invites an outstanding act of bravery, where he holds the line singlehandedly against the Germans, and takes dozens of them prisoner with only a few of his fellow American soldiers.  He is awarded dozens of medals for this, including the Medal of Honor, but his greatest reward is getting to go home to Gracie, get married, and start a family on the farmland he spent the first half of the movie trying to buy.

It's hard for people today to realize, but in 1941 Alvin York was something of a household name.  Much of the bravery exhibited in this movie (and the honors he received after) was based on actual fact-York would become one of the most decorated US Army soldiers of World War I.  Particularly in the midst of World War II, a dose of patriotism was probably not a hard sell for theatergoers who wanted to see an American hero on the big-screen.  The problem for me with the film, though, is that it's unfathomably boring for the first 90 minutes of its run.  The scenes that are at-home with York drag and while the war scenes themselves are quite thrilling & interesting (York became a legend for a reason-this is fascinating stuff), they feel like an almost afterthought on the movie.  The war parts keep it from getting a 1-star situation, but man is the rest of this dreadful.

The film won 11 nominations, and for-the-most part they're a bust.  The best aspect of the film is probably the art direction, as the bunkers look quite well-constructed, and give you a sense of the closeness to danger York was encountering, and how these men lived...though that's again just for 15 minutes or so of the picture.  The Sound, Score, & Cinematography are routine-you couldn't find anything much different than any other picture of the era, and I dare you to find anything interesting about it.  The Editing has not so much as a fascinating cut (even in the war scenes)...this beat Citizen freaking Kane?  Come on now Oscar.  The script is tired, the direction lousy (Howard Hawks, the man who made genuine classics like Bringing Up Baby, Rio Bravo, Scarface, Red River, and Gentleman Prefer Blondes got his sole directing nomination for this)?  And the performances are a snooze.  Brennan doesn't even get to have some of his goofier comedy bits in this, and Wycherly looks like she's on novocaine the entire film-apparently you could win an Oscar nomination just by standing and looking penitent for the run of your movie in 1941.  Gary Cooper, whose acting style is more miss than hit for me, is not Will Kane here-this is a one-note piece of work, and don't get me started on something thinking this is better than what Orson Welles was doing that same year.

OVP: Come and Get It (1936)

Film: Come and Get It (1936)

Stars: Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, Frances Farmer, Walter Brennan

Director: Howard Hawks & William Wyler

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Walter Brennan*, Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Walter Brennan: click here to learn more about Mr. Brennan (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Walter Brennan spent much of his early career in bit parts, largely focusing on small roles that amount to what we would call "cameos" if he were famous, but really were extra work since he hadn't made a big name for himself yet.  It wasn't until 1935 that Brennan would start to get more significant work, but that history is important when you think about Brennan's most singular achievement to anyone looking back on his career today: that of winning three Academy Awards in the span of five years, unprecedented for an actor both then and now (it seems pretty much unthinkable that this feat will ever be matched).  This is because of a quirk in Academy voting laws in the early 1930's.  When the Academy introduced the supporting categories in 1936 (in part due to Franchot Tone being nominated for Best Actor in what pretty much everyone considered to be a "supporting" role), extras were still a part of SAG (this would end in 1946 when the Screen Extras Guild would be formed) and as a result, many were eligible to vote for the Oscars.  One of the primary reasons that people attribute to Brennan's unusual feat of winning three Oscars in rapid succession was of his popularity as a former member of the extras, who voted for him en masse to get all three of his trophies.  I have seen two of Brennan's three Oscar wins (he would later take trophies for Kentucky and The Westerner), so I figured I couldn't do a month devoted to him without getting to his first (and my final) Oscar win for him, Come and Get It.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, based on the bestselling novel by Edna Ferber is about Barney Glasgow (Arnold), a cutthroat logging tycoon who rises up from the ranks as a foreman and (thanks to a lack of scruples and marrying for money) finds himself as the head of the logging industry in Wisconsin.  The film is split into two halves, the first of which shows Barney's rise, when he & his buddy Swan Bostrom (Brennan) form a partnership, and Barney must choose between the true love of his life, a saloon singer named Lotta Morgan (Farmer) and the wealthy Emma Louise (Mary Nash).  He chooses money, and Lotta ends up marrying Swan, even though her heart is broken.  Years later, when Barney is rich, he seeks out Swan, now a widower, whose daughter Lotta Bostrom (also Farmer) is the spitting image of her mother (apparently that's what happens when you cast the same actress to play both parts!).  Driven mad by his inability to have Lotta in his youth, he aggressively pursues her, even though he's married and there's a huge age gap, but the younger Lotta is more interested in his son Richard (McCrea), and despite Barney's protestations, Richard & Lotta end up together in the final moments.

There's a lot of good stuff here, and I get why this novel was a success.  Barney is not an antihero but a proper villain, but still a bad guy who learns a lesson by the film's end-that youth & love are far more precious than money, and you cannot buy them no matter how hard you try.  The final moments of the film work really well as Lotta rejects Barney not for his money or for his cruelty, but for his age, the one thing his fortune cannot do is buy back the time he's spent selling his soul.  It's solid plotting, and combined with the cruelty of his treatment of the elder Lotta, a great comeuppance.

But in the Hays Code world, you don't really get a lot of mileage out of the obsession that Barney has with the younger Lotta (in a different world, this could've served as inspiration for Vertigo), and Arnold isn't a good enough actor to get beyond what the page has in front of him.  Instead we largely get a slog, albeit one with a very talented Frances Farmer playing two women so differently you'll be forgiven for thinking they're different actresses (Farmer, of course, is the stuff of Hollywood legend given her tragic offscreen life, but it's nice to see her afforded the ability to actually act here, and prove that she was more than just a sad tale).  Brennan's performance is, charitably, fine.  He plays Swan as a comic relief stereotype, which would be fine except there's nothing really there.  I will admit that I generally like Walter Brennan (if you watch enough old Hollywood performances inevitably you see him in a lot of stuff), but I don't know that I've ever seen a movie where he actually deserved an Oscar nomination, much less a win.  This is true for his caricature of a person in Come and Get It.

Rio Bravo (1959)

Film: Rio Bravo (1959)

Stars: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Ward Bond: click here to learn more about Mr. Bond (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Ward Bond, as we talked about throughout this month, never really became a leading man on the big screen despite being in classic movies as diverse as It's a Wonderful Life and Gone with the Wind.  He did, however, get a chance to play the leading man on television, starting in 1957 with NBC's Wagon Train.  The show, which had Bond playing wagon master, was inspired by two previous movies, The Big Trail (1930) which is famous for launching the career of John Wayne and Wagon Master (1950), which featured longtime western star Ben Johnson.  Both films also featured Ward Bond, though in supporting parts.  In this series, Bond played Major Seth Adams, who on the trail would meet loads of different famous guest stars from Bond's film days like John Carradine, Ernest Borgnine, Linda Darnell, & Rhonda Fleming.  During this time, though, Bond didn't stop making movies, and he appeared in one major classic during this era, his final film with John Wayne, this time directed by Howard Hawks instead of John Ford: Rio Bravo.

(Spoilers Ahead) Rio Bravo is about Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne), who has recently imprisoned the brother of a notorious land baron for murder after getting into a fight with Dude (Martin), a town drunk.  We learn soon after that Dude is a former deputy of Chance's who has fallen on hard times since he took to the bottle, and along with the aging Stumpy (Brennan), is pretty much the entire town's law enforcement.  This becomes a problem when it's clear that the land baron is coming to get his brother out of jail, and so Chance, after initially refusing the help of his old friend Pat Wheeler (Bond), who dies soon after Chance refuses him, starts to take on more help, including Wheeler's apprentice Colorado (Nelson) and a beautiful woman who has just come to town named Feathers (Dickinson).  Together, they overcome the odds to beat the land baron, and in the process Dude gets a second lease on life, and Chances & Feathers become romantically involved.

Rio Bravo was seen in many ways as a rebuttal to the 1952 classic High Noon, which featured Gary Cooper trying to find someone to help him in a town that doesn't want to get involved.  High Noon was written by Carl Foreman, who was eventually blacklisted, and many view it as a metaphor for the blacklisting that happened in Hollywood during this time frame.  John Wayne, of course, was one of the main instigators during the HUAC investigations, and likely didn't take too kindly to his beloved western being used as political metaphor (even though, the further he went in his career, Wayne's finest films generally did slip into liberal metaphor in pictures like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).  As a result, Rio Bravo is a movie about unlikely allies coming together for a common cause (the irony of our modern political movement being that both High Noon AND Rio Bravo would be considered to have a "woke" message by today's standards).

The thing both movies have in common is they're both excellent.  Rio Bravo is filled with strong performances.  John Wayne, three years after The Searchers (by pretty much every measure, the pinnacle of his career as an actor), had largely eschewed westerns, but this was his way of acknowledging (after a string of flops) that he would never escape the Wayne persona, and so he'd find new ways to say something about it (Liberty Valance, True Grit, and The Shootist would all fall under this umbrella).  Here we see him having the last major film romance of his career, and honestly it kind of works despite his age difference with Dickinson.  Wayne was a byproduct of the studio system, perhaps one of its best myths, while Dickinson was a quintessentially modern woman for the 1960's...that shoe leather & mini skirt combination works really well in an oil-and-water sort of way, and I liked it.  Throw in a great film score (seriously-some of Dean Martin's most romantic onscreen singing with songs like "My Rifle, My Pony, and Me") and beautiful western cinematography, and you have a true classic.

Bond has only a small part.  True-to-form, Bond's billing is a bit higher than what he was able to achieve, and once again he's just doing his character actor duty.  Bond's time in the sun on Wagon Train was very bright (it was at one point the highest-rated show on television), but brief.  In 1960, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 57; John Wayne, his costar of 22 films, gave the eulogy at his funeral.  Next month, we're going to talk about a contemporary of Bond's, another character actor who made his mark in westerns (including some with Bond himself) but who unlike Bond, would receive critical accolades that would make him far more of a household name before he found his way onto America's TV screens.

Twentieth Century (1934)

Film: Twentieth Century (1934)

Stars: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Carole Lombard-click here to learn more about Ms. Lombard (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we discussed the earliest stages of Carole Lombard's career, when she was being romanced on (but not yet off) screen by Clark Gable, and was still married to William Powell, which brought her an amount of celebrity that she wasn't really earning onscreen.  In 1934, though, she made what seemed immediately after as a mistake-she turned down the lead role in It Happened One Night, which would eventually go to Claudette Colbert, and win her an Oscar (to be fair to Lombard here, Loretta Young also turned down the part & Clark Gable wasn't thrilled about doing it either...no one knew they were headed to immortality on that film's set).  Instead, she made a couple of modest hits (Bolero, We're Not Dressing), and then was put in Twentieth Century.  This movie would not be a hit-it was a bit of a flop with audiences...but it would completely change the course of Carole Lombard's career.

(Spoilers Ahead) Twentieth Century is about a cruel, bombastic (but genius) director named Oscar Jaffe (Barrymore), who has been tasked with making a lingerie model named Mildred Plotka (renamed Lily Garland, and played by Lombard) into a stage star.  Though he basically tortures her (this movie rings a lot differently in the #MeToo era, though in the film his treatment of Lily is played for laughs), it works.  Lily is splendid in the show, with a knack for the stage, and they continue working together in a series of huge hits.  Lily, though, dumps Oscar once she's outgrown him personally & professionally, and moves to Hollywood achieving stardom.  Oscar, though, can't live without his muse, and produces a string of flops, and at one point to stave off his collectors, disguises himself aboard the Twentieth Century Limited, a train headed from Chicago to NYC (and back again).  Lily is on the train, and though she pities Oscar to a degree, she doesn't want to work with him again, and is going to make a play with his rival.  Oscar, though, tricks Lily in the closing scenes of the play into thinking he's dying, and making her sign a contract with him while she's overcome with emotion...and then he uncovers his charade, but she's already under contract.  The film ends with the two of them reunited, in their own version of tortured codependence.

Twentieth Century sounds meaner than it is (that description makes it sound like Lily is a constant victim, which while she is certainly the injured of the two, the movie doesn't really come across that way).  The film is such fun (though it's worth noting, it's not It Happened One Night).  Most of the joy from the film doesn't come from the script (which is wry, but not breaking a lot of ground), but from the two leads.  Barrymore, in particular, is sensational as Oscar Jaffe.  He plays him with comic genius, overacting (blissfully) and riding this character til dawn.  If you've read this blog for a while you know I have a fondness for John Barrymore (I also thought he was marvelous in Dinner at Eight), though Twentieth Century was the end-of-the-road for the troubled actor as a regular leading man.  Due to his alcoholism, he'd basically be unemployable soon, playing bit parts in film until his death from cirrhosis at the age of 60 in 1942 (despite his vast age difference & poor health even when they were filming he would outlive his Twentieth Century leading lady by a few months).  But more on that in a few weeks.

While Barrymore is the revelation in this cast, Lombard is nearly his equal.  To this point in her career she'd never shown the incredible knack for screwball comedy she displays here, not just eating into the one-liners, but also the physical comedy bits in the film as well.  While audiences didn't warm to this movie, critics did, and noted how Lombard seemed at-ease in a part like this, and was soon being cast in similar films.  Just two years later, she'd be an Oscar nominee & have graduated from leading lady to one of the most famous women in America...a status she almost certainly wouldn't have reached without this gem.

OVP: The Big Sky (1952)

Film: The Big Sky (1952)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt, Arthur Hunnicutt
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Arthur Hunnicutt, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We will jump back five decades from our French film yesterday to 1952 as we look at Best Cinematography nominees this week.  The Big Sky is a generally well-regarded western from the early 1950's when Kirk Douglas had graduated to proper leading man status, but probably wasn't quite at the point where he'd be amongst the biggest names in Hollywood (like he would be in the late 1950's).  The movie is a retelling of the novel by AB Guthrie, Jr., and isn't necessarily what you think of when you list one of Hawks' best films-after all, the man made Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and that's just the A-list.  But The Big Sky is a surprisingly moving story of friendship buried within the traditional confines of a western, and I left moved but unsurprised that a director as visionary as Hawks was able to craft such a compelling narrative cinematically.

(Spoilers Ahead) In the 1830's, laid-back Jim Deakins (Douglas) comes across a suspicious man named Boone Caudill (Martin) in the wilderness, and while they are opposites, they quickly become good friends, and soon traveling companions as they go out searching for Boone's uncle Zeb (Hunnicutt).  After finding him (and then promptly getting thrown in jail), they join his band of trappers, who are traveling some 2000 miles up the Missouri River to seek trade with the Blackfoot.  They are led on this expedition by Teal Eye (Threatt), a beautiful woman who is the daughter of a chief, and will be how they barter with the Blackfoot into giving them the trade business.  This trade comes with peril, though, as the Missouri Trading Company (a rival) finds out about Zeb's plan to establish trade with the Blackfoot, and consistently attack them (at one point even burning their boat), as they move up the river.  Along the journey, amid multiple dangers, both Jim & Boone fall in love with Teal Eye, and form a romantic rivalry.  In the film's closing moments, Jim pitches his love to Teal Eye, but she only loves him as a brother-she wants Boone.  Boone initially resists, shaming her, and Jim gives him disparagement, but eventually Boone decides to stay with Teal Eye, the two men able to repair their friendship, but likely never to see one another again as Jim returns home.

The Big Sky is the kind of movie that really comes together in the last twenty minutes, which is always a challenge for me as a reviewer.  Up until that point, the film's focus on the constant attacks on Zeb's trading company feels half-hearted, sturdy stuff but I'd want something more even if I'm having a good time (westerns are in my top three favorite film genres).  But the love story, particularly the one of friendship between Boone & Jim (there's some Celluloid Closet going on here), comes into focus in the final moments, and it lifts the picture to be something more than it seemed.  When Jim, angry about losing out on his love, but angrier still that he will never be able to look at his friend in the same way if he doesn't take the woman he loves, confronts Boone-it's great cinema, and the final goodbye from Jim & Boone worked for me.  As a result, we're giving this a 3-star rating, but a very high one, bordering on a 4.

It is in these moments that you come to understand why Hunnicutt received his Oscar nomination.  The actor has so far in the film been a fun comic presence, but not the sort you see nominated in the 1950's (it feels more what you'd see nominated in the 1930's).  However, the smooth-talking Hunnicutt makes the most of a late confession over the woman in his life that got away, and how he never forgot her (and in the process, Jim realizes perhaps that he'll never forget Teal Eye or Boone, the great loves of his life).  It adds a strong depth to Hunnicutt's performance that otherwise was lacking, and while this isn't immediately the sort of performance that would spring to mind for a nomination, it's certainly a reputable one (though his early scenes do feel like he's doing a bit too much of a Walter Brennan impression).

We can't neglect this week's theme, of course, and will need to address the Cinematography.  The movie is filmed almost exclusively outdoors, which usually helps in terms of Cinematography, but it's not using that as a crutch.  The film makes strong use of wide shots, particularly in open scenes along the river & at the Blackhawk camp, and the scenes along the river capture the mood of the film, looking beautiful but finding peaceful & rough shots to match the course of the movie (as if the river is its own credit in the movie).  It kind of feels like it'd have been better in color, to be honest (there's so much beauty in those shots you wish you could catch the blues of the sky & water), but this is a find for cinematography-gorgeous & calming.

OVP: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Film: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Stars: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Special Effects)...there's some confusion over whether this film was also cited for Best Cinematography, and I'd love if someone reading this might help me out on what is "official" in terms of nominations, as IMDB and Inside Oscar list this as being one of ten nominees for Best Black & White Cinematography in 1939, but the AMPAS Database officially doesn't list it, saying the only official nominees were Wuthering Heights and Stagecoach.  I defer to the AMPAS database as my source-of-truth for the OVP, but if anyone has more clarification or sources, I'd love to read them.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I'm sure there have been dozens of books and podcasts and articles about 1939, and it being the "greatest year in the history of the movies," but I always get a thrill getting to cross one of that year's movies off the list, as there's just that extra sheen of "one of the best" that comes with it.  Only Angels Have Wings is not one of the Best Picture nominees of 1939, but looking at that cast list & director, you have to assume it was close.  Jean Arthur had been on a stampede in recent years with Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington & You Can't Take it With You, while Cary Grant & Howard Hawks had made arguably one of the greatest comedies of all time the year before with Bringing Up Baby.  Combine in a "newcomer" in the form of Rita Hayworth & Thomas Mitchell the year he won his Oscar, and this is a pretty pedigreed movie.  What's surprising about it in hindsight, is how groundbreaking some of the effects are and occasionally deep the cast makes the picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Geoff Carter (Grant), who runs a piloting company in South America that delivers mail.  His flyers, including a pilot in the opening scenes, regularly die-this is a dangerous job, and one that Geoff loves, even when he hates it.  Of course, you can't have a film like this without a beautiful woman, and that's spunky Bonnie Lee (Arthur), who is a piano player who comes to this corner of the world and falls in love with Geoff.  Geoff eventually hires his former nemesis McPherson (Barthelmess), who let his partner "Kid's" (Mitchell) brother die in a plane crash, and coming with McPherson is his new wife Judy (Hayworth), who used to be romantically-involved with Geoff (and yes, this is the closest that Cary Grant ever came to the "Judy, Judy, Judy" line, though he only ever says the name to Hayworth twice-in-a-row, so that's an apocryphal quote in Grant lore).  The film continues with McPherson making a daring plane landing, this time initially saving the Kid's life (though he ends up dying of injuries eventually), and Geoff not being willing to admit to Bonnie that he wants her to leave.  However, he makes a bet with her with a trick coin (that only has heads) that she should "stay if it lands on heads," and once Bonnie realizes this is the closest he'll ever get to saying he loves her, she decides it's enough and stays with him.

Only Angels has some superfluous parts.  You know me-I love me some Rita Hayworth, but she's completely unnecessary to the plot of this movie, and you have to assume she got such key billing & the scenes she did because Harry Cohn was pushing for her.  The ending is also a bit saccharine for my tastes-I don't like women who are coming across as doormats, and Arthur isn't Lauren Bacall or Joan Crawford-we don't really know that she's "choosing to stay" even though she'd be fine on her own.  She plays Bonnie as too precious for my taste.

However, I liked Only Angels a lot.  It was disturbing initially to see Cary Grant play someone other than a gentleman, admittedly.  The way he doesn't instantly charm Arthur's Bonnie, you wonder if you've entered some sort of twilight zone, but as the movie progresses, he does a good job with this part.  Geoff is probably in love with Bonnie, but he's more in love with danger & the camaraderie of these men at the outskirts of their world, a makeshift family that understands the suicidal risks they need to take to feel alive.  It's a darker film than the call sheet & director would suggest, but that darkness, that underbelly, especially in Grant's performance, is what sells it.

If the film wasn't going to get in for Best Picture, Oscar paid attention to the nomination it did deserve (Special Effects) and the category it was shortlisted for but (apparently) wasn't nominated for (Cinematography).  The cinematography here is incredible.  The aerial shots are amazing, particularly through the mountains, and they blend perfectly with the special effects.  Yes, in hindsight you can see the strings attached (metaphorically) to the plane crash sequences, but given the time these are incredible shots, and the cinematography in my opinion doesn't age at all.  Unlike many sort of "stunt" films of Classical Hollywood, where the nomination (look at something like Beneath the 12-Mile Reef for an example) came just for the impressive sequences, this is still beautifully shot on the ground too.

OVP: How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Film: How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
Stars: Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Rory Calhoun, William Powell
Director: Jean Negulesco
Oscar History: 1 nominaton (Best Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Betty Grable-click here to learn more about Ms. Grable (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Despite having been a major star for over ten years, even in the early 1950's, Betty Grable's pictures were still hits.  She had been in the Top 10 biggest box office draws of every year since 1942, and in 1950, despite a relatively ripe age of 34 (which was a bigger deal in the '50's than it would be now), she was still the highest-grossing actress in America.  However, her star started to fall apart when she demanded that Fox acknowledge that she'd been a consistent draw by requesting more artistic freedom and a giant paycheck.  This led to Grable missing out on a big opportunity-Fox's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was a huge hit and gave a boost to the woman that was expected to succeed Grable as the top actress on the Fox lot, Marilyn Monroe.  Grable eventually came back to Fox, but they had a bit of a punishment for her in their next picture-casting her as a gold-digger opposite Monroe and Lauren Bacall, both of whom were a decade younger than Grable.

(Spoilers Ahead) How to Marry a Millionaire is a pretty slight film, and one that focuses on three women looking to get rich husbands: scheming Schatze (Bacall), naive Loco (Grable), and ditzy Pola (Monroe).  The three find a posh Manhattan apartment, and start selling off furniture in the hopes of finding a rich husband, but one-by-one they fall not for the actual millionaires like William Powell's JD Hanley, but instead for lumberjacks or criminals, or in Schatze's (the character most determined to stick to the plan) case, Tom, a man she assumes to be a grocery store clerk but who is instead wealthier than any of the men they pursue.  All of the women end up marrying for love, and in Schatze's case, accidentally it comes along with $200 million.

The film is not, unfortunately, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a picture I adored.  It's considerably drier, with only the three leading ladies adding anything to these happenings (Powell is a bore, which is a damned shame coming from the guy who made The Thin Man and My Man Godfrey so bubbly).  It's still fun, of course.  Bacall is ballsy (and gets a great joke about the "old guy in The African Queen" at one point), and Monroe is always fun to watch, and even Grable gets to have some game moments with a man who is looking to have an affair, but there's not enough laughs here.  We don't really get a sense for who these women are other than cartoons, and there aren't memorable musical numbers or someone who is as willing as Jane Russell is to commit to the cartoons the women are asked to play.

Grable's month, as a result, ends with a movie with some promise but ultimately a picture that flirts with a 2-star rating even if it's more a questionable three.  I'll admit to not finding much in Grable's extensive filmography this month to lend to her, disappointing after the joys of Jean Harlow in January.  Grable's career quickly petered out after this, the last significant picture of her time in Hollywood.  After Millionaire she turned down another role that would go to Monroe (There's No Business Like Show Business), something she was fine with; despite press at the time, Monroe & Grable got along famously, to the point where Grable requested her for what would be her last film How to Be Very, Very Popular (the Monroe part would go to Sheree North).  Grable would be turned down for the lead role in 1956's Guys and Dolls, making her quit the industry, and then became a headliner in Vegas until her death in 1973 of lung cancer at the age of 56.  Next month, we will move to a different star of the 1940's who would also find herself in the 1950's looking to Las Vegas, but not before having one of the most eclectic (and unfair) careers of any star in Classic Hollywood.

The Big Sleep (1946)

Film: The Big Sleep (1946)
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: No nominations-film noir usually struggled in this department, but it seems weird that such a storied movie didn't land somewhere.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

All of the films we're profiling for our Film Noir Series this month are classics, movies that I have desperately wanted to see that arguably I should have seen by this point but hadn't.  That being said, there is perhaps no movie we are going to chronicle this month that is more of a celebrated classic than The Big Sleep, and it's arguably the movie I'm most hanging-my-head-in-shame over having never seen prior to this project.  The second of four films that Bogie & Baby starred in together is frequently cited as their best (and weirdly the only one of the quartet that I hadn't seen already, as I'd even watched the strange Dark Passage), and serves as the catalyst of this series.  Hopefully you've seen it, because considering how convoluted the plot is, I'll need your help in the comments to sort it out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Philip Marlowe (Bogart), a private detective hired by a wealthy, dying man who is trying to pay off the gambling debts of his youngest daughter Carmen (Vickers).  As he leaves, he is confronted by Carmen's older sister Vivian (Bacall), who is recently divorced and suspicious of the man her father has hired.  Marlowe begins investigating, assuming that he's less going to be going after the gambling debts and more investigating what happened to the dying man's protege Sean Regan, and soon finds himself covering up a murder, as a drugged Carmen is found at the home of a crooked used bookstore owner (stay with me now, it's going to get harder to follow in a second), and begins to investigate to try to figure out what really happened.  Carmen is clearly a suspect, as is Vivian, but it's a criminal ring that revolves around a man named Eddie Mars (Ridgely) that seems to be the proper culprit.  We see Marlowe go through seedier back alleys and deals (there's a running gag about him essentially collecting guns they're so often in his face), but eventually he outsmarts Mars, who while he may not have been the killer, at least of Regan (it's heavily implied that it's Carmen who is the killer, though never confirmed outright), he did certainly kill a man in cold blood, and deserved his bloody ending (by the laws of Hollywood).  The movie ends with Marlowe framing a dead Mars for the murders, with the assurance that Carmen will get help, and ends up in an embrace with Vivian, with whom he's fallen in love during the picture.

The Big Sleep is perhaps best known for its convoluted plot, and while I rarely have my cell phone out when I see a movie (it's a respect thing), this one I made sure to keep it buried as there are a lot of characters, and not every question gets answered.  Famously, director Howard Hawks had no idea based on the book what happened to the chauffeur, and so he telegrammed Raymond Chandler, the author of The Big Sleep...who also couldn't figure it out (real talk-I just saw the movie and I'm not entirely sure either).  The movie chops a lot of the more salacious aspects out of the novel, including a subplot involving the bookstore owner being both a pornography peddler and the gay lover of Vivian's ex-husband, neither of which would have worked in mid-1940's cinema.  To make matters more bizarre, there are essentially two different versions of this film, the one that was released in 1946 (nearly a year after production had completed) and one from 1945, which was eventually released in 1997 (with Hugh Hefner of all people leading the charge to make the original version of the film available to the public) and also is a common version of the picture that floats around in the ether.  The best way to tell the difference is the small but crucial role of Mona Mars is played by two different actresses: 1945 had Pat Clark and 1946 featured Peggy Knudsen (for the record, I saw the 1945 version, but for symmetry's sake we're going to say 1946 because that's when the film was originally released).

All of this is to say that The Big Sleep is a lot of work, and not always in a good way.  There's too much plot here, and while the twists are fun, they don't always make sense, and it's not a particularly good mystery that doesn't seem to tie together the loose ends (or leave enough clues for you to figure things out on your own).  The production of this movie is legendary, but the film it produced isn't as fun as some of the other movies with this iconic duo.  Bogart is marvelous as Philip Marlowe, though, and just based on his work here it's probably worth the "classic" label this movie achieved. He's wry, sexy, and plays this role with an assuredness that even one of cinema's most confident leading men rarely duplicated.  Bacall is gorgeous, but she's been better.  This was very early in her career, and she seemed to be getting her bearings still as an actress, more sliding on her natural charisma than talent.  The movie is basically stolen from her by the supporting women, all of whom are uniformly good.  Dorothy Malone plays a horny bookshop owner (for real...is this the prototype for the slutty librarian trope?), who seduces Bogart on a rainy day for some afternoon delight (it's staggering to me that this scene made it past the sensors...perhaps they were also mesmerized by Malone, who got her big break here and was headlining films within 2 years of its release).  Sonia Darrin (the only living cast member of the movie) wasn't credited for the film as the femme fatale Agnes thanks to a fight her agent had with Jack Warner, but she's supremely fun sparring with Bogart.  Best of all is Vickers, who steals every scene she's in as the drunk, oversexed Carmen.  Best known today as one of the many wives of Mickey Rooney, there's a raw, cutting edge to this performance that the rest of the film lacks and that feels a bit jarring even for 40's noir, and you kind of wish if they were going to make two versions of the film, one would have been entirely from her perspective.  This great acting makes up for a plot that stretches too thin for my tastes, and while I get the classic angle of the picture enough to warrant a "thumbs up," we'll get to better movies as this month progresses & we take a peak at more storied noir.

Previous Films in the Series: The Woman in the Window

I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

Film: I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Stars: Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan, Marion Marshall
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ann Sheridan-click here to learn more about Ms. Sheridan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We continue on with Ann Sheridan's run as our Star of the Month with arguably her last major hit.  In 1949, Sheridan was 34, starting to approach a dangerous age for actresses, especially those who had been marketed for the bulk of their career based on their sex appeal (which was true of Sheridan), and she had just ended her long-running contract with Warner Brothers, becoming a freelance star.  Sheridan's period as a freelancer between her time at Warner and her shorter, less-successful run at Universal resulted in one of the biggest hits of her career, I Was a Male War Bride, with Cary Grant.  Sheridan & Grant had made a few films together in the early 1930's, but that was when Grant was a major leading man & Sheridan was a bit player, taking tiny parts before she'd become a proper star.  Male War Bride, despite a troubled shoot (both Sheridan & Grant had grave illnesses during the run of the film), became the highest-grossing film for FOX that year and served as something as a career-capper for Sheridan before she slid into smaller roles and television at the end of her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is pretty much entirely a duet between Sheridan as Catherine Gates, a lieutenant in the American army, and Grant as Henri Rochard, a French captain who is working with the Americans (no, there's no attempt by Grant to do a French accent...Grant, as ever, has the same affectation in his voice).  Initially the two despise each other, seemingly because Henri at one point had made a pass at Catherine in a previous mission (which he denies), but are forced to find a lens maker before he is recruited by the Nazis.  Along the way, they suffer a series of mishaps, including nearly going over a waterfall and Henri crashing into a haystack, before they inevitably fall in love and get married.

The first half of the film is a bit tedious, which is a bummer because there is a lot of conviction by Sheridan to make this work.  Both actors are at their best when given patter and snappy dialogue to exchange, but they are so instantly compatible it's hard to understand why they didn't like each other in the first place.  The plot of the entire film is pretty thin, and as a result it only really succeeds when they aren't relying on the plot to drive the dialogue between the two actors, which is sparkling if they get into a good flow.

Unfortunately, that charm wears off entirely once they actually get together, and Sheridan is relegated to just being a straight woman for Grant rather than a wiseacre star in her own right.  The second half of the film is dependent on you finding it funny that Grant is constantly treated like the woman in their relationship (yes, as pictured above, Grant wears a woman's army uniform and a feminine wig), and the script is so thin here that it's a struggle to find much humor, even dated humor, in this portion of the movie.  Grant, who even at his worst is eminently watchable, occasionally finds moments of hilarity (there's a great bit with a hotel clerk who needs Grant to help her with her knitting I quite enjoyed), but by-and-large when you eliminate the patter between Sheridan & Grant, and relegate her to doting wife rather than his equal, the film loses whatever panache the first half was (slowly) leading toward.  As a result, this is arguably one of the least impressive Hawks' films that I've seen and the first proper disappointment in our Saturdays with the Stars series, though considering the leading actors involved I'm not surprised this was a hit for FOX.  Next week we will close our discussion of Sheridan's career with one of her films at Universal, where she took a role not only in front of the camera, but behind the scenes as well.