Gidget (1959)

Film: Gidget (1959)

Stars: Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, James Darren, Arthur O'Connell, The Four Preps

Director: Paul Wendkos

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sandra Dee: click here to learn more about Ms. Dee (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Sandra Dee's early life was rough.  Raised initially with her brother Dodd by her mother and aunt under the birth name Alexandra Zuck, she would eventually live with her mother and her second husband, a real estate executive who sexually abused young Alexandra, something her mother eventually became aware of but refused to acknowledge.  As a teenager, Alexandra (now under the name of Sandra Dee) worked as a high-profile model, suffering from severe issues with her weight & health but becoming quite successful (to the point where biographers argue she made more as a model than as an actress).  This led her to move to Hollywood, and work in film.  A chance encounter with gossip columnist Louella Parsons got Dee's name in the papers, and she won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1957 for her work in Until They Sail with Joan Fontaine & Paul Newman.  A series of movies in 1957 led to a contract with Universal (Dee would eventually be the last major star under contract to a studio under the old studio system), and in 1959 she'd make the two films that would cement her fame.  First was Imitation of Life, a mammoth hit for Universal (the biggest hit in their history to that point), which we profiled a few years ago when we looked at the career of Lana Turner, and then while on loan to Columbia she made Gidget, our film today, and the movie that she would become synonymous with for the rest of her life.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Francine Lawrence (Dee), who at the age of 17 is feeling pressured to fall in love with boys like her friends do, but she doesn't have that feeling toward them yet.  Still, wanting to fit in, she goes to the beach, and meets a group of surfer boys, including an older man named the Big Kahuna (Robertson) and a younger guy named Moondoggie (Darren).  She falls in love with surfing, and to some degree both of the guys, and starts to surf, getting the snarky moniker Gidget (a combination of girl and "midget").  She proves to be only somewhat good at it (enough to need to be rescued a couple of times), but starts to have real feelings for Moondoggie.  Impatient for him to notice her and for her to feel like she's a real woman, she tries to seduce the Big Kahuna into taking her virginity, which he initially refuses, and then almost does as he finds her charming.  Before he can commit the deed, though, he throws Gidget out where she has a big confrontation with Moondoggie.  She returns to civilization, a bit defeated, only to discover that the "nice young man" that her father's been trying to set her up with all of the movie is a now-respectable looking Moondoggie, who finally takes Gidget on a date.

The movie was pretty consequential in the 1960's.  We talked last month about the career of Annette Funicello and her part in the Beach Party movies, but Gidget really paved the way for those movies in the 1960's to be popular.  It also spawned a sequel (Gidget Goes to Rome) and a short-lived TV series starring Sally Field...neither of these featured Sandra Dee, who was under contract to Universal and so wasn't at liberty to line Columbia's coffers continually with hit movies.  Dee is actually quite good in Gidget.  She finds a sort of spunky feminism that honestly wasn't really a thing in teen movies of this era, when girls were either saints or sirens in movies like this, and while this is no one's idea of a progressive film, it definitely means that Gidget gets to be two things at the end of the movie-both with her dream guy and decidedly herself.

The movie, though, isn't very good outside of these messages.  The supporting characters are so interchangeable you'll get confused when they're referenced, and it's not funny enough even though it's meant to be.  Cliff Robertson's Big Kahuna is sexy but a snore (and it's SO weird to think he'd be clutching a Best Actor Oscar less than ten years from this film's premiere), and James Darren is even less interesting (if, again, quite cute).  I get the appeal here, but this didn't have as much of the snappy fun that the Beach Party movies would have with Frankie Avalon.

The Shaggy Dog (1959)

Film: The Shaggy Dog (1959)

Stars: Tommy Kirk, Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, Annette Funicello, Tim Considine, Cecil Kellaway

Director: Charles Barton

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Annette Funicello: click here to learn more about Ms. Funicello (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Annette Funicello joins Shirley Temple as the only two actresses this season that really became famous as children, and that's where they started their reign as "America's Sweetheart."  In Funicello's case, though, she began not in the movies like Temple did but in television.  Funicello was the star of the original Mickey Mouse Club TV series on ABC during the 1950's, but unlike the 1990's remake (which would feature future superstars Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, & Britney Spears), the only one of the stars of the original that would truly break out into superstardom was Funicello, who proved to be the most popular actor in the cast from the start.  Hand-selected by Walt Disney for the show, she quickly turned around her fame with The Mickey Mouse Club into starring roles in both the Disney TV series Zorro and then her feature film debut with the studio, today's film The Shaggy Dog.

(Spoilers Ahead) Even by the standards of a Disney live-action movie, this is a bizarre plot, but I'll give it a shot.  Wilby Daniels (Kirk) is an ordinary teenage boy, one who pals around with his buddy Buzz (Considine) and lusts after girls, namely Buzz's on-again-off-again girlfriend Allison (Funicello) and the new neighbor Francesca (Roberta Shore).  When he's visiting Francesca's father's house, he comes across a man named Professor Plumcott (Kellaway), and accidentally takes a ring from him that has magical powers, namely that it will turn him into Francesca's sheepdog Chiffon.  Adventures ensue, as Wilby transforms (with little control) between both himself and Chiffon, including when he and Buzz are attempting to take both girls to the Prom at the same time, but it's a Russian spy ring that's uncovered by Wilby that takes over the wackiest final third of the film.  With the aid of his dog-hating father Mr. Daniels (MacMurray), he stops the spies, but Buzz & Wilby end up getting neither girl, as Francesca moves back to Paris and Allison realizes that she can do better.

You'll notice that I barely mentioned Fred MacMurray in that plot, which is weird because MacMurray is the most famous name in this cast and would've been in 1959 as well.  Walt Disney had a history of making a lot of live-action films in the 1950's & 60's, and the studio would continue to do this after his death well into the 1970's.  This was because at a time when the studio's costly animated features struggled at the box office (it's hard to believe now, but in their initial run, now-beloved classics like Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty were flops for the studio), the live-action movies were gigantic hits.  The Shaggy Dog was the studio's most successful feature of the decade (more than even Cinderella), and because of this movie's success, three stars who would feature prominently in a lot of those pictures were Kirk, MacMurray, & Funicello.

Annette, though, doesn't have a lot to do in this movie (and while he's in a lot of it, MacMurray doesn't get much to "do" in it either).  She's basically just sitting around waiting for one of the boys to call (this was apparently a recurring motif for her until she broke out in non-Disney films a few years later).  Maybe that's for the best as The Shaggy Dog isn't very good.  The plot makes no sense, and it's really more silly than funny (when you need it to be both).  Kirk is charming as the lead (you get why he became a star in films like this), but MacMurray and his onscreen wife Jean Hagen are a snooze.  Given both of them have roots in film noir, and we're watching a movie about a plot to foil Russian spies, you kind of wish they'd ditch the dog and just make this into a gritty thriller.

OVP: The Nun's Story (1959)

Film: The Nun's Story (1959)

Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger, Mildred Dunnock

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Audrey Hepburn, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Like many women who wore the title of "America's Sweetheart" Audrey Hepburn's critical acclaim has been questioned through the years by some, claiming she was a "limited" actress.  This feels like an odd thing to point out for Hepburn, who more than almost any actress we're going to profile this year, received a lot of critical acclaim.  Hepburn was cited for five Oscars in her career, winning for Roman Holiday, and that didn't include her lauded work in My Fair Lady, which was widely-expected by many to be a spot for her to get a nomination.  She also was one of the first people to win an EGOT (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, & Tony) and did so as a performer.  Today, we are going to discuss one of Hepburn's Oscar-nominated turns, the final one that I had yet to see, and one that I think shows the versatility of her acting, rather than calling it (as her critics have) "one-note": The Nun's Story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the life of Gaby, a young postulant who for most of the film is known as Sister Luke (Hepburn).  She has, before the start of the film, decided to devote herself to a life as a nun, something that we don't get a lot of insight into the rationale why, though we think it's to become a nurse in the Congo (there's a throwaway line about a boy she liked late in the film, and I rather liked that this might be a secondary reason for her, because it adds a depth to the film even if it might also be a touch antifeminist to assume she couldn't just want this for a career).  Of course, being a nun is not just about nursing, but instead also about devotion to God, and throughout the film we get to see Sister Luke struggle with a crisis-of-faith, trying to find a way to help those around her through her scientific skills, but also to get back to her devotion to the church, and wanting to show that she can be worthy of her new calling, and not just being a nurse.  As the film progresses, it becomes evident that she cannot, and in the final moments of the film, she leaves the convent forever.

The movie was cited for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it's worthy of most of them.  The film is wonderfully-structured, giving us a glimpse not only into the life of a woman trying to become a nun, but giving it two-dimensionally.  I have read that some (particularly composer Franz Waxman) were critical of the Catholic Church, but I'll be honest-I don't think the story gets that across.  If you want to debate the Church, you've got your evidence there-the constant critiquing of Sister Luke for having human impulses feels cruel in parts.  But there's also a spot for those who are sympathetic to the church, showing how becoming a nun isn't a calling for everyone, even for the most kindhearted of women (i.e. there's more to being a nun than being good).  I loved that approach, and honestly really liked this movie.  There are critiques to be had (I don't think that it gives us enough connection to those around Sister Luke for us to really understand why she ultimately gives up the church after sacrificing so much), but they're thin.  Zinnemann's approach, the film's lovely cinematography, and the way that it wordlessly adds depth to the ending by foregoing Waxman's score as Hepburn leaves the convent, rather than giving us a dramatic swell, is marvelous.  It's clear at that moment that Sister Luke is picking the only way out, but she's not sure if it's the right one, and the music not giving the audience any indication this is the correct path is really well-designed.

Hepburn's performance here is really stellar.  The cinematography & makeup work are helping her cause, to be fair.  I love the way we start to see the angelic Hepburn's eyes start to become sallow with the weight of the world on her, highlighted by the constant focus on her face (in many ways copying what cinematographer Arthur C. Miller did for Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette).  But Hepburn is also giving something extra to her work here.  Her internal struggles, the way that her inner-monologue never shuts off, particularly when we see that she can't speak to other people, is very reminiscent of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, and it's very effective.  Hepburn shows here she might always look like a pixie, but she also was able to use that to create versatility.  She's up against actresses like Simone Signoret & Katharine Hepburn, generally considered to be "better" actresses than she is, but her performance honestly is more nuanced and stronger in the way it highlights the picture than either of those two more celebrated thespians.  Hepburn's critical reputation from some snobbish cinephiles as one-note is, well, wrong.

A Stranger in My Arms (1959)

Film: A Stranger in My Arms (1959)

Stars: June Allyson, Jeff Chandler, Sandra Dee, Charles Coburn, Mary Astor, Peter Graves

Director: Helmut Kautner

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the late-1950's, June Allyson's once unimpeachable box office record was more miss than hit.  She appeared in a Douglas Sirk film called Interlude (which I am dying to see as I am fascinated by what Sirk would do with Allyson's girl scout persona) and a remake of My Man Godfrey with David Niven, both of which bombed.  Her last leading role in a movie was in 1959's A Stranger in My Arms from Universal Pictures.  At the time, Allyson was 42, an age at which most actresses, especially those who bear the title of "America's Sweetheart" tend to fade from the public.  But Allyson would live for almost 50 more years after A Stranger in My Arms, and have an unusual second chapter in her career that, while perhaps lucrative, would become an unorthodox part of her legacy as an actress.

(Spoilers Ahead) Before we get into that, though, let's talk about A Stranger in My Arms, which is our movie today.  The film is about Major Pike Yarnell (Chandler), who is tortured by memories of his time on a raft during the Korean War with Donald Beasley (Graves), his fellow soldier.  Beasley's widow Christina (Allyson) comes to find him, and wants to hear more about her husband's final days, as does his family, specifically his mother Virginie (Astor).  As we find out, Donald is not a hero, and was not as enamored with his wife & mother as they were with him, as he bad-mouthed them, saying he hated his mother and never truly loved his wife.  Virginie, though, is pressuring Major Yarnell to help get Donald the Medal of Honor, but he refuses, even as he begins to fall in love with Christina, as we soon learn that Donald killed himself on the raft, and Major Yarnell had lied and said he'd fallen off the raft in a storm.  The film ends with Christina, finally breaking free of her in-laws and the memory of a man who never truly loved her, leaving with Major Yarnell, hopefully for a happier second chapter to her life.

The film walks the line between delicious campy melodrama and over-serious bore, and man do I wish it'd had the gaul to go with the former.  This is one of only two films that Helmut Kautner (who made films in Germany during World War II, but largely avoided some of the propaganda films that would plague other Germans who made films during the reign of Adolf Hitler) made in the United States, and came just three years after his picture The Captain from Kopenick was nominated for an Oscar.  The movie needed to have more indulgence, either leaning in on Mary Astor's gorgon mother or Sandra Dee's salacious debutante.  These are the best parts, as Allyson & Chandler are a snooze in the lead-he's too dour to be a romantic lead, and she's too old to be this naive.  It's the sort of film that in 1952 would've starred Joan Crawford, Kirk Douglas, & Gloria Grahame and been much more interesting.

As I said, Allyson never was the lead in a major studio film again after this movie-after two decades in the spotlight, this was probably more than she could've asked for.  She quickly did an eponymous TV series that she (and critics) hated, and would work on-and-off in theater, television, and film in the years that followed.  She also did a series of commercials throughout the 1980's for Depend undergarments, which are essentially a well-known brand of adult diapers in the United States for people with incontinence issues.  This was actually pretty brave for Allyson to link herself to-before this, no celebrity had talked about issues like this, which is a common issue, particularly for women.  But it made her something of a punchline.  My first encounter to Allyson was not in one of her movies, but through a joke made about her by Dixie Carter on Designing Women, where in one episode she says to an older woman she's annoyed with "I don't appreciate you leaving your big old box of June Allyson bladder pads on my nightstand!"  Like Lauren Bacall over enunciating about High Point Coffee or Ann Miller tap-dancing for Heinz, this is further proof that, no matter how many movies you make or how long you reign as a leading lady, nothing lasts quite as long as a TV commercial.

Next month, we're going to fully move into the 1950's, and we're going to talk about the only woman this season who wore the crown of America's Sweetheart...even though she was not born in America.

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Film: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Stars: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, Richard Bright

Director: Robert Wise

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

While the French New Wave (as we learned a couple of days ago) was already starting to invest in film noir elements as Hollywood began to lose interest in the late 1950's, that didn't mean that Hollywood had stopped making noir entirely, though the tale-end of the film noir is generally considered to be 1960 (most films after that are "neo-noir" and I refer to them as such if you look at the list of past film noirs at the bottom of this page).  One of the last important film noirs came from United Artists, and was the first film noir from a major studio to star a Black actor, in this case the late Harry Belafonte.  1959 was still within the peak of Belafonte's entertainment career.  At 32, he had starred in major movies, including the box office smashes Carmen Jones and Island in the Sun, and was a popular recording artist, just a couple of years out from "Banana Boat (Day-O)," the biggest hit of his career.  Odds Against Tomorrow represented a different chapter in his career, though, and was an opportunity for him to be seen in a different way by audiences, a dramatic actor who didn't need a musical to make an impression.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a ticking clock story, as we countdown to a bank robbery being orchestrated by David Burke (Begley), a former police detective whose career is ruined when he refuses to provide evidence to state crime investigators.  He recruits a former con Earle Slater (Ryan) and a nightclub entertainer Johnny Ingram (Belafonte) to join him in the hit.  Neither man is excited about the prospect, as Ryan's Slater is an avowed racist who doesn't want to work with a Black man & Belafonte's Ingram is trying to do right by his wife & daughter, but Slater's pride (he's supported by his girlfriend Lorry, played by Winters) and Ingram's gambling debts mean they can't turn down the job.  The heist goes wrong, and Burke is killed holding the keys to the getaway car.  There's a chance for Ingram & Slater to escape, but instead they turn on each other, having a shootout that burns them both alive.  The film ends a bit cheekily, with the police officer not being able to tell who is who with their charred corpses (indicating that underneath, we're all the same).

The film is solid.  The cast is really good.  Winters is maybe the best part as the scorned girlfriend, who can't understand why her man won't love her even though she gives him everything (Robert Ryan is having an affair with their neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, who is also good as a titillated, bored housewife), but everyone is solid in this movie.  Belafonte is sexy as hell in the lead role, and they even find an excuse to have him sing some of the jazz score, original work by John Lewis that would be a hit for the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The film doesn't always work, though.  The ending is perhaps a bit too cute (particularly the "can't tell them apart" scene), given that it implies pretty heavily both of these men have committed the same crimes, even though Slater's bigotry is far worse (it's 1959, I know, but I'm still going to say it hurts the story).  I also think that the way that they handle the personal lives of Ryan & Belafonte in particular could've been stronger. We needed more scenes late in the film with Winters & Grahame, as well as Kim Hamilton's Ruth (who plays Belafonte's love interest).  And we sure as hell needed to get more of Richard Bright's delicious Coco, who is so queer-coded that honestly I think he's just meant to be openly gay, a small-time hood who is horny-as-hell for Belafonte, and flirts openly with him.  While film noir will frequently hint at queer characters, this is the closest I've ever gotten to seeing an openly gay one in a Classical Hollywood noir, and man I wish he'd been in more scenes.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

Ride Lonesome (1959)

Film: Ride Lonesome (1959)

Stars: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James Best, Lee van Cleef, James Coburn

Director: Budd Boetticher

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Randolph Scott: click here to learn more about Mr. Scott (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout this month, we've watched two films (and a third today) from the storied partnership between our May star Randolph Scott and filmmaker Budd Boetticher, but we haven't actually talked about their partnership, until today.  By the late 1950's, Scott was still a hot commodity, though nowhere near as important as he was in the early 1950's, when he was a Top 10 box office draw.  His partnership with Boetticher happened by accident.  Boetticher, who had once studied to be a matador, had been working in Hollywood for over a decade as a director, most notably in the Robert Stack film Bullfighter and the Lady (for which Boetticher had been nominated for an Oscar), but had not really had much success, and was largely a for-hire director.  John Wayne had originally been offered the lead role in 7 Men from Now, but because he was making The Searchers, he had to turn it down and instead recommended Boetticher try making the film with Randolph Scott.  This set off a creative partnership between the two men that was moderately successful at the box office that spawned seven films (known as the "Ranown Cycle"), and with the possible exception of John Wayne & John Ford's collaborations, is the most-noted in the annals of classical Hollywood westerns.

(Spoilers Ahead) Today we're going to focus on one of the final films in the partnership, Ride Lonesome, which stars Scott as Ben Brigade, a bounty hunter who has captured Billy John (Best), the brother of a famed outlaw named Frank (Van Cleef).  As he's taking him into custody, they come across a way station, being run by Carrie Lane (Steele), a beautiful widow (she doesn't know it yet, but she's about to be a widow), who lives there waiting for her soon-to-be-dead husband.  Also there are two low-time crooks who want in on the Billy John capture, Sam Boone (Roberts) and his (rather stupid) sidekick Whit (Coburn).  As the film goes, we learn that Ben is really more after revenge, as Frank killed his wife by hanging her from a tree, a tree they happen across.  The movie ends with Billy John strung up by said tree, drawing Frank out, and allowing Ben to kill him.  He gives Billy John (and the reward) to Sam, Whit, & Carrie (whom we get the impression will fall for Sam as he's been lusting after her the whole movie, albeit with little reciprocation), telling them to change their ways, and the film ends with him burning the tree to the ground.

The Ranown Cycle is remarkable largely for the sheer, bleak artistry that it brings.  The films are beautifully-shot, almost exclusively outdoors & on location, and feature Scott in roughly the same, stoic character.  They all feature ominous music, characters with mixed moralities (though Scott is always the good guy), and a relatively dour ending, even the happy ones.  This was atypical for westerns at this point.  While The Searchers and Shane had a lot of commentary about the invincibility & heroic natures of the cowboy, by-and-large most films of this era showed uncomplicated lawmen or ranchers who fought the bad guys & got the pretty girl.  It wasn't until the 1960's with movies like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Wild Bunch that the clear violence & ambiguity of this genre would become the norm.  As a result, the Ranown Cycle stands apart as ahead-of-its-time in addition to being well-constructed.

This is true of Ride Lonesome.  In terms of the Boetticher/Scott films we saw this month, it's my least favorite.  It doesn't have enough tension between Roberts & Steele, and Van Cleef's Frank needs more scenes.  But it's still good.  I love the way that Scott's Ben feels so detached the entire movie, as if he gave up on life long ago, and will surely disappear into oblivion at the end of this film.  It's the one movie that I've seen of him this month where it's very obvious he's not ending up in a resolved place after this (likely suicide or riding off into increasingly dangerous situations that will result in him joining his dead wife).  I wish that we were maybe a minute or two later in the Hays Code era so that he could say this out-loud, indicate he's beyond redemption, but alas...it's just implied.

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.

The Crimson Kimono (1959)

Film: The Crimson Kimono (1959)

Stars: James Shigeta, Glenn Corbett, Victoria Shaw

Director: Samuel Fuller

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

As I mentioned when we discussed Murder by Contract earlier this week, film noir as a genre closed most of its doors in the late 1950's.  At that point, stars like Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Edward G. Robinson, & Humphrey Bogart who had defined film noir were either well past their prime or (in Bogie's case) dead, and they hadn't really been replaced.  Today we're going to talk about a film at the tale end of film noir, and in the next two days we'll close our month-long tribute to film noir with two pictures from the neo-noir revival of the genre that occurred in the 1970's.  The Crimson Kimono, directed by Samuel Fuller (who also directed House of Bamboo which we discussed this month-all links to past film noirs listed below), doesn't star any particularly recognizable actors, and in the 1959 the biggest name in this cast would've been James Shigeta, who was part of a small group of Asian actors like Nancy Kwan, France Nguyen, & Shirley Yamaguchi who gained fame in the late 1950's & early 1960's as marquee stars despite Hollywood's still overarching racism toward Asian actors, who even in this era were regularly played by white actors in yellowface.  What makes Crimson Kimono so intriguing to me upon revisiting it this month for the first time is the way that Fuller handles a potentially racist plot with sensitivity and grace...all on a tight, shoestring budget.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film opens with the murder of a gorgeous stripper named Sugar Torch, played by Gloria Pall but clearly meant to evoke the fading beauty ideal of Jayne Mansfield & Mamie van Doren (a big-breasted, oversexed blonde).  Though most think of Sugar as "trash," and not worth the detective work, two police officers: Joe Kojaka (Shigeta) and Charlie Bancroft (Corbett) investigate her murder, and seem to uncover a criminal ring which leads them to Christine Dowes (known in the movie as Chris, known in real life as Victoria Shaw).  Chris is an artist who painted Sugar, and as the movie continues both men start to fall for her, setting up a rare interracial love triangle that would've been impossible to imagine just a few years earlier on big screens.  As the film progresses, we learn that most of this criminal world is a red herring (the killer is in fact one of the women they'd met along their investigations, killing Sugar because she thought she was sleeping with her lover), but the main story becomes whether or not the partnership between Joe & Charlie can outlast them both being in love with Chris.

While the Hays Code was still partially in effect by 1959, we had started to see in the late 1950's the use of interracial relationships between actors of different races more frequently in studio films.  Whereas at the start of the decade you'd catch, say, Ava Gardner playing a black woman in Showboat, the first onscreen interracial kiss between Harry Belafonte & Joan Fontaine in 1957 set off a surprisingly robust group of films showing grown-up, true romances between white actors and actors of color including Sayonara, South Pacific, The World of Suzie Wong, and The Crimson Kimono.  That the film ends with Shigeta's Joe getting Shaw's Christine, rather than Corbett, is a sign that Fuller understood the changing times that would come in the 1960's, and had a bit more vision than you'd expect from an on-the-cheap Columbia film noir of this era.

The plot itself is relatively good.  As we enter the 1960's, a lot of the tropes about film noir had started to fade.  While Chris is a "woman in danger," she's not really a "dangerous woman" in the way we'd expect from a femme fatale, and so this movie, while billed as a film noir, is really more of just a crime drama than a film noir.  It doesn't help the case that while the plot handles Chris & Joe's romance well, all of the chemistry is between not Shaw & Shigeta but Shigeta & Corbett, playing off of each other in early scenes like a married couple.  In a truly different era, it would've been appropriate for these two to end up together, but alas, that wasn't in the cards in 1950's Hollywood quite yet.

1940's: The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia,The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Nightcrawler

Solomon and Sheba (1959)

Film: Solomon and Sheba (1959)
Stars: Yul Brynner, Gina Lollobrigida, Marisa Pavan, George Sanders
Director: King Vidor
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 Gina Lollobrigida-click here to learn more about Ms. Lollobrigida (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In the careers of a lot of beautiful actresses from the late-1940's through the mid-1960's, one of the weirder tropes that seemed to befall these actresses was playing the romantic lead in a biblical epic.  Throughout Saturdays with the Stars, we've already run into this a couple of times.  There was Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah and Virginia Mayo in The Silver Chalice.  Last month, though we didn't profile it, Sophia Loren got to play the female lead in The Fall of the Roman Empire, which while not biblical definitely takes place during the times of the Bible.  And this week Gina Lollobrigida goes into the trope.  The production of Solomon and Sheba is legendary (we'll get into that after we discuss the film) even though that had little to do with Lollobrigida, but suffice it to say this was a big deal in Gina's career, and probably the height of her time as a leading woman in Hollywood (perhaps coincidentally, this was also about the time that her longtime rival Sophia Loren was starting her rise in Tinseltown).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a gigantic epic (read: too long) look at only a partial portion of the reign of King Solomon.  The film is loosely based on the Book of Kings in the Bible, which details some sort of relationship between King Solomon (Brynner) and the Queen of Sheba (Lollobrigida), though the Bible is not entirely clear on what that relationship was (and historical evidence of Solomon's reign is scant, and in the case of the Queen of Sheba, bordering on non-existent).  Either way, within this movie they are lovers, though not without their initial problems.  The Queen is recruited by the Pharoah to seduce Solomon, and trick him so that she can gain additional lands, and she does so, but then she falls in love with him.  The Pharoah then persuades Solomon's jealous brother Adonijah (Sanders) to betray him, which he does, but thanks to the prayers of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon is saved from certain defeat, and returns to save her from Adonijah's ordered stoning.

There's a lot more to this movie, but to be honest, that's really the highlights version.  I am not opposed to biblical epics (I love Ben-Hur and consider it a proper masterpiece, and was quite fond of The Ten Commandments), but this movie drags and is SO dull.  The film is famously bad, showing up in "worst films of all-time" lists, and while it's not quite "worst of all time," that's about the closest I'm willing to get to a compliment.  The acting from Brynner, Lollobrigida, and Sanders is super cheesy (and Pavan's saintly sister is really annoying, to the point where you are inappropriately relieved when she dies halfway through the movie), and the script is repetitive & hammy.  This movie was a hit in 1959, even with critics at the time giving it tepid reviews & director Vidor publicly stating that he didn't like Brynner in the lead.

His idea for who should play the lead was Tyrone Power, which gets us to the best story about Solomon and Sheba, because Tyrone Power was supposed to be the lead, and actually filmed large chunks of the movie that were eventually reshot with Brynner.  Looking at news articles at the time, it appears that Power was in the middle of a sword fight with George Sanders (which if the script wasn't changed, this is one of the movie's final scenes), and after doing repeated takes, he complained to Vidor about his left arm hurting.  He then went to his trailer, his makeups artist got him a brandy, and Vidor paged for the studio nurse.  Power was then driven to the hospital by Lollobrigida, but didn't make it-he was pronounced dead when they arrived at the hospital, supposedly still in costume.  While other actors have died in more shocking ways (Martha Mansfield, Brandon Lee, Jon-Eric Hexum), Power is arguably the most famous actor to die on a movie set, a fate that bizarrely also befell his actor father, for whom he was named.  This makes Solomon and Sheba a weird curiosity to modern viewers, even though at the time it was a blockbuster.  Next week, we'll close our month devoted to Gina with her costarring with a different actor whose death (not on a set, but decades after the two starred together) would also become the source of tragic scandal.

OVP: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Film: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Stars: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O'Connell, Eve Arden, Kathryn Grant, George C. Scott, Joseph N. Welch
Director: Otto Preminger
Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-James Stewart, Supporting Actor-George C. Scott, Supporting Actor-Arthur O'Connell, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

All right, we are on Day 2 of our week devoted to Best Supporting Actor.  One of my favorite things about doing reviews this way (where there's a common Oscar theme, but generally the films have little else in common, hopefully proving both the depth of each category within the Academy and forcing me to have a little bit more structure to knocking out some more great movies) is that when a movie gets a lot of nominations, you don't necessarily think of it first as a nominee in a category like Best Supporting Actor.  This is especially true for Anatomy of a Murder.  If you think of this movie today, it's obviously going to be as a "classic courtroom drama" one of the harbingers of eventual hit television series like The Defenders.  If you think of it in relation to Oscar, it's almost certainly going to be for its Best Picture nomination (weirdly the split in 1959 that meant Otto Preminger wasn't nominated was that Billy Wilder was for Some Like It Hot) or for being Jimmy Stewart's final nomination for Best Actor, which he lost to Charlton Heston during the Ben-Hur sweep.  However, Anatomy of a Murder is the only film we're going to profile this week that received two nominations for Best Supporting Actor, one for steady character actor Arthur O'Connell and the first nomination for a man who would one day turn down the Oscar: George C. Scott.

(Spoilers Ahead) Anatomy of a Murder has a lot of characters, but I'll attempt to summarize here.  At the center of the story is Paul Biegler (Stewart), a down-on-his-luck lawyer who recently lost his race for district attorney, and as a result is cash-strapped, unable to pay his secretary Madge (Arden) as he spends most of his time with his drinking buddy Parnell (O'Connell).  A case lands in his lap of a man  named Frederick Manion (Gazzara), a war veteran accused of murdering the man who raped his wife Laura (Remick).  Biegler tries the case on temporary insanity, as unlike a lot of dramas we would have seen at the time (where the defendant would be truly not guilty), there's never any question that Manion killed the man who raped his wife.  The film's central storyline largely unfolds in the courtroom, with Stewart and the prosecuting attorney Claude Dancer (Scott) going against each other in a series of rapid fire questioning rounds with witness after witness, until finally it's Mary Pilant (Grant, in one of the only roles she'd do after her marriage to Bing Crosby) provides enough evidence to the fact that her father raped Laura that they dismiss the charges against her husband.

There are a lot of things to unpack with a movie like Anatomy of a Murder, which at nearly three hours long (though it never feels like that, and indeed I was having so much fun I would have happily gone on for another hour) has a lot of plot.  The film at the time was landmark.  It was banned for a period in Chicago because it spoke so frankly about sex (this is the earliest chronologically I've ever seen a film use the word "sperm," for example), and is not shy about the realities of what happened to Laura Manion.  It's particularly interesting because of the way that Laura Manion is depicted in the film.  In Classic Hollywood, rape victims were almost always played as virginal saints (think of Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda or Hope Lange in Peyton Place)-Laura Manion is not a virgin (she's been married twice) and is not shy about clearly liking sex & liking that men are attracted to her.  That the film manages to show a woman of her proclivity as being a rape victim (that it shouldn't matter what a woman looks like, "no means no means no" is always right) is really progressive, and something I wasn't expecting going into this picture.

This boldness really hits well with the film though-this is a movie that cares about detail, cares about telling a complicated story.  We leave not really knowing if Fred Manion is guilty or not, or whether Stewart's Biegler (who gave him the idea of temporary insanity in what bordered on witness tampering) simply let a guilty man off by trying a different case (essentially stating that the man he killed wasn't worth a war veteran going to jail).  We also don't have a sense that the Manions live happily ever after-the ending heavily implies that Laura & Fred had a violent squabble, and that they are headed into another town to start over, but with the same character defects they had here.  It is only Biegler who has learned from this that he can move on past his election loss, and start helping he, Madge, and Parnell continue to make a living going forward.  It's the sort of open-ended finale you'd struggle to find even in modern day movies, and the ease with which it happens is enviable.

The Oscar nominations were uniformly strong-lots of strong competition when we eventually get to this year in the OVP, but know that Anatomy is coming with a winning hand.  Stewart is charming, but finds a rascal in his Paul that is fantastic, and proof that his career-best work in Vertigo the year before was no fluke-he was on a role.  The Cinematography is splendid, as is the editing, with the moving camera of the courtroom scenes working overtime to give us looks at being, in turn, the witnesses, the jury, the judge, and the lawyers.  I loved the screenplay too-it's hard to pull off a legal thriller and have people curious what will happen in the end, but they did just that, and the care that they handled the sensitive nature of the movie (but didn't handle it with kid gloves) is brilliant.

And as for our Supporting Actors?  Honestly, it's hard to tell which one's better.  Scott gets the showier role-the first hour or so you're going to wonder how he was nominated, but once you get into the film, you see his power and gravitas, particularly in his cross-examination of Lee Remick's Laura (Remick, who was cited by the Globes, had to have just missed with Oscar and it's disappointing she wasn't cited even in a strong field, as she's sensational & maybe the best performance in the movie, give or take Stewart), and suddenly you're wondering how he didn't win the Oscar, as this is the sort of performance that wins.  O'Connell's isn't the type that wins, but it's wonderful to watch his chemistry with Stewart, and the laid-back approach of his character.  There's layers in his work as it unfolds.  He's a drunk who was perhaps saved from being a lost cause by his friendship with Biegler, and the potential he saw in him, though O'Connell never gets the "I'll give up the booze!" sort of scene that would normally be required of an actor playing an alcoholic to get nominated.  Oscar wisely picked these two men as his nominees rather than the Globe-cited Joseph Welch, who portrays the judge.  Welch would have been an understandable if gimmicky choice that Oscar might have eaten up-he had been Chief Counsel for the Army during the McCarthy hearings, and was seen as the most important figure in taking down Sen. McCarthy (whose crusade, of course, had destroyed the careers of dozens of Hollywood figures).  This was his only role, and one he took on a lark-he's fine, if not particularly impressive in a plum role, and I'm glad if they were only going to give two citations to Anatomy, they went with O'Connell & Scott.

OVP: The Hanging Tree (1959)

Film: The Hanging Tree (1959)
Stars: Gary Cooper, Karl Malden, Maria Schell, George C. Scott, Ben Piazza
Director: Delmer Daves
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"The Hanging Tree")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're going to conclude our weeklong look at films nominated in the music categories at the Oscars with The Hanging Tree, a film on the tail-end of Gary Cooper's career (this morning we took a glance at Mr. Cooper's early work in The Cowboy and the Lady).  The Hanging Tree is during arguably my favorite period of the film western, when the industry was willing to start encountering the era's violent & problematic past, while still having the grandeur of the classic American western.  This film certainly comes in with a sense of history.  Gary Cooper was on the Mt. Rushmore of American western stars, rivaling John Wayne & Jimmy Stewart in that regard, and this is his final entry in the genre, and darn near his final film (he'd have three more films in him before his death in 1961 at the age of 60).  Being an on-again-off-again fan of Cooper's (sometimes I'm all there, other times I feel like he relies too much on his intense handsomeness), I was curious what I'd make of this film.  As it turns out, what I should have been more curious about is how I'd react to a truly strange movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Joseph Frail (Cooper), a stiff-lipped doctor in Montana tending to the sick during the middle of a gold rush.  He's surrounded by prospectors, and takes in one who tries to rob from the main hoard of prospectors named Rune (Piazza), who he takes on as his ward (through blackmail-he keeps the bullet that Rune was shot with).  Eventually, Frail also has a beautiful young woman in his care, a Swiss woman who was in a stagecoach robbery, and was blinded as a result.  She regains her sight through Frail's care, but she also starts to see him for what he really is-a controlling man, wanting to "own" people through blackmail and debts they can't possibly repay.  This causes her to go into business with Frenchy (Malden), a local louse who has been trying to make moves on her the entire movie.

The film is, and I cannot stress this enough, strange.  I've seen countless westerns through the years, and there's definitely a lot of the tropes there.  The noble woman keeping her chastity in the hardest of circumstances, the lone frontiersman with the checkered past, and the villainous drunk who wants to tear them apart...these are classic western cliches.  But the movie doesn't really play with that idea.  It's more interested in the strange claustrophobia of these characters, all of them desperate for gold but perhaps more so for recognition, and doing whatever it takes (even if it's self-destructive) to get to that point.

This would normally make for a really good movie-this is, after all, what made films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance masterpieces, that sense that the western needed to be dismantled.  But The Hanging Tree doesn't quite work, perhaps because it doesn't have enough vision in the way its characters are seen.  None of the performances are three-dimensional.  Physically Schell's work is impressive, but you don't leave understanding anything about her Elizabeth in a real way-she's still a cartoon.  The same is true for Cooper & especially Malden (who is actively bad in some scenes).  It's rare for a classic Hollywood film to fall apart not because of the writing but because of the acting, particularly since Cooper & Malden have genuinely been Oscar-worthy in the past, but this doesn't work because of the performances.  It always feels like it's trying for something higher, but none of them are giving the kind of work you'd need to ensure that it hits that plain.  Still, it's a valiant effort & a watchable curiosity (the art direction is also very strong-I loved all of the watermills).

The film's music nomination happened in Best Original Song, where the titular number is sang by Marty Robbins.  The tune is catchy, and quite the diddy (it was covered by Frankie Laine, the quintessential western crooner), and it definitely is connected to the story, but like the film itself, it feels a bit off-balance.  This is the rare situation (I'm running out of these) in the OVP where this is the first nomination I've had from a category-I haven't seen A Hole in the Head, The Five Pennies, The Best of Everything or The Young Land yet (has anyone...these are pretty obscure titles?), but this lands in the middle for me-fun, but forgettable.

OVP: Imitation of Life (1959)

Film: Imitation of Life (1959)
Stars: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner, Dan O'Herlihy, Troy Donahue, Mahalia Jackson
Director: Douglas Sirk
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Juanita Moore, Supporting Actress-Susan Kohner)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

This series is focused on not just sex symbols, but also on films that I haven't seen made by said sex symbols.  As a result, we're going to be skipping over a major part of Lana Turner's career post-Green Dolphin Street.  After the film, she enjoyed a couple of years of success, but bad decisions by the studio (Lana Turner was not meant for musicals) and the constant headache of her personal life got in the way, despite occasional successes like The Bad and the Beautiful (which I've seen before, otherwise I'd have included it as it's the only noteworthy Turner film in the early-1950's).  MGM eventually dropped her, and while many actors in that position would have been on the downhill slide of their career, Turner managed to get two major roles immediately after.  The first (another film I've seen, hence it's lack of a profile), was Peyton Place, a massive hit for Fox, which won Turner the only Oscar nomination of her career.  However, Turner's life would be turned upside down afterward when her daughter would be charged (and then acquitted) of the murder of her mobster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato (you can read more about this here).  This was a huge scandal in an era where Turner wasn't signed to a studio that might have helped her with the press in the wake of a hit like Peyton Place, and she was badly in need of a follow-up hit considering the legal bills she'd incurred on behalf of her daughter, and was potentially unemployable due to the scandal.  Thankfully for Turner, producer Ross Hunter had a role that would be perfect for her in Imitation of Life.

(Spoilers Ahead) A loose remake of the 1934 Best Picture of the same name starring Claudette Colbert & Louise Beavers, Imitation of Life is about two women who are afforded very different paths, and the complicated relationships that they have with their daughters.  One of them is Lora Meredith (Turner), a beautiful woman who has a daughter she has to raise, but dreams of stardom on the stage.  She gets just that through a chance encounter with a photographer (Gavin) who becomes her off-and-on lover, and then a producer, and stands out in a small part on stage which graduates to a decade of stardom on Broadway.  This leaves her daughter Susie (as a teenager, played by Dee), without an obvious mother-figure.  This is solved in the opening scene when Susie, having ran off from her mother, is found by a destitute woman named Annie (Moore), who is there with her daughter Sarah Jane (played by Kohner as an adult).  Susie & Sarah Jane are quick friends, but Sarah Jane struggles deeply in life because she's biracial-her mother, Annie, is black, but her father was very light-skinned and she passes as white unless she's forced to acknowledge her mother.  The film watches as these two women must acknowledge the realities they bring as mothers to these growing girls, and the film unfolds with these two lifelong partners struggling to find a place in their daughter's lives when they become adults.

Imitation of Life is one of several major melodramas of the 1950's that had Douglas Sirk's signature branding, alongside other pictures like Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession.  This one might be the best of the bunch, for my money, mostly because it leans in the heaviest into the melodrama.  The tearjerker scenes between the four principle actresses are splendid, even if they are occasionally uneven.  Susan Kohner alternates between eyebrow-raising histrionics to just brilliant screen work-it's uneven, but when she's on, she's sensational.  There's that scene where she dances on tables and clearly enjoys being desired, discarding her racial identity-it's tough to watch, the inner-hatred she brings, but she manages to find it as a learned hatred in a way other actors might have tried to simplify the performance.  Kohner in real-life was not black, but she was biracial (her mother was Mexican actress Lupita Tovar, known for her work in the Spanish-language Dracula) which may lend more credibility here.

Moore is also splendid (both actresses won Oscar nominations for their work here, and kind of steal the picture).  She grounds her character in kindness, but also pragmatism.  Yes, she's playing a maid, but she's playing a maid who knows she's a better mother to Susie than her one-time friend, but more often employer, is.  There's a great moment late in the film where Annie is discussing her funeral with Lora, and Lora wonders how Annie has so many friends she'd want to invite, and why she never mentions them.  "You never asked," Annie says knowingly, and it's as much an indictment of the audience as it is of Lora; we assume that Annie's whole world are the two white women who get top billing in the film, but she's got her own life & it actually takes over the ending of the film as the final scenes are her funeral.  The film's best, and most devastating moment comes before that, though, when Annie & Sarah Jane say goodbye, and Sarah Jane pretends that Annie is her childhood nanny rather than her mother so as to continue to pretend to be white in her new job.  It's heartbreaking, and the sort of thing that results in easy tears, but man is it effective.

As for Turner, she's not given as interesting of a part as the other two women, but it probably doesn't matter as written.  Her Lora has heavy-lifting in the first half of the film (making us believe that a nearly 40-year-old woman would be given the time of the day by an agent without experience), but the rest of the movie she's meant to mostly just be an ice queen that occasionally thaws.  Turner's most noted aspect in this film is the wardrobe & jewelry that she wears.  The Bill Thomas gowns are hyper-glamorous, and the jewelry in the film was valued at some $1 million, as the producers assumed that if no one wanted to see a film about the Civil Rights Era in 1959, they'd at least want to gawk at Turner wearing gorgeous gems.

But the thing is, people did want to see Imitation of Life.  The film would be Universal's biggest hit ever, and hold that title until 1970's Airport.  Turner turned down her regular salary for the film (likely because the producers were worried about risking their necks on a celebrity who'd just got through a murder trial), and took a cut of the profits instead, making by some estimates to be $2 million (adjusted for inflation, that's nearly $18 million today) for the film as a result, a sum that set her up for life and briefly made her the highest-paid actress in film history.  Most looks into Turner's career end with Peyton Place/Imitation of Life, but as we have five Saturday's this month, we're going to go a few years further into her career next week, in one of her last starring roles, and discuss the end of Turner's very long time in the spotlight.

Alias Jesse James (1959)

Film: Alias Jesse James (1959)
Stars: Bob Hope, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Gloria Talbott, Jim Davis
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Rhonda Fleming-click here to learn more about Ms. Fleming (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


By the end of the 1950's (where we will end our look at the actress), Rhonda Fleming's career was in a weird place.  She had had a very big hit just two years prior to our picture today, Gunfight at the OK Corral, that might have turned around her career had she had a more significant part in it (we would have certainly profiled that for this series, and I'll likely see it at some point, but she didn't get above-the-line billing for it so it didn't qualify under our rules).  She had, in 1957, opened up a wildly successful nightclub act in Vegas and she had become independently wealthy through shrewd real estate investments (Fleming would not be one of those stars who soared and would go broke later in her career), but it was clear that a film career that had been given great promotion throughout the decade was coming to a close.  At 36, she reunited  with the man who had made her career in 1949 with The Great Lover, Bob Hope, but starring opposite Hope in 1959 didn't mean as much as it had ten years earlier, as Hope's career (in film, at least) was also winding down.  As a result, Alias Jesse James would come out just one year before Fleming would announce her "semi-retirement" from cinema and while she'd appear in pictures occasionally after 1960, she never had another starring role in the movies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a silly little western, one that exists almost solely for Hope to be a witty dope as Milford Farnsworth, an insurance salesman who accidentally gives a $100k life insurance policy to outlaw Jesse James (Corey), and his boss tasks him with tracking down James, stating that he either needs to prevent James from getting killed or die trying.  James and his brother Frank (Davis) see Wendell as an easy mark, someone who can be duped, and whom they can kill (and pretend it was James in order to get the insurance money).  Milford keeps foiling their plans by accident, living through preposterous situations, until he finally realizes toward the end of the film what is happening.  Along the way, he falls for Jesse's girlfriend Cora Lee (Fleming), who takes a shine to him despite the seemingly sexless nature of Milford (at one point Jesse tells Milford, who has just been kissing Cora Lee, something to the effect of "oh, Milford good, it's just you-I thought I saw a man through the window."  Like all films of the era, Milford gets the girl who is totally out-of-his-league, and then takes over as president of the insurance company, with a family of redheads in tow.

The film is most well-known for two scenes toward the end of the picture.  The first is an extended chase sequence where Hope is literally running at the speed of a moving horse as he's fallen through the bed of his carriage.  It's funny, and Hope makes the most of the physical comedy (Hope's humor, though dated and predictable, has a retro feeling watching it today that probably felt tired when the movie came out in 1959 & he was an everyday part of most people's film-watching lives for the past 15 years).  The most famous scene, though, is having Milford "shoot down" the James gang, but instead it's actually a series of western heroes who show up (without context) to shoot down the gang.  This is a delight, so if you genuinely haven't seen the movie skip to the next paragraph as I wasn't kidding about the spoiler alert.  The film has not only Hope's old pal Bing Crosby (just as a random cowboy), but also (in their famed costumes) Fess Parker's Davy Crockett, Gary Cooper's Will Kane, Jay Silverheels's Tonto, Hugh O'Brian's Wyatt Earp, James Arness's Matt Dillon, Ward Bond's Seth Adams, Gail Davis's Annie Oakley, and Roy Rogers as himself.  It's a who's who of popular western figures at the time, and for years the film was difficult to find on home release because of the copyrights involved with recruiting these characters.  The film marks the final cinematic appearance for both Bond and Arness.

Rhonda Fleming's role is, as you might be able to tell, minimal.  She once again plays a beautiful woman, someone for our hero to fall-in-love with within seconds of meeting her, and to be almost comically attractive to the point where men do stupid things to stay in her favor.  Fleming was very good at this type of role as we've seen throughout this series, and her Cora Lee is funny & she finds ways to elevate her even when she's not an interesting character on-paper.  However, the assertion made by Fleming that we discussed at the beginning of this series was apt-after working on films like Spellbound and Out of the Past (genuine masterpieces), Fleming used her newfound fame and leading lady status to kind of make forgettable pictures.  She definitely got fame & money, but she was correct in that she sort of sold out for playing toss-away parts in pictures that seemed to be beneath an actress as talented as she was.  It's hard not to think of two other actresses born the same year as Fleming (Gloria Grahame & Anne Baxter) who also took promising careers in supporting parts but unlike Fleming transformed them into memorable leading roles, and have as a result enjoyed a career longevity that Fleming has lacked.  Had she demanded at her heyday to get better parts in better movies, Fleming certainly had the talent to get off of a list of "actresses Oscar never acknowledged" and might not have needed to go into retirement in such unceremonious fashion.  Instead, she's the sort of actress you're surprised to watch in Out of the Past and realize how good she can be.

Fleming, though, is probably better remembered than the woman we'll profile starting on Thursday, an actress who enjoyed only a few years of proper leading lady status, and is arguably the most obscure leading woman we're going to profile during our 2019 series.  That said, unlike Fleming, she managed to get one truly great film out during her career that is better-remembered now than anything Fleming ever made in her career.  Stay tuned!