HM Pulham Esq. (1941)

Film: HM Pulham, Esq. (1941)

Stars: Hedy Lamarr, Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn, Van Heflin, Bonita Granville

Director: King Vidor

Oscar History: No nominations

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 Robert Young: click here to learn more about Mr. Young (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about how Robert Young's early work was largely unremarkable, and while he was a leading man for most of his career, he was oftentimes overshadowed by the women in his career.  Indeed, Young, in a similar vein to someone like Robert Taylor (who, it's worth noting was a MUCH bigger deal than Young in his day) was a star who coasted off of the considerable charms of his leading ladies for over twenty years.  Today we're going to find the rare movie that was the exception to that rule.  While if you look at the poster for HM Pulham, Esq, you'd find that Hedy Lamarr is the top-billed player in the movie, it's Young who is at the center of this film.  Directed by King Vidor, HM Pulham Esq. was arguably the best chance that Young would've had to actually distinguish himself and become like the other actors of his era (the Spencer Tracy's and Clark Gable's) who could genuinely command the screen without the assistance of a Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford.  Unfortunately for Young, he didn't have the charisma to pull off such a heavy lift.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Harry Moulton Pulham, Jr. (Young), who is a middle-aged businessman in a loveless marriage to his wife Kay (Hussey).  After being asked to organize his 25-year reunion from college, he begins to reminisce about his long lost love Marvin (Lamarr, and yes despite the name this is not to a queer love story though after writing that I really wish there was enough to the allegory to make that case as it'd be a far more interesting movie).  The two were from different castes, and while they love each other, it's clear that Harry is as much a product of his posh Boston upbringing as his seemingly stuffy parents are.  Marvin & Harry eventually reconnect, even sharing a passionate kiss, but they are both married & there's nothing there anymore-they made the right decision 25 years earlier when they decided to go separate ways.  In the end, Kay comes to Harry & seemingly acts differently, determined to have another go at the romance that has left their marriage, and the film ends with them hopefully getting a second chance at life.

HM Pulham Esq. reads as more interesting than it actually is when you look at that description, as well as what Vidor tried to do with the story structure.  Based on a novel by John P. Marquand, the book is told in the first person, and Vidor tries to emulate that by having everything in the movie from Harry's point of view.  Young is in every scene of the movie, and things like telephone calls you only hear what Harry hears (i.e. when Marvin calls her husband while Harry is in the room, we only hear her side of the conversation).  It's a neat trick, and combined with the sort of "lovers that couldn't make it work" trope that I love in this era's films (think Brief Encounter), this would normally be up my alley.

But it's not, and honestly it's mostly Young's fault.  I was worried when I picked Young for this series that I'd have to admit that I don't historically like Young as an actor, but I figured going through four of his undiscovered movies I'd find something to love...but so far I'm bankrupt.  Young doesn't have enough style or leading man flare to pull this off.  Someone like Robert Taylor whose insane handsomeness gave him a romanticism even when his acting didn't, would've been a better choice (or someone like Robert Montgomery, who frequently succeeded in the types of roles that Young couldn't, primarily because Montgomery was a significantly better actor, and would've given this part more callous regret).  But Young isn't capable of such things, and while Lamarr is better, her parts are usually so underwritten because the filmmakers are reliant on her otherworldly beauty, that she's unable to give Marvin (who doesn't even show up until a third of a way through the movie) much grounding.  The film flops with such underwhelming leads, and no amount of plot potential can get by a lack of chemistry.

OVP: Comrade X (1940)

Film: Comrade X (1940)

Stars: Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr, Oskar Homolka, Felix Bressart, Eve Arden

Director: King Vidor

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Story)

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 Eve Arden: click here to learn more about Ms. Arden (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Eve Arden's career was quite long.  One of the advantages of being a character actress is that while she was never as big of a star as she was during her Our Miss Brooks days (we'll talk about that next week), she didn't have to worry about finding headlining vehicles & could go back to high-profile character work after her television success, unlike actors like Lucille Ball & Jack Benny who had largely eschewed supporting work.  So today we're going to cover one of the many, many films that Arden made in the 1940's & will move into the 1950's next week with Arden.  Arden spent much of the decade as a steady presence in the movies, frequently playing the best friend or assistant to one of the main characters.  This is how she ended up getting her sole Oscar nomination, playing Joan Crawford's best friend in 1945's Mildred Pierce.  Arden lost that Oscar to Anne Revere, but it served as a reminder of what a good performer she was, and makes her one of the only actors we're going to profile this year that got recognition of their talents from the Academy prior to making a big name for herself in television.  I've seen Mildred Pierce before (Arden is quite good in it, if somewhat overshadowed by Crawford & Ann Blyth playing the worst daughter in film history), so I couldn't watch it for this project, so we're going to focus on another film that was cited by the Oscars in the 1940's, and weirdly (I pick all of these films months in advance) feels uncomfortably prescient of our current world situation: Comrade X.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the Soviet Union circa 1939, where Mac Thompson (Gable) is a reporter who is secretly writing under the pseudonym "Comrade X" writing scathing stories about the Soviet government and the situation in Moscow.  Mac is blackmailed by his valet Vanya (Bressart) into keeping his identity secret, but only if Mac can figure out a way to get his daughter Theodore (Lamarr) out of the country, as her politics have made her a target for imprisonment.  The problem for Mac is that Theodore doesn't want to leave-she's a devout communist, and is wholly devoted to the Soviet cause, so Mac has to trick her into thinking that he is anti-American.  This unfolds primarily in one day, with Mac eventually marrying and falling in love (in that order) with Theodore, and by the end of the movie both of them are on the side of America, and particularly the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The movie is an unusual artifact if you study Hollywood's shifting attitudes toward Russia in the late-1930's and early-1940's.  Comrade X, like the previous year's more successful Ninotchka, is very anti-Soviet and anti-Communist, making everyone, including Lamarr, look like idiots for supporting the Soviet government.  This would change less than a year later when both the United States would enter World War II and Germany would invade Russia & Ukraine (in fact, there's a late plot point in Comrade X where a fictional invasion of Russia from Germany changes Theodore's mind about her country...weirdly predictive of real life), creating a temporary alliance with the United States that would lead briefly to pro-Soviet films like Song of Russia to come out...which would then be used later in the decade as grounds for HUAC investigations into a number of different actors & performers.  Actor Robert Taylor, who starred in Song of Russia, would be the only major Hollywood star to publicly name names in front of Congress, in part because of his initial connection to this movie. But at the time, stars like Gable, Lamarr, & Arden were not put into a position that might have made their careers difficult later, as this film is very much about mocking the Soviet Union.  And of course, in the decades that followed, Hollywood would continue to have an uneasy attitude toward depictions of Russia in everything from James Bond to the 1980's Cold War classics like WarGames...similar to the world's uneasy relationship with a combative Russia, a relationship still dominating headlines today.

Comrade X, though, isn't a particularly good movie.  The story for which it was cited feels like a retread of Ninotchka, and doesn't have a lot to say beyond "Lamarr's character is stupid, Gable's is smart."  It's helped a bit by Gable & Lamarr having good chemistry, and the supporting cast, specifically Arden as Gable's former flame & now fellow wise-cracking journalist, works well, but they can't save a pretty sloppy piece of anti-Russian cinema, which is focused more on casting stereotypes than grounding us in a real relationship between Gable & Lamarr.  Arden, for the second time this month, is a key supporting player but not in a lot of the movie, just two extended sequences that are crucial to changing the tone of the movie.  Next week, though, we're going to look at a movie from Arden where she would take the top of the marquee, and talk about how that came to pass.

OVP: Tortilla Flat (1942)

Film: Tortilla Flat (1942)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff

Director: Victor Fleming

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Frank Morgan)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The concept of an "art film" has changed dramatically throughout film history.  Film historians differ about the definition of what an art film is, and it's a loose term, but by-and-large what we think of an art film as today is some variation on both its funding (usually they are independent movies), and frequently are told in a nonlinear or atypical fashion.  Prominent modern filmmakers that come to mind with the term include Terrence Malick, Bong Joon-Ho, Lars von Trier, Jonathan Glazer, Kelly Reichardt, & Darren Aronofsky.  Classical Hollywood wasn't really focused on avant-garde or art films, and as a a result when sound was introduced into movies, most of what we might classify modern art films as didn't really exist, especially in the 1940's in studio system.  In Italy & France at the time they were experimenting with these ideas (think Children of Paradise, Open City, or Bicycle Thieves), and certainly Powell & Pressburger were achieving something similar to what would eventually be an art house film with Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.  But even films like Brief Encounter which altered our expectations of what movie stars will look like or what we'd expect on a screen (by having actors that look like "ordinary people") still followed relatively conventional habits throughout the 1940's.  That being said, occasionally Hollywood will introduce some aspects (perhaps on purpose, perhaps considering the very conventional if talented director of this movie, by chance), and Tortilla Flat is a movie that reads as more "art house" to someone like me (who has seen a lot of major studio cinema of the 1940's) than I'm used to getting from a place like MGM.

(Spoilers Ahead) Tortilla Flat is based on a novel by John Steinbeck and it's about a group of men, one of whom is named Danny (Garfield) inherits two houses in a poor California town.  This is a huge step up for he and his friends, principally Pilon (Tracy), who were basically homeless, and in Danny's case, in jail, prior to the movie starting.  They enjoy the trappings of this more comfortable lifestyle, with Pilon being a bit of a scoundrel (I don't know that I've ever seen Spencer Tracy, sturdy & solid American movie star, play a character who for large swaths of the film is a total jackass before Tortilla Flat).  Danny falls in love with a local girl named Dolores (Lamarr), who wants a steadier man than he is, but after an accident that nearly kills Danny (and in the novel by Steinbeck, does), they realize they were made for each other, in part due to Pilon praying to the statue of St. Francis.  The movie ends with both of Danny's houses having burned down, the first by accident, the second on purpose, and all of Danny's crew now back to where they started, but Danny, the best of them, having escaped & started a new life with his bride.

Okay, so that's what the movie is about on paper, but it's not remotely as conventional as that.  For starters, there's virtually no consistent conflict.  While there are arguments between Dolores & Danny especially, it doesn't seem to really be about anything, and though Garfield was a pretty big name at the time (and Danny is the most important character in the film's structure), he disappears for extended periods of the film.  It's hard to exactly describe, but Tortilla Flat defies convention by not really being about what it's showing at its center (the relationship between Danny & Dolores), but instead about a journey of faith from Pilon, and without saying it, him changing his morality (even though it's rarely remarked upon by characters other than a priest played by Henry O'Neil who is barely in the movie).

Perhaps the best illustration of how this is strange is Frank Morgan's character.  He plays a man named Pirate (not, in fact, a pirate no capitalization), who is a sweet old man who spends most of his time caring for a group of devoted dogs (one of which worked with Fleming in a different, more famous film, where she was called Toto).  Pilon expects that Pirate is hiding money in the woods, and tries to trick him out of the money, but in a twist for the film, Pilon is right-Pirate is sitting on a gold mine in the woods, but he intends on using all of his money to buy a candlestick for St. Francis because he prayed to him once to save a favorite dog (who then lived).  After this happens, Pirate has an epiphany & shows the dogs what appears to be a religious vision of St. Francis in the woods, as a thank you for the new candlestick.  It's as weird as it sounds...this is such an odd plot in a film from a studio not known for risks, and with very conventional leading stars.  I struggle to know how to rate Tortilla Flat in part because I don't know what it's about, because it's basically about nothing (and it's not good at that), but it's a film I'd recommend if you are into curiosities like this, and Morgan is good in this role-this is a strange Oscar nomination, but not an unworthy one.

Saturdays with the Stars: Season 1 Recap

Ida Lupino & Ann Sheridan, two of our
stars kicking their heels!

With yesterday's sojourn into the South Pacific, we have finished our first season of "Saturday with the Stars!"  I'm not much for naval-gazing (mostly because I am aware this blog is not read by swaths of people), but I am really, really proud of this past season.  When I came up with this idea, I mostly wanted to see if I could do it for a year, and with one exception (you won't be able to tell this unless you were paying really close attention because I pre-dated the article, but when I was suffering from a 103-fever & pneumonia, I published one article on a Sunday), I did!

This year has taught me about the careers of twelve amazing artists, and I hope you learned some things about them too.  I had never really done something like this with actors, focusing instead on genre or something arbitrary like Oscar nominations, but getting to see the progressions in these women's careers was eye-opening, noting the similarities as well as the differences in their journeys.  I am struck by how expansive the universe of classic film is still to me some 25 years after I first started to delve into it. This year we watched movies that I'd never even heard of until I included them in the project, and made a bunch of "deep cut" discoveries.

We'll begin our second season in a few days (click here if you want to learn more about it), but before we go I am a lover of lists, and wanted to rank a few of the movies we watched this year.  I'm appreciative to all of these actresses for the education & cinematic pleasure they gave me during this journey, so I'm only focusing on the positives (no "worst of" lists).  If you have enjoyed this series, please feel free to comment or tweet this post-I'd love to have more people joining us in Season 2.  And if you have opinions on these actresses (or further research I should do), share in the comments as well!

Favorite Performances from Each Star
January: Ann Sheridan-Woman on the Run
February: Virginia Mayo-Along the Great Divide
March: Cyd Charisse-The Band Wagon
April: Alice Faye-Hello Frisco Hello
May: Linda Darnell-A Letter to Three Wives
June: Lizabeth Scott-Too Late for Tears
July: Rhonda Fleming-While the City Sleeps
August: Ruth Roman-Lightning Strikes Twice
September: Esther Williams-Bathing Beauty
October: Hedy Lamarr-Ecstasy
November: Ida Lupino-The Hard Way
December: Mitzi Gaynor-Les Girls

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical)

Linda Darnell
Alice Faye
Rhonda Fleming
Ida Lupino
Lizabeth Scott

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Linda Darnell, A Letter to Three Wives
Alice Faye, Hello Frisco Hello
Ida Lupino, The Bigamist
Ida Lupino, The Hard Way
Lizabeth Scott, Too Late for Tears

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

The Band Wagon
The Bigamist
Brigadoon
It's Always Fair Weather
Les Girls
A Letter to Three Wives
The Man Who Came to Dinner
My Darling Clementine
Strangers on a Train
Too Late for Tears

10 Favorite Performances of the Year in these Films (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra
Kirk Douglas, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Nanette Fabray, The Band Wagon
Patricia Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train
Van Johnson, Brigadoon
Kay Kendall, Les Girls
Janis Paige, Silk Stockings
Ann Sothern, A Letter to Three Wives
Robert Walker, Strangers on a Train
Monty Woolley, The Man Who Came to Dinner

OVP: Samson and Delilah (1949)

Film: Samson and Delilah (1949)
Stars: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Art Direction*, Costume Design*, Special Effects, Cinematography, Score)
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 Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We will conclude our month-long look at Hedy Lamarr with Samson and Delilah, by-far the biggest movie of her career.  It's hard to understand now for a film that has largely been forgotten decades later, but Samson and Delilah was a huge hit for Paramount.  It became the top-grosser of 1950 (the movie was released in December of 1949), and was for a time the third highest-grossing film ever of the Sound Era (after Gone with the Wind & The Best Years of Our Lives).  It was also something of a zenith for Lamarr's career.  At this point she was 35, a dangerous time for actresses, but particularly for beautiful ones in Classical Hollywood.  She hadn't had a major studio contract for four years, having been dropped by MGM, and had had a series of flops with The Strange Woman and Dishonored Lady after she left the studio.  It's hard to underscore, then, how much Lamarr needed this to resonate with audiences, and it did.  Samson kicked off a new trend of biblical films in Technicolor that would dominate the 1950's, making eventually for the two best-remembered movies in this genre: The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur.

(Spoilers Ahead) If you're like me and grew up in Sunday School, you don't really need to hear the cliff notes version of the Samson story, but I'll assume for a second here that you didn't.  Samson (Mature) is a noble but poor man who falls in love with a Philistine woman, here named Semadar (Lansbury).  Semadar's sister Delilah (Lamarr) lusts for Samson, and makes plots to eventually get him, but he rejects her, and in a brawl her sister is killed, for which Delilah blames Samson.  Eventually she gets her revenge when the Philistines, wanting to understand the secret of Samson's superhuman strength, promise her mountains of silver if she can stop Samson, and she does.  She seduces him, and in the process learns that his strength is tied up in his long hair, so she cuts it off.  They blind Samson and tie him up to work in a mill, but eventually Delilah helps him escape (this is not in the Bible, as an FYI-Delilah exits Stage Left after she cuts his hair in the source material).  Samson regains his strength one more time from God to be able to pull down the temple onto all of those who have captured & humiliated him, including a repentant Delilah, who cannot bare to be apart from him and so she dies with him even though he begs her to escape.  The film ends with Samson, Delilah, and all of the godless figures who turned their backs on Samson dead, with only the humble Hebrew figures who remained true (including a young Russ Tamblyn) left to remember Samson.

The movie, since it's early in a trend, shares a lot of the hallmarks of the future biblical epics, though it's not quite the template.  There's less focus on religion than you'd think (Samson is devout, but it's more a hallmark later in the film), and it's shorter than Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments at just over two hours.  However, there's a reason this was a blueprint and a colossal hit-the parts it does well, it does really well.  The costume work, which won Edith Head one of her Oscars, is sublime-Lamarr is radiant in slinky peacock gowns and a constant midriff, every color under-the-sun in use for her Delilah.  The technicolor shimmers, with each actor perfectly lit, and the action sequences are impressively mounted, particularly the scene at the beginning where Victor Mature's stunt double wrestles an actual lion (something that would never happen today, and though it's obvious in closeups that Mature is fighting a puppet of some sort, the scenes with the stunt double are real-there was an actual lion in this scene).  All-in-all, Samson and Delilah looks incredible for a 1940's epic, and the spectacle still holds up some 70 years later.

The acting is hit-or-miss, as is also a hallmark of the biblical epic.  You kind of have to grade on a curve of this genre, which values nobility and hamminess, and if you do you end up enjoying the film a lot more.  George Sanders, who plays the high-ranking Saran of Gaza, was kind of tailor-made for such a genre, his catty tongue perfect for a man you know will fall to his own hubris.  Lansbury is saddled with a throwaway part (as was her lot during this era), and is not really believable as the older sister to Delilah, considering she was 11 years Lamarr's junior when this was filmed.  Victor Mature is kind of dismissible as Samson-he's not a good actor, but he knows how to be strong, and is convincing as a man of a thousand muscles...he's just not a very good actor.

As for our Star of the Month, I thought Lamarr was the best thing about the movie.  Unlike future turns in biblical epics from Virginia Mayo and Anne Baxter, she doesn't let the hokey nature of her character overcome her performance.  Lamarr was never going to be Bette Davis (not in English, anyway), but she shows here someone who completely understands what Delilah is supposed to be-beautiful, cruel, and intoxicating, and she plays that part perfectly.  It seems mean to say someone was born-to-play a villain, but this is the role that shows off all of the gifts that Lamarr has shown in lesser parts throughout the month, and puts them front-and-center.  Delilah would bring her hosannas and attention she hadn't received in a decade, possibly not since Algiers, but sadly for her it wasn't enough to save a downward career spiral.  Within a year she'd be playing in now-forgotten flops again, and though she'd briefly foray into television, she'd be retired entirely from acting within a decade of her (film) career highpoint, though her scientific work would lead her to become an important figure in modern technology into the next century.  Next month we'll take a look at another actress whose career also took her outside of the world of acting, and who spent the 1950's as her own kind of pioneer.

OVP: Boom Town (1940)

Film: Boom Town (1940)
Stars: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill, Chill Wills
Director: Jack Conway
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Special Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Hedy Lamarr's career in Hollywood was hitting its stride by 1940, and indeed she was about to have a massive run of hits for MGM before her contract would expire in 1945.  Lamarr, frequently written into parts that would tailor to her unmatched beauty, here managed to be in one of the biggest moneymakers of her career opposite two of the biggest stars on the MGM lot (Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy) as well as an actress of major acclaim who had just left a lucrative contract at Paramount to make a play as a freelancer (Colbert).  Lamarr, as a result, is someone who is getting top billing but nonetheless isn't getting a part that probably warrants it.  That being said, Boom Town is a pretty fun film even if it's not a leading showcase for Lamarr, and one that puts together two stars who proved six years earlier for Columbia that they were a pair-to-be-reckoned with.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around the on-again-off-again friendship & working relationship of two oil men who start the film largely down-on-their-luck: Big John (Gable) and Square John (Tracy).  Both men have dreams of striking it big, and between Big John's know-how and Square John's land purchase in the middle-of-nowhere, they begin to strike it rich.  However, Square John wants to marry a girl that he left home, but when she comes to town, Betsy (Colbert) in fact falls for Big John, not Square John, and they elope.  This sets off a rivalry between the two men as they see their fortunes ebb-and-flow, clearly in love with the same woman.  The back-half of the movie centers around Big John, who has gotten egotistical and is having an affair with a woman named Karen (Lamarr), who feeds him insider information about the oil game as she hears it (in the way that beautiful women always hear everything).  Square John essentially tries to destroy Big John's company in hopes of making him go back to Betsy, his love for her overcoming his own need to be with her, and it works.  In the end both men find themselves broke, trying to find another oil fortune, and Betsy is happy living with them on the frontier.

The film is fun, if admittedly way-too-long.  The picture was nominated for Best Cinematography, which feels a bit of a stretch for a movie so conventional, and for Best Special Effects-both of these nominations come from one extended sequence where one of the oil derricks is on fire, and we have to see the two biggest stars on the MGM lot put it out with nitroglycerine.  It's a thrilling sequence, one that likely required a great deal of visual trickery as well as pragmatic effects, but the rest of the movie is devoid of such technical creativity, relying instead on movie star magic to fill in the gaps, so it's likely the film's gargantuan box office that reminded AMPAS to include it for such honors.

That said, I liked Boom Town a lot-Colbert & Gable, in strangely the only re-teaming they ever did after It Happened One Night, are electric and lovely together, pretty much stealing the picture.  The pickup scene recalls some of their best chemistry, and while Colbert's character has some eye-rolling moments in terms of the film's feminism, overall I enjoyed their relationship; it wasn't perfect, but it was real & we see sides of the marriage that usually disappear behind the end credits sign.

The shoot wasn't a great one for Lamarr.  While she enjoyed Gable, she and Tracy didn't get along at all (Tracy spent most of the shoot moping about getting second-billing to Gable-the two would never make another film together as a result).  There's a scene in the movie where Tracy pushes Lamarr's chest where Lamarr looks visibly upset, and pushes away; apparently he was actually hurting her and she was angry about the way he was treating her while the cameras were rolling.  Despite her success in Algiers, Lamarr needed a hit here as MGM had been giving her crap since then, and she got it-Boom Town got her enough clout to ensure leading roles for years (though some would argue she'd squander that clout, given that she'd soon be turning down Laura and Gaslight which are now considered classics).  Either way, Lamarr's terrific in an underwritten role.  She doesn't show up until over an hour into the picture, but I loved her in it-she takes the "other woman" and makes her genuinely likable, someone that you don't want to break up the central marriage, but honestly hope will end up with a nice guy, as she's much smarter than the men that she's helping get to the top.  Some of the moxie that I enjoyed in Ecstasy finally finds its way into this movie.  Next week, our last with Lamarr, we'll go toward the tail-end of her time in the spotlight with an even bigger hit than Boom Town, and in fact one of the biggest (inflation-adjusted) grossers of all time.

OVP: Algiers (1938)

Film: Algiers (1938)
Stars: Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, Hedy lamarr, Joseph Calleia, Alan Hale, Gene Lockhart
Director: John Cromwell
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actor-Charles Boyer, Best Supporting Actor-Gene Lockhart, Art Direction, Cinematography)
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 Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I am currently suffering from a high fever and pneumonia, so I'm going to be honest-I wasn't sure if I would get this out today.  The last few weeks have been a bit of a nightmare, with me exhausted all of the time, and the introduction today of a spike-and-drop fever is, well, not the best thing that's ever happened to me (I am a wimp about being sick, and so rarely sick that I don't really know how my body is supposed to handle such things).  But I did watch the latest Hedy Lamarr movie for our project, so I'm going to attempt to write this, and if I like it, we're going to publish.

Algiers was Hedy Lamarr's first American film.  She had come over from Europe, where she had been married to Fritz Mandl, an Austrian arms manufacturer who worked with both Mussolini & Hitler in the lead-up to World War II, and was an abusive, controlling husband to Lamarr.  Though accounts vary on exactly how she fled him, she eventually made it to London, where she met Louis B. Mayer who signed her to a contract and began to bill her as "the most beautiful woman in the world"


(Spoilers Ahead) Algiers is the story of Pepe le Moko (Boyer, and yes, this would eventually be the inspiration for the cartoon character Pepe Le Pew), a crime boss living in the Casbah in Algiers.  The film is largely focused on Pepe's relationships with both the law (whom he consistently alludes), as well as the residents of the Casbah, all of whom are somewhat intrigued by him, even if they don't seem to have universal respect for him.  He is torn between his long-time mistress Ines (Gurie) and his new love Gaby (Lamarr), who is engaged to a wealthy man and is currently on a vacation in Algiers when she meets and falls in love with Pepe.  All-the-time, Regis (Lockhart), someone who works for Pepe but doesn't feel he gets the respect that he deserves, betrays him, selling him out to the police, and in the process he is killed for his betrayal.  Pepe eventually is brought out in the open when someone lies to Gaby about Pepe dying, and so she leaves the Casbah, heartbroken.  The final moments of the film are Pepe calling out for Gaby, wanting her to know that he's still alive, and being shot by an overzealous police officer in the process (he's already been taken into custody by the Inspector, played by Calleia).

The film won four Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor citation for Boyer.  If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that Boyer is one of my least favorite stars of classic Hollywood, his hammy approach never really giving me much appeal, and he's absurd as a crook.  There's a reason they created a cartoon character out of this performance-it's indulgent, the sort of thing that might play romantically in 1938, but it's over-the-top just a few years later.  It's worth noting that the film inspired Casablanca to some degree, and you see that (particularly with the set design, which is the movie's best feature), but it's also a testament to what a better actor Humphrey Bogart is than Boyer, as Bogart is able to imbue an actual soul into his character, rather than giving clunky line readings.

Where Algiers is at its most interesting is when they simply focus on life in a closed city, focusing on the minutia of the residents, all of whom are biding their own time until something like Pepe's accidental shooting happens to them.  The movie is kind of weird when it does this (Calleia's Inspector is a bad performance but also kind of an awesomely bad performance...is he secretly in love with Pepe too?), but it's distinctive and keeps you intrigued long enough to get around Boyer.  The movie's other acting nomination was for Gene Lockhart, who gets a meaty part as the man who betrays Pepe, but he's two-dimensional and not remotely the best supporting character in the lot, so I'm surprised they even noticed him for this honor.

As for Lamarr, it's clear that this is her first film in a language that is not her own.  She's gorgeous, almost ridiculously so (apparently when the film initially opened, people audibly gasped the first time she was onscreen), but there's not enough fire in her to sell Gaby as anything other than a lost trophy wife, trying to figure out what to do with herself as she's about to give in to a loveless marriage.  Gurie is considerably better as her romantic rival, someone who is obsessed with Pepe, to the point where she'd rather him die than leave her, and she's ultimately the one who betrays him, but Lamarr doesn't have the natural spark that she brought to Ecstasy.  Hopefully as she becomes more acclimated to Hollywood in our remaining two weeks we'll see that spark return.

Ecstasy (1933)

Film: Ecstasy (1933)
Stars: Hedy Lamarr, Aribert Mog, Zvonimir Rogoz
Director: Gustav Machaty
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 Hedy Lamarr-click here to learn more about Ms. Lamarr (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

A few housekeeping mentions before we get into our discussion of Ecstasy.  First off, this is a very special article not just because we're kicking off our month-long tribute to Ms. Lamarr, but also because it's an historic one for two specific reasons on the blog.  For starters, it's our first ever foreign-language film we've profiled in "Saturdays with the Stars."  Lamarr is in fact our very first actress for the series that wasn't born in the United States (we've had nine months of American girls), and while some of those women filmed movies in non-English-speaking Europe (specifically the likes of Ruth Roman, Rhonda Fleming, and Linda Darnell), none of them had a major career in another language like Lamarr did.  Though our goal for our 2019 season of "Saturdays with the Stars" is to focus on the career's of Hollywood actresses, it felt a damn shame to dismiss the rare opportunity to see a legitimate Golden Age star like Lamarr act in a different language, so I made an exception.  Next week we'll return to see what Lamarr did with her career in the United States, but this week we'll see her infamous turn in Ecstasy.

The other thing I want to note before we dive in, though, is that this our 2500th article here on The Many Rantings of John.  I had a big plan to roll out some facts or a list we've never done, but I'm currently on vacation & am not about to let a perfect record with getting "Saturdays with the Stars" articles out be ruined by me being too lazy (or to put on an optimistic spin, too much enjoying my vacation) to postpone a day or two for Ms. Lamarr.  I'm approaching another major milestone I'm hoping to hit sometime in late December, so when we get to that we'll do some naval-gazing and self congratulations, but if you are someone who has enjoyed any of those 2500 articles on the blog, thank you very much and I'm glad to have you here.  I'll get started on the next 2500 tomorrow, but for now...Ecstasy!

(Spoilers Ahead) Filmed in 1933 in Slovakia, the movie is just far enough into the Sound Era that it isn't a silent film, but frequently plays as such.  As a result, there aren't a lot of characters, and the plot is relatively easy to follow since there's not much dialogue to exhibit complexity of story.  The movie follows Eva (Lamarr), a beautiful young bride who seems at the beginning of the film to be headed to a life of domestic bliss.  Her husband Emil (Rogoz) is a bit sheltered, but appears to genuinely care for her...except when it comes to matters of the bedroom.  I'm not sure if we're supposed to assume things about Emil's sexuality, but let's face it-if a man in a 1933 movie isn't going to sleep with Hedy Lamarr, they probably want you to think he's gay.  Eva doesn't want a marriage without affection, so she leaves him, and goes back to her family's farm, where she meets a young engineer who isn't really of the same station as Emil, but nonetheless is able to make up for it in the bedroom (he's definitely the "manly man" in the eyes of the screenwriters), and they start a passionate affair.  This turns tragic when Emil finds out, and kills himself, sending Eva into a moment of self-loathing & depression, and she leaves Adam despite their clear romance, heading off into the unknown on a midnight train.  The film ends with a sweaty Adam hammering, wondering what might have happened to his brief love.

The film, as I mentioned above, is considered pretty infamous.  Nudity in film is not a new thing.  Even if you discount filmed pornography, which began almost instantaneously with the invention of cinema itself in the late 19th century, legitimate actresses like Annette Kellerman had appeared nude in major studio production's as early as 1916, with the release of Fox's A Daughter of the Gods.  However, by 1933 the Hays Code was in effect, and as a result nudity in film simply wasn't done, and the movie never received a major release in the United States, even after Lamarr became famous.  Lamarr's husband Friedrich Mandl once tried to buy every copy of the film ever produced and have it destroyed (clearly unsuccessfully, as I just streamed it on Amazon).  To gain some perspective on how shocking a film with nudity and where a woman experiences an orgasm would have been in this era, the first major star to appear nude onscreen in a motion picture post the Hays Code was Jayne Mansfield in 1963's Promises! Promises, thirty years after the initial release of Ecstasy.  It's staggering to me that this didn't end up ruining Lamarr's career, and she admittedly had very mixed feelings about the film, frequently decrying it later in her career.

But the movie isn't that bad, and of course to our modern audiences it isn't that shocking.  Yes, Lamarr exposes her breasts and does have an onscreen orgasm in closeup, which is kind of bizarre to watch (I frequent classic cinema almost daily, and I'd never seen something so explicit in a movie of the era), but it's not a major part of the movie.  What is, and what is more groundbreaking to me, is that it is clearly sympathetic to the sexual desires of Eva, wanting her to have a full romantic life, not one with sacrifices.  The film's ending is ambiguous (what are we to make of Eva leaving behind Adam, whom she loves, to honor the memory of Emil?), but it's interesting.  The film is short on plot, and the Emil character in particularly is wildly underwritten/acted, but it's a fascinating picture, one that has a natural energy from Lamarr that I didn't know she was capable of, and makes me excited to see if any of her American productions were able to capture that luminous quality she brings to Eva, a broken woman who isn't willing to blame herself for problems she didn't cause (a novel concept in cinema even today, but surely in 1933).

Saturdays with the Stars: Hedy Lamarr

Each month of 2019 we will be looking at the careers of leading ladies of Classical Hollywood who were never nominated for an Academy Award as part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Last month, our focus was on Esther Williams, a former athlete who became a MGM superstar in the 1940's.  This month we turn to a Hungarian actress who also found fame at MGM a few years before Williams, but perhaps gained her greatest fame decades after with her unlikely second career as an inventor.  This month, our star is Ms. Hedy Lamarr.

Lamarr's off-screen life was always more interesting than her filmography, at least as far as most film historians who discuss her work are concerned.  Born the daughter of wealthy Hungarian Jews, she and her mother eventually headed to America as the Third Reich came to power.  Despite this, early in her life, after the breakout hit of the scandalous Ecstasy (where Lamarr purportedly appears nude and simulates an orgasm), she married Friedrich Mandl, a man who was a known business associate of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, both of whom stayed with the Mandls before Hedy fled the country, going to London in hopes of continuing her career as an actress, which she was able to do after impressing Louis B. Mayer enough to sign her to a contract at MGM.

Her career was almost entirely centered on her beauty, something Mayer cemented when he claimed she was "the world's most beautiful woman" (twenty years later, you can see that this title never left her-at the end of her being discovered on What's My Line? the entire panel started to sing "the most beautiful girl in the world").  Her first major film in America was Algiers, a huge hit for MGM that established Lamarr as a star but perhaps was also the high point of her Hollywood career artistically.  She missed out on Casablanca, which was written with her in mind, but she still had a number of hits over the next five years opposite the likes of Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, & Walter Pidgeon.  She ended the decade with the smash hit Samson and Delilah, but the 1950's saw her largely disappear from the screen with a series of increasingly small box office receipts, and she retired from film-making in 1957.

Lamarr had possibly the strangest second act of literally any movie star, however.  She came up with the idea of "frequency hopping" (this is getting into electrical engineering, so I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to explain it), and gave the idea to the Navy, who initially had nothing that they could use it for, but as her creative genius soon began to be realized, the uses for it were plentiful.  Essentially, Lamarr wasn't just a famous movie star-she is also one of the pioneers of GPS and WiFi technology, something she never saw a dime for because she gave the patent over to the US government.  She went for decades without recognition for this work, and even when she finally did receive the recognition, she was too reclusive (botched plastic surgeries and time had stolen away the looks of the "most beautiful girl in the world" and she couldn't bare to have people see her this way) to accept the acknowledgement.  This is probably, thanks to movies like the recent documentary Bombshell, what Lamarr is best known for today.  But during this month, we'll go back to the time of her as a movie star, and figure out, even without the inventions, whether Hollywood had underestimated Hedy Lamarr.