Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Film: Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Stars: John Payne, Coleen Gray, Preston Foster, Neville Brand, Lee van Cleef, Jack Elam

Director: Phil Karlson

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.

Good filmmakers watch movies.  I can always tell when a director is going to have a long career during a press tour when they mention movies that they grew up on, and it wasn't just movies that someone their age would naturally love.  No director in the past 35 years encapsulates this quite like Quentin Tarantino.  Tarantino, whenever he talks about films, will talk about the most esoteric pictures from the most obscure corners of Hollywood.  With Kansas City Confidential, though, he more than just watched it.  Seeing this film for the first time, it's impossible not to see the influences the picture would have on Tarantino's first feature-length film, Reservoir Dogs.  The beginning, in fact, is cribbed almost verbatim from it, which makes you understand why Tarantino was such a visionary-to find a pretty average film, and make one of his best pictures from it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with a man named Mr. Big, wearing a mask, recruiting three men to a crime he's committing: Peter (a gambler, played by Elam), Boyd (a murderer, played by Brand), and Tony (a womanizing getaway driver, played by van Cleef).  The four of them stand up an armored car for a bank, and in the process get away with the money, implicating a deliveryman named Joe Rolfe (Payne) in the process.  Rolfe is exonerated when his alibi for the crime checks out, but in the process he loses his job and vows revenge.  He eventually finds out that Peter left the city, and pursues him to Tijuana, where Peter is killed by the police, and Rolfe takes over his identity.  He tries to get a share of the money for his troubles, but in the process falls for a young law student named Helen (Gray) who is visiting her father Tim (Foster) in Tijuana.  It turns out that Tim is Mr. Big, and he did this as revenge for being fired at the Kansas City Police Department, and his plan was to pin the crime on the three men, getting his honor back after being fired in a scandal, and using the reward money to start a new life.  This doesn't go to plan when the men find out, and Tim is killed.  With his dying breath he ensures Helen will not know what he did, and that Rolfe will get the money, presumably to marry & take care of Helen.

If you've seen Reservoir Dogs, you understand the overlap here between Tarantino's picture and Kansas City Confidential.  Both films start with a bunch of criminals perpetrating a crime where none of them knows the others' identities.  In that film, they use colorful names like "Mr. Pink" (Tarantino has a flare for the vibrant), but in both films this concept works really well.  The best parts of Kansas City Confidential are the beginning, where we get this live wire crime moment that crackles, and you don't entirely know if they'll get away with it (or how).  Casting really strong character actors like Jack Elam & Lee van Cleef (both of whom are best-known today for classic Sergio Leone westerns like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West) is a nice touch-the supporting cast here is really solid, and helps elevate a standard film noir once you get past the main, ingenious concept.

If only they hadn't cast John Payne.  I feel bad, as Payne was once one of our Saturdays with the Stars, and I should be nicer to him, but while he's handsome he's rarely any good in movies, and this role needs a lot more charisma.  Put in someone like John Garfield or William Holden, someone with a bit more edge whom it's believable would actually seek revenge, and you're in a stronger spot with the plot.  But the sub-romance with Gray is listless, and she doesn't remotely resemble a femme fatale (which also would've been a fun wrinkle).  With two leads that can't connect, Kansas City Confidential is just a good concept more than a good movie...but a concept that would lead to a great movie 40 years later.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Caught, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, 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, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Side Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach, A Woman's Secret

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, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, 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, Whirlpool

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Saturdays with the Stars Season 4 Finale

Two of our stars this year, Lucille Ball & Ann Sothern

We ended the year on a Saturday (a first for our series), so I wasn't able to get this recap out in 2022 like we normally do, but I didn't want to finish our fourth season of Saturdays with the Stars without our annual recap.  While we are headed into a new season this coming Saturday focusing on western stars, I would be remiss if we didn't take a moment to talk through actors in television, and what I learned from our fourth season.

This year was really interesting for me for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it was really the first season where I didn't have "stars" at the center, and of course it was our first season with men.  As a result, there were actors this year where I was watching a movie where they barely showed up, character actors in Old Hollywood being harder to track their "most significant" roles.  As a result, our annual discussion below of "favorite performances" I ended up in some cases having less options.

But I also kind of loved that, as it underlined the main thesis of this year: that television gave these performers an opportunity that movies simply couldn't.  Some of these actors had great potential, but the public (or the studio heads) couldn't see it for what it was, and TV brought that talent out in them.  Others, quite frankly, needed the banality of television compared to the "make an impact every time" culture of movies because their star personas weren't as curated.  We'll be getting back to star culture in 2023 (while they might occasionally take supporting parts depending on our film, all 12 of our stars this year are generally considered to be "leading players"), I won't forget that lesson as I continue to watch the twelve stars we watched this past year in other films in the decades to come.  Below, I have created a little list celebrating the best of this year's stars.  Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for part or all of this year's season-I'm excited to have you back for season five's "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood"!: 

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Lucille Ball-Dance. Girl. Dance.

February: Jack Benny-George Washington Slept Here

March: Eve Arden-Comrade X

April: Ann Sothern-Lady in a Cage

May: Robert Young-They Won't Believe Me

June: Spring Byington-BF's Daughter

July: Loretta Young-Midnight Mary

August: John Payne-Silver Lode

September: Ward Bond-The Wings of Eagles

October: Walter Brennan-Come and Get It

November: Donna Reed-The Last Time I Saw Paris

December: Barbara Stanwyck-Baby Face

5 Favorite Performers (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Eve Arden

Lucille Ball

Jack Benny

Ann Sothern

Barbara Stanwyck

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Lucille Ball, Dance. Girl. Dance.

Barbara Stanwyck, Baby Face

Barbara Stanwyck, The Furies

Ann Sothern, Lady in a Cage

Loretta Young, Midnight Mary

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Baby Face

Dance. Girl. Dance.

Forty Guns

The Furies

George Washington Slept Here

Lady in a Cage

Rio Bravo

The Stranger

They Were Expendable

They Won't Believe Me

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Judith Anderson, The Furies

James Caan, Lady in a Cage

Charles Coburn, George Washington Slept Here

Olivia de Havilland, Lady in a Cage

Susan Hayward, They Won't Believe Me

Walter Huston, The Furies

Percy Kilbride, George Washington Slept Here

Edward G. Robinson, The Stranger

John Wayne, Rio Bravo

Orson Welles, The Stranger

Silver Lode (1954)

Film: Silver Lode (1954)

Stars: John Payne, Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Dolores Moran

Director: Allan Dwan

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

John Payne left Fox in 1947.  Payne had struggled at the studio, thinking that they hadn't used his talents as well as they should have, and walked away from an extremely lucrative offer since his contract with the studio extended another four years and was worth $670k (worth almost $9 million today).  He worked in noirs for a while, but nothing that was particularly noteworthy, and by the early 1950's he was largely a star for hire in B-and-C Grade westerns for various studios, including some on Poverty Row.  The actor who had been a poor man's Tyrone Power for much of the 1940's was clearly in the waning years of his career when television came with an offer that he couldn't refuse.  Before that, though, we're going to take a look at one of those films, a western Payne made for RKO called Silver Lode.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Dan Ballard (Payne) who on the day of his wedding to Rose Evans (Scott) is charged with murder, in this case the murder of Fred McCarty (Duryea) who also happens to be a marshal that's bringing him in to justice.  While Dan eventually tells Rose he did kill McCarty's brother, he didn't murder him, and didn't shoot him in the back as alleged, and the money that he won off of him was through a bet rather than theft.  The film progresses as the town continues to turn against Dan, particularly after several bodies start to pile up as we learn this is all a ruse-that McCarty is the one wanted for crimes, and in fact it's a case where he's going to kill Dan no matter what happens.  With the help of a local "saloon gal" named Dolly (Moran), Rose & Dan end up clearing his name, and defeating McCarty in a final shootout.

The movie is clearly a ripoff of the successful High Noon from two years previous, except in this movie the entire town turns against Dan rather than just leaving him in the lurch.  The movie is also not subtle about its critiques of the Red Scare, in this case literally calling the main character McCarty (an allusion to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who after years of dominating the press was in 1954 seeing his meteoric rise slip to a point where by the end of 1954, he would be publicly censured by the US Senate).   Unfortunately, though, it's not a particularly good movie, thanks in large part to the actors.  While Duryea is always a treat and I quite liked Moran's sassy hooker routine (even if it's not breaking new ground), Payne & Scott don't work here.  Lizabeth Scott is a star we profiled in our first season of Saturdays with the Stars, and I generally like her even though her highly-stylized method of acting is not something many are a fan of (her critics call her wooden).  But here it doesn't work, and she blends in to the scenery.  The same can be said for Payne, who is not great in the lead even though this might be the best work we got from him this month.  His character has to take a lot of wild swings, and there's not enough emotion in his work to really get that across.  After spending a month with him, I have to side with Fox...he was no Tyrone Power.

Payne's career changed in the coming years to television.  His most significant role was the lead in The Restless Gun, one of the many TV westerns that dominated the ratings in the late 1950's coming off of the success of Gunsmoke.  Payne only lasted two seasons on the show, and never really recovered the momentum he had in the mid-1940's with Sentimental Journey and Miracle on 34th Street.  He was hit by a car in 1961 on Madison Avenue that nearly killed him, and while he made a full recovery, he spent most of the rest of his career doing sporadic work on TV and in movies before dying of heart failure in 1989 at the age of 77.  Next month, we're going to move down the call sheet and talk about a character actor, in this case one who also eventually found his way into TV westerns, but while he never had his name above the title like John Payne, he starred in some of the most important movies Hollywood ever made.

Sentimental Journey (1946)

Film: Sentimental Journey (1946)

Stars: John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, William Bendix, Cedric Hardwicke, Connie Marshall

Director: Walter Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 John Payne: click here to learn more about Mr. Payne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Payne's film career, if it's remembered at all by modern audiences, is remembered for his association with a holiday classic.  In 1947, Payne played Fred Gailey, the romantic led in Miracle on 34th Street, which would become a major hit for 20th Century Fox and a huge player at the Oscars that year, nominated for Best Picture and winning Best Supporting Actor for Edmund Gwenn.  I've seen Miracle many times through the years, so it obviously doesn't qualify for a series where I'm only watching movies for the first time.  However, Payne made a film the year before that also featured Maureen O'Hara (his Miracle costar) and a young child, here Connie Marshall, called Sentimental Journey, which like Miracle was a box office success.  As a result, I figured that the combination of Payne & O'Hara felt like a good way to mark Miracle with something new.  Unfortunately for me, the costars are where Sentimental Journey ends its overlap with the celebrated Christmas perennial.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Bill (Payne) and Julie Wetherly (O'Hara), a childless couple who spend their days making beautiful New York theater together while summering in what appears to be a posh Hamptons home.  One day, Julie, who is a bit of a dreamer, meets a kindred spirit-a young orphan girl named Hitty (Marshall) who spends most of her time fantasizing about Camelot and other long-ago fantasy worlds.  Julie wants to adopt the girl, and though he's tepid to the suggestion, Bill goes along with it.  But's it's clear Bill & Hitty don't get along, with him not understanding the dreamworld that Julie shares with her, and their marriage is facing a strain to the point where Julie is going to give Hitty back to the orphanage...when suddenly she dies of a heart attack.  This sets up a bizarre third act where Hitty & Bill mourn Julie's loss in different ways, but instead of Bill growing to realize he needs to change his life for his adopted daughter, instead Julie's ghost teaches Hitty how to take care of Bill first. This results in them becoming codependent on each other in the same way they were Julie when they were alive.

If you're reading that paragraph and thinking "that sounds unhealthy, and a little creepy"...you'd be right.  Sentimental Journey is obviously a product of its time, and in 1946 women, even young girls, were trained from an early age to be wives-and-mothers, but even under that guise Julie telling her adopted daughter from beyond-the-grave how to make her widower husband's favorite meals and plays his favorite music...it's off-putting, and I hated it.  I'm usually onboard with a sudsy melodrama of this era and I try not to judge a movie too harshly if it is mirroring the morals of its time, but this one was a step too far, and I wasn't having it once O'Hara died.

It doesn't help matters that Payne is a completely asshole.  He plays his Bill as a louse who has to rely upon his wife for mothering as much as he does the wifely needs, despite being a grown man.  When he tries to bond with Hitty, he doesn't remotely try to understand this young girl's world of make believe, and the movie tries to frame it as perfectly understandable even if it's really about a grown man abandoning a girl to an orphanage because she's "a little different."  I'll admit it-with one more film left from Payne coming up next week, I'm really drawing a blank on finding a lot to love in his film career save for Miracle, where he gives like the fourth best performance in the movie as it is.

OVP: The Dolly Sisters (1945)

Film: The Dolly Sisters (1945)

Stars: Betty Grable, John Payne, June Haver, SZ Sakall

Director: Irving Cummings

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"I Can't Begin to Tell You")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 John Payne: click here to learn more about Mr. Payne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

World War II is a fascinating time frame in Hollywood partially due to the impact that it would have on the legends of some actors' careers.  Certain stars, specifically Jimmy Stewart & Henry Fonda, ended up having some of the most fruitful years of their career after the War, using their service careers as a way to launch the next stage of their stardom.  Other actors like John Wayne never served, in part out of fear that the opportunities (and plum paydays) that were there for them before the war might be taken away if they stopped working.  John Payne was somewhere in the middle of these two.  Payne did not see active battle, but did serve briefly as a flight instructor for the Army Air Corps until September 1944.  Payne, though, wasn't the star that Fonda or Stewart had been before, and when he came back to Hollywood, his options were limited.  His first major film after the end of the war was once again him playing second fiddle to one of the Fox lot's leading ladies (Betty Grable).

(Spoilers Ahead) The Dolly Sisters is about two sisters Jenny (Grable) and Rosie Dolly (Haver) who are trying to break into show business.  Thanks to a chance meeting with a songwriter named Harry Fox (Payne), they meet Oscar Hammerstein and suddenly become major stars as a sister act.  The only problem is that Harry & Jenny are in love, and Harry is jealous of his wife being more famous than him, and wants her to perform with him on the road.  This doesn't happen, though-Jenny won't abandon her sister, and as a result she & Harry divorce during World War I.  While Harry is off fighting, and eventually becoming famous, Jenny becomes a gambling addict & gets involved in a car crash that nearly kills her.  The film ends with the two of them, despite Harry having a girlfriend (who conveniently dumps him when she sees he still loves Jenny), singing onstage with Rosie, a happily ever after for all three.

The Dolly Sisters is based on real-life sisters who had a decidedly different life.  Their real life was far more scandalous than a movie in 1945 would allow.  In real life Jenny never reunited with Harry Fox, and instead spent much of the 1920's romancing a series of monarchs (which is only briefly alluded to in this movie), and both sisters broke up their act (sometimes for show to sell tickets) and occasionally swapped lovers.  Jenny ended up marrying again, but the depression following a car accident caused her to tailspin, and she committed suicide in 1941 by hanging herself.  Rosie never really got over this, retreating from the public eye, attempting suicide herself in 1962 (unsuccessfully) and dying of a heart attack in 1970.

Suffice it to say, these women are fascinating, but this movie isn't.  Without the ability to show what these sisters' painful personal lives were really like, the movie feels adrift, and Grable & Haver (who purportedly didn't like each other in real life) have very little chemistry together.  Worst of the trio, though, is Payne.  I'm hoping in our final two weeks we get to a John Payne performance that I enjoy, but man is his Harry a charmless ass.  He basically blackmails his successful wife into giving up her career so she can support his unsuccessful one...which causes her to go into a deep depression that nearly ruins her life, and yet we're supposed to be happy they end up together?  I don't think so, and Payne doesn't see to be able to find any sort of personality in this cad of a love interest.  The film's score is nothing to write home about (Grable & Haver join the cavalcade of classic film stars who did blackface with the horrendously racist "The Darktown Strutters Ball"), even the slumber-inducing ballad "I Can't Begin to Tell You" which won an Oscar nomination in 1946 (not sure what the deal is with it coming a year after the film's release) is totally forgettable.

OVP: Tin Pan Alley (1940)

Film: Tin Pan Alley (1940)

Stars: Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Jack Oakie, John Payne

Director: Walter Lang

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Scoring*)

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

We're going to start our month devoted to John Payne by taking a look at his pre-war films.  Payne's career didn't start at Fox, but for all-intents-and-purposes it might as well have.  He made a few films at Warner Brothers in the 1930's, but none of them amounted to anything, and by the end of the decade he was finding himself going back to New York to work on Broadway.  His contract with Fox, though, would dominate most of the 1940's, and at the beginning of that time, it was really focused on musicals.  We oftentimes think of MGM as the home of most of the musicals of this era, and indeed, they made most of the classic ones.  But Fox was making a massive business at the time in musicals, and Payne could sing.  The only problem for Payne was when it came to Fox & musicals, there were only two names that mattered: Alice Faye and Betty Grable.  Both of these women we've actually explored in past seasons of Saturdays with the Stars (which makes me stunned I haven't seen this film), but it's a good indication of the kind of career that Payne was enjoying heading into World War II...playing second fiddle to more important female stars on the Fox lot.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two business partners, Harry Calhoun (Oakie) and his handsome songwriting pal Skeets Harrigan (Payne), who have a hit song that they need a singer for, and they meet a sister vaudeville act in Katie (Faye) and Lily Blane (Grable).  Skeets and Katie hit it off right away, forming a romance, but obstacles keeps getting in the way, first Skeets' ambition (at one point "accidentally" dropping a glass of wine on Lily so that Katie would get to sing their song) and later by true accident (when a more famous singer coopts the hit song that Skeets promises to Katie).  When World War I breaks out, Harry & Skeets enlist, but can't help wanting to get back to see their girls one more time, and in the process, Katie unceremoniously dumps her fiancee, and instead rejoins Skeets, with promises of more success (and surely love) in their future after the war.

Fox musicals, unlike MGM musicals, are not exactly high-budget works of art, but instead they are an excuse to have excellent singers belt out classics.  None of the four leads are having their voices dubbed (which was more common in MGM musicals as well), and some of them (specifically Faye, whom I am a huge fan of) are genuinely superb singers.  This one doesn't have as many memorable songs as you'd hope, with the best being "Moonlight Bay" sung by Faye, and there's not a lot stringing them together other than a bit of Hollywood propaganda (lots of patriotism).  As a result, that Oscar statue, even in a year of less-than-inspired competitors, feels a bit cheap (just give Pinocchio two music statues-it more than deserves it!).

Payne is fine here.  As I mentioned above and in our biography kickoff earlier this week, Payne's career as a film star wasn't bereft of leading roles, but it was frequently a look at an actor who largely was there to make his more popular leading ladies look good.  He does that here, looking handsome, but largely just being a place for Alice Faye's soulful eyes and heavenly voice to project onto...in many ways he resembled someone like Robert Taylor who was gorgeous, but didn't have a lot of opportunity to act.  This was most of his career before the war, appearing as a romantic lead for Faye and Sonja Henie in hit Fox musicals.  Next week, we're going to stick with a similarly-plotted film, one that even has one of this week's leading ladies, and talk about how World War II offered Payne a new role...though it might well have hurt his career.

Saturdays with the Stars: John Payne

Each month of 2022 we will be taking a look at one-time film actors who became foundational figures in the early days of television, stretching from the early 1950's into the mid-1960's.  Last month we talked about Loretta Young, who spent most of the 1930's & 40's as a big deal (even winning an Oscar), but it was in television that she found most of her modern pop culture cache.  This month, we're going to talk about someone who led films throughout the 1940's, but unlike Young, never really got many accolades during his career.  Despite starring in one film that FAR exceeded the cultural cache of anything Young did her in lifetime, he was never a huge star in her mold...but did find success in the heyday of television westerns in the late 1950's.  This month's star is John Payne.

Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Payne had a posh upbringing as the son of a real estate developer, and attended prep school in Pennsylvania, followed by stints at Columbia & Juilliard.  Initially working in stock theater, he moved into film rather quickly in the 1930's, playing a small part in the now-classic Dodsworth before getting an unsuccessful star contract at Warner Brothers, and then a much longer contract with 20th Century Fox in the 1940's.  There he played opposite a host of different leading ladies, including Betty Grable, Alice Faye, Sonja Henie, Gene Tierney, and (most often) Maureen O'Hara.

It was opposite O'Hara that Payne found the role that he is most well-known for today (unlike many of the people we profile, Payne's most famous role was not in television): he was the romantic lead in Miracle on 34th Street opposite O'Hara.  Despite the success of this film, he dropped his contract with Fox, who didn't really know what to do with him.  Payne worked in a variety of films, including a lot of noir & westerns during the ensuing years, but it was in television where he regained his niche, playing for two years on NBC's The Restless Gun, one of many different westerns that became all the rage during that time frame (the biggest of the bunch being Gunsmoke).  This month, we're going to take a look at the career Payne had that led up to The Restless Gun, including his misdirected years at Fox, and talk about why, even with a modern classic on his resumé, Payne was never able to translate into the success that his peers like Tyrone Power were able to achieve (and why even television wasn't enough to make Payne a lasting entertainment figure).

OVP: Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Film: Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Stars: Sonja Henie, John Payne, Glenn Miller, Milton Berle, Lynn Bari

Director: H. Bruce Humberstone

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Cinematography, Original Song-"Chattanooga Choo Choo", Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

This summer, LeBron James will star in a sequel to the 1996 film Space Jam.  James is one of the greatest basketball players of all time (if not the best), but he's hardly achieved massive success (to date) in the realm of acting.  While athletes from OJ Simpson to Hulk Hogan have taken their shot at film stardom, very few actually find proper, sustainable success on the big screen.  One of the few that did, though, was Norwegian skater Sonja Henie.  Henie won gold medals in figure skating at three successive Olympics and was a world champion ten years running between 1927-1936.  She then went on to be a major star for 20th Century Fox during the late 1930's/early 1940's, featured mostly in skating extravaganza pictures that were basically just an excuse to get her to skate (think Esther Williams but on frozen water).  Henie's career would probably be worth a conversation for a Star of the Month segment, particularly her unusual connections to Adolf Hitler, but as I was watching I realized this is the first time I've ever seen he in an actual movie, and so I want to focus today just on her as a screen presence, and how being a novice with her as an actor greatly influences the way you watch a film like Sun Valley Serenade.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Ted Scott (Payne), a down-on-his-luck band pianist who can't get a gig.  He lucks into one when Vivian Dawn (Bari), a beautiful big-name singer, takes a shine to the handsome Ted.  They start to date, but there's a problem.  Ted's manager Nifty (Berle) arranged for him to take in a refugee to get good publicity, however the refugee isn't a child, but instead a grown woman named Karen (Henie), who quickly decides she wants to marry Ted.  The remainder of the film is Karen getting into a series of hijinks (many that trade in on her skating & skiing abilities), trying to sabotage Ted & Vivian's relationship, which end up working as Ted eventually marries Karen (and then they have a winter spectacular to round out the movie).

The film is predicated on you really enjoying Henie, who at this point as I mentioned above, was a big star in Hollywood.  Having her as the adorable lead would've likely been something the screenwriters could bank upon with the audience, but modern audiences who aren't as familiar with her as a screen persona (like me) don't have that currency, and as a result this movie reads as really problematic.  Karen is essentially stalking Ted, to the point where she ruins his relationship, and there's no real chemistry between the two other than a shared love of skiing.  She basically ruins Ted's life, and then he thanks her for it.  In a normal movie I'd have a problem with them portraying strong, confident Vivian as "a successful woman who needs to learn her place" (that's basically how she's portrayed), and that'd turn me off for the film, but that's to be expected in a film in the 1940's.  What isn't is that Henie's Karen, were she a man, would almost certainly be portrayed as a villain & a sexual predator, and it totally turned me off for the film-it felt icky & gross.

This is a pity because I don't really have a problem with the film's trio of Oscar nominations.  The cinematography is good-if-not-outstanding, with Henie's giant ice ballets a standout (and the skiing scenes look like they're actually skiing in at least half of them, which is an accomplishment for a movie like this).  The Score is excellent.  Glenn Miller (yes, the Glenn Miller) plays a band leader in the film, and he brings classics like "In the Mood," "Moonlight Serenade," & "It Happened in Sun Valley" to the screen.  Best of all is "Chattanooga Choo Choo," which is broken up into two parts, the first featuring some of the Orchestra, and the latter featuring a song-and-dance routine between Dorothy Dandridge & the Nicholas Brothers (Dandridge and Harold Nicholas would marry soon after this movie).  This is one of only two times the Glenn Miller Orchestra would ever be in a movie, and so it's a special spot if you're a fan of their music (which I am).  Unfortunately, the movie surrounding it is not worthy (and even the songs, classics all, aren't mounted as well as they could be save for the Dandridge/Nicholas Brothers tap number).

Slightly Scarlet (1956)

Film: Slightly Scarlet (1956)
Stars: John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl, Kent Taylor, Ted de Corsia
Director: Allan Dwan
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on 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.

In the 1950's, there were essentially three women who could claim the title of "Queen of Technicolor" as the brief romance with that particular color motion process hit its heyday during that decade (despite being a part of cinema for some twenty years prior).  These three women claimed that by virtue of their red hair, and despite being major stars, none of them were nominated for Academy Awards.  Maureen O'Hara was one, but as I've seen most of O'Hara's chief work (thanks to having a mother and grandfather who were both fans of hers), so she wasn't part of this series.  Rhonda Fleming, one of the holders of this title, was another, but there was a third I toyed with adding to this series, potentially as a replacement for Fleming: Arlene Dahl.  Like Fleming, Dahl was a spellbinding redhead who was briefly a leading woman in the 1950's, noted more for her beauty and dazzling hair color than for her acting ability.  Both women were tabloid fixtures, going through husbands at a speed that Zsa Zsa Gabor would envy (Dahl is also from my home state of Minnesota), and both are still alive as of this publication.  This film, where the two sometime rivals teamed up, felt like a way to acknowledge Dahl in this series, while also of course continuing our look at the woman I chose to be our star of the month, Rhonda Fleming.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on two sisters June (Fleming) and Dorothy (Dahl), the former a good girl who works as a secretary for a mayoral candidate (Taylor) who is hopelessly in love with her (though the movie makes a concerted point to show that they haven't had sex yet) while the latter is a horny kleptomaniac.  The two both become involved with Ben Grace (Payne) a seemingly honorable man who makes his money on the wrong side of the law, working for a crime boss named Caspar (de Corsia) whom he runs out of town after the reforming candidate gets elected.  The problem is both that he continues to profit from Caspar's syndicate, and that both June & Dorothy are falling for him.  Dorothy gets herself into trouble with the law again, stealing a pearl necklace, but June uses the new mayor's connections to get her out, causing a friction in their relationship.  The movie ends with a shootout, as Dorothy has sex with Caspar, who then threatens to kill her sister (they've had a fight where they admitted their jealousies and frustrations with each other), and weirdly it's Ben, not Dorothy, who tries to save June, and in the process he's shot.  The film ends with us not knowing Ben's fate, and with June abandoning the mayor and her sister to be with him.

Slightly Scarlet is an unusual film right out the gate because it is clearly intended to be a film noir, but it's the rare one that's shot not just in color, but a really sophisticated Technicolor.  Legendary cinematographer John Alton (who won an Oscar for An American in Paris) plays with not only the beauty of his two leading ladies, but also with shadow, costume, and the elaborate set designs to create a really remarkable picture.  The oranges and pinks pop in your face, and I don't know that I've seen Fleming ever look so ravishing, with the shadow work highlighting her expressive face.  This is almost entirely the reason that this movie is remembered today, as otherwise it's a bit of a silly affair.  Jean-Luc Godard was a fan of the picture, proclaiming it one of the best films of 1956, but I feel like this is him indulging more in Alton's cinematography than trying to rescue a genre picture.  John Payne is a bit underwhelming in the lead, and the script is disjointed & usually more fun if you take the film as camp rather than a more grounded melodrama.

The two leading ladies achieve differing results.  The main reason that I picked Fleming as one of the 12 Stars of the Month this year (rather than someone like Dahl), was that she showed such promise in supporting parts, but largely dismissed her work as a leading woman, and critics did too.  There are no major scholarly articles about either of these women, but Fleming was more famous and worked with better directors so I figured she'd be the more interesting of the two to investigate.  I was right.  While she doesn't get as juicy of a part, she finds things to say about June that the script doesn't.  There's a pain in her eyes when she looks at the sister she has versus the one she knows she deserves, and you understand the betrayal of her sister better as the movie wears on.  Fleming was so good in short performances like Spellbound and Out of the Past, but she's also the best part of Slightly Scarlet, bringing a restrained glamour to June, someone who clearly never had to work for much in her life (men are going to hand it to her), but also grounded her decisions in a morality that feels innate, and not just a plot device.

Dahl, on the other hand, is kind of terrible, and only frequently in a fun way.  She plays Dorothy as an over-the-top vixen, unable to really contain herself, and her only really good acting opposite of Fleming in their big fight scene.  Dahl's career petered out almost completely after this, as she'd soon be suing Columbia for how she was depicted in 1956's Wicked as They Come (she'd have a second career act as a beauty guru years later), and I realized I'd only seen her in one other movie, 1964's Kisses for My President, where she was also laughably awful.  Dahl later bemoaned her career, but it's hard to blame Slightly Scarlet on a bad script alone-she's not adding anything of value to this movie other than glamour, and since she gets the most interesting character, it's hard to not fault her a bit for where the movie fails.  We'll continue on with Fleming next week, but I do want to acknowledge in the comments-if you have a favorite performance of Arlene Dahl's that could save my opinion of her, I'm all ears.

OVP: Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943)

Film: Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943)
Stars: Alice Faye, John Payne, Jack Oakie, Lynn Bari, June Havoc
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Cinematography-Color, Best Original Song-"You'll Never Know"*)
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 Alice Faye-click here to learn more about Ms. Faye (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1943, Alice Faye was a conundrum for Fox.  It was clear, even to Faye herself (she'd later say so in interviews) that Warner was less-interested in her as a headliner and were more interested in promoting Betty Grable, who had eclipsed her as a box office draw.  Fox had a number of hit musicals throughout its Golden Age tenure, something we don't always think of when compared to the Grand Tetons of musical cinema that were being produced at the nearby MGM lot, but Faye had dominated musicals at the studio during this era, never really making a flop even when she was tasked with poor films.  Grable was a massive star across seas at the time, with her iconic pin-up poster becoming the bestselling one of World War II, and despite the two of them being framed as rivals (to the point where Faye was replaced by Grable in Down Argentine Way), they were actually good friends in real life.  This is a long way of saying, that by 1943, Faye had a lot more riding on Hello, Frisco, Hello than her stellar box office track record might have indicated.  Thankfully for Faye (and throwing Fox's plans for a loop), this was a MASSIVE hit in its era, one of her biggest films at the studio, and she was still too important to the studio to toss aside just yet.  As we'll see next week, Darryl Zanuck wasn't content to keep Faye at the top even if the public wanted her to stay there, but let's first get through Round 1 of her fight with the studio chief.

(Spoilers Ahead) Hello, Frisco, Hello has about as thin of a plot as you could get with a musical without it turning into a revue.  Johnny Cornell (Payne) is a vaudeville promoter and actor who wants to prove to his friends Dan (Oakie) and Beulah (Havoc, and yes this is the June Havoc of Baby June/Gypsy fame), as well as his neglected love interest Trudy (Faye) that he has what it takes to be a big-shot after they are thrown out of a bar early in the film.  Johnny proves them right, coasting in large part off of the talents of his leading lady Trudy, but fame comes at a cost.  He soon is romancing a beautiful heiress (whose fortune is a bit slack even if her attitude is not) Bernice Croft (Bari, in one of the many, many roles in this era where Bari is playing the "gorgeous rich bitch"...though supposedly Bari was second only to Betty Grable in terms of "pin-up girl" popularity during World War II despite her being a complete unknown today).  This causes a heartbroken Trudy, still madly in love with Johnny, to try her luck at stardom in Europe.  Trudy succeeds, Johnny fails, and Bernice proves herself to be the terrible human being the audience knows her to be (while Johnny is blinded by his lust of prestige and beautiful women).  The film ends with Trudy, Dan, and Beulah tricking Johnny into taking Trudy's money and starting a new club for them to perform in, and Johnny/Trudy getting their happy ending.

Musicals, more than any other genre, can get past cliches if they're charming enough.  Unlike, say, a film noir or a period drama, where cliche is going to give into boredom, solid stars and great numbers can carry a musical pretty darn far, and Hello, Frisco, Hello is a lot of fun.  The movie is littered with an array of really great musical numbers, with Faye in peak vocal form and Oakie & Havoc lovably mincing behind her for full comic effect.  The film was nominated for two Oscars, and it deserved both citations.  The cinematography (shot in Technicolor) is sublime, and perfectly lights all of the musical numbers, as Faye in particular has never looked more radiant.  And the movie introduced to audiences the Oscar-winning "You'll Never Know," a standard that has been covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Rosemary Clooney to Shirley Bassey, being big hits for all (due to a weird contract stipulation at the time, Faye wasn't allowed to record the song for record sales, but it became her signature tune anyway).  It's weird to think of such a popular standard being "original" at some point and not just part of the American lexicon, but you can see why during the film it's had such an enduring legacy.

And that's because of Faye.  As you may have been able to tell, I've been a bit surprised by how much I've adored the actress this month (considering so few people discuss her in film history), but this is her best role we've profiled to date, even if it's somewhat of a stock musical.  Faye is marvelous, heartbroken, finding just the right balance with her relationship with Payne to never make her feel like a doormat, but simply someone in love who also has dreams of her own (she just wants him along with for them).  It helps that, weirdly, Faye had already played this part in King of Burlesque, as Hello, Frisco, Hello was a remake of this 1936 film (which starred Faye & Oakie in the exact same roles, albeit playing differently-named characters).  The musical numbers are magic-her voice could so easily be on modern radios in a way I don't think you could even counter for stars like Sinatra today.  The way she brings a desperation to "You'll Never Know" is incredible-it says something that it feels like you're truly hearing the song for the first time even if you know it by heart.  I loved everything about her work here, and can see why this was a smash hit.  Next week we'll go into our first "straight" role for Faye (our final film in our tribute to her), and the role that caused her retirement from movies, but in the meantime, join me in the comments if you want to discuss your favorite Alice Faye musicals.