2023 Saturdays with the Stars Recap

Yesterday we finished up our month with Kris Kristofferson, and today, we are putting the final cap on our "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood" season.  I will totally own this, our fifth season, is probably my favorite season we've done since Season 2 (when we tackled sex symbols), and maybe my favorite ever.  I knew going into this that westerns have always been one of my favorite genres, and getting to see such a wide array, including a lot of hidden gems that have been on the To Do list for a while, was an absolute treat.  But I didn't realize how many of the films would end up being downright classics, from Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy to some of the gorgeous westerns that Anthony Mann made with Jimmy Stewart, there are movies on this list that have quickly catapulted to my favorite westerns list, and I have even added a few already to my home collection.

The biggest thing that excited me, though, was how this really ended up being the tale of Hollywood, starting with The Big Trail and ending with Heaven's Gate, and how much of Classical & New Hollywood came in-between.  This has been the case in all of our seasons, but seeing it through the most American of genres, the western, it felt like I was hearing it for the first time.  We'll get into our sixth season, where we will be "Crowning America's Sweethearts," on Saturday, but one last time, take a look at some of the best from this season of "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood."

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Gary Cooper, Man of the West

February: James Stewart, The Naked Spur

March: Gregory Peck, The Gunfighter

April: Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution

May: Randolph Scott, Ride the High Country

June: Yul Brynner, Westworld

July: John Wayne, The Shootist

August: Franco Nero, Querelle

September: Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

October: Robert Redford, Barefoot in the Park

November: Sam Elliott, Molly and Lawless John

December: Kris Kristofferson, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

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

Marlene Dietrich

Clint Eastwood

Robert Redford

James Stewart

John Wayne

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution

Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

James Stewart, The Man from Laramie

James Stewart, The Naked Spur

John Wayne, The Shootist

12 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

The Big Country

Destry Rides Again

A Fistful of Dollars

For a Few Dollars More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

High Plains Drifter

The Naked Spur

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Ride the High Country

Westworld

Winchester 73

Witness for the Prosecution

Top 12 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Ellen Burstyn, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Dan Duryea, Winchester 73

Mariette Hartley, Ride the High Country

Burl Ives, The Big Country

Katy Jurado, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Diane Ladd, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Elsa Lanchester, Witness for the Prosecution

Charles Laughton, Witness for the Prosecution

Una O'Connor, Witness for the Prosecution

Lee van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More

Lee van Cleef, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

OVP: Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Film: Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Stars: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Una O'Connor

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Charles Laughton, Supporting Actress-Elsa Lanchester, Film Editing, Sound Recording)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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 Marlene Dietrich: click here to learn more about Ms. Dietrich (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Marlene Dietrich spent much of World War II doing USO tours.  Dietrich was vehemently anti-Nazi (funding efforts to help Jews and political prisoners flee Germany in the late-1930's), and was one of the most active figures on the USO tour (it's hard not to wonder if she was slightly overcompensating given that to be the most famous German actor in Hollywood at the time would've made her being indifferent to the war effort basically impossible without fan backlash).  But post-WWII, Dietrich's film career floundered.  Though she was still ravishing (she would remain a sex symbol for the remainder of her public life, and would trade on it long after society allowed most women to), and would appear in films by important directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, & Stanley Kramer would all eventually call), it was never quite as magic as it was in her early days in Hollywood.  The closest she might've come was Witness for the Prosecution, which was intended at the time to be a vehicle for Dietrich to get an Oscar nomination, and while much of those involved (including her castmates Charles Laughton & Elsa Lanchester) got nominated for it, she did not...though she should have.

(Spoilers Ahead-And I mean it this time!) The film is based on a play by Agatha Christie, and starts with Sir Wilfred Robarts (Laughton), a barrister who is currently recovering from a heart attack.  He is coaxed (against the wishes of his nurse Miss Plimsoll, played here by Laughton's real-life wife Lanchester) into a case to defend Leonard Vole (Power), a man accused of killing an older woman for the inheritance, after he supposedly seduced her.  We also meet Vole's wife Christine (Dietrich), who appears distant at first, and it's not entirely clear if she wants him to get off (or if she believes he's innocent).  Vole's case looks increasingly hopeless when Christine is a witness not for the defense, but for the prosecution, and admits that Leonard's alibi is a lie.  However, a mysterious woman comes and gives Sir Wilfred letters indicating that Christine is lying-that she's been having an affair and perjured herself by claiming the alibi isn't the truth.  He shows the jury these letters, and she confesses from the witness stand that she lied...that Leonard was with her that night, and couldn't have possibly been the killer, and she & her lover Max wanted to implicate Leonard so she could leave him.  Leonard is acquitted, and everything seems rosy...

...or so it seems with ten minutes to spare.  Witness for the Prosecution was one of the first films to really underline the concept of "don't spoil the ending" to the point that they included it in the ad promos and had a voiceover over the ending instructing people not to spoil the ending for others.  This is because the ending is a true twist.  It turns out that Christine does love Leonard, and played this role because he is guilty, but figured the only way that the jury would believe her is if she was a cold, unloving spouse (something that Sir Wilfred hints at early in the picture).  So she perjures herself, sending herself to jail, and it's also revealed that Dietrich was the actress playing the unrecognizable mysterious woman.  In a further twist, it turns out that while Christine loved Leonard, Leonard did not love her back, and was having an affair with a younger woman.  Freed by double jeopardy, he now gets a small fortune and can marry his younger mistress, but Christine feeling betrayed and headed to jail for Leonard, kills him...and Sir Wilfred, horrified by what she's endured, proclaims that he will get her off in the closing scenes.

The movie received six Academy Award nominations, and they're all well-earned.  The editing & sound mixing aren't showy, but they're definitely top rate (as are the cinematography, score, and especially the art direction).  The makeup (more on that in a second) would've surely gotten a nomination in a different era.  Most of the cast is splendid.  I loved the dottering comedy between Laughton & Lanchester.  Laughton leaned in heavily on this part, one of his last great roles, and it feels like it was written for it he bombasts and orates so well, and Lanchester (thanks to years of living with him) shows a marital chemistry that could be silly but comes across beautifully in the film.  Una O'Connor is also good as a scorned maid (who would've otherwise gotten the inheritance).  I don't entirely like Tyrone Power here, who I think is too much (especially when he's being dramatic during Dietrich's testimony), but this is a 6-time Oscar nominee that should've gotten more citations.

And one of those should've been Dietrich.  Dietrich was largely expected to be nominated (she'd even recorded a new opening to her cabaret act where she was introduced as "Oscar Nominee for Witness for the Prosecution, Marlene Dietrich," and was devastated when she somehow didn't make it.  Looking back with her, I'm devastated too.  Dietrich nails her courtroom scenes, completely keeping you guessing the entire time, but in retrospect it's clear what was there (that she was always on Leonard's side).  It's a very tricky part, made even more difficult by Dietrich playing the unrecognizable mysterious woman.  I'll be real here, the accent was SO different than Dietrich's normal sultry German baritone that I completely missed that it was Dietrich playing the part, so the twist totally threw me.  The publicity around the twist ending surely hurt Dietrich's chances, because they couldn't publicize her two roles, and how different/good they both were.  But of all of the 1957 Best Actress nominees I've seen so far, she's better than all of them-this was a crime that she didn't get into the field, or honestly win it all.

Dietrich would have a very long life, and an equally long career, but while she'd have two more major movies (1958's Touch of Evil and 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg), most of the rest of her career was performing a legendary one-woman act that she would sell to sold out audiences for decades around the world, from the early 1950's all the way to the mid-1970's, when her health started to fade to the point that she couldn't handle the rigors of performing live.  She eventually did voiceover work (she did not appear) for an Oscar-nominated documentary about her life called Marlene (made by her Nuremberg costar Maximillian Schell).  Dietrich died in 1992 at the age of 91 from kidney failure.  Next month, we are going to take an unusual approach to our Saturdays with the Stars' headliner, looking at his long career in westerns through the lens of one specific director, as the two together made one of the most critically-acclaimed actor-director pairings of the era.

OVP: The Spoilers (1942)

Film: The Spoilers (1942)

Stars: Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Margaret Lindsay

Director: Ray Enright

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Marlene Dietrich: click here to learn more about Ms. Dietrich (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We have alluded a lot this month to Marlene Dietrich's legendary personal life.  Dietrich's sex life is arguably the most storied in terms of rumor & legend, and it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction.  There are the affairs that pretty much everyone agrees happened (Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Yul Brynner) and those that are harder-to-track-down, but are too salacious not to at least mention (Frank Sinatra, Claudette Colbert, Joseph P. Kennedy...and his son President Kennedy).  Dietrich is inarguably the actor I most wish had had a tell-all interview with Oprah.  

One of the actors that pretty much everyone agrees that Dietrich had an affair with was John Wayne, with whom she made a series of pictures in the wake of the success of Destry Rides Again.  After the success of Destry, the studio was adamant to get her back into a western, and Dietrich (according to legend) selected Wayne as her leading man by telling producer Joe Pasternak "Mommy wants that for Christmas" after seeing Wayne for the first time in the Universal Pictures commissary.  The pair made three films together, two westerns (Seven Sinners and The Spoilers) and a rags-to-riches drama called Pittsburgh, and of the trio I thought The Spoilers looked the most interesting (and was an unsee part of the OVP) so we're going with that for our movie today.

(Spoilers Ahead) Taking place in Nome, Alaska, the movie is honestly kind of a mess of a plot, but I'll sort through it just to ground you.  Dietrich, as is her wont in this era, plays a saloon proprietor who has a heart of gold.  That heart belongs to Roy Glennister (Wayne), her old beau who is back from a trip to Europe with a more proper match, the judge's niece Helen (Lindsay).  However, the judge, like most in the film, is corrupt and Roy finds this out too late when he sides with him and the new gold commissioner Alex McNamara (Scott) rather than his old mining partner.  The partner forgives him, and (after donning blackface) they try to disguise themselves and steal back their money from the judge.  The movie ends with Randolph Scott punched in the face, and Dietrich left in Wayne's arms.

The movie doesn't work, and it's partially because the plot is absurd, and occasionally offensive.  Marietta Canty, who plays Dietrich's maid, is arguably the best-in-show in a stereotypical role, getting most of her one-liners out well, though she has to pretend that Wayne in blackface is an actual African-American man which...no.  Not acceptable.  Weirdly, despite real-life heat between them, there's no chemistry between the cavier-and-corn chips pairing of Dietrich & Wayne onscreen.

The movie's sole Oscar nomination was for Art Direction, and I get it.  The beach landing sequence, in particular, is impressively shot and you almost feel like it's actually in an Alaskan shore, it gives off the aura of being properly cold.  But the real achievement is the costume design.  Dietrich's costumes are INSANE, with her wearing ornate choker necklaces and solid gold dresses in the middle of the 19th Century wilderness of the Alaskan Territory, looking like she'd just gotten done cleaning out Bergdorf Goodman.  Costume hadn't been created as a category yet by the Academy, but if it had, it'd have been easy to look beyond the historical inaccuracies & given this a nomination because Dietrich looks that good.

Destry Rides Again (1939)

Film: Destry Rides Again (1939)

Stars: Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donleavy, Una Merkel

Director: George Marshall

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Since we took last weekend off due to the Easter holiday, we're doubling-up with Marlene this week to give this star her full menu of Saturday's.  You might be wondering at this point "when are we going to get to the westerns?" and you'd be right to do so-for the first decade of Dietrich's career, she largely eschewed the genre, and was focusing on continuing to make large-scale epics with (and then without) the skilled hand of Josef von Sternberg, and by 1939 her celebrity was going out of style.  She was one of the major stars in 1938 listed as Box Office Poison alongside people like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, & Katharine Hepburn.  Like these legends, Dietrich would prove that she was not box office poison, and in short-order, when she took an against-type role in a Universal Pictures' western called Destry Rides Again, where she would play a saloon girl.  This was against type for both she and her leading man, Jimmy Stewart (Stewart, our star in February, would not be a huge fixture in westerns until the 1950's & 60's...he actually wouldn't do another western until Winchester 73 in 1950, and this was the first time he'd worn spurs onscreen).  Though she had to have a pay cut to do the role, the film would revive her career-a huge hit with both critics & audiences, it got her a smash song on the radio ("See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have," which would become a staple in her cabaret act years later), and opened up a new genre for her that she'd continue to explore for several years: the western.

(Spoilers Ahead) The town of Bottleneck is run by a lawless group of men, and the powers-that-be intend to keep it that way when they appoint Wash Dimsdale (Winninger), the town drunk, as the new sheriff.  Saloon owner Kent (Donlevy) thinks that this is the end of his problems with the law, but Dimsdale has an ace-up-his-sleeve in the form of Tom Destry, Jr. (Stewart), the son of a legendary lawman who comes to town as Dimsdale's new deputy.  Destry is competent, honorable, & intent on following the law...all of which are anathema to Kent, and initially to his beautiful saloon gal girlfriend Frenchy (Dietrich).  But slowly, it becomes clear the town needs to uproot Kent and his crew, and even Frenchy understands this (as she also realizes that she's in love with Tom).  The film ends with a riot, as the women of the community decide to end the violence by subduing Kent's gang, but in the process both Kent & Frenchy are killed in a shootout, thus ending Tom's relationship with the reformed singer.  The film ends with him likely marrying a different (more respectable) girl who has long pined for him as a wagon of kids passes by, singing one of Frenchy's songs showing her legend will live on.

Destry is a comedy despite that rather somber ending, and it's quite well-done largely because of the chemistry between Dietrich & Stewart.  The two allegedly had an affair (Peter Bogdonavich claimed later that Dietrich confided in him that she had to have an abortion as a result of her affair with Stewart), and there's a mountain of heat between the two, with Stewart playing the hapless, awe-shucks fella to Dietrich's more seasoned sexuality.  It's dynamite-Destry Rides Again occasionally has plot issues (maybe one too many side characters), but that central romance between the two main characters is electric...I wanted to watch Dietrich & Stewart flirting for hours afterward.

This was not the first film that Marlene Dietrich sang in, nor would it be the last, but we can't have a month devoted to Dietrich without at least mentioning her very successful side hustle as a singer, which would become her primary gig in the 1950's when she would largely leave movies in favor of her wildly successful cabaret act (which would feature arrangements by a very young Burt Bacharach).  Dietrich's range wasn't big (she's certainly not, say, Jeanette MacDonald if you want to pick one of her 1930's contemporaries), but it's intoxicating.  I love Dietrich's voice and songs ("Cherche la Rose" is my favorite), and am so glad that she found this niche in the movies where it could last forever.

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Film: The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Stars: Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Sam Jaffe, Louise Dresser, C. Aubrey Smith

Director: Josef Von Sternberg

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

When Marlene Dietrich came to Hollywood, she did so for Paramount under the assumption that she would be a counter to Greta Garbo (who was making bank over at MGM), and she was partnered with Von Sternberg, the director on her breakout hit The Blue Angel for her first picture.  We could honestly do an entire month just on their relationship, which was unhealthily codependent, and basically involved Dietrich "giving herself" in terms of artistic creativity to Von Sternberg.  It's not clear that Dietrich's impressive list of lovers included Von Sternberg (though his wife sued her during divorce proceedings for "alienation of affection," but they were reliant upon each other in a way that is virtually unmatched in Hollywood history.  I'd seen Shanghai Express but had not seen the remaining five classics (though I own them all from Criterion) between the two, and I settled on The Scarlet Empress, largely because film historian Karina Longworth once referred to it as "one of the most beautiful movies ever made," and if Karina tells me to do something, I do it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the rise of Catherine the Great (Dietrich) from an obscure German princess to be the most powerful empress in Russian history.  The film shows her first as a young princess, brought to Russia and disgusted by her husband Grand Duke Peter (Jaffe) who wants nothing to do with her, and chastised by her mother-in-law Empress Elizabeth (Dresser).  Catherine is chaste and confused by the world at first, but slowly finds herself seduced by lures of the flesh (and Marlene goes full sex goddess, even though we're technically post-Code by this time), and falls in love with handsome Count Alexey (Lodge), amongst other men, including a guard who likely sires her son (not her husband).  When Empress Elizabeth dies, it seems like the new Emperor Peter III will kill Catherine & wed his mistress (which his mother forbade in life), but Catherine successfully murders him, and takes the throne in a coup as the film ends.

The most distinctive thing about Von Sternberg's films in general, but especially with Dietrich, is his lighting.  Years before Gregg Toland was revolutionizing the concept of lighting onscreen, Von Sternberg used light & shadow to harrowing effect.  I said after seeing Shanghai Express for the first time that I've never wanted to smoke more he makes Dietrich with a cigarette look so intoxicating.  Here, there's less smoke but he fills the sets with gorgeous, fantastic costumes & lush royal quarters so that everything looks scrumptious.  At the center is Dietrich, looking magnificent in every regal pose, and lit in a way that it honestly feels like she ages as the film goes without ever once diminishing her beauty.  It's a gloriously-shot movie, and a well-constructed one.

The acting is also good.  Dietrich, at this point, it's hard to tell if she can actually make a mistake onscreen I love her so much, but she's wonderful here.  I don't know if I always buy her in the "clueless princess" mode but once she starts getting laid, nothing can stop her-Dietrich is on fire, lustily commanding every inch of the movie.  Jaffe & Dresser are both playing their characters cartoonishly, but honestly, it works for me-there's something impressive in the way that Jaffe makes his madness & frustration feel less like an oaf and more like a despot (which works better as he becomes a more plausible threat for Catherine then), and Dresser's Elizabeth is smartly constructed enough that you almost pity her she's been given such a ridiculous son and complicated daughter-in-law, even though she's ostensibly one of the movie's villains.

The Blue Angel (1930)

Film: The Blue Angel (1930)

Stars: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich

Director: Josef von Sternberg

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

Marlene Dietrich is purposefully getting five Saturday's this month both because she's one of my favorite onscreen performers (I've yet to see a bad performance from her, though double check back with me when the month is done) and because her career was very, very long.  We could honestly do a year on Dietrich and not get to everything.  So we're going to start at the very beginning, with a film that launched her career, and the first feature-length sound film to be shot in German.  The movie was directed by Josef von Sternberg, who would become the "Svengali" to Dietrich early in her career (more on him next week), making seven films together, almost all of which are regarded today as classics.  Dietrich was cast in this film from relative obscurity (she had been doing musicals in Berlin and Vienna at the time in increasingly larger roles), and it made enough money for Paramount (the US distributor of the film) for them to sign Dietrich to a long-term star contract, primarily in hopes that she could do for their studio what Greta Garbo was doing for MGM (the two two stars have had so much gossip written about their relationship it's impossible to tell truth-from-fiction...they were either one-time lovers or rivals that claimed they'd never met).  She would come to equal Garbo, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Let's discuss this week the one film this month we'll talk about where Dietrich is speaking her native language of German, The Blue Angel.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses primarily not on Dietrich, but on Oscar-winner (and the bigger star at the time) Emil Jannings, playing a stuffy professor named Immanuel Rath, who one night goes to the club the Blue Angel, which allegedly his male students (who mock him mercilessly but also fear him) have been sneaking off to and are obsessed with a headliner there named Lola Lola (Dietrich).  Rath becomes infatuated with Lola, slowly-but-steadily making rasher decisions (including spending the night with her), which his students find out about, and stage a huge rebellion against him, now basically blackmailing him collectively, which causes him to have his job threatened.  Rather than leave Lola, he marries her and quits his job, but they cannot remain happy.  Lola is not interested in monogamy, and he is consumed by jealousy as he sees her lusted at every night by adoring men, including other men in the troupe who try to bed her.  Humiliated, and dependent on a woman who doesn't respect him for money, he takes a job as a clown in the club, eventually being seen by his former students & fellow professors as a fallen man, all the while his wife is cheating right in front of him (literally, she's kissing another man) while he's trying to make money onstage.  He leaves the club, sneaks back to his classroom, and dies.

The story of The Blue Angel, a fallen man who gives up everything for the love of a woman he doesn't understand, has been told countless times in film history, and I suspect even in 1930 wasn't "new."  The first 45 minutes of this movie, to be honest, is kind of a snore, with Jannings' professor a giant killjoy and the movie not really sure whether to make him truly absurd or just bemused (they fail in the balance there).  The back half is much better, and the tragedy works because Jannings plays his gruff teacher not as someone that automatically invites sympathy (he is, in the beginning, too stuffy & self-righteous), but instead as someone who tried to see the world, but couldn't understand it.  From a modern lens, he is very much a fool, and one who tries to tame a woman who has no interest in being tamed (a look we don't really celebrate in men anymore, and for good reason), but it's hard not to pity him in the final moments, not because of his jealousy, but because he has no concept of what love is, and that is his downfall.

Dietrich has a smaller role here than you'd assume, and were this released today, we'd have a serious argument about whether this is "supporting or lead" in terms of category fraud.  She's good though.  Dietrich was not yet on solid ground with her onscreen persona (that'd take a few more years), but you can see the shock & awe of her here.  Sexy, perfect bone structure, and that sultry baritone already prepackaged, she steals pretty much every scene she's in (and Jannings is good in this movie, so that's not an easy task), playing her character not as someone who is intentionally cruel, but who has such a different worldview than Jannings, she can't comprehend how much more serious he is about her than she is about him.  It's a tough part to play, making Lola not be a true villain (which I think the script wants her to be), but Dietrich is capable in her first major role.

Saturdays with the Stars: Marlene Dietrich

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we focused on Gregory Peck, an actor who today is most known for a single role (his Oscar-winning turn as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird) but was the star of multiple westerns throughout the 1950's.  This month, we're going to include the one actress we'll profile this year, and for those that aren't familiar with her work, she might come as a surprise for a series about cinematic cowboys.  However, her association with the genre included one outright classic of the format, and the success of that film led her briefly to become one of the major headliners of the genre.  This month's star is Marlene Dietrich.

Born in Berlin in 1901 to a wealthy German family, Dietrich initially wished to be a concert violinist but an injury ended those dreams.  Eventually she found herself studying drama, and working as a chorus girl & background player in a number of German movies.  This led her to meet the man who would change her life, Josef von Sternberg, who would direct her in the international smash hit The Blue Angel, which brought both actress & director to the attention of Hollywood.  Paramount, desperate for an answer to MGM's Greta Garbo, thought that she would be a fine way to capitalize on the success the rival studio had seen with the Swedish actress, and between 1930 and 1935, Dietrich & Von Sternberg made seven movies together.  Not all of them were successes (particularly the last two), but they are collectively considered to be some of the best movies of the era (Shanghai Express is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen), and cemented both of their legends.

You might be wondering why I picked Dietrich for a series about actors in westerns.  After all, when you think of Dietrich's celebrity it's either focused on the seven films she made with Von Sternberg or her enduring singing & cabaret career that would extend all the way into the 1970's.  Dietrich, though, would become an unlikely figure in westerns due to 1939's Destry Rides Again, which revived her career after several flops, and made her a figure in the genre opposite Jimmy Stewart, with whom she reportedly had an affair.  After this, the studio continued to put Dietrich in westerns against John Wayne of all people.  It might shock people who didn't know this (I didn't know this until a few years ago), but Wayne & Dietrich, about as polar opposite as you can get for star personas in the Classical Hollywood era, were not only in multiple films together, but offscreen they had a passionate love affair, all of which we'll talk about this month in addition to the gargantuan career Dietrich had outside of the genre (we picked her for a five-Saturday month for a reason!).

OVP: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Film: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Stars: Cantinflas, David Niven, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Newton
Director: Michael Anderson
Oscar History: 8 nominations/5 wins (Best Picture*, Director, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score*, Adapted Screenplay*, Costume Design, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

As I start to work my way through my "Quarantine To Do List," one of the tasks I'm working on is finally starting to make my DVR manageable again.  Right now, if I had to guess, there have to be at least 70 Oscar Viewing Project films on that thing (not to mention three episodes of Westworld, which I tend to stockpile as I genuinely like the show, but it can be convoluted if you don't have a few in a row to watch), and I keep putting more random films on there, so it's high-time I start conquering it (like many of you, I suspect, I'm working on a lot of projects that I've put off for a while, and this is a big one for me).  We're going to kick off this clean-up (expect a few truly random movies to be headed your way in the next couple of months) with a bit of a bang-the rare (for me) unseen Best Picture winner, Around the World in 80 Days.

(Spoilers Ahead) When I mentioned that I was seeing Around the World in 80 Days to a friend yesterday, their reaction was one of "eek!" more than anything else, as the Jules Verne adaptation is notoriously one of Oscar's least-celebrated top prize recipients.  The film itself is, in fact, very long, which is rarely a good sign for a movie that enjoys a bad reputation.  Essentially, for those who didn't read the book as a kid, the story is about Phileas Fogg (Niven), a punctual English gentlemen with something of a stubborn streak, and his manservant Passepartout (Cantinflas), whom he hires for an expedition around the world.  Fogg has made a bet with men at his club that he can circumnavigate the globe in under 80 days, and as he continues all of the United Kingdom begin tracking his expeditions.  Along the way he and Passepartout get into a series of adventures, including bullfighting, riding an elephant, and a train robbery.  They are accompanied for much of the trip by Princess Aouda (MacLaine, in an unfortunate case of brown-face from my favorite actress) and Inspector Fix (Newton), who is determined to prove that Phileas Fogg has robbed the Bank of England, but is continually thwarted in his efforts to arrest him.

Around the World in 80 Days isn't as bad as its reputation, but it's not a good movie & it's laughable in the same year as The Searchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Written on the Wind, The Wrong Man, The Ten Commandments, and Giant that the Academy chose this of all movies to be its standard-bearer.  It's fun to watch, even if it's not funny at all, and I think it's meant to be.  At the time Cantinflas (who would get a Golden Globe win but no Oscar nomination, a rarity for a Best Picture winner) was a huge star in Mexican cinema, and was enjoying here his breakthrough into mainstream American film, but so much of his humor is based on either physical tricks that aren't particularly funny in hindsight (mistreatment of animals is a bigger part of this movie than you'd think, and it feels kind of icky in hindsight) or trading on racial humor.  I get what he's trying to do here, but it doesn't work sixty years after the fact, and no one else in the movie, not even Niven or MacLaine (both very good actors with the right material), are able to make much of the film.

The enjoyment in hindsight are the cameos and the sets.  Producer Mike Todd filmed a lot of the movie on-location, so you literally see scenes across the world that are actually quite wonderful.  Despite the story being a snore, the set designs are fun (especially in Spain & Japan), and the cinematography is expansive & lovely; I rarely have this complaint, but the only thing you can really fault the cinematography for is a lack of closeups.  It explores expansive vistas & makes sure that Todd got his money's worth.  The other Oscar nominations are less inviting.  Costumes are fine, but repetitive & not breaking new ground, while the editing is lacking (three hours without enough laughs is a struggle).  And the score is reliant on too many stereotypes and cliches when it comes to the music of the country they're in to really be interesting.

But the movie is nearly saved by the sheer volume of cameos.  This was one of the first films to employ a plethora of "guest appearances" from major stars of the era, and it keeps the otherwise humdrum plot ticking as you play "I Spy."  Some of these figures aren't as famous today, so it's a bit of a guessing game, but if you know even the remotest bit about classic Hollywood, you'll recognize a few figures.  Chief among my favorites were Marlene Dietrich as a saloon girl, Frank Sinatra as a piano player, Buster Keaton playing a train conductor, and John Carradine as an easily-vexed colonel, but there's enough here to keep you intrigued even while the movie slogs.  The film was a massive hit, proved Mike Todd a boy wonder (who was cut down in his prime), but it's really only the cameos and the location shooting that should be celebrated here.  After a long wait, I can confirm this is no "best" picture.

Stage Fright (1950)

Film: Stage Fright (1950)
Stars: Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Watching an Alfred Hitchcock classic for the first time is a bit of a thrill.  So many of my favorite movies of Hollywood's Golden Age were made by the great director, the man who brought us The Birds and Psycho and Vertigo, that seeing one of his movies that I don't have completely memorized is a bit of a bizarre circumstance, as you almost feel like you should be quoting alongside it.  That was the case with Stage Fright, which with its big-name stars Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich, seems like the sort of movie that I should be going at verbatim.  Still, I had never seen Stage Fright until last night in my quest to find more room on my DVR (this 31 Days of Oscar is really helping me cross a lot of pictures off my list, and get eliminated things that have been lounging about my Genie for months), and so I decided that it was a cold Wednesday night and perhaps I should give it a go.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film may not be what one instantly thinks of when you list Hitchcock's greatest movies, but it is definitely one that feels like it should be listed amongst his finest.  After all, we have a legend like Marlene Dietrich, playing a cabaret-style actress Charlotte Inwood, in the lead.  Dietrich, known for her onscreen enigma and glamour, is the perfect star for a Hitchcock picture, and indeed she lives up to the hype.  Her Charlotte, a woman we assume throughout most of the movie has killed her husband, is a great Hitchcockian creation.  She frequently is flirting and romancing pretty much everyone onscreen, and there's a sexuality to her that is undeniable.  Dietrich, over forty when this picture arrived, still has that intense glamour that radiates in every scene and in many ways reminded me of Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars so many years later (who was clearly borrowing from her), what with her bored attitude to the stage and those who worshiped her behind it.

If only the rest of the film had been able to equal Dietrich's allure and magnetism, but alas the film's remainder is in the hands of the lesser Jane Wyman.  Wyman is a celebrated actress, admittedly, with a number of fans in different corners of the cinema but I will admit right now I have yet to find the role that really sells me on the Oscar winner.  Her Eve is not going to be that performance for me, it turns out, even though I had high hopes that Hitchcock would have found some way to make her work.  Playing a frumpy busybody trying to clear her friend/crush Jonathan Cooper (Todd), her motivations and accents are all over the place.  She's playing the daughter of Alastair Sim and Sybil Thorndike, quite possibly the two most British human beings ever to grace a movie screen, and yet she can't bother to have an accent to match her parents and almost the entire surrounding cast.  Plus, she constantly is falling in and out of love and can't sell her character's naivete/newfound moxie and it feels like she's re-approaching the character in every different scene.  Dietrich, who disliked Wyman immensely, made a comment about how Wyman "looks too much like the victim to play the heroine," which may have been catty but it's spot-on-Wyman makes Eve seem like someone just waiting for her detective boyfriend to figure out what to do next, rather than taking on the task herself.

Still, no single actor can weigh down a Hitchcock picture completely, and while this film doesn't have the excellent and iconic scenes of say, Cary Grant running from a plane or Janet Leigh taking a stressful shower, there's still so much to celebrate visually, particularly the brilliant lighting on Dietrich or the way that Alastair Sim fiendishly cuts his own hand to try and incriminate Dietrich.  I loved the dotty old woman played by Thorndike (it's rare that Hitchcock has humor this opaque, but it works), and Richard Todd's Jonathan seems to borrow just a hint from the Hitchcock's "queer" character file, enough so that I wondered if there might have been some holdover from Rope.  The mystery itself may be easy to solve for modern audiences, but I imagine that audiences at the time were baffled about the flashback, where we had a misleading narrator in Jonathan (it was unprecedented at the time for a flashback to feature a lie).  Overall I had an excellent time, even if Wyman deterred the film from becoming a classic.

Those are my thoughts on this movie-how about yours?  Who has seen the Hitchcock thriller Stage Fright?  What are some missing holes you have in Hitch's filmography?  Is Ordinary Smith or Chubby Bannister the better moniker?  And what is the role that will finally convince me to love Jane Wyman?

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 2

Yesterday we started in on the AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, chronicling my favorite performances and the biggest missing parts of their respective canons.  We'll continue on with the next eight women on the list right now (if you haven't read the first half, make sure to click here for a rundown).

9. Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

Oscar Nominations: Dietrich would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career, for Morocco, but would lose to Marie Dressler in Min and Bill.
Probably Best Known Today For: This is one of those cases where I just don't think Dietrich is known today (aside from being in the "Vogue" lyrics) to the general populace.  Dietrich's face is likely recognizable and highly distinctive, but her work and films are pretty much non-existent to today's audience, and they probably confuse her with Garbo (which is a pity, but this is the "being honest" portion of these write-ups-if you don't know her or haven't seen one of her movies, get thyself to your Netflix queue and put off watching another season of a television show and watch a movie...or better yet, share your love of her in the comments!).
My Favorite Performance: I have tragically never seen any of her work in the Josef von Sternberg films, so I will go with her wonderful extended cameo in Touch of Evil, where she gets to say those immortal words "he was some kind of man...what does it matter what you say about people?"
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: So many of the von Sternberg classics, chief amongst them would have to be The Blue Angel, which really made Dietrich into a major star.

10. Joan Crawford (1904-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crawford would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her first in Mildred Pierce.
Probably Best Known Today For: Faye Dunaway's portrayal of her in the camp classic Mommie Dearest.  More people associate Crawford with wire hangers than anything in her extremely long cinematic career.
My Favorite Performance: Crawford was actually quite a fine actor, never better than in the classic soap opera Mildred Pierce, where she played the most devoted of mothers to the daughter from hell (a bit of an inverse to what Christina wrote about her in her infamous biography).  Deliciously, Crawford's longtime nemesis Bette Davis was originally supposed to have the part, but turned it down; Crawford went on to win her only Academy Award for the role.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen almost all of the iconic Crawford films (Grand Hotel, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), so I'll probably go with her other two Oscar-nominated films: Possessed and Sudden Fear.

11. Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Stanwyck would receive four Oscar nominations in her career, but never actually won any of them.  She would receive an Honorary Oscar, however, in 1982 for her body of cinematic work.
Probably Best Known Today For: It depends on whom you ask.  If I'm saying my generation, Stanwyck is not a particularly well-known star, but she did have enormous success in the 1980's so the generation a bit older than me would surely say her work in The Thorn Birds.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to go cliche two times in a row here.  There's no beating Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and there's no beating Barbara Stanwyck as the scheming femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.  Stanwyck owns the screen in this performance-frequently trading that biting wit that she shared so well in a movie like The Lady Eve in for a crackling, cruel evil.  Spellbinding for anyone who loves noir.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have never seen her work in the classic King Vidor weepie Stella Dallas, nor have I seen her in her acclaimed television performance in The Thorn Birds.

12. Claudette Colbert (1903-1996)

Oscar Nominations: Colbert would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her classic It Happened One Night in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Those gams of hers.  Seriously-you'd be hard-pressed to find a more famous scene in pre-Golden Age cinema than Claudette Colbert lifting her skirt and showing her legs while hitchhiking with Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: Most definitely her work in It Happened One Night.  Few people can easily make chemistry look so effortless and smitten as Colbert and Gable do in this film, and this is really one of the high points in the romantic comedy genre.  If you haven't seen it, make sure to add it to the top of your To Do list.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With all due respect to Ms. Colbert, nothing else in her filmography really compares to her work in the Frank Capra classic, at least in terms of critical acclaim. I would probably go with one of her sexually suggestive Cecil B. DeMille roles, since Colbert would always be a bit more innocent in the years that followed onscreen (perhaps 1934's Cleopatra, a Best Picture nominee).

13. Grace Kelly (1929-1982)

Oscar Nominations: Kelly would receive two Oscar nominations during her career, winning in 1954 for The Country Girl.
Probably Best Known Today For: Almost certainly best known today for her romantic relationship with Prince Rainier of Monaco, and as his consort of over 25 years.  Grace Kelly has also become incredibly well-known as the ideal of pristine beauty and poise, and is one of the most emulated stars of her era.
My Favorite Performance: I'm not wild about Grace Kelly as an actress (as a celebrity, she has few equals), but far-and-away my favorite bits of her work are in Hitchcock's films, particularly Rear Window, where she's the perfect untouchable beauty for a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart to obsess over.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Kelly has one of (if not the) shortest filmographies of any of these 25 women, and I've seen most of the classics (High Noon, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, The Country Girl), so I'm going to have to go with her other Oscar-nominated performance in Mogambo for my selection.

14. Ginger Rogers (1911-1995)

Oscar Nominations: Rogers would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career (for Kitty Foyle), though she had the good sense to win for it.  This was the first year that they didn't announce the winners ahead of time, and so she didn't know she was about to top Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, Numbers 1 and 2 on AFI's list.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her longtime dancing partnership with Fred Astaire, which kept the champagne flowing at RKO and made her a fortune, even if they both mildly resented the fact that the public demanded them be together (both would enjoy long careers outside of their ten films together).
My Favorite Performance: You can't really beat Top Hat or Swing Time, and I've always felt picking between the two to be a bit of a chore.  I'd probably go with a slight tip toward Swing Time for Rogers work, though I think Top Hat may be the better picture.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have stunningly never seen Rogers' 1933 classic 42nd Street, where she plays "Anytime Annie" (and which made her a star).

15. Mae West (1893-1980)

Oscar Nominations: West, much like Marilyn Monroe (who clearly borrowed a bit from her look), would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being synonymous with sex and sexual come-ons.  Her "why don't you come up and see me sometime" is a pick-up line for the ages, and no drag queen's oeuvre is complete without donning Mae West's platinum blonde hair and bodacious plunging necklines.
My Favorite Performance: None of the Mae West pictures (which are very few, I must confess) that I have seen are particularly good, but her real triumph was always being Mae West.  Some of these women are on her because they are great actresses or because they are great movie stars.  Mae West is on here because she is one of Hollywood's best ever celebrities, which is a performance unto itself.  If I had to pick a film, it would be She Done Him Wrong (she's by far the best and only reason to see the movie, and it stars Cary Grant so that's saying something), a film at the peak of her fame and one that likely kept the lights on at Paramount.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Definitely Klondike Annie, generally considered to be her finest work and another film from her early-mid thirties period of peak fame.

16. Vivien Leigh (1913-1967)

Oscar Nominations: Leigh would receive just two Oscar nominations in her career, but boy howdy were they earned for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire (she won for both).  It's hard to imagine an actor ever winning a pair of Oscars and being more deserving.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, one of those rare classics that keeps its luster decade-after-decade, and her role at its center keeps her permanently in the public consciousness.
My Favorite Performance: Leigh is one of my all-time favorite actors, and part of me could just sit here going on-and-on about her brilliance in Gone with the Wind or how anyone who wants to spend a couple of hours watching a forgotten masterpiece should give Waterloo Bridge (I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!) a shot, but you cannot beat Blanche DuBois.  This is, in my opinion, a tie for the greatest performance ever captured on film (oddly enough, the other greatest performance ever captured on film is also in this movie, which is why I forgive myself for a tie).  A Streetcar Named Desire is the reason I first fell in love with the cinema, and will always be my favorite Leigh performance.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Her two Oscar-winning films are really the reasons she's on this list, but Leigh did make a number of other pictures, and probably the most notable of the ones I'm missing is The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

And there we have our middle eight on the list.  We'll finish up the list tomorrow, including getting to the lady that inspired this countdown, Ms. Lauren Bacall (and I have a couple of other articles in mind before we close out this actress love-in), but first, there are eight brilliant women listed above-which is your favorite performer, what are your favorite performances of them, and most importantly, what film are you going to see next that stars one of them?  Share in the comments!

Supporting Actress Smackdown 1990

For those of you who love the wonders of actressing on the edges, Stinkylulu's Supporting Actress Smackdowns need no introduction. This month, Stinkylulu tackled the lovely ladies of 1990, and yours truly is one the panelists. Make sure to head over there and discuss Oda Mae Brown, Marietta Fortune, Karen Hill, Myra Langtry, and Stands With a Fist (seriously, has there ever been such variety in the names of the supporting ladies?)

I, who have to admit I wasn't greatly impressed with the film output of 1990, will readily proclaim that my favorite of the ladies was Ms. Annette Bening, turning in one of her (to date) three Oscar-nominated performances. Bening's delicious con artistl in The Grifters was a true delight, and a nice throwback to the supporting actresses who have populated the film noir genre (my personal favorite film genre). When I first started looking into Bening's perf, I kind of figured that noir, like most genre pieces, would have largely been ignored in this category. Boy was I wrong! Roles as diverse as Angela Lansbury's floozy maid in Gaslight to Cathy Moriarty's childlike bride in Raging Bull have been recognized by the little golden guy. Winners, as Bening illustrates, are far less common; only Claire Trevor's lush mistress in Key Largo has come out on top of the category.

And yet, as any Oscar watcher knows, nitpicking must ensue when discussing Oscar's rather fickle choices. And when it comes to film noir supporting actresses, Oscar's dismissal of Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil was one of his biggest mistakes. Granted, 1958 was a year filled with snub miscalculations (Jimmy Stewart and Orson Welles were not included amongst the Best Actor lineup), but Dietrich's snub is particularly grating because she does so much with so little screentime. She can't be onscreen for more than ten minutes, but she flies to mind when I think about the film. The ladies of The Grifters (particularly Anjelica Huston) seem to have borrowed a bit from the world-weary Tanya; each has a history that is alluded to in the film more than actually viewed, leaving the plot largely in the hands of the male protagonists. Dietrich's whisky-worn vocal timbre indents each line-reading, and her eyes and eyebrow raises with Welles show that she's the only true equal to Hank Quinlan in the film. While Charlton Heston may be able to one-up Quinlan due to circumstance, Dietrich's Tanya is his equal, and therefore her place at the stunning conclusion of the tale seems fitting.

Unlike Touch of Evil, Bening's Myra is not the equal to Huston's Lilly Dillon, but she is definitely her only challenge in the film. The real genius to Bening's performance is that one is never quite sure how much this woman is capable of; whilst we know that Huston has a lot of tricks up her sleave, the enigmatic, seemingly bubbleheaded Myra doesn't show her cards, leaving the audience and her co-grifters guessing what she would do for success. Sometimes this is a bit problematic (at times, I wonder if even Bening herself knew Myra's intentions), but as a whole this is a wildly entertaining performance, and a grand counterpart to Huston's epic turn.

I personally would have handed both Dietrich and Bening Oscars in their respective years, but what about you? Head over to the Smackdown and voice your opinions on the actresses of 1990's edges!