Play it again, Sam.

For some people, at least half of their brain is made up of song lyrics. Others are able to spew poetry into a conversation, however unnecessary or unappreciated. Then there's us, the classic film nuts, who mouth the words along with Atticus Finch no matter how many times we've heard him tell Scout the secret to getting along with folks. It's as if we're always on constant vigil, waiting for the opportunity to tell some poor unsuspecting "my dear" what it is exactly that we don't give a damn about. But some of these little gems just fit any given situation so well, we can't help ourselves. Here's my top 10. Feel free to confess your own.

(Caveat emptor: I never claimed any of these were normal or made sense). 

#1. "Here we are, Sunset and Camden!" Singing in the Rain

I announce this almost every time I pull into a parking place, and always in my best sing-songy Debbie Renolds' voice.

#2. "Turn right here left!" The Long Trailer

You can imagine all the times that proclamation comes in handy.

#3. "No you ain't! You're not gonna show your bosom before three o'clock!" Gone with the Wind

#4. "Y for him, ie for me." Adam's Rib.
In this comedy courtroom classic, Spencer and Katherine's nick names for each other are Pinky and Pinkie, and because I frequently have to correct someone on how to spell my name, the "ie for me" part is pertinent. 

#5. "I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative." Dark Victory
How do you ever order anything without thinking, (hopefully not saying) that?

#6. "A party indeed." Deception
Never are we more in love with a bigger jerk that when Claude Rains busts in on that party.

 

#7. "Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?" All About Eve
The perfect answer to those who ruthlessly hound me to try match.com.

#8. "Your father doesn't know beans about piggy backing!" It Happened One Night.
I'm telling you, you find reasons to say these things.

#9. "You know we got rats in the cellar?" What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.
Well, do you?

 #10. "Come on Dover! Move your bloomin' ass!!" My Fair Lady.
The only way to survive rush hour traffic is to scream this at the top of your lungs. Try it.


Those are mine! What are yours?

What Makes Sammy Run?

It occurred to me today, in one of those stupidly obvious epiphanies, that the actual term "fan" translates into "fanatic." I hadn't thought of it that way before, but yeah, I guess that pretty accurately sums up the devotion of a Red Sox die hard, or more pertinently in this case, a classic movie fan(atic). So it stands to general good reason that as a Bette Davis fan(atic), I would be inclined to take her advice on what is or is not a good book. In her Dick Cavett interview, when shy and semi-flirtatious Dick asks her what's the best book on Hollywood in her opinion, she replies with Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run. "That is the best book," she muses, in Edith Head shaped glasses and hilarious black go-go boots, "to describe what those incredible men that we worked for, that seemed to us so inartistic, and so lacking in knowledge to the art part of making of movie, they had something, you don't know what it was, it was sort of a magic, gambling intuitive thing. That has gone." 

That would be my cue to scurry onto Amazon and hit quick ship.

Amazing book, y'all. It's captures so articulately the true "business" of the studio-era Hollywood. These men weren't just making movies, they were buying and trading property, (aka people), gambling on rights to stories, ruthlessly shoving people off the ladder on their way to the top, stealing, conniving, and creating the most priceless couple of decades in motion picture history that we will ever see. 

Had to do a book plug here. A-ma-zing. Good call, Bette. You never disappoint me, dahling. 

What Makes Sammy Run? 

What if?

All the world loves a good what-if. What if the South had won Gettysburg, what if Kennedy hadn't been riding in a convertible, what if Scarlett had never gone to that darn picnic at the Wilkes'. Lucky for us, we're still privy to some of the close-call what-ifs and decisions made in classic Hollywood. Some are of the "well that would have been interesting" variety, some the "thank God that didn't happen," but in either and all cases, they're indeed fun propositions to speculate. 

The first on our list of close-calls was the search for every one's favorite homesick little terrier lover, Dorothy Gale. It seemed only natural that the lead part in The Wizard of Oz would go to the smash hit child star of the day, a face audiences would be familiar with, would draw crowds, and add that certain--cuteness. Dimples and quarter socks and tap shoes, oh my! Instead of Judy Garland, or Frances Ethel Gumm, we almost got....

Shirley Temple. Gee wilikers! Think what a change in the footprint of 1939  that have would have made. Instead of the childlike (not childish) allegory that so many millions of people in hundreds of languages have grown up with, we would have gotten--cute. Shirley's little patent-leathered feet could certainly have kept up with Ray Bolger, but I think she would have enjoyed the adventure too much. Judy was just mature enough to be startled and a little bit scared by the craziness of this Technicolor land. Shirley's innocence would have come across as either Alice in Wonderland-terrified or Charlie in the Chocolate Factory-delighted. Neither one would have been right. And what's worse, we would have lost that song that almost didn't make it through the rushes--"Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Think of that! "Animal Crackers in my Soup" just doesn't cut the mustard. 

Then there's this close call with ridiculousness. Clark Gable as Tarzan, a role that the whole jungle is grateful ultimately swung to Johnny Weissmuller. Even if every straight female born after 1930 wouldn't have balked much at seeing Rhett in a loin clothe, we know that wouldn't have worked. Denied the role because producers didn't think he was muscular enough, Gable feigning an ignorant jungle-boy dialect just seems odd. The whole Tarzan franchise seems odd to me, even with Johnny, but whatever. Me writer, you reader, what do I know?

And what about Bette Davis as Rose Sayer in The African Queen? She was considered for that role before Katherine Hepburn. I'm usually all over the idea of Bette in any role, absolutely, put her in! Out with the old, in with the Bette! But honestly, would anybody have bought the idea of pistol-packing, face-slapping Bette as a primly legalistic missionary? And there's no way, NO WAY, she would have fallen for anybody with the pitiful grammar of Charlie Allnut. Nope. She probably would have slapped him for being such a sissy about the leaches too. That wouldn't have worked.

Finally, our nearest brush with disaster, Claudette Colbert as Margo Channing. And if she hadn't broken her back, she would have been the star in All About Eve, not Bette. Maybe it's because I've seen The Egg and I too many times, or maybe I haven't been able to get the image of her hitchhiking with Gable in It Happened One Night out my head, but Colbert was just too flirty to be Channing.  She could have looked the part, but behind every viciously spat-out line, there would have been the suspicion behind it that she was just kidding. I don't see her charging around her living room, gnawing on chocolate and Bill Sampson, do you? There was only one person who could be that something-called-a-temperament, and that was Bette.






So I guess with all the possible what-if's in Hollywood, it was us, the movie lovers, who have gotten the last laugh.

Stellllaaaaa!

We've all said it, even when we didn't know where the reference came from. At some point in our life, all of us have put both of our hands up to our head, leaned back in drunkenly dramatic agony and hollered, "Stelllllaaaa!!"

It's the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, and poor Stanley's lost his woman again. It's the typical girl meets loser boy from the hood, boy marries girl, moves girl to the hood, girl's crazy sister comes to live with them, boy rapes sister, girl vows to leave him story. But as with so many of these fascinating movies of the bygone age, the story does more than to simply play out a tragic scenario in front of the camera. It instead reveals something to the audience, something about themselves.

On the surface, Vivian Leigh's Blanche DuBois is the sympathetic character, the feeble sister who we know from listening between the lines has suffered a great deal back home at Belle Reve. We know there's been some scandal at the high school where she  taught English. Parents are angry, she's been driven out of town, and a "boy" is dead. She is twitchy, insecure, obnoxious, and utterly broken.

Then there's Stanley Kowalski, a 27 year-old Brando who's most significantly positive trait is the ability to make a sweat-soaked t-shirt sexy. We know he's had a rough start too, overly sensitive about his Polish origins and a little too eager to throw around his feeble intelligence of the Napoleonic code, perhaps the only bit of trivia he knows. He's too rough, too loud, just as insecure as Blanche, and disgustingly cruel.

Yet the smallest part in the movie is also one of the more complex and realistically heartbreaking. Stella, played on screen by Kim Hunter, provides a startling and upsetting insight into a uniquely female condition. The first time we are introduced to her character, she's in a bowling alley, watching her husband play. When Blanche arrives, Stanley has started a hootenanny of a brawl with some of the other men, and chairs and salty language are both flying. When Blanche asks Stella which one is Stanley, Stella visibly blushes proudly, points and says, "There he is, over there. The one causing all the raucous."

 As his character develops, Stella's deepens further. There is absolutely nothing to see in this guy, and yet there she is, sniveling after him, even when his aggression almost causes her to lose a baby.

This is the character we mourn for. The quiet, mousy, ex-debutante who has become so hypnotized by Bad-Boy Attraction that she's even willing to sacrifice her sister's sanity.

Isn't this the kind of stuff the movies teach us? It's so subtle that we could almost miss it. Blanche getting hauled away to the Funny Farm is probably the best thing that could have happened to her. But Stella is a willing prisoner here with Stanley, and it's pitifully obvious that no matter how many times she resolutely runs upstairs to spend the night with the neighbors, she's only one "Stella!" away from being lured back in. Sometimes movies are entertainment, sometimes lessons, sometimes warnings, and sometimes all three.
 Streetcar is a triple threat.

Bette the Queen Bee

As anyone who knows me at all knows, yesterday was a bit of a holiday for me, a day I anticipated and sacrificed a substantial amount of time and sleep to fully savor and enjoy. Yesterday was Bette Davis day on TCM. Ode to joy! There's only one woman who could get me up at four o'clock in the morning, miss my morning run to fiddle endlessly with the VCR/DVD recorder, and spend the next 18 hours as a complete vegetable, and that's Bette. This was not just a day in front of the boob tube. This, was an event.

There are so many things I love about Bette from her personal life: her resilience, bawdiness, perfectionism, her childhood bearing striking resemblance to mine. But yesterday I didn't want to focus on any of those things. Yesterday it was all about the acting. And after now proudly checking moving #48 off my Bette-Bucket list, I can only say one thing. 

Dang, she's good.

I'm so fed up with the style in Hollywood today, that we as the audience shouldn't know that the actors are acting, it should all look effortless and completely realistic. Well bull pucky, I can see real life every day, the movies are supposed to be entertainment! And entertain she does. There are mannerisms in each of her characters that are hypnotizing, not the naturalness of the actresses own idiosyncrasies, but ones she, (and I'm sure her directors) developed to give full breath and bones to each character. 

 The first one streaming through the wee small hours of yesterday morning is Irving Rapper's 1942 Now Voyager. Bette is uber-ugly Aunt Charlotte, the caterpillar-browed and chunky late child of her suffocating mother. Charlotte is on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown, and more than any other gesture, it is her hands that do the acting. Mama Vale, played by Gladys Cooper, is the first on the scene to draw our attention to the hands in this movie--she is ringing them compulsively as the first scene opens and she is bulldozing the idea of Charlotte being, um...slightly dissatisfied in her stifling life with Mother. Later in the same scene, we see Charlotte's hands caught in the same obsessive habit, not only revealing how close she is to a total freak-out, but also how far her mother has gone in molding her daughter into a carbon copy of her own miserable self. (Spoiler alert: Charlotte's hands aren't doing anything but sexily holding cigarettes by the end of the movie. Tootles to Mama Vale). 

Next up is William Wyler's 1939 Jezebel, a achievement unfortunately eclipsed by Gone with the Wind blowing in that same year. In the pivotal and now infamous red dress scene,  Henry Fonda aka Preston Dillard seditiously forces Julie to stay at the virginal white Olympus Ball when she's (by her own choice), wearing red. It seemed like a good idea at the time, a "statement" against the legalism of the deep south, but now Julie is quite understandably mortified and wants to go home. Pres forces her to stay and dance with him, and we're all shocked at his horrific cruelty. But, hate to break it to ya Hank, it's not his icy blank face that conveys his un-chivalric behavior. It's Bette's arms. From the second he says, "Shall we?" and starts lugging her around the floor, her arm goes completely stiff and unresponsive. When the band stops playing she tenses it so hard that we're sure she's going to make a break for it. All the embarrassment and anger and damaged pride is all bottled up in those arms.

Finally there's Juarez, with Bette playing the Empress Carlotta in one of the best "look-out-I'm-going-mad" scenes ever to flash Hollywood. Tell you what, hell hath no fury like an Empress chewing out Napoleon for letting her Emperor husband die at the hands of Mexican nationals. Yikes! But it's amazing to watch. Any Davis fan has seen fire-breathing, nostril's flaring side of their icon a million times, but this lashing is so passionate, so truly ferocious, if I had been Claude Rains taking that, I would have split. 




She was right, what Bette said in her interview with Dick Cavett. Acting should be a little bit bigger, a little larger than life. And Bette my dear, you were.

Something has gone wrong.

A terrible thing happened to me the other day, during a late night coffee shop conversation with one of my friends. She's my best friend, actually, an Audrey Hepburn fan, a friend I have taken for granted all these years as being at least reasonably educated in the weird and wonderful realm of old Hollywood. Yet here I was, me with the latte froth mustache, looking shocked into the eyes of my befuddled friend. 

I had made reference in the conversation to someone I knew as having "Bette Davis" eyes, and my Audrey Friend said the unthinkable.

"Who?"
"What do you mean who?" 
"Bette Davis. I haven't heard that name before. She a model?" 
"Are you kidding? Margo Channing, Jezebel, Baby Jane for cryin' out loud?!"

Nope.


What happened? When did Big Mama's Road House Adventure take the place of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Why are people my age ok with this?!


In the words of Sally Field's Mama Gump, "There must be somethin' can be done." Surely if young people, and even some quick-to-forget-nostalgia adults, watched these amazing movies, they would realize what they were missing. The great directing and superb acting isn't gone, we've just forgotten about it, hypnotized by in-your-face 3D and computer generated explosions. Those "improvements" in entertainment progress are really serving to distract us from the lack of story that we don't even come to expect anymore. 


Well you know what? I don't like that! I like a story that makes me think, I like actors to look like they're putting some work into it, not just living a regular life while a camera follows them around. I like soundtracks and costumes and set designs and lighting done by experts that know what they're doing and show off  a little bit. Don't you? 


Let's give these old movies some lovin'. They're every bit as good now as they were sixty or seventy years ago, let's make them our standard by which we judge good movies. That's what this blog is going to be about, remembering and appreciating quality so that maybe we won't be so willing to expect today's tripe as the best studios can do. 


So to get us started off, here's some of the best movies ever made, in a film compilation shown at the end of the Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios. This is the good stuff folk. That's all.