All About Eve, The Women & The Music Man

I went to the Castro twice during the last week in December.  On December 27, I saw All About Eve and The Women.  On December 29, I saw The Music Man.  I considered seeing the 2nd half of The Music Man double bill but at three hours with an intermission, I decided My Fair Lady was too long for that evening.  When I exited the theater, I was amazed at how many people were in line waiting to see My Fair Lady.  It was an 8 PM screening on a Monday night and the line went up Castro Street and turned around the corner at the Twin Peaks Tavern.

All About Eve starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter; with Gary Merrill, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Hugh Marlowe & Thelma Ritter; directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; (1950)
The Women starring Norma Shearer & Joan Crawford; with Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard & Joan Fontaine; directed by George Cukor; (1939)
The Music Man starring Robert Preston & Shirley Jones; with Buddy Hackett; directed by Morton DaCosta; (1962)

These are three all-time classics but I've only seen All About Eve previously.  In fact, I recall seeing at the Castro several years ago.

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I don't think there is much need to recount the plot of All About Eve.  Bette Davis is great in the role of Broadway star Margo Channing.  George Sanders (as the theater critic Addison DeWitt) is the center of attention in every scene he is in.

I've long known that All About Eve has a large following among gay men.  I assumed that George Sanders portraying Addison DeWitt as a bitter queen who uses Marilyn Monroe as a beard and Davis in full Queen Bitch mode were the attractions.  This was the first time I watched All About Eve looking for the hidden clues that Eve Harrington was a lesbian.

Toward the beginning of the film there is a party at Margo's apartment.  This is the party where Davis delivers her famous "Fasten your seat belts..." line.  As the party winds down & Margo erupts, she turns her drunken anger towards Eve who has yet to fully reveal her true intentions.  In front of the remaining guests, Margo announces she is going to bed.  Her boyfriend Bill (Gary Merrill) asks if she needs any help.  Margo responds "To put me to bed? Take my clothes off, hold my head, tuck me in, turn off the lights, tiptoe out?  Eve would. Wouldn't you, Eve?"  Eve softly says "If you'd like."  Margo responds emphatically "I wouldn't like."

I'm not sure if the preceding exchange implies that Margo is aware of Eve's sexual orientation.  It could be implied that Margo's assistant Birdie (Thelma Ritter) has picked up on it but I thought the inference is ambiguous.  The exchange is definitely odd but the audience must remember that Margo is three sheets to the wind by this point of the party.

There is a later scene which I found more convincing.  When Eve wins the lead role in Lloyd's play and Karen's misgivings become more pronounced, Eve makes a preemptive strike.  She has her "neighbor" call up Lloyd late at night and claim that Eve is hysterical.  Lloyd agree to come over immediately,  As the camera pans out, we see that Eve is standing beside the woman and she is anything but hysterical.  They share a knowing smile with each other and then walk back up the stairs with their arms around each other.  By this point, Eve has designs on Lloyd and the phone call is intended to get Lloyd over to Eve's place and drive a wedge between Lloyd and Karen.  However, the look between the two women and the way their arms are draped over each other imply they are more than just friendly neighbors.

The final scene also has some lesbian overtones.  Phoebe (who admits to DeWitt that that is not her real name) is a young fan of Eve.  She sneaks into Eve's apartment and falls asleep.  When Eve arrives home, she is upset to find a stranger in her home.  As the scene progresses, Eve seems more at ease.  The key aspect of this scene is to show Phoebe is to Eve and Eve was to Margo.  The cycle repeats with one manipulative actress displacing another.  Lost in that message is the decidedly sexual tone of Eve towards Phoebe.  Her pose on the couch and her leading questions are meant to invite Phoebe to spend the night without explicitly asking.

It's far from obvious that Eve is a lesbian.  I'm on the fence.  She makes a pass at Bill on screen and references are made to her enticing Lloyd from Karen and marrying Lloyd so her sexuality would appear to be a tool in achieving whatever her goals are..."gay or straight for pay" I guess.  Why couldn't she have been making overtures to Margo & the girl making the phone call to further her career?  The final scene does hint that her proclivity is towards same sex since she doesn't have much to gain by taking in Phoebe but perhaps like Margo, at some level she wants the audiences' adoration to be personal.  It is interesting watching the film from this perspective although it would be distracting for a film I had not previously seen.

I've seen All About Eve at least three time all the way through and I've caught portions of it on television probably another dozen or more times.  The film holds up exceedingly well to multiple viewings.  I think it is likely due to Joseph L. Mankiewicz's memorable dialogue.

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I've seen portions of The Women on television.  The Women was screened at the Castro on a beat up 35 mm print.  The ends of the reels were particularly damaged.  At times it was difficult for me to make out the dialogue.

Based on a play by Clare Booth Luce, a screenplay by Anita Loos and F. Scott Fitzgerald (uncredited), directed by George Cukor and with an all-star cast, The Women has a high pedigree.  The opening credit indicate what kind of film this will be.  The actresses images are preceded by images of animals:  Norma Shearer is a doe, Joan Crawford is a cheetah, Rosalind Russell is a black cat, Joan Fontaine is a sheep, Paulette Goddard is a fox, etc.

The Women is a farce that centers around Mary Haines (Norma Shearer).  Mary is upbeat and quite satisfied in her marriage when the film starts.  Her friend and cousin Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell) deliberately upsets her wedded bliss by sharing with Mary's friends some gossip she has heard at the spa.  Mary's husband Stephen is having an affair with department store perfume saleswoman named Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford).  To goose the situation, Sylvia sends Mary to the spa and recommends the manicurist who shared the gossip with her.

Crushed when she hears the rumor, Mary begins to suspect her husband of infidelity.  She is counseled by her mother (Lucile Watson) to ignore the gossip and take an extended trip to Bermuda with her.  The hope is that the rumor will die by the time she returns.

Rather than fade, it appears that Stephen & Crystal's affair has deepened.  Attending a fashion show with her friends, Mary spots Crystal in attendance.  Goaded by Sylvia, Mary confronts Crystal.  Rather than being contrite or embarrassed, Crystal is defiant and even suggests that she is comfortable with the status quo and threatens to steal Stephen outright unless Mary behaves herself.

Once again, Sylvia stirs up the scandal even more by indirectly getting Mary's confrontation with Crystal in the newspapers.  Humiliated, Mary decides to go to Reno to get a divorce.  She stays at a kind of dude ranch for married women fulfilling Nevada's residency requirements for divorce.

It was around this point that I realized I had seen a single male in the film.  Stephen is never seen and even his voice is never heard.  Not only was there not a single male speaking part, I didn't even see a single male extra.  The Women is about women whose identities are closely tied to their husbands (they all refer to themselves as "Mrs. Stephen Haines" or such) but the film never shows them interacting with men.  Like ellipsis in an Ozu film, we only see the effects of male-female interaction and we have to infer the actual interaction.

En route to Reno, Mary meets a whole slew of soon-to-be-divorcees including the oft married Countess De Lave (Mary Boland) and Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard) who is married but having an affair with Sylvia's husband.  When in Reno, Mary meets up with two of her "friends" from New York:  the shy Peggy Day (Joan Fontaine) and eventually Sylvia herself shows up.

Mary gets her divorce although she has second thoughts about it.  Stephen marries Crystal and couple of years pass.  Crystal is having an affair with the Countess' husband, Stephen is miserable, Mary & Sylvia are estranged while Crystal & Sylvia are best friends.  Eventually Mary learns of Stephen's unhappiness with Crystal and schemes to get him back.  Mary tricks Sylvia in to revealing Crystal's affair.  Mary then informs the Countess of the affair prompting her to plan another trip to Reno.  Crystal is ready to trade up from Stephen to Buck (the Countess' husband) but when informed that the divorce will leave Buck penniless, Crystal is resigned to the fact that she'll have to return to the perfume counter.  Crawford has the last word in the film; leaving the assembled women with this bon mot "By the way, there's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society...outside of a kennel."

Although The Women is a comedy, I found it horribly depressing.  These women are incredibly cruel to each other.  Mary, the one woman who refuses to get down and dirty with the crowd, triumphs in the end by using the same tactics have have waylayed her marriage.  Although their behavior was exaggerated for comic effect, The Women seemed to have just enough truth in it to be uncomfortable for me.  I'm not an expert on feminist issues in the 1930s but these characters were wealthy educated women who spent their time finding their next husband and undermining their so called frineds' marriages.  Even as satire, The Women is a sad commentary on what passed for the leisure activities of the wealthy.  That's not to say that I didn't laugh at the absurdity of some of the situations.

In my opinion, Rosalind Russell & Paulette Goddard had the most memorable roles.

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The Music Man features Robert Preston as Harry Hill, a con man/travelling salesman who pulls into River City, Iowa with the goal of conning the townspeople with the marching band scam.  Although he has no musical knowledge, he convinces the town to get behind his scheme to create a boys marching band.  Among his chief obstacles are the level-headed Marian the librarian (Shirley Jones), the susceptible to flattery mayor (Paul Ford) and his indescribable wife (Hermione Gingold who was also memorable as the grandmother in Gigi).  Gingold and Maurice Chevalier sang my favorite song from Gigi, "I Remember it Well."

The plot was predictable and at 2.5 hours, some of the songs fell a little flat.  I think the film version of The Music Man is faithful to the stage version but may have benefited from 30 minute of edits.  Among the my favorite musical numbers were "Rock Island", "Ya Got Trouble", "Shipoopi" (given a renewed interest due to an episode of The Family Guy) and of course "76 Trombones".

The difference between a good musical and a great musical is that there must be some pathos and empathy/sympathy with the characters.  Because they break into song & dance, a musical cannot achieve the same level of emotional investment from me as a drama or dramedy but the plot and acting have to carry some of the load.  I didn't get that feeling with The Music Man.  Preston was ok but it was the romance between Preston & Jones that never hooked me.  I just didn't believe that Marian would fall for him or that Hill wouldn't skip town with the money.

Buddy Hackett has a role as a former con man who helps Preston in River City.  "Shipoopi" is his big number.  A very young Ron Howard plays Marian's sullen younger brother.

I Wake Up Dreaming 2013 - 99 44/100% Noir

I saw 17 films at I Wake Up Dreaming 2013 which was held at the Roxie from May 10 to 23.  I Wake Up Dreaming is programmer Elliot Lavine's spring event.  His late summer/autumn event is typically called Not Necessarily Noir.  The 2013 edition of I Wake Up Dreaming had the subtitle of "99 44/100% Noir."  I wonder how many people under the age of 50 picked up the Ivory soap slogan.

Of the 30 films on the program, I had seen 12 before including All Through the Night which I saw again during the 2013 festival.  The two films which I had not previously seen and did not watch during the festival were My Gun is Quick (1957) and The Tattooed Stranger.

The 17 films I saw during the festival were:

Blues in the Night starring Priscilla Lane, Richard Whorf, Betty Field, Jack Carson & Lloyd Nolan; with Elia Kazan & Howard DaSilva; directed by Anatole Litvak; (1941)
I Wake Up Screaming starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar & Elisha Cook, Jr.; directed by H. Bruce Humberstone; (1941)
The Monster and the Girl starring Ellen Drew, Robert Paige, Paul Lukas & Joseph Calleia; directed by Stuart Heisler; (1941)

Fall Guy starring Leo Penn; with Elisha Cook, Jr.; directed by Reginald Le Borg; (1947)

Club Havana starring Tom Neal; directed by Edgar G. Umer; (1945)

Island of Doomed Men starring Peter Lorre, Rochelle Hudson & Robert Wilcox; directed by Charles Barton; (1940)

Nightmare starring Diana Barrymore & Brian Donlevy; directed by Tim Whelan; (1942)

All Through the Night starring Humphrey Bogart; with Kaaren Verne, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, William Demarest, Jackie Gleason & Phil Silvers; directed by Vincent Sherman; (1942)

Bewitched starring Phyllis Thaxter; directed by Arch Oboler; (1945)

Five  starring William Phipps, Susan Douglas, James Anderson, Charles Lampkin & Earl Lee; directed by Arch Oboler; (1951)

All Night Long starring Patrick McGoohan, Marti Stevens, Paul Harris & Richard Attenborough; directed by Basil Dearden; (1961)

Autumn Leaves starring Joan Crawford & Cliff Robertson; with Vera Miles & Lorne Greene; directed by Robert Aldrich; (1956)

Killer at Large starring Robert Lowery; directed by William Beaudine; (1947)

Key Witness starring John Beal; directed by D. Ross Lederman; (1947)

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons starring George Sanders; directed by W. Lee Wilder; (1960)

Death of a Scoundrel starring George Sanders, Yvonne De Carlo & Zsa Zsa Gabor; directed by Charles Martin; (1956)

The Crooked Way starring John Payne; directed by Robert Florey; (1949)

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Although I enjoyed several of the films, overall I was slightly disappointed with the program.  Granted, I missed two films in the program which are among the all-time great noir films - Sweet Smell of Success and Criss Cross.

The best double feature was a George Sanders' pair on the penultimate night.  Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons was a dark comedy which reminded me of Sweeney Todd with a dash Hitchcock cheekiness.  Sanders plays a used furniture dealer who is in love with a chanteuse.  Unfortunately for him, she has expensive tastes and monogamy is not exactly her strong suit.  One thing leads to another and Sanders ends up a killing series of women whom he is romancing.  Now that sounds very harsh but director W. Lee Wilder handles it with a deft touch.  Sanders is very frugal and keeps track of all his costs in a little ledger.  When he buys train tickets to take his victim to his country cottage, he saves money by only buying her a one-way ticket.  How does he dispose of the bodies?  Fortunately, his cottage has a large stove that custom built to cook large game animals.  A better man would be offended but the film tickled my admittedly perverse funny bone.

Whereas Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons was a fun little film, Sanders strives for the epic in Death of a Scoundrel.  Oddly, Sanders with his RP accent plays Sabourin, a Czech refugee in New York by way of South America.  Having survived a Nazi concentration camp, Sabourin calls on his brother only discover he has married his true love.  Undeterred, he sells his brother out to the police in exchange for passage to New York.  Once in NYC, he spots Yvonne DeCarlo pulling a scam.  Seeing a chance to scam the scammer, he steals her stolen loot.  For his trouble, he gets shot but that leads to better things. The back alley doctor tips him off to penicillin which he promptly buys on the stock market.  With his insider tip, he makes friends with the wealthy Mrs. Ryan (Zsa Zsa Gabor).  Eventually, Sabourin sets up a company and parlays unscrupulous and fraudulent deals to great wealth.  Juggling amorous intentions towards Mrs. Ryan, her secretary cum actress, his sister-in-law, Sabourin is a scoundrel in every sense of the word.  Only DeCarlo understands and even appreciates his flaws and strengths.  Sanders is magnificent in the role.  His performance is even more incredible given that Sanders and Zsa Zsa Gabor were less than 2 years divorced in real life at the time of the filming.

About 15 years after making Death of a Scoundrel, Sanders married (and divorced) a second Gabor sister (Magda).  If he hadn't committed suicide in 1972, Sanders might have been able to pull off the Hungarian Hat Trick given his apparent partiality towards the Gabor sisters and their collective propensity for marriage.  Magda, Zsa Zsa and Eva had something on the order of 20 marriages between them.

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I Wake Up Screaming features one of the iconic images in film noir:  Victor Mature standing with the shadow of an elevator cage partially obscuring his face (see program below).  The film was quite good but not in the pantheon of noir.  Victor Mature is a Broadway producer who "helps" young actresses.  Together with newspaper columnist Allyn Joslyn and Broadway actor Alan Mowbray, the three seem to make sport of building up the next big thing.  Carole Landis is a waitress who is the latest object of the trio's attention.  However, she ends up dead and creepy cop Laird Cregar thinks Mature is the prime suspect.  Betty Grable shows up as Landis' sister who develops an unusual attraction to Mature, who was in love with her sister and is the prime suspect in her murder.  Elisha Cook, Jr. is the front desk worker at the apartment building where Landis & Grable live.  Most memorable for Cregar's menacing performance, I Wake Up Screaming is a solid film.

Autumn Leaves was paired with Female on the Beach which I saw at the 2011 edition of Not Necessarily Noir.  Both films feature Joan Crawford as vulnerable woman.  In Autumn Leaves, she is a lonely spinster who is won over by Cliff Robertson.  At least they acknowledge the age difference in the film.  Crawford was 20 years older than Robertson.  Interestingly, Lorne Greene played Robertson father despite only being 8 years older than Robertson.  In true noir fashion, Robertson's Burt turns out to have serious psychological issues and Vera Miles shows up claiming to be his ex-wife.  Crawford's Millie has a strong nurturing streak due to childhood trauma.  Desperate to personally care for her husband, Millie rejects all entreaties that she commit Burt to a mental sanatorium.  As you see, Autumn Leaves is fairly melodramtic.  In addition, Crawford is vulnerable and I think she is at her best when she has a bitchy role.  We do get to watch Robertson chew up the scenery when he is in one of his fugue states.

Peter Lorre seems to be one of those actors whose presence elevates a film.  Such was the case with Island of Doomed Men.  Lorre plays the warden of an off-the-books private island prison which is kind of cross between Devil's Island and a slave plantation.  Lorre takes sadistic pleasure in lording over the prisoners and his beautiful but captive wife.  A G-man goes undercover to break up the racket but needs the help of the wife.  Lorre is the best thing about the film and makes it worthwhile.

The final film of the festival was The Crooked Way, another amnesia film.  John Payne is a soldier convalescing (at Letterman Hospital in the Presidio) after WWII.  Permanently unable to regain his memory, his doctor decides to send him back home to Los Angeles where familiar surrounding may help him adjust.  What doctor & patient are unaware of is that he is a former gangster who joined the army under an alias and his return stirs up old feuds with the cops, other gangsters and his ex-wife.  It's a run-of-the-mill plot with above average performances.  Sonny Tufts as the gang boss and Rhys Williams as the hard-nosed cop stand out among the cast.

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I had never heard of Arch Oboler before this festival.  Lavine programmed a Oboler double bill one night.  Bewitched was about a young woman who "hears voices in her head" and whose fiancé ends up murdered.  Technically, she only hears once voice but that's enough to lead to multiple homicides.  It was a nice try but ultimately the film fell flat.  Phyllis Thaxter gives it her all as the lead character.

Five was more interesting for me.  The premise is that a nuclear holocaust has killed everyone in the world except for five people.  Interestingly, the buildings are still standing and the nuclear fallout doesn't seem to be particularly fatal.  Even more amazing is that these five people find each other but contrived situations and incredible coincidences are part and parcel of cinema.

Anyway, the five consist of Roseanne (Susan Douglas), a woman who turns out to be pregnant.  She goes to take refuge at her aunt's remote home only to discover her aunt is missing and man is living there.  His name is Michael (William Phipps) and  I believe he was an architect.  Later, two men drive down the deserted road near the house.  The younger man is Charles (Charles Lampkin), an African American who worked at a bank.  The older man is Oliver (Earl Lee) and also worked at the same bank.  The four of them survived due to chance - Roseanne was in lead lined X-ray room, Oliver & Charles were accidentally locked in the bank vault and Michael was in an elevator in Empire State Building.  Wouldn't the EMP knock out the elevator?  As Oliver shows signs of radiation poisoning, they take him to the beach to recuperate where they meet the fifth survivor.  Eric (James Anderson) is a mountain climber was trapped at the top of Mt. Everest at the time of the nuclear detonation.  After the blizzard passed, Eric flew back to the US (despite having a French accent) where his plane ran out of fuel just off the coast.

With the quintet set, we see societal ills played out in a microcosm.  Eric brings discord to the group.  He and Michael both have romantic intentions towards Roseanne.  He is also a racist which causes tension between him & Charles.  His greed and selfishness causes problems for the small group (by this point, Oliver has died of his illness).  From a rational perspective, Eric's behavior is counterproductive.  Everyone knows that all three of the men should impregnate Roseanne to created the large gene pool but I guess that would be a little risque for 1951.  Eric's desire to go to the city and "steal" jewelry and money is ridiculous in a post-apocalyptic world as is his destruction of the crops Michael & Charles have cultivated.  Human foolishness knows no bounds.  The film was a little predictable and pedantic but interesting nonetheless.

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Lavine appears to have an affinity for the obscure and B-films.  Sometimes this results in unearthing hidden gems.  Other times, I feel as though these films were obscure for a reason.  I wouldn't say the films were "bad" but they were largely forgettable.

As I scan the list of films I saw, I cannot recall the full plot for many of them.  A scene or two is as much as I can remember per film.

Blues in the Night - a jaxx band gets mixed up gangsters at a roadhouse.  Jack Carson played the trumpeter, Elia Kazan played some instrument.

The Monster and the Girl - a human brain in a gorilla; enough said.

Fall Guy - a guy has no memory of the previous night but he is covered in blood and a woman is dead.

Club Havana - a large cast and multiple subplots set in a nightclub.  There was a shootout in the parking at the end.

Nightmare - Brian Donlevy breaks into a house and makes himself some fried eggs.  A woman in the house confronts him and the next thing you know, they rooting out Nazi spies in wartime England.  There were explosives in marked bottles of wine or some liquor.

Key Witness - a guy has no memory of the previous night but he is covered in blood and a woman is dead.  Sounds like Fall Guy, eh?  I liked this one more because the guy goes on the lam and eventually switches identities with a dead man whose face is disfigured.  It turns out the dead man is the estranged son of a wealthy industrialist.  The older man has not seen his son since he was boy so he doesn't recognize the man claiming to be his son.  Actually, now that I started writing I think I liked Key Witness more than the other films in this section.  The man's achieves success as the rich man's son which brings him to the attention of his wife who has assumed he was dead.  The ending was pure hokum but it was fun ride until that point.

Killer at Large - two newspaper reporters (one male & one female) investigate the murder (suspicious suicide) of a city leader.  Eventually, the trail leads back to the female reporter's father.

All Night Long - I forgot I saw this at the 2009 I Wake Up Dreaming.   A retelling of Shakespeare's Othello set in a London jazz club in the early 1960s.  An impressive array of jazz musicians appear as themselves over a long night at the club. Patrick McGoohan's performance stood out.  He always seems to stand out from the cast.

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All that is left is All Through the Night.  About as noirish as a Bowery Boys film, the film is essentially a screwball comedy.  It was embarrassing to see Humphrey Bogart ham it up and sprout gibberish.  I guess I've typecast Bogie but he seemed to want to have it both way - part tough guy, part comedian.  Growing bored with the film about halfway, I wondered how Bogie & Gleason got along.  Gleason was infamous for his all night parties and the prodigious amounts of money & alcohol he consumed.