MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE DEVIL WITH HITLER" (1942)

By 1942, Hal Roach was no longer the powerhouse comedy producer he once was. Having lost or sold off his most popular stars -- Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang -- he tried to turn his little studio into one of the majors. Initially, it seemed to work, releasing classy A-list features like Topper (starring Cay Grant) and Of Mice and Men (with an original score by Aaron Copland). 

But with our involvement in the War, the US Army commandeered the studio to make training films, leaving him only a fraction of the space he needed to continue his cinematic output. 

For the remainder of the decade, Roach released what he called "Streamliners" -- 45-minute B-movies that were too long to be short subjects but too short to be considered features.

Satan learns there's no severance
package in Hell.

Hands down, the best of these Streamliners has to be the bizarre comedy/fantasy The Devil with Hitler. Hell's Board of Directors has decided that Adolf Hitler would make a swell CEO, being far more evil than the current office-holder, Satan. The Jeff Zucker of his day, Satan begs for another chance, making a deal with the Board: he will visit Hitler and prove that the Feurher is capable of one nice gesture, and thus lacking what it takes to run things down below.

A menage-a-trois I'd rather not think about.

Satan arrives in Berlin and immediately weasels his way into Hitler's inner circle. (Wal-Mart seems to have better a security team than Hitler.) Satan plays on Hitler's feelings(!), getting to admit that, yes, sometimes he feels bad about wiping out villages or sending prisoners to concentration camps. But Hitler snaps out of it in time to welcome his visitors, Benito Mussolini and his Japanese counterpart Suki Yaki. (Apparently the writers hadn't heard of Hirohito.) A visit from a fast-talking insurance salesman, however, convinces the three leaders to secretly take out policies on one another. This leads to a lengthy scene where they discover time-bombs in their beds, forcing them to sleep together, bombs in hand, while trying to sneak out of the room one at a time. (It makes even less sense than it sounds.)

Two Hitlers + one explosive = endless hilarity.

They all survive, only to have Satan disguise himself as Hitler and tell the guards that the real Hitler is an impostor. Further mix-ups ensue when they all wind up in an exploding munitions building. Scared out of his wits, Hitler bows to Satan's command to perform one good deed: freeing a couple (the insurance guy and an ex-Nazi agent) rather than sending them to a concentration camp as planned. Hitler is killed in the explosion and sent to Hell. Having watched Hitler's good deed on their proto-HDTV, the Board of Directors realize he's not fit to rule Hell. "That's only the beginning, folks," Satan assures us as the Board takes Hitler out for a beating, "only the beginning!"




A laffing, panicky crowd outside the Globe Theater in Times Square.



If this doesn't make you want to see
The Devil with Hitler, there's something
wrong with you.

Many would posit that The Devil with Hitler is no competition for Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. I'm not so sure. Granted, the latter is more sophisticated in every way possible. (The sets in The Devil with Hitler look like they could fall over if you sneezed near them.) Yet it also takes an extra 80 minutes to make the same point, and without the pathos-laden subplot, either. Heck, you could even say that, at 18 minutes, the Three Stooges' You Natzy Spy outdoes them both. 

In his book Forgotten Horrors 2, Richard H. Price describes The Devil with Hitler as a laugh a minute. While I wouldn't go that far, I have to admit I laughed more than I do at most contemporary comedies, and often for the right reasons.

Even a dictator needs a luffa now and then.

Bobby Watson's bravura performance as Hitler is worth the price of admission. (Early on, he tells his hapless servant, "You are fired! Report yourself to the Gestapo and tell them to shoot you -- and get me a new valet!") Hitler comes off as simultaneously egotistical, malevolent and effeminate, giving  a vitriolic radio speech while lounging in a bubble bath as an aide plays recorded applause after each sentence. 

Later, he relaxes by  painting a wall while skipping back and forth like a little girl. This stereotypical "pansy" portrayal goes further by having him rammed directly in the rear end three times -- first by a large remote-control toy airplane, then by an artillery shell and finally by the devils' pitchforks.

                                                                                              

Hitler fondles the airplane with anticipation.

Other laughs come from the simple ridiculousness of the production. British character actor Alan
Mowbray, the poor man's Sir Cedric Hardwicke, plays Satan with what looks like a badly-designed bathing cap with two tampons atop his head. Joe Devlin's buffonish Mussolini sports a burlesque Italian accent ("Hey, whatsamatter for you?!"). George E. Stone, taking a sabbatical from playing Boston Blackie's sidekick at Columbia, is Suki Yaki, the typical buck-toothed, goggle-glasses-wearing, photo-taking "Jap" so prevalent during World War II. (Did the Axis produce equally over-the-top parodies of the Allies?)  


A suggestion for your next Halloween party.

The slapstick often provides I-can't-believe-what-I'm-watching entertainment for its very crudeness. I dare you not to laugh when the three despots try to avoid the runaway toy airplane, or when Hitler falls backwards off a painting scaffold. Yet one very brief yet effective dramatic moment of a prisoner being tortured for information drives home that this Nazi business was, in the end, no laughing matter. The rest of The Devil with Hitler reminds us that there was a time when it was OK to make fun of the enemy without even the allies getting offended. Imagine that.

Hal Roach admitted to Richard H. Price that both The Devil with Hitler and the Army's occupation of his studio were something of a penance. In 1937, you see, while on vacation in Italy, Roach was contacted by representatives of Benito Mussolini, a serious Laurel & Hardy fan. As Roach explained it to another film historian, Randy Skretvedt: "The first thing I said was, 'The motion picture business is a Jewish business. If you have sanctions against the Jews, forget this talk, because I want no part of it.' Mussolini was not anti-Semitic at that time." Just so we have that straight.


Hal Roach: "I never met a
Fascist I didn't like."

Out of that pleasant afternoon came a deal: Roach would supply American technicians to shoot movies in Italy starring Italian actors. A studio was born: RAM -- short for Roach And Mussolini. As a goodwill gesture, Roach brought Il Duce's son, Vittorio, back to Hollywood to introduce him to the industry movers-and-shakers. (Is this starting to sound like a Coen Brothers comedy or what?) 

Strangely, nobody had any interest in knocking back a beer with a Fascist dictator's son. I guess they didn't get the word -- Benito's OK with you guys for the time being! With RAM now just another broken Hollywood promise, Vittorio returned home empty-handed.  Four years later, Mussolini declared war on the US. Causation or correlation? I leave it to you.

This wasn't Roach's first brush with politics. He was one of the many members of the right-wing American Liberty League, a group of wealthy businessmen who were against the New Deal. I mean, really against. How against? In 1934, Roach and his fellow patriots allegedly tried to engineer a military coup against President Roosevelt. Cue the Laurel & Hardy "Cuckoo" theme.

Hollywood had forgotten these moral detours by the time Hal Roach received a special Academy Award in 1984 (or maybe he just outlived everyone who remembered). He died in 1992, just two months shy of turning 101. To the end, he swore that his Streamliners were the right length for any comedy. And when you consider Adam Sandler movies have been known to run up to two-and-a-half hours, 45 minutes of The Devil with Hitler looks pretty good.
                                                          ******************

Memo to the Coens: Oscar Issac as Hal Roach
John Goodman as Benito Mussolini
Seth Rogen as Vittorio Mussolini
Damien Lewis as Stan Laurel
Jack Black as Oliver Hardy
Steve Buscemi as Josef Goebbels

THE SIGN OF THE ZE

Proof that a higher education
pays off in the end.

I recently took my 16 year-old daughter on a tour of a couple of colleges. We got a pretty good idea of what we could expect -- a lifetime of college loan repayments. Both schools admitted tuition didn't come cheap, but that we should look at it as an "investment."

Oh so? I thought the whole idea of "investments" is that, in theory anyway, they eventually turn a profit to the investor. But as my broker reminds me at the end of every phone call, my principal is subject to loss. So why should higher education be any different? Look what my diploma got me: a blog.



That's me in the last row on the far right.

Just from two tours, I could tell college is certainly different than it was when I was sleeping through American History (not just the class, but the real thing). The broadcasting departments, for example, feature state-of-the-art equipment that allow the students to produce their own news shows, soap operas, sitcoms and the like. Considering what TV has become, they might as well skip the soap operas and skip straight to the reality shows about overweight hoarders with bratty children who are on the lam from airport security.

The guides boasted of a student population involved in everything from physics to public service. All I saw were kids tossing around Frisbees while others withdrew their parents' cash from an onsite ATM before going into the college-owned food court featuring every chain from Starbucks to Subway to Domino's Pizza. There were the usual fraternities, of course, like Eata Smegma Pi and Grabba Girla Dae. Somewhere between the compost station and the wi-fi laundry room, I think classes were mentioned, too, but I can't be sure.


Apropos of nothing,
I hate this shit.

But at least the kids looked nice enough and, even better, normal. No signs of political strife or cultural warfare. This wasn't the case for the college that another couple had toured with their son. The first thing they learned was that  some students might not identify with their sex; therefore, the words "he" and "she" are inherently sexist, and have been replaced by "ze." And faculty being what it is today -- Whatever the kids do is OK because we don't want anyone's feelings to get hurt -- this is considered not only acceptable but desirable. And they say college doesn't prepare you for the real world!

This whole "ze" business, aside from reeking of undeniable stupidity, is ready-made for interesting conversation over late-night beers at the campus pub:

"I was talking to Bob and Mary today."
"What's up with them?"
"Well, ze told me that ze is transferring to another school."
"Really? What does ze think about it?"
"Well, ze's not happy about it, but -- and this is what ze told me later -- ze was told by everybody else that ze had to accept it."
"Ze's right."
"Yeah, but so's ze."
"Yeah, I hadn't thought of that."


If it's good enough for Tom Poston...

I don't know where this leaves possessives. "His" and "hers" seem equally sexist, as do "zis" and "zers." If it didn't already have another meaning, "zits" would seem to be the logical choice (using "logical" very loosely.) Perhaps they should go with "zotz," since, as Tom Poston knew, it's the magic word for fun. And brother, fun is something these maniacs need more of. A lot more. I mean, like getting laid for any reason other than as a political statement.

Otherwise, why stop at he and she? Let's go the whole hog and eliminate names. "Hank" sounds more masculine than "Betsy," for example, so it's best to replace them with, say, "Menu" and "Wristwatch." Too bad those names can be easily considered politically incorrect. Better make it "Vegetarian Menu" and "Non-Blood Diamond Wristwatch."

Uh oh. Diamonds are associated in our sexist society with women, so we can't have that. Better make it "Hourglass." Except there's that old saw about women with hourglass figures. A simple "Clock" sounds too much like a certain masculine-oriented slang -- wait, isn't "orient" racist? Make that "masculine-Asianed" slang.

Where was I? Ah, the new name for Betsy. "Time Piece"? Uh uh. Haven't you ever heard how men degrade women by calling them "a piece"? There's always "Sundial"... if the first syllable didn't sound exactly like "son," thus paying homage to our sick, paternalistic society. The bastards always win in the end, don't they?

Forget about identifying with my sex. I'm having a hard enough time identifying with with my species.
                                                    ***********************
Today's ze-obsessed college students could learn a thing or two from this 1960s Folger's Coffee commercial:

HOW TO GET LAID (OFF)

One of the most ridiculous phrases is "losing your job." It makes no sense and, by rights, leaves you open to conversations like this:

"Hello, Bob, how's it going?"

"Bad news, I lost my job."

"That's too bad. Can I help you find it?"

You don't lose a job. You know perfectly well where it is -- or was. The job lost you. And even then, that implies that made yourself scarce by your own volition. That's just not how it's happening these days. If you're lucky, however, you get "laid off," like the remainders of dinner being scraped into the garbage disposal. But at least you get a severance. Which, to me, evokes the memories of The Pit and the Pendulum. 

Good advice -- now tell management!

 

The worst thing about getting laid off – other than getting, well, laid off – is the sheer, breathtaking suddenness of it. One minute you’re leaving muffin crumbs on your keyboard. The next, you’re emptying the Ricola wrappers out of the desk drawer – along with the napkins, packages of soy sauce and the 2Q09 spreadsheet that someone in middle management thought looked really good to whatever vice-president she was sucking up to but never got a promotion from.

The perfect Christmas gift.

Just because you’ve worked at your job almost 25 years and have an “Employee of the Month” scroll that misspells your name doesn’t mean you’re safe. Everyone’s on the firing line these days. Unless you’re management. Then you make sure that everyone else gets the blindfold and last cigarette so your muffin crumbs can keep clogging the keyboard. After all, somebody’s gotta talk to the board of directors with a straight face, which nobody with half a brain can possibly do.



"I know it's tough, but
look on the bright side --
this is the last time you'll
get bad news from me!"

In the end, then, there’s no reason to be shocked when you get the call from Britney from H.R. (the perky, sort-of cute blonde who tries dressing older than she is even though she was still defecating in her pants when you started working there, and for all you know still is) asking if you could “come over for a moment.” Trust me, she’s not looking for a little Petraeus-under-the-desk action. Not at 9:15 in the morning, anyway. And especially not with your manager sitting there, mentally rehearsing the speech she’s known she was going to give you for three months now: “As you know, we’ve been going through changes recently, and your position has been eliminated.” (C'mon, you’ve spoken these words twenty times in the last year and it still sounds like you’re reading it off a script for the first time. Try to sound a little empathetic.)

Meanwhile, the idiot
in IT gets a raise
because he knows
HTML or something.

And you? You just sit there with your mouth agape as Britney from H.R. gives you the last rites in what sounds like Uzbek but is really English but you can’t tell because you just got severed and you have no idea what you’re going to do next because every company in America is going through this same ritual at this very second. You have no witty comeback or snappy reply to at least temporarily gain the upper hand. 

Oh, you might come up with something on your way home – something that would have really set them back on their ear – but by then it’s too late. Your chance to make an exit with your head high and a That’ll teach ‘em grin on your face has come and gone.

As a public service, I offer a few rejoinders to keep in the back of your mind (or underneath the 2Q09 spreadsheet) when they give you your walking papers. A few  require props, so some preparation is needed. Considering that your time could come tomorrow, it's good to get cracking now!

1) After you get the news, take a short breath, shake your head ironically and mutter, “First, the cancer diagnosis, now this. Man, this is not my day.”     

2) Look relieved, smile and say, “Thank God. I’ve seen that merger coming for months. At least my 401(k)’s safe.” When they look at you quizzically, look genuinely shocked and ask, "You mean you haven't heard?" Make an Oops expression as if you've let the cat out of the bag, then whisper, "You didn't hear it from me."
 

3) Bring in your backpack or briefcase. When they drop the hammer on you, announce, "Before I go, there's been something I've always wanted to do at work." Pop open a beer (preferably after it's been shaken) and take a very long swallow, followed by a a satisfied "Ahhhh" and a good belch. Then ask, "Now where do I sign?"

4) Whip out a realistic-looking water gun filled with red food dye, point it at your head and pull the trigger. After they finish screaming, laugh and leave the room.

Remember: this is your role model.

5) Don't say a word. Simply stare at your manager as he gives you the news. Do the same to the HR rep. When she asks you if you have any questions, keep staring at her with a blank expression but your eyes expressing a horrible end for her. (Think of Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men.") Keep it up for another moment, then get up from the chair, walk to the door... and give her another, brief, terrifying look. Return and do the same just on your way out of the building (if they haven't already called security on you).

6) After you leave HR, enter your manager's office and announce, "I've read my severance contract carefully and didn't see anything that says I can't do this" -- then stick your finger down your throat and vomit on her desk. (They might find a way to cancel your severance anyway, so be sure to have a good lawyer.)

7) When HR asks if you have any questions, ask, "Yes. Who did a complete and utter moron like you have to fuck to get your job?" (My wife really objects to this suggestion, so you know it's a winner.)
 

8) Return to your team and tell them confidentially, "Just a head's up. You can keep your job if you go down on the manager. I didn't think it was worth it, but you do what you have to."

There’s nothing illegal in any of these suggestions. No threats of violence are spoken. As far as I can see, you're in the clear. Besides, what are they gonna do – fire you?

 

                                                 ***************************

IN THE SPIRIT OF THE HOLIDAY: THANKS A LOT TO...

REPUBLICAN SEN. JOHN MCCAIN for showing, once and for all, that a war hero doesn’t necessarily qualify one for politics. Filibustering Susan Rice’s appointment for Secretary of State? Yo, Senator, didn’t you get the word – by appearing hostile to women and minorities, your party lost coyote ugly two weeks ago. Time to start reading the Washington Post for something other than the Fox News TV listings.

 
DEMOCRATIC SEN. PATRICK LEAHY for writing a bill that would allow the federal government to snoop on anybody’s emails, Tweets and Facebook posts without a search warrant. And they don’t have to notify you for a year afterwards. Better not use the word “bomb” while describing Liz & Dick – the FBI might turn up at your door tomorrow. (Yikes -- do Google blogs count?)


INDEPENDENT MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG for his utterly tone-deaf handling of the post-Sandy New York Marathon debacle. By not realizing that governing a city is different than running a company, he lived up to the stereotype of the insensitive, out-of-touch billionaire businessman that he his. And yet the other choices for the 2013 mayoral election are already so bad that I’d vote for him again. 

 
MEL GIBSON for totally disproving Hollywood’s self-appointed image as America’s moral arbiter by continuing to get work despite being a proven violent, misogynistic, anti-Semitic drunk.  (Memo to director Robert Rodriguez: You still would’ve hired Mel for Machete Kills if he’d complained about “spics” instead of “yids,” right? Right?)

LINDSAY LOHAN for giving ordinary people the chance to feel better about their humdrum lives by watching the way a “celebrity” attracts trouble (and bad movies) with the ease of flypaper. Even better, she allows older women everywhere the chance to say, "Oh my God, is that what 26 looks like?"

THE BBC for demonstrating that it is no better than your average crime family by covering up a decades-long child sex abuse scandal initiated by one of its most popular stars, Jimmy Savile and other network bigwigs. You’ve just prevented your honest reporters from covering the next, similar scandal involving the Catholic Church without looking like total hypocrites. Oh, and you’re a bunch of goddamn pedophiles, too.

KEVIN CLASH, aka the voice of Elmo, for living up to the stereotype of the middle-aged man who just loves entertaining children. Last week, Clash paid $125,000 to make a claim of having sex with a 16 year-old boy while he was in his 40s go away – only to face an identical claim days later. Clash has since resigned from Sesame Street, sighting that the charges had become, you guessed it, a "distraction."  Hey, Kev, don’t worry – you can always get a job at the BBC!

PBS for proving as cold-blooded as its British counterpart by weeping that Clash’s resignation was “a sad day for Sesame Street” but not for the children he allegedly had sex with. It looks like today’s episode was brought to you by the number 69.
Oh, and you support a goddamn pedophile, too.

KEITH OLBERMANN for finally making himself unemployable from any place other than his Twitter account. When you get fired from a "let's do a show in my parents basement" network like Current TV, your only other possibility is hawking "Keith Olbermann Spittle Bibs" on the Home Shopping Network.




 
KIM KARDASHIAN for furthering the causes of both the sanctity of marriage (via a sham made-for-TV ceremony which ended in divorce 10 weeks later) and world peace (by being "determined" to learn about the latest Middle East conflict while promoting her milkshake restaurant chain in Kuwait and Bahrain). Who else makes a better U.S. representative to Hamas?

DIANE SAWYER for providing gales of laughter by appearing drunk on live TV during ABC’s election night coverage – and several other news events over the years.  C’mon, Diane, you’re pushing 70 – it’s time you started holding your liquor like a man!


**************************
Watch Diane Sawyer mixing Merlot and prescription meds while preparing for her hosting chores circa 1992. Note the catty remark she makes, too, at the 1:20 mark. Glass houses or pot/kettle black? Your choice. "Hideous crimes" indeed!:

MOVIE OF THE DAY: THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF "THE MALTESE FALCON" (1931)

Long before it became fashionable, Warner Brothers was into recycling in a big way. Not plastics or paper, mind you, but stories. Throughout the '30s and into the early '40s, the mantra seemed to be, If it worked once, it'll work a second time. Or a third, if we don't have anything else on hand. Often a twist was necessary to fool people. Give it a different title. Change the sex of the lead character. Make it a comedy instead of a drama. But keep making it over and over so we don't have to pay for a new story! Celluloid composting, as it were.

And so it was with The Maltese Falcon. First filmed a year after its 1930 publication, Dashiell Hammet's novel was ripe for the pre-code Warner Brothers: fast-paced and sexy, it featured a few murders, a half-dozen fascinating characters and that strange, jewel-studded statuette everybody wants to get their hands on.

Too bad it took another ten years to get it right.

Well, not really. Sure, Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade is iconic. Come to think of it, so are the performances by Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor and the great Elisha Cook, Jr. The screenplay and direction by John Houston are both brilliant. It's even cool to see Houston's dad Walter make his good-luck cameo as the murdered sea captain. Yes, the 1941 Maltese Falcon is pretty much Exhibit A as far as perfect movies are concerned. But the original version... um... well... is the original!

"Admit it -- ain't I a better
looker than Bogie?"

OK, why give it a second (or, for most, a first) look? A couple of reasons. First, Ricardo Cortez as Spade. A Latin lover in silents, it took only a microphone to make clear this was no sweet-talking Spaniard -- he was, in reality, a New Yorker named Jacob Krantz who nonetheless had a face for movies, perhaps moreso than Bogart. 

Unlike the brooding Bogie, Cortez's Sam Spade is a smarmy, sex-obsessed guy who has no compunction about having an affair with his partner's wife (and every woman who crosses his path). His teeth gleam like the grille of a newly-polished Duesenberg. (His slimy demeanor got more than one "Oh yuck!" from my wife during just the first minute of the movie -- the sure sign of a fine performance.) Indeed, we're introduced to Spade just after he's had a roll on his office couch with an anonymous woman. While Bogart's Spade is difficult to know, Cortez dares you to even like him.

I would kill to have a smile like that.

Another thing. Bogart's Spade doesn't even seem to like his job. But Cortez? He's having the time of his life. You can't wipe that smug smirk off his face, even when he's locking horns with Detectives Dundy and Polhaus from the San Francisco Police Department.  He loves calling them "darling and "sweetheart" just to piss them off even more than they are already. (Polhaus at one moment silently mutters "son of a bitch" at Spade through cigar-clenched teeth, a moment the remake never would have been able to get away with.)

What the hell -- let's call the gun a phallic symbol.

A major difference lies in the final third of both movies,coinciding with Spade's dealing with the trio of villians: Casper Gutman, Dr. Joel Cairo and Wilmer Cook. The actors -- Dudley Digges, Otto Matieson and Dwight Frye (the latter fresh off his deranged sidekick roles in Dracula and Frankenstein) are all fine, but no match for their 1941 counterparts. (Mary Astor's portrayal of Ruth Wonderly, too, is more entertainingly neurotic than the inexplicably top-billed Bebe Daniels is here.) The dialogue carried off so splendidly by Greenstreet in the remake sounds merely expository when spoken by Digges, slowing things down as if the brilliantine in Cortez's hair gummed up the movie projector.

Gutman and Cook,
sittin' in a tree...

The original supporting cast, you might say, is merely a rough sketch for a masterpiece to come a decade later. But at the same time, the performances by Greenstreet, Lorre and Cook are so similar to those in the original -- right down to line readings -- that I wonder if Houston screened it for them before rolling film. What Houston was obliged to cut, however, was the gay vibe that the villains give off in the original. When Spade, speaking to Gutman, refers to Cook as "your little boyfriend," he's not being facetious.

But it's the ending where the two versions really deviate. There's no need to recount the now almost-cliched finale of the remake. But, again, the line readings come into play. When Bogart tells Mary Astor, "I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck," he makes you feel that he means it. When delivering the same line, Cortez is all teeth and sarcasm -- he's looking forward to seeing her swing from the noose at San Quentin.

Why the long face? You're getting free Hershey bars!

Or is he? In the final scene, missing from the remake, Spade visits Wonderly in prison. Just to rub salt in the wound, he tells her that he brings good news: thanks to the way he broke the case, he's gotten a high-profile position in the DA's office. Yet, he still has a soft spot for her, telling the prison matron to provide her with candy, cigarettes, anything she wants -- and to charge it to the DA. 

It certainly doesn't pack the punch of the jailbars-like shadow passing over Mary Astor's face as she steps into the elevator. But for the only time in the movie, the scene shows that Spade just might have a beating heart somewhere inside him.
 


Don't you wish your stockbroker had a
headshot like this?

Interestingly, Ricardo Cortez slipped into B-movies as Humphrey Bogart leaped into the stratosphere with The Maltese Falcon. One can only speculate what Cortez thought of the remake -- and if he conceded that while his version was a snappy little picture, Bogart's was an instant classic. 

If so, he probably didn't care much. After making a stab at directing (and a final movie performance in the aptly-titled The Last Hurrah in 1958), Cortez returned to New York and, in a move that would boggle the minds of middle-aged men these days, carved out a second, lucrative career as a Salomon Brothers stockbroker. He died in 1977, outliving Bogart by 20 years.

Remakes have a bad reputation, usually for good reason. Not so with the version of The Maltese Falcon. However, the original is worth a look, if only to compare and contrast, and to see exactly what one could get away with before Will Hayes decided that audiences needed to be treated like children. You know, when movies were the stuff that dreams are made of.

                                                  ********************
Just so you can see what repulsed my wife, here's a clip from the first scene of the original version of The Maltese Falcon:

TRUMPING THE MEDIA

The latest cast of "Celebrity Apprentice"

In case you were distracted by the rising body count in Syria, Donald Trump recently appeared on Today to promote the new season of Celebrity Apprentice – which, in the most bizarre of coincidences, are both NBC series. Trump introduced the dozen or so has-beens who hope to land a real job once they’re through groveling in his boardroom. (Three of these "celebrity" stooges are Lisa Rinna, Brande Roderick and Claudia Jordan. I'll give you a moment to ask, "WTF?") The only one who doesn't fit that sorry mold is Penn Jillette, the larger, louder half of Penn & Teller. The genuinely talented Jillette, who's probably taking part just to promote his Las Vegas gig, knows a showman when he sees one.


I could totally see him taking
the oath of office on a
cold January morning.

Or would that be “shaman”? Because it seemed like Trump concocted a potion to make everyone forget he was last seen as an almost-presidential candidate. And not just any candidate, but one whose crack team of gumshoes found evidence “you wouldn’t believe” regarding President Obama’s birth certificate. Trump never released their findings because… well, what’s the point if we wouldn’t believe it? 



Perhaps, now that Election Day has passed, pundits analyzing the 2012 campaign will wonder how anybody took Trump seriously. Did they really believe he would give up his Celebrity Apprentice infomercial for a job that offers less personal power? (He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who’d enjoy consulting with 535 Congress people.) Or trading in his new jumbo jet for a used, government-designed model? Or, adding insult to injury, willingly living in a house that lacks shiny brass pillars, black marble credenzas and solid gold toilet handles?

You can't spell "class" without "ass."



Yeah, in today's job market this is
exactly what people want to purchase.

Now as far as his business empire is concerned, Donald Trump’s “look at me” shtick is no worse than goofy fun. You know the drill. The Trump hotels, steaks, vodka and cologne are the greatest in the world. The Trump country clubs are chockfull of “very important people.” Fine, that’s how big shots operate. At least he’s not flying airplanes into office towers or blowing up subways –- Trump creates things (or slaps his name on them). And he’s certainly responsible for more jobs and tax revenue than all his critics combined. That’s way more impressive than, say, the Trump Home fragrance collection. (What does a runaway ego smell like? You can find out yourself, starting at just $26.)



A jock, a black woman, a midget,
a dumb blonde and a gay guy
walk into a room...

But…That“will he or won’t he run” routine was nothing more than Trump and the media engaging in MAC (Mutually Assured Cynicism). Morning news shows in particular decided long ago that celebrities were what brought in the eyeballs. (The death of our ambassador to Libya? The winner of Dancing with the Stars? It’s all the same to George Stephanopoulos and the gang at Good Morning America.) 

During the Republican campaign, you probably saw more of Donald Trump than Jon Huntsman or Gary Johnson combined. Those other two were serious guys who wanted to discuss important issues as varied as our relationship with China to the legalization of marijuana. But as far as many news anchors were concerned, there was only one question worth asking: What does Donald have to say? 



Perhaps it was appropriate, then, that the only person I saw demand Trump put up or shut up with the birth certificate“evidence” was Anderson Cooper. Cooper had nothing to lose by doing the job his elders forfeited when Trump allegedly considered throwing his hair into the ring. And when you're the news anchor best known for giggling fits, New Year’s Eve broadcasts with Kathy Griffin and being the son of the woman responsible for $500 jeans, that's pretty freaking sad for the state of television journalism in general.
 

Anderson Cooper proves once and for all that he has the same credentials

                                                              as Walter Cronkite.

In the end, though, who can blame Trump for taking advantage of our TMZ-fueled, celebrity-consecrating media? He’s just following the lead of your average holistic dietician or pet psychologist: shilling dubious claims via accommodating interviewers. On the other hand, as with the shrink who analyzes Fido’s aggressive behavior as suppressed memories of stale Milkbones, it doesn’t mean we have to take him seriously.

By the way, Donald, love your spring water!

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