THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 62

Forty-six years separate the oldest and newest movies here, bookended by a silent version of a classic stage play and a semi-update of a classic novel. The fans of the play and the book would object to them. Too damn bad.

GHOSTS (1915): It helps to have a rough idea of what Hendrik Ibsen's groundbreaking play Ghosts is about. Otherwise, you'd think the "Inherited Trait" mentioned in one of the intertitles was insanity brought about by too much partying rather than syphilis. 

Capt. Alving's marriage to the wealthy Helen Arling doesn't prevent him from continuing his roue ways, even at his wedding reception. As time passes, his behavior worsens, even urging his eight-year-old son Oswald to knock back a shot of whiskey. Helen ships Oswald to boarding school, where he becomes a renowned artist... who keeps rubbing the back of his neck because that's apparently an effect of the "Inherited Trait". It also drives him to go off his nut, burn down a church and eventually take poison. Well, that's what syphilis a sore neck will do to you.

Wisecracks more or less aside, Ghosts at least tries to get across the idea of an STD, while definitely keeping the incest subplot of the story, as Oswald falls in love (and almost marrying) the woman he doesn't realize is his half-sister. His real father, of course, sired her out of wedlock -- which comes as a surprise to the guy who thought he was her father. Just why the family doctor knew all this but never told anybody until it was almost too late proves he should have lost his license to practice medicine. Or he just wanted to give Ghosts an excuse to run more than three reels.

Controversial dramas made in 1915 aren't known for subtlety, but Henry B. Walthall (Beggars in Ermine) is quite good as Alving father and son; his climactic nervous/psychological breakdown is remarkably effective and kind of scary. If you cut Ghosts some slack, it's not difficult to understand why it was considered a powerful, adult movie in its day, even if it cuts corners. Watch for Erich von Stroheim in a bit part in the boarding school, too.

BONUS POINTS: Following the opening credits, somebody named Karl Fromes poses as Hendrik Ibsen rather stiffly. Maybe he had a sore neck.

JULIUS SIZZER (1931): Do you remember a comedian named Benny Rubin? He was the go-to actor if you needed an old guy, maybe running a pawn shop or complaining about kids these days. Rarely explicitly Jewish, his character came close enough to give you the general idea.

Not so in the early days of sound, when Rubin's "gift" for Yiddish accents, slangs, and malapropisms came to the fore in many low-budget two-reelers for the smaller studios like RKO Pathe, which released the gangster parody Julius Sizzer. Here, Rubin plays crime boss Liddle Sizzer (you get the joke, right?) and his younger brother, the goodhearted Julius. The "plot", if you can call it that, involves Liddle trying to find the guy who took a shot at him, while he tries to keep Julius, just off the boat from Russia, away from the underworld.

There's very liddle -- excuse me, little -- in Julius Sizzer that would rouse even a smile today. Not that the Yiddish stuff is offensive. In fact, that's the only thing that makes it, and Rubin's other pre-code shorts, almost interesting. No, it's the constant use of the Yiddish accent attempting to make mediocre jokes and puns that's offensive, even if it is fascinating to view a kind of humor that feels as ancient as the Torah. (Liddle Sizzer's weapon of choice is little scissors. Oy vey!). Strictly for undemanding fans of early talkie comedies and historians looking for grant money in order to write seriously about this kind of stuff. 

BONUS POINTS: As often with movies like these, the fascination with Julius Sizzer comes when it inadvertently calls attention to itself as a movie, such as the ambient sound of an airplane flying overhead, a couple of brief moments when it goes out of focus, and the microphone being a little too far from the actors during wide shots.

YOU AND ME (1938): Give credit to director Fritz Lang for putting every genre except Westerns into You and Me: romcom, drama, gangster, comedy, German Expressionism, a touch of leftist polemics -- even Kurt Weill gets into the mix with a couple of songs. Its poor box office made sure there'll never be another movie quite like it again. But it was fun while it lasted (for 85 minutes)!

Five years after their pre-code Pick Up, Sylvia Sidney and George Raft were reteamed, this time as Helen Roberts and Joe Dennis, employees at a department store. Joe, like many of the workers, is an ex-con given a second chance by his boss. Helen is aware of Joe's past but still wants to marry him. But she's hiding a secret from her past, one that derails their marriage, and drives Joe back into a life of crime. 

You and Me's multi-genre hopscotch is dizzying. It begins with an anti-capitalist number, before calming down into your average love story, before whiplashing into laughs, punches, guns, threats, a gauzy recreation of the song a nightclub chanteuse warbles, a bizarre prison fantasy/flashback recounted in rhythm and rhyme by the store's ex-cons... It's all very strange (and strangely entertaining), with camera angles and lighting in the manner of Lang's 1920s German productions. Ergo, it shouldn't have been a surprise that Depression-era moviegoers wanted something a little more accessible to drop their nickels on. 

Sylvia Sidney is nothing less than wonderful as the lovestruck Helen -- she can go from thrilled to despondent without breaking a sweat -- while George Raft is his usual cigar-store Indian self, made even more wooden in comparison by a lively supporting cast, including 28-year-old Robert Cummings, playing ex-cons. I think Raft's most interesting moment was likely off-screen, as he pretended to understand what the heck kind of movie You and Me was.

BONUS POINTS: It's also the only film where a group of criminals are literally taught a lesson (in math).

CASH ON DEMAND (1961): The next time your relatives drop by uninvited for Yuletide cheer,
tell them they're going to watch an update of A Christmas Carol. Then run Cash on Demand. It won't be what they were expecting, but it'll be a nice change from the hundredth screening of the real thing. That is, if they take their holiday fun with nerve wracking suspense and threats of violence. 

Peter Cushing, Hammer Studios' legendary horror mainstay, is the mousy yet Scrooge-like bank manager Harry Fordyce. Two days before Christmas, his ice-cold demeanor is shattered when forced to help rob his bank by a charming criminal posing as an insurance representative. If they don't pull off the heist within the allotted time of 45 minutes, Harry's wife will be zapped by two electrodes attached to her skull. And a happy new year!

When I call Cash on Demand nerve wracking, I'm not kidding, bub. The movie, playing out in real times, continually racks up tension until, as with Double Door, you feel like screaming at your TV. Cushing, detestable for the first several minutes, gradually becomes unexpectedly sympathetic, thanks to Andre Morell's eerily charming role as the robber. His psychological needling of Fordyce brings out, perhaps for the first time ever, the bank manager's humanity. To describe more would be unfair to first-time viewers; catch it next December, as it seems to be one of TCM's holiday favorites. Just be sure to have a glass of strong eggnog on hand to steady yourself.

BONUS POINTS: Fordyce's put-upon assistant is played by Richard Vernon, the disgruntled train passenger who shuts off Ringo's transistor radio in A Hard Day's Night.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 20

 One A-list feature sneaked into the list this time around, just to remind you I've got a scintilla of good taste. But only a scintilla. 

BEGGARS IN ERMINE (1934): Steel factory owner John "Flint" Dawson is forced out of his job when crippled in an accident arranged by his board of directors rival Jim Marley -- who then runs off with Dawson's wife and baby. Still wealthy, Dawson travels the country organizing disabled beggars into a fraternity with the help of blind peddler named Marchant. Dawson invests 10% of the beggars' earnings while providing food and housing for them in all major cities. He's also been quietly providing for his daughter Joyce, orphaned when her mother died, while still finding time to plan a way to take back his factory from the money/power-hungry Marley. 

I'm not sure what's more fantastical in Beggars in Ermine: the ability to organize the nation's beggars or that a rich businessman would actually do such a thing. It's a credit to the great Lionel Atwill's talent that he's able to make both impossibilities fully believable. And this is an actor better known for roles on the wrong side of morals. Dawson has lunch with his workers, provides them with stock in their company, and is always looking out for their best interests --everything Jim Marley hates. There's a vaguely socialistic bent in Beggars in Ermine which resonates today. Call it paternal capitalism.

This was the first time in over 25 years that I first watched Beggars in Ermine. While it's a pleasure to see it restored from its previous worn-out public domain condition, it didn't hold up quite as well as I'd hoped. The subplot involving Joyce and Marley's son Lee could have been eliminated, thus trimming 10 of its 72 minutes, which would have fully focused on its near-fantasy story.  It would have been nice, too, if Marchant (played by Henry B. Walthall) didn't play the same damn song over and over on his accordion. What I appreciated more this time around, though, was the movie's assumption that audiences in 1934 would be savvy enough to understand its discussions of selling, buying, and shorting stocks, much of which went straight over my head. I wish Dawson were around to organize financial idiots like me.

BONUS POINTS: Only a Poverty Row studio like Monogram could misspell the name of Henry B. Walthall in the credits, despite him being in over 300 movies since 1908. Love his fedora and sunglasses, too.

CITY FOR CONQUEST (1940) Truck driver Danny Kenny turns to boxing to help send his kid brother Eddie to music school. Meanwhile, Danny's lifelong sweetheart (at least he thinks so), dancer Peggy Marsh, goes on tour with the lecherous, underhanded Murry Burns. As Danny and Peggy occasionally reunite, their careers rise and fall. By the end, Danny, losing his eyesight, is now operating a newsstand; Peggy is back to being a hoofer in low-rent vaudeville houses; and Eddie conducts his symphony at Carnegie Hall.

City for Conquest seemed vaguely familiar, as if I'd seen it parodied by Carol Burnett or Mad magazine. And maybe I had. Like the previously discussed Cry of the City, City for Conquest is one of those paint-by-numbers yet emotionally effective dramas that studios turned out with the ease of combing one's hair. A passel or two of familiar Warner Brothers's contract players, starting with James Cagney and Ann Sheridan, further help to make City for Conquest something like the best community theatre group you've ever seen (and I mean that as a tribute to their welcome familiarity, not their talent). Only Frank Craven's unnecessary appearances as a Greek chorus (billed as The Old Timer) slows things down. (His part was cut to almost nothing in City for Conquest's 1948 re-release, but restored decades later, which wasn't necessarily a good idea).

Unexpected actors include 25 year-old Anthony Quinn as the slimy Murry Burns -- his rape of Sheridan is kind of implied without being shown; soon-to-be legendary director Elia Kazan as Cagney's childhood friend-turned-gangster named Googi; and, in his movie debut, Arthur Kennedy as Eddie (he looks like he could be Cagney's brother). Anatole Litvak's masterful direction on what was obviously a big-budget production gives City for Conquest a look as epic as its title. And I dare you not to get choked up at Cagney and Sheridan's climactic reunion. A truly great '40s movie. But watch a waterfront backdrop shake when a car drives by. Great doesn't mean perfect, y'know.

BONUS POINTS: Old Timer Frank Craven was one of the writers of Laurel & Hardy's best feature, Sons of the Desert. 

THE MAD MONSTER (1942): PRC had no shame in ripping off ideas from the major
studios, so it was inevitable they would get around to the werewolf genre. Dr. Lorenzo Cameron -- a scientist of the so-you-think-I'm-mad-do-you? school -- has perfected transferring the blood of a wolf to his half-wit assistant Petro. Good news: Lorenzo intends to give the formula to the military in order to create a monster army to fight the Axis. Bad news: First, he's going to sic Petro on his former university colleagues who got him fired because of stunts like this. Talk about cancelling people!

George Zucco was fast becoming poverty row's go-to actor for nutty characters. And in The Mad Monster, Zucco as Cameron takes it to the next level in a lengthy scene hallucinating a conversation with all his past nemeses. It's rather strange watching what seems to be a "classy" actor happily wallowing in hogwash like this -- I'm certain he broke out in laughter more than once after director Sam Newfield called "Cut!" But as if to make Cameron and Petro even less empathetic to the audience, the first victim is an innocent little girl. That way, we want to see those guys pay for their crimes, because, well, maybe those professors deserved to get clawed to death. 

Glenn Strange's make-up as Petro as the werewolf makes him look more like a hillbilly in need of dental work and a haircut rather than a monster. To further save time and thought, The Mad Monster's writers trot out the old saws of the scientist's beautiful daughter dating a reporter (the inexplicably top billed Johnny Downs) who solves the crime; a thunderstorm in the final reel; and Cameon and Petro dying in a house fire -- before the military gets the chance to turn their troops into werewolves. Next time, maybe.

BONUS POINTS: Glenn Strange's unintentionally(?) hilarious performance of  Petro (before his werewolf transformation) is a carbon copy of Lon Chaney, Jr. in Of Mice and Men. I told you PRC only ripped off from the best. 

LIGHTHOUSE (1947): After discovering her low-rent boyfriend Sam is a two-timer, the spiteful
Connie marries his much older boss, lighthouse keeper Hank. While Sam is quite aware of Connie's -- ahem -- past, Hank remains blissfully unaware until her drunk friend JoJo spills the beans. Soon after, Hank is nearly killed in a mysterious fall into the ocean. While hospitalized, Connie grows to love him, while losing all affection for Sam. But a nosy insurance investigator gets Hank to thinking that his near-fatal slip into the sea might not have been an accident after all, setting up a three-way showdown. 

One of PRC's last releases, Lighthouse bears a strong resemblance to the superior The Voice of the Whistler from two years earlier. It starts out well enough, with PRC's signature low-budget atmosphere, squalid settings (a waterfront dive, the dump shared by Connie and JoJo, a lighthouse well-lived in by two guys), and starring a solid B-movie triumvirate. John Litel (Two-Dollar Bettor) plays Hank as a nice but clueless sap -- how does a guy this blind to reality run a lighthouse? As Sam, Don Castle (Roses are Red) continues his strange career as a Clark Gable-lookalike who sounds like one of the Bowery Boys, while June Lang (Connie) is simply a woman lacking the sense God gave geese. They look like the kind of unfortunates who'd get caught up in a sleazy phare-a-trois (look it up).  

In a way, the best actors are the two who don't initially seem important, but who set in motion Hank's growing mistrust of his bride. Marion Martin's JoJo continues PRC's solemn tradition of extraordinarily blowsy, big-mouth women with hair peroxided to an inch of its life. Charles Wagenheim (there's a B-movie actor's name!) is Quimby, the suspicious insurance investigator who warns Hank that Connie is an untrustworthy slut (in so many words). Lighthouse is actually pretty good until falling apart in its final moments with a happy ending rather than a depressing climax featuring at least one murder and the survivor(s) wishing they never met each other. Doesn't that sound like a better movie?

BONUS POINTS: You'll never forget the incessant flute-heavy eight-note leitmotif, whether you want to or not.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE SIN OF NORA MORAN" (1933)

If the world were just, The Sin of Nora Moran would be known for something other than possessing the most startling movie poster of the 1930s. But as its ill-fated heroine learns, justice sometimes depends on who you know and where you're from.

Nora Moran isn't exactly leading a charmed life. She lost her adoptive parents as a teenager, is later raped by the man she worked for and is found guilty of a murder she didn't commit. Nora willingly takes the fall for the real killer, the married man she loves -- who happens to be the spineless Governor who refuses to pardon her, and who ultimately blows his brains out moments after her execution.

Even by pre-Code standards, this is pretty grim stuff. In the wrong hands, it would have been either unwatchable or howlingly melodramatic. But thanks to talented people in front of and behind the cameras, The Sin of Nora Moran is fascinating not only to watch but to study. That "New Marvelous Screen Technique" mentioned in the poster is what sets it apart from most of the Hollywood herd released back then.

The Sin of Nora Moran opens with District Attorney John Grant telling Nora's story to Edith Crawford, the widow of the late Gov. Dick Crawford. From that point, the narration bounces back and forth to any number of characters, including Nora herself via sedative-induced hallucinations while awaiting execution. 

Flashbacks contain flashbacks, then suddenly jump to the present before returning to Nora's fantasies and other characters' memories. People suddenly appear from the darkness only to disappear again. Images pile up on each other like Legos. Dizzying montages mark the passage of time. Nora Moran's storytelling makes that of Citizen Kane look like "Jack & Jill." 

At times, you don't know what's real and what's merely the by-product of pharmaceuticals (either Nora's or the director's). One bizarre scene features Nora's vision of her own funeral, attended by Grant and Crawford, featuring the kind of dialogue not spoken in other American movies in 1933:

 
CRAWFORD: What's the matter with her?
GRANT: She's dead.
CRAWFORD: I don't like the way they've fixed her hair.
GRANT: They've shaved part of it off. 
CRAWFORD: Why? Why did they do that?
GRANT: So the current would go through her head.
CRAWFORD: It doesn't go through her head?
GRANT: It goes through her head, her arms and legs.
CRAWFORD: It's a lie!
GRANT: It goes through her head, her arms and legs. If you don't believe it, come to the execution tonight. They're going to kill her again. The warden wasn't pleased with the way that she died.

For audiences weaned on mainstream fair like 42nd Street, Little Women and Dinner at Eight the same year, this  must have been a very strong drink indeed. Whether it was deliberate or not -- and I'd like to think it was -- The Sin of Nora Moran's low budget actually aides the visuals in avant-garde scenes like the funeral and the climatic meeting between Nora's spirit and Crawford. "There's nothing to fear in death," she assures him. "I'm not dying for all the things you did. I'm dying for all the good things you're going to do. And I'm dying rather than giving up something precious to me." Nora Moran is the victim of every man she's ever met, yet ultimately the strongest character in the movie.

The language in The Sin of Nora Moran is pretty coarse for its time -- four "damns" and one "hell"  by my count, with an "Oh my God!" or two thrown into the mix. Early scenes in a moth-bitten circus where Nora works as the assistant to an alcoholic lion-tamer who eventually rapes her -- and whom is eventually murdered -- set the appropriately depressing mood. (The actor's stand-in repeatedly punches the lion in the head -- a crowd-pleaser no longer featured by Ringling Bros.)  Even the brief scenes of happiness between Nora and Crawford are shrouded in doom -- we know from the opening moments that Nora kept an appointment with the electric chair. 

But the others involved ultimately pay the price as well. Crawford, by committing suicide. And Grant -- the District Attorney who not only tried to make the murder look like an accident but urged Crawford not to pardon Nora -- by a heavy conscience that will haunt him the rest of his life. Nobody gets off easy in The Sin of Nora Moran. Not even Crawford's scheming harpy of a widow (right), who realizes too late that her husband danced to her own foul tune as much as to Grant's. 

Special commendation to Phil Goldstone for the revolutionary style later credited to any number of later directors. It's especially interesting considering that Goldstone directed only 11 other movies, none of them of particular interest today (unless you count Damaged Goods, his grimy 1937 exploitation shocker about syphilis). And it's a loss to movies that The Sin of Nora Moran would be the only screenplay by somebody with the fancy-pants name of W. Maxwell Goodhue, the author of a bunch of now-forgotten stage plays. 

And speaking as someone who reads too much into coincidences, I do wonder if Phil Goldstone cast Zita Johann as Nora because of her resemblance to Renee Falconetti
in the 1928 French classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc (left). If so, The Sin of Nora Moran has to be the only B-movie influenced by a silent art film directed by Theodor Dreyer. 

By and large, the cast is made up of second-tier names who made their living as character actors. Alan Dinehart (left), as John Grant, seems to appear in every other movie run on TCM. British-born Paul Cavanagh (right), as Dick Crawford, specialized in dashing heroes and oily villains, eventually making dozens of TV appearances throughout the '50s. (As it is today, TV was the salvation of actors no longer appreciated by movie producers.)

Henry B. Walthall (right), who plays the priest that arranges the young Nora's adoption -- and presides over her phantasmagoria funeral -- made his movie debut in 1908 under the direction of D.W. Griffith. He appeared in over 300 movies, including The Birth of a Nation, over 28 years. Contrast that Warren Beatty, who's made only 22 movies from his first in 1961 to his most recent in 2001. That's 40 years. Hollywood definitely honors the wrong people.

Zita Johann was the closest of the bunch to a star at the time, having been Boris Karloff's object of desire in The Mummy a year earlier. She plays Nora Moran with the right touch of sorrow, confusion and, ultimately, relief (coming from death) and compassion (for the living). 

In 1934, she returned to Broadway after only seven movies. Fifty-two years later, Johann  made her eighth movie, the low-budget sci-fi hybrid Raiders of the Living Dead, no doubt at the request of a movie fan involved in the production. 

According to her 1993 obituary in the New York Times, "In recent decades, she worked with disturbed children and gave private acting lessons," which sounds redundant. Trivia alert: Zita Johann was married to producer/director/writer/actor/commercial pitchman John Houseman from 1929 to 1933 (above, left). You can just feel the love between them, can't you?

The Sin of Nora Moran could only have been made by a two-bit studio like Majestic Pictures. (Even the name "Majestic Pictures" sounds like something from a Three Stooges comedy.) The majors would rarely, if ever, make a movie with such an atypical style. Independents had the freedom to take a chance just to get noticed. Sometimes, it was their only choice.

Such is the quandary of The Sin of Nora Moran. Without a strong family named Warner, for instance, to guide it into the age of home video, it was doomed to be forgotten, winding up in the wilds of YouTube while far less interesting movies went on to lasting fame with promotion undeserved. The real sin of Nora Moran, as with its heroine, is its fate.

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  UPDATE: THE SIN OF NORA MORAN has been beautifully restored after all! Go to Cineverse: The Sin of Nora Moran