THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 56

 The genres are all over the map today -- Western, mystery, horror, and film noir. Each has a twist from the usual movies of their type, making them stand out either for the good or like a sore thumb.

LAW AND ORDER (1932): The year is 1890. Ex-lawman Fame Johnson, his brother Luther, and two sidekicks Ed Brandt and Deadwood, mosey into Tombstone, Arizona, where the residents are terrorized by the crooked sheriff and a gang of cattle rustlers. (Stop me if this is starting to sound vaguely familiar.) Fame is talked into become Tombstone's marshal, a development the galloots don't take kindly to. When Ed Brandt is shot down in the middle of Main Street, Fame and his posse decide it's time to meet up with the bad guys for a gunfight at --

Oh, you know where. Law and Order is a barely fictionalized version of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, with only the date and names changed. This doesn't negate the fact it's a topnotch Western -- high praise from a non-fan of the genre like me -- and, for my money, better than the more highly regarded My Darling Clementine, the 1946 version of the story directed by John Ford. It's about 30 minutes shorter, too, earning it an extra gold star.

I wouldn't be surprised if the star of Clementine, Henry Fonda, studied Huston's performance in Law and Order, as the two are often eerily alike. Of the two, I prefer Huston, one of the great movie actors of his time who doesn't get enough respect these days, and whose stage work didn't prevent him from being wholly natural in the entirely different style of movies. Watch how he makes dimwit killer Andy Devine (younger and thinner than you've ever seen him) feel good about his execution by reminding him that he's the first person to be legally hanged in Tombstone. You'd want to be arrested by a guy like Fame.

All of the supporting actors, especially Harry Carey as Ed Brandt, evoke the Old West more realistically than other studio Westerns of the time. Their clothes are often covered in dirt and dust and grime; they use the same towel to wash their faces and clean their shoes; their eyes reflect the deaths they've witnessed and participated in. Further making it a must-see, Law and Order (written by Walter Huston's 26-year-old son John) was recently restored for a 4K Blu ray, making it look and sound as good as it did nearly a century ago. Maybe better. Like I said, I've never been into Westerns, but Law and Order is one I'll return to more than once in the future. 

BONUS POINTS: The use of Universal's famous crane used in the 1929 musical Broadway, especially during the astonishing climactic shootout. And don't miss skinny Walter Brennan as the guy who sweeps out the local saloon. At age 38, he was toothless even then.

THE GHOST CAMERA (1933):
Good Lord, man, where has this delightful, fast-paced, 64-minute "mystery narrative" from the UK been hiding all my life? With a little tweaking, The Ghost Camera could pass for one of Alfred Hitchcock's early British talkies.

Finding a camera in the back seat of his car, John Gray develops the film hoping to identify the owner. Instead, one of the shots has captured a murder -- a photo which, along with the camera, quickly goes missing. John tracks down a woman in another photo, Mary Elton, whose brother Ernest vanished days earlier with the camera. As John and Mary follow the other photographic clues, they find the scene of the murder just as the police find Ernest. While the evidence is stacked against Ernest, John inadvertently saves the day when finding the real culprit.

If only all British "quota quickies" were as good as The Ghost Camera, starting with the twisty, occasionally risqué script by H. Fowler Mear (there's a British name for you!). I was and continue to be unfamiliar with Henry Kendall, who is memorable as John; he's like the prototype of the young Hugh Grant mixed with Edward Everett Horton. In one of her earliest roles, the nearly unrecognizable pre-Hollywood Ida Lupino is appealing as Mary, who seems to be hiding a very important secret. She's supposed to be 20-ish but, if Lupino's birthdate is correct, was actually 15! Well, people aged faster then, that's for sure.

Along with Lupino, there are a couple of other yet-to-be famous names found here. John Mills plays Ernest as the innocent guy who looks guilty, as when he makes his first entrance into the courtroom, twitching and stumbling like he's already being led to the gallows. The pitch perfect editing in that scene -- and throughout The Ghost Camera -- is the work of future director David Lean. Everyone in fact gives their all to what was intended as just another bottom-of-the-bill picture but today should be considered as an unjustifiably overlooked bit of British cinema.

BONUS POINTS: Upon entering the ruins of a 12th-century castle, a nervous Ida Lupino says the surroundings give her "a case of the jimjams", a phrase I hope to re-enter into everyday conversation.

CRY OF THE WEREWOLF (1944): Universal pretty much had the lycanthropy lore to
itself, first with Werewolf of London and, later, The Wolfman until Columbia got into the game with Cry of the Werewolf.  Columbia made an unexpectedly nice switcheroo by casting a woman, Nina Foch, as the hellish human hound. And in a regrettable example of genetics, Foch's Celeste is a werewolf by birth, courtesy of her late mother. Celeste is determined to rip the throats out of anyone connected to a museum featuring proof of her heritage. Such a loyal child!

Yet Cry of the Werewolf doesn't veer too far from what people were expecting. Celeste is the leader of an Eastern European gypsy "family" which apparently took a wrong turn outside Budapest and wound up in New Orleans. Further confusing things, two of the movie's characters are British, while nobody has a Louisiana accent. It's actually rather surprising that this mishmash doesn't include a Nazi professor trying to breed his own werewolves to unleash in America. Maybe Monogram already tried that gag.

If you recognize Nina Foch, Barton MacLane (as the gruff police lieutenant) may ring a bell as well. If not, you won't recognize anybody in the cast, even if the romantic leads deserve a negative mention. Stephen Crane -- not the guy who wrote Red Bad of Courage -- has the presence of stale popcorn. His onscreen honey, Osa Massen, was probably Columbia's answer to Republic's Vera Hruba Ralston, right to the hard-to-pin-down accent and relentless state of confusion.

Despite my japes, Cry of the Werewolf is ultimately a perfectly watchable B-movie war weary audiences were desperate for any kind of distraction for an hour. Save it for when all you can find on TV is junk -- in other words, any evening.

BONUS POINTS: Washing out of show business after only two more movies, Stephen Crane found his calling by creating the Kon Tiki restaurant chain. Another round of Zombies, Steve!

                                                         

DEUX HOMMES DANS MANHATTAN (1959): Ahh, the comforting pre-credit
sequence of so many '50s noirs: Times Square at night seen through a car's rear window, with the familiar ADMIRAL TELEVISION APPLIANCES neon sign in the background, accompanied by a lonely trumpet wailing like a lost child. Then the title appears: DEUX HOMMES DANS MANHATTAN. Hey, what they hey? A credit reading SCENARIO ADAPTATION ET DIALOGUES? What gives? 

Well, it was inevitable that the country that coined the phrase film noir would give it a go. And the set-up is actually a good one, updated for the geopolitical age. Moreau and Delmas, respectively a French reporter and photographer both stationed in New York, prowl the city one night investigating the disappearance of France's delegate to the United Nations. They track down the married man's known girlfriends but gain little useful information. The French friends are ready to give up until they learn of the attempted suicide of one of the delagte's sidepieces -- an event that takes their investigation to another, unexpected level. And, say, what's the deal with the car that's been tailing them all night?

All the elements are there for a classic noir. The problem with Deux Hommes dans Manhattan lies with writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville (who also plays Moreau). In his attempt to emulate an American movie genre, Melville exaggerates noir style to the point of laughability. Reporters wearing sunglasses in the office. Slutty women spouting "tough" dialogue that's actually inane. An obnoxious trumpet blast every time the mystery car behind them turns on its headlights. It's like a Cordon Bleu-trained chef using all his culinary knowledge to replicate your grandma's simple coffee cake by tripling the amount of ingredients and throwing in some others because they seem right.

Moreau and his costar Pierre Grasset do their best to emulate American anti-heroes, right down to the trench coat, fedora, and world-weary conversations. The French actresses are fine, but their American counterparts -- mon Dieu! Melville must have cast most of them for no other reason other than they worked cheap. It's always nice to see '50s New York in movies, but Deux Hommes dans Manhattan doesn't do it any favors. 

BONUS POINTS: Several location shots are plugged both visually and through dialogue in what appears to be product placement. The Capitol Records recording studio on East 23rd, the Pike Slip Inn, the Oven and Grill Diner, the Ridgewood Rathskeller... all now vanished but preserved in the movie. Well, at least it was good for something.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 46

 This Early Show entry is a mixed bag, with one great movie, one pretty good, one creepy, and a forgotten TV show starring a now-century-old legend. You can't say I don't deliver the goods.

THE CRIMINAL CODE (1930): Just as the first phase of movie musicals was overstaying its welcome, prison dramas took hold, and The Criminal Code was one of the best. Robert Graham is on his sixth lap of a ten-year prison stretch for manslaughter. Mark Brady, the new warden -- and former D.A. who sentenced Graham -- hires him as a chauffeur, giving the young man a daily taste of freedom and for Brady's daughter Mary. But before Graham can make a move on her, he's thrown in the prison "dungeon" for refusing to squeal on a fellow prisoner named Galloway, who stuck a shiv into a stoolie -- even though it means losing his chance at parole. 

The Criminal Code -- better looking than your average Columbia movie of the time -- is remembered mainly as the movie that allegedly inspired director James Whale to hire Boris Karloff (as Galloway) for Frankenstein later that year. There's far more to the movie than that, as it also shows how its director Howard Hawks was already polishing his fast-talking, multi-conversational style in only his second talkie. It's on display primarily in the first few minutes, but Hawks seems to have urged Walter Huston (Brady) to not only keep up the speed but intensify it along the way. And while Huston looks the part of the D.A.-turned-warden, he has an amusing habit of muttering "Yeah" -- both as a statement and a question -- while chewing on a cigar in a possibly unintentionally nasal imitation of Edward G. Robinson. 

As for the others, Phillips Holmes (Men Must Fight) makes for a sympathetic Graham, who over time has gone mad in stir. A young, dreamy-eyed actor, Holmes is convincing and empathetic as the nice guy-turned-grimy prisoner. And then there's Boris Karloff who admires Graham so much for keeping his yap shut that he willingly pays the ultimate price himself. Had Frankenstein not come along, he'd have probably gotten typecast in criminal roles. (He also played a prisoner in the now-lost French language version of Laurel & Hardy's first feature Pardon Us.) But it's Hawks himself who's the real star of The Criminal Code, putting his mark on almost every scene, bringing a welcome fervency into what could have been a routine melodrama.

BONUS POINTS: An unexpectedly young (and dramatic) Andy Devine is the prisoner who provides the weapon when a brutal prison guard gets what's coming to him.

THE LIMEJUICE MYSTERY, OR, WHO SPAT IN GRANDFATHER'S PORRIDGE? (1930): Any one-reeler nearly a century old with a title like that deserves a looksee. Until you looksee it for yourself. Then you realize how you just wasted eight precious minutes of your life -- or if you're pupaphobic, terrified to near death, for the cast is made up entirely of marionettes. 

A UK production, The Limejuice Mystery has a plot that... well, doesn't really exist. A murder happens in a bar in London's Limehouse district. (We know that because "Limehouse Blues" is heard almost incessantly on the soundtrack.) As weeks pass without the police coming any closer to solving the crime, master detective Herlock Sholmes is literally begged to step in to help. Not that he actually steps in. As with all the marionettes here, he more or less slides across the floor as if, er, moved via strings controlled by drunks. And if you think the name Herlock Sholmes is witty, his "co-star" is named Anna Went Wrong, as if out of one of those pornographic Tijuana Bibles.

There's no dialogue here, because The Limejuice Mystery is a wonderful example of pantomime that the British music hall in known for. Well no, that's not true. It's because providing dialogue would have been a tremendous waste of time and effort. As with the nightmarish I Am Suzanne! , its alleged appeal lies strictly in watching pieces of wood carved into grotesque-looking humans getting dragged around like a dog by its cruel master. The Limejuice Mystery exists in a good print on YouTube, while movies highly-regarded in their day have vanished without a trace. That's the real mystery here.

BONUS POINTS: Nobody actually spits in grandfather's porridge. 

THE LAST CROOKED MILE (1946): Private dick Tom Dwyer horns in on a police investigation of a bank robbery in order to collect the reward money. He starts by cozying up to nightclub thrush Sheila Kennedy, former girlfriend of the robbery leader named Jarvis who, along with his two assistants, were killed when their getaway car took  swan dive off a cliff. Dwyer is convinced the money is hidden somewhere in the getaway car, now restored and on display at a carnival. But before he can get his mitts on the dough, he has to get past "Wires" McGuire, a criminal whose trademark is strangling people with -- you'll never guess -- a wire. No more wire hangers!

At times it's difficult to figure out if Republic Pictures' The Last Crooked Mile is supposed to be taken seriously. Former cowboy star Don "Red" Barry plays Dwyer like a combination of James Cagney and Dwayne "Dobie Gillis" Hickman -- ready to throw a punch minute, spout goofy dialogue the next. Even the ever-reliable Sheldon Leonard (as McGuire) verges on laughing at one point, as if he doesn't know what's going on. But once it settles down, The Last Crooked Mile is quite an enjoyable 67-minute outing.

But it's B-queen Ann Savage as Sheila Kennedy who got me watching it. Almost unrecognizable at times with dark hair rather than her usual

blonde, Savage is more vulnerable here than in her best movie, Detour, even if she appears to know more than she lets on. A nice twist is the way Dwyer starts romancing her despite having a girlfriend named Bonnie. Is he really starting to fall for the moll, or does he suspect her as being part of the bank heist? You'll have to find out for yourself. All I can tell you is that I was 50% fooled -- which is something else you'll have to figure out yourself by watching the movie to its very last crooked mile.

BONUS POINTS: Barry and Savage have a couple of surprising moments with risqué dialogue that wouldn't have been out of place in a 1930s pre-code movie, proving the censors weren't very bright.

MOTHER'S DAY (10/21/58): Judging by the hoopla surrounding Dick Van Dyke's
99th birthday, you'd think that Mary Poppins and his first sitcom were the only things ever starred in. Why oh why did no one ask him about hosting Mother's Day, ABC-TV's kinder, gentler rip-off of Queen for a Day? Unlike the latter's cruelly exploitative nature, Mother's Day pit middle-aged women against each other in friendly challenges all moms apparently should know, like telling raw eggs from hard-boiled by touch alone, or figuring out which of a half-dozen steaks weighs four pounds. Women sure had it easy in the '50s!

Mother's Day's contestants were submitted by the loved ones of women who were deemed worthy of prizes provided by the producers -- mink stoles, tea sets, portable record players, and a vacation to one of a half-dozen glamorous cities. (The Latin Quarter, where the show aired from, was probably the classiest joint any of the contestants or audience members ever visited.) In addition to those eggs and steaks stumpers, the moms in this episode are submitted to a memory test and, in the weirdest moment of any game show in history, telling the difference between a dynamite cap from three similar-looking harmless devices -- as we're reminded, kids playing in vacant city lots are forever bringing home explosives. 

And as for Dick Van Dyke, no daytime host was ever more affable; women at home probably considered him such a nice young man. Today, he's the only reason worth watching Mother's Day if only to learn that legends had to start somewhere, even if meant wiping egg yolks off their hands. Well, also to remind us that live lunchtime programs like this and The Liberace Show ("next on most of these stations") were the closest housewives had to a vacation from their humdrummiest of lives. 

BONUS POINTS: One of Mother's Day's sponsors is Betty Crocker's hot cereal Protein Plus, back when it was pronounced Pro-Tee-In. Just to show my age, I remember hearing that pronunciation in commercials.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE" (1933)

In this, the worst presidential campaign since 1932 Germany, President Judson Hammond of Gabriel Over the White House looks awfully good -- even if he goes awfully far to help raise America out of the Depression.

It wasn't always this way, however. President Hammond, you see, used to put party (political and otherwise) over country first, last and always. Only lightly concerned about the endless promises he made to voters during the campaign, a colleague assures him, "By the time they realize you're not going to keep them, your term will be over." Who was it that said politicians need a public and a private face?

"I faithfully swear to make myself rich off  the
donations of lobbyists, and the backs of the
taxpayers, so help me God."

For Hammond, being president is business as usual. Meaning, press conference questions must be submitted 24 hours in advance, all his answers will be generic banalities, and he is never to be quoted. After listening to answers given during this campaign, that might not be a bad idea.

Being the kind of guy nobody says "no" to, Hammond relaxes by driving his car at 100 MPH -- until he eventually loses control and goes flying headfirst into a coma for several days. Just as it appears to be heading for the polling station in the sky, he undergoes a spiritual transformation, waking up as a combination of Abraham Lincoln, Benito Mussolini, Jesus Christ, and Bernie Sanders. It's certainly more interesting than a party hack with a famous name or a bankrupt casino owner.

"The good news, America, is that you won't have to
travel to Central America to live under a banana
republic strongman."

Once immune to the despair of the unemployed, hungry, and homeless -- not to mention the violent bootlegging underworld -- Hammond runs roughshod over the Constitution in order to right America. When firing his Cabinet isn't enough to prove his mettle, Hammond declares martial law and dissolves both houses of Congress -- with Congressional approval! Now you know it's a fantasy.

But that's not all. Deciding to beat bootleggers at their own game, Hammond opens government-run liquor stores. And how else is he going to get foreign countries to pay their debts but to make sure the US has the largest Navy in the world, and force all other countries to give up their military so they have the scratch to give back to Uncle Sam -- or else. 

"Let's do the dirty before I get conked on the head."

Walter Huston plays Hammond as something of a double role. Initially a blatant roue, he installs his girlfriend, Pendola Molloy, as his "personal secretary", giving the concept of "private dictation" a whole new meaning.

But after experiencing his transformation, Huston goes dead serious, with make-up helping to show how the weight of the office hangs heavy over the Dictator-in-Chief. Out goes rolling in the hay with Pendola; in comes a socialist/ fascist/populist presidency that exists only to help the well-being of the lower- and middle-class. Like I said, fantasy.

"Are you there, God? It's me, Judson."

The movie's spiritual bent is never far from its surface (not surprising for its title, hunh?). Hammond is summoned out of his coma by the sound of a faint horn that only he can hear (Yo, Gabriel, louder!) and an invisible spirit brushing past the curtains of his open window. 

Hammond looks up from time to time for guidance whenever the horn sounds, kind of like a student of Louis Armstrong. Witnessing one such incident, Pendola describes it as "a delicious sense of lassitude." I thought I was the only person who used that phrase.

It would be worth going to trial just to stand
in this cool courtroom.

Gabriel Over the White House is stuffed with startling imagery. The pre-coma President Hammond playing with his nephew, oblivious to a passionate radio speech by the leader of the million-man march of the unemployed and homeless; gangsters shooting up the White House, leading to an art deco/expressionistic court-martial; and the federally-sanctioned firing squad execution of said gangsters -- apparently in New York's Battery Park! -- with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Irony? Approval? All I can do is refer you to Hammond's right-hand man, Hartley Beekman, who's happy to "cut the red tape of legal proceedings." That's one way of looking at it, chum.

Sometimes this doesn't seem like such a
bad idea.

As it is today, 1933 was an uneasy time for America, with an angry, ignored populace ripe for a major shake-up from politics as usual. It was, after all, the year that also saw the release of Columbia's laudatory documentary Mussolini Speaks!, narrated by a gushing Lowell Thomas. Gabriel Over the White House speaks to that unease in a way few fictional movies of the time dared -- especially one released by a major studio like M-G-M.

Whatever you think of his methods, Pres. Judson Hammond puts the working man first. Our two major presidential candidates are in it to satisfy their egos and lust for power. There's only one cure for what ails America: Make America Hammond Again! 

And while you're at it, let's see some government-run marijuana stores. You just know they've got the best stuff.

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Pres. Judson Hammond gives Congress what-for in this scene from Gabriel Over the White House. Tell me you wouldn't vote for this guy. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivMiVQjGeyg)

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "DUEL IN THE SUN" (1946)

Oh my God. Has there ever been a more oversexed, overheated, overproduced, overacted movie than Duel in the Sun? With phantasmagorical three-strip Technicolor and shouting-to-the- rafters dialogue making it look every inch the fever dream of amphetamine-addicted producer David O. Selznick, Duel in the Sun was intended to top his previous epic Gone with the Wind. 

Instead, the huge, grossly-expensive (almost $100-million when adjusted for inflation), two year-long production is still considered one of the most harebrained movies from Hollywood's "golden age." Director King Vidor handles Selznick's risible script with the same anvil-like touch that he would bring to The Fountainhead three years later. Vidor, by the way, was one of six directors who helmed Duel in the Sun during its lengthy inception -- or is it ejection? -- including Selznick, who, in a rare moment of lucidity, fired himself. As for the acting, there's so much ham on display that it's probably banned in Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods.

The tale of a young, half-breed trollop who causes havoc between two brothers and their racist father, Duel in the Sun intends to be spicy but winds up being tasteless. It would have fared better as a low-budget RKO black & white programmer as originally intended, but once Selznick got his Oscar-winning paws on the project, all bets were off. 

Warning: staring at this sun on a high-def
TV for 10 straight minutes can cause
permanent eye damage.

The movie announces its intentions to epicdom (a word I just made up) with a 10-minute instrumental prelude by Dimitri Tiomkin, which never manages to string together more than three interesting notes at a time. 

The difference between "prelude"
and "overture" is 7 minutes.

Just as it comes to a thudding end, and you're settling in for, you know, a movie, the voice of character actor Reed Hadley announces, "Ladies and gentleman, the overture to Duel in the Sun!" -- followed by three more unmemorable minutes of the Selznick Studio orchestra sawing away while Hadley describes the movie you're about to see. Show, don't tell! 

Then that's followed by the credits, and that's followed by a magniloquent prologue spoken by Orson Welles (presumably to make it sound classy) before the movie finally kicks in. I guess Selznick had to do something to make it seem as long as Gone with the Wind. (Without the music folderol, Duel in the Sun runs only a little over two hours.)

Now we know where Elvis Presley got his sneer.

If Duel in the Sun was Selznick's attempt to turn his then-mistress, Jennifer Jones, into another Vivian Leigh, he should have spent more time on his shrink's couch and less time popping bennies. Wearing dark "Injun" make-up, Jones instead resembles a drunken Emirates Airline stewardess. And rather than being sexy, as was Selznick's intentions, she often appears to be having a seizure. But as she admits, "I'm trash like my maw!" A moment later, upon reflection, she writhes on her bed shouting, "Trash, trash, trash, trash, trash!" Yeah, like the script, script, script, script, script!

"After we do the nasty, I'm going out to kill
a mockingbird."

Anyone familiar with the stolid Gregory Peck of To Kill a Mockingbird will be shocked by the horny, violent sociopath presented here. Unlike, say, Alfred Hitchcock's multidimensional bad guys, Peck's Lewt McCanles is a rotter through-and-through, licking his chops like a hungry wolf eyeing a defenseless lamb -- in this case, Jennifer Jones' Pearl Chavez. As for Pearl, it winds up being one of those I-hate-you-so-much-I-love-you relationships that always work out real well in the end. (Note: that was delivered with a heavy dose of irony.) If nothing else, Peck has the time of his life playing a heel for a change, far looser in Duel in the Sun than anything else he ever made, even if he is more cartoon than human. 

Joseph Cotten is amused by Jennifer Jones'
attempt at catching flies with her mouth.

Jessie McCanles, Lewt's younger brother, hasn't got a chance with Pearl. While having pledged her love to Jessie, she's far more attracted to bad boy Lewt. Just to show you how low Pearl is, she  allows Jessie to enter her room just as Lewt is in there lighting up a post-coital smoke. (What's Apache for "bitch"?) Cotten is saddled with pity-me dialogue, but so underplays his part that he comes off better than most of his co-stars. (The only other actor in Duel in the Sun who avoids histrionics is Herbert Marshall as Pearl's father, and that's because he's killed off after ten minutes.)

The good preacher takes a personal interest in
Pearl's salvation.

Yet despite Jones' and Peck's grandstanding, it's up to the old-timers to really pull out the stops. Walter Huston's brief appearance as a shady preacher proves that the actor knew kitsch when he saw it, and, as with his role as Doc Holliday in The Outlaw, plays it with outsized tongue in cheek. King Vidor probably didn't get the joke.

"I look like Hillary who?"

Nor did Vidor do poor Lillian Gish any favors as Lewt and Jessie's mother Laura Belle McCanles. Perhaps not having seen any Gish performance since The Birth of a Nation, Vidor appeared to have instructed her to telegraph her emotions by opening her eyes like manholes, dropping her jaw to the floor, and placing her hands on her cheeks whenever possible. Her final scene -- crawling from her bed to console her grumpy husband before dropping dead at his feet -- is perhaps the cruelest, most unfortunately-hilarious thing a legend like Gish ever had to suffer. Other than the rest of her scenes in Duel with the Sun.

Lillian Gish wipes away the
spittle from Barrymore's
line-readings.

But nobody -- no body -- overdoes it like Lionel Barrymore as Sen. Jackson McCanles, the family patriarch. Once a wonderfully subtle actor, Barrymore had by now settled comfortably into the wheelchair-bound lovable crank character that defined the latter part of his career. Under Vidor's direction, however, Barrymore crosses the divide between crank and bull undergoing a wide-awake vasectomy. Bellowing, bawling and roaring his dialogue like a one-man zoo, he officially becomes a self-parody in Duel in the Sun the way his brother John did in Playmates. But at least the latter was supposed to be a comedy.

At least you can see the (over)budget on the screen.
An impressive sequence featuring hundreds of cowboys charging down a steep hill and across the plains is still exciting (and today would be recreated with CGI). The psilocybin-like Technicolor is wildly vivid, with fiery red sunsets and gorgeous blue skies popping out of the screen, while Tiomkin's score never, and I mean never, stops. As Bosley Crowther wrote in his New York Times review, "Oh, brother—if only the dramatics were up to the technical style!"

D.W. Griffith visits Huston and Barrymore
on the set of Duel in the Sun, and decides he got
out of pictures at the right time.

Thanks to the lurid promise of SEX SEX SEX, Duel in the Sun actually turned a financial, if not artistic, profit, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of the year. It would go down in history as being the first movie little Martin Scorsese ever saw -- such are legends made.

Love means never having to say you're
sorry after shooting each other to death.

Today, Duel in the Sun divides viewers. Scorsese, still a fan, believes it was ahead of its time. Everybody else thinks it's the work of a madman. But the best part -- the absolute icing on the cake -- follows the climax. Pearl and Lewt shoot each other a dozen or so times before dying lustily in each other's arms in the hot desert sun. Pull back, fade out... to five minutes of Exit music. 

Two hours and 20 minutes of non-stop music -- and I still can't remember a frigging note.

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

To read about John Barrymore's swansong, Playmates, go here.
To read about King Vidor's The Fountainhead, go here.

 

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL" (1935)

The idea of a tunnel running from England to the USA seems something of a fool's commute. The idea has actually been discussed from time to time, but Gaumont British Pictures got there in 1935 with the art-deco sci-fi epic Transatlantic Tunnel. If the Second Avenue Subway contains as much melodrama and intrigue as this movie -- marital problems,  blindness, double-crossing, murder, a disease called "tunnel sickness," underwater volcanoes -- those poor sandhogs are in for a hell of a time.

How many people were decapitated opening
the trunk?

It's a credit to the British filmmakers' honesty that the character behind the tunnel, Richard McAllen, is an American. Apparently, Brits weren't forward-thinking (or foolhardy) enough to come up with such an insane idea. As with all sci-fi movies, Transatlantic Tunnel takes place in the future -- that is, the 1940s and beyond. This allows the filmmakers to show off all kind of jim-dandy inventions, including television, wall-installed Skypes called televisors, trains and cars shaped like torpedoes, and private planes that resemble badly-made scones. Doesn't life today seem dull by comparison?

"How many times do I have to tell you? I'm on the
phone, not hiding behind the wall!"

None of these material things, of course, prevents human drama from taking its toll. Gossip rags hint that McAllen is having an affair with British debutante Varlia Lloyd. His wife Ruth, having gone blind working in the tunnel as a nurse, walks out on him, taking their son with her. McAllen's friendship with his associate, Robbie, is stretched almost to the breaking point. A couple of the moneymen financing the project plan to dump their shares, and, in the resulting panic, buy up the rest to control the whole thing. (One of the financiers is murdered when he backs out of the deal.) McAllen's son Geoffrey, now a young man, is killed in a tunnel explosion, joining hundreds of other fatalities that have already incurred. All this to prevent climate change from airplanes zooming over the Atlantic? No thanks, bub, I'll take my chances with the melting icebergs.

You'd think by then, they'd have invented
an iPhone instead of having to use
pencil and paper.

You may be wondering by now if the tunnel is even worth this heartache. The world leaders, deciding if they're willing to back the project, aren't so sure. When one declares the tunnel will provide only "useless employment," another says, "That's the kind they prefer." (Hey, how did Harry Reid get in here?)  But the overriding reason for the tunnel's construction, as repeated over and over, is to bring about world peace. But nobody ever explains how! They should have paid attention to the French representative, an arms manufacturer, who admits, "When your tunnel is built, all of the other nations will come to me for guns to blow it up." Merci, mon ami. (His line echoes a similar sentiment during an equally-cynical scene in The Man Who Reclaimed his Head.)

The wonderful world of alanite steel.

You may be wondering, too, just how a transatlantic tunnel can possibly be built. Well, I guess you weren't counting on radium drills and alanite steel. That's the cool thing about science-fiction -- if something is impossible, just make up stuff to defy it. Another side-effect of living in the future, by Transatlantic Tunnel's sights, is that apparently nobody ages over time except McAllen's son -- and he's killed on his first day on the job. That'll teach you non-aging little whippersnapper!

Richard Dix and Leslie Banks discover just
how hot it can get drilling through a
volcano.

Richard Dix, nearing the end of his leading-man days, was probably hired to play Richard McAllen because he looks and sounded to Brits like the typical American -- part genius, part caveman, not quite handsome but someone who can fill out a tux.  British actor Leslie Banks -- perhaps best known for the original UK version of The Man who Knew Too Much -- plays McAllen's friend Robbie with his usual flair, even as he spends most of the time with his

Even this UK promotional card
for the movie kept Leslie Banks
in right profile.

right profile to the camera, the left side having been paralyzed during service in World War I. (I bet you thought I was going to make a crack about him being a two-faced actor. Never.) George Arliss and Walter Huston -- "classy" actors from the UK and US -- make guest appearances as the British Prime Minister and American President respectively. Arliss fans will be happy to know that he continues his time-honored technique of dramatically pointing his finger in the air while giving speeches. Why doesn't anybody do this anymore?

My wife would love this staring down at her
in the living room every day.

A fascinating film, Transatlantic Tunnel wouldn't appeal today to the average movie fan, if only because its soft, faded image and occasionally muffled audio cry out for a restoration that is unlikely to come. Yet some of its "farfetched" ideas have already come true. McAllen, we learn early on, has already built the English Channel tunnel, although his other tunnel, linking the Bahamas to Miami, remains unrealized, to the grateful thanks of the anti-immigration crowd.

 Transatlantic Tunnel is actually a remake of the German movie Der Tunnel, and one from France entitled -- you'll never guess -- Le Tunnel. In England, it seems to have premiered as -- hold on to your hats -- The Tunnel before taking on its final title in America. The release in Spain, as El Tunel Transatlantico, also provided its most bizarre poster, one I would use my kid's college savings to purchase. I'd say it's worth its weight in alanite steel. 

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

Richard Dix didn't always play such noble characters, as he proved quite well in The Ghost Ship.

Can't get enough of profiteering world leaders dragging their nations into war?  Read about The Man Who Reclaimed His Head.