THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 11

 Having just finished several consecutive 12-14 hour days of background work on a much-anticipated, high-wattage cable miniseries, I have only now gotten around to finishing another entry in my you-may-or-may-not-want-to-see forgotten movies and TV shows of decades ago. And I think I already know what your choice will be. Ring up the curtain!

CLUB HAVANA (1945): It's a busy night at Club Havana. A medical intern is on his first date with a clothing store salesgirl. A middle-aged couple are reuniting after a year's separation. A financially embarrassed money manager is wining and dining a wealthy widow in hopes of handling her millions. A young divorcee learns that the man she's in love with is no longer interested in her. And a customer is recognized by one of the club's musicians as a murderer. By closing time, there will be an arrest, attempted suicide, two killings, a marriage of convenience, and five musical numbers. And no cover charge!

Kind of a musical version of Grand Hotel on a Cracker Jack budget, Club Havana is a genuinely entertaining B-picture from PRC Pictures and semi-legendary director Edgar G. Ulmer. Because of its 62-minute running time, the stories have to move quickly. But take into account those five musical numbers scatted throughout, plus the credits, you have roughly 45 minutes to jam these mini-dramas in -- all but the last five minutes told in real time!

Never have I seen so many people in one movie where I knew the faces, yet almost nobody's name. The exceptions to the latter were Paul Cavanaugh as the investor, and Tom Neal as the lovesick doctor. You could consider Neal as Leonardo DiCaprio to Edgar G. Ulmer's Martin Scorsese, but that might be giving them both too much credit. Whether lovey-dovey with his date or saving a woman from a sleeping pill OD, Neal's constant expression registers as mild concern -- as if he's wondering how much to tip the coat check girl. (His character's treatment for the barbiturate OD: a quart of strong black coffee and a walk in some fresh air. Thanks, Doc, you're a genius!)

Club Havana's raison d'etre seems to be cashing in on the watered down Latin American big band music craze that was sweeping the US, due to Xavier Cugat and his former band member Desi Arnaz. The low-rent musical acts featured were probably scouted from various L.A. nightclubs, giving an idea of what your average patron saw in 1945 as they sipped pina coladas on a night out on the town after taking in Club Havana as the bottom half of a double feature. I'd have been one of them.

BONUS POINTS: The wealthy widow turning the tables on the desperate money manager, as her three bespectacled teenage children watch with fascination, is worthy of an A-picture from any major studio of the time; it's likely the wittiest moment in any PRC production.

FOR YOU I DIE (1947): After being forced into a prison break by fellow convict Matt Gruber,

Johnny Coulter makes his way to a lodge where Matt's ex-girlfriend Hope Novak works. As he waits for Gruber to show up so they can plan their next move, Johnny finds himself the objection of affection by another lodge worker, Georgie, even as he and Hope fall in love. Gruber eventually arrives, when a fight and a shootout ensue. Johnny drives the wounded Gruber to the police. Gruber confesses to forcing Johnny to break out of stir; Johnny is taken back to prison to serve the one year remaining on his sentence, when he will return to start a new life with Hope (and hope).

For You I Die -- now that's a great title for a '40s B-picture. Perhaps too great considering the final product. I guess I was expecting the "sap falls in love with a bad dame" story, minus the prison break angle. You know, a good guy who falls into crime in a frenzy of lust. Adding to the story reversals is character actor Mischa Auer as lodge guest Alec Shaw, a Russian-born cab driver/aspiring actor/amateur artist providing comedy relief and philosophical musings in equal measure. Now, you can never go wrong with Mischa Auer, although his performance is a little out of place in what's supposed to be a dark movie. And when I say dark, I mean literally as well as figuratively; I'm thinking the producers set many of the scenes at night to save on the electric bill.

Speaking of dark, Paul Langton (as Johnny Coulter), whom we last saw as a gumshoe in Murder is My Beat, is something like Humphrey Bogart without the range or charisma. In the few roles I've seen him in, an air of an impending doom hangs over him like an especially heavy fog. Even when his characters are on the right side of the law, it seems like he's hiding a very dark secret. Yet, like Tom Neal, that kind of personality fits these low-budget dramas, as if it was too strong for A-pictures. 

As for the rest of For You I Die's cast, only Jane Weeks really goes toe to toe with Langton as far as style is concerned. Brusque, strident, trampy rather than sexy, Weeks dishes it out but good as the no-good Georgie, who tries blackmailing Hope while wanting to skip town with the unwilling Johnny. (It's shocking that she's only 29 here.) Either she was too realistic for her own good, or decided movies weren't her thing -- of her seven roles, four were uncredited. In other words, she's perfect for a worth-one-look movie like For You I Die. 

BONUS POINTS: Mischa Auer was also the movie's associate producer. As he probably said in half of his movies, How you like that?

VIOLATED (1953): Who is murdering and scalping innocent women in New York? Is it low-rent photographer Jan Verbig?  The creepy, sex-obsessed Joe Summers, just released from Bellevue Hospital? Convicted child molester George Mastro? Or could it be anyone of the suspects Police Lt. McCarthy rounds up at the station house? He better find out soon, before innocent aspiring teen model Susan Grant and zaftig dancer Lili Damar find themselves on the wrong end of a fatal pair of scissors. 

I really have to hand it to everyone involved in this sleazy, low-budget excuse for entertainment -- I felt violated just watching Violated (there's a line that will attract an audience). All the genuine New York locations seen throughout, whether Greenwich Village exteriors, bars, the studio apartment doubling as the photographer's studio, even the Staten Island ferry, look grimier than they really were. This is an Ugly-with-a-capital-U movie.

And the actors! Well, "actors" might be too strong a word. The people being paid very little to walk and talk in front of the movie camera aren't just unphotogenic -- they're actively grubby, shabby, and unkempt. When Lt. McCarthy spits out, "What a buncha crumb-bums!" at a roomful of suspects, you get the feeling they've heard the same thing in real life. Even the "exotic" dancers are repulsive.

Technically, Violated provides everything you'd expect -- simple camera set-ups, sloppy editing and lighting, claustrophobic sound -- that were hallmarks of the grindhouse genre. Then there's the scene with Lili Damar in a tub with a phone and radio on a shelf directly over her head -- did no one think this was an electrocution just waiting to happen? Or was the director hoping to ultimately avoid her paying her salary just to save a few more bucks?

BONUS POINTS: Thanks to one of the Greenwich Village scenes, we can see that furniture movers were still using horse-drawn wagons as late as 1953. You can learn history in the strangest places.

THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR (4/15/1951): There's some irony that the most popular form of entertainment in the early days of the futuristic medium of television was vaudeville. The most popular series of this type was The Colgate Comedy Hour, hosted by a rotating roster of entertainers; this episode features loud singer Tony Martin. Perhaps because Martin lacked what would be called comedy chops, Fred Allen was brought on not only as the unofficial co-host but head writer as well. 

And this is what makes this episode kind of fascinating. Having hosted his own weekly radio comedy series almost continuously from 1932 to 1949, Fred Allen loathed TV, particularly the Colgate format. Known as a dry, urbane wit, Allen must have squirmed at having to put up with the old-fashioned musical numbers, especially one featuring a little girl fantasizing that Tony Martin was her father. Had Allen presented the same idea on his radio show, the little girl would have sued Martin for bellowing a song into her ear as he does here before switching her allegiance to Frank Sinatra.

Still more irony!  Allen revives one of his radio characters, Chinese detective One Long Pan, in a sketch with Martin and guest Celeste Holm. One Long Pan had been a radio audience favorite; here, seeing Allen -- a strange looking guy to begin with -- in full make-up is actually scary. Naturally, he never misses an opportunity to mangle the stereotypical Chinese accent. (His long-time running gag of pronouncing "revolver" as "lelowler" is revived here.) People today offended by the benign Charlie Chan movies would be positively apoplectic by what goes on here. One wonders what the Chinese/Hawaiian actor Richard Loo thought being in this sketch as, you guessed it, a houseboy (he was 48 years old).

Fred's alleged friend Tony Martin seems aware of Fred Allen's new position in show business, introducing him as "a gentleman you've enjoyed many, many times in the past". It's no surprise announcer Don Pardo excitedly informs us that the hot young duo Martin & Lewis will be emceeing The Colgate Comedy Hour two weeks hence, in addition to being the special guests the week after that when another young up-and-comer, Jackie Gleason, hosts. A former vaudevillian himself, Fred Allen -- whose droll humor peeks through from time to time in this episode -- likely realized he was being overtaken by the kind of new generation of comedians he once symbolized. 

BONUS POINTS: This episode was produced by Sam Fuller, later known as the writer and/or director of non-comedy classics-to-be including Shock Corridor, Pickup on South Street, Crimson Kimono and House of Bamboo. Maybe he saw in Fred Allen what he would become if he didn't carve a new path for himself.

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