THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 15

 This Early Show piece features three movies I've been wanting to watch for a long time, one of which I'm sorry I did. The TV episode at the end has made me rethink my desire to see as much early television as possible. But hey -- in total, it's less than four hours out of my life!

PEACOCK ALLEY (1929): In the mood for a movie that destroyed its star's career? Take a stroll to Peacock Alley. Mae Murray sleepwalks her way through her role as Claire Tree, a showgirl who spends a semi-innocent night with Clayton Stoddard, the man she'd like to marry. Stoddard rejects her proposal, which leaves her no choice to but to marry her fiancé Jim Bradbury the following day as planned. Upon learning of wifey's sleepover, Jim gives her the heave-ho just hours after the wedding. Claire finds fame as a dancer (a word used advisedly), which apparently convinces Clayton Stoddard that he really does want to marry her. Hopefully, to keep her off the stage.

There is so much wrong with Peacock Alley that it plays like a parody of melodramas. Everyone is far too old for their roles, with Mae Murray looking every inch of her 44 years and then some, while 37 year-old Jason Robards, Sr. (playing her fiancé) is described as "a boy." It's also extraordinarily slow and (bad) dialogue-heavy -- Claire and Clayton's first scene is the length of a two-reeler. With all the non-stop talk, you could close your eyes throughout Peacock Alley and, except for the Technicolor nightclub scene, not miss a thing. In fact, you'd likely enjoy it more, since the latter features Mae Murray's dreadful solo dance routine as a toreador and a bull. It was probably this number, more than any else in the movie, that wrote her professional obituary.

Peacock Alley might have turned out differently if Murray, a big deal in silents, hadn't walked out on MGM, and wound up at poverty row Tiffany-Stahl (the studio responsible for Georgie Jessel's equally shoddy Lucky Boy.) For sure, no actress could have made a hit of this 65-minute cinematic lobotomy, but absolutely none of them would have been worse than Murray, who, as far as critics and audiences were concerned, became Typhoid Mae almost literally overnight. Two more movies nobody wanted to see lay ahead before she disappeared from the screen forever in 1931 -- the most precipitous fall of any A-lister until that of Kevin Spacey. And at least he was good. 

BONUS POINTS: In a fascinating bit of hubris, Mae Murray sued Tiffany-Stahl for almost two-million dollars, sighting incompetence on the crew's part for Peacock Alley's failure. With all her money she couldn't afford a mirror?

GOD'S COUNTRY AND THE MAN (1931): Other than the great Randolph Scott movies directed by Budd Boetticher in the '50s, Westerns have always bored me. One exception is the weird God's Country and the Man. Lawman Tex Malone and his Irish sidekick Stingaree Kelly are sent to the border town of De Vina to arrest saloon-owner Livermore (no first name given), who's been running guns to Mexican revolutionaries. Tex also finds time to fall in love with the girl Livermore lusts for, Rose, who has a secret of her own.

What God's Country and the Man lacks in surprises it lacks even more in budget, and that's a good thing. From the first scene in the dingy sheriff's office, you're aware that the very low production values are what make this indie release more authentic than Westerns released by the majors. The De Vina saloon is cramped and grimy; you can almost smell the sweat permeating the set. The extras appeared to have been told not to bathe before showing up because their wardrobe is going to be dirty and ill-fitting anyway. The live cantina music drowns out some of the dialogue, and one actor has trouble opening an uncooperative door. (Second takes cost money!) Other than stars Tom Tyler and Betty Mack, nobody but nobody looks like they should be in the movies. This is supposed to be the old West, not early 20th century Hollywood.

The actor who really makes God's Country and the Man worth its 59 minutes is Al Bridge as Livermore. More oily than a gallon of Castrol, making even a banal greeting sound like a personal threat, Livemore is less a human and more a timebomb ready to go off at any minute. His trademark is playing the "Waltz of Death" on a violin in front of his victims before murdering them. His musicianship, woozy to begin with, sounds downright creepy today thanks to the scratchy, worn-out audio track in circulating prints. (Other than the violin and cantina band, the movie lacks music, heightening the awkward realism that much more.) Fans of John Wayne won't find much to enjoy in God's Country and the Man, which is high praise indeed.

BONUS POINTS: George Hayes, the actor who plays Stingaree Kelly, would soon drop the Irish accent and dentures, finding lifetime fame as perennial Western sidekick Gabby Hayes. 

BLACK FRIDAY (1940): Meek college professor George Kingsley is badly hurt during a drive-by shootout involving gangsters Red Cannon and Eric Marney. Kingsley's friend, Dr. Ernest Sovac, grafts part of the fatally-injured Cannon's brain into the professor's skull in order to find the $500,000 the gangster has hidden in Manhattan. Sovac brings Kingsley to the big city for an alleged rest, but really to jar Cannon's memory regarding the money. Soon, the gangster's thoughts take over the professor's, leading him to murder his rivals one by one. But before long --

Wait, let me save you the effort of saying it out loud: How do you graft the halves of two brains together?  An even better question: How do you graft the Frankenstein and Jekyll & Hyde tropes into a B-gangster picture while selling it as a straight-ahead horror movie? As long as it's quiz time, here's a third: How the hell do you cast Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the same movie and not give them any screen time together?  Watch Black Friday and you'll find out the answers.

It falls to Stanley Ridges as the professor with the (half) brain of a killer to carry Black Friday.  The make-up and hair departments certainly helped him visually, yet it's Ridges's performance that ultimately makes the back-and-forth transformation convincing; I wasn't initially sure it was the same actor. It doesn't even sound like the same guy. This is a real character actor at work. (Despite seeing him in at least a dozen movies, I've never recognized him.)

As for the above-the-title stars, Karloff, per usual, can do no wrong as the surgeon who ultimately pays the price for throwing the Hippocratic Oath in the trash with the other halves of the brains. Stuck in what is no more than a supporting role, Lugosi makes the best of what he's given -- and it's nice to see him lose the Dracula cape in favor of a double-breasted suit and homburg for what little time he's given during Black Friday's fast-moving 70 minutes.

BONUS POINTS: Lugosi was allegedly hypnotized to amp up his performance in the scene where his character is suffocating inside a locked closet -- a bit of ballyhoo featured in Black Friday's original trailer. Whether he was really hypnotized is another story. (You can see it here and decide for yourself.)

AUCTION-AIRE (1949): You could take all the synonyms for "insipid", "embarrassing", and "jejune" in all the languages of all the galaxies, and still be left wanting for a proper description of the game show Auction-Aire. Lasting only one season, it's Exhibit A as to why most everything aired on TV before 1952 has the staying power of a snowman in Death Valley during a heatwave while being blasted with a portable hairdryer. 

Semi-genial host Jack Gregson takes command of the Auction-Aire stage while the hysterical audience bids on the new Westinghouse Laundromat (otherwise known as a washing machine), a Tracy Customized Kitchen Unit (what we know today as silverware drawers), and other astonishing items. And you don't have to bid money! Instead, you use labels from Libby's products -- ketchup, tomato juice, canned meat, whatever you've got laying around. As the bids go into the thousands of labels, the question comes to mind: Who has this many Libby's products at home?

Then take into account that you're also bidding against viewers on the phone from cities in the eastern half of the USA, including New York ("Call CHickering 4-7350!"), Boston and Philadelphia, and you realize Auction-Aire is nothing but a Ponzi scheme engineered by the sponsor.

Lucky callers also get to win a 1949 Chrysler Sedan if they can add the numbers called out auctioneer-style by Gregson. But although none of them can guess the right answer, they all get the same consolation prize: a carton of Libby's Fruit Salad, whose labels they presumably will use to bid on future episodes. I truly believe Jack Gregson is drenched in sweat by the end of Auction-Aire's half-hour not just from the hot lights overhead, but the sheer panic of seeing his meager career go down the drain.

BONUS POINTS: In an attempt to get viewers to stock up on the sponsor's products, Jack Gregson explains how you can eat every meal of the day using only Libby's canned foods. What are Vienna Sausages, anyway?

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