It's an all-star Early Show spanning 24 years of movies and television, with gangsters, reporters, doctors, and juvenile delinquents ready to entertain, threaten, and shill for the sponsor.
There's no reason to delve further into The Guilty Generation's story. Just think of Romeo & Juliet mashed with Little Caesar. Now picture Ricca padre e figlio played by pre-Frankenstein Boris Karloff and 24-year-old Robert Young. Now we're talking Entertainment with a capital ENTER, whether either of them seems Italian or not. (Karloff's attempts are limited to one-word sentences like "grazie" in his British accent).
Constance Cummings isn't given much to do as Maria Palmero except moon over Robert Young and show embarrassment by her brother Joe's drunken antics. Leslie Fenton (The Hatchet Man) jumps into Joe's role with nasty gusto, lashing out at his father and whoever else strikes his fancy. If Karloff and Carillo had switched roles, The Guilty Generation wouldn't have been guilty of overpromising and underdelivering.
BONUS POINTS: The startling way Mike Palmero's mother prevents him from interfering with his daughter's happiness still startles nearly a century on.
From roughly 1932 to 1934, movies were awash in zany political satires, mocking capitalism, communism, fascism, and in the case of Clear All Wires!, journalism. And during that time, you couldn't have a fast-talking, double-crossing, woman-chasing reporter played by anyone other than the great Lee Tracy.
With James Gleason as the side-of-the-mouth-talking Lefty and Una Merkel as Thomas' ex-lover (and current girlfriend of his editor), and, of course, Lee Tracy's rat-a-tat delivery, Call All Wires! is a banger of a comedy offering an impressive number of big laughs. Highly recommended especially for those unfamiliar with its sadly forgotten star. Maybe I should run a Lee Tracy retrospective in my living room sometime.
BEDSIDE (1934): X-ray technician Bob Brown becomes a physician the old-fashioned way: buying the medical diploma off of a washed-up doctor-turned-morphine junkie going by the name of John Smith. (Can't anyone come up with a better alias?) By hiring a real doctor to do the heavy lifting and a PR rep named Sparks, Brown soon becomes the toast of New York society hypochondriacs. But as his lack of medical knowledge and the junkie doctor catch up with him, Brown learns that a piece of paper doesn't make you a real doctor -- especially when he's expected to perform brain surgery on his nurse.
You know who else loves him? His nurse Caroline (Jean); his medical partner Dr. Wiley (David Meek, the actor who always is meek); and his PR pro Sparks (the ever-reliable Allen Jenkins). The only person on to him is the hophead who sold him the med school diploma (David Landau), and who continues to haunt him by returning uninvited for his morphine fix. (By the end, he's rubbing his nose and talking a mile a minute, indicating that he's become a cokehead, too.) To see a Warren William character brought low due to his own misbehavior isn't all that unusual. But what is, is how low a louse he eventually becomes, and how you wind up rooting for the law to catch up to him. Don't see Bedside before your next annual check-up. And if you do, ask the doc if he knows how to correctly perform a simple suture. You'd be shocked to learn how some so-called medical professionals don't.
THE ELGIN HOUR: "CRIME IN THE STREETS" (1955): This live television play might have introduced every juvenile delinquent cliche of the '50s. The angry young teen out to murder someone just because. His overworked mother blaming herself for how he turned out. His frightened little brother. The Italian immigrant who owns the corner malt shop and whose son is part of the neighborhood gang. The social worker who understands that the kid acts the way he does because he's had a rough life and wants some attention.
As good an actor as Cassavetes was, it must have been kind of a stretch for the 26 year-old to play the eight years his junior Frankie. He doesn't look 18 but is convincing enough as one kicked around by life to age beyond his years. Only Mark Rydell (also 26) rivals him in striking looks and talent as the crazy-eyed Lou, who appears headed to the psych ward instead of prison.
No stranger to faking his own kidnappings, twisting the news to guarantee headlines, or double-crossing his rivals, Chicago Globe reporter Buckley Joyce Thomas and his right-hand man Lefty fly to Moscow to cover the 15th anniversary of the Russian revolution, promising top officials that Pres. Roosevelt will recognize the communist government if they just sit down for an exclusive interview. Faster than you can say dobroye utro tovarishch, Thomas is hanging with Stalin, a commissar, and a disgruntled Marxist who wants to overthrow the current Communist government. But just as Thomas is making room for a Nobel Prize, the head of the KGB learns that his attempted assassination was arranged by the reporter. Not for real, mind you, just for the headlines. Tell that to the firing squad.
Few movies at the time of Clear All Wires!' release were so relentless in satirizing real-life politics and culture as is done here. (Would you expect to see a sight gag involving Stalin?) Yet instead of dating the movie, it oddly feels contemporary in its topical, SNL-style. It's easy to picture young men at the time wanting to become newspaper reporters due solely to the way Lee Tracy makes the job seem so damn fun. Other than that firing squad, that is.
With James Gleason as the side-of-the-mouth-talking Lefty and Una Merkel as Thomas' ex-lover (and current girlfriend of his editor), and, of course, Lee Tracy's rat-a-tat delivery, Call All Wires! is a banger of a comedy offering an impressive number of big laughs. Highly recommended especially for those unfamiliar with its sadly forgotten star. Maybe I should run a Lee Tracy retrospective in my living room sometime.
BONUS POINTS: As with the Humphrey Bogart picture Sirocco, the dialogue heard in opening scene with Thomas chatting with an Arab chieftain could be taken from a similar interview today.
By 1934, Warren William had made a career of playing scoundrels, cads, and scalawags, but his quack role in Bedside takes the bedpan. He gambles away the $1500 his girlfriend Caroline lent him to finish med school; turns away from examining a sick child because he can't be bothered with her; spends more time clipping his photos from newspapers than most doctors do on the golf course; and comes thisclose to killing a patient. And when he isn't at the office -- and often when he is -- he's gambling and drinking his life away. Even I started to find the guy despicable, and I love Warren William.
BONUS POINTS: Director Robert Florey goes in for a little German expressionism in the climactic scene with Landau taunting William in the o.r.
You've seen it all before, somewhere or another. But per usual with productions like this, its creators and cast that make it worth 60 minutes of your time. Script by TV legend Reginald Rose, direction by Sidney Lumet. Robert Preston as social worker Bob Wagner. Former Warner Bros. star Glenda Farrell as Frankie's mother. Future Oscar-nominated director Mark Rydell as gang member Lou. Future musician/songwriter/Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks as Frankie's little brother Richie. And as the incorrigible Frankie, the future incorrigible director John Cassavetes. All this and the original Elgin Watch commercials!
As with many 1950s TV productions, Crime in the Streets presents old school stars going toe to toe with young Method-era whippersnappers. No question Crime in the Streets is dated but is still a good example of a time when TV presented live plays with top-notch New York talent before everybody moved to Hollywood and got as many takes as they wanted with video tape. Meh.
BONUS POINTS: When Frankie and his gang synchronize their watches, it gives us a chance to see a close-up of -- guess what -- Frankie's Elgin watch. How do these ruffians afford them? Oh wait -- they're on sale this week at your local department store!
*************
No comments:
Post a Comment