THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 54

Having gone through my John Garfield, Alan Ladd, and 1950s Bogart phases, I'm currently diving into Lee Tracy territory. Oh, and there's another gangster picture with Boris Karloff before his move to Horrorwood, USA.

THE WRECKER (1929): There's something rather moving about the tinny
Tiffany-Tone overture from Tiffany-Stahl Productions, the little studio that couldn't. They sure tried hard, though, playing on the same level as the majors, either with Technicolor or releasing European pictures like The Wrecker, a UK-German drama, stateside. For the latter, Tiffany even added a synchronized musical score, sound effects and a couple of very brief moments of talk to entice U.S. customers.

The basic idea of The Wrecker is interesting if slightly farfetched. An unknown terrorist nicknamed Jack the Wrecker is causing trains to crash across the UK. Sir Gervaise Bartlett is concerned that his company, United Coast Lines Railway, will be next -- as well he should. His business partner, Ambrose Barney, is Jack the Wrecker, and the secret owner of the Kyle Motor Coach Company. See, Barney is determined to put the train business out of business in order to boost his bus profits. Bartlett's new board member (and nephew) former cricketeer Roger Doyle and secretary Mary Shelton are assigned to figure out who's behind the crimes. Maybe if they noticed Barney sneering with glee when the trains go boom and reacting with ennui at Bartlett's murder...

Let's get the cast out of the way before proceeding. Two of the leads, Carlyle Blackwell (Ambrose Barney) and Joseph Striker (Roger Doyle) were really Yanks. Everyone else is British and likely forgotten even in the UK. The only name that might ring a bell -- or, rather, that a nerd like me would recognize -- is Benita Hume (Mary Shelton), who later married Ronald Coleman. As for two supporting characters, Bartlett's footman Walter exists only to insult a bumbling detective with the only-in-a-British-movie name Ramses Ratchett.

What gives The Wrecker whatever cachet it possesses a century after its release are the train wrecks. Unlike other movies that used charming (i.e., unconvincing) miniatures, here three honest-to-gosh trains are destroyed, each more jolting than the last. These scenes pack a visceral jolt that no CGI today can equal because they're so obviously real. If you ever see The Wrecker, you'll probably forget the actors but not the action, which is reason enough to watch it. And be sure not to miss the Tiffany-Tone overture. It'll bring a tear to your eye.

BONUS POINTS: The Wrecker unexpectedly parodies the then-popular use of vocalized songs on the soundtrack during love scenes, as Ratchett continually interrupts Roger and Mary's canoodling. It's pretty funny, really.

BEHIND THE MASK (1931): The final Boris Karloff gangster picture during his brief spell at Columbia Pictures. And it's still only a supporting role! Here, Boris plays ex-con Jim Henderson, a member of a heroin-smuggling ring lead by the never-seen Mr. X. Henderson has brought his former cellmate Jack Hart into the fold as a chauffeur for another gang member, Arnold, who -- wouldn't you know it -- has a beautiful daughter named Julie. Dr. August Steiner -- the only person who seems to report in person to Dr. X -- recognizes Hart as an undercover federal agent. When leaving Hart to drown after picking up the heroin at sea doesn't work, Steiner decides that a little heart surgery minus anesthesia might do the trick.

As usual with movies of this time, there's a lot more that happens during Behind the Mask's 68 minutes, but you get the gist of it. The movie's general idea is good -- it's always interesting to see Class A drugs in pre-codes -- but the overall production is a little disappointing. Many of the events that either make no sense or are difficult to believe -- like Hart creating a dummy in about five seconds before he allegedly parachutes to his alleged death or Alice getting the upper hand on a gangster in a hospital -- happen offscreen and are explained so hurriedly that even the writer seems to realize it's all balderdash. 

Jack Holt (as Hart), a one-time leading man in silents now moving into character parts, doesn't have much presence, appearing a decade older than his 44 years. He's utterly outranked in recognition and talent by Karloff and his Frankenstein co-star Edward Van Sloane as Steiner. (Columbia's publicity department clearly did everything it could to convince audiences Behind the Mask was a horror movie.) As with her role in another Columbia Karloff gangster picture The Guilty Generation, Constance Cummings, as Alice, does little more than swoon over a guy -- in this case Hart -- although she unexpectedly saves his life at the climax. Behind the Mask doesn't equal the gangster movies Warner Bros. was releasing at the time but thanks to Karloff isn't a total washout. And you won't have to wrack your brain figuring out who Mr. X really is, either.

BONUS POINTS: A cylinder record player hooked up to a candlestick phone makes for the coolest answering machine ever.

THE NIGHT MAYOR (1932): By rights, The Night Mayor should have been an A-1 racy comedy, starting with the cast. Lee Tracy in the title role as Mayor Bobby Kingston, who spends more time romancing chorus girls than working in City Hall. (Any resemblance to New York Mayor Jimmy Walker is strictly deliberate.) Eugene Pallette as Hymie Shane, the chief of staff who'll do whatever he has to -- including attempted murder! -- protecting Kingston from a hostile press. And Evalyn Knapp as the mayor's current wisecracking squeeze, whose reporter boyfriend threatens to bring down the mayor on the front page of his right-wing newspaper.

Politics! The press! Sex! All the ingredients are there for a classic pre-code. So why is The Night Mayor such a disappointment? The overall idea is interesting -- while Mayor Kingston is a goodtime Bobby, he isn't corrupt, preferring to spend tax dollars on schools, playgrounds and hospitals rather than waste it on a symbolic duck pond and an unessential second airport. The only reason the morals committee wants him out on his butt is because of his dating habits and refusal to accept their bribes. 

Blame the script, then, which confuses cutesy dialogue with wit, and direction, which begs for Tracy's usual mile-a-minute patter instead of a performance more worthy of slow-poke Gary Cooper. And as for the sex... Kingston's new flame Doree Dawn won't make with the goods unless they middle-aisle-it. What is this, a '50s sitcom? 

And there lies the problem. The same way Friends was for people who thought Seinfeld too mean, The Night Mayor is for those who find pre-codes too icky. Track down Washington Merry-Go-Round on YouTube for a Lee Tracy political drama that delivers a real wallop. Even without the sex. And as for what happens to Doree Dawn -- let's just say the lesson for women 90 years ago was "Put out or shut up". 

BONUS POINTS: The too-brief moment when Lee Tracy shows off his tap dance skills -- back when you needed talent to be in the movies.

HI DIDDLE DIDDLE (1943): Depending on your tolerance level, Hi Diddle Diddle is either inane, riotously funny, or bizarre solely for the sake of being bizarre. Possessing the style of a low-rent Preston Sturges picture with the wackiness of the Hope & Crosby Road movies, it often seems like a first draft written under the influence of endless cups of coffee tempered with the occasional shot of I.W. Harper. And if you need an endorsement other than mine, Quentin Tarantino says it's his favorite comedy of all time. 

Yet for all that, Hi Diddle Diddle's story proper is nothing more than a typical late-era B-screwball picture. Sonny Phyffe is on 48 hours leave from the Navy to get married to Janie Prescott when they learn her mother Liza has lost her fortune due to a sleazy shyster. Through a series of nefarious schemes, Sonny's nouveau-riche father Hector recovers the money. That idea alone might be enough for any filmmaker. But it's what writer/director/producer Andrew Stone does that makes it, in that overused adjective, surreal. Wallpaper comes to (animated) life, the cast continually breaks the fourth wall, one of the supporting players is essentially said to be sleeping with the director... Stone seems to have wanted to do anything to distract the Homefront from the war going on overseas. He even provides a welcome twist on the ol' two-people-in-a-revolving-door gag. That takes talent.

In a zany-with-a-capital-Z movie like this, you need a cast that's game, and fortunately Hi Diddle Diddle has it, right down to the bit players. Adolphe Menjou puts over the nonsense in his usual suave manner in the role of Hector Phyffe; the way he keeps a stunned straight face when a woman's hat is shoved on his head is the funniest thing I've seen since forever. (OK, I'm an easy audience.) Billie Burke is her usual scatterbrain self as the mother of the bride. Dennis O'Keefe, soon to be a noir icon, surprises as the vacant-eyed groom whose sexual frustration as the wedding night is continually postponed somehow flew under the censors' radar. Future television-staple Martha Scott plays it straight as the bride (except for the scene where she and the others practice double-takes -- you have to see it to understand). Retired dramatic actress Pola Negri makes a surprise comeback as Menjou's second wife Genya, an egotistical opera singer who drives people out of a nightclub by singing an unwanted Wagner aria. 

If none of this arouses even a grin, then Hi Diddle Diddle is no way or shape for you. But if the Museum of Modern Art ever runs what they will undoubtedly refer to as "a forgotten classic wartime comedy", I don't want you crying that you couldn't get tickets, you hypocrite. If you can't wait for that hypothetical event, go here to see the restored version released in the UK, where it was retitled Try and Find It. If my history with recommendations is any indication, you'll probably try and lose it.

BONUS POINTS: The animated moments were provided by Leon Schlesinger Productions, better known as the animators on loan from Warner Brothers.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 21

While many "Early Show" entries are strictly for crackpots like me, I've included YouTube links to a couple here that are more mainstream, while maintaining the blog's desire for the obscure and the unwonted -- or unwanted, depending on your tastes. 

DAUGHTER OF THE TONG (1939): You can't expect much from a gangster movie with
characters named Lefty and Muggsy, and Daughter of the Tong underdelivers as expected. Chronicling FBI agent Ralph Dickson's assignment going undercover to break up a human smuggling ring in L.A.'s Chinatown, it borrows from two other previously discussed B-movies, Gangs of New York and Yellow Cargo, while improving on neither.

This doesn't mean Daughter of the Tong lacks entertainment value. Like other low-budget indies of the time, second takes were a luxury; thus, we see walls shake when doors shut, and the reflection of a camera crew filming a car. Lacking the finances to hire stuntmen, the stars are obliged to handle the fight scenes themselves (most "punches" don't even connect). Since we're in Chinatown, obligatory racism is offered up, as when Dickson refers to a henchman as "a glorified laundryman" and the title character as "a slant eyed-lady who looks like Mrs. Fu Manchu." I'm not sure if the latter wisecrack is more insulting to Asians or the audience -- outside of wearing a black wig, she looks about as Chinese as Tina Fey. 

Director Raymond K. Johnson does everything he can to pad Daughter of the Tong to (almost) 60 minutes. Opening credits that list everyone in the movie. An endless montage of a newspaper going to press just for a shot of one headline. An ultimately fruitless car chase which does nothing to movie the story along (at least it was shot on location with the actors really driving). Worn-out police footage "borrowed" from another, older movie. When the daughter of the tong (oddly named Carney) shouts at her minions, "Fools! Idiots! Imbeciles!", she might as well be talking to the people who made the movie. I enjoyed every minute of it, but not enough for a second time.

BONUS POINTS: Co-star Dave O'Brien played the pot-head shouting "Faster! Faster" to the pianist in Reefer Madness. 

SYNCOPATION (1942): Syncopation is the story of how the descendants of enslaved Africans created jazz, which was then polished for the masses by white musicians. Heavily fictionalized characters based on, among others, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, and Paul Whiteman go in and out of the story, which focuses primarily on Kit Latimer (Bonita Granville) and her love interest, coronet player Johnny Schumacher (Jackie Cooper). They dig the New Orleans sound, which Johnny and his band gradually turn into the Chicago style, which, to me, seems different only because gangsters shoot at each other in the nightclubs.

As with many of the rock & roll pictures a decade later, Syncopation features older folks (like Kit's dad George, played by Adolphe Menjou) initially disapproving of this newfangled music the kids groove to, but gradually learn to enjoy it themselves. In one of the movie's less believable moments, a jury deciding the fate of Kit, who was arrested for playing jazz at a house party(!), can't help but tap their toes when she demonstrates her style during the trial. Maybe Trump should take piano lessons.

Produced and directed by William Dieterle, Syncopation seems to exist mainly for the climactic appearance by the so-called All American Jazz Band (voted on by Saturday Evening Post readers). Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnett, Alvino Rey, Harry James, Joe Venuti, Jack Jenny, and Gene Krupa blow the roof off the studio in a performance that's as exciting today as it was over 80 years ago. (Krupa, likely hopped-up on speed, beats the drum kit like it insulted his mother.) While Syncopation isn't groundbreaking, it's different from similar movies of its time, from its slavery-linked prologue to its startingly abrupt blackout of an ending. It has style. And it actually gives credit to black Americans for laying the groundwork for the big band/swing movement of the time. Some kind soul illegally uploaded the restored version of Syncopation to YouTube, so if you're interested, click here before the authorities find out.

BONUS POINTS: The opening credits list the actors and crew respectively with IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA and BEHIND THE CAMERA without mentioning their characters or jobs. Only in the closing credits -- still a rarity in 1942 -- do you find out exactly who did what. Style, baby, style!

YOUR WITNESS (1950): Sporting a title more appropriate for a '50s TV courtroom drama, Your Witness is actually a pretty decent UK production starring and directed by Robert Montgomery (in his final movie role). New York lawyer Adam Heyward flies to a British village when his old army buddy Sam Baxter -- who saved his life during World War II -- is arrested for murder. Heyward pokes around the village trying to find the unknown witness to the crime who could prove Baxter was acting in self-defense as claimed. As he becomes friendly with the families of Baxter and the village's high sheriff, Heyward becomes even more personally involved in the case.

Either the one-sheet to the right was designed by someone who didn't see the movie or was trying to make it look noirish. Your Witness is, like the village it takes place in, a rather quiet mystery where every clue turns cold while Heyward's friendship with the high sheriff's daughter heats up. The victim was a well-known philanderer (which is why Baxter believes the witness he didn't see but heard breathing was a woman), yet the villagers are convinced Baxter murdered him in cold blood. Also working against Heyward is his unfamiliarity with the ways and means of British law, along with the local customs, accents and slang, leading to a few amusing moments of utter misunderstanding between English-speaking people from different countries and backgrounds.

Older British movies often go a little overboard when Americans are concerned. Here, it occurs when the opening credits are accompanied by an inappropriate big band-style theme that was old-hat by 1950.  Robert Montgomery's direction, however, is similar to his acting style: subtle almost to the point of being imperceptible -- I've never seen him blink in any of his movies. His gaze can be unnerving before he suddenly smiles and you realize he isn't a killer.  A forgotten movie, Your Witness can be found on YouTube here in an excellent print complete with its original British censors' approval. Like Syncopation, it's worth a viewing when you're sick of Netflix.

BONUS POINTS: The high sheriff is played by Leslie Banks from I Am Suzanne! and Transatlantic Tunnel, two of the stranger movies on this blog. And that's saying a lot.

PLAYBOY'S PENTHOUSE (1959): Hugh Hefner's reputation has taken such a
beating since his death that younger people might find it shocking that there was a time when he not only had a weekly late-night talk/ entertainment series, but that it was considered sophisticated stuff in its time. This episode is probably the most interesting of what survives of Playboy's Penthouse series.  

Its concept is that we've dropped in on a little soiree at Hef's pad in Chicago -- in reality, a television studio done up to look like the real thing. You can almost smell the cigarette smoke, men's Aqua Velva and the Intermezzo on the women as you enter to the classy Cy Coleman Trio playing the swanky theme song. But wait, who's that over there? Why, it's Lenny Bruce, entertaining the ladies with his Jerry Lewis impression before sitting down later for a serious chat with Hef and the current Playboy playmates. Is Lenny in full hepcat mode or just stoned? It's difficult to tell; he doesn't really start firing on all cylinders until telling a funny true story about a doctor who treated a little girl who fell down a well only to send the family a bill later. If you're only familiar with Lenny's albums, you'll be happy to know his face goes perfectly with the voice.

Hey, guess what -- Nat "King" Cole just dropped by, not to entertain, but join the conversation with Hef, Lenny, and author Rona Jaffe, who's discussing her first novel The Best of Everything. Getting itchy for some jazz? You're in luck: Ella Fitzgerald arrives to belt out a few numbers before it's time to say goodnight. Say what you want about Hugh Hefner, but here was a show in pre-Civil Rights America featuring a black guy sitting on a couch with some white men and women, and a black woman treated like the queen of show business.  Everybody's well-dressed, articulate, and nobody's playing beer-pong. Whatever the hell Playboy "ethos" means anymore, TV could use a little of it these days (and nights).

BONUS POINTS: Before Ella Fitzgerald sings, Hef plays a recording of her scatting her lungs out at the recent Playboy Jazz Festival. Think it's strange watching a bunch of people sitting around listening to a record? Hey, haven't you been known to do the same thing at your parties, with or without the singer dropping by?

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 12

 If TCM and YouTube had been around when I was growing up, I'd have left the house even less than I already did. And I still would have ignored the classics in favor of cinema's red-headed stepchildren. Enough with the classics! Up with the arcane, the outré, and the uncouth! Just don't ask for your money back, bub.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD? (1911): On the day an old carpenter learns that his wife is gravely ill, he loses his job to a younger worker. As his money runs out, the carpenter is arrested for stealing groceries. The judge, having seen similar situations, bails him out and gives him money for his wife's medical care. When the carpenter arrives home with a doctor, the wife is already dead.

Try running that synopsis past a studio, see how far it gets you. But being the star director at Biograph, D.W. Griffith had free reign to make any kind of movie he liked. And what he liked were social dramas exposing the lives of the dispossessed and those who profit from them. And just to show you how serious he was about it (and movies in general), What Shall We Do with Our Old? was just one of 75 movies Griffith made in 1911! But that's when movies like this ran 15 minutes or less.

You can't expect much in the way of subtlety in most movie acting of the time. Nobody shakes their head in sorrow when pounding a fist on their chest will do. Yet there is something undeniably moving about the story and its characters. W. Chrystie Miller makes the carpenter (as the song goes) a man of constant sorrow.  Who among us in his position -- a dying wife, loss of income, imprisonment -- would look or behave any differently in real life?

When watching a movie like What Shall We Do with Our Old?, a modern audience needs to prepare for simple sets, long takes, a static camera, and occasional histrionics -- it is, after all, 112 years old. And while movie-making has come a long way since then, what hasn't changed is the question that the title poses. 

BONUS POINTS: While the actress playing the old wife, Claire McDowell, is obviously much younger under her make-up, W. Chrystie Miller was 68 at the time. To put that in perspective, he was born when John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States.

LUCKY BOY (1928): A young man from the Lower East Side turns his back on the family business in favor of vaudeville. As his fortunes rise, he falls in love with a shiksa, questions his values, and returns home to tend to a sick parent, where he at last gains familial blessings for his career choice. In other words, the silent/sound hybrid Lucky Boy steals from The Jazz Singer lox, shlock, and barrel of schmaltz. There's even a "Mammy"-style song, "My Mother's Eyes", performed not once, twice, but FOUR times in 77 minutes.

Credit -- make that discredit -- lies with scriptwriter/ star George Jessel, one of the most inexplicable celebrities of the 20th century. If Lucky Boy is any indication, the 1928 version of Jessel was little different from the tedious talk-show nudge of four decades later, viz: A personality similar to a dead flounder; an endless supply of hackneyed jokes and mawkish songs delivered in a mumbling, nasal voice bordering on the near-incomprehensible; forever confusing sentiment with sentimentality; and sporting a hairpiece that wouldn't fool a blindfolded mite.

Originally titled The Ghetto until a last-minute change, Lucky Boy features its star playing someone named Georgie Jessel. And if that first name sounds adolescent, it's no accident. In the movie's early scenes, Jessel plays the teenage version of himself swearing to run away from home -- when the actor himself was 30! 

 Poverty row studio Tiffany-Stahl promoted George Jessel as "The Original Jazz Singer". It was a reminder that he had been the star of the Broadway play of the same name, only to lose the movie version (and his place in film history) to his frenemy Al Jolson in a salary dispute with Warner Brothers. Whether called The Ghetto or Lucky Boy, the title of the short story on which this cinematic consolation prize was based is probably more appropriate: "The Schlemiel".

BONUS POINTS: The only legitimate laughs are provided when Jessel makes a few pointed jokes regarding Henry Ford's antisemitism. 

WIR SCHALTEN UM AUF HOLLYWOOD! (1931): Viennese-born actor Paul Morgan arrives from Germany to report via shortwave radio on his experiences in Hollywood. After a German expatriate shows him around the city, Morgan literally parachutes into the MGM studio, where he meets Buster Keaton, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford, Adolphe Menjou, and Leo the Lion. In the evening, he attends a movie premiere where even more Metro actors appear.

Yeesh, that's it? Now picture the whole thing in German without subtitles, and in a washed-out print. That's Wir Schalten Um Auf Hollywood! (in English, We're Switching to Hollywood!), made for release exclusively in Germany, one of Hollywood's biggest foreign markets. And brother, they can have it.

Strictly for obscurity fanatics, Wir Schalten... features production numbers from the never-released 1930 Metro musical revue The March of Time. Two of the numbers are obviously cut from what seems to be the sole surviving print of Wir Schalten..., although we're blessed to see a recreation of a turn-of-the-century vaudeville routine featuring people tapdancing in horse costumes. The picture also gives us the opportunity to hear Joan Crawford awkwardly attempting to speak German. Adolphe Menjou, though, is utterly fluent in a weird movie-within-a-movie where he's eventually shot by Paul Morgan, climbs a ladder to Heaven, then enters a cinema where he orders the film rewound so that he lives. 

Other than Menjou's commendable German delivery, the movie's highlight is Buster Keaton ignoring Paul Morgan in the Metro commissary. Likely shot in one take, a bored-looking Keaton gets more laughs fooling around with cutlery than most comedians with a closet full of props. He returns at the climax dressed as a caveman to knock Morgan unconscious with a club. Wir Schalten Um Auf Hollywood! will make you yearn for the same fate.

BONUS POINTS: Sergei Eisenstein can be seen at the climactic movie premiere. Russian filmmaker at a Hollywood premiere in a German movie -- gee, it looks like we can all get along! 

STREET OF CHANCE (1942): Before griping about your day, consider the plight of Frank Thompson. After getting conked on the head by a piece of falling debris, Frank gradually learns he had been living as someone named Danny Nearing for the last year. As Nearing, he was having an affair with a dame named Ruth Dillon despite him being happily married to another woman. Confused yet? So is he -- especially when a silent, tough guy gets on his trail. Oh, and I almost forgot: Frank is wanted for a murder he can't remember! And the only witness who can clear him is a bedridden old crone who can't speak. Like I said, no complaints about your day.

Based on a story by Cornell Woolrich, Street of Chance's main characters all reflect Frank Thompson, in that none of them are who they appear to be. Ruth Dillon is just a housekeeper -- until she isn't. Frank's hulking nemesis Joe Marruci appears to be out to kill him -- except he doesn't. The two survivors of the murder victim are the obvious suspects -- up to a point. 

While Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor are fine as Frank and Ruth, it's Sheldon Leonard, as usual, who steals the show as Joe Marruci. Scarier here than he typically is in dramas, Leonard was born to dominate whatever project he appeared in, whether movies, radio or TV. I love this guy.

Director Jack Hively seems to have wanted to jazz up what would have been an ordinary B-mystery. His use of lighting (and darkness) is effective, as are the impressive crane shots that literally elevate the movie's look. Still, there's never a minute during Street of Chance when you aren't cognizant that the movie makes absolutely no sense, is overflowing with handy coincidences, and sports more loose ends than a welcome mat that's been caught in a tornado. Maybe that's why it's so entertaining.

BONUS POINTS: The grandly-named Adeline DeWalt Reynolds, who plays the elderly mute, entered the movie business at age 78, two years before Street of Chance's production, and continued until her death in 1960. See all you aspiring actors, there's hope for you yet!

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE SNIPER" (1952)

Long before he was the producer of "message" movies both treacly (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, A Child is Waiting) and self-consciously serious (Ship of Fools, The Defiant Ones), producer Stanley Kramer made a film noir "message" movie, The Sniper. And instead of tackling issues like race, religion or Nazis, The Sniper took on psycho killers. Don't tell me that doesn't sound better. 

"No, I'm not Shepard Smith!"

Terrifically directed by Edward Dmytryk, The Sniper follows a week or so in the life of ex-con Eddie Miller (played with the perfect combination of angst and pathos by Arthur Franz) a guy who's had it with women. I mean really had it, like shooting all brunettes who cross his path. Since this is taking revenge a step too far, the public and the press start pressuring Police Lt. Frank Kafka (what a name) to catch this guy before he starts turning his rifle on blondes. Now that would be a loss.

But this being a Stanley Kramer production, we learn early on that Eddie Miller's problem is a lack of proper psychiatric treatment. Eddie, you see, wants to be locked up. He calls his old prison shrink for help, but the doc's analyzing a nine-iron at the golf course. He even deliberately burns his hand on a stove as a failed signal to the e.r. doctor that there's something wrong with him. What's a rejected guy to do but keep killing women?

Dr. Kent tries to figure out if chopsticks
are phallic symbols.

While the pitchfork crowd readies the hot seat for the still-unknown sniper, police shrink Dr. James Kent has other ideas. What this boy needs, he says, is help. In fact, he insists, that's what all these psychos need before they go shooting women from rooftops. Dr. Kent being played by Richard Kiley, the original star of Man of La Mancha, you expect him to sing "The Impossible Dream" to get the public on his side. 

A fastball thrown by the
screwball.

Lt. Kafka initially doesn't buy into Dr. Kent's theories, but is soon won over when he receives reports of a fellow at a carnival who's a little too eager to throw fastballs at a woman in a dunking cage -- one of The Sniper's many creepy moments. Seems Eddie Miller, who's already a suspect, was known to be fast with the balls in his day. If only he joined the majors -- then he'd be shooting up steroids instead of dames.

"Bet you don't recognize me
without the 'stache, eh, kid?"

Perhaps Stanley Kramer knew that the idea of an almost-sympathetic killer was going to be a tough sell. Why else would the world-weary, seen-it-all Lt. Kafka (I laugh every time I write that name) be portrayed the usually-debonair, audience-friendly Adolphe Menjou? Minus his dashing mustache for the first time since puberty, Menjou can't completely disguise his urbane demeanor -- he speaks too articulately for a cynical cop -- yet is great fun to watch because he's playing against type. You almost expect him to break out a bottle of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs, vintage 1889, when he finally captures Miller.

...while the cops say, "We're busy
working, bub."

Kramer, not surprisingly, lays on the "society is to blame" spiel a little thick now and then in The Sniper, starting off with a pre-credit prologue. Dr. Kent gets two soliloquys on the matter, while Lt. Kafka makes with the Freud routine eventually. Yet two women who really tick off Miller -- his harridan of a supervisor at work, and a stranger slapping her young child -- are so hideous that you're sorry that he didn't shoot them instead. Next time, Eddie, choose your targets with better care. 

Edward Dmytryk and cinematographer Burnett Guffey make great use of the San Francisco locations, especially the shadowy nighttime sequences. One of their Hitchcock-worthy visual motifs is Eddie Miller taking aim while normal life continues behind him, whether at a carnival sharpshooting gallery or on an attempted murder from atop a roof. In a particularly startling moment, an elderly woman removing towels from an indoor drying line near a window reveals a police sniper on the next-door roof, but doesn't notice him herself. The madness, Dmytryk seems to be saying, is so prevalent that people don't even see it anymore.

It's always important to keep on the lookout for familiar faces in old movies, and The Sniper is no exception. The legendary Charles Lane (left) appears briefly as a barfly annoying a doomed lounge singer (noir queen Marie Windsor, co-star of Two Dollar Bettor, in a small but important role.) The e.r. intern is Sidney Miller, whom I immediately recognized as Warner Brothers' stock Jewish kid from 20 years earlier. You can see him when he was a teenager in the previously-discussed bootleg-toothpaste drama, The Big Shakedown. (His character names from those Warners' days include Sanford Nussbaum, Issadore Marks, Maurice Levy... and George Washington. That's comedy, folks.) 
 
It's a pity that The Sniper is pretty much ignored these days, especially compared to Kramer and Dmytryk's other 1952 production, the appallingly-overrated High Noon. To my narrow-vision eyes, Kramer in particular never made a better, tighter movie. (His rare venture into comedy, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, crawls 3 hours and 40 minutes.)  If I have to be fed a message, let it be quick and tasty like The Sniper.

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To read about Two Dollar Bettor, go here.
To read about The Big Shakedown, go here.

 

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "FRIENDS AND LOVERS" (1931)

Friends and Lovers asks the question, "Can two men remain friends when they both love the same woman?" We all know the answer to that one, but the movie spends 68 minutes teasing us with the possibilities -- kind of the way the woman in question does.

Captain Geoffrey Roberts and Lieutenant Ned Nichols (not to be confused with bandleader Red Nichols) are stationed in India when they discover they've both had affairs with a married woman, Alva Sangrito. Roberts tries to settle matters by sending Nichols on a fatal mission, only to wuss out and rescue him at the last minute. Having decided to put Alva behind them, the two men unexpectedly meet her (and her new fiance) in London at the kind of weekend sleepover rich people indulge in.  Realizing that Alva and Roberts are still in love, Nichols takes a wild shot at him, only to miss. Alva, finally realizing she's caused enough trouble for these idiots, leaves the party. Roberts, at Nichols' urging, successfully wins her back.

"Yes, it's true, I'm
devilishly handsome."

Director Victor Schertzinger must have thought Friends and Lovers a work of art, his name appearing as an ostentatious signature on the credits. But it's the actors who make it worth a look. For Friends and Lovers marks the American movie debut of Laurence Olivier, whom RKO Radio Pictures anticipated would be the new Ronald Colman. Unfortunately for both the studio and Olivier, Colman wasn't going anywhere. Within a year or so, Olivier was back on the British stage where he belonged. (You can take that last remark any way you'd like.)

"Don't let the door
hit you on the way out, Larry!"

As Nichols, Olivier is outclassed by Adolphe Menjou's Rogers in more than just military ranking. There's a 17-year difference in their real-life ages, giving Menjou a leg up not only in the art of movie acting but in life itself. Opposite a foxy film veteran like Menjou, 24 year-old Olivier is alternately juvenile (which may be the point) and playing to the balcony of the Old Vic (which definitely isn't). If you weren't aware that he would some day be considered one of the the great actors of his time, his impact on you would range somewhere between zero and so what.

"Love to hate...
or hate to love?"

Viennese-born Erich von Stroheim as Alva's husband, Victor, is the cyanide-laced frosting on the cake. Promoted early in his career as "The Man You Love To Hate" (an honorific now owned by Ashton Kutcher), von Stroheim is terrific as the guy who's been forcing his wife to engage in extramarital affairs just so he can blackmail her lovers for money. The way he bemusedly catches Rogers and Alva in a lie that he's set up is wonderfully funny in an icky way. And when demanding £5,000 to keep the couple's fling quiet, Victor informs Rogers that he's already gone to the trouble of finding out where he banks.

"Thanks for lending me
your wife, buddy!"

The equally-bemused look on Menjou's face signals that we're in the company of two old pros -- both the characters and the actors themselves -- who appreciate each other's jaded world-weariness. (Von Stroheim's innocent defense, "Blackmail is such an ugly word," instantly created a cliche that would launch a thousand comedy sketches.)

This is similar to the
way my wife & I hang out
at home.

Victor, by the way, needs the money in order to indulge in his hobby, collecting porcelain -- the most fragile piece being his own wife, who can't even fight back when he whips her with a riding crop, leading their butler to fatally shoot him. I wish he'd accidentally shot the wife, because von Stroheim's icy presence is missed for the remainder of the movie. A truly underrated actor, von Stroheim was appreciated far more in Europe, to Hollywood's lasting shame.

You may remember the actress who plays Alva, Lily Damita, from a previous piece about the 1932 sex farce This is the Night. Damita's sex-kitten persona in that movie is all but negated here, as she apparently confuses languor for heartache. She must have been mighty hot in real life, because I still can't figure out why Errol Flynn married her, let alone why she's the object of desire by four sapheads in this movie, two of whom were willing to kill each other over her. I guess men weren't as choosy during the Depression.

The only actor to have
starred alongside
Laurence Olivier and
Wheeler & Woolsey.

A couple of supporting actors are worth mentioning, not so much for their talent as for just being in the movie. Hugh Herbert plays McNellis, Rogers' valet, with a singularly unconvincing Scottish accent. Herbert, best known as the rubber-faced character actor from a hundred or so Warner Brothers' comedies, seems weirdly out of place when sharing scenes with Laurence Olivier. Your brain reacts to it as it would to, say, Shemp Howard playing opposite Max von Sydow: This makes no sense whatsoever.

"I was born in 1858.
Have some respect, sir!"

As the host of the sleepover, Frederic Kerr trots out his old codger routine seen in Frankenstein the same year. All's that missing is the fez. I bring him up only because he was 72 at the time -- and how often do you see actors who were born 155 years ago?

"Are you convinced I'm wonderful?"     

Watching a somewhat-better-than-average melodrama like Friends and Lovers convinced me that you can pull any Adolphe Menjou role off the shelf and never find a bad performance. His style might not have differed much from role to role -- Menjou doesn't even attempt a British accent in Friends and Lovers, his crisp diction being enough -- but no matter the genre, he was consistently good, occasionally great, always convincing.

"Oui! I am, how you say,
un grand hambone!"

In movies, Laurence Olivier, was inconsistently great, often histrionic, not always convincing. (He couldn't have bettered the job done by Menjou as the despicable martinet in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.) Check out The 49th Parallel some time, where his French-Canadian trapper (left) could be substituted for Swift's Premium Ham in your grocery's meat section. For every movie like The Entertainer -- brilliant, a role in which Olivier really loses himself -- there's The Boys from Brazil, The Betsy, The Jazz Singer ("I haff no son!"), Inchon... And, of course, the legendary Polaroid commercials for which he was paid the princely sum of one million dollars. Having coveted the dough more than his reputation, it was one of his more credible jobs.
 
But none of that matters in a piece of sophisticated fluff like Friends and Lovers. Because in real life, Roberts wouldn't have saved Nichols back in India, and Nichols would've shot Roberts through the head at the sleepover. Alva, in turn, would've stayed with her fiance, just to make the survivor that much more miserable. And no amount of great acting would change that.

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