MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE TWONKY" (1951)

Remembered by only the buffest of old-time radio buffs, Arch Oboler was one of the medium's most famous writer/directors. His most popular series, Lights Out!, presented atmospheric horror, while Arch Oboler's Plays was fantasy with a social conscience.  Oboler's style -- which might be described as heightened reality, the way regular people would talk if they had a good writer giving them pointers -- and the programs themselves were  undoubtedly a prime influence on Rod Serling's Twilight Zone many years later.

Oboler made the occasional foray into movies during this time (including the previously-discussed Gangway for Tomorrow) bouncing back and forth from film noir to anti-fascist dramas. In 1951, perhaps intrigued by the then-burgeoning television industry, he wrote and directed The Twonky, a low-budget sci-fi picture that over 60 years later remains a fascinating misfire.

The Twonky tells the story Professor Kerry West dealing with the new television that his wife has given him. Without even being plugged in, the TV starts quite literally taking over West's life. Giving the concept of "portable TV" a rather ominous twist, it even follows him around the house to keep an eye on what he's up to. Cops, colleagues and varsity football players who try to destroy the cathode-ray monster are knocked unconscious, only to awaken in a hypnotic trance babbling, "I have no complaints... I have no complaints... I have no complaints" like your average couch potato parked in front of a 50-inch 3D HDTV with his pretzels and Pabst.

That The Twonky is an allegory of the power of the television is as obvious as the nose on the face of Hans Conried, who plays Prof. West. But its real accomplishment is predicting both the 21st-century nanny state and the dumbing down of America with eerie accuracy.

For it's not enough that the TV insists on doing everything for West -- it does what it believes best for him, like replacing classical music with military marches or helping him play solitaire. By way of explanation, the talking TV identifies itself (in the typical take-me-to-your-leader patois) as a representative of the Bureau of Entertainment, which sounds like something straight out of 1984 -- or 2013.

Having taken charge of West's leisure time, the TV eventually prevents him from thinking for himself, going so far as to change his class lecture topic from "Individualism as the Basis of Great Art" to "Passion Through History."  And when its tyrannical behavior eventually drives West to drink, the TV zaps him back to sobriety. "I may be wrong," West screams in retaliation, "but it's my kind of wrong. It's my God-given right to be wrong!" That notion probably seems shocking to anyone growing up these days. In fact, if The Twonky were a new release, the TV would destroy West's cigarette rather than lighting it as it does here. 

"Twonky," by the way, is simply a slang dreamed up by one of West's colleagues, Coach Trout, for something inexplicable. Trout eventually comes to the conclusion that the TV is a robot from the future that fell through a time portal. Having landed in 1951 Los Angeles, the robot took the form of something that would help it blend in. The robot, he believes, was constructed to regulate every thought according to the dictates of the superstate -- a rather heavy idea for a movie many people probably blew off as being one step above a kiddie matinee.

A television wandering around the house sounds a little stupid -- OK, very stupid -- but it's pretty creepy here, despite (or because) of the rather humble special effects. That's not some Pixar creation walking into the kitchen or up the stairs; it's a real -- make that phony real -- Admiral TV.

Some years later, a Twilight Zone episode worthy of a horror movie featured a similar concept concerning a gambling addict and a slot machine. But here, the scare factor is undercut by a bassoon & flute-heavy score reminding us It's only a joke, folks. Someone more tech-savvy than me should post a remix The Twonky with Bernard Herrmann's music from Citizen Kane and Vertigo. It could be the stuff of nightmares. 

But even that wouldn't do anything to improve the dialogue or direction. Oboler made the unfortunate decision of wrapping The Twonky's spooky package with a whimsical ribbon, undercutting whatever message he might have tried to get across. Whimsy was the bete-noir of Oboler's unofficial protege Rod Serling as well, as demonstrated by the atrocious Twilight Zone episodes starring Carol Burnett and Buster Keaton respectively. (You haven't lived 'til you've heard a laugh track on The Twilight Zone. Nor do you want to.)

The Twonky's cast does what it can with the material provided. Hans Conried's name is often preceded by "the great" for a reason. A solid character in movies, radio and TV for six decades. Endless voice-over work in cartoons. A face and delivery you recognize immediately. Known mostly for comedic roles, Conried could have made his Prof. West  a compelling dramatic part had he been allowed. As it is, his reaction to the crushing of his independence is still quite moving at times. His plaintive cry, "Why is it when a man tells the truth, he's accused of drinking?", could have been just a comedic line in other hands. When delivered by Conried, it becomes the apotheosis of the sane human in a world gone mad. Yes, this is the great Hans Conried.

No one else in The Twonky comes with 100 TV antennae of Conried, although Billy Lynn, as Trout, is certainly something. It's difficult to say if he was the most subversively subtle character actor of his time or the brother-in-law of the casting director (he has only a handful of credited roles). What's not up for debate is that Lynn has the worst teeth in movie history outside of Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera.  

The Twonky went unreleased for two years after its 1951 production. It could very well be due to its overall shabbiness.  Much of the audio sounds like it's emanating from a cave, thanks to the indoor-location shooting. The static direction and cinematography is what you would have found on syndicated sitcoms of the time. What is definite is that The Twonky's promotion was piggybacked onto Arch Oboler's Bwana Devil, the movie that started the original 3D craze in 1952.

As anyone who's seen Carnival of Souls or The Honeymoon Killers can attest, a movie's low budget can actually create a genuinely disconcerting ambiance. No, what ultimately works against The Twonky is, ironically, what its evil TV is a proponent of: not trusting people to think for themselves. Had Oboler gone the dramatic fantasy route of his great radio plays, The Twonky could have been one of the most interesting, unnerving low-budget sci-fi movies of the '50s. The taglines on the poster promise much and, occasionally, glimpses of greatness are seen. By the end, though, the film pulls its punches, settling for comedy rather than the serious, even prophetic ideas it lays out. But what can you expect from a movie called The Twonky anyway? 

It wouldn't surprise me if a seven year-old Steven Spielberg saw The Twonky at his local movie house one Saturday afternoon. In 1971, his first feature, the made-for-TV movie Duel, was about a monstrous truck... that seems to have a life of its own. There isn't one second of humor in its running time. So successful was Duel, Universal Pictures released it theatrically in Europe. Let this be a lesson to moviemakers everywhere: When inanimate things come to life, it's scary.

 
                                                       
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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "GANGWAY FOR TOMORROW" (1943)

Stop me if you've heard this one. Six carpoolers are on their way to work at the munitions factory. The driver breaks the silence by telling the others his fantasies of what they used to do before their current occupation. Instead of telling him to shut up and mind his own business, they each have their own little dramatic flashback of the events that led them to where they are today.

That's Gangway for Tomorrow, a patriotic B-movie with a script by Arch Oboler, one of radio's most celebrated writers. Released in 1943, smack-dab in the middle of World War II, Gangway for Tomorrow is a "portmanteau" movie made up of the memories of five different characters. As the movie runs a zippy 69 minutes, that makes the average length of each flashback roughly 13 minutes long (or, more accurately, short), not including the wraparound scenes. I wish I had the kind of life to create 13 minutes worth of memories.

Is your carpool this interesting? Front, left to right: Robert Ryan, John Carradine and Charles Arnt.
Rear, left to right: Amelita Ward, James Bell and Margo.

There's gotta be easier ways to
avoid the military.

As with all memories, some are more interesting than others. One tells the tale of Joe Dunham, a driver at the Indy 500 who gets a blown tire and winds up in the hospital with injuries making him ineligible for military service. That's it, nothing more to see here, folks. The only thing that makes it worth watching today is 34 year-old Robert Ryan, still several years from stardom, as Dunham. And although he plays a good guy, it's my memories of his roles in Crossfire, Bad Day at Black Rock and Beware, My Lovely that make me uneasy throughout.

A mink coat won't keep you warm at night,
Miss America! On second thought,
maybe it will.

Then there's Amelita Ward as Mary Jones, a former Miss America who realizes that her crown and a role in a Broadway musical mean nothing without a man. Especially when her scenes in the play are cut on opening night. Serves you right for ignoring your boyfriend, Miss A! Ward, an actress I confess to being unfamiliar with, appears to have had a six-year run in movies, about half of which are as the every-popular "Uncredited." She later married Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys. Which fate would you have preferred?

"That's 'heaubeau' to you!"

As with the Indy 500 segment, sometimes all it takes to make something worth watching is the star. And so it is with John Carradine as a hobo who's guilt-tripped by a small-town judge into doing his part to help win the War. With his impeccable manners, 50-cent words and cultured diction, Carradine appears to be poking good-natured fun at his off-screen chum John Barrymore. His throaty delivery shows the signs not only of Shakespearean stagecraft but probably four packs of Luckies a day. Nonetheless, Carradine proves beyond all doubt that homeless people were more fun when they were called hobos.

Warning to all singers: if these are
your fans, it's time to find a
new profession.

One of the two completely serious segments -- and the only one that could have been expanded to feature-length -- stars the mono-nomenclatured Margo as Lissette Rene, a one-time member of the French resistance. A nightclub singer popular with the local Nazi leaders, Lissette is arrested, along with her confederates, when her performance of "Les Marseillaises" disrupts Hitler's radio broadcast.

The one segment of Gangway for Tomorrow that's explicitly war-related, it's filled with memorable moments. The Nazi general recognizing Lissette's voice on the radio. The resistance members, spanning from teenager to elderly, being ordered to their execution while a traitor tearfully waits behind in the jail cell. And the firing squad scene itself. Lissette and her boyfriend, Jean, hold hands as the rifles are readied. At the last minute, the general offers to spare the women's lives if they agree to entertain German troops. In a close-up of their hands, Jean willingly lets go of Lissette. They give each other a final look before she walks away, the rifles sounding before she's even out of the courtyard.

From this, we've devolved to
Greta von Sustern.

Escaping to freedom on her way to the front, Lissette returns to her hideout where, via radio, she warns her allies of the traitor in their midst -- and promises the Nazis that their days are numbered. Delivered in one intense take, Margo delivers her message looking straight at the camera, a sequence still effective today. 

By the way, Margo's real name was Maria Margarita Guadalupe Teresa Estella Castilla Bolado y O'Donnell. I know what you're thinking -- "O'Donnell?"

For me, the best segment is the one that has nothing to do with the War. Tom Burke, a prison warden, is awaiting the electrocution of

"Do I have to join
Executioners Local 27?"

career criminal Dan Barton when he gets word that the executioner is unavailable. Should the electrocution be postponed? Burke replies that he'll do it himself. On his way to the execution chamber, Burke recalls the events that brought him to this point (yes, it's another flashback-within-a-flashback so beloved on this blog). It turns out Tom and Dan are brothers. And it was Dan's final crime -- murdering four people in a bank robbery -- that killed their mother from grief on Christmas Eve.

Dan, screaming for mercy, is placed in the electric chair. Ignoring his brother's cries, Burke places his hand on the switch. Suddenly, the phone rings. It can only be a call from the Governor's office. The camera focuses on Burke's hand on the switch. He squeezes... but lets go... Squeezes... and lets go again, the phone ringing incessantly all the while. Finally, and defiantly, he pulls the switch. The lights dim as the electricity courses through Dan's body. It's only when Dan's dead that Burke picks up the phone. "Yes?" he whispers hoarsely. "Yes, this is he... It's too late, Governor. The execution has taken place. And Governor. One other thing. I just sent you my resignation." End of scene. Your only response is, Wow.

James Bell

Erford Gage

A mini-film noir, the segment succeeds not only through style -- it doesn't resemble any other part of Gangway for Tomorrow -- but the lead actors, both forgotten today. James Bell plays Burke with grim determination, taking no joy from executing his brother even though he believes it good and necessary -- and as a little bit of his own soul dies with him. Erford Gage, resembling a cross between Gary Crosby, Richard Widmark and Dennis Hopper, is a near-revelation as the born-to-be-bad Dan Barton, a guy you hate from the get-go. Had he been born ten years later, Gage could have been a mainstay of '50s crime movies; not a star, necessarily, but a character actor who worked steadily in supporting roles in little movies like this before moving on to television. 

Oh, and I misspoke slightly when I said this segment wasn't War-related. Shortly after appearing in Gangway for Tomorrow, Erford Gage joined the army. He was killed in the Philippines just a few months before the end of the War. 

Gangway for Tomorrow is typical not only of the flag-wavers produced by the studios at the time, but also of the several-stories-in-one pictures like If I Had a Million and Tales of Manhattan. The genre all but disappeared until the recent releases of Movie 43 and  InAPPropriate Comedy (yes, that's how it spelled), two low-budget monstrosities that received some of the worst reviews since the invention of Rob Schneider. 

Maybe somebody can make a sequel to Gangway for Tomorrow featuring workers on their way to the missile plant once we have nuclear war with North Korea. Those memories are going to be really short.

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