Three Great Ladies, One Great Movie

One of the best recent broadcasts on TCM the other night was a gem called Comet Over Broadway, a drama about a woman who's dream of being an actress breaks her life, then catapults her to success, then holds her to some hasty words from years before that she knows she can't go back on. The reason for the broadcast has to do with its leading lady, Kay Francis, who is no longer with us but who turned 105 this past Wednesday.

Watching this movie, I was moved by its story, which was involving and well told. Perhaps the biggest treat in a viewing of the film is the discovery (for me) of three wonderful, woefully-neglected actresses: Francis, Minna Gombell and Sybil Jason. It's also a great showcase for the talents of a man best known for his dance arrangements: Busby Berkeley. Even some die-hard 42nd Street fans don't remember that Berkeley directed several non-musicals between 1933 and 1951. Few of his non-musical ventures were A Pictures. This one clearly falls into the "programmer" category. Yet it's so much better than that. Spoilers ahead.

Kay plays a small-town shopkeeper named Even, married and with a baby, who has vague dreams about acting and a side gig in community theater. When a famous Broadway actor (Ian Keith) comes to town, Eve attracts his attention and she goes to meet him at his hotel room for 'acting lessons.' Her husband (John Litel, nobody famous, but a great actor) gets wind of this and, in the brawl that ensues from confronting the illicit pair, the actor is knocked down a slope and into a ravine (spoiler coming), and fatally hits his head. Eve's husband is brought to trial for the accident and charged with manslaughter. Eve is racked with guilt, particularly when her lawyer explains to her that it was her own foolish ambition that brought this tragedy upon her. As her husband goes into the big house, she pledges to do everything she can to get him out, and once he is out, she'll be there waiting for him.

Snagging a burlesque gig, Eve goes on the road with her baby daughter, Jackie. On the train, the troupe's leading lady Tim (Gombell) takes Kay and the child under her wing. Eve gets pressured by various men to leave the kid with somebody else and focus on her career, and after holding out for a long time, she decides it would be best to leave Jackie under Tim's care. Tim, who had years ago lost her only child to what sounds like SIDS, is elated; she's become very attached to the child herself. Eve travels to country and makes it to New York city, where she meets a handsome British producer, Bert (Ian Hunter), who casts her right away in a production. She is driven away, however, by the show's jealous leading lady (Leona Miracle). Despondent, Eve sales to England on a whim.

Several years pass, and Eve has become the most talked about stage actress in Britain. She sends for Tim and Jackie, now 8 or 9 and being played by the fantastic, utterly adorable Jason. Initially happy to see them, Eve is crestfallen when she realizes that Jackie has grown up under the impression that Tim is her mother, a misunderstanding Tim failed to correct. Reluctantly, Eve goes along with it.

When they return to New York, Eve reconnects with Bert; there is still the same sexual chemistry between them and, now that Eve is a big name, he can be the one to mount her American debut. At the same time, she finds out that her husband's case can be overturned, but only for several thousand dollars that she doesn't have. She agrees to work with Bert if he can loan her the money, which he does.

The play is a huge success, and Eve is forced to accept the fact that she is in love with Bert. In a long and tearful conversation, she tells him the whole story, and why they can never be together. Bert is reluctant to accept this; surely, her husband will understand that, after all this time... Eve agrees. She goes to meet her husband at the prison. He is so happy to see her, she can't bring herself to tell him that she loves someone else. In the final scene, we see Eve walking with Jackie back to the prison, to her fate, with nonetheless a bright and prosperous future ahead, and with her dreams of success achieved. It is then that Jackie calls her "Mommy." The circle of Eve's trials is complete.

Like its three stunning leading ladies, Comet Over Broadway is long overdue for rediscovery.

Good Ideas: WPA Murals, Hawaii

There are a few things bothering me lately, but only slightly since I haven't been keeping up on politics a whole lot in the past few weeks. From what I can tell, crazy white people are still having affairs and snubbing government money that would help their states' schools, and then spreading rumors that Barack Obama might not have been born in the US, and about how brown women are racist. Oh yeah, and they're still practically going out of their way to mispronouce non-WASP surnames. I guess I haven't been missing very much.

President Obama is a native of Hawaii, that beautiful state where white people can go and get treated like massa's. Hawaii was inducted into the union in March 1959, a year and five months before his was born, so the question of birth on American soil isn't an issue. However I was talking with a friend the other day and the hypothetical "What if he had been born before 1959" came up. It's a reasonable scenario. Fortunately, Albert is smart and knew right away that, since 1900, Hawaii had been a US territory, which qualities it as American soil, and therefore Obama wouldn't have had any trouble. Can you imagine what Mrs Ann Coulter would have done with that, though? I'm going to write Albert in on the ballot for 2012.

The only things that are really bugging me about Obama are already things we knew before we voted for him: He's a little more moderate than I would like, and he doesn't support marriage equality. I've said that before, not on here, and I'll say it again, on here. And, yes, it's the perfect time to take down Don't Ask, Don't Tell. These Human Rights Campaign spam emails really to stop. People are also totally freaked out about the free communist healthcare, big surprise. I just want to know if American can expect free WPA Murals with their healthcare. That's a change I could believe in.


By the way, this is the WPA mural from the late, great Essex Mountain Sanatorium in Verona, New Jersey. Check out the link below to see more fabulous pictures.

http://www.mountainsanatorium.net/

Vanity Fair

I have to give this month's Vanity Fair major props for its 'Ain't We Got Style?' photo spread by Michael Roberts, Norma Jean Roy and Mark Seliger, especially for the fantastic portrait of Mila Kunis as Letty Lynton, the Joan Crawford role/character that has been hard to find for the past seventy-something years since it was court-ordered back into the MGM archives on copyright violations. My next thought, after taking it in, was 'Of all movies, Letty Lynton? Do people actually know about that movie?'

Apparently people know about the dress. "(T)he Letty Lynton dress, with billowing, diaphanous sleeves, became an overnight sensation" says the small text in the upper right corner. Previously, my only visual reference was a small still in the great book Sin in Soft Focus by Mark A. Vieira, which shows Crawford buried in silver fox, leaning against Nils Ascher. Indeed a google image search did turn up some terrific glamour shots of Miss le Seur in the white dress with big sleeves.

A YouTube search turned up something even more exciting: The entire movie, which I don't think has ever been on VHS (and certainly never been on DVD). Until it gets taken down, do seek it out. It's been divided into about ten increments.

I watched the first three or so last night, and I can't say I'm not completely impressed. The overall image quality is better than nothing, but still very dismal and washed out, particularly disappointing when you consider how gorgeous movies from that era at MGM usually looked. (The cinematographer Oliver Marsh, was also responsible for Dancing Lady, San Francisco, The Women and a few of the Thin Man movies.) The sets, by Cedric Gibbons, are disappointingly plain. As to the acting, let's just say nobody won any Oscars. Joanie is good, not great. Her wardrobe is more interesting. Robert Montgomery is charming, and more interesting to watch than Joan's wardrobe. Nils Ascher is good, but not the complicated General Yen you'd like to see. Character problems aside, the actors don't bring a whole lot.

Granted, I'm saying this after watching the equivalent of the first three reels. Maybe Letty Lynton will redeem itself in its second act. By the time I'm finished with my essays for English class, hopefully this faded apparent bootleg will not have been removed from the webitudes. In the meantime, I'm just glad it's available, glad that it didn't suffer the same fate as Convention City. Then again, Convention City was exciting enough to watch than it actually threatened the status quo. Letty Lynton scandalously (allegedly) plagerized an outside source material, but so far that's about the only aspect of it that's still scandalous today.

Studio Glamor

I recently bought a hard-cover edition of the brand new Bonnie and Clyde biography Go Down Together by Jeff Gunn. Since I am (slowly) reading about five different books right now, I haven't gotten very far; I've covered Clyde's harrowingly destitute childhood, but that's about it. I can, however, already recommend it very highly as an engaging and well-written piece of historical literature.

Go Down Together gets extra brownie points for its nice collection of illustrations, mostly rare photographs that relate to the principals' early lives. One of my favorite pictures is a 1925 (or thereabouts) studio portrait of a teenage Bonnie Parker, an item the low-born girl would have had to really save up for. It's a gorgeous picture, and worth contrasting with the famous snapshots of her clowning around with a shotgun. Those pictures were taken about twelve years later, and you can see the effects of a stressful and difficult life on twenty-something Bonnie. The woman in those pictures had aged quickly and no longer had any illusions about life.

The photographic gem below was purchased the same day as the Hawaiian vacation group shot, and from the same vendor. I don't have any information on the woman, but the picture struck me with its simple beauty and wonderful little details (look at those sleeves!) as well as its clarity.

Haha, Blackface.

Today, I'm again playing that constant game of catch-up. It's been over a week since I blogged. Here now are, as promised, my thoughts on Check and Double Check, the Hammer/UCLA blackface offering from over a week ago.


Check and Double Check is an Amos n Andy movie, the only one, starring the radio performers who created the duo, Charles Correll and Freeman Gosdon. (the picture above is from the TV show) It's up to you to look it up since I don't want to waste space laying out the plot. In attendance was Correll's son, Richard, who unbeknownst to me (I'm ashamed) is a successful TV director and writer in his own right. Ever hear about this thing called Hannah Montana? He invented it. Seriously. Anyway, he got up and talked about his father, his father's partner in crime for thirty years and about the film.

Refreshingly, Correll made no apologies for the film. He shouldn't, but he's also a rare brave soul not to take the audience's hand in his and talk to them like a ten year old. An audience of adults at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California, doesn't need to be reminded that the movie we are about to see contains subject matter that some people might find offensive. We are there because we know that already and just want to see the damn movie. Kudos to you, Mr. Correll.


Richard Correll's parting words were something like, "I'll probably be the only one laughing for most of this, but enjoy." The audience's reaction, however, was extremely positive, and the movie holds up really well, thanks in no small part to it having been made well and to surviving in its original form. The jokes are also way less dated than, say, a Marx Brothers movie where they make jokes about Abie's Irish Rose.

I'm going to go out on a limb here: This movie is not offensive! Its central characters are uneducated black men played by white men in blackface, but their relationship is complex and plays out with admirable subtlety and humanity. There's an especially moving scene where Amos learns that his own employer, who was like a father to him and Andy, has passed away. His reaction, even in the minstrel-y dialect, is heartfelt and moving.

I will also point out a scene where they have to spend a night in a haunted house. As fearful as they are of houses' alleged ghost, they are still able to work strategize and keep their cool. When somebody's coat tail gets caught in a door, they don't behave any differently than Edgar Kennedy or Laurel and Hardy would. For a 1930's comedy made by white people about black people, that's about as unoffensive as you can get.

One more thing to consider: Charles Correll and Freeman Gosdon were both known to be supportive of equality both in the recording studio and in the real world. A number of black performers, including Hattie McDaniel, go their start on the Amos n' Andy radio show. They were even lauded by the NAACP.


This movie was the first half of a double feature program. At the end of the second feature, a guy sitting near me and my cohorts asked us about Check and Double Check, which he had skipped because he didn't want to see a racist movie. We did our best to assure him, in a polite and round-about way, that he missed a well-made and interesting movie that had a lot more than that to offer than some politically incorrect makeup choices. We did our best to paraphrase what Richard Correll had said, but it didn't seem to change his mind.

As much as I want him to understand us, I can see where he's coming from. We all have our red flags that we can't see past. It's like opening a window for a bird stuck in a house, and all they could do was keep hitting their head on the wall space next to it. Certain accents make me wary of people. Certain word choices make me judge them. And yet I feel like, in America, blackface is one of those things that refuse, at this point, to get past. By its very nature, it has become territory that nobody dare cross into. In the previous night's show He Fell In Love with His Wife, Lydia Yeamans Titus played a brutish, rabble rousing Irish housekeeper, but nobody at that screening seemed to bat an eye. There is something so outrageous, so unnatural and invasive about blackface, that its very appearance cancels out its context. It made me sad that, outside from academic-filled screenings like this one, this sort of film was unlikely to see much appreciation, or at least be given the chance it deserves.

Jean Harlow Award for Excellence

I wasn't sure of what to write about today. I need to post something, otherwise I will have failed in my mission as a blogger. There's a lot going on but I feel extremely disinclined to write about it. After all, if I tried to work my issues out here, what would I talk to my therapist about? Jean Harlow?

I needed an excuse for posting pictures on here. A blog does not survive on written words alone. Therefore, I am creating the award for excellence in a particular field. Like being photographed wearing something I like. I will post new winners at my discretion. I am pleased to announce that today's winner is...




Jean Harlow, for her Chewbacca costume! Actually, this outfit is fantastic, don't you think? I don't know which movie this is from but I'm assuming based on the hair, that it's one of her earlier films. This is quintessential Harlow right here. You can almost see where her face ends and her hair begins. Lord only knows how many sables were harmed in the making of this fantastic example of fur coat cubism.

Also, I'm including in this post a gag photo that is most definitely associated with Red-Headed Woman. I'm reluctant to pick a favorite Harlow movie, but this one is up there. The woman holding the bottle is Gentlemen Prefer Blonds author Anita Loos, who wrote RHW's fantastic screenplay. It's a good thing we're having a power outage. It forces me to go somewhere public and do constructive things, like look for a job and stuff. Otherwise, I might be compelled to pop in that 'Forbidden Hollywood' DVD and spend an hour shouting 'Can you see through this? I'm afraid you can miss. I'll wear it!' at my computer.

Hearst Metrotone Highlights

Last night I attended a UCLA Film and Television Archive screening, part of their fourteenth annual lineup of recently preserved materials from their collection. The set of films they have this year is especially appetizing, and I urge you to try to check it out if you're in LA through April 26th. (A link will be posted below.) All screenings are presented at the Hammer Museum's terrific Billy Wilder Theater, with its immaculate acoustics and Pepto-Bismal-hued seats. You might also see famous people (I happened to be seated in the same row as Leonard Maltin).

For those of you who don't know, I kinda have a 'thing' for archive footage. Ok, it's more of an obsessive fetish. Last night's program title alone, SILENT AND EARLY SOUND FILMS FROM THE HEARST METROTONE NEWS COLLECTION (1919-30), was making me twitch. We were going to be seeing a group of news stories that had not been seen in 80 to 90-some years. Heaven! I apologized to my date, Shaun, in advance: "If I start spontaneously orgasming in the middle of this thing, it's ok to pretend you don't know me." He assured me he would.

The show was hosted by Jeffrey Bickel, Newsreel Preservationist for UCLA (and my new god), who had great notes for the each segment. The new stories were presented chronologically. The first batch of clips were silent and spanned 1919 through the mid 1920's, and had live piano accompaniment (sorry, pianist, I can't remember your name, but you did a great job!). The sound segments picked up in 1929 and a majority of them were from the following year (January to September). I can't remember all of them (there were over a hundred minutes of them) but below are a few highlights:

1. A never released obituary for Theodore Roosevelt, including shots of his wintry funeral procession and burial in Long Island. Right from the beginning, the footage was fascinating and the visual quality was extremely reassuring.
2. Several shots made in France following the armistice, including a victory parade. The crowd shots were incredible. There is also some extremely beautiful footage of US General Pershing leaving port in southern France (in one interesting, very human moment, somebody is helping him get something out of his eye with a handkerchief), and Victory parades in New York and Washington, DC, that deserve to be in every World War I documentary ever from now on. (Why can't I remember that guy's name? He was a big deal!)
   
3. "Women Besiege Capitol To Urge Suffrage Bills" which I recognized from documentaries like Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America (which is worth seeing). The hats and furs are terrific in this one, though the title is overly sensational. I wouldn't say the well-dressed, slow moving caterpillar of lady protesters are 'besieging' the steps of Albany's capitol building. They are simply making their case. You go, ladies!
   
4. A ship that has run aground near Devon, England, gets pried out of its chasm prison. Many of the reels, both silent and sound, were tinted different colors. This one was tinted bright yellow.
   
5. The Wall Street crash of 1929, and a proclamation by Charles M. Schwab (not the Charles Schwab you're thinking of) set the sound era of Heart Metrotone off with a bang. Schwab talks about how everything is going to be fine, and there is no need to worry about the economy. I love the speeches and interviews from this period. The speakers never seem comfortable, they usually shout their speech at the camera, and it usually ends with them pausing awkwardly and asking the off-camera technicians if they are done. So human! So different from the ass puppets you see on the news today!
6. The interior of a black (!) Southern (!) schoolhouse during a 'war on illiteracy,' showing African American adults learning to read. This was one of my favorite pieces, mostly because it's so unexpected; real black people are rare enough in the movies around this time. Here they are in their natural habitat (that sounds bad). Plus there are great closeups on fashion (people really took pride in their appearance back then!) and they sing a gospel song at the end. Yeah, maybe somebody could argue that it's a little racist to include that. But you know what? It's also a valuable document of American cultural heritage. Plus I couldn't stop recalling the instructor on the car-ride home: "M...A...N! Again!"
7. A children's parade in central park where a little boy is named champion of a 'freckle' contest (cute), and a dower little girl dressed in bridal wear declares "I am the blushing bride" as if she's undergoing some sort of punishment (in my opinion, she definitely was).
8. The 'plainest girl' in DC (or was it New York?), twenty-something Dolly Gray, is made over by a set of 'beauty scientists' while an on-camera male commentator makes shockingly sexist remarks. The end result: Dolly models her new look awkwardly. She's cute enough with the marcel wave and all, but Shaun and me like her better with long, unprocessed hair, natural eyebrows and light smattering of freckles.
9. A demonstration of self-defense techniques by people with British accents. Cute.
10. Also in Britain, a prince opens a hospital for children with polio. During his speech, I kept thinking of Eddie Izzard talking about EastEnders ("We must go with our strange accents...").
    
11. Navy football players training and tackling each other. Just goes to show that football has always been America's great latent-homoerotic pastime, even without steroids.
12. A group of Japanese-American teenage girls do a song and dance number. Just goes to show that Asian girls have always been and always will be TOTALLY ADORABLE!
13. A guy jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge (for the second time, apparently). He says something to the newsreel camera and then gets a kiss from his stylish girlfriend, be-cloched and be-furred. Fun thirties fashion turn up so often when you least expect it!
14. Tennis champion Betty Nuthall defeating Virginia Wade. My first thought was "Finally, women's tennis without the porno noises," and I was not disappointed. Miss Nuthall accepted her trophy with class and humility. Another posh accent.
    
15. The beginning of an all-female airplane race in Long Beach, with no word on who won. And no cute flapper outfits either. Suddenly I want my money back.
16. The latest fashions from Paris, and all of them have some sort of fur piece, of course. Ok, I feel better now. The narration for the episode is by some woman with a French accent that is both heavy and fake-sounding. Unlike today's models, the mannequins in this segment look like they eat healthy meals. Like today's models, they all look a bit angry.
    
17. A women's fire brigade. For all the probably good intentions of the newsreel crew, the women seem a little foolish, fighting fires in 4-inch heels and cloche rain caps. Also, when you're going to fight a barn fire by spraying water through the front entrance, it's probably best to open both doors, rather than just one. That way, you won't spend most of the time spraying the door you left shut, and you won't get soaked by the back-splash. Just a thought.
18. Finally, I get to hear what Thomas Edison and Henry Ford sounded like, and all in one story! They are addressing a group of scholarship winners. Edison can barely stand or open his eyes, and mumbles as if he doesn't know what's happening to him. To be fair, he was 82 by then. Ford, however, is the complete opposite, on the other hand. One smooth oak spouting asinine stuff like 'There's no such thing as a lost opportunity,' I thought of Gary Cooper. An old Gary Cooper with big ears and an undying hatred for Jews.
    
19. Hiram Johnson yells at the camera about stuff. The benefits of isolationism, I think. He moves his around a little too much, and shouting even more than usual. 1930 seems early to be yelling about war anyway. Freckle boy and his contemporaries wouldn't get caught in the draft for another twelve years.
20. This wasn't the last piece, but it has to have been the most priceless: Two lion tamers get married in a cage, with their prized lions standing in as witnesses. As if this wasn't already a tacky idea, a handler at the beginning lets the trap door fall on the tiger's head as it steps into the cage. I don't know how audiences in 1930 would have processed that, but in this post-PETA zeitgeist, all of us in the Billy Wilder Theater let out a gasp, followed by a rumble of righteous indignation. The bride and groom (both really good-looking) are about as nervous and distracted as could be expected, but for at least as long as the camera and sound men were rolling, nobody's face was torn off.

How miraculous that all of this survives, when you consider how much has been lost or is missing. What a shame It's about as cliché a notion as can be had, but you realize just how true it is when you're walking through the Hammer's lobby, your butt just beginning to regain feeling after 100 minutes sitting on Barbie-pink leather, and images and sounds of another age playing themselves over and over in your head. A few people looked exhausted after the show, but Shaun and I were both jonesing for more.

Where does that leave us? Well, what we all have to do is throw some money at the National Film Preservation Foundation and wait for Treasures from American Film Archive Volume 87 to come out. If the films I see tonight get released on DVD, I can see myself doing what I always do whenever I procrastinate: Adding new titles to the Internet Movie Database. Wouldn't it be nice to search for titles like Good News for Homely Girls or Edison Welcomes ‘Brightest' Boys and not come up empty-handed? John James Brookhart has a filmography thanks to NFPF's efforts. Why not grant the same opportunity to the plainest girl of 1930, Dolly Gray?

A list of showtimes and program notes for UCLA Film and Television Archive's 14th Annual Festival of Preservation can be viewed here:
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/