HOLIDAY - #1009

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2006.

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made an excellent movie duo. Both had distinct personalities, with their own way of speaking and carrying themselves. It's impossible to mistake them for anyone else, or anyone for them. Their fame and legend is down to how well they managed the Grant and Hepburn brands, playing roles either together or apart that celebrated their independent spirits.

Holiday, the 1938 adaptation of the Philip Barry stage play, is the third movie that the pair made together, and the second with George Cukor. It was nearly Hepburn's last, coming around the time when she was infamously declared "box office poison." Two years later she and Grant and Cukor would team again in the film that would turn it all around, The Philadelphia Story, also based on a play by Barry. (Adding to the lineage, the screenplays for both movies were written by Donald Ogden Stewart.) Holiday doesn't quite hit the heights that film would, but there for the grace of The Philadelphia Story goes Holiday. It's a classic tale of class and romance in its own right.

Cary Grant plays Johnny Case, a self-made man whose career in finance is only the springboard for his true dreams: he wants to earn enough money to live a life of carefree travel. He wants to experience the world while he is young and return to work later, when he has figured out what he is working for. On the first ever vacation of his life, he met Julia (Doris Nolan, One Hour to Live), a heck of girl that has smitten him so, he has asked her to marry him after ten days. Only, he has neglected to ask anything else about her.

Imagine his surprise when he discovers that she is Julia Seton of the New York Setons, one of America's sixty wealthiest families. It's a bittersweet twist for Johnny, because he wants to earn his own money--a quaint little idea in Julia's circle. Dreams aren't every really pursued at that level of society, they are too close to bother reaching for. Hence, Julia's brother Ned (Lew Ayres, best known for the Dr. Kildare series of films), who could have been a fine musician if he wasn't being sensible and managing daddy's money. The price for this sell-out? A bottle of Scotch.

Then there is Linda, as played by Katharine Hepburn. She's the self-described black sheep of the family. Hip to the plight of her kind, she does the only sensible thing and gives up. Rather than try anything that might matter, she spends all of her time in their childhood playroom wondering what it would be like to live the kind of life Johnny imagines for himself. Thus, when he enters their gigantic home (complete with elevator), he's a reinvigorating breath of fresh air for Linda. Johnny is proof that you don't have to be tied down. She instantly sees the value of his plan, but she's not convinced anyone else will.

This all sounds like rather serious stuff, and for the most part, it is. It's not as dowdy with import as, say, Eugene O'Neill, but it's also not the frothy comedy some might imagine. There are serious issues of class and desire and what it means to love another person, and long stretches of the movie are given over to real discussions of the problems between Johnny, the Seton offspring, and their controlling father. Hearts are broken over these things, and by the end, there are some shards on the floor.

And yet, Barry and Cukor also keep in mind that this is a film about people falling in love, and that if Johnny and Linda really want the life of fun and frolic they talk about, there is plenty of room between the heavy discussions to indulge in the considerable charisma of the two lead actors. Naturally, with Grant and Hepburn as the names above the title, they are going to be the ones who really fall in love. Johnny's philosophy of life is summed up through acrobatics. If things get too drastic, do a somersault. Cary Grant was trained in stage gymnastics as a young actor, and those skills come to good use in Holiday. The scene where Linda and Johnny show off the stunt he taught her is a rightful classic. You'll be delighted to see them tumble across the floor, and even moreso when a similar trick punctuates the picture. The scenes the duo has alone or with the Johnny Case Club--Ned and the Potters, a delightful scholarly couple Johnny is friends with (played by character actors Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon)--are grand fun. Additionally, when the romance gets romantic, you will swoon. The smoldering desires that pass between Grant and Hepburn during a New Year's Eve waltz are all you need to see to know who Johnny Case should really marry.

So, don't mistake Holiday for predictable holiday fluff, but don't worry about being bogged down in the social drama, either. Instead, expect a true romance, with moments of intensity and giddiness in equal measure. If you've ever enjoyed Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant together before, Holiday sits comfortably amongst their other triumphs. I swear, it doesn't matter how many times I see them fall in love on my TV screen, they get straight to my sappy old heart every time.

TWO-FACED WOMAN - CRITERION CHANNEL

A self-important magazine editor from New York climbs a mountain with a no-nonsense ski instructor and comes back down with a wife.

This is the meet-cute of Two-Faced Woman, a 1941 romantic comedy from director George Cukor. It sounds harmless enough--and truth be told, it is--but it’s also the film that ended Greta Garbo’s career. So maligned was the picture upon release, the screen legend left Hollywood for good.

Garbo plays Karin, the aforementioned ski instructor, a lover of the land more at home in the freezing temperatures than anywhere else. She’s an improbable match for Melvyn Douglas’ Larry, whose dry wit sits atop his dandyism in a way that can be charming sometimes, but is a little gruff here. This is the third time the pair starred together, so it’s a wonder that the chemistry between them takes a while to mix in Two-Faced Woman. It’s the film’s #1 problem. Perhaps the coupling would not seem so improbable had Cukor and his three writers not decided to leave most of the courtship off screen. The would-be lovers meet, bicker, and then after some slapstick, Larry falls into a snow bank. Cut from a concerned Karin to a more concerned ski lodge where panic has set in over their disappearance. Even Larry’s business partner (Roland Young) and secretary (Ruth Gordon) have come looking for him. When the “lost” skiers finally do re-emerge, they reveal little about where they have been, but wherever it was, they fell in love and got married.

Problems ensue almost immediately. Larry’s initial promises to change his life and stay with Karin are quickly overtaken by his workaholic tendencies, and Karin refuses to go to the city with him. Larry leaves anyway, months pass, and fed up with his constant excuses for not returning, Karin goes to him. The surprise she has planned for her husband is trumped by the surprise she receives, however; it appears her man has taken back up with his former flame, playwright Griselda Vaughn (Constance Bennett). Humiliated but not beaten, Karin decides to impersonate her own twin sister so she can spy on Larry and potentially lure him into a trap. Is it possible he’ll love the bawdy sibling more than the down-to-earth gal he married?

Here is where the title Two-Faced Woman apparently comes in, though it’s a bit misleading. The negative connotations of being “two-faced” would actually probably apply to Larry more than Karin--he’s the cheater, after all! It’s of little consequence, I suppose, and easy to overlook, since this is the point in the picture where the story really starts to take off. In this invented persona, Garbo cuts loose, and the stakes start to matter. Two-Faced Woman’s best scenes come when Larry and Karin are finally alone, each playing the other for a fool, but the mutual seduction actually working rather than just being a petty ruse. Cukor plays with reversals here, bringing each lover to the brink of temptation, only to have them hold back, to tease, each one not yet ready to give up the game.

It’s an exquisite bout, a drunken tug-of-war, with Douglas and Garbo at their most charismatic. They both play very good boozehounds. Things only get sillier and more fun as the back-and-forth escalates, with the pair racing back to the ski resort, each determined to reveal the truth first. It’s too bad the script lets us down once again, returning to slapstick rather than finding a more meaningful ending. I get that Larry tumbling down a mountain brings them back to a place where they initially fell in love, but since we didn’t get much of a glimpse of that love the first time, it comes off as meaningless the second.

MVP honors go to the exquisite supporting cast. Fans of Harold and Maude [review] will likely enjoy seeing young Ruth Gordon give it her all as the fastidious Miss Ellis. But the whole of Two-Faced Woman is stolen by Constance Bennett, whose smart, sharp-tongued Griselda cuts through every scene, taking scissors to the film’s would-be heart strings. Bennett’s performance is a scream--sometimes literally. Griselda’s penchant for letting out a high-pitched cry when her stress and anger reach a boiling point, sometimes filling the space between words, at others pure punctuation, is Two-Faced Woman’s top gag.

Which isn’t all that abnormal, for a supporting player to upstage the main stars. It’s just too bad here because one would have hoped for better from Garbo’s final bow. In the early scenes, she seems as baffled by the script as the rest of us, and her performance suffers for it. Two-Faced Woman should have reminded audiences why they fell in love with her in the first place instead of being slightly relieved the relationship is over.

OUR BETTERS - CRITERION CHANNEL

A comedy of the upper classes with a “they’re just like us” message knotted together with a “but they’re also rather perverse” chastisement. Based on a stageplay by W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage), Our Betters is a fun trifle, a bit meandering and at times stiff, but generally entertaining thanks to a diva turn by Constance Bennett (Topper). She plays Lady Pearl Grayston, an American socialite who married into her title, but who is quickly turned hard by the discovery--on her wedding day, no less--that, for her husband, it is a union of convenience and not love. Accepting this fate, Pearl is fine to have her husband go on an extended vacation and, in his absence, twist England to her will via fashionable outings and well-curated parties.

Directed by George Cukor (The Women) and released in 1933, before Hollywood adopted the Hayes Code and started minding its manners, Our Betters is a rather frank look at the trysts and turns of high British society. From a rich older woman keeping a much younger lover (Violet Kemble Cooper and Gilbert Roland, respectively), to Pearl’s own sister, Bessie (Anita Louise) pursuing her own place in the upper classes, everyone in Pearl’s circle has some kind of affair underway, ones we are to surmise are pursued out of loneliness and convenience, but never love. This is shown to us via the bewildered American boy Fleming (Charles Starrett, a.k.a. The Durango Kid), who has been jilted by Bessie and yet hangs around to marvel at the freak show.

Our Betters is essentially a string of loosely connected vignettes, following several gatherings, flitting in and out of the various relationships and breaking off couples on their own to give us time to get to know them. Occasional moments of despair seep through as lifestyle choices backfire. Bennett is the glue holding it together, not just arranging the parties but manipulating the aftermath to keep her little circle from disintegrating. It’s very light stuff, even if Cukor’s direction is often weighed down by the material’s theatrical origins. Unfortunately, as enjoyable as the individual bits may be, the conclusion fizzles. The final scene doesn’t feel very final, making Our Betters come off more like an episode in a larger narrative than a wholly formed entity unto itself.

MORNING GLORY/WITHOUT LOVE/UNDERCURRENT/SYLVIA SCARLETT - FILMSTRUCK

Katharine Hepburn is the lead Star of the Week for Filmstruck's final month. In honor of that, I am adapting my review for a 2007 boxed set celebrating her 100th birthday to focus on film's currently featured on the streaming service.

Katharine Hepburn is one of those rare individuals who can truly be said to have come from a different time. Yes, many historical figures are reflections of the particular social mores of their era, but it's something else altogether to be one of those figures that is so unique, there is no way to repeat the confluence of factors that made them. Surely, Hollywood couldn't come up with a movie star like her today. The way we view our celebrities has changed too much. The Golden Age of American cinema produced icons whose images were a mixture of their own personal quirks and studio spin. One gets the sense that one knows stars like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart from watching their films, but at the same time, the flickering lights of motion pictures allow them to maintain a sense of mystery. For as personal as our connection to them, they have a sense of "otherness" that can never be fully erased. They are one of us, and yet they are something more.

Of the classic female stars, no one may embody this as much as Katharine Hepburn. The accent, the laugh, the strident intelligence, the incredible strength and the equally incredible fragility it keeps in check. She had parts in over fifty movies from 1932 to 1994, establishing one of the greatest legacies in American movies. Though she had her fair share of trouble spots, she always managed to pull out of them, and her pairings with the aforementioned Mr. Grant and the love of her life, Spencer Tracy, resulted in some of the best films ever made. Out of twelve Oscar nominations as Best Actress, she won four. Not bad, eh?

Morning Glory (1933) was directed by Lowell Sherman (She Done Him Wrong) and adapted by Howard J. Green (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) from a play by Zoe Akins (The Greeks Had a Word For It, a.k.a. How to Marry a Millionaire). It features the young actress, appropriately enough, in the role of a young actress, the hopelessly naive but fiercely determined Eva Lovelace (a stage name, as she's quick to point out--do you like it?). Eva has come to New York City from her home in Vermont to try to make her way treading the boards. Walking into the office of Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou), one of the most successful producers on Broadway, she talks a blue streak that makes her seem alternately crazy, endearing, or inspiring, depending on who you ask. The other actresses think she's pathetic, but the men around are caught in her spell, particularly the writer Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.).

What transpires is a slightly skewed take on the rags to riches rise of a Broadway star. While the title, Morning Glory, refers to the glow of overnight success, it might also refer to the post-coital glow, the dirty curve Easton throws Eva that could only be talked about in a roundabout fashion in the 1930s. Given Eva's precarious mental state, the situation takes on a decidedly dark pallor, and so it's strange when Easton's cruelty is fairly easily bypassed in the climax. In fact, the whole movie has a kind of strangeness about it. It suffers from a staginess that deadened a lot of pictures from the period, making it all the more discomfiting that Fairbanks performs in a loose, naturalistic style that feels out of place next to his colleagues' more demonstrative approach. There is also a jumbled sense of time in the narrative. Part of it is intentional, since at least one character makes a point of how Eva speaks of weeks as if they were years, but it's an incongruity that eventually affects the timeline of the entire script, making it difficult to gauge just how much time has passed by the end.

Really, without Katharine Hepburn, we'd probably not even still be viewing Morning Glory today. Her take on Eva suggests more than a passing knowledge of obsessive-compulsive psychoses. When Eva starts on one of her talking jags, Hepburn freight-trains through it, barely breathing but still hitting the right marks, shifting into the various tangents as if they were the most logical choices for where to go next. The speeches are revelatory, not just as pieces of great acting, but for the character, revealing her vulnerability, her intelligence, and the power of her singular belief. It's the most complicated kind of denial, as Eva believes her own rationalizations even as she betrays them by calling them false. Hepburn never rings a bum note. She's just splendid.

Jumpoing twelve years forward to 1945 and Harold S. Bucquet's Without Love, by this point the Katharine Hepburn persona was pretty well-established, and her romantic comedies were becoming a staple of cinemas. It was her third movie with Spencer Tracy, a most winning combination and perennial exception to the rule that off-screen chemistry is supposed to yield on-screen fizzles. In fact, a kind of repertory had gathered around Hepburn in the intervening years. The screenplay for Without Love was adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart, who had also written the scripts for Holiday [review] and The Philadelphia Story, and all three movies were taken from stage plays by Philip Barry.

The deliciously improbable plot casts Tracy as scientist Patrick Jamieson, a citizen contributing to the wartime effort by secretly working on a high-altitude oxygen mask for pilots in the U.S. army. A chance meeting leads him to the basement in the house of Jamie Rowan (Hepburn), a wealthy widow whose personal loss has made her never want to love again. Pat is of the same mind, but for the opposite reason. Rather than having experienced the greatest love of his life, he's experienced the greatest frustration--a French socialite who keeps him dangling by a heartstring. Another thing the pair has in common is that their late fathers were both scientists, and so they share a hunger for knowledge and discovery. Seeing the perfect opportunity for a coupling, they decide to get married. It will be a union of convenience, built on true friendship without any of that troublesome love stuff mucking up the works.

It wouldn't be a Tracy/Hepburn picture, of course, if this plan didn't go horribly awry. Two people so perfect for each other will perfectly fall in love. Not without their obstacles, of course. Jamie will have to get over hang-ups, and Pat will have to finally let go of his French pastry. Comedy ensues along the way, including gleefully silly montages of the two at work in Pat's lab. There is also some funny business involving Pat's sleepwalking and the little dog he's trained to stop him from wandering too far. Running parallel to the action is another comic couple, played by a young Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn (Royal Wedding). It's nearly a case of the supporting cast running away with the show. Though Ball is more restrained than we'd come to know from her, I've never seen Wynn be funnier. He's marvelous as the perpetually drunken Quentin, equal parts clown and cad.

As a Tracy/Hepburn fan new to Without Love (in fact, I hadn't seen any of the movies in the box before this viewing), the film fits right in with what I like about the acting duo's comedies. Hepburn's character is never any less than her partner's equal, which is not always the case in 1940s romantic comedies. She is always smart and active in her own power, and her specialness is never neutralized. Rather, both lovers usually have to move either up or down to find a common ground that will allow them to be together. For me, what sets Without Love apart from the rest of their team-ups is the final scene, where Jamie and Pat admit their love without ever admitting it out and out. They do a little verbal dance, saying what they feel in a roundabout way. It's both clever and smart, and the two actors come off as remarkably sincere while still keeping it light. (In reality, they weren't stepping too far outside themselves, as they had years of a very public private affair.) Their last embrace is surprisingly sensual. Hepburn looks particularly hungry, like she's just about to bite a chunk of flesh from Tracy's head. It's enough to inspire the vapors.

1946's Undercurrent is a tense thriller that stands out as a kind of oddity in Katharine Hepburn's career. Undercurrent was actually kind of a departure for several of the people involved. Director Vincente Minnelli was known for his frothy musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis, and co-star Robert Mitchum was usually the tough guy, not the more sensitive soul he is here.

Hepburn is cast as Anne, the daughter of a widower scientist (Edmund Gwenn). Her father is about to sell his greatest discovery to Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), a famous industrialist who invented a revolutionary navigation system for airplanes. Though Anne is convinced she will live the life of a spinster, when she and Alan meet, it's love at first sight. They are quickly married, and Anne is removed from her safe, academic world and placed amongst Washington politicos. She takes well to high society, but always feels out of step. Part of the problem is that her husband seems to be hiding something. The circumstances of his mother's death and the disappearance of his brother Michael (Mitchum) are closely guarded, and Alan loses his temper at the mere thought of them. Too many coincidences and almost psychic feelings keep bringing Michael to the fore, however, and Anne is convinced she must find out the truth if she's ever to know her spouse.

Undercurrent has started to pick up a bit of a reputation as a film noir. I first heard of the film in 2006 when it played as part of a noir festival at the Northwest Film Center. I'm not really sure it qualifies, however, unless we can establish a subgenre of women's noir. The plot has more in common with Victorian melodramas like Wuthering Heights and the work of Daphne Du Maurier (and her frequent adapter Alfred Hitchcock) than it does the moody expressionism of Fritz Lang or Jules Dassin. Genre hair-splitting aside, however, I found Undercurrent to be absolutely riveting. Minnelli creates a palpable sense of foreboding that lingers over the picture, ratcheting up the suspense each time Anne finds something new to cause her to doubt her husband's story only to be placated by his wily explanations. You just know that eventually one of these things is going to be too large for him to erase, and then Anne is going to be in real trouble.

It's rare to see Katharine Hepburn portray a character that is as lost and confused as Anne. Normally, her characters are merely misguided, blinded by their own hubris or stubbornness. She's quite good in this sudsier role, enough to make me wish she had made more genre pictures. Minnelli also shows a great facility for the style, using what he learned about using his environment from shooting more pastoral pictures to give the couple's ranch a sinister bend.

I'd say my only complaint about Undercurrent is that Robert Mitchum is barely in it. Like Harry Lime in The Third Man [review], Michael Garroway is more of a pervading presence than he is an active participant. When he does show up, it has a much weightier impact. So, this isn't really a fault in the story. I just really like Robert Mitchum.

Katharine Hepburn made ten movies under the direction of George Cukor. He cast her in her first film, Bill of Divorcement, in 1932. They paired for the last time forty-seven years later, in 1979, for The Corn is Green [see original review], a television production of a play by Emlyn Williams. Hepburn was 72, Cukor was 80. The Corn is Green was not a bad showing for two mega talents late in their careers, but a little too safe to have a lasting impact when faced with the grandeur that had come before.

Such as 1935's Sylvia Scarlett. This film has a bit of a checkered reputation, having been a much derided flop on its initial release, leading to Hepburn being labeled "box office poison." Though Cary Grant would emerge from it having proven his skills as a romantic funnyman, it would take years for the movie itself to get a proper reassessment. (In the Cukor documentary on Warner Brothers' 2005 double-disc Philadelphia Story, the director comments that it had become a cult hit and a favorite whenever a retrospective of his career was put together.)

Having finally seen Sylvia Scarlett, I can kind of see why the original audience didn't know what to make of it. It's definitely off-kilter, and it may run a little long, particularly in its screwball turn in the final fifteen minutes. Other than that, though, I found it enchanting.

Hepburn is Sylvia, a dour French-English girl who has just lost her mother. Adding insult to injury, her father (Gwenn again) has gotten into trouble from gambling, and the only cash they have to fund an escape is intended for Sylvia's dowry. Believing she'll never be married anyway, Sylvia cooks up a plan for them to escape to England. Fearing the police will be looking for a father/daughter duo, Sylvia decides to dress as a boy to throw the cops off their scent. The newly dubbed Sylvester takes exceedingly well to his new gender, so much so that his moxy impresses a slick Cockney conman by the name of Jimmy Monkley (Grant). He forms a criminal trio with the Scarletts, igniting Sylvester's sense of adventure. His sense of right and wrong won't let him keep stealing, though, so the three then team up with a chambermaid (Dennie Moore) and become traveling clowns.

And that's just the first half. Cukor packs a lot of story into Sylvia Scarlett. It's more than just a simple cross-dressing-for-comedy picture, however. Sylvia becoming a boy is actually a clever device employed by the writers to show how naïve the character really is. Hepburn is credible as a boy, and so she manages a convincing, athletic performance of a girl pretending to be one. It's almost like some weird version of method acting.

The second half of the film is concerned with the romantic entanglements that come out of this arrangement. Papa Scarlett chases the maid, Monkley's affection toward Sylvia after she reveals the truth is never clear, and Sylvia falls for a rakish artist (Brian Aherne, The Best of Everything) who exposes just how unprepared for womanhood Sylvia really is. A female once more, she's has few defenses to protect herself from his cad-like behavior and the emotional games his girlfriend (Natalie Paley) likes to play. Being a boy was easier for her, because the disguise allowed Sylvester to keep the world at arm's length. The revelation of Sylvia's true sex uncorks everything. Tragedy strikes, and the film's cynical heart is exposed, as well. This is perhaps what makes the final scenes of Sylvia Scarlett a little unconvincing: Sylvia and Monkley have already told us not to believe it.

Even so, it's not enough to fell Sylvia Scarlett. The charms of the rest of the film hold strong. Cary Grant is smart and funny, and when you stop and think about it, Sylvia's predicament is really the Katharine Hepburn image taken to the extreme. A woman fights so hard for her liberation, she neglects the things about herself that are honest and warm, and the lesson she must learn is to somehow have both. It didn't matter how many times we watched Katharine Hepburn go through it, she held us in her thrall. It didn't matter if the material let her down, because she'd always pick the script right back up.

WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2014. 

Twenty-two years before George Cukor would remake A Star is Born (and even five years before William Wellman's original), the director would set the standard for the quintessential Tinsel Town tale with his entertaining pre-Code melodrama What Price Hollywood?.

A charming Constance Bennett stars as Mary Evans, who, up until her lucky run-in with perpetually soused film director Max Carey, is just another blonde actress making ends meet as a waitress at the Brown Derby. Carey, played with affable aplomb by Lowell Sherman (who soon went on to be a director himself), is working on slightly sobering up before heading off to the Chinese Theatre for his latest premiere. When the girl gets him home safe, she also gets herself a screen test, kicking off an illustrious career and a difficult relationship between two strong personalities--the nature of which seems to be a little more father/daughter until Mary gets married to Lonny Borden (Neil Hamilton), a millionaire playboy who doesn't get this Hollywood life. (Though, given his twisted courtship technique, I'm not sure Lonny's one to judge.) As the scales tip and Max needs Mary's help more than she needs his, it drives a wedge between the newlyweds and eventually propels everyone
into scandal.

Cukor mines some pretty dark material here, seemingly fascinated with the mechanics and mythology that had already sprung up around what was really a very young industry. The studio machine that churns out Mary's publicity--including the hands-on studio head (Gregory Ratoff) who goes so far as to plan her wedding--and the contentious relationship between the stars and the press appears no different then than it is now. There are even scary run-ins with fans, who literally try to tear the clothes from Mary's body. At the same time, the backstage efforts have their own magical efficiency. Cukor inserts shots of the technicians at work, a peek into the complicated choreography of a movie set. Gearheads should enjoy seeing the old cameras, microphones, and the like.

Constance Bennett is a dream as Mary, hitting on several notes that would become archetypical for this type of story--wide-eyed ingénue, a marquee-powered diva, frustrated wife and mother. She and Lowell Sherman make a fine pair. His performance here establishes him as one of the great on-screen drunkards. There is both comedy and tragedy in Max's descent, with neither side played so heavy as to ring false. He's the kind of guy you want to tip a few with, he's so much fun, but whom you also aren't surprised loses control. Naturally, the way What Price Hollywood? brings the starmaker and his protégé together casts them as the only two authentic people in an inauthentic business.

What really makes What Price Hollywood? sustainable, however, is that it manages to have its cake and eat it, too. Like the best behind-the-scenes exposés, Cukor's film loves and hates its subject. He subverts the emerging tropes even while reveling in them. Mary at one point complains that she has a baby in every movie the studio puts her in, to which the boss replies at least this time her character is married. It's the kind of knowing crack that would be censored once the Hayes Code was put in place, though in What Price Hollywood?, the joke holds true: Mary has a baby after her marriage has dissolved. And she gets her happy ending, too.

THE MISFITS - CRITERION CHANNEL

Originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2011:

The quality of John Huston's 1961 drama The Misfits is often eclipsed by its salacious backstory. The final completed film of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, it was written for Monroe by her then-husband Arthur Miller while they were in the grip of a divorce. Shooting was difficult, as both Marilyn and co-star Montgomery Clift suffered from various addictions and mental afflictions. Both Huston and Gable were hard drinkers themselves, but their habits were nothing compared to their younger cohorts. The Misfits even fell into hot water with the studio, who couldn't make heads or tails of the film. If not for Gable, who had final script approval, standing his ground, who knows how the movie might have ended up.

As it stands, The Misfits is a marvelous motion picture, easily one of Huston's best (not an inconsiderable boast). If it was misunderstood in its time, it's because The Misfits was a couple of years ahead of the curve. Its tale of displaced loners looking for meaning in the Nevada desert grappled with the passing of time--and not in the sense of a ticking clock, but historically. These characters represented an age that was ending, a lifestyle that was fading. It was as much a metaphor for the oncoming demise of Old Hollywood as it was the disappearance of 1950s America. The aura of freedom the characters longed for, and the artistic license that Miller and Huston were grasping at, were just around the corner. In two years, Martin Ritt's Hud would be a big hit. Maybe existential cowboys were just easier to take when they were Paul Newman, or maybe 24 months really did make that much of a difference.

The Misfits opens in Reno on the day when Roslyn (Monroe) is going to court to finalize her divorce. Back then, Reno had the easiest divorce laws in the country, and wronged spouses moved to the littlest big city temporarily to establish residency and dissolve their union. (This was perhaps most famously portrayed in Cukor's 1939 production of The Women.) Getting her single life back likely paid off in terms of alimony, but it costs an emotional price for Roslyn, as well. Now that she's alone, she doesn't know what to do with herself.

Enter a cowboy. Gay Langland (Gable) is a rootless roughneck who has a way with the ladies. In his mind, the worst thing in the world is "wages"--that is, a regular job. When Gay meets Roslyn, he's looking to bug out of town and spend some time in the wild with his pal Guido (Eli Wallach), a war veteran and pilot. Guido actually saw Roslyn first, he met her and the woman she's staying with (the great Thelma Ritter) that morning to assess the value of Roslyn's car. That Gay moves in on the curvy blonde causes Guido much consternation. Both men have refused to settle down again since their last marriage--Gay is divorced, Guido a widower--but Roslyn has a way of inspiring men to make exceptions to their principles.

The quartet heads out to Guido's house on the outskirts of town, where they get loaded and flirty. Guido may know how to dance, but Gay wins the day, and Roslyn and he start shacking up at Guido's house. This is essentially Act I. Act II is hitting the rodeo to find a third cowboy to go mustanging. That is when they pick up Perce (Clift), another drunk who rides broncos and bulls. There is some intimation that he maybe has some mental problems, too, though which symptoms are caused by the booze and which by the blows to his skull are up to interpretation. Perce and Roslyn are immediately attracted to one another. If Gay is a kind of stable father figure, then Perce is a kindred spirit, a broken creature just like her. Seeing him tossed around a rodeo ring puts Roslyn on edge. She can't stand a living thing to be hurt. Earlier in the film, she even stops Gay from killing a rabbit who is stealing the lettuce from their garden.

Act III is the mustanging. Roslyn goes with the boys, thinking that they intend to capture the wild horses for riding. This is not the case. Nevada mustangs are rounded up for dog food. Once upon a time, there were thousands of them in the mountains, now the men head out there believing they will find at least fifteen; the actual count is less than half that, calling attention to how pathetic this whole scheme really is. Roslyn, of course, is horrified, and her reaction stokes the testosterone in the group. There is much male posturing. First, it's who will abandon the deadly quest fastest in order to placate her; then, as she rejects different members of the hunting party, who is the bigger man. Gay almost literally wrestles with a horse just to prove no one can tell him what to do. In the frontier days, he might have been applauded for this macho showing off. In the context of The Misfits, you end up sad for him--even if you aren't sure which way your pity should flow. Is it because he is so out of touch with the times, or because the times are so out of touch with him?

Arthur Miller's script for The Misfits is poetic and intelligent. The playwright never condescends to these characters; on the contrary, the writing shows tremendous affection for them. It would have been easy to make them purely comical, but the humorous moments come naturally, they aren't forced or born of ridicule. (The drunk antics when they all return home after the rodeo are as hysterical as the preceding scenes are heartbreaking.) There is a layer of metafiction here that is hard to avoid: these freaks getting boozed up and tearing each other apart out in the middle of nowhere really were a bunch of freaks in real life. The doomed history that follows The Misfits around--Gable died mere days after shooting was completed, Monroe followed within a year, and Clift apparently had his heart attack not long after refusing to watch the film on television in 1966--becomes part and parcel with the narrative. These were cinematic icons whose time was about to pass, working in a genre that had also seen better days. It's possible this is the first revisionist western, leading to the reassessment of the cowboy mythology that would redefine the genre over the next couple of decades. It's a safe bet that Peter Bogdanovich saw The Misfits before he started making The Last Picture Show [review]. John Huston's pioneering cinema style is all over that later film. Huston shoots in the thick of the action; wherever the dust is getting kicked up, he goes. Russell Metty's black-and-white photography is beautiful and gritty, capturing the open spaces of the desert plains and contrasting them with the cramped spaces where humans wall themselves in. The bar scene where Roslyn entertains the cowboys in inadvertent ways while playing with the paddle and ball is marvelously orchestrated; the men are climbing on top of one another, and the camera jockies for such positions, as well.

Just as it's easy to forget the excellence of the scripted drama under the scandal of the off-screen drama, it's also easy to forget that these actors became stars for a reason. The acting here is exceptional, with Marilyn Monroe turning in one of her finest performances as the bruised beauty Roslyn. There is a wonderful scene in The Misfits when Gay comments on how sad Roslyn is, and she is shocked, most men always tell her how happy she seems. He replies, "That's because you make a man feel happy." This one exchange could sum up the whole of Monroe's career, and to her credit, she brings this schism to life in her performance as Roslyn. She creates a complete character, one whose internal sorrow keeps her from ever being subsumed by the things the men in her life project on her. She can play at being happy, but Monroe knows how to do it so that it's clear that it's just for show.

By the shooting of The Misfits, Marilyn had put in time with the Actors Studio. Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach were also purveyors of method acting, and they both bring their naturalistic style to the production. They appear to be living it, not putting it on. (Clift has obviously been living it too much; his handsome features are starting to show signs of age and vice.) Clark Gable somehow manages not to get lost in this. His performance is pure confidence. Perhaps it's the fact that Gay is meant to loom large over the other men working in his favor. He is intended to be different, a misfit amidst the misfits, and so the performance styles end up meshing within the material.

The Misfits is a heavy movie. It's a sad movie. It sets up multiple themes and contends with each, all the while giving proper showcase to the characters and their relationships. It's a movie that isn't afraid to be about something, but it never forgets to be about somebody--or a bunch of somebodies--along the way. It also doesn't skirt the surface or play with clichés; rather, Huston and Miller get right down in the human muck and root around in all the neuroses and foibles, and though they lament how their misfits are losing ground, they also show how these folks do it to themselves. The tide of history drowns those who can't adapt. The glimmer of hope here is that sometimes, when people swim for shore together, they actually find a way to stay afloat.

Part of a recommended Criterion Channel double feature...

HIS GIRL FRIDAY/THE FRONT PAGE - #849

I love Rosalind Russell. Her range as a spot-on comic performer is amazing. Compare two of her most famous roles, Mrs. Howard Fowler in George Cukor’s The Women and Hildy Johnston in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday. Both are smart performances, invigorated by Russell’s sharp verbal delivery, but there is a great physical difference. Fowler is loud, gawky, a bit camp; Hildy is poised, assured, and direct. If you weren’t paying attention, you might not catch that they are the same actress. Yet, both performances are very, very funny.

In His Girl Friday, it helps that Russell gets to play off Cary Grant. As Walter Burns, Grant delivers one of his best performances, as well, playing the opportunistic newspaper editor as an arch trickster, stiff-backed but playful, and deep down hiding a true heart.

Because, you see, in this 1940 adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s play The Front Page, Charles Lederer (Ride the Pink Horse) has the ingenious idea of changing Hildy’s gender from a man to a woman and adding a marriage and divorce to Hildy and Walter’s relationship. Watch the more traditional rendering included in this set, Lewis Milestone’s 1931 version of The Front Page, and you’ll see what a difference this makes. In the original, Walter is working purely out of business concerns. He and Hildy have a professional friendship, but one man trying to stop another from getting married and quitting his job doesn’t quite have the weight of an ex-husband trying to do the same with his one-time wife. In His Girl Friday, Walter doesn’t just want Hildy to keep writing for the newspaper, he wants to reconcile their relationship. He’s losing her twice over.

Beyond that, the plot is essentially the same. Hildy Johnson, one of the best reporters in town, is looking to get married and get out, partially fed up with the slave-driving schemes of his/her no-good boss, Walter Burns. Just as Hildy is leaving, a big story is about to have a major development. Earl Williams (Joel Qualen, Anatomy of a Murder [review]) is due to be hung for murdering a policeman--a crime he can’t quite explain. The mayor and the sheriff (Clarence Kolb and Gene Lockhart) have cloaked Earl in a communist uniform and are using him for political gain; others think Earl is not necessarily in his right mind and deserves a reprieve. On the eve of his execution, Earl escapes, causing a madcap manhunt that Hildy can’t help but get tied up in--partially because Walter is pulling every puppet string, con, and bribe he can to keep her around.

His Girl Friday is famous for its impressive pace. Hawks reportedly set out to shoot two pages of script for each minute of film--double the rate of most movies. To do so he took out all the pauses, having one line of dialogue immediately follow another, sometimes letting his actors step on each other’s final words just to keep it moving. The result is a comedy that zips by. Words become akin to action, a good line packing as much of a wallop as a sock in the jaw. This gives the whole of His Girl Friday an unprecedented verve, and also invigorates the character interaction. Walter is fast-thinking and fast-talking, but Hildy is always faster, always a step ahead, unraveling his plots, even as he circles back around and draws her in.

Also noteworthy is the banter between the cynical journalists that hang out in the prison pressroom covering the execution for rival papers. This is one area where Milestone outshines Hawks. Not only was the earlier director more interested in the reporters’ verbal jousting, but the dialogue in his version had a more jagged edge, thanks to pre-Code freedoms. There is no sugarcoating of the issues in The Front Page: race, politics, and sex are referenced directly. Likewise, the older script shines a more satirical light on the reporters. Adapted by Bartlett Cormack (Fury), with additional dialogue by Lederer,  this The Front Page shows the reporters each putting their own spin on the story, a round-robin of false reporting and straight-up embellishment that is hilarious on its face, though also a bit scary if we consider the current distrust of the media. It’s our living nightmare--facts really don’t matter, it’s all about the point of view of each particular outlet.

In the 1931 movie, Walter is played by Adolphe Menjou (Paths of Glory [review]), playing off his sophisticated image, a low-society capitalist in a high-society suit. His sparring partner is Pat O’Brien (Knute Rockney All American). O’Brien plays Hildy as a man’s man who loves chasing a good story and can’t get enough of scooping everyone else. It makes him the best at what he does--a distinction they thankfully didn’t remove when handing the role to Rosalind Russell. It’s refreshing seeing a woman on the screen who is better than all the men in a field they are supposed to own. His Girl Friday also subverts the notion that a lady should give up such a life and settle down with a good man. In both films, Hildy doesn’t seem to really be chasing a suburban existence or even love; the most important factor in their decision is sticking it to Walter and proving him wrong when he says they can’t. (Though, I should note a discussion I had with a co-worker who thought Hildy in His Girl Friday was working against a certain sexism where all the men in her life, including her nice-guy fiancé, insisted she didn’t know what she really wanted.)

And Hawks doesn’t blow that in His Girl Friday by tacking on a romantic finish. If we see Grant and Russell as two peas in a pod, it’s just that: they are perfect for each other, and will carry on doing what they do best together. It’s funny that Milestone ends his film with an end title that implies we could see more from Menjou and O’Brien as Burns and Johnson, because if ever there was a duo ripe for a Thin Man-style string of sequels, it would have been Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

In addition to crisp restorations of both His Girl Friday and The Front Page, this double-disc set comes with two different radio performances of The Front Page, one of His Girl Friday, and a bunch of archival materials from different eras. It should also be noted that this restoration of The Front Page works from a print that maintains Lewis Milestone’s preferred cut, and not the international version that has circulated for many years.

All in all, these dueling adaptations make for a remarkably entertaining double feature. You could watch them back-to-back without tiring of the story. Both play on their own charms enough, you’ll be unable to resist playing along.

The images here are taken from an earlier standard-definition DVD and not the Blu-ray under consideration. This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - #835

There is a pargraph in Glenn Kenny’s essay in the booklet accompanying Criterion’s release of Valley of the Dolls where he posits that simple adjectives, either good or bad, don’t quite fit when talking about the 1967 phenomenon. An enduring cult classic, it embodies many things, and takes on its own image well before many in its continually renewing audience even get a chance to see it. It’s infamous, it’s campy, it’s scandalous--all things that are true, all things that don’t quite hit on what a strange little creature this film really is.

Adapted from a best-selling novel by Jacqueline Susann, whose name became synonymous with outrageous stories about ambitious, liberated women, Valley of the Dolls is a culmination of many story traditions and the evolution of the same. It updates the 1950s concept of the “women’s picture,” as well as the career girl movie. It’s essentially a showbiz version of The Best of Everything, but with an added frankness about the sex, booze, and drugs that previously only went on way behind the screen. And then there is that showbiz thing itself--Valley of the Dolls is also an update of the Tinsel Town and Broadway dramas, a bit A Star is Born, a bit All AboutEve. There is a touch of the musical, especially with Dory Previn’s off-kilter songs (written with her philandering husband Andre, and more than hinting at Dory’s own personal drama), as well as a smidgen of horror films (the asylum, the nightmarish empty streets in the final New York scenes). Director Mark Robson, who also helmed Peyton Place and edited the original Cat People, and screenwriters Helen Deutsch (Lili [review]) and Dorothy Kingsley (Kiss MeKate) combine their knowledge of all these genres and subjects with Susann’s narrative to create a fresh 1960s perspective. Thus we get former child star Patty Duke popping pills, and Sharon Tate seemingly commenting on her own blonde bombshell image, and pop-art redoes of the fashion shoots from Funny Face [review].

The plot of Valley of the Dolls is nothing new. Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins, a star on the PeytonPlace TV series), a privileged college girl from New England, travels to the big city in hopes of escaping the conventional married life laid out for her. She gets a job as a secretary for an entertainment lawyer, and on her first day, gets a quick lesson in backstage politics, when her own innocent comment to an aging theatre star (Susan Hayward, I Married a Witch [review]) gets the new ingénue in the show fired. Duke plays the young starlet, Neely O’Hara, and Tate plays chorus girl Jennifer North, who is on hand at the rehearsal to witness the injustice (and suffer her own, given that her body is a topic of discussion). The lives of these three women quickly become entwined, both socially and professionally, as each sees different career paths open for them.

In these criss-crossing stories, Dolls explores different notions of hard work and fate. Jennifer is lucky enough to be born blonde and bosomy, and so easily snags a husband (a nightclub singer played by Tony Scotti). She knows she has little talent, and the work she’ll eventually turn to in order to help pay the bills relies on her assets. (As is the nature of these kinds of stories, someone must have a fatal illness, and that ends up being her man.) In one of the more comical scenes--and also for the time, more progressively honest--the young Jennifer, chastised and shamed by her forever-unseen mother, starts her nightly breast exercises to keep them perky before saying forget it, let them droop.

I note that it’s the “young Jennifer” because Valley of the Dolls follows all of its characters over a course of a couple of years, so these women do age--though not necessarily physically, there is no notable old-age makeup, which only sharpens the biting commentary that comes ¾ of the way through. When her addiction to sleeping pills (nicknamed “dolls”) gets the better of her, Neely is told she’s been replaced by a new, younger actress, she’s looking too old. “I’m only 26!” she declares. It seems ageism is imprinted in Hollywood’s DNA. Neely’s on-set tantrums are modeled after Judy Garland, but they also have echoes of Marilyn Monroe, who was cut from her final, unfinished picture because she couldn’t make it to set in performance condition. Duke makes the most of her meaty role, easily the best in the movie, playing the lush life to the hilt. She also gets the movie’s most memorable and campiest scene, a final bathroom showdown with Susan Hayward’s Helen Lawson, the diva who would have ruined her. (As in George Cukor’s TheWomen, much happens in the bathroom.)

That climactic clash between Duke and Hayward is actually indicative of the light touch Robson took to most of this. Sure, heavy things happen, but the movie itself rarely feels heavy in its telling, even when the women have to make tough choices. It’s also telling how little backstabbing the core trio does to one another. Outside of a third act boyfriend grab when Neely is heading for her ultimate downfall, these ladies aren’t vying for the same slices of pie. At the same time, the kindness they attempt to show one another is often rebuffed. Friendship buckles under selfishness.

Even so, they are more emotionally mature than their male counterparts. The men in Valley of the Dolls are childish philanderers with fragile egos. Both of Neely’s husbands resent her success and her inability (unwillingness) to cater to their needs, while Jennifer’s spouse is the opposite, resenting having to be the breadwinner. Though, not even he is in control of his own destiny: besides his illness, his sister (Lee Grant, Mulholland Dr.) manages his floundering career, holding the purse strings and telling him what to do. The one guy doing for himself, Barbara’s on-again/off-again paramour (Paul Burke, TV’s Naked City), is no picnic either: he has commitment issues. Gone is the Sirkian man of the land, there is no Rock Hudson to swoop in and make things better. So absent is this figure in this newly liberated lifestyle, actually, that the end of Valley of the Dolls takes the back-to-nature element of Sirk’s All thatHeaven Allows and gives it to Barbara, who gets out of the rat race single, free, and whole.

Amongst the extras on the new Valley of the Dolls Blu-ray, for those who can’t quite get at why they like the movie, or what its strange machinations add up to, the wonderful film critic Kim Morgan provides a video essay in which she digs into the progressive subtext and the subversive genre tropes, embracing the criticism of the source material as “trash” and balancing it against the more “serious” but comparable literature of the day. Interesting to hear that Harlan Ellison removed himself from scripting duties when he felt the ending of Susann’s novel had been compromised. That Harlan, always with his shoulder against the grain.

Jacqueline Susann at a book signing.

Morgan tackles and makes a case for the more aspirational aspects of the story, and how the women take over the traditionally male roles and suffer for it, which also leads us to an interesting question to ponder: just why do we enjoy such tragic movie-star movies? Is there a self-loathing that runs through Hollywood, where they indulge in these cautionary tales about the price of stardom, or are they merely tapping into a mean streak that connects all moviegoers? We won’t ever be the next big crooner or the face of a national ad campaign, and so we like to watch our idols fail. If not us, then not them either, and none of it is what it’s cracked up to be anyway.

Comics fans also take note, the exclusive cover here is by Phil Noto. Those unfamiliar with Noto should check out his website. Or maybe his amazing run on Black Widow for Marvel Comics.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.