Tag: Jack Carson

The Strawberry Blonde (1941, Raoul Walsh)

The Strawberry Blonde is a period piece within a period piece. It opens in the past, then there’s a flashback to the further past. It recalls a time when WASPs couldn’t figure out how to eat spaghetti and the political corruption machine was easier to crack. Director Walsh is very enthusiastic about the time period and setting (turn of the century New York); almost distractingly so.

The film opens with working men James Cagney and George Tobias hanging out on a Sunday, getting into a tiff with some lounging college folks across the fence, while Cagney tries to put off having to take wife Olivia de Havilland for their weekly walk. There’s a lengthy exposition dump about how Cagney’s ended up in his current situation and how it’s the fault of someone they used to know.

And just who should call for an emergency Sunday dental appointment (Cagney’s a dentist, Blonde is set in the mail correspondence course era of dental schools) but that someone (Jack Carson, but we haven’t met him yet).

While the script—Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein—is very snappy with the dialogue, including bringing up the coincidental nature of it all, it doesn’t bother trying to get around Cagney telling the story to someone who already knows it; we’ll find out Tobias was there for all of it. So then, the film drops into a further flashback, ten years before.

And it opens on Cagney’s dad, Alan Hale, having adventures without Cagney witnessing them. Hale sees himself as the neighborhood Casanova, romancing the housewives while the husbands are out. Strawberry Blonde makes sure everyone gets at least one really good, really solid scene—they rarely overlap between actors—but pretty much everything Hale gets is gold. When Hale disappears in the second act so Cagney can get into his perceived love triangle, the film feels the loss—and it’s on the film; Walsh’s showcasing of Hale’s comedic abilities doesn’t affect the narrative at all, it’s just because Hale’s great at the physical comedy.

All the guys in the neighborhood have a crush on Rita Hayworth, but none of them have the courage to talk to her… not until Carson has the excuse of selling charity tickets. Of course, the tickets are a scam but it doesn’t matter (there’s a dropped subplot about Cagney selling tickets for Carson, which gives them an excuse to hang out together but doesn’t factor in otherwise). Hayworth takes to Carson, dropping a hint about where he can meet her without a formal introduction, only they’re going to have to bring friends to keep it proper. He brings Cagney, she brings de Havilland.

There’s an obvious age difference between Cagney and de Havilland, which ends up really helping the relationship, even though a lot of his problem is he’s just a cocky jerk. He’s got a good heart in there somewhere, which de Havilland recognizes right away, when she’s busy trying to convince him she’s wise beyond her years and a suffragette activist to boot. Cagney doesn’t go in for that kind of progress and would prefer a girl like Hayworth. Specifically Hayworth.

The second act is Cagney’s pursuing Hayworth while de Havilland and Carson hang around on the sidelines. While most of the film is Cagney against type—he’s always getting beat up—the plot eventually does at least appear like a more predicted Cagney one; the third act introduces and resolves that drama, then there’s the return to the (still period) present for the wrap-up. There are additional flashback tiers; there’s a skip ahead a couple years from the earliest flashback, then another five years (so the final flashback scene is three-ish years before the present).

Walsh and the Brothers Epstein do a fantastic job keeping the plot moving, which isn’t always easy since Cagney’s frequently making a fool of himself.

Performance-wise, de Havilland is the obvious winner. She only gets a couple big scenes and she’s magnificent; from the start, the film’s got a sort of peculiar relationship with the comedy because Cagney can’t do it as well as Hale or Tobias. When Cagney’s watching Hale, waiting for his line, you can see the excitement on his face, getting to work opposite the more comically inclined Hale. But when de Havilland shows up, she immediately gets how to do the comedy. In a few minutes she’s able to elevate the entire project.

Cagney’s good. There’s not really the opportunity for anything great and he doesn’t create one, but he’s good. After all the work he does for comedy’s sake, when he finally does get his spotlight scenes, they’re just riffs on gangster melodrama.

Hayworth gets a phenomenal scene and the biggest character arc, but she seems underutilized. Though it wouldn’t be Cagney’s movie if it were actually about The Strawberry Blonde. It also wouldn’t be a comedy.

Carson’s good; kind of broad, but he makes it work.

Hale’s great.

Excellent use of songs, great sets and costumes, good or great direction from Walsh—there do seem to be some strange film stock issues going on, where cinematographer James Wong Howe just isn’t able to match lighting between shots, but it seems like it’s got to be something other than him.

The Strawberry Blonde’s a fun vehicle for Cagney and an exquisite showcase for de Havilland’s comedic chops (when she gets to show them). It’s forties studio comedy done right.

Destry Rides Again (1939, George Marshall)

There are a lot of great shots in Destry Rides Again, with director Marshall finding a lot of raw human emotion in a comedic Western; it starts with opening titles, which are a long tracking shot introducing the setting—the town of Bottleneck. The tracking shot is at night (cinematographer Hal Mohr’s black and white photography is gorgeous and never more than in low light or night exteriors, it’s just glorious) and the town is hopping with drunk cowboys shooting off their pistols in glee as they file in and out of the single saloon. Brian Donlevy owns the saloon, Marlene Dietrich is the headlining star, though we don’t find out about Donlevy right away. Initially, he’s just a guy losing at cards.

Only he’s got an ace in the hole—Dietrich. After she does her first song, she heads upstairs to help out, introducing some of the the supporting cast on her way. Marshall’s really big on continuous movement, whether a shot or between them, and Dietrich quickly establishes drunk Charles Winninger, devoted fan Mischa Auer, and town mayor Samuel S. Hinds.

Turns out Donlevy and Dietrich aren’t just a couple, they’re a criminally enterprising couple—they’re cheating ranchers out of their land to set up a toll road for cattle (when they cheat yet another victim, it’s hard not to just think, well, it’s capitalism)—and eventually sheriff Joe King’s going to have to do something about it.

Now King is just a regular sheriff, not a mythic Old West sheriff, though Winninger used to be deputy to one those—name of Destry—something he can’t stop talking about. At least when he’s conscious. If only they could get someone like Destry again.

Good thing there’s a Destry Jr. out there, James Stewart, who Winninger calls in Donlevy goes too far.

It takes twenty minutes before Stewart shows up (Dietrich is top-billed so character name in the title doesn’t matter here) and he’s not what anyone’s expecting. Not Winninger, not Donlevy or Dietrich, not new-to-town rancher Jack Carson… or his sister, Irene Harvey. Stewart’s an amiable fellow who tries to deescalate situations instead of shooting things up, speaking in Old West dad jokes.

Destry’s got a lot of things going for it—Marshall, Stewart, Dietrich, Winninger, Donlevy, all the other actors (especially Auer and Una Merkel)—so maybe all things—but the script is something spectacularly spectacular. Felix Jackson, Gertrude Purcell, and Henry Myers only have seventy-six minutes (starting when Stewart shows up—that first twenty mnutes is continuous action set in a night); they do a lot with it. There are full subplots for Winninger, Auer and Merkel (they’re a married couple), Dietrich (separate from Donlevy and Stewart; she’s got arcs with both of them too), and also Carson. Tom Fadden gets sort of half a subplot to himself before son Dickie Jones takes it over. Plus minor subplots for Harvey, Lillian Yarbo, and….

Everyone. Basically everyone who doesn’t die right away gets at least a minor subplot for the film to keep running to give the film its verisimilitude. It’s a short film with a limited setting (they leave town—and presumably back lot—once to go to a ranch), it’s got three big musical numbers, and the arcs for Dietrich and Stewart, Stewart and Winninger, and Stewart and Donlevy are all rather complex but they still make time for the background. Turns out to be particularly important for the twist in the finale.

Because the script is phenomenal. All of the great moments (save probably that opening title tracking shot) come through thanks to the script. Getting Stewart and Dietrich into the room in the right way, getting Stewart and Harvey their brief moments, a subplot change in the Dietrich’s style, the way Marshall holds on Donlevy’s bravado until the layers become visible—ditto Dietrich—there are a lot of great scenes.

But nothing compares to the deus ex machina. All of a sudden Marshall slows Destry down and zooms in hard on Stewart and demands an entirely different moment. The film—again thanks to the script and Stewart, Dietrich, and Winninger’s performances—all of a sudden needs Stewart to show a precise depth he’d only ever implied implying before. It’s classic movie magic in that way the ingredients all have to be right for the film to succeed so well and it’s breathtaking good. Marshall maybe seems a little lost during some of the musical numbers—he’s focusing on Dietrich whether he should be or not—but otherwise his direction is outstanding.

Destry is an exceptionally subtle yet often uproarious comedy, an always sultry and always sincere morality play, and an exciting action movie. It’s truly wonderful and rather charmingly casual about it.

Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958, Leo McCarey)

It’s hard to describe what’s wrong with Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys!; not because its ailments are mysterious but because the sentence is just a little problematic. Rally is a light handling of what should be a mature comedy. It deals with big issues–fifties suburban malaise and boredom, not to mention a strange post-war animosity towards the military–but director McCarey tries to do it all Cinemascope slapstick.

He does not succeed.

He’s lucky to have such a strong cast, because they really get the film to its finish. Its finish involves a Fourth of July pageant. The script lays the groundwork for that pageant real early, before taking a detour into a comedy of errors where Paul Newman can’t get away from Joan Collins’s roaming housewife, much to his chagrin and wife Joanne Woodward’s anger. The first twenty or so minutes setting up this part of the film are boring but gently amusing. Woodward and Newman are great together and Collins has a lot of fun.

Until her goofy dance sequences. There are maybe three of them. They all stop the film for a moment because they’re so awkward. Maybe if the editing were better. Louis R. Loeffler does a real bad job editing Rally.

But there’s also a tangent with teenager Tuesday Weld, who’s appealing but pointless if the film’s about Newman and Woodward. McCarey seems to be aiming high with the film’s ambitions, but he fails on all of them so maybe he wasn’t.

Rally’s fine, just unsuccessful.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Leo McCarey; screenplay by Claude Binyon and McCarey, based on the novel by Max Shulman; director of photography, Leon Shamroy; edited by Louis R. Loeffler; music by Cyril J. Mockridge; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Paul Newman (Harry Bannerman), Joanne Woodward (Grace Oglethorpe Bannerman), Joan Collins (Angela Hoffa), Jack Carson (Capt. Hoxie), Dwayne Hickman (Grady Metcalf, Comfort’s suitor), Tuesday Weld (Comfort Goodpasture), Gale Gordon (Brig. Gen. W.A. Thorwald), Tom Gilson (Corporal Opie) and O.Z. Whitehead (Isaac Goodpasture, Comfort’s Father).

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Love Crazy (1941, Jack Conway)

Love Crazy has to be the worst film William Powell and Myrna Loy ever made together. Powell started his career in silents, so it’s possible it’s not his worst film, but I’m pretty sure it’s Loy’s. Love Crazy starts incredibly lazy. It doesn’t bother defining either character–they’re just Powell and Loy playing a couple, Powell’s charming, Loy’s enchanting. They’re playing caricatures, not people–Love Crazy would have been much more amusing if it’d been different actors impersonating Powell and Loy, David Niven and Maggie Smith really should have remade it.

But the script’s weakness doesn’t have much to do with the shallow characters. Like I said, Powell’s charming, Loy’s enchanting, they’re certainly actors one can spend ninety minutes with, even if there’s not much of a story. Love Crazy, unfortunately, has a story–and it’s a bad one. The film’s construction is incompetent. The first forty minutes or so take place over one evening, Powell and Loy’s four-year wedding anniversary. The four-year anniversary, according to Wikipedia, is linen or silk. Neither of these play a part in the film, I just got curious. The tradition–according to the expository dialogue–is for Powell and Loy to walk four miles into the country, get on a boat, then have a late dinner. Powell suggests they do it backwards, which sounds like a diverting enough premise for a picture. But they don’t do any of these backwards activities. Instead, Loy’s mother shows up and the evening goes to pot. While Loy’s off running an errand for her now injured mother–at this point, Love Crazy seems like it could be a mix of The Man Who Came to Dinner and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, told over one evening–Powell all of a sudden decides to skip off with ex-girlfriend Gail Patrick.

Here’s where Love Crazy flushes itself out to sea. Loy thinks Powell’s running around with Patrick, Powell protests his innocence, Loy doesn’t believe him and sets out to divorce him, viewer is supposed to believe Powell–even though the evidence is against him–because he’s William Powell; there must be a reasonable explanation. He and Myrna Loy are movie married after all. What Love Crazy never acknowledges is Powell’s character running out on his ailing mother-in-law (she’s annoying) to hang out with ex-girlfriend Patrick after Loy’s made it clear she doesn’t want him seeing her. It’s such a strange scene where Powell decides to scurry out with Patrick, it’s a ludicrous move just to get something going in the plot. Regardless of Powell’s innocence in terms of fidelity, he’s still a heel who ran out because he was inconvenienced by his mother-in-law. It’s lame.

There’s a lot of slapstick and it’s lame too. A scene where Powell gets his neck stuck in an elevator door implies he might get some brain damage, but it’s never explored. It’d be a far better way for the film to have gone. All of Love Crazy suffers similarly–it always could make a better narrative choice and never does.

Conway’s direction is fine. It’s not his fault. Powell and Loy are both fine. Florence Bates is okay as Loy’s mother. She occasionally overplays the annoying mother-in-law, but not often. She’s usually the good guy compared to Powell. Jack Carson’s good as Loy’s new suitor (a terribly underwritten part, in a film of underwritten parts). Patrick’s bad. Vladimir Sokoloff is awesome in a small role.

It’s a terrible film. I’d never seen it before–Evelyn Prentice instead being the worst Loy and Powell pairing I’d seen–and I wish I never did.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Frank Capra)

Arsenic and Old Lace has to be one of the finest–if not the finest–film adaptations of a stage production. Nothing about the film, save the knowledge it’s from a play, suggests its theatrical origins… not the one night present action, not the one set. It’s an ideal motion picture comedy, down to what has to be Frank Capra’s most inventive direction. Capra’s confined to that one set for the majority of the film and he keeps things very interesting. He reveals the house gradually, not even exploring the full size of the main room–where around seventy percent of the story takes place–until well into the third act of the film.

The film’s full of fantastic performances, but the story’s split between Cary Grant and Raymond Massey. Grant disappears for a while and Massey takes over, but filling a completely different role than Grant. The film sort of goes without a protagonist for a while in Grant’s absence (Massey isn’t really an antagonist at this point) and the story accelerates into a different area without him. When he returns, he doesn’t inhabit the film in the same way. For the first half, watching Arsenic and Old Lace is watching Grant. Sure, lots of good stuff is going on around him, but his performance is captivating. It’s unlike anything else (Grant hated the performance) and it’s wonderful. Maybe because it so perfectly matches the viewer’s expectation of a reasonable person’s response to the film’s fantastic situation. The romance between Grant and Priscilla Lane–which has a lot of texture independent of the main action’s two plots (the aunts and their gentlemen and Massey’s return)–is wonderful too. Lane and Grant play great off each other; it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the roles.

Massey has the film’s most difficult role, since it’s so incredible. I wonder how much Arsenic and Old Lace did for Boris Karloff’s name recognition, as Massey has to personify the idea of Karloff (and the unmentioned Frankenstein) from his first moment on film. But Massey has to go further–he has to be both menacing, dangerous and silly. The viewer has to be scared of Massey and what he might do, but also has to be able to laugh at him. By the time he’s ready to go after Grant, the viewer’s already had a chance to laugh at him a little, but Massey brings it all around to present real danger.

Peter Lorre has a similar position. He has to be funny–Lorre’s performance is one of film’s great comedic performances–but also endearing and a little disturbing. He’s still Massey’s partner in crime, even if he’s incredibly likable. There isn’t a weak performance in the film or even one less than stellar, but Lorre still stands out.

The rest of the supporting cast–Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the two aunts are great–is all exceptional. Arsenic and Old Lace is one of those flawlessly casted films.

My wife had never seen the film before, which made the viewing even more entertaining. It’s least like the rest of Capra’s films of the period, but that dissimilarity somehow makes it more exciting to see from him. It’s as close to experimental as Capra ever got with his style. It might even be his most impressive work as a director; he’s essential to the film, which has such a strong script, it’s easy to think he could have gotten lost somewhere.

I’m hard pressed to identify my favorite part of the film. I love the sequences with Lane and Grant in the graveyard, but Grant’s long stretch of discovering what’s going on–where he’s the whole show–is fantastic too. But then there’s Lorre….

There’s just too many great things about Arsenic and Old Lace to narrow it down.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Frank Capra; screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, based on the play by Joseph Kesselring; director of photography, Sol Polito; edited by Daniel Mandell; music by Max Steiner; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Cary Grant (Mortimer Brewster), Josephine Hull (Aunt Abby Brewster), Jean Adair (Aunt Martha Brewster), Raymond Massey (Jonathan Brewster), Peter Lorre (Dr. Herman Einstein), Priscilla Lane (Elaine Harper), John Alexander (Theodore Brewster), Jack Carson (Officer Patrick O’Hara), John Ridgely (Officer Saunders), Edward McNamara (Police Sgt. Brophy), James Gleason (Lt. Rooney), Grant Mitchell (Reverend Harper), Edward Everett Horton (Mr. Witherspoon), Vaughan Glaser (Judge Cullman), Chester Clute (Dr. Gilchrist), Edward McWade (Mr. Gibbs), Charles Lane (Reporter at Marriage License Office) and Garry Owen (Taxi Cab Driver).

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Lucky Partners (1940, Lewis Milestone)

Any movie with a Somerset Maugham reference like this one (to The Moon and Sixpence) is going to get me to go a little soft on it, but given how late the reference fully realizes, Lucky Partners was already reasonably safe. When I saw Lewis Milestone directed it, I knew there’d at least be some nice camerawork and Ginger Rogers RKO comedies are also generally decent. I just realized, thinking about it, Lucky Partners is only the second film I’ve seen starring Ronald Colman, which is a mistake. Colman glides through the film. Most of it is his scenes and he carries the whole thing with geniality. From the fourth shot–the film has a nice Milestone opening, so I can remember the shots–Colman’s the whole thing… which is amusing, but also problematic, because Ginger Rogers and Jack Carson’s characters suffer so Colman can remain the protagonist.

The film makes a number of assertions and changes them to keep the film moving. First, Rogers is likable. Then, she isn’t. Then, she is. Then, she isn’t. First, Carson is a jerk. Then, he’s not. Then, he’s an even bigger jerk. First, the film’s set up as a wonderful neighborhood piece with a great supporting cast. Then it becomes a road picture. Then it becomes a slightly mystical romance. Then it becomes a courtroom comedy. The first act of the film moves fast–twenty-five minutes went by in a snap–but the end of the second act drags, as the film desperately tries to tie itself up. The opening is strong and I kept hoping the film would regain some of that quality as it moved through its ninety-degree squiggles–and the film kept showing potential for said recovery–but it never did. The film’s lowest point was just before it declared itself a charming and mediocre comedy. Harry Davenport as the judge, who’s enamored with Rogers, clangs that change.

Given the excellent quality of Ginger Rogers’s other RKO features, Lucky Partners should be a bigger disappointment, but it’s such a pleasant viewing experience, it’s hard to get particularly upset. In fact, I think the film’s a major achievement. Though he’s a wonderful director, Milestone rarely made good films. And Lucky Partners is so close to good, it counts.