August 2013 on TCM - Summer Under the Stars

[CineMaven]

“I think acting should look as if we were working a little. It’s like the juggler who loses it twice and then gets it, you know finally, which is a very old fashioned thing today. See, you mustn’t have any idea that anybody knows the camera’s on them at all. You see, it’s just life. Well we all have life, 24, 12 hours a day and sometimes we want to forget life, you know. And I think it should be a little larger than life. A little bit theatrical.” - BETTE DAVIS.



Well...no one could accuse Bette Davis of NOT being theatrical. She could be. But she was also riveting to watch. Whether her characters were courageous, mendacious, temptuous, brave, dreamers, good girls or bad, she garnered attention throughout her very long career. They say she was the fifth Warner Brother. I think she’s the Queen of the Movies. And TCM sees fit to make Bette Davis, queen...for the day - AUGUST 14th 2014:

6:00 AM PARACHUTE JUMPER (1933)
A gangster victimizes three friends trying to get jobs. Dir: Alfred E. Green. Cast:  Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis , Frank McHugh. BW-72 mins,.

7:30 AM GIRL FROM 10TH AVENUE, THE (1935)
After a working girl reforms an alcoholic lawyer who was recently dumped, his ex wants him back. Dir: Alfred E. Green. Cast:  Bette Davis, Ian Hunter, Colin Clive. BW-69 mins, TV-G.

9:00 AM DANGEROUS (1935)
A young fan tries to rehabilitate an alcoholic actress he's fallen in love with. Dir: Alfred E. Green. Cast:  Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Margaret Lindsay. BW-79 mins.

10:30 AM PETRIFIED FOREST, THE (1936)
An escaped convict holds the customers at a remote desert cantina hostage. Dir:  Archie L. Mayo. Cast:  Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin. BW-82 mins.

12:00 PM JEZEBEL (1938)
A tempestuous Southern belle's willfulness threatens to destroy all who care for her. Dir: William Wyler. Cast:  Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Margaret Lindsay. BW-104 mins.

2:00 PM LETTER, THE (1940)
A woman claims to have killed in self-defense, until a blackmailer turns up with incriminating evidence. Dir: William Wyler. Cast:  Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson. BW-95 mins.

3:45 PM NOW, VOYAGER (1942)
A repressed spinster is transformed by psychiatry and her love for a married man. Dir: Irving Rapper. Cast:  Bette Davis, Paul Henreid , Claude Rains. BW-118 mins.

5:45 PM WATCH ON THE RHINE (1943)
Nazi agents pursue a German freedom-fighter and his family to Washington. Dir: Herman Shumlin. Cast:  Bette Davis, Paul Lukas , Geraldine Fitzgerald. BW-112 mins.

7:45 PM CARSON ON TCM: BETTE DAVIS (2/9/83) (2013)
TCM presents a classic interview from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. C-9 mins.

8:00 PM EX-LADY (1933)
A female artist is torn between her belief in free love and the constraints of romance. Dir: Robert Florey Cast:  Bette Davis, Gene Raymond, Frank McHugh. BW-67 mins.

9:15 PM DARK VICTORY (1939)
A flighty heiress discovers inner strength when she develops a brain tumor. Dir:  Edmund Goulding Cast:  Bette Davis , George Brent, Humphrey Bogart Geraldine Fitzgerald. BW-104 mins.

11:15 PM MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, THE (1941)
An acerbic critic wreaks havoc when a hip injury forces him to move in with a midwestern family. Dir: William Keighley Cast:  Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley. BW-113 mins.

1:15 AM DICK CAVETT SHOW, THE: BETTE DAVIS (1971)
Bette Davis appears on The Dick Cavett Show in an interview that originally aired November 17, 1971. C-62 mins.

2:30 AM PAYMENT ON DEMAND (1951)
A bitter divorcee thinks back on the mistakes that destroyed her marriage. Dir: Curtis Bernhardt. Cast:  Bette Davis, Barry Sullivan, Jane Cowl. BW-90 mins.

4:15 AM NANNY, THE (1965)
A disturbed young man tries to prove his nanny is out to kill him. Dir: Seth Holt Cast:  Bette Davis, Wendy Craig, Jill Bennett. BW-93 mins.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Watching The Human Comedy right now because I've never seen it. It seems very sweet, and Mickey has a few nice scenes where he is actually thoughtful and low-key. How I empathize with Miss Hicks....

[CineMaven]

"The Human Comedy" is wonderful Americana and Mickey Rooney does a great job in the movie. The score of the movie is beautiful. I like Marsha Hunt and James Craig and the school teacher that lets Homer run his race and...

[Sue Sue Applegate]

I am digging this music, and Marsha is a total delight! When Frank Morgan and Mickey sang that song together, it was so sweet! Donna Reed is sooooo cute with Barry Nelson, too. Hahaha! Van Johnson plucking chickens to "she loves me, she loves me not!"

[movieman1957]

I saw "The Nanny" years ago and it was pretty disturbing. Not that I ever had a sitter like that but it's pretty disturbing for a kid to think that a person his parents trust is the scariest thing in his life.

It helped the Bette was a bit older as I think that helped the "creep" factor.

[JackFavell]

Love The Human Comedy and watched last night too. Little Butch Jenkins and Darryl Hickman started the tears rolling in the library scene. What a wonderful thing, every child should see that scene and then go to the library.

Did anyone watch Parachute Jumper this morning? I wish I'd gotten up to record it like I was going to, but I didn't. Frank McHugh and Doug Jr. were sensational and I almost spit out my breakfast when Frankie McHugh flipped the bird to the airplane pilots chasing him for transporting narcotics! What a laugh!

[CineMaven]

I missed it Wendy. I should have programmed it the night before. I always remember Bette Davis on some talk show eons ago mentioning "Parachute Jumper" as one of those dog films of hers; it's always had the curiosity factor for me. I'm thinking "Dangerous" is the film where Bette Davis begins to seem like the Bette Davis she was to become.

For me, Mickey Rooney's best moment in "The Human Comedy" was when he said if his brother died, he would spit at the world. He would hate it forever. Damn...the war took a lot of young men. Sad.

[JackFavell]

I think I may be the only person who LOVES Dangerous, truly, madly, deeply.

I like watching train wreck Joyce Heath, I love her changeover, I love the trick plot twist, I love her sexiness, I love her evil bitchiness when she tells him that he was so awkward that she laughed when he made love to her, I love that that was all a front because she was falling for him, I love the theatrical setting, I love her doomedness, I love the country house so much that I was literally thinking of how I could redo my living room with white stone.

I recommend Parachute Jumper, though not for Bette. Not only does it have Doug Jr. in one of those hard boiled roles he had perfected by about that time, it has Frankie McHiugh, who really shines, and Harold Huber as a gunsel who gets a terrific final scene.

As for Human Comedy, Rooney does a tremendous job, I really believe he's the future for that family. I like how he steps up, and is just a nice nice kid. Favorite scene is probably him and Butch Jenkins riding on the bike singing, "Weep No More My Lady...." My Old Kentucky Home. I think I read once where Butchie said it was something he always remembered, because Mickey was so nice to him. Just like a big brother.

[moira finnie]

I can't say that all of the moments in this film work for me, but you've described some of the touchstone scenes in The Human Comedy (1943) that somehow, I never tire of viewing for the universal emotions and similar personal memories they evoke. Perhaps it's the effect of getting older, but Frank Morgan's moments as the aged, alcoholic telegrapher move me deeply--especially when he is alone with Mickey Rooney, (who was giving the quietest and perhaps most effective performance of his young career).



Did you notice how the director had cinematographer Harry Stradling, Sr. photograph Morgan in half shadow in these scenes? It was almost as though Mr. Grogan (Morgan) was slipping into darkness but still had a few words to impart before he disappeared from life's shore. This performance, and the ones he gave in The Mortal Storm and Tortilla Flat are probably my three favorite dramatic performances from this actor (of course, The Wizard of Oz is in a whole separate spot in my heart entirely).



On the flip side of this, the teasing relationship between the effervescent Marsha Hunt and James Craig was really a delight. Normally, spoiled rich girls who know they are pretty and appealing give me a pain in movies, (there are several Lana and Liz movies I find hard to swallow because of these stock characterizations) but Marsha found a way to make her character truly endearing, instead of a self-centered air head. I suppose it is the indefinable way that makes one performer a likable presence more than another for each viewer, or an indication of what an actress can do when she is directed by Clarence Brown (who really deserves more credit for his work). I just get such a kick out of her girlish burbling "You do love me don't you? Yes you do, you know you do."

One small discovery yesterday on Mickey Rooney's day:



Quicksand (1950), which is on DVD and youtube. I enjoyed Mickey’s performance as a grease monkey whose desire to live it up with the hot number (Jeanne Cagney) behind the counter at the diner leads him to pocket $20 from his garage's till. This small malfeasance ultimately leads to his becoming drawn into deeper and more serious, violent crimes--all in the space of a mere week. Rooney's intense performance was enormously absorbing (even though the narration could have been edited a bit). I think he could play desperation better than most actors. While I found the ending rushed and implausible, I would not let that stop anyone from enjoying this fast ride into the abyss for Mickey’s not very bright mechanic. One of the things I liked about this movie was that few of the central characters were very swift, though of course that makes them better playthings for Fate in the film noir universe, huh?

Jeanne Cagney was awesome as the avaricious babe with a yen for dead animal skins like mink. She pushes the Mickster over the edge and then claims “I’m the kind of gal who looks out for me.” There were moments in her performance (when the cops burst into her apartment with the search warrant, for instance) when she conveyed a similar kind of intense enjoyment in portraying defiance and foolhardiness with almost the same maniacal glee conveyed by her brother Jim throughout his stellar career. I wish she had more opportunities to play such a character. Barbara Bates, who invested warmth and a recognizable reality into her despairing but inexplicably loyal love for Mickey's character, played the opposite number to Cagney's femme fatale. Her performance as the cast-off girlfriend of Mickey indicated that if the studio system's erosion and her personal problems had been ameliorated, she might have had a better fate in her career and life.

In addition to a very young Jack Elam popping up in an uncredited bit in a bar scene, (at the time he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Bashful Buzzard who used to show up in Warner Bros. cartoons), it was a jolt to see Minerva Urecal playing a casually vicious landlady–-the kind of part normally reserved for Hope Emerson & Marjorie Main (when Main was not being adorable). I was a bit disappointed in Peter Lorre’s underwritten role here as Jeanne Cagney's former boyfriend, though he did his best to leave a trail of slime behind him as he slithered around the penny arcade where he hung out.

BTW, in an interview quoted in Stephen Youngkin's book The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, Jeanne Cagney commented that Lorre (and everyone else, including Mickey, who tried to pull out of the film) knew that Quicksand was not an A picture, but that Peter surprised her with the contrast between the menace he could convey on camera, and the "elfin quality" he projected in real life. "The thing that really tickled me about Peter," Ms. Cagney relished recalling, "was the marvelous sense of humor and really dingy gaiety [he brought to the project]." Apparently Rooney and Lorre were also very good off-camera at sparking each other's irrepressible, waggish humor too.

This film made me wish that director Irving Pichel (who also made They Won't Believe Me) had lived a bit longer to make more film noirs, though I also like some of his more sentimental films too, such as And Now Tomorrow, Life Begins at 8:30 and Happy Land.

[JackFavell]

The thing about Marsha Hunt, and now that I think about it, everyone in the entire cast of The Human Comedy, is that she played an entirely plausible, fully rounded human being. We see that in her reaction toward the end of the film, that she has feelings and thoughts and wishes just like everyone, sometimes not particularly happy ones, but she chooses to be pert and upbeat, and bring joy to those around her. My daughter's reaction to Marsha : "Who IS she, Mom? She's GORGEOUS." Which I can't say I've ever actually thought about Marsha, but I looked closer, and it was true.

What I especially like in this film is that each character seems to live a fully realized life off the screen, during the moments we aren't eavesdropping. You know that Marcus is peeling potatoes even after we cut away from the song he and his buddy sing, and marching through mud and such other activities. We know that the man who owns the apricot orchard is a bit lonely, but is revived by the sight of the boys trying to steal unripe fruit, the turn of nature coming around again as it does every year. We know that Horse, the soldier whose real name is Quentin, is a nice boy from Texas, who just wants a little normalcy when he comes to the town for night out at the movies. We know that Darryl Hickman is picked on by the other kids, perhaps he's a bit slow, but that he's a true friend to little Ulysses. I absolutely LOVED how Fay Bainter replied to his character when he talked about the other boys who wouldn't let him play on their team. She told him they were nice boys too, and not to let it bother him. You would never in a million years find a mother nowadays saying that the other boys who excluded someone were nice... but it occurs to me that this is maybe the right approach, at least to some extent. I like the fact that the sisters were able to look past their suspicions in order to connect with the soldiers based on their real behaviors rather than their looks.

[moira finnie]

Good points about the reality suggested by the film's pacing and atmosphere, Wen. I am looking forward to a new biography of Clarence Brown, the director responsible for framing this world created by William Saroyan on film from Howard Estabrook's script. The book is expected from The University Press of Kentucky and is written by an Irish film scholar, Dr. Gwenda Young. I hope it comes out this year.

[JackFavell]

Thanks for the info, Moira! Clarence Brown has been rising in my esteem for a couple of years now, when I suddenly realized he directed some of my favorite films. You are so right, he was able to create a certain atmosphere for each of his films, not always the same one, but a kind of self contained world, which has nothing to do with reality. Everything in each world fits and is right. I admire that very much.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Thanks, Moira and Jackie for your comments about The Human Comedy. I really enjoyed it!

[CineMaven]

Wow. You guys are bringing back the warmth and loveliness of "The Human Comedy." A production company is working right now on a documentary about Marsha Hunt's life. She was wonderful.

TONITE - PECK'S BAD ( GOOD ) BOY



I've been waiting all August to see "THE MACOMBER AFFAIR" tonight at 8:00pm. If you haven't checked it out before, you MUST put that on your short MUST-SEE list. Thought-provoking.

http://sittinonabackyardfence.com/2013/ ... t-there-2/

Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett and Robert Preston give impressive performances, especially Robert Preston. He really opened my eyes in this one. Please do check out the movie if you can.

[JackFavell]

WOW! Congrats on your blog post!

Love this part of your review at Sittin' on a Backyard Fence:

He doesn’t really want Francis broken. The thought crossed my mind that Wilson wanted Macomber strong if he were going to fight to get his wife. It was some code of ethics for Wilson. The same way he would never shoot an animal from the jeep b’cuz he had unfair advantage, he wanted to fight a man, not a wimp. There’s a code to stealing another man’s wife fair and square.

Yes, there is this distinct impression that though Macomber sees this as a friendship, or maybe a mentor-student relationship, Wilson is more aware of the rivalry factors, and the big picture. He is the stronger so he is quite torn. I think were it not for Margo, Wilson and Macomber might be friends, or perhaps Wilson would not have bothered at all with Macomber, but all in all, the whole thing would not have been a to-the-death situation. It would have been a take-him-or-leave-him-alone situation. Wilson's biggest problem is that he sees this, and yet he also sees Margo trapped in a relationship with an inferior man. He cannot stop himself from messing with Margo.