Positive Propaganda

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"Let me tell you something about my iron nerve, son. It's made of rubber, just like everybody else's, so it'll stretch when you need it. You know, people got a funny idea that being brave is not being scared. But I don't know. I always figured that if you weren't scared, there was nothing to be brave about. The trick is how much scaring you can take."

Humphrey Bogart

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When one hears the word propaganda, the initial response tends to be negative, I suppose. But that really depends on which side of the fence you occupy.

In the case of "Action in the North Atlantic," which premiered on this day in 1943, it is a positive thing, telling the story of the Merchant Marines and their contribution to the Allied war effort during World War II.

In 1943, of course, the war was raging, and the outcome was far from inevitable.

First–time viewers may be startled by the realism of the movie, given the fact that it was made long before computer–generated graphics came along. The black–and–white photography is a giveaway, though.

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The title was certainly no exaggeration with Humphrey Bogart's tanker being hit by a torpedo from an enemy sub in the first 15 minutes — and the action kept on coming.

Well, actually, it wasn't just Bogart's tanker. Bogie was the ship's first mate. Raymond Massey played its captain. Bogart, Massey and the other survivors bobbed around in the sea for 11 days before being rescued.

But the lure of the sea was too strong. The only home the seamen knew was their ship; when their ship was sunk, they felt compelled to find a new one, and before long they were on their way back to the North Atlantic.

Their ship was part of a convoy taking supplies to Russian allies. After it was attacked and essentially crushed by German submarines, Bogart played an important leadership role.

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There were many movies made about World War II — and many were made while the war was still being fought.

As far as I am concerned, the best part of "Action in the North Atlantic" was that it premiered less than 1½ years after the U.S. entered the war — so its makers felt obliged to remind viewers why America was involved. It's a good history lesson — and a reminder of what America has fought for over the years.

At the Academy Awards, Guy Gilpatric, on whose novel the movie was based, was nominated for Best Original Motion Picture Story — but William Saroyan won the Oscar for "The Human Comedy."

Bringing a Stage Play to the Screen

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For a long time, "Mourning Becomes Electra," which premiered on this day in 1947, was treated like a cinematic afterthought.

It was seldom seen on TV and unavailable in video tape or any comparable format (such as laserdisc) until it was finally released on DVD about a dozen years ago.

Why was that?

Well, it could have been the movie's performance at the box office. It lost more than $2.3 million.

I've read some reviews in which critics dismissed it as "stagey" and "wordy." I could understand that being a problem today. If it seemed that way to critics 70 years ago, I can only imagine what today's critics would say.

But it was adapted from a play written by Eugene O'Neill so it was to be expected that it would seem stagey. After all most of the action took place on a single set. And it would also be expected that it would be wordy. Plays tend to be driven by dialogue, not flashy explosions or car chases.

And, for its time, the movie was rather long — nearly three hours. But when it performed poorly at the box office and failed to win an Oscar, RKO Pictures made a decision that made matters worse — to slice about an hour from the film and re–release it. The original version, while long, made sense; the chopped–up version did not.

Fortunately, the movie has been restored to its original length — and, while it is not ordinarily my policy to promote a particular TV network, I must say that you can count on seeing that original version on Turner Classic Movies, which airs it fairly frequently. That is where I saw it, and I was impressed.

As a matter of fact, TCM will be showing the restored version on Tuesday, Nov. 28 at 3 p.m. (Central). Do not — I repeat, do not — watch the pared–down version. You have been warned.

In case you aren't familiar with the background of the movie, it was an adaptation of O'Neill's 1931 play that was, in turn, a re–telling of Aeschylus' Greek play "Oresteia" set in post–Civil War America.

Rosalind Russell's performance as Lavinia was so good it was a foregone conclusion she would win an Oscar; according to Oscar lore, when the Best Actress nominees were recited but before the winner was named, Russell rose from her seat, only to sink back down in it when it was announced that Loretta Young had won for "The Farmer's Daughter."

The comedic actress was nominated for Best Actress four times but never won.

Michael Redgrave was nominated for Best Actor that year but lost to Ronald Colman in "A Double Life." That was a pity, too, because it was his only Oscar nomination in a long and distinguished career on the stage and screen.

Redgrave, incidentally, is the only Best Actor nominee to have two daughters who were both nominated for Best Actress as well.

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For some Russell's performance may seem overblown, and maybe it was, but I thought the character called for some of that, and Russell was good at it — better than Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis, both of whom reportedly were considered for the role.

Kirk Douglas and Raymond Massey were great, as always. In fact, the acting on the whole was superb.

O'Neill's play has long been regarded a jewel of the modern American stage so it was no surprise to me that the actors turned in top–notch performances, and that can be enthralling on the stage, where the play can easily run twice as long as the movie.

Producer/director Dudley Nichols adapted the play for the screen, and as a writer I can appreciate his fealty to the original work. If you have ever seen the play and the movie, you know he tried to resist the temptation to stray from O'Neill's work.

But that may have worked against him. As New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther observed in his review, "It is one thing to watch a group of actors hiss and scream their deep emotions on a stage; it is quite something else to see the same thing done at great length by a group of photographs."

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Motion pictures were still evolving in 1947, and filming adaptations of plays was still something of a mystery for many. That is why so many such movies appear now to be little more than films of stage productions — because that is essentially what they were. Shakespeare's plays have always been great on the stage, but it took considerable adaptation and experimentation to successfully bring them to the silver screen.

That was still a problem for O'Neill's plays 15 years later. By all accounts, director Sidney Lumet did a great job with "Long Day's Journey Into Night" — it even brought Katharine Hepburn an Oscar nomination — but, because that play, too, was largely confined to one set, even Lumet could not break past the impression that he had filmed a stage production.

'The Prisoner of Zenda' Was Rousing Swashbuckler

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"Fate doesn't always make the right men kings."

Fritz (David Niven)

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Several versions of "The Prisoner of Zenda" have been made over the years, and most have been pretty faithful to Anthony Hope's adventure novel.

But the first version I ever saw was one that was made in 1979. It starred Peter Sellers — and if you know anything at all about Peter Sellers, you know that just about everything he ever did was funny. As a result, Hope's novel got a rather irreverent treatment.

If you were familiar with the story, it was funny in the parody style of Mel Brooks. But I wasn't familiar with the original story so I assumed that all the versions of "The Prisoner of Zenda" that had been made earlier were comedies, too.

Regretfully, that led me to ignore the earlier versions for a long time.

That was a big mistake. I have often wished that I had seen the version that premiered on this day in 1937 first. If I had, I would have appreciated the humor in the Sellers version in a way that I didn't back when I saw it. I haven't seen all the movie adaptations of Hope's novel, but that is the best that I have seen.

The best word for it is swashbuckler — quite a rousing one.

And I would have known — as I didn't for a long time — that it was really an adventure story and not the parody that the Sellers version was.

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But my mother was a huge fan of Peter Sellers. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I am also a great admirer of Peter Sellers — I don't know how anyone could watch "Dr. Strangelove" or "Being There" and not be a Sellers admirer.

But he simply wouldn't have been the right person to play the lead in a movie that was faithful to the story as it was originally told.

Ronald Colman, on the other hand, was a pretty good choice.

Now, as a Sellers fan, I can understand why he was an obvious choice to play the role. It involved a doppelgänger — the main character was the identical distant cousin of the crown prince of a small country that was unnamed in the movie. Colman played both roles (as he did in "Dr. Strangelove," Sellers played three parts, but you'll have to watch the movie to find out about that third character).

Anyway, Colman's character was drafted to fill in for his cousin at the coronation because his cousin drank some wine that had been drugged by his half–brother (Raymond Massey) who was poised to seize power if his half–sibling did not show up for his coronation. The prince could not be roused, and his cousin agreed to fill in to keep the throne from falling into the wrong hands.

The rest of the movie was entertaining with adventure punctuated by a romance involving Madeleine Carroll as the prince's apparent arranged fiancee, who despite her status had always disliked him but now, having become acquainted with the pretender (but not knowing it was a different person), found the new Rudolf to be very appealing.

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It made for a terrific combination of adventure and romance that was rewarded handsomely at the box office, which was hardly surprising. Its cast included the likes of David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Mary Astor.

And it received two Oscar nominations — for Original Music Score and Art Direction.

You know, in hindsight, I'm inclined to wonder if maybe Mom, who was a child when this version of "The Prisoner of Zenda" was in theaters, was drawn to see the Peter Sellers version more because she had seen the Ronald Colman movie and had fond memories of the swashbuckling classic than because of her fondness for Sellers.

Of course, I wouldn't rule out either possibility.

Not Exactly the Santa Fe Trail

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"I have given you fair warning. You can keep your heads or lose 'em as you wish."

John Brown (Raymond Massey)

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If you have never seen "Santa Fe Trail," which made its debut 75 years ago today, I guess it is important to know something before you do see it.

The movie has nothing whatsoever to do with the real Santa Fe Trail, which was a 19th–century transportation route that ran from Franklin in western Missouri to Santa Fe in northern New Mexico.

Rather, it was a pretty basic account of the events surrounding John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) — about 800 miles east of Franklin — less than two years before the start of the Civil War.

(Well, I suppose a rather tenuous connection could made from the fact that the trail started in Missouri and the railroad that would replace the Santa Fe Trail as a commercial route couldn't be built until Brown was driven from neighboring Kansas, an event that was re–created in "Santa Fe Trail," but making that mental connection would require the viewer to know certain details about American history that were never explored in "Santa Fe Trail" and a garden–variety moviegoer in 1940 was no more likely to know than one in 2015.)

It wasn't entirely literal history, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a rousing good story, and it had a great cast.

It had Errol Flynn in it so audiences knew it would have lots of action and romance.

It had Olivia de Havilland in it so audiences knew they would be treated to a top–notch performance from an actress who, although her movie career was only a few years old at the time, was already regarded as being an actress in the classical mold.

It had Raymond Massey, who had been established as a classical actor for at least a decade and lent some of his personal credibility to the role of John Brown — even though, as I say, the movie is not the definitive word on the history of either the mid–19th century or John Brown.

And it had Ronald Reagan. No one knew at the time, of course, that Reagan would be elected president 40 years later. In the role of George Armstrong Custer, Reagan had a bit of a rivalry with Flynn's character, Jeb Stuart, that supposedly went back to their days at West Point.

I've been a student of American history most of my life. I will readily concede that I am not an authority on military history or military school history, and I don't know enough about Custer's individual relationships with his fellow cadets to pass judgment — but I do know that Custer had one of the worst personal conduct records in the school's history and was nearly expelled several times. Many of his demerits were received for pulling tricks on classmates so such a rivalry would not be inconceivable.

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But Jeb Stuart must have been a stand–in for all those who were pranked by Custer. Stuart and Custer were never classmates. Stuart was born six years before Custer and graduated three years before Custer enrolled at West Point.

For that matter, Stuart was a West Point classmate of several people who had noteworthy military careers, according to the movie, but it played fast and loose with the facts, just as it did in its account of John Brown.

If you believed the movie, Stuart was a classmate of James Longstreet, George Pickett, Phil Sheridan and John Bell "Sam" Hood as well as Custer, but Stuart was a teenager when Longstreet and Pickett graduated from West Point, and Stuart, as I say, had been gone for three years when Custer enrolled there. Stuart was at West Point when Sheridan and Hood were there, but they graduated a year before he did. I have seen no evidence that Stuart knew either one.

Also, I have heard nothing of a romance between Stuart and the woman known as Kit Carson Holliday, the name of de Havilland's character. Stuart was married to a woman named Flora and was reportedly devoted to her until his death during the Civil War.

The only Kit Carsons I ever heard of were men. I can only assume that Kit Carson Holliday was entirely fictional.

Another inconvenient fact. When you look at pictures of John Brown in history books, he always has a long beard, but he didn't grow his beard until after he left Kansas. Nevertheless, in "Santa Fe Trail," he is portrayed with a long beard.

But Hollywood never let the facts get in the way of a good story. (Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?)

And, as I say, it was a good story.

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It just wasn't literal history.

So if you are a student and you want to write a paper about John Brown or any of the other famous folks who were portrayed in "Santa Fe Trail," I implore you — don't use this movie as one of your sources.

Watch it and enjoy it. It's very entertaining.

But please don't treat it as a reputable factual source.

The Spell of the Woman in the Window

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Richard (Edward G. Robinson): The flesh is still strong, but the spirit grows weaker by the hour. You know, even if the spirit of adventure should rise up before me and beckon, even in the form of that alluring young woman in the window next door, I'm afraid that all I'll do is clutch my coat a little tighter, mutter something idiotic and run like the devil.

Dr. Barkstane (Edmund Breon): Not before you got her number, I hope?

Richard: Probably.

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A lot of movies are labeled film noir, but "The Woman in the Window," which debuted 70 years ago today, is a classic of the genre — purely film noir.

And, when I say it is "purely film noir," I mean that is really all that it is — no distracting subplots.

Fittingly, then, "The Woman in the Window" is credited, at least in part, with the first use of film noir as a description of that particular genre. It is my understanding that film noir was first applied to American movies in 1946 when several of the movies that are now recognized as the early ground–breakers — among them "The Maltese Falcon," "Double Indemnity," "Laura" and "The Woman in the Window" — were first released in France.

In many ways, it reminded me of "Double Indemnity," another film noir that was in the theaters only a couple of months earlier and featured Edward G. Robinson — but in a different kind of role. In "The Woman in the Window," he played the same kind of part Fred MacMurray played in "Double Indemnity." He, too, was involved with a seductress; he, too, killed a man who was connected to the woman.

MacMurray's character killed as part of a plot, though, whereas Robinson's character killed in self–defense. Or did he? Was he an unsuspecting pawn manipulated by the woman in the window?

Robinson's femme fatale was played by Joan Bennett. Before I saw "The Woman in the Window," I knew her only as Elizabeth Taylor's warm–hearted mother in "Father of the Bride." But that was a later phase of her career. It really was like watching a completely different actress in "The Woman in the Window" and "Scarlet Street," both of which were directed by Fritz Lang and starred Bennett, Robinson and Dan Duryea.

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As I say, Robinson's character shared some similarities to the one played by MacMurray in "Double Indemnity," but there were some differences as well. MacMurray was in insurance; Robinson was a psychology professor. Well, I suppose there were some similarities there as well. I mean, an insurance salesman has to comprehend a certain amount about human psychology, right? Actually, I guess that is true of a successful salesman of any kind.

They both tried to dispose of the bodies of their victims, and the women with whom they were involved tried to help. Afterward, they both tried to nonchalantly learn details of investigations into the disappearances of their victims — in "Double Indemnity," MacMurray, as an insurance salesman, tried to learn about the investigation from the claims adjuster, played by Robinson.

In "The Woman in the Window," Robinson tried to find out what the police knew by prying details from the district attorney, played by Raymond Massey. And Robinson took some good–natured teasing from Massey — not unlike the joshing Robinson threw MacMurray's way — about really being guilty of the crime (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) that was much more on the mark than any of the characters knew.

Of course, the audience knew — and, in "The Woman in the Window," Robinson actually managed to make viewers sympathize with him. He was, after all, a lonely professor whose wife and children were on a vacation; it was purely a random thing that he found himself in the wrong place with the wrong person. He and Bennett met when he noticed a painting of her in a display window, and it turned out she was there to observe people's reactions to the painting.

They struck up a friendship and went back to Bennett's home, where her wealthy lover showed up and got into a fight with Robinson. In self–defense, Robinson stabbed him with a pair of scissors.

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The rest of the story was about how Robinson and Bennett (Robinson mostly) disposed of the body and tried to keep from being discovered.

That led to a surprise ending of which the filmmakers were quite proud.

By and large, film noir can be a bit heavy–handed for my taste. For example, the first time we saw Robinson in this movie, he was lecturing his students about the legal degrees of homicide.

"The various legal categories such as first– and second–degree murder, the various degrees of homicide, manslaughter, are civilized recognitions of impulses of various degrees of culpability," Robinson told his students, neatly foreshadowing what was to come. "The man who kills in self–defense, for instance, must not be judged by the same standards applied to the man who kills for gain."

Did I say "foreshadowing?" It wasn't as subtle as that. How about "telegraphing?"

If there was a theme to the story, I suppose it was that conditions often resolve moral dilemmas, one way or the other. That certainly was true of Robinson and Bennett. Everything they did was dictated by things that, for the most part, appeared out of their control.

And if I have a blanket criticism of film noir, it is the general absence of subtlety. Maybe it is because the facts of the case are assumed to be known — or at least strongly suspected — by the audience, whether that much information actually has been communicated to the audience or not.

I'm not saying that was the case with "The Woman in the Window," only that it has been a problem with many of the film noirs I have seen in my life.

"The Woman in the Window" was a pretty good movie. It's a shame that many of the entries in the film noir genre that followed didn't come close to its standards.

Murder and Mayhem in Brooklyn

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Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant): Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

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In 1944, Cary Grant was one of the most popular movie stars in Hollywood.

He's been called "the best star actor there ever was in the movies," and, if he wasn't, he should have been. The American Film Institute agrees. When AFI named its top 50 male and female movie stars, it listed Grant as second only to Humphrey Bogart.

During his career, Grant must have co–starred with nearly all of the most beautiful leading ladies of his time, but I don't think he ever really had the same chemistry with any of them that he had with Priscilla Lane in "Arsenic and Old Lace," which made its big–screen debut 70 years ago today.

Grant seemed to have chemistry with everyone, but there was something special about his chemistry with Lane. She had a definite girl–next–door quality, not unlike Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island, that set her apart from Grant's other co–stars. That was a good quality for her to have because, in "Arsenic and Old Lace," she was the girl next door. The viewing audience knew her as Grant's new bride, but, before that, she had been the girl next door.

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Lane was young and vivacious — and not a star in the sense that Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne and many of Grant's usual co–stars were. Lane probably would have qualified for one of those "you know the face, but do you know the name?" contests — if such a thing existed in 1944.

Lane didn't upstage Grant, who was clearly the star (and, therefore, the primary attraction) of the movie — perhaps that was part of what made the movie so appealing. In reality, Grant was 11 years her senior, but they looked very natural together on screen. It worked in a way that Grant's other on–screen relationships did not.

Lane's character wasn't submissive, she was deferential. The thesaurus may tell you that those words are synonyms, but they don't really mean precisely the same thing.

Maybe a big part of the movie's success was the dialogue, which came from Joseph Kesselring's 1939 stage play. It was a huge hit, opening in January 1941 and moving to the Hudson Theatre in 1943 before finally wrapping up in 1944 after more than 1,400 performances.

That's an important fact to remember because the movie was made in 1941; but it couldn't be released until after the play had concluded its run on Broadway because of a mutual agreement between Warner Bros. and the producers of the play.

That led to some interesting quirks in the story. For example, the story itself took place in Brooklyn, and it was supposed to be set in the present day. When the movie was made, the then–Brooklyn Dodgers had won their first National League pennant in more than 20 years (they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, four games to one), and the opening sequence shows the jubilation of Brooklyn baseball fans.

In the next three years, the Dodgers plummeted to 42 games out of first place, and, what with the war and everything, the '41 pennant was a distant memory by the time the movie made it to the theatres — so the references to Brooklyn's championship season had no real relevance to moviegoers in 1944.

One of my favorite lines in the movie was when Aunt Martha (Jean Adair) said she was anxious to leave Brooklyn because the community had changed since the Dodgers "won that old pennant thing." That certainly would have been a lot more amusing in 1941. Audiences in 1944 had to reach too far into their collective memory bank.

Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby (Josephine Hull) were delightful supporting characters who, as one of their charities, poisoned lonely old bachelors and widowers to end their suffering, then buried them in the cellar — with the assistance of their nephew Teddy, who believed himself to be Teddy Roosevelt.

(A nice touch was the way Teddy would run up the stairs and yell "Charge!" It was his re–enactment of Roosevelt's famed charge up San Juan Hill.)

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I don't think I ever saw Adair in any of her other film roles (there weren't that many of them; most of her career was spent on the stage) so I think of her performance as Aunt Martha when I think of her, but Hull is different. I always associate her with her Oscar–winning role in "Harvey." It was a similar kind of role, I guess — a peculiar, even eccentric, older lady — and she was awfully good at it.

It wouldn't be right to discuss the supporting characters without mentioning two other, more sinister characters — played by Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre.

Massey took the place of Boris Karloff, who was still appearing in the stage version on Broadway when the movie was being made. Adair and Hull were in the Broadway play, too, but they were given leaves of absence to make the movie. Karloff was the main attraction of the Broadway show, however, and couldn't be spared.

The movie retained a line that was written for Karloff. His stage character was supposed to have had facial surgery by his companion, who had been intoxicated and made the character of Jonathan look like Karloff. The resemblance was mentioned in the script and, presumably, it drew a huge laugh from theater audiences when Karloff was said to look like Karloff.

To support the story about the surgery, Massey was made up to look like he had scars on his face.

As a student of history, though, I have more appreciation for a line that Massey's character delivered.

To set the table, as it were ... there was a discussion about Massey's murder record stacked up against the record of his aunts in Brooklyn. One of the victims Massey claimed to have killed had died of pneumonia — but he had been shot first. Lorre's character insisted that it didn't count.

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"He wouldn't have died of pneumonia if I hadn't shot him," Massey replied.

I don't know if Americans of that time were as ignorant of the nuances of history as they are today, but that was an allusion to the death of President James Garfield in 1881.

Garfield was shot in early July 1881 and lingered for weeks, at times appearing to improve only to get worse. Eventually, he died more than two months after being shot. Officially, he died of a heart attack and pneumonia, neither of which probably would have occurred if not for the facts that he had been shot earlier and the inadequate medical treatment he received had taken a toll on his system.

So Massey's assertion that a victim wouldn't have died of pneumonia if he hadn't been shot was a reference to the manner of the president's death.

I wonder how many people knew that in 1941 or 1944.