Birth of a Notion: 1951

Showing posts with label 1951. Show all posts

Sunday, October 23, 2016

From Beyond Maps

"Trees lie where they fall, and men were buried where they died."

Narrator (Howard Keel)

If you like horses, you'll probably like "Across the Wide Missouri," which premiered on this day in 1951. It had a lot of horses.

Does that sound flippant? It isn't intentional. Fact is, I do like horses — and I liked "Across the Wide Missouri," too, but not simply because it had horses.

To be honest, though, there really wasn't much of a plot — at least by the standards of the times. When you sit down to watch a western from the '40s or '50s, you expect a movie that has obviously good guys (usually the cowboys or the soldiers) and definitely bad guys (typically the Indians although sometimes they were outlaws). The idea that the cowboys/soldiers might be the bad guys and the Indians/outlaws might be the good guys was seldom if ever explored in the movies — at least until comparatively recently.

And "Across the Wide Missouri" wasn't necessarily a radical departure from that norm. It simply seemed to take a more neutral position than most of the movies I have seen from that time. It made few judgments about who was right and who was wrong although it often spoke of issues that would provoke intense debates today. It simply told a story — in much the same way that a textbook would. You know ... This happened and then this happened and then this happened.

No in–depth exploration of cause and effect. All very matter of fact.

I'm not suggesting it lacked a story, but "matter of fact" is an apt description. The movie was based on an historian's book about actual fur traders and their experiences with the Indians. Clark Gable played the central character, a fur trapper, and he was surrounded by some well–known people — James Whitmore, Howard Keel (who did the off–screen narration), Ricardo Montalban — and some who were not so well known.

Like 24–year–old Mexican actress–singer María Elena Marqués, who portrayed the adopted daughter of an Indian chief. She had been in Mexican movies for nearly 10 years, but "Across the Wide Missouri" was one of her few Hollywood movies so she couldn't have been too familiar to American audiences. She was Gable's love interest.

Gable actually came to love her in time, but the marriage began as one of convenience. It basically allowed Gable's character to trap at will in Indian territory. It also saved him from being scalped.

His wife gave birth to a son then was killed by a warring Indian tribe. And for awhile, after Marqués' character was killed, it was uncertain whether Gable would care for his son or not. That wouldn't be a politically correct angle in the 21st century, but nearly 200 years ago it was apparently acceptable for a man to abandon his children if he lost his wife.

Well, perhaps not acceptable, but in those days it may have been considered a legitimate option for a man whose work kept him away from his home for much of the year.

It is important to keep such things in context. The movie was set about 30 years before the start of the Civil War. Many of the modern states west of the Missouri River were nothing more than unsettled territories, if that.

It's safe to say the rules were different in those days — starting with the fact that there were no rules in many places. In fact, there were few boundaries. A man lived by his wits and seizing the day.

In my favorite line from the movie, at a gathering of trappers, one was asked where they all came from. He replied, "They come from beyond maps."

I thought "Across the Wide Missouri" was probably a more realistic depiction of the times and the people than most movies of its genre — precisely because it kept that in mind.

And then there were the horses.

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

Texas Carnival Was No Fun

My guess is that "Texas Carnival," which starred Red Skelton and Esther Williams and premiered on this day in 1951, coincided with the start of the Texas State Fair.

As long as I can remember, the Texas State Fair has opened here in Dallas at the end of September. It was probably that way 65 years ago, too. "Texas Carnival" was not specifically about the Texas State Fair, but it was in that same general setting. The only thing missing, I suppose, was Big Tex, the iconic 55–foot statue that greets fairgoers at Dallas' Fair Park.

Skelton and Williams were before my time; they were celebrities my parents probably saw in movies when they were children.

I remember Skelton vaguely from his final year or two on TV, his many characters and his signature signoff, "Good night and may God bless." He was amusing, which was good because his aspiration was to make people laugh.

Williams was retired from acting by that time. I have only seen her in old movies, nearly all of which centered on her prowess as a swimmer and promoted swimming in some way.

I wish they had left it at that instead.

Since they didn't leave it alone, I would have thought that they would have capitalized on the things that made Skelton and Williams stars in the first place.

Now Skelton always was a clown. While some people seem to gravitate (often a bit involuntarily at first) to that vocation, Skelton was what you might call a premeditated clown. He set out to become a clown, and he succeeded. But his role as a carnival dunk tank operator in Texas was a bit too over the top.

It was not as off the wall, though, as Williams' role. As I say, she was known for her swimming, and you would think that would be a big part of her role in any movie — but not "Texas Carnival." The objective of her role in that movie seems to have been to keep her out of the water as much as possible. Her biggest moment was when she swam in a waterless hotel room. Really. It was a dream sequence. I wonder who dreamed up that one.

She was the girl in the dunk tank, but that was only her job when the movie began. As the story — such as it was — evolved, Williams got farther and farther away from water.

That wasn't completely possible, but, by and large, it was achieved.

Then there was Ann Miller, a dancer, singer and actress but mostly a dancer and singer who was occasionally called upon to act. Whether she did so was largely a matter of opinion. She had some singing and dancing scenes in "Texas Carnival," but they lacked the vibrance that her singing and dancing usually brought to her roles.

But at least she lived in Texas when she was a child, and she brought a touch of an authentic Texas twang to her lines. I'm not sure if Skelton ever spent any time in Texas. Not that that would be necessary, but it wouldn't have hurt.

There was a lot of singing in "Texas Carnival," but none of the songs were memorable. Howard Keel played a singing ranch foreman who courted Williams. Skelton, meanwhile, was interested in Miller.

I wonder if audiences in 1951 were interested at all.

Keenan Wynn played a wealthy (and inebriated) Texas rancher, a character that barely managed to connect all the story's loose threads and held them together with all the stability of a house of cards.

Alcoholism may have been regarded as hilarious in the 1950s, but I doubt that such a plot device would be too warmly received in the 21st century. The story would need some considerable retooling in the unlikely event that someone chose to remake it.

The central theme — mistaken identity — probably could have been retained. Without it, it is hard to see where there would be much of a movie. Not that there was a whole lot to begin with.

Of course, if anyone happened to be foolish enough to try to do that, it wouldn't hurt to rewrite the whole story, not just the rancher's part.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Pursuing a Place in the Sun

"I love you. I've loved you since the first moment I saw you. I guess maybe I've even loved you before I saw you."

George (Montgomery Clift)

If you ever read Theodore Dreiser's novel "An American Tragedy," you know the plot — for the most part — of George Stevens' "A Place in the Sun," which premiered on this day in 1951.

The movie wasn't exactly a re–telling of the novel — in fact, there were several changes in the story in its translation from printed page to silver screen — but it was heavily influenced by it, and anyone who read the book and saw the movie knew that the protagonist in the movie (Montgomery Clift) was virtually a carbon copy of the protagonist in the book.

In both the book and the movie, he was poor but ambitious, the son of religious activists, street missionaries in the Midwest. He wasn't well educated, he lacked maturity, and he was naive. He took menial jobs to help support his family; while working at such a job he met his wealthy uncle who owned a successful factory on the coast and invited his nephew to visit him, suggesting that he could have a job in the business.

So he made his way to his uncle's factory — in the book, it was on the East Coast, but it was on the West Coast in the movie.

Other details and circumstances were different, too, but the story was essentially the same. The protagonist took his uncle up on the offer and was, indeed, given a job. It was an entry–level job at first, but the protagonist got rapid promotions. Things were looking up.

There was one problem, though. When he was first hired, the protagonist was told that most of the employees were females, and he should not have relationships with any of them outside the workplace.

So, of course, that is precisely what he did. Almost immediately he struck up a friendship with a young worker (Shelley Winters, who broke into movies in the early '40s as a blonde bombshell but found that label too limiting and claimed to have washed off her makeup to audition for the role in "A Place in the Sun"). In the story, it was probably a good match. Winters' character was almost as naive as Clift's, believing nearly to the end that his family ties brought him no privileges at all — all evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, they started seeing each other on the sly, and it wasn't long before they had sex. That, of course, was the kind of thing that simply was not seen in movies in the 1950s. It could only be suggested, hinted at, the kind of thing in which a couple kisses passionately, and the music swells, and the figures become silhouettes that fade into a morning scene in which both are seen at the breakfast table.

Everyone who saw the movie knew that something had happened, but no one saw it happen — rather like when one goes to bed and there is no snow on the ground, but there is snow on the ground when that person wakes up the next morning. You know something happened even if you didn't see it happen.

Nevertheless, the secret — if it ever was one to anyone watching the movie 65 years ago — was a secret no more when Winters' character sought advice from a minister, who believed she was overwhelmed by the stress of being pregnant until Winters confessed that she was not married and the father had "abandoned" her.

As self–absorbed as he was, Clift's character claimed he was going to do the honorable thing (by '50s standards) and marry the girl — but he was falling in love with an affluent and socially connected girl (Elizabeth Taylor), the kind who could do many wonderful things for his career.

And his allegiance was shifting rapidly from the working girl to the society girl.

At times, Clift's character reminded me of Hamlet, Shakespeare's famed Danish prince who couldn't make up his mind. But, once he met Liz, his devotion clearly belonged to her, even though he agreed to marry Winters after she phoned him at a weekend party with Taylor and the ritzy crowd and threatened to expose him. They went to get a marriage license — only to find the office was closed for the Labor Day weekend.

They decided to come back the next day and, in the meantime, enjoy some R&R. They were on a secluded lake and decided to rent a boat. Winters' character didn't know that Clift had been plotting to kill her and make it look like an accident, leaving him free to marry Taylor — but once they were on the lake, he had a change of heart and decided not to kill her after all.

But fate intervened, and Winters really did slip and fall — and drown.

The audience, of course, knew that it really had been an accident. But Clift's suspicious behavior before and after the accident led to his conviction — with none other than Raymond Burr, TV's future Perry Mason, leading the prosecution.

Waiting to walk that last mile to his execution, Clift told a priest that he didn't kill Winters, but he did nothing to help her when she fell in the water. The priest concluded that it was murder and Clift's execution would be justified.

In 2016, it seems a little melodramatic, but it must have seemed to be pushing boundaries in 1951. It remains only the second movie adaptation of Dreiser's novel. He didn't live to see it, but he saw the first one, which was made 20 years earlier. I've heard that he hated it.

Maybe he considered it too literal a translation. He might have preferred "A Place in the Sun," considering that it did differ in some ways from the original source (and in more than just the name). Perhaps, now that filmmakers have more freedom than they did 65 years ago, it is time for a fresh take on the story.

"A Place in the Sun" ranked #92 on the American Film Institute's original list of the Top 100 movies of the last 100 years, but it was left off the revised list that was released 10 years later.

It won six Oscars — Best Director (Stevens), Best Screenplay, Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, Best Black–and–White Cinematography, Best Black–and–White Costume Design and Best Film Editing. It received three other nominations — Best Picture, Best Actor (Clift) and Best Actress (Winters), losing to "An American in Paris," Humphrey Bogart and Vivien Leigh.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

"Bad news sells best 'cause good news is no news."

Charles (Kirk Douglas)

"If you build it, they will come."

That line belonged to another movie, not the one that premiered on this day in 1951 — Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole." But it could have.

Kirk Douglas played one of those old–fashioned reporters — the kind who learned the trade in the field instead of the classroom. Don't get me wrong. That can be a good thing if the right lessons are learned, but Douglas' character didn't learn the right lessons.

Early in the movie he practically boasted about losing nearly a dozen big–city newspaper jobs for one infraction or another (i.e., libel, adultery, drinking) as he worked his way west, and he hoped to get a big–city newspaper job again. For that, he needed a big story, a human interest story that would capture the public's imagination — and would be a valuable scoop for whoever hired him.

In the meantime, he needed to put food on the table — and get some repair work done on his broken–down car.

So Douglas walked into the newsroom of the newspaper in the city where his car had given out on him — Albuquerque, New Mexico — and sweet–talked his way into a job. But after a year on the job, he still wasn't sitting on a blockbuster human interest story. In fact, he was being sent out to rural New Mexico to cover a rattlesnake hunt.

But a funny thing happened along the way. Douglas and the newspaper's young and idealistic photographer stopped off in a bump in the road sort of town — where, they learned, a local man had just become trapped inside a cave where he had been searching for Indian artifacts. Douglas figured this could be his ticket to that big–city newspaper job and did the very thing that my journalism instructors told us not to do — don't become a part of your story in any way, they admonished us, and they were right.

No instructor ever told Douglas that, of course, because he never attended journalism school, and he began to manipulate the rescue effort behind the scenes, making the trapped man and his family believe he was their friend when really he was using them and persuading an ethically challenged sheriff to lean on the contractor who was trying to drill his way to the trapped man and get him to follow a strategy that would delay the rescue and keep the story on the front pages longer.

Douglas' character was really more of a showman than a journalist, and he knew that the best possible outcome would be a happy ending in which the trapped man was saved, and the people who had been following the story were left with that warm, fuzzy feeling. The more time that the outcome was in doubt, the higher the anxiety — and the greater the payoff when that warm, fuzzy feeling happened.

Douglas' character knew that people who follow dramatic stories make emotional investments in them — and they expect an emotional payoff at the end. Call it the feel–good factor.

That is what he was aiming for, but there were complications, you see ...

As the days dragged on, the man who was trapped became more despondent. And then, there was his wife, played by Jan Sterling, who was remembered for her performance as the "sluttish, opportunistic wife" in "Ace in the Hole" after she died in 2004 (Ronald Bergan of The Guardian wrote at the time that it was "[b]y far her best role"). When her husband was trapped in the cave, she had been planning to leave him — but she was persuaded to stay when Douglas told her the big story would bring crowds of people to the area, and the little diner/curio shop run by the victim's family would make more money than ever.

He turned out to be right about that. In almost no time, the area became a circus. Well, actually, it was a carnival, with rides and food vendors and all of that; it sprang up after its operators paid handsomely for the privilege. There was even a song that was sung about the victim by a traveling troubadour.

As I said, Douglas' character was, at heart, a showman, and in this case the show followed the showman. It was really drawn more by the fact that so many people had already arrived on the scene, hoping to witness a dramatic rescue.

And the victim's wife had dollar signs in her eyes as she watched a line of traffic coming through that quiet New Mexico valley that put the line of traffic at the end of "Field of Dreams" to shame.

After all she knew that people needed to eat.

But the good times came to an end when the victim died before the drill could reach him. No happy ending. Actually, there wasn't a happy ending in the real–life inspiration for the movie — a case in which a man named Floyd Collins was trapped in a cave in Kentucky in 1925. A reporter from Louisville won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the event — even though that victim died before his would–be rescuers could reach him.

Douglas' character mentioned that event — by then more than a quarter of a century removed from the fictionalized account that played on America's movie screens in the summer of 1951. Just in case you were inclined to think that media obsession over a single story is a new phenomenon. My guess is it's been going on at least since Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable–type printing press in the 15th century.

"Ace in the Hole" was a first in several ways, though, virtually all involving Billy Wilder.

It was the first time Wilder was writer, producer and director of a movie. That was a combination that worked really well in Wilder's later films, like "Some Like It Hot," "The Apartment" and "The Fortune Cookie."

It was also his first project without Charles Brackett, his collaborator on "The Lost Weekend" and "Sunset Boulevard."

Last but far from least, it was the first of Wilder's projects to be both a critical and a commercial failure. Given his record of award–winning successes, the fact that Wilder ever had misfires is shocking to me — even though he had his share, like everyone else.

But if you understand something about the times, it isn't so shocking.

Wilder had been critical of the media of his day for its bias. Consequently, "Ace in the Hole" got bad reviews in American newspapers, and that kept attendance down.

Nevertheless, I have heard it said that "Ace in the Hole" was one of Wilder's favorites — high praise indeed when you consider the other movies Wilder made in his career.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Bringing a Serial Killer to Justice

At some point 65 years ago this month, the movie "M" made its debut.

It was a remake of a German movie that was made two decades earlier, and it had roughly the same plot — the search for a serial killer — but the setting shifted from Germany to Los Angeles, presumably to take advantage of the locations in the Los Angeles area that had been frequently used to tell stories on the big screen — and continued to be until the Victorian neighborhood underwent extensive renovation starting a few years later. Several locations in the movie do still exist, however, and are sometimes used in movies today.

I have never seen the 1931 movie, and I only saw the 1951 version recently. It is not the greatest movie ever made. At times, the editing seemed choppy to me, and the story isn't told as smoothly as movie stories tend to be told today.

But I found myself thinking of several things as the movie revealed the various themes that were happening at once. And it had an unexpected ending for a movie made early in the 1950s, a decade that is routinely savaged as the "Leave It To Beaver" decade.

I thought, for example, of the notorious child murders in Atlanta in 1980. That is probably the only case of child serial murders to receive national attention in my lifetime. Maybe there are other, equally obvious examples that I am simply forgetting, but that really is the only one that comes to mind.

It isn't, unfortunately, the only case of an individual child murder that comes to mind. I've known of many of those in my life. Too many.

"M" was an interesting movie for several reasons.

While it was kind of raw in its presentation, the nature of the story was raw — and, I am sure, shocking for movie audiences of that time. I have long thought that many of the things that we find repugnant, like child murder and sexual assault, do not happen with any greater frequency today than they did many years ago. They are just spoken of more frequently.

That, it seems to me, was what people really found shocking about such stories in 1951 and even when I was growing up long after "M" was in the theaters. It was the kind of thing that nice people simply didn't talk about.

But ignorance is not bliss, and that was one of the unspoken lessons of "M." If a serial killer is on the loose, knowledge really is power.

The people in "M" knew there was a serial killer on the loose, and the chief of police even made an appearance on TV to warn citizens of the danger. But things were different 65 years ago. TV was not in every home, and many people had to see TV from the display window at the appliance store. That was what was shown in "M," and it must have looked perfectly normal to audiences in 1951, but it looks odd to audiences who can carry TV with them in a phone/computer/camera/TV gadget that is small enough to fit in one's breast pocket. Such audiences can't comprehend a time when everything wasn't available on demand.

(If the movie is ever remade again, that is something that will have to be rewritten. It wouldn't be hard to do, but it would have to mention all the ways that the police could get the word out and solicit the public's assistance. You know. Along with TV, radio and newspapers, the police could be shown preparing messages for Facebook, Twitter and all the other social medial outlets.)

If you think about it in the context of 1951 vs. 2016, you are left with the truly inescapable conclusion that the story's writer was positively prescient. The words that came from the police chief's mouth in his address on TV could be the same speech, virtually word for word, that was given by Atlanta's mayor to his terror–stricken city three decades later.

David Wayne played the child killer, driven by a compulsion that was the result of ideas that had been planted in his brain by his mother when he was very young.

The police were getting desperate. There had been too many deaths and too few plausible leads, and they began to harass mobsters, who did not appreciate the increased police attention. It kept them from doing business so they decided to find the killer themselves. And they did.

He was taken to a parking garage for a mock trial and was convicted by a jury of mobsters.

As I say, it wasn't an artfully done movie.

But there was a remarkable moment at the end when the murderer spoke for himself and explained how all these blood sacrifices had been his way of seeking salvation.

The movie featured several familiar faces — or, at least, they would become familiar to audiences in the years ahead and mostly on television after it became more of a fixture in people's homes.

David Wayne tended to play supporting roles in movies. His performance as the child killer in "M" was a rare opportunity to see him in a leading role. His TV credits were extensive, mostly in guest roles but occasionally in recurring ones.

Jim Backus played the mayor but was better known later in his career as Mr. Howell on Gilligan's Island and the voice behind Mr. Magoo.

Raymond Burr was many things in his career. He played Perry Mason and Ironside, but in "M" he played a gangster named Pottsy.

Oh, and one more thing. Do you know what the M in the title stood for?

It was the code name for the operation that was intended to apprehend the killer. The name was Operation: Murder. That implies that murder was such a rare occurrence in 1951, even in a big city, that the effort to capture a serial killer could be code–named "Murder" — when, in fact, murder was not necessarily a rare occurrence. As I wrote earlier, I think things like that probably just weren't spoken of as much 65 years ago.

If a new version of the movie is ever made, the title will need to be changed — perhaps to a C for children or K for kids.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The Day the Earth Stood Still

I'm not a devotee of science fiction, in either print or film.

There are certain offshoots of the genre that I do find appealing, but they are more mainstream, I suppose, combining elements of drama or comedy or whatever — and I've never been like one of those guys I knew in high school who had bookshelves filled with obscure science fiction titles and spoke to each other in Klingon.

I don't know why science fiction never really appealed to me. I've always liked good fiction. Maybe it was the science part that turned me off. (Science was never my strong subject in school.)

Science fiction, though, has often meant space exploration in my experience, and I was a child during the most intense years of the space race so you might think, therefore, that I would have more than a passing interest in it. And, to be honest, there are some films that are designated as science fiction movies that I appreciate and always enjoy watching.

One of those movies is "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which made its debut on this date 60 years ago.

In 1951, science fiction as a movie art form was still in its nascent phase. Prior to that time, the science fiction that most audiences saw in the theaters was in the form of the serials of the time or horror movies.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" was one of the earliest movies to introduce space travel and alien beings — and special effects — to the big screen and helped to usher in what was arguably the golden age of science fiction movies. "Forbidden Planet," which came along a few years later, is often mentioned by film historians as the movie that launched the science fiction genre, but I believe, as I wrote in the spring, that it more accurately marks the maturation of it.

While "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is rightly remembered as a science fiction movie, it was really a drama in the finest tradition of that genre — and just happened to use space travel as its backdrop. It was intended, as I understand it, as something of a metaphor for the Cold War and how it was changing the way people thought about themselves and each other.

There were messianic themes evoked by the resurrection of the visitor from space (similar themes, I might add, were part of the "Star Wars" trilogies). There were the elements of fear, hatred and suspicion that became common during the four–decade Cold War, which was still a new development in 1951.

Academy Award–winning composer Bernard Herrmann wrote a haunting score for the film.

I won't dwell too much on the story because, if you have never seen it, you should. It is worth seeing, even after 60 years.

Patricia Neal is probably the best–known star in the cast — although Andy Griffith Show fans will recognize Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) in a supporting role, and folks who are fond of movie trivia may be intrigued to know that Spencer Tracy and Claude Rains were each considered for the role of Klaatu, the visitor from space.

Eventually, Klaatu was payed by Michael Rennie, an English actor.

And, then, there was Gort, the tall robot, who was played by a fellow named Lock Martin. What's that, you say? You never heard of Lock Martin?

No reason why you should have, actually. The 7½–foot Martin worked as doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theatre when he was chosen to play the robot. That was when it was still said that movie stars could be "discovered" sitting on drug–store stools and in other unlikely places.

When you're 7½ feet tall, though, it's hard to imagine how you could be overlooked.

Anyway, Martin had something of a modest acting career in the years after he played Gort. He was known as "The Gentle Giant" because (1) he apparently did not possess the physical strength to match his imposing height, and (2) he liked reading stories to children (which, apparently, he did professionally for awhile on a TV show in Los Angeles).

Of course, there was the iconic phrase — "Klaatu barada nikto" — that Rennie's character told Neal to utter to the robot if anything happened to him, which she did — and, in the process, supposedly prevented him from destroying the earth in retaliation.

No one ever translated it from the fictitious space language from which it sprang so no one really knows what it meant.

What do you think it meant?

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Never Talk to Strangers

I really wish Farley Granger had managed to live another three months.

The 85–year–old Granger died in March. If he had lived until tomorrow, it would have been interesting to hear his observations on the 60th anniversary of the theatrical release of Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train."

I'm sure he would have said something about how that movie inspired Billy Crystal's "Throw Momma From the Train" — and, frankly, I would have been interested in hearing his insights.

But I've probably heard much of that from others already. And besides, I would really like to know what it was like to work with Hitchcock 60 years ago.

You see, I've always thought that "Strangers on a Train" was symbolic of Hitchcock's filmmaking M.O. It was really an innocent, rather simple story that became, well, complicated.

"Fibres of fate," the movie trailer said.

Just beneath the surface was a larger theme of doubles. Initially, of course, there is Granger's character, who is a professional tennis player (and, presumably, would have played doubles in tournaments, although, as I recall, that part is never stated).

Upon repeated viewings, I have become aware of other duplicates in the film — taxis, railroad tracks (that cross each other twice), female characters who wore glasses and were choked.

The doubles theme wasn't always visual. Sometimes it was implied or spoken. Hitchcock was fond of puns, metaphors. I believe he intended the film to be an ongoing source of revelation, and he inserted all sorts of things that went undiscovered, perhaps, for years, for decades.

No detail was too small.

"Isn't it a fascinating design?" he once said. "One could study it forever."

Indeed.

Sometimes it involved a mixture of elements.

Hitchcock, of course, became known for many things, but one thing that his audiences always looked for was his signature cameo appearance. In "Strangers on a Train," Hitchcock's onscreen moment played heavily on the doubles theme, but viewers probably didn't get it unless they had a certain amount of musical knowledge.

The cameo shows Hitchcock carrying a double bass as he boards a train.

The movie's much broader doubles theme didn't emphasize duplicates, though, as much as it did opposites.

In "Strangers on a Train," two characters who do not know each other feel trapped by their personal relationships. Granger's unhappy marriage apparently is public knowledge. The other character, played by Robert Walker, has a dysfunctional relationship with his father.

Walker arranges to meet Granger on a train, where he manipulates the conversation into a proposal that they "swap murders." He will kill Granger's wife if Granger will kill Walker's father. "Criss cross," he says. With no known links to their victims, the police will have no reason to suspect either.

Granger's character refuses to believe the conversation is for real, and he goes along with the perceived gag. But Walker's character is deadly serious, and he keeps his word, killing Granger's wife in an amusement park. Granger also doesn't realize that Walker has a personal item that belongs to Granger (a cigarette lighter) — with which he intends to blackmail Granger into holding up his end of the "deal."

Granger is reluctant to comply but begins to feel pressured when Walker starts showing up frequently to remind him that he is obliged now. Granger eventually agrees to go through with it, although he has no intention of actually doing so. He sneaks into Walker's house late one night and makes his way to the father's room, planning to tell him of Walker's plot, but it turns out to be Walker who is waiting for him in the dark room.

Walker tells Granger that, because he will not go through with his part of the arrangement, he should face the consequences for his wife's death. That murder, Walker says, "belongs" to Granger.

(I can still remember the chill I felt when I heard Walker say it for the first time.)

Granger's love interest (played by Ruth Roman) visits Walker's mother to tell her what her son has been up to, but she doesn't believe it — worse, Walker overhears the conversation and tells Granger's girlfriend that he has that personal item I mentioned earlier and intends to plant it at the murder scene.

That sets in motion the climactic scenes. If you've seen a Hitchcock movie before, you're surely familiar with how loose ends come together by the ends of his movies — but it was a rather new M.O. for Hitchcock in 1951. His style was evolving into what kept viewers of the 1950s and 1960s on the edges of their seats so it might catch you by surprise the first time you see it.

Trust me, though, it is worth it.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Hey Good Lookin' Turns 60

About a year and a half before his still–mysterious death at the age of 29, country music legend Hank Williams released one of his final #1 hits — "Hey Good Lookin'."

Hank was on a roll at that point in his life. He'd had a single #1 hit between 1947 and 1949, but, in 1950, he seemed to explode on the charts with three #1 hits — and he kept that hot streak going the following year, starting with "Cold, Cold Heart" — and he nearly made it three #1 hits in a row with "Howlin' at the Moon," which reached #3.

You could probably recite a list of all the #1 hits Williams had in his brief but explosive career (as well as after his death), and any one of them could almost be said to be the definitive Williams song.

His style could be bluesy and earthy, and it could be playful and lively. I always felt "Hey Good Lookin' " touched on it all.

Oh, I guess you could say the same thing about songs like "Jambalaya" or "Settin' the Woods on Fire" — or several other Williams standards. For that matter, "Howlin' at the Moon" had the same sense of whimsy as "Hey Good Lookin'," but it isn't as well remembered, even though it was released at about the same time.

In the last year of his life, Williams had five songs that made it at least to #2 on the charts — and two of them reached the top. One of those songs was "Jambalaya" (which was released more than a year after "Hey Good Lookin' ") and the other, ironically, was called "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive."

The song was intended to be humorous, as you can probably tell from the title. It was still climbing the charts when Williams died on the first day of 1953 — and took on considerably deeper meaning after that.

But, in June 1951, that was still in the future.

Sixty years ago, Williams was crooning to someone who was good lookin' and wonderin' what she had cookin'.

"How's about cookin' somethin' up with me?"

It has been covered by countless performers over the years, but, half a century after it was released, Williams' version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

That's staying power.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Say Good Night, Bonzo

I've heard that Ronald Reagan regarded it as his least favorite of the films he made during his movie career.

And how anyone else feels about it may depend upon whether that person tended to agree or disagree with Reagan politically.

For his part, Reagan said he never watched it — and who could blame him?

Personally, I would have to say that "Bedtime for Bonzo," which made its debut on this day in 1951, wasn't all that good. I found it predictable ... and, for the most part, boring. It was white bread. Stale white bread, for that matter.

Not everyone felt that way, though. "Forget what you've been led to believe," writes Hal Erickson for AllMovie.com. "Bedtime for Bonzo is a most enjoyable film."

I wouldn't call it "enjoyable." I have other words for it.

It's the old "nature vs. nurture" argument, which could have been presented more effectively. Reagan played a college professor who was trying to teach morals to a chimpanzee. Reagan's character was a bachelor, and he decided that he would need a mother to complete the study.

What followed was, as I say, predictable.

I will admit, though, that there were times when I found the dialogue unexpectedly amusing.

Like the time when Reagan says to co–star Diana Lynn, "You're no dope. You couldn't be. You haven't a university degree and you don't teach logic."

In the context of the rest of Reagan's career and life, that really sounds like something he might have said.

I heard that, 30 years ago, during Reagan's first successful campaign for the presidency, some people wanted to air this movie as a kind of reverse political statement — implying something along the lines of "Do you want someone who once read a bedtime story to a chimp to be president of the United States?"

But then I heard more plausible stories that, because of laws requiring "equal time" for candidates for political office, no TV station would show the film before the election. If they did, they would have to provide the same amount of time and charge the same fee to the opposition — and no one was willing to provide 83 minutes of air time to Reagan's rivals.

That made sense to me. Not once during the 1980 campaign did I see "Bedtime for Bonzo" on the TV schedule.

I eventually saw the movie a few years after Reagan was elected. But I only saw it once. That was enough.

I rarely agreed with Reagan on anything, but I will admit that I agreed with him on that point. "Bedtime for Bonzo" was a waste of time.