Lily and Gaston are quite the crooks and they steal their way across Europe.  While in Paris, they steal a diamond-studded handbag belonging to Mariette Colet (Kay Francis), the owner of a very famous perfume company.  But when Mariette puts out an ad offering a 20,000 Franc reward for the bag’s return, they realize they’d make more by turning it in than by selling it and Gaston goes to turn it in.  But when Gaston gets there and realizes that Mariette is awfully careless with her money, he convinces her to hire him as her secretary, planning to embezzle money from her company.  The plan works and Lily even gets hired on as Gaston’s assistant.  The only thing that doesn’t go according to plan is that Gaston and Mariette fall in love with each other.

Eventually, Mariette starts bringing Gaston along with her to social gatherings, but some of Mariette’s wealthy friends recognize Gaston.  Plus people in the company are starting to suspect that Gaston has been stealing money for them.  Even though her friends warn her about him, Mariette doesn’t want to give up on Gaston.  Meanwhile, Gaston and Lily are planning to skip town, but Gaston is torn between staying with Mariette or leaving with Lily.  The last thing they had planned to steal was 100,000 Francs from her safe, but before they leave, Gaston decides to come clean to Mariette about who he is and what he was really there to do.  Lily interrupts his confession to announce that she is the one who has stolen the 100,000 Francs and that Mariette is welcome to have Gaston for that price and leaves Gaston to decide who he wants to be with.

I positively adore Trouble in Paradise.  It’s sharp, witty, got plenty of lavish sets, and a top-notch cast.  There’s no going wrong with Miriam Hopkins in an Ernst Lubitsch comedy, but when you add in Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall, plus Charlie Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton in some supporting roles, you’ve got cinematic gold.  I just love everything about it.  Trouble in Paradise is total pre-code and pure Ernst Lubitsch.

Plot: A scientist (David Hedison) is found dead, his head and arm crushed into an unrecognizable mess. His wife (Patricia Owens) confesses to the crime, but refuses to provide details, although she seems obsessed with finding a strange white-headed fly. As the investigation begins they find she actually crushed him in a hydraulic press twice… something the victim’s brother (Vincent Price) cannot fathom, as they had a loving marriage. Owens begins to come unraveled, going berserk when a nurse crushes a fly on the wall. Finally, Price coaxes the truth from her: his brother was destroyed by his own invention – a disintegrator-integrator – which horribly mingled his body with that of a housefly, turning him from man to beast. As they attempted to find the fly that now had his arm and head, his mind became more and more frayed, until he finally begged her to kill him. Price keeps the story to himself, allowing the court to believe her insane, and sparing her from a murder charge.

Thoughts: I wish I could have found other films between the last one (1942’s Cat People) and this 1958 classic, but as I tried compiling my list, I was stunned at the utter dearth of memorable horror films from the late 1940s and early 1950s. This isn’t to say there weren’t scary movies, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the right choice for my little project here. It actually gets back to what I said about horror at the very beginning – horror is subjective. Each person, and in a larger sense, each culture determines for itself what it considers terrifying, and in the late 40s and 50s the fears of the American public weren’t running along the lines of vampires and witches and monsters. In the wake of the atom bomb, we were afraid of science gone wrong. With the rise of the Soviet Union, we feared the threat of international communism. The result is that the best, most iconic scary movies of this era don’t necessarily fall into the category of horror, but belong more appropriately on the science fiction list (which I hope to use for this same sort of project in the future). The truly disquieting films of the time were things like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – both excellent films worth discussing, but I feel like they belong more in the realm of sci-fi than true horror.

So that brings us to 1958 and The Fly, which still straddles the line between science fiction and horror, but falls with enough of its bulk on this side of the line to make it on the list. While not exactly built on hard science, the movie attempts more of a feeling of realism than most other sci-fi shockers of the area, which often dealt with the likes of insects and other animals mutating into giant beasts thanks to radiation exposure, eventually leading to their death by missile and their ridicule at the hands of a guy in a satellite and his two little robot pals. In The Fly, director Kurt Neumann does make an effort to help the science seem plausible, at least to an audience without deep understanding of such things. (At one point, while trying to guess the nature of his brother’s experiment, Price even suggests a flatscreen television.)

Vincent Price, of course, gets top billing for this movie, but for my money that really should have belonged to Patricia Owens as Helene. Price is in the framing sequence – the 30-minute buildup to the flashback and the 10-minute denouement at the end – but Owens really carries the film. We see her at the beginning as the shellshocked, borderline deranged woman who has just witnessed her husband’s death, then go to the backstory where she’s a kind, devoted wife. She’s really magnificent in the part, going from the heights of joy for her husband’s success to a slow spiral into despair when his experiment falls apart. Finally, at the end we get pain and resignation from her. Genre pictures are rarely recognized for the performances of their actors when award season rolls around, but I would put Owens’s performance in this film right up there with any great actress of the era.

The film follows a fairly standard format for horror films of the era, where the truly terrifying stuff happens largely off-screen. This is to the good, because when the blanket comes off David Hedison and we finally see his transformation… well… just as Owens is as fine an actress as any of the day, his creature costume is as goofy as any of the day. It’s a silly-looking monster helmet with a some device to make the pincers twitch a little bit. I find the final scene far more chilling – Price and the inspector (Herbert Marshall) manage to track down the white-headed fly to a spider’s web where it’s been captured and about to be consumed. The effect of a tiny little David Hedison caught in the spider’s web, superimposed against film of a real spider, is impressive by 1958 standards, and the effect of his miniscule voice pleading for help as the predator advances upon him is creepy even today. It’s probably the most memorable scene of terror from the film, far more so than the human-size fly.

The film plays upon the fear of unchecked science, questions of insanity, and a good dose of body horror (which, no doubt, is why David Cronenberg was the man tapped for the 1986 remake). All of these elements add up to one of the best films of the era.

From the end of the age of monsters, we’re about to step into the world of more psychological terror. Next on my list is the film many consider the first slasher movie, the 1960 film Peeping Tom.

Director:

Plot: A scientist (David Hedison) is found dead, his head and arm crushed into an unrecognizable mess. His wife (Patricia Owens) confesses to the crime, but refuses to provide details, although she seems obsessed with finding a strange white-headed fly. As the investigation begins they find she actually crushed him in a hydraulic press twice… something the victim’s brother (Vincent Price) cannot fathom, as they had a loving marriage. Owens begins to come unraveled, going berserk when a nurse crushes a fly on the wall. Finally, Price coaxes the truth from her: his brother was destroyed by his own invention – a disintegrator-integrator – which horribly mingled his body with that of a housefly, turning him from man to beast. As they attempted to find the fly that now had his arm and head, his mind became more and more frayed, until he finally begged her to kill him. Price keeps the story to himself, allowing the court to believe her insane, and sparing her from a murder charge.

Thoughts: I wish I could have found other films between the last one (1942’s Cat People) and this 1958 classic, but as I tried compiling my list, I was stunned at the utter dearth of memorable horror films from the late 1940s and early 1950s. This isn’t to say there weren’t scary movies, but that doesn’t necessarily make them the right choice for my little project here. It actually gets back to what I said about horror at the very beginning – horror is subjective. Each person, and in a larger sense, each culture determines for itself what it considers terrifying, and in the late 40s and 50s the fears of the American public weren’t running along the lines of vampires and witches and monsters. In the wake of the atom bomb, we were afraid of science gone wrong. With the rise of the Soviet Union, we feared the threat of international communism. The result is that the best, most iconic scary movies of this era don’t necessarily fall into the category of horror, but belong more appropriately on the science fiction list (which I hope to use for this same sort of project in the future). The truly disquieting films of the time were things like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – both excellent films worth discussing, but I feel like they belong more in the realm of sci-fi than true horror.

So that brings us to 1958 and The Fly, which still straddles the line between science fiction and horror, but falls with enough of its bulk on this side of the line to make it on the list. While not exactly built on hard science, the movie attempts more of a feeling of realism than most other sci-fi shockers of the area, which often dealt with the likes of insects and other animals mutating into giant beasts thanks to radiation exposure, eventually leading to their death by missile and their ridicule at the hands of a guy in a satellite and his two little robot pals. In The Fly, director Kurt Neumann does make an effort to help the science seem plausible, at least to an audience without deep understanding of such things. (At one point, while trying to guess the nature of his brother’s experiment, Price even suggests a flatscreen television.)

Vincent Price, of course, gets top billing for this movie, but for my money that really should have belonged to Patricia Owens as Helene. Price is in the framing sequence – the 30-minute buildup to the flashback and the 10-minute denouement at the end – but Owens really carries the film. We see her at the beginning as the shellshocked, borderline deranged woman who has just witnessed her husband’s death, then go to the backstory where she’s a kind, devoted wife. She’s really magnificent in the part, going from the heights of joy for her husband’s success to a slow spiral into despair when his experiment falls apart. Finally, at the end we get pain and resignation from her. Genre pictures are rarely recognized for the performances of their actors when award season rolls around, but I would put Owens’s performance in this film right up there with any great actress of the era.

The film follows a fairly standard format for horror films of the era, where the truly terrifying stuff happens largely off-screen. This is to the good, because when the blanket comes off David Hedison and we finally see his transformation… well… just as Owens is as fine an actress as any of the day, his creature costume is as goofy as any of the day. It’s a silly-looking monster helmet with a some device to make the pincers twitch a little bit. I find the final scene far more chilling – Price and the inspector (Herbert Marshall) manage to track down the white-headed fly to a spider’s web where it’s been captured and about to be consumed. The effect of a tiny little David Hedison caught in the spider’s web, superimposed against film of a real spider, is impressive by 1958 standards, and the effect of his miniscule voice pleading for help as the predator advances upon him is creepy even today. It’s probably the most memorable scene of terror from the film, far more so than the human-size fly.

The film plays upon the fear of unchecked science, questions of insanity, and a good dose of body horror (which, no doubt, is why David Cronenberg was the man tapped for the 1986 remake). All of these elements add up to one of the best films of the era.

From the end of the age of monsters, we’re about to step into the world of more psychological terror. Next on my list is the film many consider the first slasher movie, the 1960 film Peeping Tom.

As Angel Face begins, paramedic Frank Jessup, portrayed with typical deadpan machismo by Robert Mitchum, is attending to Katherine Tremayne (Barbara O’Neil), who has been overcome by gas escaping mysteriously from an open jet in her bedroom. The medical technicians sedate the distraught woman and the camera takes us downstairs, where we get our first glimpse of Simmons’ Diane, Mrs. Tremayne’s stepdaughter. As though nothing more exciting than a quiet game of Parcheesi were going on above her head, Diane sits at her piano in a dimly lit room, playing a classical tune. Her face is a blank slate, devoid of all emotion.

When Frank enters the room to inform Diane that her stepmother will live, Diane bursts into tears, only to stop instantly when Frank delivers a slap to calm her hysteria. A woman in a film of a less dark nature might then collapse onto the nearest settee, overcome with emotion. But not this angel. Her face registers surprise, then disbelief, and, finally, fury. Without another moment’s hesitation, she matter-of-factly returns Frank’s blow. We need no other indication to show us what this character is all about.

This relationship was on the wane the moment Diane stepped into the picture.

During the course of the film, and with seemingly little effort – a lingering gaze, a come-hither smile – Diane manages to break up Frank’s long-standing relationship with his fiancé, Mary (Mona Freeman), and indirectly secure Frank’s help in murdering her stepmother. In one scene after another, she slowly reveals the devious mind that is buried behind her sweet smile, and the warped sense of morality that is concealed by her angelic mask.

Part of Diane’s ability to accomplish her deeds lies in her subtle brashness, a quality that is first demonstrated on the evening she meets Frank. Shortly after his departure from her home, Diane’s roadster is seen roaring into the night. She follows him to a small café and less than five minutes later, Frank is breaking his date with Mary to spend the evening with Diane – a woman about whom he knows nothing more than that she lives in a mansion and has a mean right hook. As Diane listens to Frank fib his way through the phone conversation with his fiancé, a cool, knowing smile curves her lips. It was, obviously, no more than she had expected – like most femmes of this sort, she is fully aware of, and confident in, her effect on men. Before long, Frank’s relationship with Mary is finished, just as our angel intended.

Like Lola, whatever Diane wants, Diane gets.

Diane Tremayne is a rather unique noir femme. She does not smoke or drink, and when the film begins, she is only 19 years of age – much too young to have acquired the world-weary air that accompanies many women of this film type. Also, as opposed to most of noir’s bad girls, Diane Tremayne is accustomed to having money, if only because of her father’s marriage to Katherine when Diane was 10 years old. While other film noir femmes might be striving to acquire fortunes, Diane has, for years, enjoyed the privileges that money can bring – and she doesn’t intend to be without them.

From the start, it is apparent that Diane suffers from what Freud would term the “Electra Complex” – she has an unnatural attachment to her father (Herbert Marshall) and resents the presence of her stepmother in his life. In several scenes, Diane is shown assuming many of the responsibilities typically handled by a wife, including serving her father’s “milk and biscuits,” mixing his cocktails, and making sure that his cigarettes and matches are left beside his bed at night. And while out with Frank at a nightclub, Diane confesses that she has not danced with any other man since coming to America – “except my father.”

Famous last words: "Would you like to borrow my gloves?"

Like a number of men in films of this sort, Frank is patently unable to resist Diane’s charms. Shortly after their first meeting, he allows Diane to talk him into quitting his job to become her family’s chauffeur, despite his initial negative reaction to the idea. Later, when Frank begins to get wise to Diane and prepares to leave the Tremayne house, it only takes Diane a matter of minutes to use her kisses and wide, brown eyes to reel him back in like a fish on a line. “I don’t pretend to know what goes on behind that pretty little face of yours, and I don’t want to,” Frank says, obviously operating under a severe case of conscious denial. Diane begs Frank to take her with him and he ultimately agrees, but insists that they live off of his income. For this angel, that is not enough – she wants Frank, but she is not willing to struggle financially to have him. So, she pursues other avenues. Diane uses her burgeoning relationship with Frank to learn from him the information she needs to rig her stepmother’s car so that it plunges off a cliff. (In another revealing demonstration of Diane’s warped mind, she – with uncharacteristic generosity – loans a new pair of gloves to her stepmother just before Katherine takes her fatal car ride.) Contrary to Diane’s well-laid plans, however, her father is along for the ride and is also killed – an unplanned by-product of Diane’s scheme that nearly drives her completely bonkers.

Poor Frank. A sucker to the end.

After the murder, Frank’s eyes are fully, irreversibly opened about Diane, particularly after he is arrested along with her for the crime. To her credit, though, Diane tells her attorney that she alone committed the dirty deed – a cause that she continues to champion until the attorney suggests that she and Frank get married in order to play on the sympathies of the jury. At the prospect of becoming Frank’s wife, Diane complacently abandons her impassioned denials of his innocence. With her father now gone, her fanatical devotion is now focused completely upon Frank. The crafty attorney, portrayed by the always-interesting Leon Ames, does manage to convince the jury that both Diane and Frank are innocent of the murders, but upon returning home, Frank informs his wife that he is heading to Mexico for a divorce. He should have known that Diane wouldn’t give up without a fight. And she doesn’t, pulling out all the stops as she begs him to stay: “You don’t hate me, really. You couldn’t hate anyone who loves you as much as I do . . . I can’t let you go, darling – I just can’t.”

It can almost be viewed as a benevolent warning when Diane informs Frank of her inability to allow him to walk out of her life. Unfortunately for Frank, he doesn’t get the hint. After Diane finally accepts that Frank has made up his mind to leave her, she proposes to drive him to the bus station, calling once again on her feminine talents to coax him into an acceptance. It will be Frank’s last mistake. If you haven’t seen this film, I’ll sidestep one final spoiler and keep this last bit of business under my hat. But suffice it to say that the conclusion to Angel Face offers a violent and startling illustration of the concept that if “I can’t have you, nobody else will.”

Herbert Marshall and Bette Davis scheme against each other in "The Little Foxes"

Independent producer Samuel Goldwyn was no stranger to the murky intersection of personal relationships and business. He was pushed out of more than one company he helped found, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, less for business reasons than for personal antipathy. Given this background it is no wonder that Goldwyn was attracted to Lillian Hellman’s play The Little Foxes, which explores the violence and exploitation possible in just about any relationship (connubial, sibling, friend, etc.) when business intertwines with personal relationships.

The Hubbard family has clawed its way up from social and economic irrelevance to prominence in their unnamed Southern town by the turn of the twentieth century. They are a breed of new capitalists who displaced the old Southern aristocracy in the decades after their defeat in the Civil War. They did not, however, get rich through hard work or innovation, but through the exploitation and outright cheating of the poor, and by picking the bones of struggling families of the old aristocracy. (Ben Hubbard even marries Birdie, the daughter of one of these clans, to gain access to the prestige of her family name.) The Hubbard siblings, Oscar, Ben, and Regina, value profit and power above all else. They are even willing to sacrifice their own relationships with each other and their respective families in order to secure profit.

Their latest scheme is to building a textile mill to their city. Bringing manufacturing to a town that already provides the raw materials (cotton) isn’t in itself a bad deal, but the carrot they dangle before a prominent Northern investor is the promise of laborers willing to work for $3 a week rather than the $8 he has to pay in the North.

Brothers Oscar and Ben are in, ready with their share of the investment needed to get the mill going, but Regina needs to convince her estranged husband Horace to put in as well. Horace, however, is convalescing from a serious heart condition in Baltimore and Regina connives to get him back home so she can convince him to invest in the mill, even though she knows he will be reluctant. Horace has grown more and more disgusted with the business tactics of the family he married into and sees the mill as another way for the Hubbards to suck up more of their town’s riches. His refusal to commit forces Regina and her brothers to scramble to make sure the deal goes through – and they aren’t above a little dishonesty.

The Hubbard clan gathers with money on their minds

The rest of the film is a rousing competition of wills and cunning as everybody maneuvers for the best position to maximize their own profits. Ben and Oscar hatch a scheme to cut out Regina and she retaliates by blackmailing them into a greater share and on and on it goes.

Hellman’s play translates well to the screen, especially with some remarkably good performances. Bette Davis delivers one of the best performances of her prolific career as Regina, dominating every scene with nothing more than her presence. Herbert Marshall appears as Regina’s husband Horace. He plays Horace as a sensitive man tired of his wife’s greed, but quietly accepts her by going away. He manages to take one last stand against this mill, but Regina’s determination may prove too much for his weak heart. Since the entire Hubbard family can’t be rotten (and I’m even leaving out Oscar’s son Leo, a dumb and arrogant kid that, knowing the course of U.S. history, is probably bound to be a U.S. Senator or something) we also have Regina and Horace’s daughter Alexandra played by Teresa Wright. She is sweet and naïve, completely unaware of her mother’s and uncles’ nefarious double-dealings. Though her character does not get the screen time others do, at the end, the movie is more about her coming of age and disillusionment about her family as anything else. (A principled young newspaper reporter was added to the screenplay as her love interest and to prod her toward the light, probably because Hollywood big shots couldn’t conceive of a woman having an idea of her own, without a sensible man planting it in her head.)

William Wyler’s direction and Gregg Toland’s photography buttress the strong performances and polished writing to complete one of the best movies of 1941. For me this would have been a shoo-in for best of the year if it were not for a sparkling, socially-conscious comedy and a pesky, but unavoidable masterpiece.

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

When Trouble in Paradise sought to be re-issued three years after its 1932 release, the Hayes Office said: No way. The film that had been alright for release upon completion, if not without some minor, ignored objections, was far too scandalous for 1935 when the Production Code was in full swing. What was Director Ernst Lubitsch‘s crime with his first talking romantic comedy? Obvious sexual innuendos and a couple of thieves who get off scott free.

The subject that most comes up in discussions of the Production Code is sex. Before the code, women could have multiple partners, couples could have extramarital affairs, and the camera, dialogue or action could clearly indicate that a sexual act had just occurred. Another subject that fell under the Hayes Office’s purview, however, were criminal sorts. Individuals found as outright thieves or murders had to be punished –either by the legal system, suicide or other killing. You see this in many of the popular gangster movies of the 1930s and 1940s where our beloved hoodlum James Cagney or whomever gets it in the end. I suppose the message from the powers that be was understandable enough: Do not encourage crime. But those gangster films and Trouble in Paradise with them still glorify and make sexy the criminal aspect, so the restriction seems a moot one.

It was because of the Code’s distaste for Trouble in Paradise years later, which prevented anyone seeing it again until 1968 (with it unavailable on video or DVD until 2003), that this film has gone largely forgotten despite being among Lubitsch’s greatest work and a standout in film history. Herbert Marshall is Gaston who in his Venice hotel room eagerly accepts a visit from Lily, embodied by Miriam Hopkins, a woman claiming to be a countess. A man in another room has just been robbed of a large sum of money by a man posing as a doctor and seeking to examine his tonsils. During their dinner, Lily and Gaston intermingle romantic sentiments and the woman declares that Gaston is the man who robbed the neighboring Francois Fileba (Edward Everett Horton). As you can see in the video below, this wonderfully romantic and comedic scene –flush with “the Lubitsch touch”– continues as Gaston reveals that Lily has stolen the stolen wallet from him. Also pick-pocketed from the couple by each other are Lily’s pin, Gaston’s watch and Lily’s garter –but she is not getting that back. As an audience, we instantly decide that this pairing is perfect and the two will have an adventuresome future we can all enjoy.

While in Paris some time later, Gaston and Lily plot the thievery of an expensive purse from Mlle. Colet, played by Kay Francis while she is at the opera. To their fortune, the woman puts a notice of a reward for the bag that would exceed the amount the robbers could get if they sold it. Gaston returns the purse but during his visit with Ms. Colet, manages to woo her and she hires him as her secretary, in charge of all her financial affairs. Ms. Colet is the head of a major perfume company –by inheritance– and has a board of directors running things who now takes orders from Gaston. Colet also has “boyfriends” in none other than Mr. Fileba, the tonsil victim, and ”The Major” (Charlie Ruggles). With Gaston in her life, however, she loses even more interest in the two feuding beaux. Gaston has brought Lily in to help him with his new duties and the two plan to rob Mlle. Colet’s safe once more cash has been deposited there, via Gaston’s new financial orders. Lily begins to get jealous, however, when it becomes apparent Mlle. Colet wants alone time with the secretary. It is unclear how much of an affair is conducted between Gaston and Colet, although they spend late nights together.

Mr. Fileba has yet to identify Gaston as the man who robbed him, and it is quite amusing to watch this fabulous character actor try to pull from his memory whether or not he has met the man previously. Eventually, The Major says at first he mistook Gaston for a doctor, and click Mr. Fileba has solved the mystery. Realizing this, Gaston and Lily plan to get out of town fast with the little money they can take from the safe at present. Lily is home packing but Gaston is getting tied up in Colet’s embraces as they visit each others’ bedrooms in a highly suggestive but funny number of scenes. What concludes the film are questions of: will they steal the money, will Mlle. Colet find out, and with whom will Gaston choose to stay, but I will not give that away.

I mentioned the highly risqué feel to this film, so here are a few examples. The opening title reads “Trouble in”, an image of a bed appears, and then the word “Paradise” shows up. Thank you, Lubitsch for explaining this movie is about trouble in bed. Besides Gaston and Colet responding to knocks at their bedroom doors by opening the door of the other, the end includes an embrace between those two that is filmed through a mirror above the woman’s bed so we can connect their embrace with that piece of furniture. Several edits using different angles also inserts a perfect shadowed silhouette of the kissing couple on the bed itself. Bullseye.

The sexy suggestions are not why one should watch Trouble in Paradise, however, but instead the snappy Lubitsch dialogue that had me laughing out loud throughout. The film is ripe with quick banter among the characters delivered in the most sophisticated manner that makes slapstick look utterly primitive. Apparently, Lubitsch throughout his career would act out every part in a movie to show the actors how to deliver the lines and move their bodies. He had started as an actor in Germany before entering directing there and finishing out the silent era in America, coming here at the bequest of Mary Pickford. Peter Bogdanovich has said that Lubitsch managed to get performances out of his actors that they did not convey in other films, which was likely the result of this control he exerted on the actual acting.

Sources: Peter Bogdanovich introduction on Criterion Collection DVD, TCM.com

If May 23 is your birthday, you learned to be self-sufficient in youth, enjoy physical freedom and are welcomed by all types and classes of people.  Sympathetic and sensitive, practical, responsible and self-confident in your intimate relationships, you handle family burdens and aim to make the best of life’s options.  Precocious as a child, you understand human nature – were never really a typical, self-absorbed teen-ager – and as an adult, have a unique ability to just “know” what’s right or wrong in any situation and to diagnose mental or physical ailments.  You are intelligent, wise, friendly and loyal…and, you are “a healer” in many ways.  Slow your emotional reactions. Govern your selfish pride.  Learn to control your temper to avoid unsettling surprises and changes = and you will attract a loving family, material comforts and respected lifestyle.

2011 mood and tempo is right up your alley…busy, surprising, challenging, offering rewards, fun and new enthusiasms.  May begins the pace and there may be difficult situations to overcome, June fills with emotional reactions and delayed responses, July is happier and friendly, August puts a focus on practical issues and September intensifies all that began and has gone on since October 2010.  Expect financial focus in March and December.  Open to a pivotal change and expansion of permanent business and personal relationships in 2012.  2011 is intended to soothe your restlessness, to get you out of your rut and to give you the freedom to add new people and life experiences to your memory-bank.

In 2011 wear the color turquoise to attract spontaneous, adventurous, unconventional friends.
Turquoise is your gem in 2011.
People whose names begin with the letters E, N and W steer you toward a lucky risk in  2011.
Tuesday is your lucky day of the week in 2011.

Your lottery numbers are: 1, 5, 19, 26, 28, 30. 

Celebrities born on May 23 are:  Mitch Albom (Author/”Tuesdays With Morrie”), Linden Ashby (Actor/”Mortal Kombat”), Barbara Barrie (Actor/”Barney Miller’), Helen Bonham Carter (Actor), Rosemary Clooney (Singer), Joan Collins (Actor), Lea DeLaria (Raunchy Lesbian Stand-Up Comedienne/Jazz Musician), Douglas Fairbanks (Actor), Betty Garrett (Actor), James Gleason (Actor), Bret Herta (Racing Car Driver), Marvelous Marvin Hagler (Boxer), Laurel Holloman (Actor/”The L Word”), Ken Jennings (“Jeopardy” all-time-Champion), Jewell (Singer/Guitarist), Herbert Marshall (Actor), Maxwell (Singer), John Newcombe (Tennis Hall of Fame), Helen OConnell (Singer/”Green Eyes”, “Amapola”), John Payne (Actor), Bruce A Peterson (Test Pilot), Artie Shaw (Band Leader), Buck Showalter (Baseball Manager), Linda Thompson (Actor/”Hee Haw”).

For your May 23 Life forecast order YOU ARE YOUR BIRTHDAY available at www.ellindodge.com \ click on BOOKS.  To see excerpts and to order books by Ellin Dodge:  NUMEROLOGY HAS YOUR NUMBER, YOU ARE YOUR FIRST NAME, YOU ARE YOUR BIRTHDAY, WIN THE LOTTERY! and FROM ACE TO ZUMMO  click on BOOKS at WWW.ELLINDODGE.COM now.

With all this unhappy money talk stuffing up the house, there are also issues of young Alexandra’s future.  At some points she seems to be following her mother’s terrible example, at other times she resembles her meek and miserable aunt Berdie (Patricia Collinge).  Regina and Oscar want Alexandra to marry her cousin Leo (Dan Duryea), Oscar’s conniving son who misuses his job at the bank.  But there is also David (Richard Carlson), the energetic young man who works for the newspaper and tries to write about the truth people have a right to hear that is kept out of his paper.  David doesn’t act as high class as Alexandra’s meddling family, but he is twice as sincere and confident.  He even sees Alexandra off at the train station in his pajamas.

Bette Davis puts up a magnificent performance as Regina.  She seems almost unnaturally tall in her gowns that are so tight in the middle.  There’s an air of domination every time she’s seen standing. Her cold expressions make us think that she is always plotting.  And her quick coy manner of speech, always about money or manipulation, tells us that we can never trust her.  Frankly, Davis makes Regina to be a classic, conspiring evil woman who only finds happiness in money and causing others pain and was rightfully nominated as Best Actress.

We see the poisonous effects Regina has on those around her.  Alexandra has a few despicable moments that she knows would make her mother proud.  It’s her father that sheds a positive moral light on Alexandra, making her realize the horrible influences she has been around.

At the heart of the story, adapted from Lillian Hellman’s play, is a moral of caution.  The mill Regina and her brothers want to invest in will thrive on hard labor at terrible wages.  While they are well aware of this, they conspire only with the intention to make themselves rich, not caring that their plan will only bring pain to everyone around them.  The title of the film comes from a line in the Song of Solomon, “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.”  Alongside this idea of removing the destructive beings is the idea that it is just as wrong to watch the destruction happen without doing anything to stop it.  It’s a tender moment watching all the good hearted characters in the story come together in a moral realization, and so triumphant when they act.

“I’ll die my own way, and I’ll do it without making the world worse. I leave that to you.”

His next film, Rebecca (1940), also won the Academy Award for best picture, and his films Since You Went Away (1944) and Spellbound (1945) were both nominated. With the advent of the auteur theory, Rebecca and Spellbound are remembered primarily as Alfred Hitchcock’s films, but Selznick’s power and influence in Hollywood during the ’30s and ’40s can’t be underestimated.

Selznick spent two years making Duel in the Sun, at an unprecedented cost of $6 million. He spent another $2 million on promotion, which was equally unheard-of at the time. (Some of the more novel advertising methods were 5,000 parachutes dropped at the Kentucky Derby and body stickers handed out at beaches that spelled out the title of the film on skin after a day of sunbathing.)

The trailer for the film proclaimed that it was “the picture of a thousand memorable moments,” and that’s true. The problem is that one memorable moment after another doesn’t necessarily add up to a single memorable film. The cinematography by Hal Rosson, Lee Garmes, and Ray Rennahan is occasionally breathtaking, and there are a few shots that are among the best I’ve ever seen on film, but there’s nothing to anchor them.

Like Gone With the Wind, Duel in the Sun was credited to a single director, but there were more directors who worked on the film who never received credit. King Vidor is the man who got his name in the credits, but Otto Brower, William Dieterle, Sidney Franklin, William Cameron Menzies, Josef von Sternberg, and even Selznick himself sat in the director’s chair at one point or another during production.

Duel in the Sun is a pretentious, overblown mess, but it’s worth seeing at least once in your life. Of course, you have to get through the “prelude” that opens the film. The word PRELUDE sits on the screen against a backdrop of a desert sunrise, accompanied by Dimitri Tiomkin’s score. As if that wasn’t enough, the prelude is followed by an overture. The word OVERTURE sits on the screen against a backdrop of a desert sunset. The narrator (an uncredited Orson Welles) gives us a taste of what we’re about to see, but it’s still 12 minutes of nothing but Tiomkin’s music and two static images. Hell of a way to start a picture.

Anyway, if you can make it through that, you can make it through anything, even an insane story about a “renegade Creole squaw-man” named Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall) who’s hanged for murdering his lusty Indian wife and her lover. Before his execution, Mr. Chavez arranges for his half-breed daughter, Pearl (Jennifer Jones), to live with his second cousin and old flame Laura Belle (Lillian Gish).

The kind-hearted Laura Belle welcomes Pearl with open arms, but her husband, the wheelchair-bound Senator Jackson McCanles (Lionel Barrymore), is less charitable. “I didn’t spend thirty years on this place to turn it into no Injun reservation,” he growls.

Much of the film is a push-pull between the two McCanles sons, the gentlemanly Jesse (Joseph Cotten) and the brutish Lewt (Gregory Peck, in a rare role as a villain). Pearl is never really accepted into the family, and lives in servants’ quarters. Shortly after she arrives to stay, Lewt swaggers into her room one night and forces himself on her. She kisses him back savagely at the last second, so it’s not quite rape, but the implication is still there.

There are a lot of jump cuts in Duel in the Sun. Some are necessary — like when Cotten slaps Peck across the face and then the scene cuts to a closer shot in which Peck’s cheek is scratched and blood is pouring out of his mouth — but most seem like a byproduct of sloppy filmmaking, or a big-budget epic sprawling out of control.

Lewt promises to marry Pearl, but quickly backs out. When a kindly rancher named Sam Pierce (Charles Bickford) proposes to her, however, Lewt murders him. Afterward, he tells Pearl, “Anybody who was my girl is still my girl. That’s the kind of guy I am. You know … loyal.”

Duel in the Sun came to be pejoratively known as Lust in the Dust, which is a more apt title. Jennifer Jones appears in all manner of undress and compromising positions, and looks great doing it. It’s sometimes called a “Freudian” western, but I didn’t see much that was Freudian about it, except for the stunning final 10 minutes. The finale is the most overwrought and ridiculous expression of the intertwined relationship between Eros and Thanatos that I’ve ever seen.

Duel in the Sun was never a hit with critics, but it was the second biggest box office success of 1947. It ran into more censorship trouble than any film since Howard Hughes’s “roll-in-the-hay” western The Outlaw (1943), which starred Jane Russell and her enormous breasts, and at least some of the notoriety of Duel in the Sun came from the very public knowledge that Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick were both cheating on their spouses with each other.

In 1948, Selznick retired from producing films. Duel in the Sun might not be the apotheosis of his 20 year-long career in terms of quality, but it’s probably the wildest, weirdest, sexiest, and campiest movie that the chain-smoking, amphetamine-popping Lothario ever produced. And it sure is pretty to look at.

DVD / Info

{ Fonts: Freebooter Script, Market Deco / Image Source: 1 }

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

      All Hitchcock movies have an element of humor to them, even the straight horror ones such as Psycho, but none of his mysteries is funnier than Foreign Correspondent. I developed a certain fondeness for Joel McCrea after seeing this one. I would not say the man is a great actor but he is funny, if not dry. Paired with George Sanders, the movie is full of laughs.

     My favorite aspect is Sanders’ character’s name. It’s ffolliott, spelled with two Fs both lowercase because one his relatives was beheaded by Henry VIII and his wife lowercased the letters in the man’s memory. Only Hitchcock would design a joke like that.

     Set just before England goes to war with Germany, McCrea’s Johnny is assigned as a foreign correspondent in England and the start of the film pokes fun at the many English-American differences in manner and dress. Johnny’s first assignment involves him interviewing Dutch diplomat Van Meer, whom he happens to run into on his way the event where the foreigner is the guest of honor. He shares a cab with the man but after they arrive at the event it is announced Van Meer was detained and unable to join the guests. Johnny also meets love interest Carol Fisher (Laraine Day) at the event. Johnny goes to Amsterdam looking for Van Meer, and finds him although the diplomat does not remember the reporter. On the spot Van Meer is shot and Johnny chases after the murderer. He happens to jump into a car occupied by Carol and ffolliott who humor him with the chase that concludes at a windmill.

     The windmill set is quite impressive, full of winding staircases, windows and rotating cogs. Therein Johnny must sneak about past some Germans and into an upstairs room where he finds Van Meer, alive. It turns out the assassinated one was “a substitute” to make it look as though the diplomat is dead when in fact he is being held captive until he reveals the memorized content of a secret clause of a peace treaty. Upon returning to London, Johnny discovers that one of the men at the windmill, a German in a turtleneck, is pals with Carol’s father, the head of a peace organization, he tells the father of the woman he plans to marry about his suspicions. I’ll stop there to save the surprises.

     Foreign Correspondent tends to go unnoticed among Hitchcock’s work but I really consider it among my favorites. It is full of laughs and a story that unravels in typical Hitchcock fashion.

The MacGuffin: Treaty Clause 27.

Where’s Hitch? 12 minutes into the film when McCrea leaves his hotel, Hitchcock is outside in a hat and coat and reading a newspaper.

Source: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan

I will be posting reviews of Hitchcock movies every hour ending at 8 p.m. today, but other members of the Classic Movie Blog Association, which is hosting the blogathon, have plenty to offer also. Links to their articles is up at the CMBA site. Check them out!

A typical day at Winthrop...not. (From "Good News

After a fast Christmas break, I have moved back into my Winthrop University dorm for the last time.  In honor of my last semester as a college “co-ed”  here is a blog with different representations of college in classic film and judge at how realistic the films portray college.

*I’d like to point out that all of these are classic films, so don’t be disappointed that I didn’t review “Animal House” or “Accepted.”

Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston in "The Freshman"

•The Freshman (1925)-

Harold Lloyd is very excited about going to college after seeing a movie about a popular campus. Lloyd’s only purpose at college is to be the big man on campus. He achieves this by doing a silly dance before he shakes people’s hands and fumbling around the football field. However, he just makes a fool of himself. To review: I’m not a huge fan of Harold Lloyd actually (I am loyal to Buster Keaton), but this is actually one of my favorite silent movies. It’s heartbreaking to see how people make fun of him but also hilarious at the same time. I really don’t know what college life was like in the 1920s, but in my college experiences there is not one BIG popular person. I will say, I am on a fairly small campus of 6,500 people so there are notable figures but no one person who I would say is the most popular.

•Pigskin Parade (1936)- Winston and Bessie Winters (Jack Haley and Patsy Kelly) are college coaches trying to have a winning season. Things are going rough until hillbilly Amos (Stuart Erwin) and his sister Sairy (Judy Garland)-also a redneck- come to campus.  Amos can throw a winning football pass after throwing melons on the farm. To review: Its been a long time since I’ve seen this movie but I remember it being pretty excruciating. Between Judy’s country accent and the Yacht Boys singing, it was pretty obnoxious.

Rosemary and Priscilla Lane publicity shot for "Variety Show"

•Varsity Show (1937)-

Priscilla and Rosemary Lane (as Betty and Barbara) and friends are trying to put on a show on Winfield Campus, but the faculty doesn’t like swing music. They pull in former student and Broadway star Chuck Day (Dick Powell), to help with the show, but his last performances have laid eggs. To review: I love Priscilla Lane and Dick Powell, and its fun to see them in a movie together. However, this is another stereotypical song and dance college musical. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen in college put on as big of a show as they do in this movie.

•Vivacious Lady (1938)-Francey (Ginger Rogers) marries college chemistry professor Peter (James Stewart). The marriage is a secret from his family because he is already engaged and his father (Charles Coburn)  is the college president. Stewart and Rogers go to extreme measures to stay together, including Rogers becoming a student at the college. To review: This is one of my favorite movies. Rogers and Stewart have wonderful chemistry and there are several funny moments. I did think most of the college students in Stewart’s class looked a lot older than college students though.

•Bathing Beauty (1944)- Caroline (Esther Williams) goes back to her old job as a teacher at a girls’ college after a misunderstanding with her boyfriend Steve (Red Skelton). Steve tries to win Caroline back by finding a loophole in the rules and enrolling in the school. Comedic moments ensue with Red in a tutu and Harry James jazzing up music class. To review: I love this movie. Esther is beautiful in Technicolor. Xavier Cugat and Lina Romay spice it up with Latin rhythm along with other musical talents like Ethel Smith and Harry James. I know that James and Cugat don’t come and jazz up “I’ll Take the High Road” in music class in college, but it certainly does make college look fun. I also love the ever pert and fun Jean Porter in this movie. She really seems like the quintessential college/high school young lady of the 1940s to me.

Susan Peters is a co-ed with "Young Ideas"

•Young Ideas (1943)- Romance author Josephine Evans(Mary Astor) marries college professor Mike (Herbert Marshall) and cancels her book tour.  Astor’s children, Susan (Susan Peters) and Jeff (Elliot Reed), oppose of the marriage, especially since it may mean their mother’s book career is over. Susan and Jeff enroll in college and do whatever they can to break up the marriage. To review: This is a classic, fun MGM movie from the 1940s. I love Herbert Marshall and he was really funny in this movie. Susan Peters and Elliot Reed were pretty bratty but Richard Carleson gave a nice balance to it. This movie seemed the most of what college might have been like-though I do wonder if freshman really wore little beanies.

•Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble (1944)- Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) goes to college and is surrounded by beautiful girls-his dream. Two twin blondes trick him and he falls for the icy Kay Wilson (Bonita Granville). Hardy competes with professor Dr. Standish (Herbert Marshall) for Kay’s attention. To review: I don’t like the Andy Hardy movies as much when he goes to college. However, the way college was represented seemed to be pretty realistic.

Peter Lawford and June Allyson in "Good News"

•Good News (1947)- In the 1920s, co-ed librarian June Allyson isn’t exactly what you would call a vamp. Allyson falls for popular, football star Peter Lawford but he is interested in modern woman, Patricia Marshall.  Several songs are fit in during the pursuit of love, including a great number involving “The Varsity Drag.” To review: Once again, I wonder if in the 1920s, schools were so small to have one person who is the most popular? The movie is fun and colorful, but it seems more a vehicle for Joan McCracken and Patricia Marshall-neither who did much else in movies. I wish June Allyson was in the movie more, because she was the whole reason I watched it.  

•An Apartment for Peggy (1948)- Peggy (Jeanne Crain) and Jason (William Holden) are married, and Jason is going to college as a chemistry major using the G.I. Bill.  Professor Henry Barnes (Edmund Gwenn), a professor at the college, has decided he has lived long enough and wants to commit suicide. The couple lives in a trailer, but needs more room because Peggy is expecting. The professor agrees to let the couple rent out his attic as an apartment and his views on life begin to change. To review: This is a really fun and cute movie. It is very light hearted but let me warn you for some sad parts. I think the college aspect is pretty realistic when put in perspective of post-war men using G.I. Bill to go to college and their wives and their struggles.

•Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949)- Clifton Webb as Mr. Belvedere decides to enroll in college since his highest level of education is from the fifth grade.  Though he is older than all the students, Belvedere is considered a freshman and has to deal with ritual hazing. During all of this he makes friends with Tom Drake and beautiful Shirley Temple who has a secret. To review: The movie is very funny, and Clifton Webb gives a droll perfomance as always. Other than the hazing, I thought this seemed pretty similar to a real college. It was pretty large and it didn’t seem like there was that one person in charge.

The Varisty Drag from Good News:

Other college films:
College (1927)- Starring Buster Keaton
College Swing (1938)- Starring Bob Hope, Gracie Allen and Martha Raye
Dancing Co-Ed (1939)-Starring Lana Turner, Ann Rutherford,  and Artie Shaw
These Glamour Girls (1939)- Starring Lana Turner, Lew Ayres and Anita Louise
Second Chorus (1940)- Starring Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard, Burgess Meredith and Artie Shaw
The Feminine Touch (1941)- Starring Rosalind Russell and Ray Milland
The Male Animal (1942)- Starring Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Leslie
The Falcon and The Co-Ed (1943)- Starring Tom Conway
Mother is a Freshman (1949)- Starring Van Johnson and Loretta Young
High Time (1960)- Starring Bing Crosby, Tuesday Weld and Richard Beymer
Joy in the Morning (1965)- Starring Richard Chamberlin and Yvette Mimeux

Check out the Comet Over Hollywood Facebook page and Radio Waves Over Hollywood Facebook page.

So why didn’t I like it? Everything about this film reeks of “Oscar bait.” It’s high-minded, pretentious, and self-important, but ultimately shallow. There are a number of interesting characters in the framing sections of the film, but the central story about a young man named Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) seeking enlightenment in Eastern spirituality falls flat, and everything else in the movie hangs on it.

Darrell is a veteran of the Great War who returns home to Chicago in 1919 questioning life after a fellow soldier — a friend of his — died saving his life. His confusion and guilt lead him to reject ordinary life and travel the world searching for meaning. He leaves behind his fiancée, porcelain-skinned beauty Isabel Bradley (Gene Tierney), as well as a sharply drawn cast of supporting characters; Isabel’s uncle, the fabulously wealthy and snobbish Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb), the tragic hanger-on Sophie MacDonald (Anne Baxter), and “regular guy” Gray Maturin (John Payne). Just as in the novel, Maugham himself (played by Herbert Marshall) pops in and out of these characters’ lives.

When Tyrone Power first appears in the film, the character of Maugham says in voiceover, “This is the young man of whom I write. He is not famous. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end, he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on this earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. Yet it may be that the way of life he has chosen for himself may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men, so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.”

Maugham’s words are prophetic. In the decades after he wrote The Razor’s Edge, many young men (and some women) would seek wisdom and enlightenment just as Larry does, traveling the world working a series of menial jobs and seeking truth in non-Christian religions.

While working in a coal mine in France, Larry plays cards and drinks with an old man who eventually turns out to be (unshockingly, based on the dialogue that passes between them) a defrocked priest running away from himself. The priest tells Larry of an Indian holy man who is vastly wise, and who may be able to set Larry straight.

Larry makes his way to India, and it was at this point that — at least for me — the movie took a nosedive. While all kinds of terrible things are happening to the other characters — Isabel is in a loveless marriage, Sophie loses her baby and becomes an alcoholic, etc. — Larry hangs out in a set that looks left over from Anna and the King of Siam and studies with an Indian guru who is ridiculously played by British actor Cecil Humphreys. The holy man speaks only of “God,” nothing specific, and certainly nothing polytheistic. His mysticism is inoffensive New Age stuff along the lines of Deepak Chopra’s vague aphorisms.

After Larry learns all he can from books, the holy man sends him on a pilgrimage to the mountains, where he receives “enlightenment” in the form of a matte painting of sun bursting out from behind the clouds and one last mealy-mouthed conversation with the guru.

All of this might have been meaningful in the novel. I can’t say, as I haven’t read it. But at least in this film, Larry’s spiritual journey is a bunch of vague nonsense that trades on the supposed exoticism of the East without actually including anything strange or specific enough to offend Peoria. Worst of all, he returns to his circle of friends, who are now bumming around Europe, with what amounts to a bag of parlor tricks. He does some hypnosis, forcing his friend Gray to drop a coin after he counts to ten and then tells Gray that he will feel pain no longer. Stuff like that. I was surprised he hadn’t learned to turn himself invisible, like Lamont Cranston in The Shadow.

When the movie ends, we’re supposed to believe that everyone who came into contact with Larry is better, somehow, because he is possessed of the most powerful force in the universe, goodness. But what is it about him makes him so good? He agrees to marry Sophie when she is in the depths of her alcoholism, which leads another character to describe him as being in the grips of self-sacrifice, which seems more apt.

Is Larry a good person because, at the end of the film, he works his way back to America on a tramp steamer? So do legions of cruder, simpler men. Does the mere fact of Larry’s enlightened attitude make his manual labor somehow nobler than the manual labor of “lesser” men? If it does, then why? The film never answers this question, but rather asks us to accept its thesis at face value.

I love all the actors in The Razor’s Edge, and they give some of the best performances of their careers in this film. But while it contains plenty of strong individual scenes, it’s a sodden, overlong snoozefest.

The Little Foxes (1941)

     To say The Little Foxes is a triumph for Bette Davis is an understatement. The story of conniving southern siblings seeking to further their riches to the detriment of their workers and customers was seemingly designed for the evil qualities Davis brings to her role. Davis begins the picture looking absolutely stunning in very complimentary Orry-Kelly gowns and favorable makeup but somehow as the film progresses, what I first viewed as a gorgeous face turns into a horror-inducing facade. Late in the film she sits slouching in an armchair as her husband succumbs before her with an unmoving expression of surprise and evil that I might never shake.

Regina sits as a statue as her husband stumbles to his death.

     The Little Foxes also marks the screen debut of Teresa Wright. The 22 year old had stage experience but really shows her talent by giving an Oscar-nominated performance as the sheltered daughter who becomes wise to her family’s infamy and develops a spine by film’s end. I have always found Wright to play consistently nice-girl roles, and this spot is no different, yet she really comes off as a master. The star also set a precedent by being nominated for an Oscar for her first three performances, winning one for her second, Mrs. Miniver. In total, The Little Foxes was nominated for nine Academy Awards but won none of them. Davis was given a Best Actress nod and another Supporting Actress nomination went to Patricia Collinge, who plays the air-headed sister-in-law to Davis’ Regina. Collinge is absolutely magnificent and at times reminded me of Katharine Hepburn‘s performance in Long Day’s Journey into Night.

     Given the overabundance of fine performances, The Little Foxes has a lasting impact on the viewer. What begins as a normal southern family tale slowly transforms into a grotesque story of greed and manipulation. It is certainly among Davis’ finest work and a must see for any film fan.

• The Little Foxes is set for 8:45 a.m. ET Feb. 2 on TCM.

Helen Faraday (Marlene Dietrich) is a former showgirl married to chemist Ned (Herbert Marshall) and mother to Johnny (Dickie Moore).  She gave up her stage career to become a wife and mother, but when Ned gets Radium poisoning and needs to go to Germany for treatment, Helen goes back to performing to get the money.  After her first performance, she meets the young and wealthy Nick Townsend (Cary Grant).  He’s quite smitten with her and she uses him to get all the money she needs to pay for her husband’s treatment.  While Ned is in Germany, Helen carries on her affair with Nick.  The two of them have a swell time living in luxury, but since Helen wasn’t living in her apartment during this time, she misses a telegram from Ned saying he’d be returning two weeks earlier than expected.  Of course, Ned is absolutely livid and Helen takes Johnny and leaves before Ned can take Johnny from her.  Ned reports them as missing and the two of them travel from town to town, Helen taking any job she can get.  Sometimes she can get a job in a nightclub, sometimes she works on a farm, but eventually, she has to turn to prostitution.

When the law finally catches up with her, she hands Johnny over to Ned.  Without Johnny around, Helen hits rock bottom and is stuck living in a flophouse.  But eventually, she manages to pull herself up and go over to Paris.  Under the name Helen Jones, she becomes a nightclub sensation and even runs into Nick again.  They become engaged, but Nick realizes the only thing that truly makes Helen happy is Johnny.  Nick arranges for Helen to see Johnny one more time.  But when Ned sees Helen with Johnny again, it makes him question whether or not he wants her to stay.

Blonde Venus is one of my favorite Marlene Dietrich movies, I rank it right up there with The Blue Angel and Witness for the Prosecution.  The story might not be perfect, but I like it anyway.  For example, I don’t really understand why she carries on an affair with Nick.  Does she not want to be alone?  Does she want the lifestyle he can offer?  I’m not really sure.  This is one of her famous collaborations with director Josef von Sternberg, but I think this one is rather different from his other collaborations with her.  Usually, von Sternberg bent over backwards to make Dietrich’s character into the most outrageously glamorous person you’ll ever see.  Think of the lavish costumes and sets of The Scarlett Empress and Shanghai Lily’s extravagant wardrobe in Shanghai Express.  But here, we don’t see that quite as much.  Oh sure, Helen has some glamorous stage costumes and some scenes where she wears some nice things Nick has clearly paid for.  But we also see her giving Johnny a bath and wearing tattered dresses, things Shanghai Lily wouldn’t be caught dead wearing.

I’m quite fond of Dietrich’s performance here because even though we get to see the glamorous side of Dietrich that we know quite well, but I also liked getting to see Dietrich the mother.  Dickie Moore was just adorable and I really enjoyed his scenes with Marlene.  Blonde Venus came very early in Cary Grant’s career, and even though there are hints at just how suave and charming he could be, he hadn’t quite found his niche yet.  And it didn’t help that, according to Cary, von Sternberg didn’t really direct him all that much.  I would have really liked to see Cary and Marlene do another movie together after Cary had become a more developed actor.  There was definitely some chemistry there, I think they could have done something great.

When Lord Philip Rexford (Herbert Marshall) and Mary (Norma Shearer), a party girl socialite, are invited to a costume party and are given a couple of ridiculous costumes to wear, it turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  Before the party, the two of them meet and, upon seeing how goofy their costumes are, they decide to skip the party, ditch the costumes, and spend the evening together dressed as normal people.  That night leads to a whirlwind romance and an impulsive marriage.  Five years later, they are still happily married with a daughter and living in England and Mary’s wilder days seem safely behind her.  But when Philip has to take a trip alone, Mary quickly becomes lonely and accepts his Aunt Hetty’s invitation to take a trip to Cannes.  The two of them have a swell time, but things start to get out of hand when Mary finds out Tommie Trent (Robert Montgomery) is staying in the same hotel.  Tommie has quite a reputation of his own and had a thing for Mary in the past.  Unfortunately, Tommie’s hard-living lifestyle has caught up with him and left him nearly suicidal.  But when Mary shows up at his hotel room, everything brightens up for him.  She brings him down to the party, the two of them get drunk, and have a lot of fun together.  But when Tommie gets carried away and kisses Mary, Mary goes back to her room instead of being unfaithful.  Tommie tries to follow her back to her hotel room by climbing onto her balcony, but ends up taking a serious fall.

When Mary finds out what happened, she goes to see him in the hospital.  But when she is photographed kissing him very innocently, her marriage is torn apart by scandal.  Mary swears up and down that nothing happened, but given her past, he won’t believe her.  When Tommie was well enough, she had him come and tell the whole story to Philip, but that only makes things worse.  Eventually, Philip decides he wants a divorce and Mary begins a real relationship with Tommie.  But then Philip does some investigating and finds out Mary was telling the truth the whole time and asks her to come see him.  Still in love with him, she gladly goes, but Tommie decides to see Philip, too, to tell him how he feels about Mary.

Riptide was Norma Shearer’s final pre-code and compared to some of her other pre-codes, the story feels relatively tame.  It’s not as obviously scandalous as The Divorcee and it’s not like her character is challenging conventional values such as marriage like in Strangers May Kiss.  But it still definitely has its pre-code moments.  It’s got a former wild party girl trying to put her past behind her, a married woman cavorting with a former lover, and when the divorce papers are drawn up, she even willingly gives up custody of her daughter.  Norma’s performance here is one of my favorites out of all her pre-codes.  When her character was supposed to be fun, boy was she bubbly, fun, and free.  She was quite intoxicating to watch.  I also like the fact that she closed the pre-code chapter of her career with her best co-star of that era, Robert Montgomery.  I think it’s interesting that the pre-code era of Norma’s career really began and ended with movies both dealing with troubled marriages that also starred Robert Montgomery.  Riptide makes for a nice bookend to that era of Norma’s career.  And if for no other reason, it’s worth seeing just for Norma’s entrance dressed in her ridiculous insect costume.  Best Norma Shearer entrance ever!

Leslie Crosbie (Jeanne Eagels) is married to Robert (Reginald Owen), a rubber plantation in Malaya.  When Robert leaves for a night, Leslie sends a letter to her lover Geoffrey Hammond (Herbert Marshall), asking him to come see her.  When he gets the letter, Geoffrey is with his new mistress Li-Ti (Lady Tsen Mei).  At first they make fun of Leslie, but Geoffrey decides to go see her to break things off with her.  But Leslie isn’t too happy about him ending things with her so she grabs a gun and shoots him repeatedly.  She tells police that she killed him in self-defense and she sticks to that story until her lawyer finds out that Li-Ti has the letter she sent to Geoffrey the night he was killed.  Leslie agrees that they should buy the letter from her and the court clears her of all charges.  But then the lawyer goes to Robert to get reimbursed for buying the letter and Robert finds out the truth.

This version of The Letter is significantly different from the 1940 Bette Davis version.  First of all, the Bette Davis version is more ambiguous.  Her version opens with Leslie shooting Geoffrey, but we don’t actually see what happened before then.  We don’t know for sure if Leslie is telling the truth or not until the movie gets going.  But in the 1929 version, we actually get to see Leslie interact with Geoffrey and the events leading up to Geoffrey’s death.  And when Leslie goes to pay Li-Ti for the letter, Li-Ti truly revels in making Leslie grovel first.  Gale Sondergaard made Bette Davis work for that letter a little bit, but Li-Ti milked it for all she could.  She loved showing some children how she can have a wealthy white woman on her knees before her.  Perhaps the most pre-code element of this version is that Leslie really gets away with murder.  When the production codes were enforced, the sinners always had to pay for what they did.  In the Bette Davis version, she gets off in the eyes of the law, but in the end, Mrs. Hammond makes sure Leslie gets what’s coming to her.  But in the pre-code version, Leslie is not only cleared in court, she absolutely refuses to be punished in any way by anybody else.  Leslie and her husband had originally planned to leave the country as soon as the trial was over.  But then her husband found out about the letter and instead of leaving, he decides to make her stay there as a punishment.  That’s when she unrepentantly declares, “With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!”  He may be trying to punish her by making her stuck with him, but she punishes him right back because not only is he stuck with her, he’s stuck with someone who still loves another man.  I also love how Herbert Marshall went from playing Geoffrey in the 1929 version to playing Robert in the 1940 version.

The 1929 version of The Letter desperately needs to be more available.  I had to download it from a torrent because it’s not available on VHS or DVD and I don’t recall ever seeing it on TCM.  The copy I watched was in rather poor quality, but I could clearly see that it’s a very good little movie.  It packs a lot into an hour and Jeanne Eagels set a high standard for Bette Davis to live up to, especially in the final scene.  A lot of the early talkies haven’t held up very well over time, but time has actually been rather kind to The Letter.  The sound quality may be primitive, but the dialogue itself holds up better than a lot of other early talkies.  I’d really love to see a good quality version of it someday.  A real gem that deserves to be seen.