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Hollywood’s Real Tough-Guy Gangster. (No, His Name Wasn’t “Bugsy”)

Mar21
2013 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, marveling at how close were the links between the movie studios in the Forties and Fifties and organized crime.

The big studios today are run as faceless corporate entities by interchangeable bureaucrats operationally on another planet from the Bugsy Siegels and Mickey Cohens of Hollywood lore.  But back then, gangsters were required by studio bigwigs for all manner of purposes — both business and personal — and it was not uncommon for mobsters to date actresses.

Through the years, those interested in Hollywood mobsters have generally focused on the antics of Siegel, the Brookyn-born tough guy who transformed himself into a  Los Angeles social smoothie with access to big and small studios alike and entrees to various actresses of varying popularity.

He was shot to death in the Beverly Hills home of his mistress in 1947. He was played in the movie, Bugsy, by Warren Beatty in 1991 .

Up until recently, Cohen, perhaps the more vicious of the two, got short shrift.  Although he garnered reams of publicity in his time, he never got a bigtime movie named after him. With Warner Bros.’ Gangster Squad, Mickey finally receives his due — or is it comeuppance. (Squad is about an intrepid band of tough LAPD cops in an off-the-books assault on Cohen and his empire.)

The recently released film portrays Cohen as a psychopathic slob, all facial grimaces and tics, spouting a fare smattering of fake deez, dems and doz.

In fact, Cohen was a wily, balding, fat-nosed runt of a man (a fast 5-feet, 5-inches tall) who was brought down on tax evasions charges (not murder, as the movie has it) and sent to Alcatraz. He died of stomach cancer in 1976, which for sheer longevity gives him an influential edge over Siegel.

Perhaps his closest link with mainstream studio life was via Johnny Stompanato, whom Cohen took on as a gofer-enforcer-bodyguard in the Forties.

Born in 1925 in Woodstock, Illinois, Stompanato went to a military high school before joining the Marines in 1943, and seeing combat in the Pacific. After a failed marriage, he arrived at 22 in Hollywood in 1948, and quickly connected with Cohen, according to the author Tere Tereba’s biography of the gangster, Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.’s Notorious Mobster.

Johnny’s FBI file describes him as a procurer of girls for Mickey Cohen’s out-of-town contacts.  The LAPD blunt characterization: a notorious pimp. Cohen described him as lacking a ‘vicious nature,’ a lover, not a fighter. His bedroom prowess quickly became legendary, writes Tereba. Oscar, his nickname, referred to the Academy Award-winning size of his phallus.

No wonder, then, that Stompanato is best remembered as Lana Turner’s lover — the one who came to that bloody finale.

The end of the affair came on a rainy Good Friday night, April 4, 1958, with the information that Stompanato’s dead body could be found on the floor of the pink bedroom of Lana’s Bedford Drive residence. And eight-inch kitchen knife had been shoved into his solar plexus, piercing his aorta and kidney. Cheryl Crane was found to have committed justifiable homicide in trying to defend her mother, writes Tereba.

Interestingly, the character and legend surrounding Stompanato is left out of Gangster Squad.  Not left out is Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen, a portrayal described by British film journal Sight & Sound as “a mannered, manic performance.”  Right on the money.  Mickey deserved better.

 

 

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How Important ARE Oscar Nominations?

Jan28
2013 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

So the film you thought was the best last year, or the film you worked on, didn’t get ONE Oscar nomination. Not ONE. Not in ANY category.

Don’t fret. History has proven that many films never recognized by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have gone on to become classics.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here to tell you that a genuinely classic film doesn’t need any recognition from The Academy.

John Ford’s great western, The Searchers, (below with Natalie Wood) is undoubtedly a classic and deemed one of John Wayne’s best films. But it didn’t get even an Oscar nomination, not one.  Neither did 1939′s Destry Rides Again, another classic, so good that the studio tried to capitalize on it by remaking it a couple of times.

Take (and we suggest you do) director Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, which many consider the quintessential Film Noir. Despite superb performances by Robert Mitchum and by costar Jane Greer, who set the bar here for ruthless femme fatales,  the 1947 picture was totally ignored at Oscar time.

As was the Lana Turner/John Garfield classic The Postman Always Rings Twice. Frank’s pick for best war film of the 1940s, director Lewis Milestone’s  A Walk in the Sun featuring a marvelous cast headed by Dana Andrews, was overlooked as well.

Frank’s Academy Award outrage is more recent, in 1981, when the Best Picture Oscar went to Ordinary People, a domestic melodrama directed by Robert Redford (he made his debut as director here) and costarring Donald Sutherland, Timothy Hutton and Mary Tyler Moore.

Largely ignored in the best picture category that year was Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, the beautifully rendered biopic of boxer Jake LaMotta (played by Robert DeNiro, who did get the best actor Oscar ). While the Redford picture has since been all but forgotten, Raging Bull as achieved its rightful status as a classic, perhaps the best sports-related movie ever made.

We could go on and on  - Paths of Glory, Touch of Evil (above with Charleton Heston and Janet Leigh) Gilda, The Big Heat, Sweet Smell of Success,  – even King Kong.  You, dear reader, might have a favorite that’s been slighted.  Let us know.

Some might say that perhaps those who nominate don’t recognize a good movie when they see one. Or to be more charitable, any good movie will survive a nominating committee.

But one thing is for sure, when it comes to recognizing greatness the old adage applies, “only time will tell.”

 

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‘Mildred Pierce,’ ‘Postman’ & ‘Double Indemnity.” What Next From James M. Cain?

Nov16
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

A lusty young wife, who finds her much older husband boring and physically repulsive. A virile vagabond, who turns up at the door one day. Eyes lock, libidos surge and then — all hell breaks loose.

That pretty much sums up the plot of 1946′s The Postman Always Rings Twice, the vintage crime melodrama costarring Lana Turner and John Garfield, based on James M. Cain’s novel published 12 years before.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here to say that Postman’s plot elements are very similar to those of the novelist’s new book — yes, NEW book — just now published a full 35 years after the crime writer’s death.

The Cocktail Waitress is billed as “The Lost Final Novel By James M. Cain,” unearthed in several manuscript forms and in excerpts of various lengths. It was put together and edited by Charles Ardai – who spent nine years tracking down the title and securing its publication rights.  (The publisher is the A Hard Case Crime Book line of Titan Books.)

The plot hardly shows its age. The Cocktail Waitress features a shapely young mother, a brutal first husband who dies in a car crash, a vulnerable child, a hot young lover and a wealthy second husband with a heart condition who dies suspiciously.

And, there is a determined local cop who suspects the waitress all along. The story is told from her point-of-view so it’s not clear if she is the vulnerable, put-upon heroine in great stress or the femme fatale.

Take it from us, The Cocktail Waitress is a most enjoyable read, and a novel, we suspect, that would make a good movie. Keep in mind that from 1944 through 1946, Hollywood churned out three of the finest crime movies ever made — 1944′s Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder, 1945′s Mildred Pierce with Joan Crawford, and Postman. All of them are based on Cain novels.

MGM had to tone down Postman a bit from Cain’s sexier version — which was banned in Boston — but the movie certainly conveys the steamy highlights. Leave it to those lusty Europeans to first spot, understand and then latch onto the Cain property. The earliest movie based on the novel dates from 1939, and is French, Le Dernier Tournant (The Last Turn).

We haven’t caught up with that French version.  But for our money, the best of the movies based on the Cain novel (and probably the most faithful to the feeling of the book) is renowned Italian director Luchino Visconti’s 1942 maiden film, Ossessione.

The performances of the two leads – Clara Calamai as the young wife, Massimo Girotti as the vagabond — are dynamite.  The sexual tension between the two leaps off the screen.  It helped that Calamai was no stranger to onscreen friskiness (she had bared her breasts in a previous movie, a very big deal at the time) and Girotti, who died at 84 in 2003, was always regarded as a handsome, physical actor.

Like the Cain novel Ossessione ran into censorship problems. The film’s negative was said to have been destroyed by fascists although Visconti managed to hide and keep a print.  Thank heavens, because the picture is a true classic.  We urge you to take a look.

In an informative afterword to The Cocktail Waitress, Ardai writes that Cain showed us life as it is lived, language as it is spoken; the dreams and hungers and despairs of ordinary people in dire situations; the impact on the human soul of crisis and the ability of the human animal to give up its humanity under duress.

Cain’s characters sweat, and have reason to… His final novel shows us that even at the end Cain still had the ability to disturb, to trouble, to shock. 

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WAS VAN JOHNSON GAY?

Feb02
2012 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

 

 Hello Everybody.  This is Mister Joe Morella and Mister Frank Segers here again at ClassicMoviechat. MRS. Norman Maine is out, wandering about.

We thought we’d reprise an old column for some of our newer readers.

In the 1940’s, MGM supremo Louis B. Mayer pondered the question posed above, and he wasn’t sure he liked the answer. At stake, after all, was the future of one of MGM’s biggest studio-groomed stars.

The blunt fact of the matter is that being gay back then was a career killer for a Hollywood leading man on the rise. In the case of Van Johnson, subterfuge if not tight secrecy could well be called for.

Born Charles Van Dell Johnson in 1916 in Newport, Rhode Island, raised as an only child in a grim, motherless household (an alcoholic, she left early; Van was raised by his dour Swedish-American father, a tight-lipped plumber), Johnson fled to New York after high school, undertaking countless chorus boy jobs in Broadway shows and touring musicals.

On Oct. 18, 1939, he found himself in the Broadway opening of the Rogers and Hart musical Too Many Girls, directed by George Abbott. Van was cast in one of the many “student” roles in the production; more important, he was the understudy to the show’s stars: Eddie Bracken and a handsome new Cuban sensation by the name of Desiderio Alberto Arnaz ye de Acha the Third, billed as Desi Arnaz.

Johnson not only became friends with the future Ricky Ricardo, but accompanied the show’s stars to Hollywood when RKO bought the rights to the musical as a big screen vehicle for Richard Carlson, Bracken, Arnaz, Ann Miller – and its rising star, Lucille Ball. (Van has an un-credited part in the 1940 movie as a chorus boy.)

If for nothing else, the Too Many Girls movie version is notable today as the first onscreen evidence of the obvious romantic sparks set off by what became perhaps the most powerful married couple in entertainment history.

Although Lucy’s love interest in the movie was Carlson, off screen the 29-year-old actress actually fell head over heels for the 23-year-old Desi.  The couple quickly became an item, with Van cheering on their incipient romance (the trio’s friendship lasted for years, long after Lucy-Desi’s ensuing marriage).

To a considerable extent, it was Lucille Ball who set Johnson’s movie career in motion. After being dropped by Warner Brothers after an abortive six-month stint, Johnson was prepared to return to the East Coast to attempt his luck again in New York.

Arnaz and Ball took Johnson to Chasen’s restaurant for a farewell dinner.  Sitting at a nearby table on that night was Billy Grady, MGM’s talent chief, who had recently signed Ball to a studio contract. Lucille got up from the table, and took Johnson over to see Grady.  Ball persuasively pleaded Johnson’s case with the MGM official.

The result was an invite to Johnson from Grady for a screen test at the studio. The boyishly personable Van passed the test, and was signed to a contract paying him $350 per week.  Johnson’s 12-year, 50-film career at MGM had begun.

His breakthrough at the studio came in 1943 in Victor Fleming’s romantic fantasy A Guy Named Joe. Johnson plays a young serviceman adopted by the ghost of a grizzled fighter pilot (Spencer Tracy), who was killed in a crash but returns to earth to advise the younger man in the wooing of Tracy’s former girlfriend (Irene Dunne).

By this time, Johnson began drawing noticeable piles of fan mail – always an unfailingly accurate measure at MGM of an actor’s growing (or waning) popularity.

Fan magazines of the period were pressing for interviews. A bobby-sox idol in the making, the blue-eyed, freckle-faced, carrot topped actor had a promising future

Mayer was nonetheless troubled.  He had been hearing things about Johnson’s chorus-boy escapades. The girls on the lot were curious too. And when the rumors reached a certain level, MGM’s reigning sex symbol, Lana Turner decided she’d be the one to find out the truth.

Lana had co-starred with Clark Gable in 1942’s Somewhere I’ll find You. In which Van had a supporting role. By the early-Forties, the vamp from Wallace, Idaho, herself a hot property at MGM, was one of the most popular of the World War II pinups.  She also was notoriously  promiscuous, quite the sexual athlete.

Supposedly, Lana had sexually engaged mogul Howard Hughes on the cockpit floor of his huge plane while cruising on autopilot over the California coast. Who better to “test” Johnson by taking him to bed?

Turner did, and returned to the studio the next morning with this memorable assessment — “He did it, but he didn’t like it.”

 

 

 

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MYSTERY MAN IDENTIFIED — At Last

Nov30
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Joe Morella and Frank Segers

Glad Tidings.

Joe heard from old friend Lou Valentino (Lou by the way is author of The Films of Lana Turner), who did us an enormous favor by correctly identifying the man pictured above as Frank Albertson.

The photo above is from The Donald Gordon Collection, and unfortunately our man Donald didn’t label all his prints, and in his later years even managed to mislabel a few. That’s why we initially thought this was Red Barry because it was his name that the late Gordon scribbled on the back on the photo we used.

To check out our original misidentification of Albertson, see our July 15 blog Susan Hayward: Cancer Victim, in which we ran his photo, and assured the world that he was Barry (who was a lover of Hayward’s).

I know you’ll be reassured by the news that we corrected that mistake in our Aug. 22 blog, We Admit It. We Goofed. So, Who Is Out Mystery Man? 

Three days later, we located an actual photo of Barry, also from The Donald Gordon Collection, and ran with it (That’s Him All Right, The Real ‘Red’ Barry).  

But for several weeks were honestly unable to say who our mystery man was. That is, until Lou Valentino’s missive arrived.

Albertson was hardly a household name, but did have some notable credits. He played the role of the innocent playwright in the Marx Brothers film version of Room Service. 

Albertson had started in films as a boy, about 14, and worked until his death 50 years later. He’s in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, as the man who provides the cash later stolen by Janet Leigh.  He’s probably best remembered as Sam Wainwright, the “hee-haw” guy in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Our thanks to Lou.  Keep keeping us on our toes.

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Publicity is the Name of the Game

Oct25
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Notice what’s special about the photo above?

Sure, it’s a still of Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner — all in the cast of MGM’s version of  ”Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” directed in 1941 by Victor Fleming (the director of credit for “Gone With The Wind.”)

But it’s a posed shot with a twist, and certainly isn’t in the movie. 

Hello, everybody.  Your classic movie guys, Joe Morella and Frank Segers, here again to ponder bits of hype, hoopla and wonderful, old-fashioned studio publicity. Hollywood just doesn’t ballyhoo movies like it used to back when, we maintain.

A bit of backround of how the studios used photographic stills.

Each studio had a publicity department, and their job was to hype, hype and keeping on hyping that important new release. Stills from the picture were, of course, sent to newspapers and magazines.

But the publicity guys had to be creative.

Thus a still with a special visual twist had a greater advantage of being chosen for use. The studios had to come up with inventive shots which might capture the imagination of the editors, get the picture published and hence the film publicized.

In Hollywood’s heyday the studios’ publicity departments often staged their stills by posing stars together in situations that were not necessarily in the movie. Thousands of these orchestrated photos would be blanketed world wide to what was the communications maw of the time – the vast print media.

Print was king in the U.S. in the 1940’s with nearly 2,000 newspapers published every day.  Worldwide, that total was geometrically increased. The global reach of print was staggering back then, and the studios took full advantage. Photo stills were second only to theater trailers as promotional tools for movies.

So competition for print space was fierce, and most often photo stills with that special twist won the day, and a place in the next edition.  Take the photo above. Many editors chose it because of the unavoidable visual presence of that large, black figure (Mr. Hyde, we presume) looming over an unsuspecting trio — three of the best known Hollywood stars of the day.

A clever bit of publicity.  And the movie itself wasn’t bad either. 

 

 

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READER COMMENT — Not So Fast About ‘Forgotten’ Hayward

Oct24
2011 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again to field a most welcome e-mail from another reader who demurs from our dismissal of Susan Hayward.

In our blog of July 14 — “Susan Hayward — Forgotten Star?” — we wrote that although Hayward was popular in the late Forties and Fifties,  she is a largely “who dat?” today.  On Oct. 11, we ran reader Philippe Elan’s comment that took us (mildly, thank heaven) to task with his opening line, “happy to disagree on the fact that Susan Hayward is a forgotten star.”

We were delighted to receive Phillipe’s defense of the actress. But we also pointed out that although such Hollywood luminaries as Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner may not be household names today to those under 40, their respective films — eg. “Gilda” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” among others — are so good that both actresses are assured cinematic immortality.

Did Susan Hayward make films as good?  We said and say, no.  Thus, her largely forgottten status today.

But reader “iarla” gracefully disagrees, and e-mailed us the following wide-ranging and thoughtful consideration of Hayward. We like it so much that we just had to let you in on the exchange. So here’s “iarla.”

It’s true that Edythe Marrenner (Hayward’s real name) is unfortunate in that none of her movies are as well revived as say, Lana’s “Postman” or Rita’s “Gilda”.

She is simply unlucky in that none of her films achieved cult status, with the sole — startling — exception being “Valley of the Dolls”, and it is screened today for reasons other than Hayward’s contribution.

Although this was possibly the most comercially popular film Hayward ever appeared in, its not exactly a prestigious credit for any of its participants. Although, female audiences loved Hayward back in the Fifties when she was considered a “strong” actress as well as a box office star.

Though critics were not always as impressed, and I recall Hayward being unflatteringly referred to as a “bargain basement Bette Davis”( ! ).

(The late film critic) Pauline Kael, while enjoying the earlier Hayward of (director Harold Clurman’s 1946 murder mystery) “Deadline at Dawn” felt she had “slipped” considerably by the time (1955) of (Daniel Mann’s biopic of singer Lillian Roth) “I’ll Cry Tomorrow.”

It’s as if certain performers, who start out as starlets, become almost embarrassed and self-conscious and unfortunately mannered when they strive to be taken ‘seriously’ as dramatic actresses.

But I’ve always wondered why ‘actressy’ types date badly in comparison to the glamour queens, such as (Norma) Shearer and Louise Rainer versus (Jean) Harlow and (Marlene) Dietrich in the Thirties, or (Greer) Garson and Jennifer Jones against Rita and Lana in the forties.

Maybe its the sense of ‘fun’ and approachability thats lacking.

Hayward never had the good fortune to become a cult figure. Also, although her private life was rather tempestuous, and covered as such by the media at the time, there was always a brittle, cold quality to the private Hayward image as opposed to the more inviting, vulnerable qualities emitted by some of the sex symbols like (Kim) Novak or (Marilyn) Monroe in the Fifties.

Changing fashions dictate public tastes and interests, and Susan Hayward is simply not in the public consciousness. Oftentimes, clotheshorses like Lana or Rita are referenced as emblems of classical Hollywood glamour when designers like Valentino (“Ziegfeld Girl”) or Gaultier (“Shanghai Express”) discuss their muses/inspirations. Hayward was never identified in this way either then or now, proving the power and endurabilty of image over talent, especially today!

Now that I think of it, Hayward died (of cancer in 1975 at 57) relatively early compared to her peers, which is a pity as she would almost certainly have had a substantial shot at television like (Barbara) Stanwyck or (Jane) Wyman.

But she was a genuine star, and context is everything, and I’m glad to remember her even though her heyday had passed long before I was born!”

Thanks iarla.  And keep on commenting.

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SOMEONE REMEMBERED SUSAN HAYWARD

Oct11
2011 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

Hello Everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers here to report that — yes,  finally, after a couple of months — we heard from a Susan Hayward fan who disagrees with us when we say she is today a forgotten star. (Check out our blog to this effect which ran on July 14.)

Philippe Elan writes, “Happy to disagree on the fact that Susan Hayward is a forgotten star….Most people who like movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood still know her and she is very popular among them.

“Lots of her movies have found their ways on official DVD releases and they have been big sellers : ‘With a Song in My Heart,’  ’I’ll Cry Tomorrow,’  ’I Want to Live,’ ‘Snows of Kilimanjaro,’  ’Where Love Has Gone,’ ‘David and Bathsheba,’ ‘Smash Up’….and many others. Movies unlimited has just issued the official DVD of her 1961 major box office hit ‘Back Street’…

“One thing I agree is that Hayward was a front rank star in the second part of the 1940s…she became one of the superstars of the 1960s and remained a major box office draw until the late sixties… Quite a great achievement for a female Hollywood star of her time….

“She was unique, both a great beauty and a very talented actress.”

Thanks for writing in, Philippe. (We LOVE to hear from our readers, and please feel free to call us on the carpet when you feel it’s necessary. The tougher you are, the better.)

And, yes, we certainly appreciate Philippe’s view that she was unique, beautiful and talented.  And we note that among old movie buffs she’s still remembered.

BUT, we contend she’s a forgotten star for the obvious reason (to us) that she’s little (if at all) remembered today by younger generations of film fans.  True, many in the under 40 set might not know much about Rita Hayworth, or Lana Turner either.

But — and here is a crucial point — those actresses made some films which might be considered classics (none of Haywards can be, in our view) and Rita and Lana have been noted in song, story and myth.

The general rule is — you make really good pictures, you will be remembered by succeeding generations. (We will, for example, always cherish Lana’s torrid performance opposite John Garfield in 1946′s The Postman Always Rings Twice.” As for Rita, she remains a Frank favorite just for marrying Orson Welles.)

No question that Susan Hayward in her time was a top star.  And one of the attributes of the “real” stardom she shared with Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford was that during her glory days in Hollywood, most people knew her real name as well as her screen name.

OK, we challenge you Susan Hayward fans (and non-fans).  Any guesses about the name she was born with?

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A BLACK ACTRESS UPS THE ANTE

Aug16
2011 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talented black actresses confined for racial reasons to roles of maids, cooks or “mammies” in Hollywood movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s, invariably stood their ground in their limited cinematic circumstances, even upstaging on occasion their more celebrated white costars.

Who can forget Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With The Wind?”

Frank often extols the work of two actresses not often mentioned in discussions of racial stereotyping back then.  One is Marietta Canty who in 1955′s “Rebel Without A Cause” plays the maternal maid in the hapless family of fatherless John ‘Plato’ Crawford (Sal Mineo), and ends the picture with the plaintive observation that the slain  ’Plato’ had “no one.”

The other actress –Houston-born Theresa Harris – was especially good in two classic movies produced by renowned RKO producer Val Lewton.  In 1943′s “I Walked With A Zombie,” Harris beguilingly portrays a maid on a Caribbean plantation tutoring Frances Dee on the ways of the local populace. The year before, Harris put in a smart and appealing turn as a coffee-shop waitress in  director Jacques Tourneur’s “Cat Woman.”

Although 95% of her roles were playing maids and servants, Joe’s favorite, Louise Beavers - pictured above left with Claudette Colbert, with Fredi Washington above right, and with Irene Dunne and columnist Hedda Hopper in the center photo — was justly celebrated for bringing different aspects to parts than did her contemporary McDaniel.

Hello Everybody.  Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers here again.  Mrs. Norman Maine is having her hair done.

Today we examine the extraordinary career of  actress Louise Beavers, who started in the silent era, and eventually made over 160 films and dozens of television appearances before her early death in 1962, seven months past her 60th birthday.

With the exception of her award winning role as Mammy, McDaniel almost always portrayed maids as stereotypes and for comic relief. In comparison, Beavers, who’d started in films in 1927, was atypical.

She was viewed as the confidant of the woman she worked for, and her characters were an integral part of the story. Some of Beavers’ parts can be justifiably considered fully costarring roles, not the abbreviated character stints that minority actresses so often found themselves in back when.

Her most famous role was that of Delilah Johnson in the first film version of “Imitation of Life,” in 1934. She is a black woman during the depression who teams with a white woman (Colbert), another financially-pressed widow, to make ends meet and raise their daughters.

The two go into business together, making pancakes and eventually becoming enormously successful. Of course, following the novel and the prevailing mores of the day, Colbert is the businesswoman and Beavers, (whose recipe it is) was the behind-the-scenes partner, although it is her picture as an Aunt Jemima type, used on the box of pancake mix.

The real plot of the film however is about their daughters. Colbert’s (Rochelle Hudson) a spoiled girl in love with her mother’s suitor.  Beaver’s (Fredi Washington) a girl who wants to pass for white and breaks her mother’s heart.

As reviewers of the day noted, it was probably the first time movie audiences had been exposed to real issues and emotions faced by African Americans.  In 2007 TIME magazine named it one of  “The 25 most important films on Race”

“Imitation of Life” was remade in feverishly melodramatic fashion by director Douglas Sirk in 1958. Lana Turner (who else?) was the star with Juanita Moore in the key supporting role, comparable to Beavers’ part in the original but not quite as strong or as integral to the plot.  The remake was a huge commercial success once again, and earned Moore an Oscar nomination.

Louise Beavers’ career continued unabated through the 30s and 40s. Check her out in “The Big Street,” and “Made for Each Other.” In 1947′s “Mr. Blanding’s Builds His Dream House” she again portrays a wise maid/cook who saves the white employer’s job.

One of her non-servant roles was as Jackie Robinson’s mother in “The Jackie Robinson Story,” a hastily-made (at La Palma Park in Anaheim, California in early 1950) low-budget independent movie (distributed by Eagle-Lions Films). The year before the picture was shot, Robinson, the first black player ever in Major League Baseball, had logged a career year.

Robinson played himself to mixed results (he had been persuaded to do so by Dodger President Branch Rickey). Playing second bananas as Robinson’s devoted wife and mother, respectively, were Ruby Dee and Beavers. Neither drew kudos from the critics, who viewed the movie largely as an awkward biographical screen turn by the pioneering baseball player.

Beavers was born in 1902, in Cincinnati, Ohio, a city that has special appeal to Frank because he spent summers there as a youngster since his father came from the nearby town of Hamilton.

Coincidentally, author Fannie Hurst, who wrote the novel on which both versions of “Imitation of  Life” are based, was born (in 1889) in Hamilton.

 

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Movies IN Novels

Aug08
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello everybody. This is Joe Morella and Frank Segers here again. Mrs. Norman Maine is outside walking the dachshund.

Today we are delighted to welcome back our guest contributor Larry Michie, literary man of the world and former television editor of Variety.

Larry has a special interest in how classic movies are handled in and by fiction, especially the always-fascinating process of converting good novels into great films.

Larry continues to weigh in on our Blog as subject and fancy strike him. We hope you enjoy his contributions as much as we do. So, here’s Larry:

Imagine Busby Berkeley splashing a parade of prancing showgirls across a theater screen as Japanese bombers flatten nearby buildings and zeros strafe beaches where terrified hordes are trying to escape in any boat that can be stolen or commandeered.

Well, not long after Pearl Harbor, that was the scene in Singapore as recreated in the novel “The Singapore Grip” by the celebrated British writer J.G. Farrell (1935-1979). The movie was “Ziegfeld Girl,” a 1941 release that hit the screens just as World War II erupted in flame and gore.

The greater part of Farrell’s novel portrays British imperialism in Singapore and the highly profitable rubber trade there as rival businessmen elbow their way to wealth and power. Vivid and often hilarious portraits of British overlords, their families and their social maneuvers are scathing but so deftly written that one might suspect that Evelyn Waugh lurked nearby.

When the Japanese mount their attack, the British military is woefully unprepared and the outcome predictably dire. As the Japanese approach Singapore, their bombing reduces the city to ruins. A band of volunteers organizes a fire brigade, dashing from one flame-engulfed disaster to another, snatching sleep at odd moments, searching out hydrants in a futile effort to extinguish raging fires, and saving lives when they can.

At last they are forced to admit defeat, as the bombing has completely destroyed the city’s water mains. As the firefighters stagger back through the streets, they come upon a motion-picture theater that unaccountably is open and showing a film called “Ziegfeld Girl.”

Farrell writes: “This seemed such a cause for wonder that they stopped and consulted each other. Why not? Just for a minute or two. They had such a craving for normality, even if only a glimpse of it … even if only for a few minutes. So they went inside, and once inside in the darkness they kept falling asleep and waking up, paralyzed by weariness and comfort.”

A young man named Matthew, a prominent character in the novel, a decent and likeable fellow with fervent though wildly naïve ideals, wakes from a doze to see Hedy Lamarr, “beautiful, grave and sad,” arguing with her violinist husband because she wants to make money as a showgirl. A scene or so later, “A breathless, manic Judy Garland” bursts into the room where the girls were getting ready for their performance.

Soon, the Busby Berkeley extravaganza begins — he staged the big musical numbers; director of record is Robert Z. Leonard — with Tony Martin crooning “You Stepped Out of a Dream” to a celestial Lana Turner descending a large staircase. (The Nacio Herb Brown-Gus Kahn tune soon became a Turner offscreen signature, and was often played as she entered a night club or a restaurant.)

Matthew dozes off again, only to awake to Lana Turner dumping a lover for a “stage-door johnny.” Soon Garland was singing “Minnie from Trinidad,” and in a waking moment Matthew leaves the theater in hopes of finding the Chinese woman with whom he had fallen in love.

One helluva way to catch a movie, you may well say. But what a movie! While not a true classic it still merits a view today.

The clouds of feathers surrounding the ravishing Hedy Lamarr as she steps down the stairs in the opening number might as well have had Busby Berkeley’s name in blinking neon lights on her forehead, so clearly was his style stamped on the scene.

Judy Garland, of course, was just two years past her performance in The Wizard of Oz. And speaking of Hedy’s looks, don’t forget Lana Turner, an eye-popping beauty who plays a Ziegfeld girl who crashed out of show-biz because of demon rum – even though she was still a lovely lush.

The list of stars in Ziegfeld Girl has barely begun. There was James Stewart, Jackie Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, Eve Arden (guess what? She cracks wise!), Dan Dailey, and a spectacular aggregation of uncredited Ziegfeld Girls.

(Yes, that’s Stewart huddling above with Turner.)

Incidentally, one quaint aspect of the movie is the various ways in which it is strongly suggested, although not exactly mentioned, that the show girls barter their pretty flesh for rewards of jewelry and other bonuses. In 1941, movies couldn’t use the verbiage so familiar on the screens today. But those girls grabbed the gold, make no mistake about it. Hubba-hubba.

And by the way, if you’ve a taste for the best of British writing, try J.G. Farrell. His three celebrated novels, collectively known as the Empire Trilogy, are “The Singapore Grip,” mentioned above; “Troubles,” about the conflict between Ireland and England, and “The Siege of Krishnapur,” the tale of an uprising in India.

Th-Th-That’s All, Folks

Thanks Larry– look forward to your next entry.  Meanwhile, if any of our followers have a particular Book To Film or Book inside a Film  you’d  like to tout… give us a holler.

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