Beefing about Blood

Wildly praised, Oscar nominated film is a major disappointment

I don’t know why I partially bought into the press release journalism that passes muster as legit movie criticism nowadays. There Will Be Blood has been lauded to the critical heavens as an all-time classic with one notable scrivener comparing Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic to Citizen Kane. High praise indeed.  I knew better, but I still should have known better.

Part of it was my admiration of Daniel Day Lewis’ acting craftsmanship in My Left Foot and Gangs of New York. My interest was also piqued by Anderson’s stated inspiration of The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)-a pantheon classic and personal favorite- that he reportedly used as a template for his latest movie. And yes, I admittedly got a little dizzy after being bombarded by the pre Oscar media cacophony of rave reviews for a reputed epic that was a paean to great movies past.

After watching There Will Be Blood, I can state categorically that not only does this much-ballyhooed film not hold a candle to Citizen Kane; it is simply not a very entertaining movie.  

Thomas, who’s wonderful Boogie Nights blew me away just over a decade ago used Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil” as a premise for his latest film. It is an inspirational springboard that traces the evolution of Southern California’s petroleum boom during the first quarter of the 20^th century via Daniel Day Lewis’s powerhouse portrayal of oilman Daniel Plainview.  Although the distinguished English actor’s turn is definitive Oscar material, it is a tour de force that simply cannot be sustained throughout the excessive run time. The inalienable directorial right of final cut once again becomes a virtual boomerang that initially enthralls and then exhausts over one hundred and fifty eight minutes of celluloid that is sorely lacking structure and pace.  A prime example is the ending of the film.  This rapid fast-forward in time exuded an artificial, tacked-on quality instead of the crafted culmination of a masterful tale.

There Will Be Blood is a bravura one man show to the point of detriment. The principal supporting role of the youthful preacher-as-adversary (think of an adolescent Elmer Gantry on Vicadin) by Paul Dano was ultimately unconvincing, particularly when demonstrating his more devious side in private and then in the long waited, but predictable denouement. Dano had a tough road to hoe. The first actor cast in the part reportedly quit after being intimidated by Lewis’ blockbuster acting.  In an interesting debut, youngster Dillon Freasier played Plainview’s young son and remarkably holds his own.. The rest of the supporting cast are faultlessly appearing ciphers or caricatures of little interest as their entire purpose is to provide a backdrop for Lewis who never relinquishes center stage.  Paul Thomas Anderson should have taken greater note of the work of Tim Holt, Walter Huston, Bruce Bennett and Alfonso Bedoya in The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

The cinematography by Robert Elswit and production design, particularly the location filming in  Marfa, Texas representing turn of the century Bakersfield is magnificent. There is a sequence of an oil well explosion and fire that is simply stunning.  This visual panorama is intermittently disrupted by the original musical contributions of Radiohead rocker Jonny Greenwood.  Enduring this abominable soundtrack reminded me of a story I heard Robert Towne relate about the initial musical score for Chinatown that was finally tossed out by director Roman Polanski after composer Bronislau Kaper told him the music was, “…an abomination on your movie”.  Too bad Jerry Goldsmith wasn’t around for another 911 call.

Most of the cited issues with There Will be Blood could have been overlooked if Lewis’ transference from earnest oilman to paranoid Croesus elicited greater interest. This is the principle flaw of the movie. Don’t misunderstand; my expectations for a happy ending, deeper meaning or redemption were bupkiss. It was apparent early on that Plainview was a shit. The problem was that he was a boring shit. There was no spark, no layers of complexity, no diabolical charm, not too much of anything. Perhaps that was the point. In the end, I didn’t really care too much what happened to him and ended up not caring too much about There Will Be Blood. Yes, it is masterful looking film, but beyond that, there isn't much there.  Paul Thomas Anderson is a superb filmmaker, but he needed to breathe much more depth into his main character and surround him with characters who mattered in order to reap full appreciation for all of the positive attributes of his movie. 

In addition to Jerry Goldsmith, Anderson could have used some help from some other departed hands.

Anderson needed a Broni Kaper to tell him that his musical score sucked and while he was at it, the director should have screened Citizen Kane and figured out how Orson Welles made it all work.   

Percy

No actor exemplified the downtrodden film noir schlemiel better than Percy Helton.  If his hunched frame and marsupial-like features weren’t enough to convince audiences of his servile timidity, there was always the unique Helton voice which made his screen characterizations permanently distinctive. Never was a vocal inflection more perfectly suited to a performer.

Percy Helton uttered his lines with a breathy vocal lilt akin to the sigh of an exhausted calliope.  When alarmed or threatened- a frequent occurrence- he reached a higher octave reminiscent of a damaged ukulele.  Even though the diminutive performer seemed to be specifically constructed as a mid-century urban whipping boy, Helton’s thespian roots dated back to the nineteenth century.

            He made his stage debut in 1896 with his vaudevillian father, Alf Helton, at the Tony Pastor Theatre on 14^th Street in New York City.  Percy Helton was two years old.   At age eleven, he appeared with David Belasco on Broadway in Return of Peter Grimm.  The adolescent thespian had a long speech in the play that he recited verbatim over six decades later during a guest appearance on the Merv Griffin television show.  In addition to his early stage work, he also appeared in several silent pictures filmed in New York. 

During his career along the Great White Way, Helton worked for George M. Cohan for five years and appeared in a variety of productions opposite notables such as Lloyd Nolan, Helen Hayes and Peggy Woods.  As he  retained his youthful appearance and played adolescent roles into his twenties,  Helton earned the nickname of “Dype”, short for the diapers that he appeared to belong in.

 Helton worked exclusively in his native New York, treading the boards and  appearing in several musical short films during the late 1930’s.  Moving into middle age and acquiring a curved spine alternately ascribed to either late growth or osteoporosis, Helton’s career began to falter a bit as he finally outgrew playing juveniles.  A Gotham film location shoot in early 1947 changed everything.  Director-writer George Seaton cast the actor as a drunken Santa Claus in Miracle on 34^th Street. Helton was uproariously perfect as an inebriated St. Nick who passes out while rehearsing Jingle Bells for the Macy’s holiday parade and is replaced by the “real” Santa, Edmund Gwenn.  Percy’s comedic turn in what would be a perennial holiday classic resulted in his continual employment as a film actor during the next quarter century.  He was summoned to Hollywood by Twentieth Century Fox to play a bit part in Call Northside 777 (1948) and remained in L.A. for the rest of his life.   

Percy Helton racked up an impressive string of film noir credits over the next several years, beginning with the seldom-seen Larceny (1948) starring John Payne, Dan Duryea and a boisterously brassy Shelley Winters. Helton plays a servile hotel manager who searches for his registration book that he misplaced under, “…my jiu-jitsu manual.”   In  Robert Siodmak’s superbly crafted Crisscross, (1949), Helton essays a memorable turn as a Bunker Hill barkeep.  When a cuckolded Burt Lancaster returns to his former nocturnal haunt in search of femme muse Yvonne De Carlo, he encounters Percy tending bar. Burt gets cute with his inquiries, not wanting to own up to the Statue-of-Liberty-sized torch he is resolutely carrying for Yvonne.  Helton quickly tags Lancaster as an undercover liquor “checker” before having to apologize for the oversight. Later on, the perpetually regretful bartender has to “take the liberty” of breaking Lancaster’s heart. He informs him that Yvonne has eloped with lowlife crook Dan Duryea and double-crossed him once again. Helton neatly summarizes the age-old bartenders’ credo about personal entanglements in a mournful tone to a female lush whose posterior polishes a barstool every evening:  “I don’t get involved. Nowadays, it doesn’t pay.” 

The Set-up (1949) features a classic Helton portrayal of a beaten-down boxing trainer who works in ham-and-egger Robert Ryan’s corner. Percy vainly warns Ryan’s obtusely corrupt manager (George Tobias) that he had better let their fighter know that the fix is in and a dive to the canvas is in order:  “Stoker can still punch… you gotta tell him!”   Treading in a sea of bottom feeders, Percy is just another minnow, getting ripped off for a miniscule slice of the crooked payoff and literally running away from the ring after Ryan scores an upset knockout, abandoning the helpless palooka to face the wrath of the crossed gamblers. 

The Crooked Way (1949) included a memorable Helton portrayal of a pitiful loser.  A flunky mired in servitude to a nut-job gang boss (a near-drooling Sonny Tufts), Helton constantly totes his only friend, a pet cat named Hector, around with him while intermittently sneezing because of an allergy to feline dander!  He attempts to protect his pet when a gangster firefight erupts, but ends up getting a bullet in the back for his trouble. Not that the actor was unfamiliar with gunfire.

Percy Helton went “over there” to Europe with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during World War I, experiencing battlefield combat for nineteen months. The diminutive actor was reportedly awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s 2nd highest military decoration for extraordinary heroism in battle.  Settling quietly in a Hollywood apartment, Helton became the first vice-president of the noted thespian club, the Masquers, and enjoyed a long, successful marriage with his wife Edna, a former Ziegfeld dancer.

Before film noir began to disappear from theatre marquees and morphed into televised crime dramas, Helton continued to make an indelible imprint in dark cinema: Never Trust a Gambler (1951), The Tall Target (1951), Vice Squad (1953) Crashout (1955), No Man’s Woman (1955) and Terror at Midnight (1956). Although he appeared in hundreds of television shows and films of different genres, the actor’s most unforgettable turns proved to be a bookend set of seminal film noirs.

Helton was memorably repellent as a corrupt coroner who gets too greedy for his own good while trying to shake down private eye “Mike Hammer” in the iconic Kill Me Deadly (1955).   Instead of being filled with greenbacks, Percy’s extended hand is memorably slammed in a desk drawer by a grinning Ralph Meeker as a dubbed (and fake sounding) shriek gradually subsides to an actual Helton whimper.

There is no doubt that Percy Helton’s most compelling screen performance was in Russell Rouse’s uniquely perverse Wicked Woman (1953).  The rangy Beverly Michaels stars as a weirdly moist tramp with blown-out, peroxide hair and an attitude to match. Her saga begins when she gets off a bus in a Bo hunk town and moves into cold water flat. Third-billed Percy Helton is “Charlie Borg”, a perpetually horny tailor who resides directly across the hall.  Helton’s jaw hits the floor as he becomes immediately transfixed with the six foot tall blonde. After landing a job as a cocktail waitress, Beverly occupies her time seducing married saloon owner Richard Egan, convincing him to unload the gin mill by forging his wife’s signature so the star-crossed pair can lam off to Mexico. At the same time, the greedy Michaels strings Percy along, titillating his over-active libido in order to borrow money from him. After dodging his direct advances, an increasingly pressured Beverly ends up being blackmailed by Helton who discovers her chicanery to fleece Egan’s alcoholic wife and skip town.  The audience is led to believe that a grotesque coupling occurs. The entire situation finally explodes when an enraged, scantily clad Beverly Michaels cuffs a whining Helton around like an errant Chihuahua after she is caught by Richard Egan being lasciviously pawed by her ardent neighbor. With a total absence of morality amid bizarre characterizations, Wicked Woman remains a highlight reel of mid 20th century camp.

The “Charlie Borg” performance was a personal highlight for Percy Helton who continued working steadily until he passed away in 1971 at the age of seventy-seven. While visiting San Francisco with his wife shortly before his death, Percy was complimented about his work in Wicked Woman. The slight thespian replied with a breathy sigh that it was his favorite movie.  Edna Helton immediately chimed in, revealing that her “Perc” had the one sheet poster of Wicked Woman hanging on the wall above their bed back home in Hollywood!

A Trip down a Darkened Memory Lane

Watching Horror and Science Fiction movies from the 1950’s is a serendipitous journey back to my boyhood.

Yes, Virginia, before film noir, I was a Monster Kid.

Growing up in the greater New York metro area during the pre-cable and video era, I feasted on scary fare shown during weekend evenings on WPIX-11’s Chiller Theatre, WOR-TV-9, Supernatural Theatre and Million Dollar Movie and WNEW, Channel 5’s Creature Features. 

This trailer may bring back some fond memories for 1960's era denizens of the N.Y./N.J. metro area: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CafM97ifNc

In retrospect, a lot of these films can’t endure the slightest critical scrutiny, yet I retain a soft spot for many of them: She-Demons, The Cyclops (featuring the worst special effects in movie history), The Hideous Sun Demon, (made by RKO contract actor Robert Clarke and some film students for about $1.50), Indestructible Man (a mute Chaney Jr. running amuck through mid 20^th century downtown L.A and riding Angels Flight up to Bunker Hill.) Neanderthal Man, The Giant Behemoth … the list is seemingly endless.

However, it is too easy and downright unfair to classify all of these films as simple camp.  More than a few hold up extremely well as credible entertainment.  Many of these top quality genre films are among those being screened at the American Cinematheque’s Seventh Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy film festival at the Egyptian Theatre this month.

When the American Cinematheque kindly asked me for programming and guest assistance, I immediately homed in on several key films and invited some of original participants to attend the screenings. The screenings on Friday and Saturday nights of the 10^th and 11^th of August constituted an eerie trip down a darkened Memory Lane. 

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) was more than just a science fiction or fantasy film; it was and remains one of the seminal movies of the 1950’s.  I remember Journey as a major childhood event; I was entranced by the story, the brilliance of the Cinemascope wide screen color and the myriad special effects (even if I realized back then that the dinosaurs were pet shop iguanas with plastic fins glued on their backs).

It was dually delightful that 20^th Century Fox provided a new 35mm Cinemascope print of Journey and star Pat Boone accepted my invitation to munch some popcorn and enjoy his best remembered movie that has endured for nearly half a century. I am happy to report that the picture retains its joyous ability to entertain and enthrall modern audiences.

Bulletin to Fox Home Entertainment: It is time to start on the 50^th anniversary edition of Journey to the Center of the Earth that should be laden with special features headlined by the surviving actors.

Attired in white shirt, pants and boots, Pat Boone exudes the same youthful energy at age 73 that he did while exploring Jules Verne’s inner world in Carlsbad Caverns where selected sequences of the film were shot. His recollections of the two and a half month filming of Journey to the Center of the Earth were detailed, amusing and harrowing:

“We filmed in the Caverns at night to avoid the tourists” … I was taking a nap once, heard something above my head, turned and saw the hugest albino rat looking right at me!”

Boone nearly knocked himself unconscious on a rock formation while scrambling to get away from the cavern-dwelling marsupial. 

The rat saga was one of several stories related by Pat Boone about the Journey shoot during the post screening Q&A. It was a movie that apparently needed an adjunct M*A*S*H* unit to patch up the injured actors.

Co-star Arlene Dahl was carted off to the infirmary on a couple of occasions.  During the ocean sequence that had thousands of gallons of water being spewed on the actors who were lashed to a raft, the saturated actress sputtered for the director to cut the scene. Boone remembered James Mason-a total pro who knew everyone’s lines- telling Dahl to pipe down and Arlene literally treaded water until the shot was completed.  The ascension up the Icelandic mountain with the actors dressed out in full kit and shivering due to the implied cold was another occasion for first aid. Pat Boone advised that the mountain location shoot was staged in sweltering Needles, California with a colored camera lens used to simulate frigid Iceland. Miss Dahl was overcome by the oppressive heat and again borne off for medical assistance.

As the production returned to the Fox back lot, Boone ended up breaking a big toe by kicking what he thought was a fake Styrofoam rock (it was real) while showing off for tourists and was nearly suffocated during a sequence where he fell through what appeared as a huge deposit of subterranean salt. The scene was filmed on an ingeniously designed set with four cameras stationed on a vertical plane with a series of trap doors that opened sequentially with Boone falling through as a ton of gypsum dust rained down on him. The danger became apparent after he landed at the bottom of the trap with the actor being unable to move or breathe as he was literally being buried alive in gypsum. As director Henry Levin was checking the cameras and the gypsum piled up to his nose, Pat remembered that, “…a grip up in the scaffolding looked down and yelled to Levin, ‘You better get Boone out of there’. The cavalry arrived just in time.

Pat Boone’s most cherished memory of Journey to the Center of the Earth was the inadvertent nature of a project he took on with considerable misgivings that became an incredibly profitable annuity over the years. He remembered being “arm-twisted” into doing the movie because, “…it wasn’t a musical.”  Fox finally gave him a percentage of the movie to his production company that clinched the deal. Through re-releases, video and DVD, the iconic film has proved to be one of the most profitable ventures of the singer, songwriter and actor’s storied career.

Although I hadn’t seen World without End (1956) in over forty years and never before in color, the new Cinemascope print from Warner Brothers didn’t disappoint; it was nearly flawless. 

 An added plus was the presence of screening guest Lisa Montell who had one of the principal supporting roles in the film. Miss Montell didn’t remember too much about the production (she confided that the youthful Rod Taylor became a bit too amorous during a brief kissing scene) outside of the hot Iverson Ranch location. Lisa also expressed mild embarrassment when we viewed Taylor tussling with the absurdly fake giant spider that resembled an arcade prize.

Veteran Hollywood hand Edward Bernds wrote and directed this Allied Artists sci-fi tale that desperately needed an infusion of increased funding from Walter Mirsch.  Bernds held out for Sterling Hayden and Frank Lovejoy. He ended up with Hugh Marlowe and Christopher Dark; no wonder he was unhappy. Truth be told, the picture has some striking moments, a memorable score by Leigh Stevens and earnest work by Nelson Leigh, Taylor, Nancy Gates (great gams!) and Miss Montell. 

The time travel opus of astronauts arriving back on Earth hundreds of centuries later to discover that nuclear Armageddon had occurred was a strikingly original yarn in 1956. The resultant strife between the surviving “mutates” who dwell on the surface and the normal humans clinging to a dysfunctional underground existence (all of the women are young, beautiful and in heels with the men appearing elderly, weak and beyond ready for the invention of Viagra) is resolved with good old American know-how.  The Cold War version of Yankee ingenuity is characterized by  the manufacture of a bazooka that allows the stranded astronauts to cow the surface dwellers into submission after a final bout of stunt combat between the one-eyed chief mutate (appropriately named  "Na-Gah") who is efficiently dispatched by an physically underwhelming Marlowe.  In sum, the attributes of World without End outweighed the deficits that included an eye-popping exhibition of hamming by Booth Colman that elicited sporadic laughter from the audience and old pro Everett Glass uttering lines like, “...the weapons… the accursed weapons!”  

Several of my favorite 1950’s horror films were shown on a triple bill the following evening. These films are distinguished by the pulsating musical soundtracks composed by the estimable Gerald Fried. Fried’s “B” film compositions are seldom compared to the pantheon works of Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but his work shares a distinctive characteristic with these masters; once you listen to a Fried score, you never forget it. Gerald Fried possessed a distinctive, dark-edged musical style that was perfect for noir, horror and science fiction.                    

Gerry Fried was a world-class oboist who graduated from Julliard and followed his boyhood friend from the Bronx, Stanley Kubrick, out to Hollywood in the mid 1950’s.  He scored Killer’s Kiss, The Killing and Paths of Glory for Kubrick before moving on to a series of horror films, Westerns and gangster pictures. Fried’s career resume of memorable small screen orchestrations include the original Star Trek series (remember the episode where Spock got married and fought Kirk?) Roots, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Lost in Space.  

I Bury the Living (1958) takes supernatural suspense to horrific extremes and is greatly bolstered by Fried’s creepy score that includes a haunting harpsichord accompaniment.

A “pre-Paladin” Richard Boone reluctantly becomes the chairman of the Immortal Rest Cemetery Committee. Much to his distress, Boone discovers after he accidentally puts some black pins into the cemetery burial plot map, the corresponding people assigned to the plots unexpectedly wind up dead.

The surreal atmosphere becomes oppressively frightening as the map assumes a supernatural cast with Boone gradually cracking under the strain of the ever-increasing body count. Despite a microscopic budget, director Albert Band managed to design a far-fetched tale penned by Louis Garfinkle into a considerable suspense film that had the early Saturday night crowd at the Egyptian leaning forward in their seats.                                                                                  

Dick Boone is well-matched by a youthful Theodore Bikel who plays an elderly Scottish cemetery groundkeeper sporting a rich brogue straight from the Grampian Hills.  Bikel, who was artfully aged at least four additional decades in the film via the labors of pioneer horror make-up artist Jack Pierce, attended the screening and joined me for a Q&A session afterwards.

The professional resume of Theodore Bikel is so talent-laden and studded with artistic accomplishments that it cannot be related in any deserving detail in this blog entry. Mr. Bikel’s web site at http://www.bikel.com/  provides a comprehensive summary of this true Renaissance Man.

Bikel recalled the twelve day shoot on I Bury the Living with Richard Boone as a distinct pleasure, tabbing the actor as, “a star without the ego of one”.  Location filming in what is now called the “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” was a similarly smooth exercise.  According to Bikel, the place was run fifty years ago, “…by an old woman who offered to reroute scheduled funeral processions to ease our production schedule!” Only in Hollywood.

Queried about the film’s finale that annoyed some horror purists, Bikel shrugged and said that the ending was discussed on the set and what was seen on the screen was as appropriate a denouement as any other.

“What else would you do? Have them (the dead people) come to life and start walking around?”

Theodore Bikel discussed his storied career in the movies from  The African Queen to 200 Motels, demonstrated his astonishing facility with accents (he is conversant in more than seven dialects) by alternately imitating George Cukor’s lisp, a Cockney accent- he wanted the Stanley Holloway role as Eliza’s father in My Fair Lady, but had to wait to play it on stage- and his Southern sheriff in the iconic movie The Defiant Ones for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Bikel is always on the go, winging off to myriad lectures, folk-singing gigs, concerts and plays; He remarked that his principal residence is “seat 3B”.  Demonstrating a razor-sharp memory and boundless energy midway through his eighth decade, this consummate performer did allow that Hollywood has changed and not for the better.

“Today they want you to be the character at the first meeting, as if you are auditioning when you shake hands. And if they don’t see it right away…. “

I asked Theo Bikel if he ever had a casting whippersnapper ask him the dreaded, “So what have you done?”

“Not exactly” replied the veteran of over 130 movies, television shows and countless plays and concerts. He then grinned wickedly. “However my response would be, ‘you go first’.”

The following two Saturday evening screenings were a pair of the best independent horror films of the 1950’s: The Vampire (1957) and Return of Dracula (1958).

Both films were scored by Gerald Fried, directed by former Universal Studios cutter, Paul Landres and produced by Gramercy Pictures.

Gramercy was formed by a trio of WWII vets who served in the Army Air Corps Motion Picture Unit: Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner and director Arnold Laven (The Rack, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue). After cutting their teeth with a snappy noir programmer, Vice Squad (1956), the company moved into the science fiction-horror genre. The trio would later strike gold when their television series The Rifleman became a smash hit over a four year period from 1959-63.   

(Note: I invited Arthur Gardner to the screening and after he reminisced over the phone about appearing in All Quiet on the Western Front with Lew Ayres in 1930 -Mr. Gardner is 97 years old and goes in to his office every day- he regretfully had to decline due to a scheduling conflict. )

One of Gramercy’s more astute decisions was promoting a young production assistant, Pat Fielder, to pen the scripts for their quartet of horror features.  The UCLA Theatre Arts graduate would go on to have an extremely successful screenwriting career, writing numerous episodes of The Rifleman and Geronimo (1962) for Levy-Gardner-Laven.

At the screening, Miss Fielder was reunited with Coleen Gray, star of The Vampire with the women discussing their different roles in the production.

The Vampire is a wholly different type of Dracula movie. In fact, it is not a Dracula movie at all. Purists will search in vain for the usual vampire trappings. Native soil, wolf bane, garlic necklaces, Lugosi sartorial capes and crucifixes are notably absent.

A small town sawbones (John Beal) is accidentally given some experimental pills derived from vampire bats in lieu of his migraine medicine by his young daughter. Beal becomes a fiendish blood sucker who murders nocturnally (causing “capillary disintegration”; he’s a vampirism disease carrier!) after fruitlessly attempting to eschew the pills that quickly have him resolutely hooked. Beal’s struggles with hellacious withdrawal symptoms makes Frank Sinatra’s cold turkey turn in Man with the Golden Arm seem like a walk in the park while tearfully sending his daughter away to protect her from his murderous angst comprise some of the highlights of a strikingly believable performance.

Beal’s killing spree incorporates the demise of the ubiquitous Dabbs Greer as a fussy psychiatrist who additionally gets incinerated for his trouble. Only after Beal turns on his nurse (Coleen Gray) after she stops him from committing suicide is the kill-crazy doc finally chased down by detective Kenneth Tobey and dispatched with a couple of .38 slugs courtesy of copper Herb Vigran.

Both Pat Fielder and Coleen Gray agreed that John Beal’s performance distinguished the film by avoiding what a lesser actor might  conveyed as unconvincing parody.  Miss Fielder recalled that she drew on both Val Lewton’s Cat People and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for inspiration in writing a story that thematically addressed the ultimate horror of a Father flirting with the destruction of his own child.

Shooting the picture was a two week exercise performed mostly out of doors in suburban Culver City with Miss Fielder doubling as production assistant.  The ominous suggestion of horror and fright was uniquely suited for The Vampire.  One sequence with the maddened Beal stalking Coleen Gray in a darkened neighborhood-she barely makes inside her front door to safety- is an emblematic, white-knuckled tribute to the best of Val Lewton. 

I asked the ever-beautiful Coleen Gray if she distinguished between her roles as a film noir icon in films such as Kiss of Death (1947) and Nightmare Alley (1947) with horror pictures like The Vampire and The Leech Woman (1960). A thorough trouper, Coleen said she gave every part her all and was always grateful to be a working actor who was putting bread on the table. Besides, the ageless star thinks it is fun to now be both a Dark City Dame and Horror Scream Queen!

The final film of the evening, Return of Dracula (1958) had the most deliriously crescendo of Gerald Fried’s music with tympanis pounding, woodwinds wailing and brass bleating.  The macabre score was a perfect compliment to the offbeat oddness of Francis Lederer’s Dracula, an impressive performance that has earned greater respect from horror fans over the preceding years.  Lederer’s Bohemian accent and cruller-coiffed hair made for a convivial, yet deadly Count:

“…and you will put the cross down now, Rachel, yes? Because your arm, it feels like lead, no?”

Fielder’s script was a paean to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. Instead of Uncle Charley as the Merry Widow serial killer, stepping off the train in idyllic Santa Rosa, California , we have Cousin Bellac appearing out of the mist at the depot of mythical Carleton, California, planning to set up a blood donation program for the undead in the land of milk and honey.

With Lederer being stalked by the Interpol version of Dr. Van Helsing (John Wengraf) it is only a matter of time before the Count is dealt his just desserts. The finale occurs in that venerable setting of so many “B” movies, the Bronson Canyon caves in L.A.’s Griffith Park.  There are few better endings for a horror movie.  As Lederer thrashed around in a mock agony worthy of Vlad the Impaler, it occurred to me that this was a perfect conclusion to a darkly delightful night of fantasy and horror in the Egyptian Theatre.  

Forgotten Hollywood: The Masquers Club

WELCOME! THRICE WELCOME ALL-

Behind these curtains, tightly drawn

Are Brother Masquers, tried and true,

Who have labored diligently, to bring to you

A Night of Mirth-and mirth ‘twill be,

But, mark you well, although no text we preach

A little lesson , well defined, respectfully, we’d teach

The lesson is this: Throughout this Life,

No matter what befall-

The best thing in this troubled world

Is LAUGHTER, after all!

And that’s the slogan of our club-

From cradle days to shroud

It brings the sunshine back again

And drives away the cloud

So-now, tonight, let joy be yours

Let LAUGHTER ring out clear!

I pray-be not too critical, in judgment, too severe!

These are all our pals we’re here to see,

There shafts of wit have zest! But should they

Touch a tender spot, remember- ‘Tis a Jest!...

And, as you leave our house tonight,

Midst Music, LAUGHTER, Din,

Remember, friends our slogan-

We laugh- WE LAUGH TO WIN!

 The Masquers Creed Harry Stubbs

WE LAUGH TO WIN!  It was a credo that stood the test of time in Hollywood for over a half a century. 

The Masquers Club became an emblematic symbol of thespian fellowship during the Golden Age of Hollywood and beyond.  A genuine melding of camaraderie and talent, this close-knit fraternity held forth at a unique clubhouse on 1765 North Sycamore Street in Hollywood for over five decades.

Founded in 1925 by a group of eight actors, the Masquers became a show business institution that honored the profession of acting along with the desire for male fraternal fellowship. The majority of the charter members are mostly forgotten names, but a cluster of these original Masquers remain memorable: Warner Baxter, “Fatty” Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, John Ford, John Gilbert, Edmund Goulding and Lionel Barrymore.

One of the leading spirits of the club for four decades (who was also one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild) was the suave British actor, Alan Mowbray, who neatly summed up the purpose of the Masquers: 

 “The Masquers Club in Hollywood is a unique organization founded by a group of lonely stage actors who felt the need for a place foregather and talk nostalgically of “footlights” as opposed to klieg lights.”

The elected club president, or “Harlequin”, of the Masquers rotated over the years through a varied group of show biz performers and personalities including: Frank Morgan, Edward Arnold, Pat O’Brien, Joe E. Brown, Robert Armstrong, Mowbray (who became known as “Mr. Masquer”), Harry Joe Brown, Lou Costello, Edward Arnold, Gene Autry, Charles Kemper, Fred Clark, Rhys Williams, Frank Faylen, Joe Pasternak and Anthony Caruso.

In addition to providing a convivial clubhouse that included a tavern adorned with Henry Clive paintings and a theatre-banquet room for members to eat, drink and make merry, the Masquers sponsored numerous events such as an annual picnic at the Uplifters Ranch off of Beverly Boulevard (charitably dubbed THE ANNUAL MESS), a  Christmas party for children and thousands of benefit banquets for causes ranging from the Motion Picture Relief Fund to the Order of the Purple Heart. 

The tribute banquets to show business legends such as Ronald Colman, Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, and Edward G. Robinson frequently included the bestowment of the “George Spelvin Award”. This honorarium acknowledged the tradition of any stage actor who plays two different roles in the same show adopting the alias of “George Spelvin” as his second character. These evening events were laden with humor dished by some of the sharpest wits in Tinseltown.  The format and ambience of the Masquers fetes were eventually adapted and popularized by Dean Martin’s televised “roast” programs of the 1970’s. 

One memorable “roast and rib dinner” feting cherubic character actor Charles Coburn held in 1953 was dubbed “To Charles Coburn and His Lovelies”.  The participating “Lovelies” were: Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck, Piper Laurie, Joan Bennett, Marie Wilson, Spring Byington, Marjorie Main, Shelley Winters, Ella Logan, Wanda Hendrix, Olga San Juan, Frances Langford, Ginny Simms, Marguerite Chapman, and Billie Burke. Lovelies indeed!

However, the club was much more than a Hollywood mutual admiration society. What made the Masquers Club a unique fraternity was the emphasis on acting. This singular thespian focus encompassed stage, radio and silver screen productions   

The Masquers radio show on KNX in Los Angeles beginning in 1940 was an outgrowth of their first public cavalcade of comedy, dancing and dramatic skits that originated for seven years during the 1920’s in the Hollywood High School gymnasium.  

Along with other period acting clubs, the Masquers landed a studio production deal for short films. In association with Radio (RKO) Pictures, the club made eleven two-reel comedies during 1931-33. (For greater detail concerning this interesting aspect of the Masquers and film history, check out Leonard Maltin’s informative book, THE GREAT MOVIE SHORTS)

Many of the plays performed at the Masquers clubhouse theatre possessed a quality and diversity of casts, writing, direction and production that couldn’t be seen anywhere else.

Productions ranged from Shakespeare, to revivals, and original dramas, comedies and musical reviews. The Masquers provided an important venue for many character actors to hone their craft:

What Price Glory, starring Robert Armstrong, Charles Kemper, Wallace Ford and Pat O’Brien, Produced by John Ford.

Surprise Party with John Wayne, Grant Withers and Forrest Tucker.

Elliott Nugent and James Thurber’s The Male Animal produced by Percy Helton.

Fred Clark starring and directing The Absence of a Cello by Ira Wallach

Reclining Figure by Harry Kurnitz, with Nestor Paiva, Gil Lamb and Sherwood Keith

The Tommy Farrell Show, a new musical review with  Fred Clark, Jerry Adler, Chester Clute, Helen Thurston and Dale Van Sickle.

Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey with Sean McClory and Mae Clarke

The Deadly Game with Lyle Bettger, Roy Roberts and Berry Kroeger.

As the years thinned the ranks and the veteran stalwarts who frequented the Masquers on a daily basis (Alan Mowbray, Percy Helton, Fred Clark, Robert Armstrong and Roy Roberts among others) passed on, it became increasingly difficult for the club to maintain its élan in a changing Hollywood.

The clubhouse on North Sycamore, heavily mortgaged and gradually surrounded by the concrete of progress, finally had to be sold off.  An apartment building now occupies the former playground of the Jesterati. With the loss of their revered headquarters, a golden era of banquets, benefits, plays and convivial thespian comradeship that epitomized the best of Hollywood finally arrived at an inglorious denouement.

The Masquers Club survives to the present day even though they recently lost one of their most ardent members and historians, actor Sean McClory. In addition to promoting good fellowship between men and women in the profession, the organization is pursuing gathering and displaying its memorabilia and history with a renewed dedication. 

The Masquers web site is at  http://www.masquersclub.org/index.html- They have some terrific pictures.

As for recollecting the days of laughter and past glories, as Pat O’Brien remarked during the Masquers 50th anniversary in 1975, “There is no price tag on memories.”

The Masquers:  WE LAUGH TO WIN!

The Seventh Annual Palm Springs Film Noir Festival

The temperature in Palm Springs, California during the first weekend of June was as warm as the ambience at Arthur Lyons seventh annual Film Noir Festival in this desert oasis.  In returning for my fifth year at this festival, I always think of this eventl as film noir’s version of Same Time, Next Year.  I have an opportunity to become reacquainted with old friends, make new ones and hobnob with the celebs in a relaxed atmosphere that is just not present in other locales. There is nothing quite like Palm Springs to relax the body and soul for four days of non-stop film noir.

For more about the festivities in Palm Springs, go here http://notesfromhollywood.com/page.cfm?Sectionid=7&typeofsite=storydetail&ID=1330&storyset=yes

Art Lyons, a cherished comrade in noir and author of Death on the Cheap: The Lost “B” Movies of Film Noir invariably produces a fest renowned for movie star guests and obscure dark oddities (typically in 16mm or DVD) that frequently expand the foggy boundary lines of the film noir style.

The opening night screening of Cry Tough (1959) at the Camelot Theatres was an emblematic launch. This seldom-seen foray by writer-producer Harry Kleiner about a Puerto Rican ex-con struggling for redemption in Spanish Harlem enthralled the packed house. John Saxon and a gorgeous Linda Cristal were a compelling duo of fatally mismatched lovers. A stellar supporting cast headed by vet Joseph Callieia was just as effective though Don Gordon and Harry Townes initially struck me as incongruous choices to play Hispanic gangsters.  Although this El Barrio saga has a few stereotypical creaks, the picture is laden with an oppressive sense of fatalism amid a hard-edged visual style that proved wholly authentic. Cry Tough is definite film noir.  

John Saxon took to the stage, visibly moved after viewing a film that he hadn’t seen in its entirety for nearly a half century. Saxon was entertainingly prescient  in describing his whirlwind transition from Carmine Orrico, a 16 year old New York photo model who wanted to mimic Tony Curtis’ hair style from The City across the River to a full blown Hollywood buildup by legendary agent Henry Willson, as John Saxon, initiating a distinguished five-decade screen career that shows no sign of abating. 

From his seminal collaboration with Marlon Brando in The Appaloosa (1966) to being knocked across the room by Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and a disastrously funny association with director Edgar G. Ulmer during the filming of The Cavern (1965), John Saxon proved to be an eloquent chronicler of his life and career amid the tumultuous changes of Hollywood, circa 1950’s.

Four films were screened the following day beginning with a restored 16 mm version of The Amazing Mr. X aka The Spiritualist (1948).

Although this Eagle-Lion gem with Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari and Richard Carlson has recently experienced a Wade Williams produced DVD release and a new 35mm print available from Sony-Columbia, it was gratifying to acknowledge the fine work of film archivist and restorer, Jay Fenton, who brought this film to Palm Springs along with several other rare prints.

Macao (1952) is a tribute to the compelling visual power of legendary stars Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell on the big screen. Although writer-producer Stanley Rubin was on hand to discuss his original screenplay (and relate how Howard Hughes reneged on a negotiated deal for Stan to produce the film), this film is a glorious visual feast of Mitch & Jane, sultry Gloria Grahame, William Bendix, Brad Dexter and Thomas Gomez amid a whirl of foreign intrigue, lost diamonds, thrown knives, cigarette smoke and spinning roulette wheels. For me, Macao remains a “movie-movie” that is less about film noir and more about movie stars in their glorious courses.

The ageless Stanley Rubin, one of the best raconteurs in Hollywood, related his fascinating experiences with Howard Hughes, Robert Mitchum, Otto Preminger, Marilyn Monroe, et al but maintained a gentlemanly decorum when I nudged him during our post screening Q&A to dish a bit about ultimate noir femme, Gloria Grahame. Ever the class act, Stanley only acknowledged dating Gloria before meeting his actress-wife Kathleen Hughes. A beacon of genuine humility, Rubin wistfully noted that he wished the last line of Macao could have been from his original screenplay.    

The rarely seen Appointment with a Shadow (1957) was scrubbed due to technical problems and the compelling blind-alley noir, Quicksand (1950) was substituted.  This underrated film stars a post Andy Hardy Mickey Rooney who embarks on the road to film noir perdition after “borrowing” a twenty-dollar bill from his boss’s till.  Ensuing that Rooney rapidly circles the drain are a slatternly Jeanne Cagney and degenerate arcade owner Peter Lorre. Quicksand was preceded by a masterly detailed introduction by my Film Noir Foundation colleague and cinematic scholar, the estimable Foster Hirsch.

The rest of the evening belonged to the Queen of Technicolor, Rhonda Fleming who was the special guest of a sold-out screening of While the City Sleeps (1956).

Even though this film was helmed by the legendary Fritz Lang, While the City Sleeps (1956) is an indifferently mounted picture that is rescued by an entourage of some of best actors then working in Hollywood.  Any film that boasts of Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Sally Forrest, AND Rhonda Fleming simply has to be entertaining. And so it was.

When Rhonda Fleming took to the stage, she was genuinely touched by the standing ovation and looked, well; she looked like Rhonda Fleming in her prime; drop-dead gorgeous. Rhonda’s beauty and charm were savored by the capacity crowd who clearly bought the tickets to see her.

Miss Fleming’s appearance after the screening unfortunately lacked a great deal of meaningful discourse primarily due to the puzzlingly indifferent Alain Silver who served as the on-stage interviewer. Silver, one of the most righteously seminal writers about film noir, appeared to be mutely oblivious to his star guest; he didn’t even formally introduce her to a sold-out crowd. Rhonda Fleming and the audience deserved better.

The early Saturday morning screening of a restored 16mm print of Three Bad Sister