Book review - "King Cohn" by Bob Thomas (re-reading)

Listened to this in audio book form because John Landis did the reading. It was fun. Full of good anecdotes. That does mean there's less analysis and a lot of stories from people where they got one over Harry Cohn. Aw shucks, anecdote teller, you're so clever. 

I was constantly thinking "What was really going on?"

I know Cohn was smart and ruthless. I sensed a less pleasant, more controlling person behind the person depicted here.

But the book is an easy read. Lots of great stories. The account of his death is moving, as is his friendship with Sidney Buchman.

Movie review - "Lady for a Day" (1933) ***1/2

 Why this is better than the remake:

- it's shorter - the plan kicks in by 29 minutes, the pace is faster;

- it's contemporary so was made when there was a depression actually on;

- May Robson was unknown so you're not sitting there all the time going "that's Bette Davis";

- Glenda Farrell is a much more believable gangster girlfriend than Hope Lange and isn't given that boring backstory;

- having lesser known stars in the leads means it works better as what it is, a community story.

Entertaining and a pivotal film for Capra and writer Robert Riskin.

Movie review - "Pocketful of Miracles" (1961) **

 Frank Capra's last movie (though he didn't intend that to be the case at the time) is a remake of his earlier hit Lady for  Day. It has bright, garish colours, as if set in toy town, and is an alright time-filler.  I have memories of it being on TV on Sunday afternoon. 

Peter Falk shines in an early role. It was Ann Margret's first movie and she's lovely - always better as a good girl. She sings a song. At times watching this I wondered if it could be a musical - I think other people had the same idea after Guys and Dolls. Some random handsome American plays her Italian fiance. He warbles a tune too.

I quite enjoyed the family of pan handlers - the little person, the mute girl. I know it was hokey but it worked.

Glenn Ford is miscast as a gangster hero, though not as much as Hope Lange who plays his dancer girlfriend. Bette Davis is also miscast playing "old lady" (a few years down the track it wouldn't matter) though I got more used to her.

In the second half the story kicks in and it became especially watchable (though Ford disappears from the action). But then at the climax I watched Davis introducing all these New York figures be introduced to the Italian count I went "who cares if the count approves or not... like he's an Italian count, Italy got smothered in the war and depended on American kindness". That's when it hit me the story didn't update that well.

Maybe it should've been set in Las Vegas - but do they have panhandlers. More could've been made of Davis' alcoholism... that's a ticking clock that was never used. Ditto Mitchell's drinking problem. No romance between her and Thomas Mitchell?

Book review - "Five Came Back" by Mark Harris

 Excellent look at the war career of top directors. A lot I was already familiar with but some stuff was fresh. The filmmakers spent a lot of time on these documentaries. They are lively characters - George Stevens whose life was changed, party boy John Huston, angsty Frank Capra, driven William Wyler. Entertaining.

Movie review - "King Cohn: The Life and Times of Harry Cohn" by Bob Thomas (1967)

Its frustrating this isn't footnoted but it was very entertaining and remains perhaps the best known book about Cohn, one of Hollywood's legendary tycoons. Like most of them he was Jewish, and admirable and terrible and missed.

Cohn's reputation has suffered in recent years along with Darryl F Zanuck because they are the tycoons probably most like Harvey Weinstein - i.e. skirt chases - which means it's highly likely they would have engaged in sexual harrasment and possibly worse. Cohn was also a bully like Weinstein who swore and was prone to fits of rage.

He could be kind and decent but also a prick. His second marriage seems to have been happy - they had three kids, lost one, adopted another. He had a lot of admirers but a lot of that was due to his business acumen.

He worked his way up the hard way like all the great tycoons. He was a song plugger and fur salesman before going into films. Columbia started as a poverty row studio but Cohn and his brother (like the Warners there was a brother) pulled it up to the majors. He was helped by the skill of Frank Capra, but a lot of it was Cohn... he was very well informed, and he had a nose for talent: Leo McCarey, George Stevens, Cary Grant, Sidney Buchman, Stanley Kramer, Daniel Taradash, Buddy Adler are among those who benefited and prospered from working for Cohn... then had to leave because there can only be one. He built some stars like Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak.

Things that were once seen to hold Columbia back like having no theatres helped it thrive in the 50s - also he got in on the ground floor with TV via Screen Gems.

People have affection for Cohn in part because he exemplified the role of Hollywood tycoon so well - lecherous, foul mouthed, cunning.

Thomas has a journo's gift for funny/scary/ touching anecdotes - there are moving accounts of his last months, funny tales of Norman Krasna teasing him, the unexpectedly strong friendship with Buchman,  bullying Jean Arthur and John Wayne, enjoying fighting with Broderick Crawford. Very human, very smart, very ideal for his job, very good man to stay away from.

Documentary review - "Five Came Back" (2016) ****

Lots of books get written about Hollywood, but only a few get the deluxe documentary treatment - I'm guessing this got up because it focuses on directors who were so idolised by A list baby boom directors who agreed to appear on camera - this has Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo de Toro, Lawrence Kasdan, Paul Greengrass.

It is a good story - some leading Hollywood directors going off to war and being affected by the experiences: John Huston, John Ford, George Stevens, William Wyler, Frank Capra. All were characters of very different stripes: Huston was an adventurer, who couldn't help bucking against army authority, making several masterpieces including one on PTSD; Ford loved the military, probably had a high old time but was affected by it - took great delight in tormenting John Wayne while making They Were Expendable, and saw action; Wyler was a Jew, very conscious of the Jewish issues underlying the war; Capra was an Italian-American patriot (well they were all patriots), determined to show his new country how loyal he was; Stevens a great liberal.

The war affected them in several ways: Capra never really recovered his former position; Stevens lost his sense of humour.

The fact this is a documentary means you can see the films, especially important for the war films. The directors interviewed, not surprisingly, are good communicators. It's very touching how much del Toro feels a kinship for Capra, and Spielberg and Coppola's enthusiasm is always winning. Kasdan is a very bright analyst.

Movie review - "Lost Horizon" (1973) *

Original film musicals rarely work, and this was a notorious flop despite the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. I wonder if they considered cutting the numbers out because it wouldn't have been hard to do - they don't really add anything except laughter. The songs aren't so bad by themselves, but they don't really work in the context of the film.

The script seems to follow the Frank Capra original, with a few dud tweaks (e.g. making one of the characters a stand up comic). But things that worked in 1937, don't translate very well - whites being Asians, the whole mystic aspect of it, the romanticism of Peter Finch's character. Also what was mysterious and strange in 1937 was a lot more familiar by 1973 - maybe this was impossible to do. Or maybe it was just ineptly executed.

Peter Finch does what he can in the role - it's a tricky part (who else could have played it?) and he doesn't suit it as well as Ronald Colman but he handles it well enough. Michael York is effective, Sally Kellerman gets on the nerves (part of it is due to her bad dialogue), Olivia Hussey is very pretty, George Kennedy is fine, John Gielgud and Charles Boyer bring on a few laughs pretending to be Asian. Liv Ullman just looks plain darned uncomfortable.

It didn't have the budget to blow the audience away with its sets and production design, like the 1937 film did, or the conviction. Could this have ever worked? Maybe with a cast with actual experience in musicals (none of them are known as musical comedy stars), a better script that tries to update the story while keeping its essence, stronger handling. Or maybe it was just impossible.

Radio review – Lux – “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1947) ****

Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed repeat their film roles with Victor Moore the new addition in this version of Frank Capra’s famous Christmas tale. It’s got one of the all time great ideas – to wit, what would happen if you’ve never been born? But surprisingly that concept only comes along in the third act. Act one is about Jimmy Stewart being frustrated in his dreams – he wants to leave town but it’s thwarted by his father’s death, then his brother’s marriage, then the Depression. Act two is Jimmy being driven to suicide. Then act three he realises things aren’t that bad. 

It’s a pertinent message just as important today – the sweet stuff works so well because there’s so much darkness: the threat of illness, cost of medical treatment, economic collapse, cruelty of Mr Potter. You really feel for Stewart’s character, with his spoilt younger brother refusing to take his turn running the family business (yeah he’s a war hero but so what), idiotic uncle who loses his money. Stewart’s wonderful voice made him a superb radio actor and he’s very good here.

Radio review – TG – “You Can’t Take It With You” (1946) ***

The Kaufman-Hart play hit a major chord with theatregoers in the 30s (and with filmgoers the same decade), with audiences attracted to its combination of family warmth, anti-materialism and isolationism. I’ve never been as great an admirer – it’s got some funny, “zany” stuff, but I guess my practicality gene kicked in. It’s alright for Grandpa to bludge, he’s got a rental income coming in. And why shouldn’t he pay tax? Where does he get water from? And roads, police... not to mention protection from the Nazis (who are mentioned here so it’s clearly been updated to the present day). It’s a good adaptation of the play, with some of the original stage cast such as Josephine Hull reprising their roles but no big film names.

Movie review – “Platinum Blonde” (1931) ***

Loretta Young and Jean Harlow at the beginning of their careers, each playing a part which should clearly have been played by the other: Loretta (very young and lovely – she was around 18) is a wisecracking reporter, best friend for a journalist who surprises everyone by marrying a tosh society girl… Harlow! 

 

But I guess they wanted to feature Harlow (not much older than Young but a bigger name due to Hell’s Angels) in a series of nice dresses; also she was already established as a temptress. However the actual star is a bloke called Robert Williams, who plays the reporter – a wisecracking smart alec type, not very funny but lively. He died soon after the movie.

 

This was one of Frank Capra’s early films, and his skill is evident. It’s handled briskly and expertly with plenty of interesting shots such as a romantic one between Williams and Harlow shot through a waterfall. Harlow’s playing is much better than in her earlier films – was this Capra’s influence? She’s particularly relaxed in a scene where she’s trying to persuade her husband to wear garters, which winds up with them doing my song.

 

Watching this again, my sympathy was more on Harlow's side than Williams'. Why should Harlow give up her house and live in a crummy apartment? Why can’t Williams get a job other than be a second-rate reporter? Harlow does seem to try – but Williams sulks and whines and invites his mates around to trash the house. And when he moves out he gets Young to make him breakfast and orders her around. (This is definitely a pre-Code film though because the hero is allowed to divorce and re-marry.)

 

The script was worked on by Robert Riskin in one of his first collaborations with Capra. It features elements later reused by the two of them, including the honest hero knocking out a reporter and a snob, and encouraging a butler to go “whoop” in a big mansion.

Book review – “Glenn Ford: A Life” by Peter Ford

Glenn Ford was an unusual star in his lack of unusual-ness – good looking but not spectacularly so, he gave the impression of being a nice, decent man, perfectly in line with his name. It was a surprise to read in Frank Capra’s memoirs that he was such a beast on the set of Pocketful of Miracles. Surely Ford was as nice as his image? Would he have the clout to have a big head?

Well, yes he did – for a time, anyway. In 1958 Ford was voted the most popular star in the US. His looks and demeanour perfectly suited the Eisenhower era – the persona of a handsome World War Two veteran who’d settled down in the suburbs; family men with a history of violence who were comfortable with authority. This meant he was ideal to play cowboys, cops, teachers, businessmen and army officers. He actually wasn’t in that many huge box office successes, but enough to keep him in the public eye, especially in the second half of the 50s. Eventually the tide went out, but he remained steadily employed until his retirement.

Just as many all-Australian types are born in New Zealand, all-American Ford was born in Canada. He moved to the US as a young boy for his family’s health, settling in California. He wanted to act from a young age, and joined the Santa Monica Players, for whom he appeared in a large number of plays over a short period of time. It’s hard to break in an actor but the people who have the least hard time of it are handsome young men with a good build and voice – there are always parts for them to play.

Ford benefited from the fact that a big wheel in the organisation was Harold Clifton, a gay man who had a crush on him. (Ford didn’t reciprocate but showed his loyalty by getting this guy hired as a dialogue coach once he became a movie star. Along with some ex-gaolbird, Clifton formed Ford’s entourage.) It also helped that he supplemented his acting jobs by stage managing – this helped him get some professional gigs (aspiring actors take note!).

Apart from a brief stint as an extra, Ford’s first movie role was a lead. Yes it was only a quickie but there was a demand in Hollywood for handome young men and he got the gig. It didn’t set the world on fire but later he was signed by Columbia who used him as a juvenile. As a result he didn’t really work his way up via the cast list, more via the budget of his films. An appearance in So This is the Night (outside Columbia) kicked his career up a level, but the momentum was stalled by war service (unglamorous service, too - he enlisted, but didn’t see action and was invalided out with ulcers).

But when he returned he was lucky enough to support two stars in hit films: A Stolen Life and Gilda. These turned Ford into a star, a position he maintained despite a run of astonishingly unremarkable films over the next eight years or so. Bland comedies and Westerns that were on the whole indifferently received (he turned down the William Holden part in Born Yesterday) – yet Ford was still considered a name.

He did make a classic with The Big Heat but what really turned things around for him was starring in The Blackboard Jungle and signing with MGM in the early 1950s. He became Metro’s major male star during the next eight years or so, featuring in a series of hit films. Again, mostly Westerns, crime films and comedies, but of a far higher quality. His standing never really recovered, though, from starring in two massive flops at the studio, Cimarron and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Joe Dante once commented that the 50s really ended in America in 1963, when JFK was shot. That’s what seemed to happen to Ford’s career – his last hit was in 1963, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. The public didn’t seem to take to any of the films he made after that – too many of them were old-fashioned, second tier entertainments that audiences simply weren’t going to any more (Peter Ford is a big fan of The Rounders, though).

Ford was married for a long time to Eleanor Powell, and their association probably helped his career, if only to keep his name in the public eye at key periods in his career. Powell was very conservative, a 29 year old virgin when they married (no wonder her tap dancing had so much energy). It doesn’t have seemed to have been much of a union. They were separated by work for long periods of time – Ford on location, Powell off touring with her tap dancing shows.

And Ford was unfaithful pretty much from the get go – he had flings with Rita Hayworth (on the early films they made together), Geraldine Brooks, Rhoda Fleming, Gloria Grahame, Barbra Stanwyck, and Felicia Farr. The majority of his female co-stars, it seems – a perk of the job, I guess. Before marriage he had a fling with Joan Crawford, as seems to be required by all male stars of this period. Afterwards there was Hope Lange, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Schell, Connie Stevens (!), Judy Garland (!!), Stella Stevens, Angie Dickinson, and many more.

Although Ford's career declined in the 60s and 70s he still seemed to have a pretty good life, still getting good roles on TV and accepting every junket going around the world (he attended the 1972 Logies in Australia and boorishly refused to shake Doug McClelland’s hand due to McClelland’s perceived anti-Americanism – which Ford’s son puts down to Vietnam and foreign policy, ignoring the fact that it was actually due to the fact McClelland was pushing for quotas of Australian drama and Ford thought this meant putting American actors out of work.)

His life became less happy in the 80s and 90s – he developed a drinking problem, blew a lot of his money, fell out with his son, had two divorces, came under the control of a nurse who tried to rip him off, was the subject of a custody battle between his son and the nurse, struggled against poor health. He was a spoilt child in many ways and the chickens came home to roost somewhat. Still, he enjoyed relative comfort and died in the embrace of his family.

Lots of fascinating bits here: Ford got Hayworth pregnant during filming of The Loves of Carmen and she had an abortion; Bette Davis tried to seduce him during A Stolen Life – her technique was to open her blouse and show her breasts, which were apparently spectacular; Ford was so heartbroken after a fight with Brooks during the making of The Green Glove in France that he enlisted in the foreign legion and had to have people get him out of it the next day; after his divorce Ford hung out with a more gay crowd, including Tennessee Williams and Chris Isherwood; he had a reputation as a necrophiliac (Ford Jnr traces the origin of this very wittily); one of his carers in the 90s was actor Roberta Collins, the New World starlet; he made a film for Roger Corman, A Time for a Killing – but Corman quit the movie.

It’s a superb book – I can’t imagine a better one on Glenn Ford. As Patrick McGilligan points out in his introduction, there’s three stories here – Glenn’s, Eleanor Powell's and Peter Ford's. I would have thought Eleanor Powell would have featured more, but I guess it’s not her book and she does sound a bit dull anyway – just someone who tap danced a lot and was deluded about her husband; she later found God, and managed to not have much money at the end of her career despite years of working. 

 

Ford Jnr admits Glenn was a bad father and that he got along much better with him once he elected to be his friend rather than his son. He points out many of his personal flaws (spoilt, selfish) but always tries to see the positive. He goes too easy on his father’s behaviour on movie sets – Frank Capra wasn’t the only one to find him a handful. On Fate is the Hunter, for instance, he took his costume without asking and David Swift went on record saying how much he hated working with him. But that’s a minor, forgivable flaw in a wonderful, emotive piece of work.

Radio review – BP#5 – “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1952) ***1/2

The old war house is given a strong adaptation – the lead actor isn’t a big name (someone called Donald Cook) but all he needs to be is normal when surrounded by crazy, murdering aunts, psychopathic brothers, cousins who think they’re Theodore Roosevelt, comic Irish cops. Good fun. Boris Karloff repeats his famous stage performance as a killer who looks like Boris Karloff.

Radio review - Lux – “Lost Horizon” (1941) **

James Hilton’s novel has one of the great central ideas – the lost paradise of Shangri La. I’ve always had problems with the story – it’s a bit mean of the lama to kidnap a planeload of people to secure themselves a leader, who anyway proves not really up to it by bailing on the place.

Also if Shangri La is so great then why does that girl want to leave?

I’m not a massive fan of oh-so-sincere Ronald Colman either, who reprises his film role. (Incidentally I think this adaptation is similar to the book in some ways than the film – Colman’s troublesome off sider is no longer his brother, which was the case in the book, Colman gets no love interest of his own, and his fellow passengers are closer to the book than the film.)

Book review – “Jean Arthur: the Actress Nobody Knew” by John Oller

Being a recluse seemed to suit Greta Garbo – she was so enigmatic on screen, so “foreign”. It didn’t seem to suit Jean Arthur – she always seemed so warm and friendly, one couldn’t help assume that she was happily married and lived in a country town. Well, she was happily married for a time, and did live in a country town (Carmel), but then she got divorced and lived as a recluse, and often was a nervous wreck.

Oller was faced with a difficult task, writing about Arthur, as she rarely spoke to the press once she had the power not to. But he succeeds magnificently, a combination of solid research (for instance, clarifying that she was born in 1900 – she was amazingly well preserved, doing a swimsuit photo in 1941), and analysis, looking at what she studied when she went back to school at the height of her fame, and the various comments she’s given in interviews. 

Arthur has been called a lesbian in recent years, for a few reasons (passionate friendship with Mary Martin, preference of manly roles such as Peter Pan) but nothing conclusive – Oller sort of sits on the fence on that one, doesn’t accept it but doesn’t discard it either. Often with eccentric people sexuality can be used as an easy explanation – “ah, she was gay, that’s why” – but I think Arthur’s personality was more shaped by other things: a desire to hide despite being an actor (something not that rare), her adoration of an alcoholic father, insecurity about her intelligence, her desire for women to be treated the same as men. 

Arthur sort of drifted into acting, it doesn’t seem to have been a grand passion with her (she started young at her parents' prompting and put in about a decade in thankless roles before becoming a star); her passion was for ideals. I also got the impression Arthur used her nervousness as “fuel” for her performing energy – but sometimes the fuel exploded, especially when working on a play and/or with a director she didn’t trust.

The structure of the book is slightly odd – by the half-way mark we’re already at the year 1943, when Arthur pretty much gave up film acting, and the whole second half of the book is dedicated to Arthur’s studies, theatre experiences and television work, with the odd film, plus her life as a recluse. I would have preferred more on the films, but this is a very good book.