Movie review - "Ziegield Girl" (1941) ****

 Fantastic example of MGM at its peak. A three girl movies where the girls are played by iconic stars each in a specifically defined role - Lana Turner as a shabby poor girl (elevator operator) who can't resist the money, Judy Garland as a super talented girl who isn't as hot as the others but is the one made for showbiz, Hedy Lamarr as the refugee.

Turner and Lamarr have controlling partners - James Stewart (adding affability and star power) as a truck driving boyfriend,  and Lamarr with her sooky violinst husband Philip Dorn. Garland isn't given a girlfriend but an actor dad whose career she helps.

Lamar's subplot looks promising when sleazty singer Tony Martin goes after her but then his wife somes along and asks for her to back off and she does and gets back with violinist Dorn. This plot needed a little more kick and for Lamar to interact with the girls. There's not enough girl interacting.

But Turner's is a lot of fun as she embraces booze, rich men (Ian Hunter, then they get sleazier - one of them is Dan Dailey), and Stewart becoomes a bootlegger. It's basically implied Turner becomes a hooker, she has a lovely final scene with Stewart then goes to see a show, and basically dies which is grand OTT wonderful MGM crap as are the production numbers.

Female writers so the women are depicted sympathetically, even the cuckolded wife, and gold digger Eve Arden, and the men are unreliable (even Stewart winds up going to prison before bouncing back). Jackei Cooper is cutely bumbling as Turner's brother - kept waiting for her to hook up with Garland but didn't happen. Paul Kelly is nicely ruthless as a stage manager and Edward Everett Horton is part of the Ziegfield organisation - two recogniseable types.

Lots of fun. Turner's film more than Garland's too which is part of its charm.

Book review - "Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film" by Ruth Barton

 Not bad. Covers the whole life. Maybe a bit thin on the films. But in Barton's defence Lamarr's life and career was so magnificently improbable it would take a longer book to do justice - Jewish, marriage to rich man, film career, nudity, escapes with jewels, meets Louis B Mayer, signed to MGM, stardom, exotic love life, invents wi-fi on the side, struggles post war as many of her kind did, blew a lot of money but bounced back via lawsuits. Lamarr is an enaging person to spend time with in the book.

Movie review - "White Cargo" (1942) ***

A film of its time, lets put it that way - actually, to be fair, its time really was 1920s London stage, where there was a rich tradition of colonial melodramas about angsty white men going ga-ga for some exotic tail. That's when the original play debuted, and the writer, Leon Gordon, did his own adaptation so the spirit is preserved.

There have been some changes - notably making Hedy Lamarr's character Tondeleyo white (well, half-Egyptian, half-Portuguese) so she can marry Richard Carlson without upsetting the Production Code, who had no problem endorsing Walter Pidgeon's dictatorial rule of this part of Africa (he wants to bring back flogging, sentences a man to a year in prison he doesn't deserve to keep things in line) or the depiction of all Africans as simpletons, or Lamarr in brown face.

But the piece does hold dramatically.  It's about the difficulties of being colonial officers in Africa - how it drives men around the bend and how they're not liable to make it. (It's not a very positive depiction - no one is happy, everyone is hot and sweaty).

Lamarr is very effective whoever offensive people are liable to find her character.  She's not introduced until 30 minutes in, giving her a good build up (others talk about her before then). Then she sets about seducing Carlson - and the story delivers on its promise because they get married, they have sex, she's impatient and then tries to kill him... so Pidgeon tricks her into killing herself.

I'm used to seeing Pidgeon playing cuddly characters so it's weird to see him play a grumpy surly Clarke Gable type role. Frank Morgan is excellent as a boozy doctor the other big part. And Carlson was very good - you can see why people thought it was going to be a big star for so long.

Movie review - "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story" (2017) ****

Superb look at the life of perhaps Hollywood's greatest startlet/inventor, Hedy Lamarr, whose private life was interesting enough (a stunning beauty, marriage to Austrian munitions manufacturer, early nude/orgasm scene in Ecstacy, fleeing to the US and MGM fame)... but then they throw in her inventing in her part time, quite successfully.

Lamarr is a fascinating character: warm, imperious, smart, funny, addicted to speed and plastic surgery, Jewish (but who would hide that even from her kids), an occasionally great and also terrible mother, bad taste in men, not great with money (she wound up with a pension despite her MGM salary and marrying an oil man).

The biography is very good helped by some great "gets" - a taped interview people did of her, home movie footage, grabs of the Austrian films. I did feel the filmmakers were a bit mean taking MGM to task for miscasting her - I felt Louis B Mayer used her very well.  I mean, she was obviously brilliant and gorgeous but it doesn't mean she could act. She was made for stuff like White Cargo.

Movie review - "Let's Live a Little" (1948) *

Terrible, dim romantic comedy despite starring (and being co produced by) Bob Cummings, normally adept at light comedy... and actually his performance is fine, but it's an incredibly dopey story with unimaginative handling.

It's got an agonisingly weak concept - Bob Cummings is an ad man who is meant to be a misogynist (Cummings is never believable as this) and has romance troubles with his girlfriend (Anna Stein) and winds up being treated by a shrink who's written a book, Hedy Lamarr.

Two European accented women feels weird. No one has a character - struggled to get a fix on any of them. Sten and Lamarr can't play comedy. I love that Lamarr invented blue tooth or whatever it was but she wasn't a comic genius. There aren't any good lines or scenes or a strong support cast... there's some half baked satire of psychiatry.

I never cared about any of the characters or the central relationship. I didn't laugh. It doesn't even look good.

Movie review - "Boom Town" (1940) *** (warning: spoilers)

A big success at the time and it remained popular for a while afterwards, in part because it was such a great star vehicle: Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy as feuding oil wildcatters, who pal around and team up when they're not fighting, make and lose fortunes and both love the same gal (Claudette Colbert).

It's very easy to make and lose money in oil according to this film - Tracy and Gable make a fortune quickly, then Gable loses it via a flick of a coin, then Gable has nothing but bounces back, then Tracy loses his in a South American revolution but bounces back via Oklahoma, then they lose theirs again via financial machinations, then they get it back again.

Hedy Lamarr pops up in the third act as a vamp-but-not-really who temps Gable away from Colbert.  Lamarr is good looking, but not much of an actress - watching her I kept having to remind myself "she invented blue tooth".

Colbert is bland, but then I'm not a fan - she reminds me too much of my grandma. Don't get me wrong, I love my grandma, but I don't think shes that vivacious opposite Clark Gable  - far too marmish. I didn't like the character either for running off with Gable on night one even though she knew Tracy was in love with her.

Or was he? Tracy is meant to be in love with Colbert, getting upset when Gable roots around on her, but it's just as easy to read he's in love with Gable and gets upset when he goes to women. 

There's some more camp value at the end when Gable goes to Colbert "I ought to lick you" and she goes "you can lick me if you like".

MGM's support cast stock company wasn't as strong as Warner Bros but there is Chill Wills, Lionel Atwill and Frank Morgan. The story is decent enough although at two hours is goes in too long - in particular once Gable and Colbert get back together for the second time at the end the film feels as though it should end but there's ten more minutes of this anti-trust hearing.

Movie review - "The Story of Mankind" (1957) **

This made an appearance in Harry Medved's 50 Worst Movies of All Time but truth be told it's not that bad - it is interesting in a uni revue kind of way, with an all star cast keeping things interestingly. The story seems to be a kind of rip off of A Matter of Life and Death with good Ronald Colman and bad Vincent Price arguing in a celestial court over whether humankind is good or bad.

We see a variety of incidents throughout history and lots of stock footage, plus actors like Dennis Hopper (Napoleon), the Marx Brothers (in separate scenes, as Peter Minuit and Isaac Newton and a monk), Hedy Lamar (Joan of Arc), Virgina Mayo (Cleopatra), Marie Wilson (Marie Antoinette), Jim Ameche (Don's younger brother) (Alexander Graham Bell), Peter Lorre (Nero), John Carradine (Egyptian leader).

Film buffs will probably get something out of it - and I genuinely laughed at Groucho's segment, and Harpo's wasn't bad. It's silly and dumb but there are lots of worse movies. The people who wrote and direct it weren't really comedy people - it was directed by Irwin Allen.

Book review - "The Films of Victor Mature" (2013) by James McKay

Victor Mature would be one of the least highly regarded stars of Hollywood's golden era - far too many musicals and costume pictures, with that haughty air of self satisfaction and muscular physique. But a closer look at his output reveals a surprising range: swashbucklers, westerns, musicals, Biblical epics, film noir, comedies, war flicks; he worked with filmmakers as capable as Hal Roach, Henry Hathaway, John Ford, Frank Borzage, Albert Broccoli, Neil Simon, and Cecil B de Mille, and featured in several classics, some camp (One Million Years BC) but others legitimate (Kiss of Death, My Darling Clementine) and a large number of "hidden gems".

Mature was also very endearing, extremely self deprecating about his abilities, funny and wry, with a good head on his shoulders: he enjoyed making money and hooking up with women, and was very skilled at both, although all those marriages dented his earnings; he managed to retire on his own terms a wealthy man and enjoyed a long retirement.

He actually deserves a full biography but until that comes along this isn't a bad substitute. McKay is a big Mature fan, and his work is very uncritical, but he at least has done some research and I enjoyed his passion. There is a solid biographical entry at the beginning and the fact that this is a film by film analysis mean some lesser known Mature works like Stella and Gambling House get some attention.

Movie review – “Copper Canyon” (1950) **1/2

Aw, those poor former slave owning Southerners – they’re being picked on after the Civil War by nasty miners. Actually that’s not a bad start for a Western – I’m sure there was plenty of discrimination, it’s just annoying all the ex-Confederates are good and there are nasty Yankees, with the peace kept of course by invoking some words of Abraham Lincoln. Naturally there are no black people or Indians in the film.

Ray Milland is a lot more happily cast than in California as a sharpshooter who the Southerners think is a former officer. Hedy Lamarr is wasted as a gambling gal but MacDonald Carey is excellent as a nasty villain – with three day growth, a hat and a scowl, he’s a lot more interesting actor than he was in his more heroic role.

Book review – “Sun and Shadow” by Jean-Pierre Aumont

Aumont belongs to that sub-category of movie stars – foreigners who went to Hollywood and usually played second leads in between some interesting marriages. Michael Wilding is another I can think of in this category. Nonetheless, he had a fascinating life and I really enjoyed his memoirs. 

 

Aumont has been blessed by good and bad fortune. He had only been acting for a short time before being picked to act in a play by Jean Cocteau and Louis Jouvet. Good luck. His looks ensured he enjoyed a steady film career as a leading man during the 1930s (good luck), until interrupted by war. (Bad luck) He was on leave visiting his dying mother (bad luck) when his platoon was mostly wiped out (good luck). He managed to get a visa to America from Vichy France, was picked to act in a play with Katherine Cornell (through a French theatre acquaintance) which didn’t go to Broadway, but got him film offers. (Good luck). He signed with MGM, starred in two films (no support roles for him), the most notable of which was The Cross of Lorraine (good luck), then went to fight for the Free French in Africa, Italy and France. Real service too – driving tanks, in amidst running into Marlene Dietrich; he was injured twice. (Good and bad luck)

 

He returned to Hollywood, where his reign as a leading man didn’t last long (very few French accented actors have had a long reign as a star - Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier, maybe Louis Jourdan). However he did carve out a decent career as a second lead, in films like Lili and Hilda Crane. He also worked in France and on stage (including Broadway)… and even had a nightclub act (despite the fact he wasn’t the best singer). 

 

Aumont is still perhaps best remembered (in a certain segment of the population, anyway) for his marriage to Maria Montez – the barely had started dating when he proposed, right before he took off for 18 months of service, but they were happy until her tragic early death (an odd one: a heart attack in a hot bath). Montez comes across a bit sketchy in this account - nice, beautiful, eccentric, devoted to her husband and astrologers. Apparently she and Aumont were going to star in Orphee for Jean Cocteau - the mind boggles. (They couldn't get the financing then the next they heard of it he was making it with Jean Marais.) Her death is one of the most moving sections of the book, though. 

 

Aumont later married Marisa Pavan, and was also in the 40s engaged to Hedy Lamarr; he also hints at a romance with Grace Kelly (who was alive when this book came out). His daughter Tina became an actor and was married to Christian Marquand (like Aumont, a French star who played some support roles in Hollywood). 

 

Aumont was probably too good looking to write a really good book – I get the feeling he wasn’t as an accomplished raconteur in the way, say, Michael Caine or David Niven was. He’s a bit up himself at times, constantly referring to the fact that he got better reviews on stage than his female co-stars. 

 

 But there’s lots to enjoy. Particularly strong is a chapter on starring with Vivien Leigh on Broadway, which includes some astute analysis of Leigh’s personality and acting, as well as an account of her breakdown; also performing with Al Pacino on Broadway (apparently Al loved to paraphrase), working with Cocteau, Louis Jouvet, Joan Littlewood (in a play on the Congo Crisis), and Francois Truffaut on Day for Night (he says things like “the problem with real life is it’s so badly directed” – very Truffaut – the director wrote the foreword to this book); the elongated shoot that was Castle Keep. Worth a read.

Movie review – “Samson and Delilah” (1949) ***

Samson has always been one of the most popular Bible stories because of it’s two great leading characters (the long haired rebel and a temptress) plus it’s great action sequences (wiping out platoon with a skull, bringing the temple down around them) and the metaphor of cutting here. All that is here in spades in this Cecil B de Mille version, plus some Hollywood embellishment. 

 

Delilah (Hedy Lamarr) is in love with Samson but he prefers her sister (Angela Lansbury in a sexy outfit – it’s weird, like seeing your grandmother show off her midriff when she was young). So she engineers some Philistines to attend their wedding and the wife ends up dead, causing Samson to go on a rampage.

 

The fight with the lion has some very unconvincing moments (not just a fake lion but a too-obvious stand in for Victor Mature) – but some really good ones too, more than I remembered. The smiting of the Philistines with the jaw of an ass is very well done, as is the climactic collapse of the temple. Most of the running time, though, consists of dialogue – specifically long chats between Samson and Delilah. And some of said dialogue is very ripe and apt to induce giggles.

 

Mature is fine – I would have thought he was better than I did if I hadn’t read that Burt Lancaster was offered the role. Lancaster I think would have been terrific, all that intensity and bitterness. Mature wasn’t as good an actor. And his breasts are about the same size as Lamarrs! (Groucho Marx famously quipped that they were bigger.) 

 

Lamarr seems a little old at first when playing the love struck sister but once she switches into temptress mode she’s great. The support cast feels very American – even Lansbury and Herbert Wilcoxon seem like Yanks, plus Russ Tamblyn does as young Saul. The exception is George Sanders who is an excellent villain, full of intelligence and ruthlessness – and he has a great death scene toasting the pillar that’s about to collapse on him.

Radio review – Lux – “Samson and Delilah” (1951) ***

Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr repeat their famous roles as the legendary Biblical lovers. Both do well enough even though not supported by their physiques. It takes a particular slant on the story - Delilah is the sister of Samson's wife, who betrays him mostly because he rejects her... and later she begs his forgiveness and helps him bring the temple down. Also Samson only kicks arse because his wife is killed - not his wife is killed because he kicks arse. Enjoyable schlocky fun; you'll laugh with the all-American kid Saul at the end - I think he's meant to become the first King of Israel. "Gee, Samson" he says. Hedy Lamarr talks at the end and you can hear her accent - not detectable at all during her performance.

Radio review - Lux - "Algiers" (1941) **

Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr were never more perfectly cast as a doomed criminal and the beautiful girl who loves him. They're all attractive and doomed and ya ya ya. I wasn't wild about it, probably because I'd only recently listened to the Orson Welles version - not that it was so much better, but I suppose there's only so much exotic romantic tosh I can take.

Radio review – Lux – “Casablanca” (1944) ***

Part of the myth of Casablanca is the possible other casts the film could have had – Ronald Reagan, George Raft, etc. Well here’s a chance to listen to the story with a different cast: Alan Ladd, Hedy Lamarr, John Loder and Edgar Barrier. Ladd subs for Bogie and actually doesn’t do too badly – he can’t do the tormented stuff that well (he struggles during the drunk scene – mind you Bogart wasn’t that great at it either), but at least the role is within his persona. Lamarr isn’t as effective; she’s OK and she would have looked good, but she doesn’t quite get Bergman’s “oh I’m just a slave to my emotions” thing (Lamarr always had more drive about her persona).

 Still, I reckon Casablanca would have still been a classic with those two playing Rick and Isla– but not with the rest of the cast, none of whom are up to Rains, Lorre, Greenstreet, Veidt, Henreid, etc. John Loder (Lamarr’s real life husband at the time) is awful and the others pale imitators of the originals. It’s still an exciting fast paced story – but you realise why they call Casablanca the happiest of happy accidents.