Movie review - "Pillow Talk" (1959) ***1/2

The screenplay for this glossy Universal comedy won an Oscar, a fact often held up for derision, but this holds up over the years as a bright, sharp comedy which has dated surprisingly little. Yes, Doris Day is determined to hang on to her virtue: but only to a point. Once she thinks Rock Hudson might be gay she's up for it, even without a wedding ring. And she's a liberated woman who won't marry Tony Randall despite his money, who has a career and isn't determined to be used. 

Doris and Rock have a real chemistry and Rock is in good form as a likable heel who clashes with Doris' sensible mum-ness. Tony Randall is a laugh, too- though it's a bit uneasy the way the film portrays Thelma Ritter's acute alcoholism as cute.

Movie review - Ladd #12 - "Saigon" (1948) **1/2

Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake made four films together, the first three classics - this fourth one is a very minor entry (and is the one liable to stump you on trivia night - not that I've ever heard an Alan Ladd question on trivia night). I was disappointed with it on first viewing but on a second go I enjoyed it more - in part because my expectations were lower and I could enjoy the good things the film did have, such as it's studio French Indo China setting, Ladd and Lake, some decent support cast, and brisk pace.

Its one of several films that had Alan Ladd as a pilot in the third world (Calcutta, Thunder in the East) - he plays a war veteran with two close mates, one of whom was clearly meant to be played by William Bendix (but who isn't), one of whom is played by a handsome contract actor and who in the film has a terminal illness. At which point you might say "huh?" - there was an earlier film about three pilot friends, one of whom had a terminal illness, called You Came Along, maybe the writers liked it - but most of the time this film forgets about this and has Ladd and his mates get involved transporting some contraband for a shady crook and a shady lady (Veronica Lake).

The Vietnam setting is an interesting one but not really exploited - there is a local French police officer (well played by Luther Adler), indicating the filmmakers probably had dreams about Casablanca but they don't come anywhere near close. Ladd is in pretty decent form but his scenes with Lake here don't sparkle and its really annoying that the sick friend is conveniently killed. (Actually both friends are killed.) Morris Carnovsky is a good crook - even if the heroes aren't that terrific because they are technically ripping him off.

Movie review - Ladd #8 - "The Blue Dahlia" (1946) ****

Raymond Chandler wasn't just a brilliant novelist he was a dab hand at screenplays, too, as this original for the screen producers. In Chandler style everyone talks really tough and is soused most of the time - ordering bourbons with a bourbon chaser, etc. The tone is just right for this tale of a returning war veteran who finds his wife has been playing around.

Chandler once described Alan Ladd as a small boy's idea of a tough guy but he's in excellent form, either being knocked on the head or slapping people around or being tormented over his dead son; William Bendix is excellent value too as Ladd's traumatised mate as is Howard da Silva as a nasty night club boss and Veronica Lake as a femme fetale who as usual isn't a femme fetale, just a nice girl who walks like a femme fetale.

There's a bland handsome male actor who plays Ladd's friend (often in Ladd films he had a comic relief friend and a handsome male friend played by some actor or another e.g. Saigon, Calcutta) - I actually wasn't sure why he was in the movie, he's not even a red herring suspect. He is a lawyer and offers some legal advice... but I think the filmmakers just felt comfortable with the trope.

Good twists, taunt handling from George Marshall - shall we call it a film noir classic? It does get confusing in spots and the plotting is a bit clunky as you'd expect from Chandler but... why not? Love it how when the cops shoot the killer dead at the end no one really seems to care.

Movie review - Elvis #7 - "Wild in the Country" (1961) ***

Back from army service Elvis made two films for Fox which attempted to stretch him - Flaming Star and this one - but neither particularly found favour with the public the way that Blue Hawaii and GI Blues did and so Elvis found himself trapped like a fly in celluloid amber. 

Here he plays juvenile delinquent living in the backwoods who, in true Elvis form, lost his ma when he was a kid - he has a pa, but pa is mean, as is his brother, so Elvis is angry at the world - angry, you understand, so he punches the brother and winds up on parole. He's sent to work for his uncle, whose daughter (Tuesday Weld) is one of those cat on a hot tin roof baby dolls - married with a kid despite her youth and hot to trot for Elvis, which causes no end of concern for El's childhood sweet heart (Millie Perkins).

But actually Elvis' main romance in this film is with his shrink (Hope Lange) - making this his third film where he tangles with an older woman (four if you change "older woman" to "mentor figure" meaning you can include Jailhouse Rock), one of the less discussed aspects of Elvis movies. I wonder what prompted it? Sometimes the woman was a Col Tom Parker surrogate; maybe it was also simply a way of increasing Elvis' appeal to older women, as well as adding a dramatic tang. When Lange reads some of Elvis' short stories and declares that he's got a great literary talent you think "a ha - this is just like those three JD-rise-to-fame-films he made before going into the army simply with writing substituting for music" but the book aspect isn't really developed - he's merely a good enough writer to get a college scholarship. 

So for a third act we have a plot where there's a scandal over Lange sleeping with Elvis - which didn't happen, but the two characters spend a rainy night in a motel together, kiss and declare their love (a hot scene - Elvis eventually leaves for not very convincing reasons), then they throw in Elvis accidentally killing someone in a fight (again - just like Jailhouse Rock) and it all becomes a bit of a mess. 

Apparently the original cut of the film had Lange's suicide attempt at the film (another very effective scene - most of her moments are winners in this movie) succeed - but the changed version, where she lives but tells Elvis to go to college, is a lot more effective. Lange didn't do anything worthy of killing herself.

Actually the whole scandal-over-Lange-and-Elvis doesn't really work because the two obviously like each other and make a good couple. (If they remade the film today they'd just have the affair but then Lange would still let him go to college - just like The Heartbreak Kid). Lange is a lot more suited to Elvis than Weld (though you get the impression Weld would be great for a fling) or Perkins (in only her second role after The Diary of Ann Frank - and you can understand why Fox had trouble in finding roles for her, she's a sort of unengaging child-like figure, who doesn't seem too engaged with what's going on and has little chemistry with her male co-star). 

The third act would have been better off doing more with Elvis' writing maybe, or Weld getting pregnant to him, just something else - as it is it kind of peters out the way it is. I think this, rather than the fact Elvis was playing a dramatic role, is what hurt the film at the box office. 

Gary Lockwood plays the son-of-a-rich-man who keeps appearing at key dramatic moments to push the plot along (lazy writing this - he interrupts a liaison between Elvis and Perkins, then Elvis and Weld, then Elvis and Lange). Lange is very good and Elvis is pretty good - its wonderful to see him trying, to see him challenged, and handling himself.

Book review - "So You Want to be a Producer" by Lawrence Turman

Excellent how-to book from Turman, best known for The Graduate, one of those once-in-a-lifetime hits... as it proved for the producer, but he's since remained highly active making films and TV movies. The book is full of wisdom, enthusiasm and good stories. What I like most about it is that while Turman inevitably refers to The Graduate a lot, he talks just as much about his other less popular films (especially The Film Flam Man, which seems to have been a particular favourite - but also The Best Man, TV movies like Get Christie Love).
He admits failures and mistakes, promotes ethics and feeling positive, as well as hard work. He's a bit self serving but who isn't in this sort of book and he may well be telling the truth (for instance "working on the script" of Butch Cassidy seemed to be encouraging and reading and telling people the second act needed work).
The correspondence between Turman and William Goldman at the end is fascinating for Goldman fans (Turman tries to get Goldman, then teaching at Princeton, to write a movie about young people but Goldman declines - Goldman also says the Beatles are managed by a "faggott")

Movie review - Elvis #3 - "Jailhouse Rock" (1957) ***1/2

By the late 50s MGM were very much in decline but one gets the feeling they were still cocky enough to tackle Elvis with the attitude of "right, he's made two films for other studios - but this is MGM and we'll do it properly". And they did, too - its Elvis' best film yet and certainly his best performance.

He's very confident in front of the camera and he's terrific - sexy, charismatic, etc, etc. This is one of his least sympathetic roles ever - even if the filmmakers do stack the deck in his favour, he's still quite snarling and JD-y (more so even than King Creole).

This gets off to a great start, with Elvis killing a man in a fight (the guy was obnoxious and deserved it), and going to a prison run by a corrupt warden, where his cell mate bosses him around and bullies him into signing a management contract (which you see and go "how did that one get past the Colonel?"). Then he gets out of gaol, hooks up with pretty record plugger Judy Tyler and tries to break into show biz, but has little luck - indeed, he gets ripped off by one artist causing him to punch out an exec (but the guy was obnoxious and deserved it) - until forming his own record company with Tyler and making it big.

Then he grows a big head and becomes increasingly obnoxious, and the sympathies of the film shift away from Elvis - he's mean to poor manager Judy Tyler, then when his cell mate comes back said cell mate doesn't try to enforce his dodgy contract and rip him off (yeah, right) but goes to work for him and Elvis treats him mean. Aw, poor management (this is how it got past the Colonel - just like in Loving You, even when Elvis signs a contract his managers aren't out to rip him off, they're his family, and he needs them to stay on the straight and narrow).

So the film gets progressively less interesting as it goes on - why should we care about the cell mate? He exploited Elvis in prison. Fortunately, though, the terrific title number is in the second half, giving it a fillip til the end.

Judy Tyler is OK as the female lead - in his review of the film David Shipman wrote that her subsequent career wasn't much, perhaps unaware that she actually died in a car crash soon after filming ended. Interestingly, Elvis' movies number two to four all dealt with the same story - Elvis rising to fame - with Elvis playing a juvenile delinquent.

Movie review - Elvis #19 - "Harum Scarum" (1966) *1/2

David Shipman once argued that although Elvis made movies for all sorts of different studios - Paramount, MGM, Fox - they were indistinguishable. I'd agree up to a point - I think you could discern a slight difference according to the producers: Hal Wallis films had solid production values and weak scripts (e.g. Blue Hawaii), Joe Pasternak films were more traditional musicals with strong production values and better albeit formulaic scripts (e.g. Viva Las Vegas, Girl Happy), Sam Katzman films were cheapo efforts with little to recommend them - like this one.

It does have an unusual setting - the Middle East, the locale of many a Katzman "Eastern" - and plot, which has touring singer/film star Elvis is drawn into an assassination plot - making the film at times seem like one of those Easterns (some of whom starred Elvis' idol Tony Curtis, so maybe that's why they made it). Indeed, the filmmakers might have been better off had they followed more in this direction - throw in a few more swordfights and princesses on the run (there are already a few as it is), and actually work out the kinks of a potentially promising albeit clichéd plot - as it is it's a bit of a mess (why have Elvis as an assassin? Why have a scene where he serenades a 10 yr old girl who dances like a belly dancer?

There's under-developed comic relief, confusing twists - they should have just taken the plots of one of those old Katzman potboilers directly and just shoved in Elvis. Pretty girls but lacks a proper charismatic female co star, which always made Elvis movies better (I kept forgetting who the romantic lead actually was). The music is slightly odd - its got this tacky throw-away Vegas-and-cocktails quality... were they being thrifty or was this an attempt to shove Elvis in a new direction? Whatever, the results are not memorable.

But, you know, I didn't mind it - the whole concept of Elvis being in the middle east was fresh enough to keep you watching - at the end all this Arabs are sitting around watching Elvis in Vegas, which gives it a camp quality.