Movie review - Maisie#2 - "Congo Maisie" (1940) ***

 Even closer to Red Dust and lots of fun, albeit racially sensitive as you'd expect. Maisie gets stuck in the Congo, stumbles upon another love triangle - John Carroll (imitating Clark Gable but ont bad) is a swashbuckling rubber man/doctor who falls for Rita Johnson (who had a colourful private life IRL) despite being married to Shepperd Strudwick.

Maisie runs around after Carroll, ordering people around, being moral despite her white trash background. She quells an uprising by singing a song, which is funny, although racist. 

Full of high spirits. 

Movie review - "Homecoming" (1948) **1/2

 Dore Schary hits MGM with a  very worthy, painfully liberal look at a Man at War, who is Greedy for Money and Ambitious and Won't Help the Nice Doctor Who Looks After the Poor but when in Europe falls for a nurse Whose Husband Died in China and Whose Child Died and who is a Good Person and he becomes a Good Person even though before the war he was a doctor and...

Oh, look, it's handsomely done. Made with care.  It's got stars. Clark Gable, looking old and tired. Lana Turner, who is excellent, even if they keep saying her character's name again. and again and again (we get it "snapshot" is a cute name, we get it).

Anne Baxter is the wife - I assume they wanted Turner for that part but the switch works. John Hodiak is the noble doctor.

Some scenes threaten to be good old trashy fun. -Turner and Gable so for a swim (he's probably too old for this to be fun even if she isn't), Gladys Cooper was Baxter's mother warning her daughter that hubby will root the wife. It doesn't go there though the essential dramatic situation is "will Gable hook up with Turner".

At the end it's kind of touching that Gable confesses all although you laugh when you see Baxter's face of relief that Turner is dead (died off screen... a waste of a good scene).

Hodiak's part feels very underwritten. I kept waiting for him to sleep with Baxter, or die, or turn up in the war, or be played by an elder actor (like why didn't he swap parts with Ray Collins).

Look not a bad movie. Just overly decent.

Movie review - "Honky Tonk" (1941) **1/2

 This starts off as a comic Western with Clark Gable as a conman out West. It offers him up shirtless in the opening scene (and a shirtless Chill Wills too if you're in ot that sort of thing. He romances good girl Lana Turner, daughter of shonky Frank Morgan who is a fake judge, despute the gum chewing appeal of his ex Claire Trevor, with Albert Dekker (he of auto erotic asphyixiation fame) as a baddie.

This is all bright and fun. Gable is terrific in a tailor made part and Turner is lovely and natural (I think she had a natural ability but later in life she got worse when she tried to act). But as the story goes on it becomes all MGM-y i.e. it's about crushing people's spirit and turning them into dull sober mother lovers. Turner traps Gable into marriage which is fun, then he becomes rich and it gets all serious and soapy about Gable becoming rich through underhanded means, and Morgan getting all moral and shot, and Turner losing a baby and plot plot plot.

It lives up at the end when Gable kicks Dekker's arse. Gable and Turner have great chemistry both so attractive. Chill Wills is an amiable sidekick.

I just MGM didn't suck all the fun out of their films.

Jack Conway - most underrated studio director?

 It's hard to call directors underrated because the minute someone pays them attention they're kind of rated.

But Jack Conway surely has some claim for being one of the most unfamous directors of famous films. I think because he worked so long at MGM, whose directors were often dismissed (Clarence Brown, Victor Fleming). They were also dismissed because they died young too and thus missed boomer critic mythologising.

But how's this for a top ten

1) Libeled Lady (1936)

2) Red Dust Woman (1932)

3) Boom Town (1940)

4) A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

5) Tarzan and His Mate(1934)

6) The Hucksters (1947)

7) Viva Villa! (1934)

8) Too Hot to Handle (1938)

9) A Yank at Oxford (1938)

10) The Unholy Three (1930)

That's a pretty good list and they're just films I'm famililar with. The best Jean Harlow movies, the best Tarzan, some excellent Clark Gable flicks.

Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

 Not many films but anyway

1) Some Like It Hot (1959) - easy choice, so perfect... imagine Mitzi Gaynr in this. No thanks.

2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - again, easy choice - shame she was never reteamed with Russell.

3) How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - glorious fun. Steals movie. 

4) Bus Stop (1956) - I recall Don Murray being creepy and Marilyn being great.

5) All About Eve (1951) - one scene but a great one.

6) The Misfits (1961) - flawed, but marvelous

7) Niagara (1953) - she's probably miscast but it's a good movie.

8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - hokey story but those song and dance numbers!

9) The Seven Year Itch (1955) - icon.

10) Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - haven't seen this in ages just throwing it in there.

Movie review - "Diamond Head" (1962) **1/2

 Entertaining early 60s melodrama which if made by Warner Bros would presumably have featured Troy Donahue and be directed by Delmer Daves. It has old school storytelling spiced up with location work in Hawaii, colour photography and miscegenation plus some stars, including Charlton Heston in a part meant for Clark Gable.

The work feels flawed - Heston should play Yvette Mimieux's father not brother, Elizabeth Allen should be his wife not sister in law (she has no stakes in the story and just appears to say racist things), Heston should be more villainous - he really should have killed James Darren in anger as opposed to it being an accident.

Frances Nyen does as well as she can in a hopeless role as Heston's ever loving, faithful, dutiful native mistress. George Chakiris ditto as the decent half-white (so it's okay) doctor who is there in reserve for Yvette Mimieux once she gets over the death of Darren.

For a while I enjoyed this - the colour, old time fun of it - but the last third runs out of puff, it throws away plots (Heston running for the senate, Heston having accidentally killed Darren) and just becomes about Heston learning not to be racist. Really he should've died at the end, killed by someone avenging Darren, but after some act of heroism during a storm. Or something. Mimieux is very good - it's one of her best performances.

Movie review - "Never Let Go" (1953) **

The sort of film that one senses just would've been more fun in the 1930s under Louis B. Mayer's MGM rather than Dore Schary's. Clark Gable is a journo in Mosco who falls (too quickly) for Gene Tierney, a ballerina. Another expat Richard Haydn marries a Russian too played by Belita. Both women are stuck at home. Then the boys go rescue.

Lacking in suspense and even romance - the courtship is rapid. Instead we get a long unfunny scene where Haydn out-drinks a Russian. The plan isn't that clever. Kenneth More brightens things up as a British journalist who helps the couple.

It's not in colour. I mean, it's okay.

Movie review - "The Misfits" (1961) ***1/2

Legendary assembling of, well, legends - John Huston, Arthur Miller, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift... even Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter in their own more sensible way. Imagine the talk around that commissary.

Miller writes it like a play - there's entrances and exits - but it is carried off well, long dialogue scenes, much talk about people we don't see. It still works, because Huston has cast such superb actors.

Marilyn is heartbreakingly good - a superb part, she's smart, beaten down by life, warm.  Gable is terrific too as the uncomplicated but melancholic cowboy who has done a lot of living. Clift rounds out the trifecta. Of course Wallach and Ritter are fine.

I didn't realise that Wallach's part was so big - he's a love rival for Monroe. Maybe his part could've been blended with Clift's.

It's moving seeing these people who are about to die soon pal around. It's a hang out movie - like The Sun Also Rises should have been. 

I will admit I felt it went too long. It needed maybe a half hour cut out or something.

Book review - "Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison" by Christina Lane

It's tricky to write biographies of movie producers because it's so hard (at times) to ascertain what their contribution was (not that it's not considerable... it's just hard to tell) . but the author here does a great job.

Joan Harrison is  a name quite well known to serious students of Hitchcock though her reputation is very much in his shadow. She joined his team in the mid 30s, and along with Alma was a crucial part of his development - Hitch only really became Hitch after he met Harrison. She helped make his great late 30s masterpieces which led to his American career; she worked on his early American masterpieces then went her own way, becoming a producer. She started off strong with some quasi classics - Phantom Lady, Nocturne, Dark Water  - before tailing off a little with some Robert Montgomery films. She reunited with Hitch for his TV series.

This book does an excellent job sketching Harrison's personality and artistic style - intelligence, taste, love of independence, sexually liberated (affairs with Clark Gable, John Huston and probably Billy Wilder, marriage to Eric Ambler, possible flings with women), sympathetic to progressive causes, stylish. She was friends with Alec Coppel and his wife. She had ill health toward the end which is sad reading but had a pretty good life.

A worthy tribute to a genuine pioneer.

Movie review - "Mogambo" (1953) ***1/2

Remake of Red Dust which works on its own terms - they keep the basic story but give it a fresh location, in Kenya, and while Clark Gable is back, his age means the interpretation of the role is very different.So too does the casting of Ava Gardner as Jean Harlow and Grace Kelly as Mary Astor.

This film needs stars to work and has great ones. Gable is perfect as an aging old rogue. I like Gardner as a shady lady off to see a Maharajah - her character is softened from Harlow, who was just a hooker; Gardner is given this backstory how her husband was killed in the war, and is basically a decent person. It's not as fun as the original but it does work on it's own terms.

Kelly is superb - the good girl with a fire in her loins. She really comes alive in her kissing scenes with Gable - she clearly wants him. It's very sexy. You can see why this turned her into a star and it's amazing MGM could never find her another role as good (she would be wasted in decorative parts and play her great roles outside the studio).

The location shooting in Kenya helps and it's nice that Kelly's husband Donald Sinden is on a science exploration not shooting people. Africa seems genuinely dangerous here - snakes everywhere, rain, hot weather. The blacks of course don't get much of a look in.

It doesn't feel obviously like a John Ford movie. But it is enjoyable.

Movie review - "Band of Angels" (1957) *

I have a soft spot for Yvonne de Carlo - she was clearly an old pro, has been around forever, and made a lot of films which I enjoy: Easterns, film noir, Westerns, comedies. She was never considered a top rank star but being cast in The Ten Commandments made Hollywood spark up and earned her a plumb role in this, a Civil War melodrama. Although the film stars Clark Gable, who has a juicy role, it's really de Carlo's story.

The central concept of the film is strong: a woman (de Carlo) is raised in the old South on a plantation, but discovers on her father's death that she's part black and is "owned" by a slave trader. That's a great set up - a privileged woman whose position in the world is pulled out from underneath her, who has to fight to survive. Gone with the Wind with a black heroine - that's awesome.

But given this the filmmakers - I haven't read the original novel, but they could have changed it - make a whole lot of mistakes.They invoke Wind a lot - Clark Gable's casting as a buccaneering southerner, a Southern heroine, balls, raping Yankee soldiers, kindly slave owners, a dim black slave like Butterfly McQueen - but never get close to that film's quality.

De Carlo isn't given much of a character to play - she's pretty and that's it. Scarlett O'Hara had drive - she was selfish but active, she wanted Ashley, ignored Rhett. What does De Carlo want? Gable? But Gable pushes her away and she doesn't seem to care. She has easy going relationships with Rex Reason and later Efrem Zimbalist Jnr; Patric Knowles tries to molest her, Gable wants her, Reason tries to rape her once he finds out she's black, Sidney Poitier seems to want her (de Carlo often played women who were pawed). But she's passive. They needed to give her something to do - fight for the blacks, escape, make money, chase after a guy, something. But the film can't make up its mind.

I think they should have given her the goal to be free - and structured the film around that. Or at least just have her love Gable all the way through and constantly try to get him instead of just accepting him pushing her away. But they don't

The film feels compromised by pussy footing around - "Oh we don't want to offend people in the south so lets have kindly slave owners and some rapey Yankees", "lets have Sidney Poitier hate whites justifiably but then slap de Carlo".

Gable's character is flat. A slave owner who buys women but does nothing with them - okay, yes, well, de Carlo sleeps with him But Only Because She Wants To. Then he turns her away because he - gasp - used to be a slave trader (why is this meant to shock when Gable meets De Carlo by Buying Her????). Gable looks bored and ill. He's got none of Rhett Butler's dash and swagger. What does he want? I mean if he's guilty, that's fine... have him want to kill himself, to self destruct, or to set black people free. But he just sort of mopes around.

The film's attitude to race is consistently dodgy. The film is full of kindly slave owners, like de Carlo's father, who never whips his slaves and is nice to them (when he dies all the blacks turn out to sing), and Gable who is nice to his slaves (they sing for him too). Everyone pats Gable on the back for raising Poitier so well... and Poitier is so touched that Gable raised him after rescuing him on a slave mission (!) that Poitier helps him escape.

Ugh. This film is awful. It starts off okay and gets worse. It's unfocused, and confusing, and offensive, and dramatically messy.

You could make the material work, easy. Have de Carlo find out she's black, get sold into slavery, be rescued by Gable to who is working off his guilt by setting slaves free, he frees her but she loves him so goes back.

Sidney Poitier comes off best because his character is the most consistent - he's a black who hates whites (until the end when he feels sorry for Gable).

De Carlo isn't very good, I'm sorry to say. Part of it is her character, who is passive, but a more charismatic star would have worked better - like Ava Gardner, say.

Book review - "Behind the Door: The True Story of Loretta Young" by Edward Funk (2015)

Loretta Young was one of those stars easy to mock - pretty, conscious of being a star, famously devout Catholic (she would refuse to do certain scenes/play certain roles, had a swear jar on set), hosted her own TV show where she entered a door every week with a new gown, always having crushes on co stars, participants in one of the juiciest scandals in Hollywood (having Clark Gable's love child), featuring in so many decorative roles.

But you don't have careers as long as successful as hers for no reason, and she had plenty of positives: ferocious work ethic, great dignity, street smarts (she knew about camera angles, lighting, dresses, etc). She could act as she occasionally got the chance to show. Fellow stars like Robert Mitchum would mock her gently but also had great respect for her.

Young was a child star - mum was a stage mum (most female stars of this era seem to have one), and Loretta and her two sisters went into the biz. Loretta became the biggest star of the three - she was very pretty, took direction well, and found consistent work. Most of her parts were decorative but she occasionally got a meaty role like in Platinum Blonde and she enlivened several pre-Code movies like Man's Castle.

Her career stepped up a notch when she went over to 20th Century Fox - who did use her as a clothes horse to look at the leading man a lot but also gave her some good chances: Ramona, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. Her career kept going when she left Fox in the 40s and stepped up towards the end of the war when she was given some meaty roles and became a real box office draw: The Stranger, Rachel and the Stranger, The Farmer's Daughter (which won her an Oscar - Dore Schary was a big fan of Loretta ).

The tide started to go out in the 1950s but Loretta stayed ahead of the curve moving into TV where she enjoyed great success, and also creative fulfilment, playing all sorts of roles on her show. She had a dodgy second husband who fleeced her for a lot of cash (all these stars seem to have dodgy husbands) but she held on to enough to have a comfortable life. One of her sons became a pop star in the Moby Grape! (Like Jerry Lewis' son.)

She spent retirement doing a lot of charity work and socialising and lived to a ripe old age. She admitted herself she was never a great actor like Bette Davis, or even a top rank star, but she had a pretty good career with impressive credits.

She was a participant in one of the most famous Hollywood scandals: having Clark Gable's love child. This book reveals that Gable actually date raped her - something which I didn't want to believe but was all too easy to believe considering the time. Young had crushes on most of her male co stars - she's constantly falling in "love" with Spencer Tracy, with Jeff Chandler, with all of them - but not actually doing anything about it. She was a true "actress", who enjoyed the romance of infatuation with her costars - and Gable took it to another level. It would have been hard for Young to prove and/or do anything about - she had the baby and adopted it herself.

In many respects Young was an exasperating ninny - hopeless about men (she let her second husband get away with a lot of money), overly interested in clothes, didn't push herself as an artist - which made this book frustrating for me. But there was much to admire as well. Funk knew Young and at one stage this was going to be a memoir, so there's plenty of terrific material, mostly from her. If you're even only vaguely interested in Young you should read this.

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 - "Betrayed" (1954) ** (warning: spoilers)

This is best remembered today for being the last movie Clark Gable made at MGM - his still potent star power helped propel this to "unlikely hit" status, with the "unlikely" arising because it isn't very good. Still it does have Gable, Lana Turner and Victor Mature all hilariously miscast as Dutchmen, plus colour photography and the novelty of a film set around the Battle of Arnhem.

Gable is the head of Dutch Intelligence who is rescued from the Germans by local resistance leader Victor Mature (giving the best performance in the best part). He goes back to England and trains (and falls in love with) Lana Turner, who is parachuted into Holland. The movie forgets about Gable for a while and becomes about Turner and Mature (although a love triangle is, disappointingly, never developed - Mature is obsessed with his mother and wears a flamboyant scarf... are we meant to think he's gay?). Then Gable begins to think there is a traitor in the nest and is convinced it's Turner.

This is consistently silly, whether its the three leads pretending they're Dutch, or characters taking time out from massed battles to go off and have personal dramas (the invasion of Europe has begun and Wilfrid Hyde White gives Gable a month's leave!), or Victor Mature's obsession with his mother, or Gable having a fight with a German general but it's filmed in long shot and is clearly done by a body double, or Lana Turner trying to act in a role that cried out for Ava Gardner, or Gable trying to hide how uncomfortable he is with his role.

It does get some points for originality: Mature is inspired to betray the resistance, not because of cash but after some locals shave his mother's head. There is some pleasing location filming in the Netherlands and I enjoyed Hyde-White's boffin-but-not-really general.

Movie review - "But Not For Me" (1959) **

Samuel Raphaelson's play "Accent on Youth" has been filmed several times, no doubt in part because it appeals to the vanity of middle aged male movie stars - the plot concerns an aging Broadway producer who discovers his secretary, young enough to be his daughter, is in love with him, which reinvigorates his career. Did audiences ever like these stories? Really?

Anyway here the old man is played by Clark Gable, not far away from death, but still raffish Clark with a twinkle in his eye. He plays a producer who is drowning in debt (he's a spendthrift), hassled by his drunken playwright (Lee J. Cobb) and ex wife (Lili Palmer) but secretary Carroll Baker gives him material and lines for Cobb to replot and rewrite the play. You know, just like real life.

Baker goes on to act in the play, along with a fellow young actor (Barry Coe) who loves her. The play is a hit and Baker and Gable get together... but does he really love her?

It's a horrible story which is given some bright lines in John Michael Hayes' script (at least I'm crediting them to Hayes - I haven't read Raphaelson's play) and vigorous handling from Walter Lang, a director little remembered today but who has strong credits. 

The cast is also (on the whole) extremely good, despite the not-particularly-interesting characters they play - Cobb even makes something interesting of that old throwback, the boozy washed up playwright. Baker is sexy and likeable and I just bought her going for Gable, mainly because she acts with intensity and Gable is still the king.

The big let down in the cast is Barry Coe, a bland actor who I vaguely recognised (I googled him - he was Rodney Harrington in Peyton Place); in his defense his character is particularly poor - an obnoxious self righteous young actor who wants Baker to leave New York and go live in Texas.

The title tune is sung by Ella Fitzgerald and there's some snappy widescreen photography of New York. And it's about Broadway producers and directors and theatre people - if you like those sort of movies and Gable/Baker you'll enjoy it.

Book review - "Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B Mayer" by Scott Eyman (2005)

Eyman is one of the best film biographers going around and Mayer deserved reappraisal - he's been long mocked/pillored in Hollywood history because of his behaviour: attacking the writers guild and communists, sobbing and wailing to actors and talking about family values and mother worship and wholesome pictures, terrorising poor little Irving Thalberg and Dore Schary, punching out John Gilbert.

There was more to him than that. Mayer was a genius filmmaker in his way - not a writer, director or even producer, but a great manager of MGM at it's peak. He set up a small, struggling operation, merged it with others and created a colossus which led Hollywood. It was an amazing achievement, even by the mogul standards, and deserves to be acknowledged and praised.

A great "what if" of Hollywood history: what if Mayer hadn't quit MGM in a huff in 1951 over fighting with Dore Schary? Could he have kept the studio up with the times? Who knows... MGM struggled before Schary's arrival when it was just Mayer. But Mayer had management genius that eluded Schary, and his taste was in greater line with that of the American public than Schary - for instance, The Great Caruso was a Mayer pet project. And that Andy Hardy type wholesome picture continued to be very popular on TV (Father Knows Best, etc) - I think Mayer could have come up with great TV ideas.

Schary gets a fair bollocking in this book, a little unfairly, I think: Schary was no Mayer, or Thalberg, and in hindsight was the wrong person to run MGM; he should have joined them as a unit producer, where he could have concentrated on turning out film noirs and hard hitting dramas, instead of expanding into areas where he had no idea, like musicals, comedies and discovering and dealing with stars (all the things Mayer was good at in other words, and which made MGM). But he was a talented man and one of the few moguls who had a decent career after being a mogul.

Anyway Schary is only one character in this book. There's plenty of others, notably his duelling daughters Edie and Irene (who would have been a great movie producer but instead worked on the stage), his poor first wife who was dumped and basically driven ga ga, a nice enough second wife (Mayer had a mid life crisis), the enigmatic Thalberg, the feuding Nick Schenck, the movie stars who were forever traipsing into Mayer's office with their problems (Greer Garson and Jeannette MacDonald could wrap him around their little finger, he was distant from Clark Gable, liked Kate Hepburn's class, didn't know what on earth to do with Judy Garland, dealt with Van Johnson's homosexuality in a matter of fact "fixer" way).

It's all deftly handled by Eyman who combines scholarship with entertaining gossip. He probably over-quotes Esther Williams and doesn't get into the dark side of the MGM vision (eg in the Andy Hardy films, it's not just about Andy's high spirits and the judge being sensible, it's also about the mother being a blithering idiot and the daughter having her spirit crushed), but its still a great book.

Movie review - "Call of the Wild" (1935) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Jack London's classic tale about Buck the wonder dog has been completely turned on its head and become a Clark Gable vehicle - and you know something? It actually works. Gable is completely at home playing Jack Thornton in the snowy north with Jack Oakie doing some amiable sidekick stuff and Loretta Young being beautiful in her fur. 

Gable and Young make a strong couple - him manly and she lady like - and of course there's the extra appeal knowing that in real life they did have an affair resulting in Young having a kid out of wedlock and covering it up as an "adopted" child. (Though apparently sexual assault was involved.)

I enjoyed Reginald Owen as the villain - a seemingly pompous English idiot who is actually quite scary - and the stuff from the novel that is used (eg Buck winning a dog sled competition) is effective. 

The movie does lose points by having Gable so passive at the end when the baddies come in and try to take his gold (they leave him and Young there and only get their just desserts by capsizing in the canoe and drowning... which feels like deux ex machina cheating). But I liked it that Young's husband turns up at the end meaning she and Gable can't be together, which gives the movie romantic poignancy. It's good solid Clarke Gable-William Wellman stuff that holds up well.

Movie review - "San Francisco" (1936) ***1/2

30s MGM at full throttle: San Francisco 1905; lots of extras, costumes and character actors; Clarke Gable punching lots of people out, running a saloon and saying "I don't get this love malarkey... I don't get this opera malarkey... I don't get this God malarkey"; Jeanette MacDonald being virginal yet lusting after Gable in between arias; Spencer Tracy being a priest and punching out Gable when he's not trying to cock-block him; lots of sin and God and singing of opera.

Tracey's role actually isn't very big - very much a support bit - with most of the attention on Gable and MacDonald. MacDonald's an acquired taste - I'm not that familiar with her work yet. Her singing really got on my nerves as did her I'm-a-scared-virgin routine early on which made it seem like Gable was sexually harassing her... but she's great when she's actually hot for Gable and trying to fight her attraction, panting away. I also really liked her singing that song 'San Francisco' on behalf of Gable's saloon at the end over the objections of her fiancee (Jack Holt).

The earthquake finale is very well done (as is the follow up city fire and looting). All the prayer and God at the end was a bit much with Gable praying and MacDonald getting hot for him while watching him. I laughed at how little Holt's mother is about her son's death ("oh well... God's will"). Done with conviction and passion and Gable in great form.

Movie review - "Gone with the Wind" (1939) *****

Just saw this again on the big screen at the Astor - introduced by none other than Bill Collins - and was struck how well it has aged. Some things didn't surprise me - the sumptuous technicolor, Vivien Leigh's dynamic performance as Scarlett O'Hara, the productions values and epic sweep of the story, Max Steiner's top rate score, the strength of the spine (at it's core the story is about Scarlett's pursuit of Ashley).

But other things did surprise me. The mark of a classic is a film that gives you new things with every fresh viewing and that's certainly the case with Gone with the Wind. For instance Clarke Gable's performance - every film fan knows how well cast he was as Rhett Butler and he does the early smiling, swashbuckling buccaneer stuff with expected aplomb, laughing delightedly at Scarlett's antics and warning the hot headed Southerners they shouldn't go into war; however I was surprised to see how well he handed the later Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? section, where Rhett and Scarlett find themselves in a domestic nightmare: the loathing, drinking, self hatred combined with love, two people essentially smacking themselves around emotionally. In many ways Rhett is a romance novel ideal - impossibly handsome, rich, funny, good at love making, charming, devoted to his daughter, intent at Scarlett, etc - but he does have some light and shade: his jealousy towards Ashley Wilkes, his platonic love/admiration for Melanie. And Gable gets it all. There are some really tricky scenes where he has to go all over the shop - hating and loving his wife, tormented by the loss of his child, etc - but he pulls them off. Gable would have deserved an Oscar for his role - Robert Donat did too, but Gable was a better actor than he got credit for.

I also had an increased appreciation for Olivia de Havilland's work. Its a thankless role in many ways - she's nice, genuinely good, kind of like a Christian where Scarlett is part of her faith - and de Havilland succeeds in not only making it believable, but likeable. During some scenes - particularly in the carriage with Belle and with a drunken Rhett - it's lovely subtle work.

Leslie Howard is the least effective out of the four but its the least effective part: virile yet wet, if that makes sense. Howard is believably handsome enough to attract Leigh's attention for so long, but also weak enough understand why he can't leave de Havilland.

I was surprised how many relatively decent roles there were for black actors. Please note the use of the word "relative" - the movie does have the values of its time, and Butterfly McQueen's Missy is a caricature, but compared to other Hollywood movies set in the South, this is positively liberal. Missy has some genuinely funny moments and in the film's defence there are plenty of other white ninnies in the cast (Scarlett slaps her sister as well as Missy). Hattie McDaniel is superb and very charismatic as the no-nonsense Mammie; there's also loyal and tough Sam who saves Scarlett from being raped/murdered and the nice house servant. There are scenes of houseboys fanning sleeping Southern bells and slaves toiling in the fields - yes its whitewashed in many ways, and the movie seems to mock the naive emancipated slaves during the reconstruction scenes, but its not as bad as say Prisoner of Shark Island.

The way David O Selznick dealt with tricky censorship material is marvellous: the Ku Klux Klan equivalent comes across as what it was meant to without spelling it out; ditto the profession of Belle Watling. I was also struck how inexpensively many of the scenes were, particularly in the second half - such as that two hander of Rhett and Scarlett walking along talking to unseen old ladies.

There is considerable richness in the supporting characters: the nice doctor, his wife who excitedly wants to know what the inside of a brothel looks like, Scarlett's dull but brave second husband, Ashley Wilkes' vicious bitchy sister, Scarlett's noble mother, her father who goes ga-ga (he's the one character where its a relief he almost died).

Okay now for some flaws: there's an awful lot of characters talking to themselves to make a point, some over-florid dialogue, occasionally the actors would mumble and some shots seemed out of focus, that marital rape was a bit close to the wind, the race issue is a massively loaded on, the second half feels long going at times. But it was hard to find spots to cut (maybe the London sequence but even that was needed to allow Scarlett time to fall pregnant).

But its aged so well. In part because the central character is selfish - selfishness ages well, just look at Richard III - and also because people's motives are understandable: loving someone who doesn't love them, avoiding hunger, being bound by honour, knowing a cause is stupid but feeling bad for not fighting for it, hating your partner, wanting to gossip. 

Scarlett is a little minx, interested in her own affairs above all... but she's still more sensible than pretty much every other female character in the movie (except Mammy and her mother) and most of the male characters as well. She knows war is a stupid idea - and she's right. 

The south is idealised in a way - but its clear that the war was pointless, caused by romantic idiots, and caused great suffering; the pain and anguish of war is quite full on here: soldiers in agony, limbs go missing, people go nuts, starvation results, there are looters and rapists on both sides. Rhett does fight for the south but not after mocking it. Ashley is a kind, courteous and decent - and held up as a weak idiot. People make fun of Melanie for being naive. No one character is presented as being all knowing and perfect, so its a film that can be enjoyed by many.

It's a flawed contentious masterpiece - but it is a masterpiece.

Book review - "Bring on the Empty Horses" (1975) by David Niven

John Mortimer once wrote that David Niven never quite acted as well on screen as he did after dinner telling anecdotes - but this collection of stories, his second volume of memoirs, gives some idea. It's a different shape to The Moon's a Balloon, consisting of a series of stories rather than an overall narrative - but this allows Niven to go into greater depth and detail for said stories. 

There are illuminating, entertaining sketches of other famous people he knew - Clark Gable, Bogart, Errol Flynn (one of the best pieces of writing on Flynn ever done), Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh (disguised), Mike Romanoff, Fred Astaire, Hedda and Louella, Marion Davies. There are some less famous people too, such as a prostitute Niven knew. He can go into more detail on the dead rather than the living (so Cary Grant and Garbo are more sketchy than say Errol or Bogie).

Niven appears too, as a happy go lucky soul who got along with everyone, was polite and sensible, but also knew great tragedy (he and Gable bond over dead wives). However the focus really is on other people and the result is one of the best memoirs on Hollywood's golden age ever written.