With a little sex in it.
Friday the 23rd April — a date for your diaries! FILM CLUB discussion of Preston Sturges’s great SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS. I’m anticipating that many of you will have seen it, so can leap in to the discussion pre-armed. For those who haven’t, there really is no excuse — purchasing details are below. Much cheaper if you’re in the UK, but on the other hand, the Criterion disc is sublime.
US:
Sullivan’s Travels: The Criterion Collection
UK:
Sullivan’s Travels [DVD] [1941]
In other news, I’ve been making excellent progress on my viewing of Cornell Woolrich derived movies, so I can announce that CORNELL WOOLRICH WEEK will commence on Monday the 12th of this month. Don your snap-brimmed fedoras and down your scotch & ryes.
shadowplay 
April 3, 2010 at 5:50 pm
A Somewhat Sad Memory of Veronica Lake
While living in Manhattan and working for 20th Century Fox way way back, it was my habit to see as many straight plays and musicals on Broadway and Off-Broadway as possible. I was usually accompanied by the Vice-President of Creative Affairs, who was as avid a theatregoer as I. The idea was to see the shows when in preview, on the off-chance they might make a good property for the studio.
So one night we left the office and walked down to the Broadway
area to have a drink and a snack before showtime. We stopped into a tavern off Schubert Alley. A petite middle-aged floozy of a waitress approached our table to take our order. Watching her walk away toward the kitchen, I asked my companion if she recognized the waitress. Not a clue. So when I informed her that it was Veronica Lake, she was dumbfounded. Although the hair no longer fell over her forehead, there was no mistaking the voice and the way she moved. She was shorter than you might imagine and heavier, and there was a lot of mileage on her face.
When she brought out order to table, I called her by name and tried to engage her in conversation. One would think she would
have been delighted to be recognized. Far from it. She backed away from the table in fear, as though the mere mention of anything to do with Hollywood was a curse. Think of what a thrill it must have been for a hopeful young actress to be cast opposite Joel McCrea in Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, or to work with Alan Ladd in not one but two noirs, or to play the witchy wife opposite Frederic March, and then be tossed away like a piece of waste by the head of the studio. All of us have memories of which we do not like to be reminded, but none more cruel than hasbeens in
the picture biz.
April 3, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Thanks for that.
I’d heard she worked as a waitress later in life. I’m reminded that I have a contact with a relation of Veronica’s, and this would be a good cue to follow up on it.
Sturges and McCrea found her tough but good fun. Mitchell Leisen had a horrible time with her. And Andre DeToth, who was married to her, reported that she hated making every picture she was in. And in her autobiography I think she says as much, doesn’t have a good word to say for anyone. Still, I feel very sorry for her career ending as it did, and would love there to be more movies out there starring the girl with the peekaboo curl.
April 3, 2010 at 6:32 pm
I always wondered if the Sturges characters Hadrian and LeBrand were affectionate caricatures of a couple of the studio heads at Paramount. LeBrand/LeBaron? Maybe it’s a question best left until the Film Club.
April 3, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Ah – finally a category I feel qualified to comment on! I’ve owned first editions, in gorgeously lurid jackets, of all Cornell Woolrich/William Irish novels and collections, and can turn into The Bore That Walks Like a Man when I hear his name…
There are all the well-known and easily available films, but if you can’t find them, I have the Not-Coming-to-a-DVD-Store-Near-You “I Wouldn’t be in Your Shoes” (William Nigh, 1948) (and the one sheet – a truly gorgeous litho, visually capturing one of the essential Woolrich themes of the innocent deemed guilty), Jack Hively’s “Street of Chance” (1942) – with Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor and Sheldon Leonard, Ted Tezlaff’s “The Window” (1947, released 1949), based on “Fire Escape”/”The Boy Who Cried Murder”, Harold Clurman’s “Deadline at Dawn” (1946) – a feisty young Susan Hayward and the deliciously named dumb hunk Bill Williams, with Odet’s usual attempts at urban poetry, and Mitch Leisen’s “No Man of Her Own” (1950), based on “I Married a Dead Man”, with La Stanwyck far too old for her role, but carrying it off with dramatic intensity as usual. There are some felicities in “Mrs. Winterbourne”; alas, neither film reaches the intensity of emotion and despair of the novel. I MAY have “Fall Guy” (Reginald Le Borg, 1947), but I’ll have to dig – it’s probably a 5th generation tape, though I can dub it to DVD or a file.
Most Woolrich/Irish adaptations fail in capturing the real power of his work, partly because he was usually so relentlessly downbeat that patrons would leave the theater looking for the nearest tall building or bridge (and partly because his plotting often requires a strenuous suspension of disbelief). One of the real oddities/stinkers (“I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes” isn’t bad, merely bland) is Arthur Ripley’s “The Chase”, although I have a perverse fondness for some of it – the PD prints are wretched, but I doubt anyone would deem it worth of a proper issue. The source novel, “The Black Path Of Fear”, is great.
Maxwell Shane’s 1947 “Fear In the Night” (based on “Nightmare”) is a sleeper; the opening scene’s weak special effects coupled with the PD print quality will put you off, but give it a chance. I have yet to see Shane’s remake (“Nightmare”, 1956), but it certainly boasts a better cast: Edward G, Robinson, Kevin McCarthy and Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis. I do have the one sheet, though.
“The Leopard Man”, of course, is superb. Plus, I have a serious letch for Dennis O’Keefe. “The Black Angel” and “Phantom Lady” are decently-budgeted and watchable – the latter is available in a French Siodmak boxed set with “The Killers” and his chef d’oeuvre, “Cobra Woman”.
I haven’t seen either of the “Whistler” films, nor the 1947 “The Guilty”, “Night Has a Thousand Eyes” (1948), the 1966 remake of “The Window”, “The Boy Who Cried Murder”, Truffaut’s 1969 “La Sirene du Mississippi” or its reputedly dreadful remake “Original Sin”, or Lenzi’s “Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso”, very loosely based on “Rendezvous In Black”. I don’t have any interest in “Children Of the Ritz” or “Manhattan Love Song”, either the books or the films – more for the completionist, as they precede his discovering a fatalistic urban existential dread and all the colors of the dark.
If you find yourself désolée and fraught after binging on Woolrich, an excellent remedy is to read “Mamie and Me”, a short story written when Woolrich “is fully at peace with the world, telling a gentle little story about a gentle little man and making magic with both, evoking the city before dawn and making the phantoms vanish with the sunrise” (Francis M. Nevins, “Nightwebs”).
April 3, 2010 at 6:40 pm
There was also a French version of I Married a Dead Man starring Nathalie Baye.
April 3, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Here.
April 3, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Yes, it looks like somebody’s making subtitles for that, but perhaps too late for me. Word is that the movie cops out on Woolrich’s ending, as usual.
I’ll withhold all opinions on the films until the week proper, although I’ll declare my love of Phantom Lady right now. Have got both Whistler films, Nightmare, Fear in the Night, Street of Chance, No Man of Her Own, The Leopard Man, Fall Guy, Street of Chance, Deadline at Dawn, The Window, Rear Window and The Black Angel.
The latter was courtesy of Guy Budziak, who also provided The Chase and its source novel.
European stuff: Martha (based on For the rest of Her Life), Mississippi Mermaid and The Bride Wore Black. There’s some South American adaptations but I haven’t managed to source them.
Lots of TV versions, of which I have the series Fallen Angels, which features a few episodes drawn from Woolrich, and Hitchcock’s episode 4 O’Clock, which I wrote about during Hitchcock Year, and an episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller called Guillotine.
No idea yet which of those I’ll write about, although Martha, Phantom Lady, Leopard Man and No Man of Her Own are almost certain. And we really enjoued our fuzzy copy of Mark of the Whistler. Good old Richard Dix!
LeBaron as LeBrand – I think it’s a must!
April 3, 2010 at 8:26 pm
On the Amazon links above… the Universal box set version has, perhaps surprisingly, better picture than the Criterion. And it comes with six more films so it’s the better deal. But the extras on the Criterion are essential, so do like me and buy both.
And speaking of the Leopard Man, I got in a (very minor) car crash yesterday while going to rent “I Walked With a Zombie,” so it had better be VERY good.
April 3, 2010 at 8:27 pm
It IS! The Sturges box set and the Lewton box set are possibly the two essential box sets, actually.
PS hope nobody was killed.
April 3, 2010 at 9:22 pm
I hope you and you’re car are gonna be fine!!
Val Lewton never dies around here…His films have been one of the sweet little mysterys of life..
Is that Karloff -Thriller episode-Guillotine,the one where the guys awaiting execution,but it all comes down to IF the Executioner who has to bring the Blade to the Machine,arrives to carry out the beheading?..I’ve always remembered that….but wasn’t sure what show it was on..ruled out Tiwilight zone and Outer Limits a long time ago..
April 3, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Yes, that’s the plot — I think the condemned man has a girlfriend who’s trying to nobble the executioner so he can’t do his job, because if there’s no official executioner they can’t proceed (which I’m sure wasn’t true). It’s rather too drawn out but the punchline is a zinger.