Classic Films in Focus: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (1950)

Tolstoy might have thought that happy families are all alike, but he didn't live during the era of Hollywood family films like Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), where the sheer diversity of happy families generated picture after picture about different domestic clans with their own unique stories. Thus we have movies like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Life With Father (1947), and I Remember Mama (1948), as well as many others, often adapted from non-fiction memoirs or thinly veiled autobiographies. Cheaper by the Dozen is no exception; based on the popular memoir by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, the original movie has nothing beyond its title in common with the purely fictional 2003 remake starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, and it certainly outshines the later picture in charm, poignancy, and inoffensive family amusement. While Cheaper by the Dozen is not among the greatest classic films ever made, it offers a very entertaining view of family life in the 1920s that both children and adults can enjoy, and its nostalgic presentation of parents as thoughtful, funny, and understanding people provides a welcome tonic to the way in which mothers and fathers are so often depicted in "family" films today.

Directed by Walter Lang, the movie stars Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy as the Gilbreth parents, whose own work in industrial engineering and efficiency has not prevented them from generating a family of twelve children, six boys and six girls. Jeanne Crain plays their eldest daughter, Ann, whose transition to womanhood creates some drama and humor within the family, as poor Ann is the first of the offspring to have to persuade her parents to let her grow up. The story of the family's life, leading up to a major event that alters it forever, is told through a series of vignettes spread out over several years.

Like many films of this sort, the vignette model for story-telling leaves something to be desired in the plot department; the sketches that we see are interesting and funny but don't really build the story's tension to a climactic height. If you have seen a number of family stories, or if you already know the history of the real Gilbreth family, you can see the major event of the movie coming, but the earlier parts of the film don't necessarily emphasize a movement in that direction, and the film uses the event as an endpoint rather than a climax. Some of the best scenes are the shortest and least consequential ones, like the father's interview with the principal at the children's school or the family's acquisition of a dog in spite of their patriarch's objections, but they demonstrate the family's love for one another and the father's intense pride in and devotion to his numerous brood. Even the smallest families will recognize the affectionate truth about parents and children living together in these scenes, and they may well prove productive starting points for conversations about important family decisions and situations.

Classic movie fans will appreciate Cheaper by the Dozen primarily for its leads; this is a chance to see Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, both strong performers with illustrious careers, in some rather different roles. Webb rose to fame as the urbane villain of Otto Preminger's noir hit, Laura (1944), but he was also well known in the late 1940s as the snippy title character of the Mr. Belvedere films (which inspired the later television series). Webb's performance as the benevolently eccentric Frank Gilbreth makes for an interesting contrast with these other roles, and his version of the old-fashioned pater familias rounds out those of Leon Ames in Meet Me in St. Louis and of Willam Powell in Life With Father.

Loy, who began her career in silent films, was a major star in the 1930s whose biggest role came when she played Nora Charles opposite William Powell in The Thin Man movies. By the end of the 1940s, she had aged out of the vampish parts that opened her career and was playing more mature characters, including the loving war wife of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and the career-minded older sister in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). As the Gilbreth matriarch, Loy combines her ladylike bearing and visible intelligence with the soft, angelic vision of maternity so often associated with motherhood in these sorts of films. That she does it without becoming a wan sort of martyr to domesticity is a testament both to her own acting talent and to the real Lillian Gilbreth, who held a doctoral degree in industrial psychology and was tremendously influential in her field, so much so that she is sometimes called "The First Lady of Engineering" and even had a US postage stamp issued in her honor as a Great American in 1984.

If you enjoy movies about large families or Americana, Cheaper by the Dozen offers a good choice that the entire family can watch together. If you find yourself really interested in the story of the Gilbreth family, you'll be happy to know that the first film was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), adapted from the follow-up memoir written by the Gilbreth children. Both of the memoirs are currently available in print, and those who want to know more about Lillian Gilbreth might enjoy Jane Lancaster's 2006 biography, Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth - A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen." For more from director Walter Lang, try the Shirley Temple version of The Little Princess (1939), the musical classic, The King and I (1956), or the Tracy and Hepburn comedy, Desk Set (1957).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Movies at the Library in December

As part of my ongoing efforts to promote Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching, I'll be introducing and screening two classic movies at the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library in December. These are free events and open to the public, and of course I will have copies of the book for sale at both films!

On Monday, December 3, we'll be watching The African Queen (1951) with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The next week, on Monday, December 10, we'll get into the holiday spirit with Frank Capra's Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, and Thomas Mitchell.

Both events begin at 6 p.m. in the second floor room of the main library. If you live in the Huntsville area, I hope you'll join us for some communal movie watching and lively discussion!

Beyond Casablanca is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com. 

Classic Films in Focus: OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934)

Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1934) is the film that made Bette Davis a star, and it's easy enough to see why. Her portrayal of the morally bankrupt Mildred Rogers dominates the picture, despite the fact that Leslie Howard's character is technically the protagonist. Few young actresses would be so willing to inhabit such a thoroughly unlikable persona, but Mildred is a true Bette Davis part, a difficult character whose descent is marked by radical physical transformation over the course of the film. Dark and unyielding in its depiction of the depths of human weakness and corruptibility, Of Human Bondage delivers on the theme promised in its title, presenting an excellent consideration of the ties that bind, even to the point of strangulation.

Howard is the established star here, and the plot follows his character, a club-footed, uncertain young man named Philip Carey. His hopes of being an artist dashed by his mediocre talent, Philip is adrift; he pursues a medical career without really seeming to care about it or anything else, until he meets Davis' Cockney waitress in a restaurant. Something about her strikes a chord, and he begins to court her, although she clearly fails to return his ardor. She replies to his passionate entreaties with the same coy, mocking phrase, "I don't mind," shrugging her shoulders with indifference. Eventually Mildred abandons him for another lover, but, like a bad penny, she turns up again, always just in time to blight whatever progress Philip has managed to make on his own. Like the fool he is, Philip repeatedly allows Mildred back into his life, although each return reveals her at a lower point in her downward spiral.

Leslie Howard's Philip is typical of his characters, aloof, diffident, but searching for something about which he can really care. The club foot only adds to the air of frailty about him; we can see how sensitive and self-conscious he is about his deformity and about himself in general. He's amiable enough, but he seems to be tailor made for a chump, a quality that Davis' Mildred instantly recognizes. Against Howard's wan sensitivity, Davis is all hard edges and cruel, animal intelligence. Both the picture and the protagonist belong to her from the moment she first appears on screen. Always fearless in her willingness to be ugly on camera, Davis undertakes a striking transformation as Mildred sinks lower into vice and corruption. When we first see her, she is prim and attractive in her waitress uniform, but by the end of the film she has become a wasted hag, a terrible casualty of drug abuse, promiscuity, and her own rotten core. Even the luminous Frances Dee as Philip's new love interest, Sally, can barely compete with Mildred, and one gets the sense that Philip might have fallen under that destructive spell yet again had fate not intervened.

The issue of class lurks in the background of the story as one of its subtler and more troublesome themes. Philip is clearly born to civilized pursuits, like art and medicine; he's a white collar man whose lifestyle is supported by money from an unseen uncle. Yes, he needs to find an occupation, but his destined social space lies much higher than Mildred's lower class sphere. Is Philip merely slumming when he first becomes involved with Mildred? Are Mildred's fatal flaws those of an individual woman or of her entire class? There are some interesting counterpoints to this uneven match in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), where Angela Lansbury plays the lower class girl and Hurd Hatfield is the upper class man, only there the moral qualities of the characters have been switched. Tragically, it doesn't turn out any better for the woman because of it. In class conscious Britain, romances like these are always suspect, although they don't work out much better in American films like Stella Dallas (1937) and Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940).

Of Human Bondage was also adapted for film in 1946 with Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker and in 1964 with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak. It would make for an interesting weekend to watch all three of them together. If you'd rather enjoy more of Davis and Howard, try The Petrified Forest (1936). Davis undertakes other striking physical transformations in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Now, Voyager (1942), Mrs. Skeffington (1944), and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Director John Cromwell also made Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), and Since You Went Away (1944).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE LETTER (1940)

Like Of Human Bondage (1934), The Letter is another Bette Davis film based on a W. Somerset Maugham work, and it's clear that Maugham was a master at writing the kind of duplicitous, destructive character Davis was born to play. Directed by William Wyler, The Letter is a fascinating study in duplicity and deception, a film where every light side has its dark double and every shot is laden with layers of meaning for the astute observer. The anti-heroine of the film is one of Davis' most insidiously destructive roles, never overtly evil and yet capable of bringing death and ruin to every man who comes near her. Nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1941, The Letter won nothing, but the merit of a film should never be determined simply by the number of gold statues it accumulates, as this deadly little fable offers quite an exciting ride as well as an intriguing depiction of Orientalist hysteria.

The film opens as plantation wife Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) pursues a mortally injured man out onto the veranda of her home. She proceeds to empty a pistol into the mysterious stranger, and the loud reports of each shot stir the sleeping plantation workers to life. Soon her husband, Robert (Herbert Marshall), and a small cadre of other white men are gathered to sort out the facts of the incident. Leslie insists that the dead man assaulted her in a drunken passion and that she shot him in self-defense, a story that her husband and her defense attorney (James Stephenson) both seem prepared to buy. Unfortunately for Leslie, the dead man's widow has a letter that suggests the truth about what happened that night at the plantation.

The story is set in the East, first at the Crosbies' rubber plantation in British Malaya and then in Singapore, where Leslie's trial takes place. The contrast between the refined, over-dressed English and the native population is marked; the sweaty, impassive faces of the plantation workers fill the scene after the shooting incident ends, and then the white men arrive, casually bossing everyone around and imposing order with their rules and formalities. The Brits merely look rumpled and uncomfortable most of the time; repression is a way of life with them. The idea that one might succumb to passion is unseemly and despicable; believing the dead man to be guilty, they congratulate Leslie on her proper response to such outrageous behavior, little suspecting that it is Leslie herself who has really become consumed by animal lust. This is, of course, the danger of the East; one risks infection through too much contact.

That alarming Orientalist fear is realized in the dead man, as well, who turns out to be Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell). Hammond had been notorious as a ladies' man before inexplicably marrying a Eurasian woman, an act that is seen as a kind of race betrayal, even though the woman is half European. The film makes much of the opposition between the fair-skinned, light-haired Leslie and the fantastically exotic Mrs. Hammond, who is played as a kind of dragon lady by a heavily made-up Gale Sondergaard. It would be offensive if it weren't so obviously ironic, with pointedly Eastern music entering Max Steiner's score each time Mrs. Hammond appears on screen. In one telling scene, Leslie enters Singapore's Chinatown to buy the incriminating letter from Mrs. Hammond. Leslie appears in a heavy white veil, looking innocent and frightened but bravely going on, while the imperious Mrs. Hammond looks down on her with a fixed expression of hatred, her dark face framed by black hair and lavishly foreign jewelry. Which is the offender, and which is the victim? The film challenges us to contrast the facts that we know with the stereotypes that we see.

Director William Wyler uses symbols to full effect, including the clouds that move over the moon and the long shadows that reach out from the characters and dominate the screen. The most interesting symbolic element is Leslie's compulsive lace-making. We see her at it over and over throughout the film, tatting the way that a spider spins a web. Like a black widow, she lures the men around her into her trap and then destroys them. Her husband is devastated to realize that his wife is a stranger to him, her lawyer betrays his own ethics to defend her, and her lover ends up dead. The elaborate lacework that she constructs represents her creation of a life built out of lies; when she becomes unable to work at it any longer, we know that she has become disgusted with her own duplicity, but the damage that she has done to the men cannot be undone, and only one ending awaits.

Rebecca (1940) swept the Oscars the year that The Letter was up for its awards, but in retrospect The Letter is certainly the tighter and more thrilling of the two films. For more of Bette Davis, see The Petrified Forest (1936), Jezebel (1938), and Dark Victory (1939). Be sure to catch Gale Sondergaard as the amusingly coquettish Inez Quintero in The Mark of Zorro (1940); she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Anthony Adverse (1936) and was nominated again for Anna and the King of Siam (1946). James Stephenson, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Letter, also appears with Davis in The Old Maid (1939) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). William Wyler earned a dozen nominations for Best Director and won for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX (1939)

Directed by Michael Curtiz, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) offers as much Technicolor pomp and spectacle as one could hope for in a lavish Warner Brothers costume drama, as well as the stars to match. Bette Davis rules the screen as Elizabeth I, but her court boasts luminaries as diverse as Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price, Donald Crisp, Henry Daniell, and Nanette Fabray. The story plays fast and loose with historical accuracy and reveals a very irksome sense of sexual politics, but Elizabeth and Essex offers viewers a terrific cast and particularly fascinating performance from an almost unrecognizable Davis, here transforming herself into a mythic monarch twice her actual age.

As the aging queen, Davis presides over a royal court that bristles with rival factions, sycophants, and spies. Despite her passionate love for the much younger Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn), Elizabeth distrusts his ambition and his ulterior motives, while his enemies do everything in their power to discredit him. One of Elizabeth's attendants, Lady Penelope Gray (Olivia de Havilland), would steal the Earl's affection for herself if she could, while Sir Walter Raleigh (Vincent Price) hopes to supplant Essex as the queen's new favorite. Even Francis Bacon (Donald Crisp), supposedly a friend to both Essex and the queen, looks to his own interests first. When the manipulative courtiers arrange for Essex to lead a losing war against the Earl of Tyrone (Alan Hale) in Ireland, their subsequent treachery brings the lovers to a tragic confrontation.

The movie, adapted from the play by Maxwell Anderson, concerns itself much more with romance than history, although Elizabeth's real relationship with Essex certainly inspires some raised eyebrows. The events that unfold in the film do, at least, offer a sense of the dangerous nature of Elizabethan court life, and Essex really did suffer the fate shown in the conclusion, as would his rival, Sir Walter Raleigh, some years later. Elizabeth was more than thirty years older than Essex, which we see in Davis' remarkable appearance, but Essex also had a wife and several children, and they are conveniently absent here.

The romantic angle depends upon a certain reading of Elizabeth's nature that one might uncharitably describe as that of a love-starved cougar. Davis excelled at playing difficult women who yearn for unconditional love, making this a perfect role for her, but it does a disservice to the historical queen's abilities as a ruler. Davis' version seems overburdened by the weight of the crown on her poor female head and wishes to be only a woman instead, while Flynn's sexist Essex would be perfectly happy to grant that wish provided that his masculine ego is gratified by his own ascension to the throne. Played merely as fictional romance, the set-up is dated though not particularly surprising, but as historical biography it's a suspicious undermining of the reputation of one of the greatest female leaders in the course of Western history.

Despite these issues, which might well trouble a feminist scholar a lot more than they will bother the average viewer, the movie has plenty of unqualified delights, from Davis' incredible physical appearance to the gorgeous costumes and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's terrific score. The sight of Vincent Price in tights, preening as the ambitious and devious Raleigh, is by itself enough to make the whole picture worth watching. Errol Flynn and Donald Crisp both offer memorable performances, and Alan Hale has a small but important role that puts him on the opposite side of the battle from his Robin Hood costar. It would be nice for Olivia de Havilland to have more to do as Lady Penelope, especially in the wake of her Robin Hood and Gone with the Wind performances, but Nanette Fabray has some very good scenes as the young Mistress Margaret, whose romantic problems inspire pity and sympathy in Elizabeth.

Nominated for five Oscars, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex suffered from the plethora of masterpieces made in 1939 and the competing performances of its own stars. Like Davis' other 1939 film, Dark Victory, Elizabeth and Essex went home empty-handed. Davis, interestingly enough, played Elizabeth again in 1955 in The Virgin Queen. For more big budget costume dramas, try The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Three Musketeers (1948), and Ivanhoe (1952). For more of Michael Curtiz, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland, see Captain Blood (1935), Dodge City (1939), and Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Classic Films in Focus: BLACK ANGEL (1946)

Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, Black Angel (1946) is a minor film noir from the classic period that merits attention more for its cast than its convoluted plot. Woolrich's work produced some interesting source material for movies, notably The Leopard Man (1943), Rear Window (1954), and The Bride Wore Black (1968), and that list alone ought to say something about the kind of story Black Angel has to tell. It's certainly no walk in the park, but its twists and turns never quite deliver, perhaps because the ending is so obvious that the suspense can't really build effectively. The dedicated classic film fan may well find the movie worth watching, however, because of the performances of noir regulars Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre.

The heroine of the picture is Catherine Bennett (June Vincent), whose husband is convicted of killing Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling), the former wife of boozy musician Martin Blair (Dan Duryea). Cathy asks Martin to help prove her husband's innocence, and their joint investigation leads them to Marko (Peter Lorre), an oily nightclub owner who obviously has something to hide. Posing as a musical act, Martin and Cathy go undercover at the club, but their dangerous gamble might not be enough to save Kirk Bennett (John Phillips), especially if Marko turns out to be the wrong man.

It would be inconsiderate to spoil the "shock" ending, but the movie telegraphs it so insistently that surely nobody is really going to be surprised. That's one weakness in the film, but another is June Vincent's Cathy, so resolutely a "good girl" type that she's determined to save the life of a man who was not only cheating on her but submitting to blackmail to keep her from finding out about it. The picture opens with the murder of the femme fatale character, but even in her few minutes on the screen Mavis Marlowe manages to be a lot more interesting than Cathy Bennett. It might be that the story leaves little room for her character to develop, but it might also be June Vincent's performance that leaves something to be desired. Either way, she can't really carry the picture, and we're left scratching our heads about her dogged devotion to her faithless spouse.

Dan Duryea and Peter Lorre, on the other hand, are great fun to watch. Duryea makes a memorable heavy in pictures like Ball of Fire (1941) and Scarlet Street (1945), but here he's more sympathetic, still a hard luck case but a nice enough guy as long as he stays on the wagon. Lorre gets to be the tough guy for a change, and he pulls it off beautifully, proving his own versatility in character roles. Of course, his most memorable work is with extreme characters, like the serial killer in M (1931) or Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941), but here he shows that he can play a more subtle line, as well. Between the two of them they almost make up for the lackluster heroine's plot.

For more classic noir with Dan Duryea, be sure to see Scarlet Street (1945). You'll find Peter Lorre in dozens of great pictures, but M (1931) made him a star, while his performance in Casablanca (1942) helped ensure his enduring celebrity. For more from director Roy William Neill, try Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) or any of the Sherlock Holmes pictures starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: DRAGONWYCK (1946)

Although it’s not as well known today as Gothic thrillers like Rebecca (1940) and Gaslight (1944), Dragonwyck (1946) sprang from the tremendous vogue for romantic thrillers that those movies helped to establish during the 1940s. The picture was adapted from a 1944 novel by Anya Seton, and the late date of the source material helps us understand the story’s obvious affinities with du Maurier and her own muse, Charlotte Brontë. One of the first films directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Dragonwyck boasts all the flourishes of the classic female Gothic, but its chief attractions are the exquisite Gene Tierney as the imperiled heroine and Vincent Price as her broodingly Byronic spouse.

Tierney stars as Miranda Wells, who thinks her dreams have come true when a distant relative summons her to serve as a companion to his young daughter (Connie Marshall). It soon becomes apparent, though, that the imperious Nicholas Van Ryn (Vincent Price) has other designs on his beautiful cousin, especially after his wife (Vivienne Osborne) mysteriously dies. Despite the romantic overtures of a handsome local doctor (Glenn Langan), Miranda falls under Nicholas’ dangerous spell, and soon her own life is threatened as Nicholas becomes increasingly deranged.

Both Fox players, Tierney and Price had already appeared together in films like Hudson’s Bay (1941), Laura (1944), and Leave Her to Heaven (1945), but Price has a much larger role in Dragonwyck and therefore gets more opportunity to exercise his tremendous screen presence. His Van Ryn is more restrained than the horror characters he would eventually play, but already the outlines of the later Corman characters are clear. Price was handsome enough for a leading man, as Dragonwyck proves, but his particular talent for a cruel twist of the mouth made him far more entertaining as an antagonist. He has an undeniable sexual appeal that makes Miranda’s attraction to him credible, even though the lines of his face and the sarcastic light in his eyes inform the audience of his character’s true nature. Tierney has a complex heroine to play, for Miranda has to remain sympathetic in spite of the flaws that lead her to her fate. Her beauty encourages us to forgive her, and Tierney is at her most lovely in her gorgeous period gowns. The two stars find capable support in the secondary cast, with Glen Langan as the opposite of Price in nearly every way, Walter Huston fiercely righteous as Miranda’s God-fearing father, and Anne Revere kindly as Miranda's loving mother. Spring Byington provides a delightfully creepy performance as the housekeeper, Magda, who ominously warns Miranda of the mansion’s dark past.

Like most of the Gothic thrillers of the era, Dragonwyck has its roots in Jane Eyre, which had gotten its own big Hollywood treatment in the 1943 picture starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. Miranda differs from Jane because she has the benefit of concerned, practical parents who worry over her dreamy notions, but still we have the unhappy first wife, the brooding anti-hero, and the lonely child populating the shadowy, history-haunted halls of the ancestral estate. Dragonwyck breaks away from the narrative arc of the earlier work in its second half, but its deviations still draw upon the conventions of the traditional Gothic, particularly in its use of the vengeful, wandering ghost and its evocation of the old story of Bluebeard and his wives. Those who are interested in the Gothic tradition will find its parallels and variations fascinating, although the film occasionally errs, especially when it drops characters like Magda and the little girl, Katrine, without explanation about halfway through the story.

Look for beloved character actors Harry Morgan as tenant farmer Klaas Bleecker and Jessica Tandy as Miranda’s Irish maid, Peggy O’Malley. For more from Joseph L. Mankiewicz, try The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), All About Eve (1950), and People Will Talk (1951). See Vincent Price in iconic horror roles in House of Wax (1953), House on Haunted Hill (1959), and Corman films like The Raven (1963) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). In addition to her previously mentioned roles, catch Gene Tierney in the wonderful Ernst Lubitsch classic, Heaven Can Wait (1943).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.