Classic Films in Focus: BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE (1958)

James Stewart and Kim Novak starred in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) the same year they made Vertigo (1958), and both films illustrate the hazards of becoming obsessed with someone you don't really know. Bell, Book and Candle plays this set-up as fodder for supernatural comedy rather than psychological suspense, but there's still an air of menace about the proceedings. The fun depends mostly on sly, offbeat performances from Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold, and Ernie Kovacs, with Stewart and Novak perfectly serious about their magical game of cat and mouse. The result is an odd film, engaging but troublesome, especially in its insistence on an ending that enforces conformity and outdated notions of gender-driven power.

Stewart plays middle-aged publisher Shep Henderson, who becomes entangled with his strange neighbors, the attractive Gil (Novak) and her mischievous aunt, Queenie (Elsa Lanchester). Despite their unusual habits, Shep never suspects that the women are actually witches, living in modern day New York and more or less hiding in plain sight. Shep's fiancee, Merle (Janice Rule), turns out to be Gil's old school nemesis, which inspires Gil to steal Shep for herself by using her magic, even though she insists that she doesn't really care about him. Gil also casts a spell to bring occult author Sidney Redlitch (Ernie Kovaks) to Shep's office, but his arrival complicates matters when he enlists the help of Gil's feckless brother, Nicky (Jack Lemmon), to write about the modern witches of New York.

There is plenty to like about this picture, especially the unconventional community of witches and warlocks, who even have their own night club and generally seem intent on having a good time. They're a bohemian crowd, weird but not really ambitious enough to play more than pranks. Nicky bangs the bongos and switches off street lights, while Aunt Queenie enjoys breaking into Shep's apartment and snooping around. Only Gil is serious and talented enough to do real harm; she terrifies Merle with a conjured thunderstorm and turns Shep's life upside down. Lanchester and Lemmon are delightful and perfectly cast, while Hermione Gingold revels in her matriarchal character, the powerful Bianca de Passe. She has her best scene when Shep comes to her for help in breaking Gil's love spell, in which she mixes a horrific potion and commands the poor victim to drink it. Rumpled Ernie Kovaks also fits in like a natural; the existence of witches in New York is great news for Redlitch and his next book, and his enthusiasm for the community contrasts Shep's growing horror.

The breakdown of the fun happens in the third act, when it becomes clear that Gil's power is deemed unnatural and antithetical to her femininity. Having it all is not an option; she can be a witch and never love, or she can lose her power to become the kind of girl Shep might want to marry. This is similar to the premise set forth in the earlier I Married a Witch (1942), in which Veronica Lake's supernatural heroine becomes a mortal for the love of Fredric March, but Bell, Book and Candle is much more heavy-handed about its disapproval of the powerful, unconventional woman. When we first meet Gil, she wears black, goes barefoot, and sells bizarre tribal masks in her shop, but in order to win Shep for real she has to give up all of those things and conform to his rather narrow expectations. Is Shep really worth it? Would it be so terrible to end up like Aunt Queenie and Madame de Passe? Given the glaring age difference between Stewart and Novak, many modern women might well decide that Gil would have been better off keeping her magic and her cat instead of surrendering to middle-class values for a man old enough to be her father. One suspects that Nicky and the witches will be having a good time long after Gil has gotten tired of seashells, shoes, and a kitchen full of dirty dishes.

Bell, Book and Candle earned two Oscar nominations, for art direction and costume design. Director Richard Quine also worked with Jack Lemmon in It Happened to Jane (1959) and How to Murder Your Wife (1965), and Lemmon and Novak both appear in his 1962 film, The Notorious Landlady. For more of Kim Novak, see Picnic (1955), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). Jimmy Stewart's other pictures from the late 1950s include Night Passage (1957) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Don't miss Hermione Gingold in The Music Man (1962), and be sure to appreciate Elsa Lanchester's Oscar-nominated performance in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), in which she antagonizes her real-life husband, Charles Laughton.

A Tribute to Lauren Bacall

I'm not tough. In fact, I'm really kind of a powder puff, the type of person who apologizes at the drop of a hat and can be made to feel bad for months with just a sharp word or a reproving look. Maybe that's why I have always loved the tough dames of classic Hollywood; they exude strength and a "Hell if I care" attitude that I can only dream of having. Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Lauren Bacall could all cut a man dead with one hard look. Today we lost Bacall, the last of the great noir dames, and the world seems a sadder place without her.

What can you say about an actress who was known as "The Look"? Whatever IT was, she had it in spades. From her very first picture, To Have and Have Not (1944), she was great, feeding Bogart seductive lines and that comeback stare. No wonder he fell hard. Every man on earth must have learned to whistle in 1944, even if he wasn't named Steve (which, by the way, Bogart's character wasn't). Bacall was launched into noir legend and the arms of Humphrey Bogart at the tender age of 19, but you would never have guessed how young she was from the way she carried herself on screen.

She went on acting for the rest of her life. She did voice work, earned an Oscar nomination, went forward, and aged well. She survived the loss of Bogart in 1957, remarried, divorced, raised three children, and wrote multiple memoirs of her life in Hollywood. She was tough, yes, but elegant, too, and into her 80s she was more beautiful than most people can ever hope to be.

Tonight the classic movie fan community - and the world at large - join her family in mourning the loss of Lauren Bacall, but I'm so grateful that she was with us for such a long time, to show us not only how to be tough and 20, but how to be great at every age.

Thanks for everything, Betty Joan Perske. We'll never forget you.

Classic Films in Focus: THE PIRATE (1948)

In the same year that she starred with Fred Astaire in Easter Parade (1948), Judy Garland partnered with Hollywood’s other reigning hoofer, Gene Kelly, in the Caribbean musical romance, The Pirate (1948). Garland and Kelly had already starred together in For Me and My Gal (1942), and they make a very lively pair in this odd, boisterous romp, which also benefits from Cole Porter’s songs and Vincente Minnelli’s direction. With its tropical setting and heated dance numbers, The Pirate pulses with sexual energy, but it moderates its plot about a young girl’s bedroom fantasies of kidnap and ravishment with liberal doses of comedy. Supporting appearances from Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper, and the fabulous Nicholas Brothers also make this picture worthwhile for musical and comedy fans.

Garland stars as Manuela, whose arranged marriage to the much older Don Pedro (Walter Slezak) threatens to extinguish her hope for a life of romance and adventure. Her beauty attracts the admiration of Serafin (Gene Kelly), a traveling actor who pursues Manuela to her hometown and disrupts the wedding by claiming to be the infamous pirate, Mack the Black Macoco. Serafin’s ruse backfires, however, when the real Macoco connives to have the actor executed for the outlaw’s crimes.

The plot of the story is surprisingly lusty, with Manuela as both desired object and desiring subject. She yearns for the rough embrace of Macoco the pirate, primarily because she is bored with her conventional, sheltered upbringing and has no idea what an encounter with a real pirate would be like. Don Pedro, fat, rich, and determined to live a quiet life, represents the very opposite of everything that Manuela thinks she wants, but Serafin doesn’t live up to her ideal, either, since he’s merely a rakish entertainer. Manuela gets to live her fantasy, even if it’s just pretend, when Serafin poses as Macoco and demands that Manuela be delivered to him as a sacrifice to save the town. This is kinky stuff for 1948 and sweet-faced Judy Garland, but the movie treats the subject with such ironic humor that it gets passed off as a harmless lark. Still, it’s hard to imagine the production heaving with the same urgency without Gene Kelly in those delightfully tight pants, even if his wig looks a bit silly.

Several of the musical numbers contribute to the heady sexual atmosphere. Louis B. Mayer might have destroyed the alarmingly sexy “Voodoo” number that was meant to be in the picture, but the songs that remain give the audience plenty of heat. Kelly’s “Nina” number has him trying to make out with every girl in port, and the pirate ballet sequence shows off both his dancing ability and his naked legs. Garland waxes rhapsodically about “Mack the Black” and literally lets her hair down to fantasize about being carried off by the buccaneer. Other songs moderate the prevailing mood of the picture with comedy or more traditional romance; the best of the lot is the first performance of “Be a Clown,” which features Kelly with the incredibly talented Nicholas Brothers.

The Pirate succeeds at balancing sensuality with comedy thanks to its cast. Kelly is obviously having a ball as the waggish Serafin; he plays at being a swashbuckler like Douglas Fairbanks and hams up his theatrical bits like John Barrymore. Garland, already fragile and edging toward the end of her MGM career, still looks lovely and has the strength to hold her own against Kelly. The scene in which she throws a roomful of breakable objects at him is quite a spectacle. Gladys Cooper is both maternal and mercenary as Manuela’s Aunt Inez, while Walter Slezak has some very good scenes as the dour Don Pedro. George Zucco makes a brief but memorable appearance as the Viceroy who wants to hang Macoco, and Reginald Owen also turns up in a small supporting role.

For more of Garland and Kelly, see their third and final film together, Summer Stock (1950). Vincente Minnelli also directed Garland, who was his wife from 1945 to 1951, in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Clock (1945); he directed Kelly again in An American in Paris (1951) and Brigadoon (1954). For more of Walter Slezak, see Lifeboat (1944) and People Will Talk (1951). Don’t miss the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather (1943), which offers a better and more extended example of their amazing technique.

BEYOND CASABLANCA is Free on Kindle This Week!

As promised in an earlier post, I am now running promos on the ebook version of BEYOND CASABLANCA. Beginning Monday, August 11, 2014, and running through Friday, the ebook is free on Kindle, and I hope you'll either consider the book for yourself or encourage friends to give it a try. It contains many exclusive reviews that you won't find here on Virtual Virago or on my Examiner column.

While you're at it, you might have a look at BEYOND CASABLANCA II, which offers 101 more classic movie reviews, or EVERYDAY MONSTERS, my newly released short story collection.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to visit the Amazon link and helps me get the word out. I'd really love to give away a  lot of copies this week! The point of the book is to connect readers with great classic films, and hopefully the free promo will promote that aim.

Classic Movies and EVERYDAY MONSTERS

This weekend I got my short story collection, Everyday Monsters, posted on Amazon Kindle, where it now awaits the lavish praise of at least a dozen readers, not including my mother, who doesn't want me to become too conceited by thinking that I might be "all that." Everybody knows that short stories don't sell, but being obsessed with classic horror and shows like The Twilight Zone I wrote them anyway. A word of warning to you classic horror fans out there - this is the kind of thing that is liable to happen to you if you watch too much Boris, Bela, and Lon, not to mention too many episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Anyway, the seven stories in the collection represent a strange melange of influences from classic movies, literature, and my studies of feminist theory in graduate school. Here's a breakdown of some of the references and allusions in each story, which I hope will inspire at least three more people to go over to Amazon and have a look at the book itself.

"The Spinsters" - I have to be coy here to avoid spoiling the big twist, but I can say that there's a lot of Arsenic and Old Lace informing the characters of Louisa and Letitia. They're also based on my real-life dotty old aunts, Birdie and Sis, who were absolutely weird enough to fuel an entire career for any writer. I love wacky old ladies, especially in movies; I adore Una O'Connor, Hermione Gingold, Dame May Whitty, and all of their cinematic sisters. In this story, the little old ladies rule.

"Desiccated" - The Mummy and other later films often depict the protagonist's love interest as the mummy's reincarnated sweetheart, but in this story I do away with the male characters and let the heroine and the Ancient Egyptian princess become the focal characters. Margot definitely has a connection to Princess Ahmesahura, but their encounter has more complicated consequences than a simple substitution. Margot is also something a movie buff, since the horrible kids she has to chaperone remind her of The Omen, and she recognizes the encased mummy as a familiar figure from old films.

"Hoodoo Man" - Classic horror fans will immediately recognize that Cleophas Legendre has appropriated his surname from Bela Lugosi's character in White Zombie, which also informs the way that the zombies themselves are handled. These are classic zombies, not the Romero brain-eaters. I really admire the short fiction of Alice Walker and Eudora Welty, and I hope their influence comes through, but this story is particularly inspired by Zora Neale Hurston's "Sweat." It's also about the blues, especially Nina Simone's fantastic rendition of "I Put a Spell on You."

"Mama Doll" - I wanted to include stories about different kinds of oppressed characters finding some poetic justice through supernatural events, and I really liked the idea of the golem as a monster that we don't see that often. Carlita is a young Hispanic girl thrown into a corrupt foster care system, but her own creativity and will to live make her a surprisingly strong character. My sister and I used to make doll people like this one when we were kids; once we even hid my sister inside one and put her on the porch, where she came to life and terrified trick-or-treaters reaching for the bowl of candy in her lap.

"This is Not a Life" - Forbidden Planet is one of my favorite science fiction movies because of the way it revises Shakespeare's The Tempest as a Freudian fable, and I play with some of those ideas here, too. Isolated on his island paradise, William Prosper has mastered science that certainly looks like magic; instead of a daughter he has his wife, Perdita, who gets her name from The Winter's Tale. There's some Heart of Darkness going on, as well, plus a shout-out to Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I saw a Magritte exhibit in Montreal many years ago, and those trippy images seemed like the perfect complement to this story.

"Morning Comes After the Storm" - I used to teach Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" all the time, and the ending always bothered me. Browning is intentionally ambiguous, but this story reveals what I like to imagine happening next. The dog recalls the beloved pet of Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett, who was already a famous poet when Browning started writing fan mail to her. You might say I'm recasting Browning's story according to the workings of Poe's universe. Hopefully that works.

"The Exorcism of Wendell Grove" - I love funny ghost stories like The Ghost Goes West (1935) and The Canterville Ghost (1944). Even Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) makes me laugh. This story is meant to be fun rather than scary, like riding The Haunted Mansion at Disney World, but it still pursues the theme of poetic justice. Frederica Island is inspired by St. Simons Island, in coastal South Georgia. I don't know what actual ghosts they have there, but the story includes a Southern belle, a slave woman, freaky poltergeist twins, gentleman duelists, a drunken frat brother, and a pirate.

Here's the link to the ebook in case you're one of those three people!

Classic Films in Focus: THE FLY (1958)

The original 1958 version of The Fly was such a hit that it spawned multiple sequels and the well-known 1986 remake with Jeff Goldblum, but it’s actually a lot less horrific than first-time viewers might assume. That famous ending, with the hideous man-fly screaming for help, is certainly over-the-top horror hysteria, but the rest of the picture is more inclined to take itself seriously. At its heart, The Fly is a love story about a young couple whose happiness is shattered by the husband’s dangerous pursuit of science. It works, too, thanks mostly to the performances of David Hedison and Patricia Owens as the lovers caught in fate’s insidious web, although horror fans will also appreciate the presence of genre icon Vincent Price as the doomed inventor’s brother.

David Hedison (credited as Al Hedison) stars as Andre Delambre, a brilliant scientist who invents a matter transmitting device in his basement lab. His experiments go horribly wrong when he tests the invention on himself and unwittingly transports a fly at the same time. Hideously mutated and rapidly losing control over his insect parts, Andre asks his wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), to help him commit suicide and destroy all evidence of the dangerous research. When she complies, Helene faces a murder investigation, but Andre’s brother, Francois (Vincent Price), works desperately to save his sister-in-law and convince the police inspector (Herbert Marshall) that her story is the truth.

The film opens with the death of Andre, so the audience is never in suspense about his fate. As the scientist who transgresses against the boundaries of nature, Andre’s demise might even be warranted, although the film prefers to cast him as a martyr to scientific progress. Helene’s more personal struggle in the aftermath provides the narrative’s tension; will she be executed for murder or committed to life in an insane asylum? Both outcomes spell disaster for her and her young son, but her story, when she finally agrees to tell it, seems far too incredible to be real. Francois, who has long been in love with Helene, acts as the amateur detective trying to figure out the mystery of Andre’s death and Helene’s part in it. Unlike Inspector Charas, Francois knows enough about his brother’s research to believe that such an invention might have been possible, even if all of the evidence has been destroyed. The proof that he finally finds is so shocking that he and Charas are thrust into the same position as Helene, driven to destroy life in spite of their own principles.

CinemaScope photography gives a sense of grandeur to the bizarre story, even though most of the action takes place indoors. The actors also bring gravitas to the narrative with their serious performances. Vincent Price in particular plays it straight and fills the role of the thoroughly human Francois instead of the monstrous Andre. By 1958, Price had already starred in horror features like The Invisible Man Returns (1940) and House of Wax (1953), but he was not yet entrenched in the campier work of William Castle or Roger Corman; House on Haunted Hill (1959) would not appear until the next year, with Corman's House of Usher following in 1960. Herbert Marshall lends the movie even more dramatic weight by playing the skeptical police inspector; an actor known primarily for films like The Letter (1940) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), Marshall serves as an anchoring presence, assuring us that this tragic tale is meant to be taken to heart. Patricia Owens and David Hedison are at their best in the scenes that depict their happy marriage before the fateful accident; once Hedison dons the fly head, he has to project Andre’s misery through the use of his one human hand, while Owens must deliver the inevitable reaction shot when Andre’s inhumanity is finally revealed. It is Owens who gets to make the film’s most prescient, and perhaps ironic, statement about the speed at which progress changes human life. “I get so scared sometimes,” she says. “The suddenness of our age!” We have to wonder what she would think of the world nearly 60 years later.

Director Kurt Neumann made The Fly near the very end of his career; for examples of his earlier work try Tarzan and the Amazons (1945), She-Devil (1957), and Kronos (1957). Look for David Hedison in The Lost World (1960) and Live and Let Die (1973). Patricia Owens stars in The Law and Jake Wade (1958) and The Gun Runners (1958). Herbert Marshall also ventures into horror territory in Gog (1954), but be sure to appreciate him in the clever Pre-Code heist comedy, Trouble in Paradise (1932). Vincent Price reprises his role as Francois Delambre in the 1959 sequel, Return of the Fly. The final installment, Curse of the Fly (1965), continues the story of the Delambre family but stars Brian Donlevy and George Baker.

BEYOND CASABLANCA 2nd Edition Ebook is Now Available

A while back my publisher at Westview announced some changes in the way they work. Sadly, the downside of the alteration is that the print version of BEYOND CASABLANCA is no longer available from online stores (I can still get print copies directly). On the plus side, I'm now able to run promotions and sales on the Kindle version of the book. As of August 6, 2014, the new ebook version of BEYOND CASABLANCA is available, and you can find it here.

The best part of releasing the new version is that I was able to fix a few errors that had been bothering me since 2012! I had a date wrong and an alphabetizing error, and both of those have just bugged the heck out of me ever since I first noticed them. All of the important content is the same, though, so don't worry if you already have a print or ebook copy.

This is a huge month for me as a writer; I have several projects coming to fruition, and I hope 2015 will be an exciting year of reaching new readers and finishing even more books. I do have another classic movie book in the works, but I have also been working on a novel and a short story collection. If you're interested in the wildly varied projects I have worked on, you can visit my Amazon Author Page.

Thanks to everyone who has supported and enjoyed BEYOND CASABLANCA. I hope it will find more readers and inspire lots of people to watch more old movies!