The Screengrab : david o. selznick

Yesterday's Hits: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947, Irving Reis)

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

During the 1930s, there was no bigger star in Hollywood than Shirley Temple. So beloved was little Shirley by both moviegoers and other actors that allegedly she was given an honorary Academy Award for fear that she would defeat older, more experienced performers if she was nominated for a competitive Oscar. However, growing up can be awkward for child stars, and Temple, popular though she was, was no exception. By the early 1940s, she had been largely relegated to supporting “kid-sister” roles in films like 1944’s Since You Went Away.

In 1947, she decided to make a last-ditch effort to parlay her youthful popularity into an adult career, and what better way to do so than to share the screen with some of the era’s biggest stars? So producer David O. Selznick, to whom she was under contract, gave Temple permission to make a film at RKO Pictures opposite Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The result was 1947’s The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and it became one of the most popular films of the year. As usual, Grant and Loy were big audience draws, but it was Temple’s presence that put it over the top, as moviegoers were eager to see if the former dimpled moppet could still outshine the grown-up stars around her.

As it turns out, she couldn’t, in large part because she hadn’t really learned any new acting tricks since her childhood days. While as a child she could sing and dance, what really endeared her to audiences was her charm and charisma, and flashing a dimpled smile at the camera could smooth over any juvenile overacting she might have done. As Temple’s mother memorably told her curly-topped little moneymaker before every take, “sparkle, Shirley- sparkle!” But as an adult, she would have to work harder to win over audiences, and her talent just wasn’t up to the task. All too often, she falls back on her stock child-acting tricks- smiling, pouting, posing for the camera- and opposite ace comedians like Grant and Loy she was way out of her depth.

Not helping matters was the screenplay, written by none other than future best-selling author Sidney Sheldon. The most obvious flaw in the screenplay is Sheldon’s unfortunate tendency to have all of his characters speak in arch, convoluted dialogue. It’s hard enough to believe anyone would say, “these are merely the vestments I don as a concession to our outworn education anachronism,” let alone a seventeen-year-old girl, school newspaper editor or not. But an even bigger issue is that it’s hard to buy the events of the story. The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is no more convoluted than your average screwball comedy, but the best of those films always kept their stories emotionally grounded with their characters. But here, practically every major character is plotting something or other, and once the movie’s happy ending becomes obvious, there’s little else to do but wait for the schemes to play themselves so that Grant and Loy can (SPOILER!) end up together in the end.

But if there’s a bright spot in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, it’s that great movie stars like Grant and Loy could give perfectly fine performances even with second-rate material. Grant is, of course, a treasure, and he takes the kind of role that he could play in his sleep- the ladies’ man- and finds new wrinkles for the character, even while the film does him few favors (who thought those ridiculous “white knight” bits were a good idea?). But for my money, Loy is even better. Loy is essentially the straight man in the story, and she pulls it off by giving her character (Temple’s older sister and guardian) a stern warmth that would have been tricky in the hands of a lesser actress. There’s a reason why both Grant and Loy enjoyed successful movie careers for years to come while Temple had more or less retired by 1950- for grown-up actors, it takes more than cuteness to survive in Hollywood.

Yesterday's Hits: Duel in the Sun (1946, King Vidor)

Paul Clark — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made Duel in the Sun a hit?: David O. Selznick was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood throughout the 1930s, a decade that concluded with his production of Hollywood’s biggest hit of all time, Gone With the Wind. After that film’s runaway success, Selznick could pretty much write his own ticket, and he used his clout to make his dream project, a mega-budgeted adaptation of Niven Busch’s novel Duel in the Sun. Selznick spared no expense- the budget topped out at a then-unprecedented $6 million- to bring this Wild West melodrama to the screen in “Glorious Technicolor”, going through more than half a dozen directors (including Josef von Sternberg) before handing the directorial reins over to Hollywood veteran King Vidor.

In the film’s principal roles, Selznick cast a pair of hot young stars- Gregory Peck, fresh off his breakout role in the Selznick production of Hitchcock’s Spellbound, and Jennifer Jones, a recent Oscar-winner for The Song of Bernadette, who took over the role for the pregnant Teresa Wright. He then backed them with a stellar supporting cast, including Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Huston, Herbert Marshall, and Lillian Gish. But perhaps the biggest factor in the film’s success was its unabashedly lurid story about a “half-breed” woman who was irresistibly drawn to a bad-boy rancher. Combining a horse opera with a soap opera and filling the atmosphere with liberal amounts of (implied) sex, Duel in the Sun stirred up no small amounts of controversy. Yet the hubbub surrounding the film (quickly nicknamed “Lust in the Dust”) ended up helping its box-office performance, and Duel became one of the biggest hits of 1946, bringing in more than $11 million.

What happened?: While Duel in the Sun was a hit with moviegoers, reviews were decidedly mixed, praising the film’s production values while criticizing its script (credited to Selznick himself) and performances. And in spite of the fact that the film eventually made money, Selznick found it increasingly difficult to make films in light of the movie’s runaway budget and extravagant (upwards of $2 million) advertising campaign. Selznick continued to work in Hollywood, but his once-prodigious output slowed considerably in the years after Duel in the Sun. On the positive side, the movie continued Gregory Peck’s steady ascent to leading-man stardom, and three years after the film’s release, Selznick married Jones, a marriage that continued until his death in 1965.

Does Duel in the Sun still work?: Not really. For such a popular genre, melodrama is difficult to pull off on film, especially in a way that ages well. Part of the problem is that melodramas were sometimes the only way to deal with risqué material under the Production Code. But while there was no shortage of controversy surrounding Duel in the Sun, most of the elements of the film that were once controversial edgy- particularly the “half-breed” background of heroine Pearl Chavez (played by Jones) and the “bad girl” urges she feels toward Peck- are dealt with in a hamfisted and uninspired manner.

It doesn’t help that Jones is all wrong for the part. Setting aside the now-politically incorrect use of “brown-face” that was utilized to make the lily-white Jones look the part, she’s simply too prim and polished to be convincing. Jones’ idea of speaking like a half-Mexican, half-Native American woman is to lower her vocal register while droppin’ the occasional “g” from the ends of words. And when even Pearl turns into a lusty, unbridled “bad girl” after falling for Peck’s Lewt McCanlies, Jones’ performance becomes almost laughable, consisting mainly of striking sultry poses and making goo-goo eyes at Peck. Jones never seems comfortable in the role she’s given, and this discomfort comes through in her performance.

Another factor was, to put it bluntly, that there were simply too many cooks. It takes a firm hand on the directorial wheel to pull off a lurid story like this one, but after going through more than half a dozen directors, Vidor was little more than a hired gun, lorded over by Selznick. But rather than allowing the story to dictate the style, Selznick overwhelmed it with production values, in a clear attempt to turn it into Gone With the Wind Goes West. Admittedly, Duel in the Sun is gorgeous, with plenty of sweeping vistas and deep orange sunsets to please the eye. However, the story becomes bogged down by the weight of the production, and many of the more emotional moments get lost in the scenery. The result is a movie that’s tamer and more bloated than any good melodrama should be. Compared to another popular melodrama of the period, John M. Stahl’s still-effective Leave Her to Heaven, Duel in the Sun is little more than an overstuffed curiosity.

That said, the one element of the movie that still works is Gregory Peck’s performance as the strapping Lewt. Later in his career, Peck became associated with playing heroes- not least in his iconic turn in To Kill a Mockingbird- so it’s fascinating to see the traits that made him such a perfect good guy used in service of an unsavory character. It helps that Peck was convincingly tall in the saddle to play a cowboy, all the better to turn the cowboy archetype- morally uncomplicated, decisive, solving problems through action- on its ear. Peck treads a thin line here, giving a performance that’s just dark enough to make the character work in this context, while simultaneously suggesting that Lewt might’ve been the hero under different circumstances. If nothing else, Duel in the Sun showed moviegoers just how commanding a performer Peck could be, even if the movie itself ultimately let him down.

"Green Porno": Isabella Rossellini's Dirty Bug Show

Phil Nugent — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Isabella Rossellini, once thought of as a bit of a muse figure, is turning into the quite the one-woman show. In My Dad Is 100 Years Old, th short film tribute to her father, Roberto Rossellini, that Guy Maddin directed from her own screenplay, she played herself, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, David O. Selznick, and Charlie Chaplin, one or two of which must have constituted a stretch for her. Now she's on the festival circuit, the Sundance Channel, and maybe your cell phone with a series of really short (one-minute) films, collectively known as Green Porno, that she wrote and co-directed with Jody Shapiro, and which star Rossellini as various insects explaining their mating rituals. Rossellini talked about the series with Deborah Solomons, who hit her straight up with the most obvious question about all this: why did she choose to play the male insects? Rossllini: "I am a ham. It makes people laugh when I play the male. So I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite." Solomon: "But aren’t the females more interesting, if only because they rule the bug world?" Rossellini:: "Can I say something? I am sorry. I didn’t want to make a feminist statement by saying the female praying mantis eats the male, so, Watch out, husbands." Solomon:: "Maybe your interest in bugs was spawned by David Lynch, who cast you in your first major film, Blue Velvet, and presented a view of the world in which red ants are teeming beneath every beautiful surface." Rossellini: "Oh, David must have chosen red ants because they are known to bite; they have a painful bite." For some reason, this reminds the reader of the story that Lynch broke up with her over the telephone. Maybe he really is a Martian.

The Rep Report (March 19-25)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:20:00 GMT

NEW YORK: "Thorold Dickinson’s World of Cinema" (March 19-25) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center pays tribute to an important but largely forgotten figure from the early history of the British cinema. The unassuming but movie-mad Dickinson worked his way up from editing jobs and various assignments pitch-hitting behind the camera on various productions before making his official directorial debut with the 1937 thriller The High Command. Dickinson got his chance to go Hollywood after the producer David O. Selznick saw his 1940 melodrama Gaslight; Dickinson turned the offer down, and Selznick showed him that there were no hard feelings by not only remaking Gaslight in slick Hollywood style (with George Cukor directing) but seeing to it that screenings of the original was suppressed in America. Dickinson's other films include the Pushkin adaptation The Queen of Spades, the Disraeli biopic The Prime MInister starring John Gielgud, and Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (1955), his last film but the first ever produced in Israel. He lived almost another thirty years, which he largely devoted to teaching, as Britain's first university professor of film in 1967. "It's terribly difficult to direct a film you don't want to make," he once said, by way of accounting for his early retirement with a total output of nine features. "That's why I've made so few." The retrospective shares its title with a new book of essays and interviews, edited by Philip Horne and Peter Swaab.

LOS ANGELES: The American Cinematheque dips into the long and varied career of George Stevens between March 20 and March 23. The program includes several of the giant '50s chin-pullers (A Place in the Sun, Shane, and, well, Giant) that kept Stevens in Oscar nominations, though its real charmer may be the opening selection, the modest 1933 comedy Alice Adams, with a barn-burner of a performance by the young Katherine Hepburn. On Easter Sunday, celebrate by getting messed up pre-show time and settling in for the umpteen-hour Biblical film The Greatest Story Ever Told, starring a bemused Max Von Sydow as J.C. Yes, that really is John Wayne in a special cameo appearance as the hungover-looking centurian who looks at Max hanging there and mutters, "Truly this man was the son of God" before wandering off somewhere to tap a kidney. Ed Wynn, Robert Blake, and the professor from Gilligan's Island are supposed to be in in too, but it's a very long movie, and their appearances must be timed to coincide with the little naps I always take at strategic intervals to restoreth my soul.