"BABY JANE" REVISITED

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962). Director: Robert Aldrich.

"I hope you can be kinder to Jane and your father then they are to you."

Former child star Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis, pictured) shares a mansion in Hollywood with her crippled sister, Blanche (Joan Crawford), who was a big movie star in her day. When they begin showing her old movies on television, Jane gets the idea of reviving her own act -- but first she has to keep Blanche from selling the house out from under her, leading to grim events and tragedy.

Joan Crawford and Maidie Norman

While the subject matter with its mental illness and physical abuse is distasteful, Baby Jane is still a mesmerizing film, adroitly directed by Aldrich, well-made, and well-acted by the entire cast. Davis is simply superb as Jane (especially good when she collapses into horrified tears in front of her mirror); Crawford is solid but has the less flamboyant role. Victor Buono and Marjorie Bennett are great as Edwin Flagg and his mother. Maidie Norman and Anna Lee are also fine as, respectively, the Hudson's maid, Elvira, and pleasant neighbor, Mrs. Bates. (Davis' witchy religious nut daughter, B.D. Hyman, is barely acceptable as Lee's teen aged daughter; she had no subsequent career as an actress.) Ernest Anderson, who had an important role in In This Our Life, has a brief scene with Davis near the end of the film when he plays a food vendor at the beach. Baby Jane? is beautifully photographed by Ernest Haller. Write-ups of this film always refer to the "decaying" mansion the Hudson sisters live in, but it doesn't seem to be "decaying" -- like Jane's mind -- at all.

2020 UPDATE: Aldrich could have built up more suspense in certain sequences. Crawford doesn't quite pull out all the stops in her final scene, but then we have to remember she's supposed to be at death's door. A bank teller is played by Maxine Cooper of Kiss Me Deadly. Remade as a TV movie with the Redgrave sisters in 1990.

Verdict: Grotesque -- but it works. ***1/2.

ANNA LEE MEMOIR

ANNA LEE: MEMOIR OF A CAREER ON GENERAL HOSPITAL AND ON FILM, Anna Lee with Barbara Roisman Cooper. McFarland; 2007.

Although in her later years Anna Lee was best known for her work as the matriarch on the soap opera General Hospital, she had a long career in movies and on television. After the soap, many people recall her as the neighbor of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? But she also appeared in dozens of films, being the leading lady in many early productions, including Bitter Sweet, The Man Who Changed His Mind with Boris Karloff, King Solomon's Mines and others. As a supporting actress Lee had notable turns in several John Ford films (she was one of his favorites), including How Green Was My Valley and The Last Hurrah, as well as roles in such films as Summer Storm (with George Sanders, whom she disliked), the spy flick In Like Flint, and Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono. 

Lee writes in a flavorful style of her childhood in England, her early days in British pictures, her three marriages (to director Robert Stevenson; a sexy American captain she met during WW 2 while entertaining the troops; and the author Robert Nathan, when they were both in their dotage), and can be forgiven for frequent name-dropping as she met and/or knew such folk as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, screenwriter Charles Bennett, the ultra-ambitious Merle Oberon, the hateful Fritz Lang, General George S. Patton, and Alfred Hitchcock, who gave her away at her second wedding! In her final years, Lee was confined to a wheelchair but still managed to make it to each taping of General Hospital that required her appearance. She died in 2004.

Verdict: Despite Lee not being a major star, hers is a very interesting story. ***. 

THE LAST HURRAH

Spencer Tracy

THE LAST HURRAH (1958). Director: John Ford.

Mayor Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) runs for one last term, and is up against a younger family man (Charles B. Fitzsimons) who seems the pawn of more experienced politicians. Frank's son, Junior (Arthur Walsh), is a fifties-type jazz baby who has little interest in politics or much else. Frank is closer to his nephew, Adam (Jeffrey Hunter), whose boss at a newspaper, Amos Force (John Carradine), and father-in-law Roger Sugure (Willis Bouchey), both detest Frank. Frank is an old-fashioned Irish-American politician who has survived decades due to his old cronies who love him, but it's a new world out there and Frank may get a surprise on election night ... The Last Hurrah could be picked apart on certain levels -- the characterization is quite superficial at times --  but it works because of its acting and Ford's smooth, professional direction. Tracy is excellent, and he gets fine support from Hunter, Walsh, Carradine, and especially Basil Rathbone in a scene-stealing turn as a banker who comes afoul of Frank and vice versa. (The whole sequence with Rathbone's lisping, clearly mentally-deficient son, who is cruelly used to blackmail Rathbone, is in questionable taste, to say the least.) Other cast stand-outs include Ricardo Cortez as Sam, the campaign manager; Donald Crisp as the cardinal; Basil Ruysdael as Bishop Gardner; and Jane Darwell as Delia Boylan, whose chief occupation seems to be to go to funerals and cackle. Edward Brophy [Romance on the Run] is also notable as "Ditto," Frank's old pal, a rather sad figure (whom we learn little about) who's given the last appearance in the picture. Anna Lee [Summer Storm] scores as Gert, a widow, in one of the film's most interesting sequences. Gert keeps repeating "he was a good man, Frank, a good man," when it's clear that her husband didn't even bother to see how she would get along after his death and left no insurance. Bob Sweeney is fine as a funeral director, as are Ken Curtis [Don Daredevil Rides Again] as Monsignor Killian, Dianne Foster as Adam's conflicted wife, and Frank Albertson as the opponent's manager, Jack Mangan. O. Z. Whitehead is quite good in the thankless role of Rathbone's son, Norman Jr. Harry Lauter, Edmund Lowe, Tom Neal; William Hudson all have smaller, generally non-speaking roles. Spencer Tracy was only 58 when  he did this picture, but looks years older, and his character was actually 72 in Edward O'Connor's source novel. Sure, make up could have been used to make Tracy look older, but I think years of heavy drinking had taken their toll.

Verdict: An excellent lead performance and a smooth production make this worthwhile. ***.

IN LIKE FLINT

James Coburn, Thomas Hasson, Lee J. Cobb

IN LIKE FLINT (1967). Director: Gordon Douglas.

"By this time tomorrow, women will be ruling the world."

"Brain and hair-washing at the same time!"

"An actor as President?"

In this sequel to Our Man Flint, super-adventurer Derek Flint (James Coburn) is contacted by Lloyd Cramden (Lee J. Cobb) of Z.O.W.I. E. when he realizes that he was blanked out for three minutes during a golf game with President Trent (Andrew Duggan). During that time Trent was replaced by a double, a plot engineered by a group of women who plan to sabotage missiles -- Project Damocles -- to gain their ends. The main representative of this women's group is Lisa Norton (Jean Hale), who runs a cosmetic outfit called Fabulous Face that has its headquarters in the Virgin Islands, adjacent to the missile base. Unfortunately for the ladies, General Carter (Steve Ihnat), is only pretending to be an ally and turns on them, forcing the women to engage in Operation Smooch ... In Like Flint is sillier than the worst episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., slow-paced, unfunny for the most part, and with a climax that seems to go on for four hours. Coburn isn't bad in the part, although both Duggan and Cobb make more of an impression. Anna Lee is fine as Elisabeth, one of the older women in the group, but Jean Hale, while very pretty, isn't much of an actress. Searching for two missing lady cosmonauts, Flint winds up in Moscow, where he gets a standing ovation after dancing in a ballet! Yvonne Craig of Batman fame plays a Russian gal who offers Flint a doped cigarette. That same year saw the release of The Thousand Eyes of Sumuru, which was also about a group of women plotters and which was even worse than In Like Flint. The ladies in Flint never seem very menacing, probably due to typical sixties sexism.

Verdict: This could have killed the parody spy genre altogether. **.

SUMMER STORM

George Sanders and Linda Darnell

SUMMER STORM (1944). Director: Douglas Sirk.

Based on Anton Chekhov's novel "The Shooting Party" this features George Sanders as a Russian judge and Linda Darnell as a Russian peasant! Despite this miscasting, the two actors play well together in the story of Fedor Petroff (Sanders), who neglects his fiancee, Nadena (Anna Lee), after he meets the beautiful Olga (Darnell), whom he knows is "beneath" him but whom he must possess come hell or highwater. An added complication is Olga's unhappy marriage to Anton (Hugo Haas), whose tragedy this chiefly becomes. Darnell is fine, and Sanders offers his usual good performance, but this is an actor whose forte is coolness, not passion, so he never really gets across his passionate feelings for Olga nor anything else. Haas, who also directed such "B" movies as One Girl's Confession, arguably offers the best performance as the likable but tormented Anton. Edward Everett Horton [Lady on a Train] is as good and as much fun as ever, although he, too, seems highly miscast as a womanizing nobleman of ill repute. Anna Lee [The Crimson Kimono] and Laurie Lane as the maid Clara both make a good impression. The whole sordid business comes to a very satisfactory conclusion, although the ultimate fate of one unhappy character is never disclosed.

Verdict: Intriguing romantic drama with interesting cast. ***.

THE CRIMSON KIMONO

THE CRIMSON KIMONO (1959). Written and directed by Samuel Fuller.

When a stripper is shot to death in her dressing room, two police detectives -- one Caucasian, one Japanese-American -- who are partners, friends and war buddies are assigned to the case. The real trouble begins when both of the men fall in love with the same woman, an artist named Christine (Victoria Shaw). The film doesn't shy away from the subject of racism, but once it brings it up it dismisses it without examining its reality. Glenn Corbett isn't bad as Detective Charlie Bancroft but James Shigeta makes more of a dramatic impression as his partner, Joe. Samuel Fuller's script has some interesting elements, but is decidedly half-baked. Shaw gives a nice performance and she and Shigeta have a lovely romantic scene together. Anna Lee adds some spice as an tibbling artist-friend of Charlie's.

Verdict: Good idea, so-so execution. **.