JEZEBEL

Bette Davis in Jezebel

JEZEBEL (1938). Director: William Wyler. Colorized version. 

In pre-Civil War Louisiana, Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) is a spoiled, headstrong gal  who lives on a rambling estate with her Aunt Belle (Fay Bainter of State Fair). Her engagement to banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda of Lillian Russell) has already been called off more than once, but Julie is convinced that Pres will always come back to her. This notion is tested when she blatantly wears a red dress to a ball when unmarried ladies are supposed to wear white. Heading north, Preston eventually comes back South -- with a new wife, Amy (Margaret Lindsay of Emergency Hospital). Getting Pres away from Amy presents a challenge to Julie, but the fact that yellow fever (aka Yellowjack) has broken out and is ravaging the area might be even more than she can deal with ... 

Davis, Bainter, Fonda, Lindsay

Warner Brothers wouldn't let Davis play Scarlet O'Hara so they gave her another fiery Southern belle to play in Jezebel. (Jezebel was released first due to the long shooting schedule for Gone With the Wind). Whether Julie is a strong-willed woman who knows her own mind and to hell with the consequences or a pathetic creature who is hopelessly tied to one man is debatable. The soap opera of the story is bolstered by the horrific events of the plague. Whether helming romantic scenes, emotional conflagrations, or sequences detailing the horrors of Yellowjack, William Wyler is at the top of his game, and his star isn't far behind. Fay Bainter is also excellent, and Fonda is better than usual. George Brent does the best he can to keep up and is adequate, as is Margaret Lindsay, deliberately cast to seem a pale weak wren next to the fiery Davis. 

Fonda with Davis

A problematic aspect of the picture, as it is with GWTW, is the patronizing attitude towards the black characters. They are not merely servants, but slaves, but they sing and dance and smile and make merry as if this were perfectly okay with them. Each one gives an notable performance, including Theresa Harris as Zette and Eddie Anderson as Gros Bat. There's a moving scene, be it intended or not, when Fonda asks butler Uncle Cato (Lew Payton) to have a drink with him, but Cato fears it is "hardly proper" and takes his drink with him to the pantry. (We must remember that Fonda swears he is not an abolitionist.) During the plague sequences, when carts are shown taking sick and dying people to an island leper colony, the camera catches both black and white victims, as if to say, the world may discriminate, but yellow fever doesn't. There is a terrific scene in a bar when Fonda falls ill and everyone in the place pulls back in fear and horror in a sudden backwards sweep.

Davis

Whatever its flaws or dated aspects -- although they are "nice" to their slaves, the white characters are essentially racists -- Jezebel is still a memorable picture that takes place in a very different time period. In addition to the fine direction and some splendid performances, there is a notable score by the great Max Steiner and topnotch cinematography by Ernest Haller. The color adds a new dimension to the film although the infamous red dress is more black than red. 

Verdict: A resplendent Davis in a rich romantic drama. ***1/4. 

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947)

Danny Kaye

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947). Director: Norman Z. McLeod.

Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye) is an editor at a pulp publishing house that puts out magazines of horror and crime. His own life -- living with his unpleasant mother (Fay Bainter) and engaged to an unappreciative fiancee (Ann Rutherford) -- is dull  enough for him to indulge in a variety of fantasies. He imagines himself as a brilliant physician, a famous pilot in the RAF, a riverboat gambler, old west cowboy, and so on. But then he meets a beautiful blond (Virginia Mayo) and his life suddenly gets more exciting -- and dangerous. The blond is named Rosalind, and she gets Mitty involved with deadly spies who are after a book that lists the location of art treasures hidden away from the Nazis. In their attempts to get the book, Mitty almost loses his life on more than one occasion.

Virginia Mayo with Kaye

Walter Mitty holds the attention for the most part, is generally well-acted, and has some clever and amusing moments -- a shot of Whistler's Mother in a bathing suit -- but it just isn't that funny. A routine Kaye does in which he imitates an old music professor goes on forever and hasn't a single laugh. The song numbers by Sylvia Fine, Kaye's wife, are pretty awful. The ever under-rated Virginia Mayo is luminescent, however, and there's some good work from Fritz Feld as a European designer of women's hats. (Kaye later does an imitation of him with some characterizing the caricature as "homosexual," but I doubt if that was the intention.) Thurston Hall is fine as Kaye's boss, who is near-apoplectic at times, and Boris Karloff shows up as a very peculiar psychiatrist.

Boris Karloff with Kaye

Rutherford does a nice job as the fiancee, and Florence Bates is typically on-target and amusing as her somewhat disapproving mother. Bainter [The Children's Hour] makes Mitty's mother a borderline harridan, treating her son like he's a ten-year-old, and she isn't funny enough to make the character palatable; a very good actress but not a skilled comedienne. Gordon Jones of The Green Hornet serial plays a man who has a romantic interest in Rutherford; Konstantin Shayne [The Unknown Man] is a nasty character known as the Boot; and the ever-cadaverous Milton Parsons plays his butler.

Verdict: Kaye running around amiably but not that memorably. **1/2. 

THE KID FROM BROOKLYN

Walter Abel, Steve Cochran, Danny Kaye and Eve Arden

THE KID FROM BROOKLYN (1946). Director: Norman Z. McLeod.

Burleigh Sullivan (Danny Kaye) is a skinny milkman who comes to the rescue when his sister, Susie (Vera-Ellen), is bothered by a masher, the boxer Speed McFarlane (Steve Cochran of The Chase). When Speed, the heavyweight champion, is knocked out with one punch, the press wrongly believe that Burleigh delivered the blow. Speed's manager, Gabby (Walter Abel), decides to capitalize on the situation by hiring Burleigh as a fighter, and paying his opponents to take a dive so he can ultimately cash in when Burleigh has a real match with Speed. Complications occur when Burleigh's success goes to his head, and Speed and Susie fall for each other. Kaye is wonderful in this light-hearted, silly, modestly entertaining musical, and the pic is bolstered with fine supporting performances, not only from those already mentioned but from an absolutely gorgeous Virginia Mayo as Burleigh's recent girlfriend, Polly Pringle, and the inimitable Eve Arden as Gabby's acerbic gal pal, Ann. Clarence Kolb of My Little Margie is the head of the milk company, Lionel Stander is as repulsive as ever as Speed's associate (and the one who actually knocked him out), and Fay Bainter [The Children's Hour] has an amusing scene with Kaye when he teaches her how to box and duck. Some of the characters, such as Polly and Susie, seem to over-react when Kaye's behavior changes after his "success" in the ring, but he's never as bad as they make him out to be, making it seem more like they've got sour grapes. Kaye and Mayo would make more movies together.

Verdict: The players help put across this. **1/2.   

STATE FAIR (1945)

Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain

STATE FAIR (1945). Director: Walter Lang.

The Frake family head for the Iowa state fair with a variety of goals: Father Abel (Charles Winninger) wants his boar, Blueboy, to win a prize; mother Melissa (Fay Bainter) also wants to win a ribbon for her mincemeat; restless daughter Margy (Jeanne Crain) has spring fever and is hoping to meet someone more exciting than her fiance, Harry (Phil Brown of Obsession); and son Wayne (Dick Haymes) just seems to want to have fun. Margy meets a newspaperman named Pat (Dana Andrews), who tells her he'll just disappear if if doesn't work out with her, and Wayne encounters singer Emily (Vivian Blaine), who has a little secret. Frankly, the romantic aspects of the movie are a little lopsided -- who really falls sincerely in love in two days? -- and the siblings blow off their respective beaus with casual, if not heartless, ease, but this is standard stuff for the period and since everything is just a framework for some excellent Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes, it doesn't really matter. "Spring Fever," "That's For Me," "I Owe Iowa" are all fine numbers, but the best songs are Haymes [Irish Eyes are Smiling] and Blaine's zesty delivery of "Isn't It Kind of Fun?" and the movie's best song, the beautiful "It's a Grand Night for Singing," a classic Rodgers melody. State Fair was not based on a Broadway show but on the first State Fair film, a non-musical starring Will Rogers made in 1933, although Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the screenplay for this remake (just as he did the librettos for their stage musicals). The acting in this is uniformly excellent, with Donald Meek nearly stealing the picture as a judge who gets drunk on Melissa's brandy-soaked mincemeat. Percy Kilbride scores as the Frakes' pessimistic neighbor, as do Jane Nigh, Harry Morgan, and William Marshall [The Phantom Planet] in smaller roles. Remade in 1962; both versions are in color.

Verdict: As stories go, this is not exactly The King and I, but the performances are good and the songs are all lilting and memorable. ***.

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR

Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (1961). Producer/director: William Wyler. Note: some plot points are revealed in this review.

William Wyler had already directed These Three, a sanitized film version of Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour, when he decided it was time to tackle the play and its sub-theme head on. Karen Wright (Audrey Hepburn) and Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine) co-own a young girls' boarding school in a small but wealthy community. Karen has held off her marriage to Joe Cardin (James Garner of They Only Kill Their Masters) because she wants to make sure the school is a success before she leaves. With the unwitting aid of Karen's miserable Aunt Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a hateful child named Mary (Karen Balkin) tells a malicious lie about the two women. Her grandmother, Amelia Tilford (Fay Bainter), believes the lie and spreads it around that Karen and Martha are lovers, with the result that all of the parents take their daughters out of school. Does Martha have deeper feelings for Karen than she wants to admit? Hellman's play was certainly ahead of its time, and some of the dialogue that may have seemed "politically correct" in the sixties was actually already in the play, produced about thirty years earlier. Martha goes on about people "who believe in it, who want it, who've chosen it for themselves," but this is something she just can't do. (Of course today it's more accurate to say gay people choose to accept themselves.) The dated, but not unrealistic for the period, line is Martha saying "I feel so sick and dirty I just can't stand it anymore," which is roughly equivalent to "Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse" from The Boys in the Band. However, I've never felt Children's Hour was as offensive as Boys, because the latter is a mostly negative depiction of acknowledged gay characters while the former not only looks at the devastating results of gossip and innuendo but functions, whether intended or not, as a trenchant study of both external and internalized homophobia. These women's lives are ruined simply because people think they're lesbians, a revelation which Martha only acknowledges at the very end. The suicide in the film may strike modern-viewers as horribly dated but it's also quite moving, as is the conflicted character of Martha. John Michael Hayes' [Rear Window] script is excellent, William Wyler's direction is sensitive and splendid, and the acting from virtually the entire cast is simply incredible. Hepburn and MacLaine are perfection, Bainter and Hopkins come close to stealing the show, James Garner (whom I've never much cared for) gives probably the best performance of his career, and the little girls, including Veronica Cartwright as Rosalie, are so good it's almost scary. Add a lovely score by Alex North, fine cinematography by Franz Planer (who also shot Wyler's The Big Country), and expert editing from Robert Swink and you've got a near-masterpiece.

Verdict: Whatever its flaws, this picture plays. ***1/2.

PRESENTING LILY MARS

PRESENTING LILY MARS (1943). Director: Norman Taurog.

"Peter Pan! Macbeth! The Follies!"

Lily Mars (Judy Garland) is a talented singer, but for some reason she decides to audition for Broadway producer John Thornway (Van Heflin) -- who comes from the same small town and whose father delivered her -- by doing a scene from Shakespeare, in which she stinks. Lily follows Thornway to New York, where he's staging a new show starring Isobel Rekay (Marta or Martha Eggerth). Is Lily a desperate and naive amateur or a coldly calculating, rather pushy worldling who knows full well what she's doing? In this simplistic movie in which the key to Broadway stardom is to become an annoying pest and vamp the producer, we're supposed to believe the former, but I'm not so sure. In any case, things don't work out so smoothly for Lily until the Hollywood happy ending. Presenting Lily Mars was originally a novel by that fine American writer Booth Tarkington, whose books Alice Adams and The Magnificent Ambersons, among others, were turned into pretty good movies. While I've read the first two excellent novels, I've not read Presenting Lily Mars, but it had to be better than this treacle, which is simply a standard Judy Garland Movie when it could have been a whole lot more. That being said, Lily Mars is by no means a bad movie, with Garland in her reasonably effective cutesy mode between child and adult, and Van Heflin, as good as ever, managing to play quite well with her.

The movie has many charming elements. The brother (Douglas Croft of the Batman serial) who steals and collects doorbells. The younger sisters who sob along with Judy/Lily whenever she's upset [they are a cute bunch]. In an early development Judy does a scene outside Thornway's home which causes some of his associates to think he knocked her up and abandoned her, and there's the eyebrow-raising scene when Thornway has playwright Owen Vail (Richard Carlson) stand in for Isobel in a love scene. When Owen keeps it up after the scene is over Thornway tells him to stop kidding around. "Who's kidding?" says Owen, in a scene meant as a joke but which probably caused some fluttering among nervous censors. [Lily watches all this wide-eyed and confused.] Connie Gilchrist [A Woman's Face] makes her mark as an ex-actress who does a number with Judy, who also nails "Tom the Piper" and "When I Look at You." My favorite scene has Isobel giving her black maid, Rosa (Lillian Yarbo of Between Us Girls), a hat that she no longer wants because Lily wears a copy of it. When Isobel sees the maid wearing it, she commands her to throw it out. Later both of them see a chimp wearing the hat, which infuriates Isobel even as the maid, having the last laugh, smiles behind her back.

Spring Byington is wonderful as Lily's mother, as is Ray McDonald as her boyfriend, whom she discards early on. Fay Bainter is also notable if a bit wasted as Thornway's mom. Bob Crosby and Tommy Dorsey also make appearances. Despite a fairly nice if unspectacular voice, Eggerth doesn't make much of an impression, which may be why she was hired -- this, after all, is a Judy Garland Movie and nobody better get more attention than her.

Verdict: Silly but enthusiastic twaddle with a dignified Heflin and energetic Garland. **1/2.

DARK WATERS

Merle Oberon

DARK WATERS (1944). Director: Andre De Toth.

Leslie Calvin (Merle Oberon of These Three) is the only survivor of the shelling of a ship, and spent many miserable days in a life boat. With no family left, she goes to live with her Aunt Emily (Fay Bainter) and Uncle Norbert (John Qualen of Girls Dormitory), who live on an old sugar plantation near the bayou, and whom she has never met. Leslie is befriended by Dr. Grover (Franchot Tone), the maid Florella (Nina Mae McKinney), and another fired servant, Pearson (Rex Ingram), who has been warned to stay away from the estate. Among her relatives' associates are their lawyer, Mr. Sydney (Thomas Mitchell), and handyman Cleeve (Elisha Cook, Jr.). It isn't long before Leslie, now a wealthy heiress, suspects that there's something not quite right going on in the bayou, and that it embroils her aunt and uncle and perhaps others. Dark Waters is a modest, obvious and predictable suspense item with some good performances from Tone and Bainter, and especially Ingram [Fired Wife], Mitchell and Cook. Oberon has a strong scene in the hospital at the beginning, but her performance is uneven. It's all swathed in a nice score by Miklos Rozsa.

Verdict: Watchable but not much else. **1/2.