MARLOWE (1969)

Sharon Farrell and James Garner

MARLOWE (1969). Director: Paul Bogart. 

Philip Marlowe (James Garner of The Children's Hour) is hired by mousy Orfamay Quest (Sharon Farrell of It's Alive) to find her brother, but during his search the P.I. uncovers a blackmail plot involving squeaky queen sitcom star Mavis Wald (Gayle Hunnicutt of Dallas), who is having an affair with a racketeer named Steelgrave (H. M. Wynant). Little does he know that both cases are connected. Marlowe stumbles over a couple of corpses of men who have been killed with an icepick, and does his best to get along with Lt. French (Carroll O'Connor) and Sgt. Beifus (Kenneth Tobey). Two other characters Marlowe has to deal with are sexy stripper Delores Gonzales (Rita Moreno) and the karate-chopping enforcer Winslow Wong (Bruce Lee). 

Garner with Hunnicutt

Marlowe is an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1940's novel "The Little Sister," and this film almost manages to make a little more sense of its convoluted plot, but not quite. The movie updates the story to the sixties when it was filmed, so one has to look at Garner -- who is not bad -- as an alternate modern version of Philip Marlowe, but hardly the real deal. The best performances in this are actually from a truly excellent Sharon Farrell, O'Connor (who gets one speech taken from the novel), Tobey, and Moreno, who does a very sexy dance late in the proceedings. William Daniels and Jackie Coogan also have good roles and run with them. Hunnicutt is adequate in a smaller and less showy role than Garner or Farrell, although she gets billed after Garner. She and Farrell have a brief "cat fight."

Paging Rockford

Bruce Lee features in two sequences. The first is a funny one in which Lee breaks up Marlowe's office, upsetting the apparently straight hairdresser, Chuck (Christopher Cary), who is friendly with Marlowe, takes his messages, and teaches his trade to women in the office next door. The second is a really stupid sequence in which Lee -- discombobulated after Marlowe suggests he's gay -- hurls himself at his opponent and goes right over a railing several stories high. (As others have noted, any fight between Lee and Garner would actually not have ended well for Garner.)

Garner never appeared again as Marlowe, but he fled to television and starred as a private eye in The Rockford Files for several years beginning in 1974. 

Verdict: This is a modestly entertaining, somewhat confusing private eye flick made twenty years too late. **1/2. 

THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS

THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS (1972). Director: James Goldstone. 

Chief of Police Marsh (James Garner) investigates when a woman is found dead and it is at first assumed that she was the victim of a Doberman Pinscher. But it turns out that she was murdered by a much more human adversary. Her husband (Peter Lawford) says she told him she was going to leave him for another woman. Interestingly enough, she was also pregnant at the time of her death. Suspects include a vet (Hal Holbrook), his assistant (Katherine Ross), who becomes involved with Marsh, and the vet's wife (June Allyson, who is quite good in a brief sequence). Edmond O'Brien plays the owner of a liquor store, and Tom Ewell and Ann Rutherford have supporting roles as well; Harry Guardino is another cop. This is typical of slick TV-like movies released theatrically in the seventies that try to be "hip" by adding homoerotic elements, but Lane Slate's script is pretty dated when it comes to the subject of homo and bisexuality and swinging. Garner is Garner; Ross is pretty. The best scene has the Doberman going a little nutty when Garner and Ross are in bed. 

Verdict: If you're a swinger you gotta die. **.

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.

THE GARNER FILES A MEMOIR James Garner

THE GARNER FILES A Memoir. James Garner with Jon Winokur. Simon and Schuster; 2011.

I confess I was never a fan of Garner's,whose "Last Real Man" image seemed manufactured and was the kind of "star" who exudes [the same] personality instead of indulging in real acting. [Garner dismisses actors who see themselves as artists, although the genuinely talented ones are artists.] Most of Garner's fame is due to TV shows like Maverick and The Rockford Files, neither of which especially appealed to me [although he has appeared in a surprising number of movies, unfortunately many of the quality of They Only Kill Their Masters, among some more decent flicks]. Despite that, there's some value in this autobiography -- although it's primarily geared to his fans, most of whom Garner implies are a little nuts -- due to Garner's lack of fear in being frank. He won't make a lot of friends in Hollywood with this book, and undoubtedly couldn't care less. [Don't invite Garner to the same party with Barbra Streisand and many others -- he names names. For someone who's never exactly been considered an Olivier, his implying that some colleagues are bad actors is bizarre!] I admire him for admitting that to him people who jam their religion down your nostrils are a pain, as well as for marching on Washington for civil rights when it was a real danger to do so, but think less of him for punching out a drunken, obnoxious fan when he could just as easily have walked away. He always says what he thinks of his fellow players -- aside from Robert Preston, whose role he wanted to play in Victor/Victoria. [Garner claims that some idiot talked him out of it because no one would "accept him as gay" -- and his wife seems to find it amusing [!] that he used to imitate (presumably stereotypical) gay men when they first met -- but considering that both of them apparently buy into stereotypes and think all gay men are effeminate, it's just as well Garner didn't take Preston's role. If I recall, Preston may not have played it super-butch, but he did have a quiet dignity.] Unless you're a golf or racing fan you'll probably want to skip the chapters on those subjects as they're rather tedious. The sections on the shady business practices of the studios make for more interesting reading, although by now everyone knows of Hollywood's double-bookkeeping.

Verdict: Strictly for Garner's fans. **1/2.

TWILIGHT (1998)

TWILIGHT (1998). Director: Robert Benton.

Private eye Harry Ross (Paul Newman) lives with his old friend Jack Ames (Gene Hackman) and Ames' wife Catherine (Susan Sarandon). Ames asks Harry to deliver a package to a man who turns up dead. Before long Harry is embroiled in a decades-old murder case that centers on the disappearance of Catherine's first husband. Others embroiled in the business include Harry's old buddy Raymond (James Garner) and his old gal pal Verna Hollander (Stockard Channing), a police lieutenant. Twilight is basically just a reworking of one of those old Ross Macdonald Lew Archer novels (two of which were filmed with Newman playing "Lew Harper") but it holds the attention, and is well-directed and well-acted by all . Newman even gets a bedroom scene with Sarandon.

Verdict: Pleasant time passer if you don't expect too much. ***.