THE SECRET FURY

Claudette Colbert and Robert Ryan

THE SECRET FURY (1950). Director: Mel Ferrer. Colorized version.

Ellen Ewing (no relation to J. R. Ewing) is about to marry architect David McLean (Robert Ryan), when a strange man (Willard Parker) interrupts the ceremony and insists that he was present when Ellen married another man -- she is about to commit bigamy! Ellen insists that she never heard of her "husband," Lucian Randall (Dave Barbour). Although Ellen's Aunt Clara (Jane Cowl) seems to fear that her niece might have had a nervous breakdown, David has a more supportive attitude and sets off with his fiancee to find Randall and get to the bottom of this mystery. The couple get more than they bargained for when a murder is committed and Ellen is accused. Is she the victim of a far-reaching conspiracy, or is Ellen truly unhinged? 

Robert Ryan questions Vivian Vance

Although there are some holes in the plot -- the whole logistics of the murder, for instance -- The Secret Fury proceeds at a fairly swift pace and maintains suspense for its entire length. You'll find yourself being suspicious of virtually everyone in the picture. The acting can't be faulted. Although Ryan has the less showy role of the two stars, he never reveals too much nor too little about David. Colbert is excellent, particularly in a courtroom sequence when she has a positive meltdown (and gives Doris Day of Midnight Lace a run for her money!) Paul Kelly is wonderful as a former flame of Ellen's, although it is highly unlikely that he would be the prosecutor on the case. Philip Ober is given one of his all-time best roles as Ellen's defense attorney and friend, and his then-wife Vivian Vance makes an impression as a maid who swears that she met Ellen and her husband, the aforementioned Randall, before. (The following year Vance wound up as Ethel on I Love Lucy.) Jane Cowl is also excellent as the aunt who hardly seems like she's that much on her niece's side. Percy Helton, Paul Picerni and Elisabeth Risdon also make an impression in smaller roles. This is one of ten or so films directed by actor Mel Ferrer; his work on this is efficient enough if hardly Hitchcock level. Jose Ferrer (no relation to Mel) has a small role in the film as a wedding guest. 

Verdict: Very suspenseful thriller with some excellent performances. ***. 

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

Harry Belafonte

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1959). Director: Ranald MacDougall.

Ralph Burton (Harry Belafonte of Odds Against Tomorrow) is an engineer working underground when he is trapped for several days. When no one comes to rescue him he manages to make his way to the surface, and discovers that everyone has vanished. Newspapers report that millions fled the cities because of a radioactive dust that flooded the world after an apparent nuclear holocaust. Ralph makes his way to a deserted Manhattan where he moves into a luxurious apartment building, turns on a generator so he can have electricity, and sends out radio messages in the hopes of finding someone else alive. Then he meets Sarah (Inger Stevens), who was in a decompression chamber. As the two grow closer she claims that the difference in their races doesn't matter to her, but Ralph isn't sure he can believe her. Then new arrival, Benson (Mel Ferrer of Born to Be Bad), comes to town, and a melodramatic triangle situation develops.

Inger Stevens and Mel Ferrer

As contemporary critics noted, the first third of World, with Ralph discovering (more or less) what has happened and exploring his vacant surroundings, is the best part of the movie and suggests that something powerful might be in the offing. But unfortunately, the movie begins to fall apart with the arrival of Sarah, and pretty much collapses altogether with the introduction of Benson. Benson claims he has no problem with "negroes," but he's just a civilized racist, and his actions are ludicrous, occurring only because the filmmakers needed some suspect "drama." Although Belafonte -- who is top-billed -- and Stevens give good performances, neither they, Ferrer, or the film itself ever quite gets across the depth of their emotions as it pertains to this apocalyptic scenario -- there are times it's hard to believe this story is happening post WW3. Ferrer's performance is unbelievably poor and perfunctory -- when he talks about his missing wife and child he might as well be discussing a trip to the supermarket!

Abandoned cars on bridge -- where did all the people go?

Because World turns into a schlocky B Movie when it could have been so much more, the bored audience has time to ponder a variety of things that the script never addresses. How come there is not a single corpse anywhere? Did anyone besides Benson make it out of the cities? Why no mention whatsoever of radiation sickness?  What about people in nursing homes and hospitals? And so on. Why introduce a potential end-of-the-world scenario and then virtually ignore it completely? Even a Grade Z item wouldn't make that mistake, and this is an expensive MGM CinemaScope production (albeit in black and white).

Menage a trois? Belafonte, Ferrer, Stevens

There are some good things about the movie, however. Belafonte's character is a positive and sympathetic African-American, the hero -- not just the protagonist -- of a film made late in the fifties, which alone makes it of note. Harold J. Marzorati's cinematography is striking. Miklos Rozsa wrote the score for the film but there isn't enough of it. The title of the film is completely appropriate if pretentious. This being the fifties, Belafonte and Stevens aren't allowed to touch, let alone sleep together, and while the two should have kicked Ferrer out of New York altogether, in that time period the film couldn't end with an interracial couple going off together. However, the finale, which is meant to show hope for racial unity, instead unintentionally suggests something even more controversial: a menage-a-trois!

On the Beach was released the same year, and Five, which also included racial tensions in its storyline, came out eight years earlier. Ranald MacDougall also wrote and directed Queen Bee with Joan Crawford.

Verdict: A major missed opportunity but not without points of interest. **1/2. 

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL

Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL (1964). Director: Richard Quine.

Bob Weston (Tony Curtis), who writes for a sleazy expose mag called Stop, has just come out with a story on psychologist Helen Brown (Natalie Wood). Dr. Brown wrote a bestseller entitled "Sex and the Single Girl," but the article claims she is a virgin with limited experience. Weston wants to dig up more dirt on Brown, so he poses as his next door neighbor, hosiery salesman Frank (Henry Fonda), whose wife, Sylvia (Lauren Bacall), is almost pathologically jealous, and pretends to be Helen's patient. When Bob and Helen start falling in love, it causes complications for everyone.

Lauren Bacall

When someone got the bright idea of turning Helen Gurley Brown's bestseller into a movie, they should have tried for something more sophisticated than this dumb "sex comedy" that has hardly any laughs. Even the basic premise of a man getting close to a woman who hates him by pretending to be someone else is nothing new. A sequence when not only Bacall but two other women show up at Brown's office claiming to be Sylvia should at least have been fun, but it's as clunky as everything else in the movie. The picture develops a slight degree of momentum toward the end, but it all winds up in a race to the airport with everyone chasing everybody else in their cars or taxis -- a bit with Bacall and a cab driver is kind of muffed -- and an attempt to emulate the kind of zaniness you used to find in Frank Tashlin movies never really comes off. The whole sequence goes on too long in any case.

Tony Curtis

Sex and the Single Girl might have worked if Carol Burnett had played Brown instead of Natalie Wood. She and Curtis give it the old college try, but they can do little to make any of the lines -- some of which are actually funny -- come alive. Henry Fonda is out of his element and even Bacall is mostly mediocre. Others in the cast include Mel Ferrer as a psychiatrist who is interested in Helen, Fran Jeffries as an amorous friend of Bob's, and Leslie Parrish as Bob's secretary. Two veterans who add a bit to the limited fun are Edward Everett Horton as Bob's boss and Otto Kruger as one of Helen's associates, and Larry Storch shows up as a motorcycle cop driven crazy by all the goings-on. There's an inside joke about Some Like It Hot but the references to Jack Lemmon are repeated once too often. The pic tries to come up with some interesting backdrops -- a dock where Bob threatens suicide, the ape cages in the zoo -- but ultimately the movie is just deadly. Fran Jeffries, who sings and dances in the movie, had previously been married to Dick Haymes, and then married Richard Quine, the film's director, the year after this was released. The marriage only lasted four years.

Verdict: And it's nearly two hours long as well! *1/2. 

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1964). Director: Anthony Mann.

A dying Marcus Aurelius (Alec Guinness), great Caesar of the Roman empire, must make a choice of who will replace him, and chooses not his son, Commodus (Christopher Plummer), but Commodus' friend, the leader of the Roman army, Livius (Stephen Boyd). Obviously this does not sit well with Commodus, and before you can say "Ben-Hur" -- this film's obvious model -- the two men are caught in a lifelong love-hate rivalry. The emperor's daughter, Lucilla (Sophia Loren), who is in love with Livius and vice versa, is also not happy that she is forced to marry another man, Sohamus (an unrecognizable Omar Sharif). Livius hopes to unite the barbarians who are ill-treated by Rome and periodically try to seize the city, while an uncaring Commodus -- who becomes emperor only due to his father's untimely death -- basically wants to turn everyone in the outlying areas into slaves. Whatever historical accuracy this movie does or does not possess, it is well-made and quite entertaining even if nearly three hours long (with an intermission). It lacks the great story of Ben-Hur, but Mann's direction is good, the pace never flags, and the performances are mostly expert, with Guinness, Boyd, and especially Plummer [Dracula 2000] at the top of their game. Loren is also fine, and there is notable work from James Mason (especially during a harrowing torture scene, although, oddly, he seems to recover from the ordeal much too quickly), Anthony Quayle, Mel Ferrer [Born to be Bad] , and others. Naturally there's a fairly well-done battle between the two major antagonists on the expected chariots, and the climactic duel between the two men in an arena is the film's highlight. There is some stunning scenic design, an excellent score by Dimitri Tiomkin, and some striking widescreen photography by Robert Krasker.

Verdict: Essentially a Roman soap opera, but quite entertaining on that level. ***.

ENCHANTMENT: THE LIFE OF AUDREY HEPBURN Donald Spoto

ENCHANTMENT: THE LIFE OF AUDREY HEPBURN. Donald Spoto. Harmony; 2006.

Spoto doesn't spend too much time detailing the terrible childhood and awful privations Belgium-born Hepburn suffered during the Nazi occupation of Arnhem before we're off exploring her rapid rise to stardom and her many memorable film roles. Originally trained to be a dancer, Hepburn's deportment and good looks earned her the title role in the play Gigi and many accolades from the critics of the day, although Hepburn thought she was still learning how to act throughout the lengthy run. [Whether or not she was disappointed that the role of Gigi went to Leslie Caron in the big-screen musical adaptation, Spoto doesn't say.] She had already had a good role in the British film Secret People, but now found herself working with such famed directors as William Wyler and Billy Wilder and such actors as William Holden, with whom she had a brief affair, and Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire, who were not always easy to work with. She was most often paired with much, much older men, such as Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck, and later, Cary Grant in Charade. She won an Oscar, had what she considered her greatest role in The Nun's Story [befriending the real-life nun and the book's author, who apparently were a long-time lesbian couple], and "stole" the role of Eliza Doolittle from Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady where she spent hours on singing lessons only to learn Marni Nixon had already dubbed all of her songs. Although Hepburn wasn't much different from other actresses in that she had affairs even while married to actor Mel Ferrer [who directed her in Green Mansions and appeared in such films as Born to Be Bad and Eaten Alive, not to mention a solid role on Falcon Crest], Spoto treads lightly, as if not wanting to spoil her image; he's very tough on Ferrer, however. Hepburn left films to become a full-time wife and mother, made a few movies of varying quality some years later [Robin and Marian; Bloodline], then had perhaps her most fulfilling role as a hands-on goodwill ambassador for Unicef, flying on military planes to such desperately hungry nations as Ethiopia and witnessing the starvation and its effects first-hand. She had two disappointing marriages, but found some happiness with companion Robert Wolders in her final years before succumbing to cancer. Enchantment is a good read, fast-paced, well-researched, and makes it clear that movie stardom is not always a recipe for lasting happiness.

Verdict: Solid and very readable biography. ***.

GREEN MANSIONS

GREEN MANSIONS (1959). Director: Mel Ferrer.

Abel (Anthony Perkins) comes to South American looking for treasure, and learns that a certain forbidden area in the jungle is home to a mysterious bird-girl, Rima (Audrey Hepburn), whom the natives see as a kind of witch and wish to destroy. Abel finds the real woman behind the legend and the two fall in love to face danger and tragedy together. This adaptation of the novel by William Henry Hudson has always had the reputation of being a stinker [by people who have never seen it] primarily due to the miscasting of the leads. Sensitive Tony Perkins as a fortune-hunting adventurer? Sophisticated Audrey Hepburn as a South American native girl? The casting is slightly ridiculous, but both actors manage to rise above it and give not only decent but effective performances, as do Lee J. Cobb (the old man who raised Rima), Nehemiah Persoff, Sessue Hayakawa (king of the natives), and especially Henry Silva, in perhaps his most memorable role, as the rather malevolent Kua-Ko. Joseph Ruttenberg's cinematography is stunning, as is the art direction by E. Preston Ames and William Horning. [Although the credits boast that this was filmed in South America, most of the sequences were shot on colorfully dressed sound stages.] Bronislau Kaper did the score, with some additional music from Heitor Villa-Lobos. Perkins sings "Green Grow the Mansions" not too badly. One particularly memorable scene details the natives' trial-by-insect! Director Mel Ferrer, better known as an actor, was married to Hepburn at the time of filming, and crafted a creditable showcase for his lovely wife.

Verdict: Incurable romantics will probably love the movie; others approach with caution. ***1/2.

FALCON CREST SEASON 1

FALCON CREST CBS Television series 1981 - 1990. Created by Earl Hamner Jr. NOTE: Out of several writers, Hamner wrote the most episodes.

The complete first season of Falcon Crest is available on DVD, and the show is quite entertaining. Airline pilot Chase Gioberti (Robert Foxworth) learns that his father, Jason, has passed away in an accident, and flies to California with his wife, Maggie (Susan Sullivan), to attend the funeral. There he learns that he has inherited a small 50 acre portion of the huge Falcon Crest vineyard, 500 acres of which belong to his aunt Angela Channing (Jane Wyman). Chase doesn't realize that his father didn't really die in a drunk driving accident, and that Angela has covered up the facts of his death because she would have to turn over far more of Falcon Crest to her nephew. Chase regrets that he never got to know his father very well, and decides to stay in California and try to make a go of his 50 acres, although the members of his family are very conflicted as to his decision. This includes his daughter Vicki (Jamie Rose) and son Cole (Billy R. Moses).

But the Channing family is in worse shape than the Gioberti's. Angela's daughter Emma (Margaret Ladd), never too stable to begin with, is positively bonkers since her Uncle Jason's death. Her sister, Julia (Abby Dalton), is a virtual slave to her mother's whims, and sees the same thing happening to her more resistant son, Lance (Lorenzo Lamas). Other characters include -- as the season progresses -- Angela's ex-husband (Stephen Elliot); Chase's mother (Lana Turner); Melissa Agretti (Ana Alicia), who comes between Cole and Lance; Julia's ex-husband Tony (John Saxon); Chase's right-hand man Gus (Nick Ramos); and his son, Mario (Mario Marcelino), who becomes Vicki's boyfriend.

Angela, superbly played by Wyman, is a ruthless person who cares more for the land of Falcon Crest than she does for members of her family, although she always believes she's doing the right thing. She prevents Emma from getting the psychiatric treatment she clearly needs because she's afraid Emma will inadvertently reveal the truth about Jason's death. [Although very well played by Margaret Ladd, who is an excellent actress, Emma's nutso act does become a bit of a bore.] As the first season progresses, Chase and Maggie are eventually clued in to Angela's duplicity, although why they continue to talk to her and attend her parties after her perfidy has been revealed is a big question.

The other cast members, especially Foxworth, Sullivan and Dalton, acquit themselves quite nicely. John Saxon and Lana Turner score in one episode apiece, although they returned for more appearances in later seasons. Marcelino is memorable as the appealing Mario, as is Mel Ferrer as Angela's very sly lawyer.

Falcon Crest lasted for nine seasons, and these episodes indicate why the drama -- which became more firmly ensconced in the soap opera category as it developed -- was such a guilty pleasure. Cast members in future seasons would include Rod Taylor, Mariska Hargitay, Robert Stack, Gina Lollobrigida, Ron Rifkin, Appolonia Kotero, Morgan Fairchild [in a very nice turn as a victim of incest] and many others.

Bill Conti's excellent theme music is a decided plus.

Verdict: Perfect to watch with a glass of wine! ***.

BORN TO BE BAD

BORN TO BE BAD (1950). Directed by Nicholas Ray.

Joan Fontaine is Christable Caine, a scheming blonde who steals away the wealthy fiancé (Zachary Scott) of a friend, Donna (Joan Leslie), but who dallies with her true love, Robert Ryan, even after her marriage. A part that seems tailor-made for Bette Davis or Joan Crawford – even Barbara Stanwyck – works beautifully with the less "bitchy" (but equally talented) Fontaine because she’s able to exude an innocence that makes her conniving ways seem even more atrocious. She sends her lonely and loving aunt away even though Scott is happy to have her in his home, and refuses to go see her when she’s ill because of a party. Ryan, playing a novelist on the verge of success who can’t compete financially with Scott, gets some of the best lines. Regarding Scott (after he marries Fontaine) he says, "How can anyone be happy with a hook in his throat?" and says to Christabel "I love you so much I wish I liked you!" Mel Ferrer plays Gobby, a painter who may have been intended to be a gay character, based on certain remarks he makes about his "harmlessness" to wives and his complete lack of interest in the women in the cast (although he paints Fontaine’s portrait he exudes absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in her). When a man pokes his head into the gallery where Gobby’s paintings are exhibited, and rapidly retreats, Ferrer yells after him "Peasant!" This is a pretty classy, entertaining, well-acted soaper, it’s only deficit being the fact that the characterizations are rather superficial. RKO.

Verdict: Watchable and well-acted. **1/2.