INHERIT THE WIND

INHERIT THE WIND (1960). Director: Stanley Kramer.

"Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding!"

In 1925 John T. Scopes was arrested in Tennessee for teaching the theory of evolution to his students. Clarence Darrow defended him and William Jennings Bryan acted as prosecutor, while H. L. Mencken covered the "monkey" trial for a newspaper. In a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, which fictionalizes the story, the characters were changed into Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) for Darrow; Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) for Bryan; Bertram Cates (Dick York) for Scopes; and E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) of the Baltimore Herald for Mencken. The play and this film version thereof adds a further complication: Scopes/Cates is engaged to the daughter, Rachel (Donna Anderson), of the local preacher (Claude Akins), who is a borderline fanatic. The main strength of this film, besides the exchange of ideas and the notion of casting off narrow minds, is the acting by the two leads, both of whom are superb. March, in particular, possibly gives the best performance of his career, full of nuances, and giving his character enough charm to understand why people like and enjoy him even when they think he's dead wrong. (Florence Eldridge, who was married to March in real life, is also notable as Brady's wife, Sarah. And Gene Kelly is so good as Hornbeck that he proves to be far more than just a song and dance man and a fine dramatic actor. ) 

Fredric March and Spencer Tracy

There is, perhaps, a little too much dramatic license; for instance, it doesn't make sense that Drummond wouldn't ask for a recess after Brady's brutal examination of Rachel. The movie is serious and sickening under the amusement and banter, as timely today -- if not more so -- than it was in 1960. Its weakest moment is the sop to the religionists with Drummond carrying a bible out of the courtroom at the end. Still, it was brave of Kramer and the others to make the film way back in 1960. Leslie Uggams sings "That Old-Time Religion" over the credits.

Verdict: Powerful stuff with two massive lead performances. *** (half a star taken off for that compromised ending).

WOMAN OF THE YEAR

Hepburn and Tracy

WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942). Director: George Stevens. 

Tess Harding (Katharine Hepburn) and Sam Craig (Spencer Tracy) are columnists for the same newspaper but don't know or care very much for each other. That changes when they actually meet and fall in love -- but can Sam deal with the fact that Tess, eventually named "Woman of the Year," is always on the go and is more celebrated than he is? Frankly, Woman of the Year, while a good and entertaining movie, sort of ducks the question of Sam's ego, making it more about Tess' lack of domesticity and maternal feelings, and despite some attempt at the end to arrive at a compromise, the movie comes off now as rather dated. For a moment it even turns into one of those "woman with amazing career will give it all up to become a devoted wifey" kind of movies. Still both of the stars, in their first pairing, are excellent, as are Fay Bainter as Tess' Aunt Ellen; Minor Watson as her father; and Edith Evanson as her maid, Alma. (Although she was frequently uncredited, Evanson had a long career, and appeared in such films as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Rope and Marnie.) Little George Kezas has a nice turn as Chris, the boy refugee, as does Sara Haden as the head of the home where he resides. Funniest scene has Kate trying to make coffee! 

Verdict: On its own 1940's terms, not bad at all, but boy what it could have been! ***.

I TAKE THIS WOMAN

Hedy Lamarr

I TAKE THIS WOMAN (1940). Director: W. S. Van Dyke.

"Time wounds all heels." -- Marcesca.

Georgi Gregore (Hedy Lamarr) tries to throw herself off of an ocean liner due to an unhappy love affair, but she is saved by the compassionate Dr. Karl Decker (Spencer Tracy). Georgi is still dealing with her feelings for the married Phil Mayberry (Kent Taylor), when she gets involved with Karl -- who works at a clinic for low-income patients -- and marries him. But trouble begins when Karl joins a practice that caters to the wealthy, and Georgi runs into her ex-lover, Phil, once more. Can this marriage be saved?

Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr

When I Take This Woman was first released, it came in for a mostly critical drubbing, and over the years has been considered a very bad picture starring a completely mis-matched Tracy and Lamarr. In actual truth, while the film is certainly not excellent, and at one point begins to rip off The Citadel, it is entertaining and very well-acted, with Tracy and Lamarr  playing very well together and making a very convincing romantic couple. In addition we've got some good work from Verree Teasdale as Georgi's effervescent friend, Marcesca, Kent Taylor as Phil, and Mona Barrie [Something to Sing About] as his bitter, heart-broken wife. Laraine Day, Louis Calhern, Frances Drake, and Paul Cavanagh also have notable supporting parts, along with Marjorie Main, Willie Best, Reed Hadley [Racket Squad], Don Castle [Roses are Red], and others.

I Take This Woman, alas, makes the mistake of trying to ape Frank Capra, throwing in a final scene that is sentimental in the wrong way and unconvincing. But the picture is still easy to take, Lamarr looks stunning, and the performances by both stars are quite memorable.

Verdict: Tracy and Lamarr make a better team than you might imagine. **3/4. 

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. ***.

EDWARD, MY SON

Marital discord: Deborah Kerr and Spencer Tracy

EDWARD, MY SON (1949). Director: George Cukor.

"The trouble with drink is it makes it just a little bit uncouth."

Arnold Boult (Spencer Tracy) is determined to make sure that his son, Edward [who is never seen] has the greatest life possible, and commits all manner of crimes to insure this, his ruthlessness even driving people to suicide. His wife Evelyn (Deborah Kerr) watches in horror, tries to interfere, and turns to drink, only inspiring more contempt from her husband. Boult has an affair with his secretary, Miss Perrin (Leueen MacGrath), but finds her as disposable as most of the people in his life, including his partner Harry (Mervyn Johns). This absorbing, adult portrait of a supreme narcissist and his spoiled son packs a wallop, due to an excellent script by Donald Ogden Stewart [Keeper of the Flame]  and superb playing by Tracy [State of the Union] and Kerr [The End of the Affair]. MacGrath, Johns, Ian Hunter [Tower of London] as a doctor who is sympathetic to Evelyn, and Tilsa Page as Miss Foxley, are also excellent. 

Verdict: Powerful marital drama. ***1/2.

KEEPER OF THE FLAME

Tracy confronts Hepburn

KEEPER OF THE FLAME (1942). Director: George Cukor.

A wooden bridge collapses in a rain storm and famous philanthropist, beloved war hero,  and would-be politician Robert Forrest is killed when his car crashes into the ravine. Journalist Stephen O'Malley (Spencer Tracy) wants to write an admiring biography of the man, but he senses that people in Forrest's inner circle are strangely alarmed by his interest and doing their best to keep secrets from him. He finally gets to meet Forrest's widow, Christine (Katharine Hepburn, who doesn't appear until 25 minutes into the running time), and she at first wants no part of him or of his project. But she relents. But the more O'Malley digs, the more he suspects something strange is going on, and the more he is drawn to the attractive young widow ... Keeper of the Flame is one of the most compelling films to feature the duo of Tracy and Hepburn, and, as usual, they play very well together. Tracy is excellent throughout, and while Hepburn is a touch stagey at times, she also gives a very good, underplayed performance. Also notable are Margaret Wycherly as Forrest's senile and desperate mother; Richard Whorf [later a director] as Kerndon, Forrest's associate; Audrey Christie as Jane, a fellow reporter who's carrying a torch for O'Malley; and Forrest Tucker as Christine's over-protective cousin, Geoffrey. Donald Meek, Frank Craven and Stephen McNally are also first-rate in smaller roles, as is Darryl Hickman as a young boy greatly affected by Forrest's death and befriended by O'Malley. Keeper of the Flame not only works as a first-rate and unusual suspense item but illustrates the dangers of blind hero-worship, and is still interesting enough to have transcended whatever its original political motivations may have been. William Daniels' cinematography is an added bonus. This was Christie's first credit. She was also in Carousel but mostly did work in television.

Verdict: A top triumvirate of Tracy, Hepburn and Cukor. ***.

STATE OF THE UNION

STATE OF THE UNION (1948). Director: Frank Capra.

"We even had a democrat in that bed one night!" -- housekeeper Margaret Hamilton.

"If I've got to listen to speeches, you'd better make me another sazerac right away!" -- Lulubelle Alexander

Newspaper publisher Kay Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury) and long-time politico Jim Conover (Adolph Menjou) work together to get plane manufacturer Grant Matthews( Spencer Tracy) to toss his hat in the Republican ring. Although she has reservations -- particularly regarding the participation of Kay, who is carrying a torch for Grant -- Matthews' wife Mary (Katharine Hepburn) agrees to go along on the campaign trail, hoping her husband will win the party's nomination. But as the weeks go by she watches in horror as Grant succumbs to the manipulations of Kay and Jim, compromising to the point where he's turning his back on what he really believes in just so he has a chance at the white house. Something's gotta give, and boy does it! This wonderful, still topical movie features top-notch performances from the actors named, as well as from Van Johnson as a snappy reporter named Spike. Margaret Hamilton has an amusing supporting part as a housekeeper who has a yen for Spike, and Maidel Turner is a riot as Lulubelle Alexander, a judge's wife who loves her sazerac cocktails; Charles Dingle, Raymond Walburn, Howard Smith and Irving Bacon also score. Hepburn's first name is misspelled in the opening credits, there are a couple of stupid moments, but everything else is just about perfect!

Verdict: Another Capra winner! ***1/2.

THE DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK

Spencer Tracy

THE DEVIL AT 4 O'CLOCK (1961). Director: Mervyn LeRoy.

"I bet you were a sweet little altar boy." -- Father Doonan [Spencer Tracy].

"Weren't we all?" -- Harry [Frank Sinatra].

Three convicts -- Harry (Frank Sinatra), Marcel (Gregoire Aslan) and Charlie (Bernie Hamilton) -- on their way to a Tahitian prison, have to stop over on the island of Talua so their plane can drop off Father Perreau (Kerwin Mathews). Perreau is there to replace cantankerous, alcoholic Father Doonan (Spencer Tracy), who has angered the islanders by building a hospital for children with Hansen's disease (leprosy) in the mountains. When the island is threatened by earthquakes and an erupting volcano, Doonan takes the convicts with him to rescue the children and the hospital staff. From there they make a perilous journey down the mountain, past thickening lava flows, that not all of them will survive. The characters and situations are so interesting that it doesn't matter that the harrowing action doesn't occur until late in the movie, and the fine performances from most of the cast help as well. Columbia has put together such a first-rate remastered high-def DVD of this film that sometimes the FX seams [process work and matte paintings] show through, but there are still some stunning vistas. Unlike the more realistic hardened convicts you generally find in today's movies, Sinatra and company are men of some convenient strength and sensitivity. The piousness sometimes threatens to become cloying but never overwhelms the movie, and dissenting viewpoints are also presented. Tracy is superb, with fine support from Hamilton [who deserved a much bigger career], Aslan, Alexander Scourby as the governor, and Cathy Lewis as hospital worker Marguerite. Jean-Pierre Aumont and Tom Middleton are fine as the pilots, as is Barbara Luna as a blind girl at the hospital. Even in this, Sinatra, who isn't bad, gets the girl -- or does he? The film isn't entirely predictable in who will make it off the island or not.

Verdict: This movie is not a disaster. ***.

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

Note that "Judgment" is misspelled!

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961). Producer/director: Stanley Kramer.

"There can never be any justification for these [acts] -- not in generations, not in centuries."

"It's not the killing that's the problem -- it's the disposal of the bodies."

"We beat the greatest war machine since Alexander the Great -- and now the boy scouts take over."

In 1948, after the "big guns" in the National Socialist Party have already been put on trail, some "smaller fry" -- judges who helped enact the illegal and immoral laws of Nazi Germany -- are also put on trial in Nuremberg. The presiding judge is Dan Heywood (Spencer Tracy), with Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark) as prosecutor and Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) as the defense attorney. The most famous defendant is a well-respected jurist named Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster). Rolfe claims that the U.S. can hardly act morally superior when they dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while Heywood discovers that virtually no one in Nuremberg will admit they knew what was going on in the concentration camps. Meanwhile Lawson is told that the U.S. will need Germany as an ally in the cold war and convicting some of its leading citizens may not be such a good idea. But Lawson was one of the men who liberated the camps, he has horrifying memories, and shows films (actual documentary footage) of Nazi atrocities -- the ovens, children sentenced to death, piles of rotting corpses, starved and frightened human beings, drawings made on human skin, severed heads (all of which is quite hard to watch but highly necessary for the movie's ultimate impact) -- and isn't about to let these guys walk if he can help it. Only two years after the end of the war, he fears that the world is already losing interest. Schell won an Oscar, and deserved it. Widmark gives one of his best performances, and Tracy is superb. Marlene Dietrich also turns in an excellent performance as the widow of a Nazi who has already been executed, and Judy Garland has a fine turn as a woman who was put in jail at sixteen for alleged perjury when a Jewish father figure was accused of intimate relations with her, an Aryan. Montgomery Clift is also superb as a Jewish witness who was forcibly sterilized years before and argues that one could not expect him to be entirely rational after such an experience. Lancaster is a comparative lightweight in this cast, and isn't well-cast as a German, but he does his best and has a few good moments. Some of the best scenes are between Tracy and Dietrich as they try to understand each other's viewpoints, particularly a scene in a lively beer hall after Heywood has seen the disturbing movies taken in the camps and Dietrich protests that few Germans really knew what was going on -- but he just can't quite buy it. There are many other good supporting performances in the film, especially Virginia Christine as a German housekeeper who argues that Hitler did some good things along with the bad. Judgment at Nuremberg covers all viewpoints and all the bases in highly dramatic fashion, and while over three hours long, is never boring. It ends in a most satisfying fashion, and Tracy's final lines -- written by screenwriter Abby Mann -- pretty much sum it up.

Verdict: A masterpiece about a shameful event in history that must never be forgotten. ****.

WITHOUT LOVE

WITHOUT LOVE (1945). Director: Harold S. Bucquet.

Spencer Tracy plays a wartime inventor who meets a widow played by Katharine Hepburn. Both have decided never to marry or fall in love again for different but related reasons. Tracy was jilted by a woman, and Hepburn's true love died at an early age; presumably they can do without the pain. They therefore decide to get married "without love," being there for each other as friends -- sort of like their relationship (which has been greatly exaggerated into one of the all-time great "romances") was like in real life; their "love" was of the platonic kind. Although Hepburn is given a nice scene in which she talks about the young man who died, this lacklustre and completely unconvincing comedy-drama only has some oomph whenever Lucille Ball appears as Hepburn's real estate lady, carrying a torch for Keenan Wynn. Despite the cast, this is pretty dull.

Verdict: Watch Desk Set or Adam's Rib instead. **.

KATHARINE HEPBURN: THE UNTOLD STORY

KATHARINE HEPBURN: The Untold Story. James Robert Parish. Advocate Books.

This is a highly compelling and frank biography of the late actress which, in addition to her life as a screen star, focuses on her relationships with several women over the years, as well as on her one marriage and her relationships with such men as Howard Hughes and Spencer Tracy. From a combination of facts and intelligent and educated speculation the book posits the fascinating and undoubtedly accurate theory that Hepburn and Tracy, far from being a great romantic love story, were in truth good and loving platonic friends who, in essence, used each other as beards to hide their true sexuality. In the 21st century it is a pleasure to read books that cut through the Hollywood press agent crap and recognize the reality about gays and lesbians in Hollywood. In a compulsory readable fashion, Parish examines the contrary and contradictory nature of the Great Hepburn, as well as the high and low points of her career. Zealously guarding her privacy and personal life for many decades, Hepburn is a tough nut to crack, but Parish manages to do just that.

Verdict: An excellent and very entertaining bio. ***1/2.

DESK SET

DESK SET (1957). Director: Walter Lang.

Although it has generally been considered that this is not one of the better Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy vehicles, it is actually a warm, funny, extremely well-acted and well-written comedy with heart and splendid performances. Not only is Hepburn at her most winning in this film, but she plays one of her most likable, admirable, entirely lovely characters, a head of a research department who longs desperately for her boyfriend (Gig Young) to marry her and shows real concern and kindness for the people who work under her, even the mail room boy (whom she advises in getting bonuses). Spencer Tracy is extremely charming and adept in his portrayal of a kind of efficiency expert who is helping to bring automation and computer services to the workplace via a big machine that will be used to answer research questions. Will Hepburn and her cohorts be out of a job? Hepburn worries over this particular question even as she draws closer to Tracy and Gig Young (finally) draws closer to her. At one point Joan Blondell, as one of Hepburn's colleagues, does a dead-on impression of Hepburn. The supporting cast is terrific, the pace is fast, and Hepburn is truly amazing. In one scene, when Gig Young comes by to cancel an engagement, she gets across her disappointment, hope, wearied anguish, and bewilderment over their relationship and her true placement in his life in telling fashion.

Verdict: Kate is Great! ***1/2.