Old Movies....."The Petrified Forest" (1936)

So, I DVR'd this old movie when TCM showed it a few weeks ago and got around to watching it earlier in the week.  Based on a stage play by Robert Sherwood, the movie is the story of a John Dillinger-type gangster who descends upon a combination gas station / lunch counter in the Middle of Nowhere Arizona desert and holds the denizens of this establishment hostage as he attempts to lam in to the Mexican border.

It's no great shakes but I wanted to see this now 82 year old film it because it is often sited as the movie that was the breakout role for Humphrey Bogart.  He was 37 at the time and up until then was pretty much a bit player in a long string of B-movie gangster flicks that Warner Bros. was always cranking out back then.  He played the role of killer Duke Mantee in the stage play, that also starred Leslie Howard on Broadway.  When Warners decided to turn it into a movie, they had signed Howard to recreate his starring role and have Edward G. Robinson play the role of Mantee, but Howard insisted that they cast Bogart, or he wouldn't do the movie himself.

So, Bogie played Mantee with all the menace the role demanded, and went on to become a big star, or so the legend says.  You will note in the poster for the film above, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis received billing above the title, and Bogie was only the third billed actor below the title, yet today, "The Petrified Forest" is considered a classic "Bogart movie".

The revelation to me in the movie, though, was Bette Davis.  We all know and concede that Bette Davis was one of the great actresses of Hollywood history, but she has never been considered a great beauty as so many of her contemporaries were, but in this one I was struck by just how pretty, if not beautiful, the 28 year old Bette Davis was.

Like I said, it's no great shakes, The Grandstander gives it Two Stars at best, but it's worth seeing once just to catch two of Hollywood's all-time greats, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, early on in their careers.

Bette, Joan, and Baby Jane

I have been watching and greatly enjoying the FX series "Feud: Bette and Joan" these last several weeks.

The series centers around the long standing rivalry (to use a polite word) between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the filming of the 1962 movie "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"  The TV series stars Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange as Davis and Crawford, respectively. We are now three weeks into this eight week series, and it has been a real hoot to watch Sarandon and Lange chew the scenery while portraying two legendary divas chewing scenery.

Anyway, by an amazing bit of serendipity, earlier this week Turner Classic Movies showed the movie that is the subject of the TV series.

I think  that I saw this movie back in the 1960's when it finally appeared on television, but I had little memory of it, so I was anxious to see it, and it was interesting to watch, and see  Crawford and Davis, especially Davis, have at it in this movie, which has become a Camp Classic.

One of the real values of the Internet is that you can delve into it and find any number of articles and commentaries on just about any subject, and this movie and its stars are no exceptions.  It's as no secret in Hollywood that Davis and Crawford loathed each other.  It was also no secret that by 1962, neither had had a hit movie in years and were considered washed up by both the movie studios and the movie audiences.

It was director Robert Aldrich's idea to offer the roles of sisters Blanch and "Baby" Jane Hudson to Crawford and Davis.  The studios balked, but both actresses expressed interest and Aldrich figured that it would work because both actresses would work harder than hell to assure that the other  actress wouldn't steal the show from her.

From a 2008 essay ion the movie from critic Roger Ebert:

...it's possible that each agreed to do the picture only because she was jealous of the other's starring role. In the event, it was Davis who emerged on top, winning an Oscar nomination as the former child star who was now a shrill gargoyle with makeup pancaked all over her face. Davis was nothing if not courageous, as she abandoned all shreds of vanity and overacted her heart out. Crawford plays the quieter, kinder, more reasonable sister -- and, it must be said, the less interesting.

Ebert went on to make another interesting observation:

The impact of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" was considerable in 1962. Today's audiences, perhaps not familiar with the stars, don't fully realize how thoroughly Crawford, and especially Davis, trashed their screen images with the coaching of Aldrich. Imagine two contemporary great beauties -- Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett, say -- as aged crones. The personal dislike between Crawford and Davis no doubt deepened the power of their onscreen relationship; the critic Richard Scheib observes: "The irony that only came out in later years is that the roles were uncommonly close to the truth upon the parts of both actresses -- Crawford and Davis were both utterly vain, particularly when it came to their own celebrity, both abused their own family members and both had daughters who wrote books about the cruelty of their parents."

In his review of the movie at the time, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wasn't enthusiastic, and while he did praise both Davis and Crawford, he also used the term "scenery chewing" not once, but twice, in his review.

I enjoyed watching this movie very much in light of watching the "Feud" TV series.  

Lange and Sarandon

as

Crawford and Davis

 Crawford and Davis

The "Originals"

The movie, by the way, was in

glorious black & white

Movie Time - Kong, Jackie, and Bette

Watched three movies in recent days.....

I was there for the first performance on Friday of the new biggie, "Kong: Skull Island".  Yet another adventure featuring the most lovable movie monster ever, King Kong.  As the title suggests, this one takes place on Kong's home turf, Skull Island. Yes, adventurers come to the small uncharted island in hopes of finding, well, I'm not sure what, but who cares?  There are prehistoric beasts, a giant ape, and, yes, a pretty girl.  

Kudos to this movie for the amazing technological processes that produces these amazing creatures, and it is fun seeing these Creature vs. Creature, Man vs. Beast contests.  As for the intricacies of the plot, well, forget about it.   About a quarter of the way through the movie, I began preparing a mental check list that went something like..."this guy is going to die, this guy is going to die in a really grisly manner, this guy will make it...", and I was pretty much on target.

As for the acting, lots of scenery chewing.  John Goodman chews scenery in the Carl Denham-type role, Brie Larson (she won't win an Oscar for this one) looks good in a tank top, and Samuel L. Jackson plays, well, Samuel L. Jackson.

Two and one-half stars from The Grandstander.

Last night we watched "Jackie", a biopic of sorts about the former First Lady, Jackie Kennedy.  Natalie Portman is excellent in her portrayal of Mrs. Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of her husband.  The movie centers around an interview that she gave within a week of her husband's death and how she used that interview to control and establish her husband's legacy and, to a lesser extent, her own.

If you are old enough to remember the Kennedy assassination, it is no doubt one of the seminal memories of your life.  You probably also have a warm memory of the First Lady, and this movie may make you a bit uncomfortable and maybe even resentful of how it portrays Mrs. Kennedy.

It is also a movie, not a documentary, and the fine print in the credits makes the requisite statement that some of the events depicted have been altered for "dramatic purposes". So for me, anyway, I wasn't real crazy about some of the things portrayed in this one.

Two stars from The Grandstander for the movie, but four stars all the way for Natalie Portman in her terrific performance as Jacqueline Kennedy.

And speaking of terrific performances, they don't come any better (five acting Oscar nominations) than the multiple Oscar winner "All About Eve" (1950), which we saw on the big screen earlier in the week as a part of the TCM/Fathom Events series.  I first wrote about this movie two years ago, and I will refer you to that write-up for a fuller commentary:

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2015/03/classic-movie-all-about-eve-1950.html

I will say once again, however, what an absolutely knock out performance Bette Davis delivers in the role of Margo Channing.  She was completely and totally mesmerizing in the role.  Just a great performance and a terrific movie.

Four stars from The Grandstander on this one.

By the way, the month of April will bring us two more TCM/Fathom Events movies on the local big screens - Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" and one of my all time personal favorites, Mike Nichols' "The Graduate", and, by the way, can you believe that "The Graduate" is now a FIFTY YEAR OLD MOVIE????

Be there!

Classic Movie - "All About Eve" (1950)

Until yesterday, I had never seen what everyone considers a classic, "All About Eve".

The movie won six Oscars in 1950, including Best Picture, and starred Bette Davis as Broadway star Margo Channing and Anne Baxter as the title character, the scheming Eve Harrington.  Eve presents herself to Margo as her biggest fan, ingratiates herself to Margo and her entourage and becomes a kind of personal assistant to her.  Eve then plots and schemes to undermine Margo at every turn in order to become a star herself.

"All About Eve" was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, winning six of them, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders) and Best Director and Best Screenplay (Joseph L. Mankiewicz).  Among it's nominations were both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for Best Actress and Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter for Best Supporting Actress.  Also featured was a young Marilyn Monroe, who appeared briefly as an aspiring actress.

1950 was quite a year for movies.  Going up against "All About Eve" for Best Picture that year was the Billy Wilder's classic "Sunset Boulevard".  Talk about a heavyweight championship bout!  Gloria Swanson was nominated for Best Actress that year as well, and it has been long thought that the classic portrayals of Margo Channing and Norma Desmond by Davis and Swanson cancelled each other put and allowed Judy Holliday to win the Oscar for her performance in "Born Yesterday".   The Best Actor award was won by Jose Ferrer for "Cyrano de Bergerac" against a field that also included William Holden, James Stewart, and Spencer Tracy.

Perhaps the best part of this movie was the script.  Lots of great quotes and long pieces of dialog for each of the characters, especially Bette Davis, who was really terrific playing the Broadway grande dame who was fearing that her star was in its descent and that she might be pushed out by someone younger.  In that regard, Margo Channing had much in common with Norma Desmond (although Margo wasn't flat out nuts).

One of the thrusts of this movie was comparing the milieu of Broadway to Hollywood, and in that regard, it has something in common with this past year's Oscar winner, "Birdman".  I suspect, however, that people will continue to watch "All About Eve" long after they have stopped watching "Birdman".

As I said, there is lots and lots of terrific dialog in this movie, but its most famous line is this quote from Davis/Channing:



"All About Eve" is a movie you definitely want to see.