● DAVID GOODIS – Down There. Gold Medal #623, paperback original, January 1956. Black Lizard, paperback, 1987. Included in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, hardcover, Library of America, 1997.

● SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER. France, 1960, released as Tirez sur le pianiste. Astor Pictures Corporation, US, 1962. Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, Michèle Mercier. Based on the novel Down There by David Goodis. Director: François Truffaut.

   In substance, Down There is pretty typical Gold Medal stuff, what with fistfights, chases, mobsters, broads, and other rugged manly stuff — the story is something about a threadbare piano player (Eddie in the book, Charlie in the film) at a seedy bar getting involved with gangs and a waitress — but flavored here with the boozy poetry unique to David Goodis. Goodis could hear the circular logic of a drunk and find in it the awesome redundancy of a Beethoven composition. His characters keep trying to grapple with the meaning of it all, keep losing, keep grappling again….

   Oftentimes they succeed in resolving whatever the plot is – they catch the killer, foil the criminal, rescue the damsel — only to lose some more Important objective, stuck in whatever personal swamp they started out the book in. So the final lesson of Down There is not just that You Can Go Home Again… your destiny was to never really leave,

   Shoot the Piano Player takes the fatalism of the novel and infuses it with director Francois Truffaut’s soft heart and Gallic wit. The circular story is still there, faithfully filmed from the novel down to small detail, but it seems somehow more human, as if it isn’t fate so much as the characters themselves that leads them to their predestined ends.

   Along the way there are plenty of pauses for the bit players to get out and stretch their legs a bit — stock characters in Goodis novels and Truffaut films simply refuse to behave like stock characters — so when Charlie (Charles Aznavour) and Lena (Marie Dubois) are kidnapped by gangsters early on, their captors end up swapping jokes with them. And later on, a thuggish bartender muses aloud about his bad luck with women as he’s trying to choke Charlie to death.

   The point, if there is one (it’s never quite safe to go looking for a moral lesson in Truffaut films or Goodis novels), may be that no one is really ordinary: not In pulp novels, B-movies or what we call Real Life; skid-row bums might be heroes, goons can feel tenderness, and a spearcarrier in the back row of Aida may actually be singing an aria, if we listen closely.

● DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Glass Key. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1931. First published as a series of four connected novelettes in Black Mask magazine, March through June 1930.

● THE GLASS KEY. Paramount, 1935. George Raft, Claire Dodd, Rosalind Keith, Edward Arnold, Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, Ray Milland and Tammany Young. Screenplay by Kathryn Scola, Kibec Glasmon, and Harry Ruskin. Directed by Frank Tuttle.

● THE GLASS KEY. Paramount, 1942. Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Brian Donlevy, Bonita Granville, William Bendix, Joseph Calliea and Donald MacBride. Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer. Directed by Stuart Heisler.

● MILLER’S CROSSING. Fox, 1990. Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, J.E. Freeman, Steve Buscemi, Sam Raimi and Frances McDormand. Written & directed by Joel & Ethan Coen.

   â€œHammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.”

   In its short arc, Dashiell Hammett’s fiction went from mysteries to mystery novels, and he seems (to me anyway) to have been on the brink of an actual novel-novel when he went to Hollywood and Hellman and burned himself out. Whatever the case, THE GLASS KEY is balanced nicely between the Mysteries (RED HARVEST, THE DAIN CURSE, THE MALTESE FALCON) and the near-novel that was THE THIN MAN.

   Set in some patently corrupt and nameless city, this is RED HARVEST writ for grown-ups, with gambler Ned Beaumont (Described as slim, mustached, well-dressed, hard-drinking — Hammett day-dreaming in the 3rd person) trying to protect the interests of his buddy, political boss Paul Madvig, and shield him from his own disastrous infatuation with a senator’s daughter, ambitious rivals, and from from taking the rap for a murder he may –or maybe not — have committed.

   Hammett is just as passionate a writer as Woolrich, but he holds his feelings close to the vest, like a card-player with an iffy hand. The strength of Beaumont’s personal honor, and his love for a friend, comes out in action, like the understated effort he takes to collect a gambling debt, and most memorably in the prolonged beating he endures at the hands of sadistic henchman Jeff, to protect Madvig.

   It’s a lengthy scene that becomes the emotional center of the book and lends a sense of uneasy tension to all the subsequent scenes where Jeff appears. Hammett sets up his characters nicely, then plays off our expectations like a real pro, and this finds him at the top of his game or pretty close to it.

   Paramount filmed it twice, first in 1935, then again in ’42. I really want to prefer the earlier version; it has a rough-and-ready pace, some expressive photography, and George Raft is just as inexpressive as Alan Ladd, with a veneer of slickness that suits the character well. There’s a particularly fine moment where he watches a brutal murder without a flicker of emotion. Director Frank Tuttle keeps the camera on Raft, his face lit by a wildly swinging overhead light that slows as a life slowly ebbs away. But the later version boasts a screenplay adaptation superior in most respects, and overall better casting.

   Foremost is Joseph Calliea as Nick Varno (Shad O’Rory in the book and the ’35 film) the gangster angling to supplant Brian Donlevy’s political boss. Calliea projects an icy authority that completely outclasses tepid Robert Gleckler in the earlier film. When Calliea snarls “You talk too much with your mouth, Jeff,” to William Bendix, you feel it in your bones.

   Bendix plays Jeff, the sadistic, sub-normal goon who delights in beating up Alan Ladd, and he conveys all the coiled-spring tension of the character in the book—much better so than Guinn Williams in the ’36 version, who seems just too downright neighborly for the job.

   As for Ladd and Lake, they make the unlikely attraction between the gambler and the society dame believable by dint of type-casting, if nothing else.

   There’s a phrase in Hammett’s book, “little Miss Jesus,” that reappears in the movie MILLER’S CROSSING, but that’s not the only similarity in a film that features Gabriel Byrne as an unlucky gambler and hanger-on to political boss Albert Finney, who has unwisely antagonized gangster Sol Polito and Polito’s psychotic torpedo J.E. Freeman, all for the love of a woman who is playing him.

   MILLER’S CROSSING emerges as a loving homage to THE GLASS KEY, with all the beatings, gang wars, double-dealings and understated feeling of the book, evoked by apt casting (John Turturro’s scheming chiseler is memorably drawn.) and a real feel for atmosphere and action.

   And as if that weren’t enough, there’s a fleeting glimpse of a fight poster featuring “DROP JOHNSON vs LARS THORWALD.”

CONVICT’S CODE. Monogram Pictures, 1939. Robert Kent, Anne Nagel, Sidney Blackmer, Victor Kilian, Norman Willis, Maude Eburne, Ben Alexander. Director: Lambert Hillyer. Currently available for viewing here on YouTube.

   You’d have to be a real fan of old movies to recognize more than one or two of the names above with resorting to IMDb to look them up, but they were all professional performers with loads of credits. I imagine Ben Alexander’s name stands out the most, and his was only a small part. I recognized him by his voice before I saw who he was. He was very young, only 28 at the time, although he’d been making movies since he was five.

   Robert Kent was a complete unknown, but with 71 credits included on IMDb, obviously I haven’t been paying attention. In Convict’s Code, he plays the convict, obviously the leading role. He plays Dave Tyler, a former football star who’s been in prison for three years, locked up for a robbery he didn’t commit.

   Released on parole, he vows to prove his innocence, but the six eyewitnesses who testified against him seem all to have died or disappeared. This is not surprising, at least to the audience, who all knew this is what was going to happen as soon as he shook the warden’s hand goodbye.

   But here is where some suspension of disbelief comes in. After meeting with is parole officer, who goes through all of the things Dave can and cannot do (mostly cannot), Dave unknowingly goes to work for the very same man (Sidney Blackmer) who framed him. And this same guy has a sister (slim and very pretty Anne Nagel) whom he dotes on, and with whom Dave soon finds himself falling in love.

   There is more, and all of the players play their roles most enthusiastically, making what could have been a very dull affair not that much of a chore to watch. Turning off your mind and not asking questions helps, but sometimes that’s all you don’t mind doing on a cold winter night around midnight.

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE. United Artists, 1937. Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon, William Gargan, Jerome Cowan, Chic Sale, Margaret Hamilton, Warren Hymer, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams. Directed by Fritz Lang. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel and other platforms.

   An early entry in the “lovers on the run” crime film subgenre, You Only Live Once blends American sentimentalism with German Expressionist fatalism to a largely successful effect. Eschewing the gritty realism of Warner Brothers’ prison films for a more nuanced, psychological portrayal of a man caught up in a Kafkaseque predicament, the movie is too early chronologically to be properly considered a film noir. Nevertheless, it definitely contains numerous thematic elements which would become hallmarks of films noir in the 1940s; first and foremost, a doomed protagonist.

   Here, it is ex-convict Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda). He is, as far as the audience can tell, an everyman just trying to get by in a cold world. At first glance, Taylor doesn’t have any particular character traits which would distinguish him from many other men. This is on purpose. But as the film progresses, the audience is made aware of one very salient fact; namely, that his first encounter with the legal system stemmed from an incident with frogs.

   But not in the way one might think. As a child, Taylor apparently watched another boy being horribly mistreating a frog. It upset him so much – the cruelty of it all – that he attacked the potential future sociopath. This sent him to on a path no longer of his own making. Shipped off to reform school, Taylor never once was able to get his life on track. All for protecting a helpless creature.

   Taylor explains the frog story to his new wife, the electrifyingly innocent Jo Graham (Sylvia Sidney). As he tells her that frogs cannot stand to live alone, the camera pans to a close up of two frogs living side by side. The symbolism may be a little too on your nose, but it works. Eddie and Jo are made for each other. They can’t survive apart.

   After Eddie is accused of a bank job that leaves six people dead, Jo does everything she can to support her one true love. But it’s too much for even intrepid public defender Stephen Whitney (Barton MacLane) who is, among other things, her boss. The story contains numerous twists and turns, invoking fatalism at nearly every corner. Just as you think things are going to look up for Eddie, everything goes dark again.

   The final fifteen minutes or so of the movie showcases Eddie and Jo reunited for the last time. Lovers on the run, hiding out from the law. But there’s no glamour, no romanticism in their perilous journey through the backroads of a rapidly transforming America. It’s just about surviving day to day. Frogs united together in a cruel, unjust world until the very end.

HONEST THIEF. Briarcliff Entertainment, 2020. Liam Neeson, Kate Walsh, Jai Courtney, Jeffrey Donovan, Anthony Ramos, Robert Patrick, Jasmine Cephas Jones. Directed by Mark Williams.

   For an action movie that benefits from the presence of several great character actors, Honest Thief is surprisingly dull and lifeless. Which is somewhat surprising. After all, the film has an intriguing premise – a veteran bank robber decides to go straight and turn himself into the FBI – and a solid lead in Liam Neeson. It’s just the execution that is lacking. The movie just plods along from scene to scene without the kinetic energy that the movie demands.

   Neeson, in yet another outing as a grizzled, world-weary man with a special set of skills, portrays Tom Dolan, a Marine veteran turned bank robber. Called the “In and Out Bandit” by the press and the feds (a term he loathes), Dolan eventually decides to go straight. Why? He meets a woman he adores and figures he wants to settle up his past debts before beginning a new life with her in suburban Boston. So far so good. But things don’t go as planned. (do they ever?) As it turns out, the two FBI agents who follow up on Dolan’s request to turn himself in in exchange for a lighter sentence are themselves corrupt. You see, they are interested in his stashed loot, not his newfound conscience.

   As I said earlier, an intriguing premise. But alas, it mostly doesn’t work. Part of that has to do with how formulaic and derivative it all feels. There’s very little in the movie that hasn’t been done – and done better – before. Also hampering the production is the fact that the movie, while set in Boston, was filmed in Worcester, Massachusetts. Nothing against Worcester, but it so obviously doesn’t look like Boston that it only serves to make the movie look more downmarket than it actually is.

   Final thought. Although his late career as an action hero may be coming to a close, Liam still could do a lot better. So can you.
   

UNLAWFUL ENTRY. 20th Century Fox, 1992. Kurt Russell as Michael Carr, Madeleine Stowe as Karen Carr, Ray Liotta as Officer Pete Davis, Roger E. Mosley as Officer Roy Cole. Director: Jonathan Kaplan. Currently streaming on Starz & Starz/Amazon Prime.

   The movie begins with an image of suburban bliss. A two-floor house in an affluent part of Los Angeles, a married couple, and their house cat. The perfect setting for the perfect life. But if it were only so peaceful, there’d be no story to tell. And in the case of Unlawful Entry, it doesn’t take very long whatsoever for a shocking act of violence – a home invasion by a crack-addled burglar – to permanently change the course of this married couple’s lives. As if that were not bad enough, one of the cops assigned to the case turns out to be even more dangerous than the criminal.

   Such is the plot of Jonathan Kaplan’s taut and suspenseful thriller. Kurt Russell, always good as an everyman, portrays Michael Carr, a club owner who is working to get his latest project off the ground. Madeleine Stowe, who appeared in numerous thrillers in the 1980s and 1990s, plays his wife, a teacher at an exclusive private elementary school.

   But the real juicy role goes to Ray Liotta, made famous to audiences from his roles in Field of Dreams (1988) and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990). As LAPD patrolman Pete Davis, Liotta gets to showcase his acting chops. Davis is a lonely, angry man with more than a bit of a misogynistic streak. It’s clear that years of being exposed to the worst of humanity on the mean streets of the City of Angeles has warped his mind. Even his partner, the cynical but clear headed Roy Cole knows that to be the case.

   As much as Unlawful Entry is a movie about a suburban nightmare, it is also a story of unrequited love and dangerous temptation. Things go completely haywire once Pete (Liotta) begins to develop a pathological obsession with Karen Carr (Stowe). At some point, Pete is no longer an unhinged cop; he’s a stalker. And if stalkers are terrifying, think of the damage a stalker with a badge can do. Break into your home and claim they are there to protect you? Check. Fix the computer system so it looks like you have unpaid parking tickets? Check. Boot your car? Check.

   What makes this film work is that, despite the occasional moments in which it verges into dark comedy, it never condescends to the audience, nor winks at it as if it were all a game. It’s a disturbingly effective thriller with many film noir aspects. There’s not a lot of light in this tonally dark film. At the end of the day, it asks the question that never ceases to provoke ample fodder for genre cinema: how far would you go to protect your family when the duly sworn authorities cannot be trusted?

   
NEVER LET GO. Rank Film Distributors Ltd., UK, 1960. Richard Todd, Peter Sellers, Elizabeth Sellars, Adam Faith, Carol White, Mervyn Johns. Co-screenwriter/director: John Guillermin. Currently available on YouTube here.

   You’d hardly believe it was Peter Sellers. Well, that’s not quite true. It’s just that one doesn’t necessarily think of Sellers when one thinks of a cinematic villain. Indeed, Sellers almost never played completely straight roles, let alone villainous ones. That, above all else, is what makes Never Let Go worth watching. For here one gets to see how much of a range Sellers had and how incredibly captivating a performance he was capable of when presented with the opportunity.

   Directed by John Guillerman, this late British noir exudes a somewhat sleazy, definitively downmarket atmosphere boosted by a jazzy John Barry score. This is not posh London, but the London of juvenile delinquents and the lower middle class struggling to get by. Among them is perfume salesman John Cummings (Richard Todd), a perpetual dreamer who thinks success is just over the horizon. When his recently purchased 1959 Ford Anglia is stolen, he sets out on a frenzied quest – think Moby Dick – to get his beloved car back.

   This puts him at odds with both the police and the leader of a vehicular theft ring by the name of Lionel Meadows (Peter Sellers). Meadows is a brute of a man. Cruel and vindictive, he isn’t above hitting women, killing animals (note: there is a particularly disturbing scene where a real fish is left flopping on the ground), and forcing a lonely, elderly man into taking his own life.

   As much as Meadows is cruel, Cummings is determined. He will get his car back, even if it costs him his marriage or his life. This obsessive desire can be best understood as reflective of the perilous economic status of England’s middle class. It’s not so much the car that he wants, as it is what the car represents; namely, the post-war dream for societal and economic advancement in a rigidly stratified society.

   Even though Cummings is the titular hero in his psychodrama, it is Meadows who is the most memorable character. Richard Todd simply can’t compete with Peter Sellers in holding the audience’s attention. It’s a downright chilling performance from a legendary actor most associated with his comedic roles.

THE TOWN. Warner Bros., 2010. Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite. Adapted from Chuck Hogan’s 2004 novel Prince of Thieves. Director: Ben Affleck. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

   It begins with a bank heist in Boston. Well-choreographed, with director Ben Affleck in full control of a fluid situation, The Town starts off with unbridled action. It sparks and sizzles with furious electricity, reminiscent of other bank robbery/heist films, most notably Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). And with a few exchanged glances between robber and captive, the plot becomes clear. This is primarily to be a movie about the relationship between a bank robber and the female assistant bank manager whom he forced into opening the vault at gunpoint. That will form the core of the tale yet to unfold.

   Ben Affleck, who stars as well directs, portrays “Doug” MacRay, a long-term resident of the Charlestown section of north Boston, with the city almost becoming a fundamental character in the list of players. He, along with his friend Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), were raised in near poverty in the townie Irish neighborhood and now lead a crew of thieves. Reporting to local kingpin Fergie Colm (Pete Postlethwaite), they are skilled professionals who are willing to use threats of violence to achieve their objectives.

   All this begins to change when Doug begins to fall for his former hostage Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). Although he initially follows her around to see what she knows about the bank robbery he took part in, Doug slowly begins to imagine getting out of his life of crime and creating a new one with her. Complicating matters is Doug’s former flame, oxycontin addict Kris Coughlin (an underutilized Blake Lively), who also happens to be Jem’s sister. Not to mention the two persistent local FBI agents on his trail.

   Overall, this is a solid crime drama – with the emphasis on drama. Although there are action sequences, including a suspenseful third act robbery sequence filmed on location near Fenway Park, the film’s primary focus is on the relationships between the characters. While the complicated relationship between Doug and Claire is the central focus of the story, Doug’s decidedly mixed feelings toward his father also plays a prominent role in the narrative.

   Unfortunately, what prevents this heist film from being anything overly exceptional is the film’s reliance on too many outworn tropes. The forced sentimentalism designed to make the viewer feel sympathy for Doug occasionally feels cheap.

   Without giving anything away, let’s just say that the final ten minutes or so of the movie in particular feels artificial. It’s not that what you see couldn’t have happened; rather, it’s the way that it’s visually presented that could feel grating, especially to crime film aficionados. The ending feels at once tragically inevitable and completely out of left field. Similarly, it’s somehow off-putting to have such an ambiguously tidy ending to an emotionally messy and nuanced film.

   Affleck is a skillful director who gets the most out of his exceptionally talented cast, including Victor Garber (Alias), who has a brief cameo as a hostage, and veteran character actor Chris Cooper who portrays his incarcerated father. There are some flourishes that I found distracting, such as his tendency to repeatedly use drone footage of Boston to remind the viewer where the film was set (as if anyone would forget?) and his decision to employ grimy black and white cinematography for flashbacks.

   But don’t let that stop you from watching this one. Affleck’s immersion in his character, Boston accent and all, is near complete. Directing oneself is not always the humblest of tasks. He pulls it off with sincerity.

CAST A CROOKED SHADOW. Associated British-Pathé, UK, 1958; Warner Brothers, US, 1958. Richard Todd, Anne Baxter, Herbert Lom, Alexander Knox. Director: Michael Anderson. Available on DVD.

   Kimberly Prescott (Anne Baxter) is a young South African heiress of a diamond company living in a Spanish villa. She has had a trying year: her father had committed suicide while her brother, Ward, is believed to have died in a car accident. One night, there arrives a man (Richard Todd) who claims to be her late brother. Kimberly is angry with what she considers to be a distasteful joke.

   The man is insistent, however, and can back up his claims with photographs and a detailed knowledge of their shared childhood. He swiftly installs himself in Kimberley’s villa and into her life, while local inspector Vargas (Herbert Lom) remains confused and concerned. Everyone considers Kimberley to be mad and even she begins to doubt herself. And then she realises her life is in danger.

   This 1958 thriller riffs on one of the most intriguing of old chestnuts – the long-lost relative who may be an imposter, which was also the premise to Golden Age writer Josephine Fey’s 1949 novel Brat Farrar. Director Michael Anderson gives us a suspenseful, gothic melodrama which keeps the viewers wondering just how it will end. Richard Todd, who had just appeared in Yangtse Incident for Anderson, makes his character casual, creepy and occasionally even considerate, while Anne Baxter remains on the right side of hysterical. She does much of the heavy lifting here, appearing in most scenes, and maintains a difficult balance between anxiety and determination, while never appearing weak.

   Of particular mention is Herbert Lom, surely one of the most underrated actors of his generation, who remains sympathetic as Vargas. He is intrigued and suspicious, but stymied by Ward’s plausible explanations. There’s also a quite excellent twist in the tale, which should not be considered too much beforehand.

   This was another I saw on the Talking Pictures TV channel, on Christmas Day, and it was better than many current TV offerings. Anyone wanting a cosily creepy evening viewing, in the Daphne du Maurier tradition of clifftop terror, will do well to check this out.

Rating: *****
   

HIS KIND OF WOMAN. RKO, 1952. Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price, Tim Holt, Raymond Burr, and Jim Backus. Written by Frank Fenton and Jack Leonard. Directed by John Farrow and Richard Fleischer (uncredited.) Available on DVD and for rent from Vudu and Amazon Prime, among others.

RICHARD FLEISCHER – Just Tell Me When to Cry. Carroll & Graf, hardcover, 1993.

   I always thought of HIS KIND OF WOMAN as a lop-sided little movie, no great shakes, but modestly enjoyable. I went out with a girl like that once. Then I read Fleischer’s memoir, and now I see it in a whole different light. A good book can do that for you.

   Briefly, WOMAN deals with the travails of Dan Milner (Robert Mitchum) a down-on-his-luck gambler lured to a Mexican resort where everyone seems to be playing a part, except for the one genuine actor, Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price.)

   Turns out the whole thing has been engineered by deported gangster Raymond Burr, who means to kill Mitchum and enter the country under his name. Yeah, it sounds over-complicated to me, too. I mean how hard can it be to get a slightly irregular passport? But that’s the story, and Bob ends up on Ray’s yacht, tied, tortured, running, fighting, running, shooting, running, ducking, and generally making mayhem in some remarkably grim moments, fraught with tension—

   –Or they would be, except that the movie keeps cutting back to Vincent Price and his genuinely funny attempts at rescue. The comedy works, the grim stuff works, but side by side, they keep undercutting each other. I kind of like it myself, but I have to say on any objective level it just doesn’t work.

   So like I say, I always thought of this as a fun little misfire, till I read Richard Fleischer’s engaging memoir, JUST TELL ME WHEN TO CRY, which devotes a whole chapter to WOMAN and reveals that the damn thing cost almost a million dollars.

   It seems director John Farrow finished this film, and like all RKO movies at the time, it went to studio owner Howard Hughes to be screened before release. Hughes thought the ending could be punched up a little, so he called Fleischer in, and Fleischer agreed, maybe it could. So Hughes made some suggestions, Fleischer fleshed them out, producer Robert Fellows added on to the yacht set, Hughes came up with more ideas, Fleischer did his thing, Fellows added on to the yacht, more ideas, more yacht, more funny business with Vincent Price, more shooting, more ideas….

   By the time they finished (they thought) the make-believe yacht filled the biggest soundstage at RKO, Vincent Price held a mock birthday party to celebrate his first year on the picture, Bob Mitchum went on a set-smashing rampage, Lee Van Cleef was judged unsuitable as the main heavy (Remember, the film was finished when this was decided.) an exhaustive search turned up Robert J Wilke as a replacement but after a few days work, Raymond Burr was hired on a whim from Hughes to re-shoot all the original footage done by Wilke and Van Cleef.

   But at length Fleischer and Fellows screened the new ending, with the extensive and expensive yacht scenes, for their Boss – who wanted it all redone because the boarding ladder was on the wrong side!

   Now I never take any memoir as gospel — the form just allows too many temptations to promote oneself and settle old scores — but JUST TELL ME WHEN TO CRY can be read for sheer outrageous entertainment. Fleischer’s accounts of working with Walt Disney, Kirk Douglas, Rex Harrison and Howard Hughes (to name just a few) are laugh-out-loud funny, and he pauses now and then for pithy observations like:

      â€œHope deceives more people than cunning ever could.”

      â€œDirecting is a democratic process in which everyone does just as I tell them to do.”

   And

      â€œIt’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”

   That last one seems particularly apt these days. And it’s just a sample from a book (and movie) I highly recommend.