THE ACTRESS. MGM, 1953. Jean Simmons, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins, Mary Wickes, Ian Wolfe. Screenplay by Ruth Gordon, based on her play Years Ago; cinematographer: Harold Rossen. Director: George Cukor. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   I had never seen this movie, based on a play by Gordon, which was in turn based on her own experiences. Jean Simmons was, predictably, a beautiful and luminous incarnation of Ruth Gordon (or of her idealized self; I don’t recall seeing pictures of the young Gordon, but it’s hard to imagine Simmons, who’s still gorgeous, aging into the on-screen persona I am familiar with).

   There was only eleven years difference in age between Simmons (b. 1929) and Teresa Wright (b. 1918), but Simmons caught all the fragile turbulence of late adolescence, and Wright had the dramatic weight to carry her role as Ruth Gordon’s mother.

   Spencer Tracy was superb as the father whose ambitions for his daughter were so clearly at odds with her ambitions, and Anthony Perkins, in a role as Simmons’ suitor that he seemed to inhabit effortlessly, made his film debut. A distinguished set of performances, with direction and cinematography to match.

   Simmons captivated the audience in her interview, displaying an intelligence and beauty that characterized her on-screen persona. One of the memorable Cinecon appearances of recent years.

Editorial Note:   As has been pointed out in the comments, Walter’s review was written in 2003, and Jean Simmons, alas, is no longer with us. She died in 2010.

THERE AIN’T NO JUSTICE. Associated British Films, 1939. Jimmy Hanley, Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, Phyllis Stanley, Edward Chapman, Jill Furse, Richard Ainley, Michael Wilding, Nan Hopkins. Screenplay: James Curtis, based on his own novel. Director: Pen Tennyson.

   I don’t watch boxing movies, not even if they’re nominated for Oscars or other awards, or even if they win. That has nothing to do with boxing, per se. I don’t watch sports movies of any kind. Well, maybe baseball, but that’s because I like baseball.

   Call it prejudice if you want, but it has nothing to do with sports movies. I don’t read sports fiction either, not even baseball. There’s nothing the screenwriter of a sports movie can make up that can match (ever) the kinds of things that are reported on every day in the sports section of your daily newspaper, the kinds of things that if you read them as fiction, you’d say, Nah, that’d never happen. But they do, and as often as not, they just did.

   No matter. Here I am reporting on a boxing movie I saw the other night, and after a slow start, I actually enjoyed it. Surprised me, I tell you that.

   Jimmy Hanley is the star. Later on he became a big name in British TV, or so I’m told, but in 1939 he was still a lad. A good-looking, boy-next-door sort of fellow, maybe not the sharpest guy in the neighborhood, but not the dumbest, either.

   In order to win the hand of fair maiden (Jill Furse) he quits his job as an auto mechanic to become a boxer. The money’s better, for one thing, and of course there’s a small bit of fame to go with it, which a cocky young lad wouldn’t mind having, but in 1939, times were tough.

   The problem is, well, boxing is a sport not particularly noted for the honesty of the guys running it, and Tommy Mutch’s big mistake is signing up with a promoter as crooked as they come — the kind of guy that gives snakes in the grass a bad name.

   Which is almost, but not quite, all I need to tell you, but I am going to tell you one more thing, and that’s that Tommy’s would-be girl friend sees one boxing match and wants nothing more to do with him nor his new found profession. Even the cockiest guy in the world would find his world upside down, and Tommy is no different from the rest.

   Let me insert a word about Jill Furse about here. She’s a frail beauty, a mere wisp of a girl, the kind that some men dream about, not only Tommy. She might have had a long successful career in films, but she didn’t. She appeared a stage play that was telecast by the BBC as a special production in 1938, had a small role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, also in 1939, this movie, and that was it. She died in 1944 soon after giving birth to her second child. There ain’t no justice, that’s for sure.

   In any case, let me end this review by reminding you of the old joke about going to a fight and a hockey game broke out. In There Ain’t No Justice the movies ends with a boxing match in which a fight breaks out. I’ve never seen such a fight, and I’ll bet you haven’t either.

HAMLET AT ELSINORE. TV movie, BBC, 15 November 1964. Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw, Alec Clunes, Michael Caine, June Tobin, Jo Maxwell Muller, Dyson Lovell. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Philip Saville.

   My annual Hamlet-fest last month had its moments, including the 1964 Hamlet at Elsinore with Christopher Plummer backed up by Robert Shaw as a shrewd, virile Claudius, Michael Caine [a year before The Ipcress File] a sardonic Horatio, and Donald Sutherland essaying a Norwegian accent as Fortinbras!

   Quite well done, with some understandable echoes of John Barrymore in Plummer’s performance: he dresses like Barrymore, adopts some Barrymore elocutions, and there are moments in his mad scenes that recall Oscar Jaffe in The 20th Century.

   There’s also a wonderful twist on the Nunnery Scene: Ophelia is not aware her dad and Claudius are spying on her and Hamlet till the scene ends. And when Polonius tells her they heard everything, Robert Shaw flashes her a smile so nasty he should have won a prize for it.

   I also read Henry Treece’s 1966 The Green Man, a retelling of the Danish legends that formed the basis of Hamlet. It recasts the part as Conan the Barbarian, and has its virtues, including vividly-evoked time and place, but overall I was disappointed.

   And you?

YOU CAME ALONG. Paramount Pictures, 1945. Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Charles Drake, Julie Bishop, Kim Hunter, Helen Forrest. Co-screenwriter: Ayn Rand. Director: John Farrow.

   For some viewers, the primary reason for watching this movie may be the fact that Ayn Rand was in part responsible for the script. Perhaps others couldn’t care less, noting instead that this was the film debut of Lizabeth Scott, known more for her roles in film noir, of which category this movie is most definitely not.

   Count me in as one of the latter. The story is kind of silly, and not particularly being a fan of Ayn Rand’s, I don’t know why she was writing movie screenplays in the mid 1940s. You can tell me more in the comments, if you’d care to, but for now, the rest of this review will focus on the movie itself, with no offense intended.

   All things considered, though, I’d rather not tell you all that much about the story line, even though every other review of this movie that you’ll find online will probably spell out the whole thing to you, from beginning to end, and in detail.

   What I will tell you is it begins as a sort of standard 1940s comedy, with a strait-laced young blonde being assigned to accompany three boisterous, fun-loving and girl-chasing war pilots on a Savings Bond tour across the US.

   The blonde being Lizabeth Scott, who soon with a gleam in her eyes turns the table on the hijinks the three decorated aces come up with, and soon thereafter that she is to be seen sitting around their cross-country transport plane with her feet up on the table with the others. Later on she finds the time to sit at a piano and sing a song – and rather well too.

   Nature has a way of taking its course in this kind of film, and I might as well tell you that romance does also. This is as much as I will say, except perhaps to add that the three heroes she is hanging out with are hiding a secret, the secret involving… No, I shan’t say, as secrets are meant to be kept.

   Or are they? Secrets are what make stories in movies like this churning along, and between you and me, they are also what makes them as sappy and sentimental as the ending of this one turns out to be. I’d also suggest that you keep the tissues handy, but I won’t. If I did, I have a pretty good idea that it would give the whole show away.

   If you were to ask me, I’d say you should watch this one for Lizabeth Scott in a role far from the ones her career led her, and for the three buddies she finds herself on the road with. Together they make a very engaging, fun-loving foursome, and like me, you may find yourself enjoying the first half of the film much more than the second.

SALLY, IRENE AND MARY. MGM, 1925. Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Sally O’Neill, William Haines, Henry Kolker, Douglas Gilmore. Based on a play by Eddie Dowling. Director: Edmund Goulding. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   I have fond, if vague, memories of the 1938 remake of this silent film that featured Alice Faye, Tony Martin, Fred Allen, Joan Davis, Jimmy Durante, and Gypsy Rose Lee (quite a cast!), but I had never seen the original film.

   Constance Bennett (Sally), Joan Crawford (Irene), and Sally O’Neill (Mary) are showgirls, with Sally the older and wiser gal who’s seen it all but is happy with her older lover who keeps her in luxury, and Irene and Mary the recent recruits, childhood friends from the same tenement background.

   The film alternates between the giddy, dangerous after hours parties and the tenement apartments where families fear they are losing their daughters to a sinful show business world. The adventure will end tragically for one of the tenement girls while the other will return to her childhood sweetheart.

   The scenes in which the showgirls talk and gossip among themselves are striking in their mixture of dreams and occasional rueful incursions of reality. Crawford is the standout, although Bennett is almost as fine in her “mother hen” portrayal.

THEY DARE NOT LOVE. Columbia, 1941. George Brent, Martha Scott, Paul Lukas, Frank Reicher, Egon Brecher, Roman Bohnen, Peter Cushing, Lloyd Bridges. Director: James Whale (with Victor Fleming & Charles Vidor, both uncredited). Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   I was very pleased to find Whale’s last feature film on the program. George Brent is an Austrian aristocrat who leaves his country ahead of the Nazis. Living in London, he encounters Scott and comes into contact with Austrian emigres who make him realize he was wrong to betray his countrymen by fleeing.

   He meets with his old adversary, Nazi Paul Lukas, and works out an agreement that will exchange his freedom for some imprisoned Austrians. The agreement is a ruse, and as he and Scott set sail on what he believes to be a neutral Dutch ship, it mounts a German flag and he is a prisoner on his way to a certain death.

   Maltin lambasts the film for its silly script and unlikely casting of Brent as a “dashing” Austrian prince. Dashing he’s not, but in spite of the inadequacies of the script and the lack of the usual Whale flourishes, the film is competently directed.

   Reicher is good as the ship’s captain who’s finally willing to sacrifice himself (and probably his family) to thwart Lukas. Cushing and Bridges have small roles, but Cushing makes a dashing appearance as a British office who takes over the German ship and saves the day.

   Not a sad, but still a disappointing conclusion to a distinguished directing career.

HAMLET. Columbia, 1969. Nicol Williamson (Hamlet), Judy Parfitt (Gertrude), Anthony Hopkins (Claudius), Marianne Faithfull (Ophelia), Mark Dignam, Michael Pennington, Gordon Jackson, Ben Aris, Clive Graham. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Tony Richardson.

   I also recently saw Nicol Williamson’s 1969 film of Hamlet, directed by Tony Richardson, made on the heels of Zeffirelli’s surprise Romeo & Juliet hit. Didn’t care much for it, but I was prejudiced two-score years ago by the film’s banal ad campaign, which billed it as “The story of Hamlet’s immortal love for Ophelia!”

   Now Hamlet is about a lot of things, but it ain’t about Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, and this slant on the film, intentional or not, put me off on it right from the outset, no doubt clouding my judgement somewhat.

   Williamson plays Hamlet as a bookish Grad Student, Weak rather than Vulnerable and Pedantic instead of Poetic. It’s a valid interpretation, but not much fun to watch for two hours.

   Likewise Judy Parfitt’s portrayal of Queen Gertrude as Lady MacBeth. Marianne Faithfull is okay as Ophelia, but an incredibly young Anthony Hopkins, looking like a kid in a false beard, is woefully out of his depth as the King.

   This is very much a late-60s film, with the kids in revolt against corrupt and complacent authority figures, which again is a valid interpretation, but robs the play of some of the depth and complexity it gets when characters like Polonious, Claudius and Gertrude are developed as rounded characters.

   Finally, there are no sets to speak of (this looks to have been shot in the back of UCLA’s Theatre Department Building) and Richardson tries hard to hide this by concentrating on close-ups and restricting physical movement, which works but stifles the action.

THE TURMOIL. Universal-Jewel, 1924. Emmett Corrigan, George Hackathorne, Edward Hearn, Theodore von Fitz, Eileen Percy, Pauline Garon, Eleanor Boardman, Winter Hall. Based on the novel (1915) by Booth Tarkington. Director: Hobart Henley. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   It’s probably difficult to appreciate the appeal Booth Tarkington had for earlier generations (which include mine). He’s probably best remembered as the novelist who provided the inspiration for Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons, but even earlier I read and reread his Penrod series, the story of an imaginative, adventuresome boy who did all the things that I, a dull, unimaginative, tradition-bound kid, never dared to do.

   The Turmoil, however, is more in the vein of the Ambersons and is the story of a successful father who tries to direct the lives of his three sons, with disastrous results for two of them.

   It’s a dark film that lacks the kind of riveting detail that a William deMille might have brought to it, but somehow manages to focus poignantly on the difficult road to manhood travelled by the third son, with a particularly fine performance by Eleanor Boardman as the young woman whose love he eventually returns.

NOTE:   The cover shown is that of the Grosset & Dunlap “Photoplay” edition, 1924.

MACBETH. Republic Pictures, 1948. Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy McDowall, Edgar Barrier, Peggy Webber. Adapted by Orson Welles (uncredited) from the play by William Shakespeare. Director: Orson Welles.

   On most occasions I need only the flimsiest of excuses to speak of Welles’ 1948 film of Macbeth, which he did for peanuts on the back lots at Republic Studios.

   Like most of his films, it was badly mauled before release, including completely new dubbing and the excision of about 20 minutes running time. It is now, however, restored and available on videotape, and you should run out and get it.

   Someone — me, I think — once said that every hardboiled novel and film noir owes a debt to Shakespeare. Welles seems to have sensed this, turning Macbeth into a very noirish-looking film indeed, with lots of shadows and heavy fog to hide the cheap sets, vaguely menacing blackmailers and detective-types, and a Lady Macbeth (Jeanette Nolan) straight out of James M. Cain.

   Edgar Barrier, normally a rather inexpressive actor, offers a fascinating interpretation of Banquo as co-conspirator, and Dan O’Herlihy makes a tough MacDuff. Welles naturally has a lot of fun with himself as Macbeth, lurching about drunk most of the time, and he has the whole cast speak in beautifully thick Scottish Brogue, so that “Sleep no more, Macbeth has murdered Sleep” comes out: “Slyeep nae Mairlrlrl, MaycBayth hae Mairlrlrlredairlrlrlred Slyeep!”

   A bit hard to follow in the denser passages, but fun to listen to.

EAST LYNNE. Fox, 1931. Ann Harding, Conrad Nagel, Cecilia Loftus, Clive Brook, O. P. Heggie, Eric Mayne, Beryl Mercer, Flora Shefffield, David Torrence. Based on the play by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and the novel by Mrs. Henry Wood. Art director: Joseph Urban; cinematographer: John F. Seitz. Director: Frank Lloyd. Shown at Cinecon 39, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2003.

   A fairly sizable portion of the audience decamped after the McCarthy interview, but memories of an enjoyable silent version of East Lynne starring Theda Bara (1916) kept me in my seat for this sound remake.

   The play on which both films were based was one of the most popular of Victorian melodramas. Ann Harding, as Lady Isabella, a London socialite, marries Nagel, a country solicitor.

   When they arrive at Nagel’s estate, Harding finds the household managed by his sister Cornelia (chillingly played by Cecilia Loftus) and even after the birth of a daughter, the power still resides in the sister, with Harding an uncomfortable and unaccepted subordinate.

   The arrival of an old friend (and former suitor) of Harding leads to her first display of opposition, an ill-advised move that results in her being sent from the house by her husband and eventually becoming the mistress of the former suitor (Clive Brook), with a life that spirals down into poverty.

   The climax pulls out all the dramatic stops (blindness, a possibility fatally ill child, vindication, penance and death). I will discretely lower the curtain on the specific plot details.

   Brook as the cad and Loftus as the possessive, vindictive sister gave performances that brought the film to intermittent life. Nagel’s profile was prominently featured.

   I’ve always found Harding to be a very controlled actress who didn’t inspire much feeling in me about her performances. That probably worked to the film’s advantage since it reined in some of the excesses of the plot.

   The film was handsomely staged (Joseph Urban was a notable production designer) and photographed. I still prefer the Bara version, but Victorian melodrama isn’t far from modern soapers, and a classy rendition still had the power to engage the sensibilities of at least some members of the audience.

Editorial Comment:   This movie version of East Lynne was nominated for an Oscar as Best Picture of the Year.