Wed 10 Aug 2016
MAE WEST IN THE MOVIES – Some Thoughts by Dan Stumpf.
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[10] Comments
Some Thoughts by Dan Stumpf
I recently got me to watching some of Mae West’s old Paramount movies, and for a fat girl, she don’t sweat much. Even in a post-code vehicle like Klondike Annie (1936) she manages some saucy one-liners (a prim cabin-mate asks Mae if she snores, and she replies, “I never had any complaints.”) and when let go full-throttle in Belle of the Nineties (1934), the results are fine indeed.
Directed by Leo McCarey in one of his Duck Soup moods, Belle features a sensuous musical montage at set at a revival meeting that I still don’t believe: one of those surprising moments of perverse genius that are why I watch movies.
Mae’s film debut was in an odd little gangster flick called Night After Night (1932), based on a Louis Bromfield story, “A Single Night.” (There’s a quip there somewhere.)
Directed with surprising competence by Archie Mayo, this offers Mae West in a picture-stealing supporting role as a former girlfriend of George Raft. Raft runs a classy speakeasy in the mansion formerly owned by neuveau-poor Constance Cummings, who is planning to marry Louis Calhern for his money, and obviously the accent here is more on romance than anything criminous, but there are some surprisingly edgy moments between Raft and a competitor who wants to “buy” him out, carried off neatly by`the actor’s casual flair for that sort of part.
And there’s an odd, moving moment when Raft realizes just how little he means to Cummings that carries a dramatic punch almost amazing, coming from a shallow actor like this and a flat-footed director like Mayo. Add the effect of a brand-new Mae West sashaying around tossing off her own one-liners, and you get quite a nice little movie indeed.
But alas. Alas I say. Since Mae West’s first film was in support of George Raft, I thought I’d follow it be watching her last film Sextette (1978) in which Raft has a cameo — along with Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, Walter Pidgeon, Alice Cooper, Keith Moon and Rona Barrett. They’re the lucky ones: poor Dom Deluise and Timothy Dalton have to stick around for the whole picture.
This is quite simply a bad movie. No, not simply Bad, but garishly, ennervatingly, appallingly awful and not even worth watching for its badness. The conceit here is that Mae West — eighty years old and looking every nano-second of it in makeup thick enough to embarrass Tammy Faye — is about to marry Timothy Dalton but is lusted after by hordes of handsome young men who keep rushing in and dancing around her.
Meanwhile, Deluise tries to get her to make love to the Russian ambassador for World Peace and Dalton sings “Love Will Keep Us Together” while Mae looks off camera and reads her lines from a cue card. Her timing is shot, the wit is gone, and the whole sad effect is like watching the last appearances of once-snappy performers like Bob Hope or Muhammad Ali.
This is a film you should cross the street just to keep from seeing, and one that will plague my mind in those long dark nights of the soul.
August 11th, 2016 at 6:54 pm
George Raft’s name is spelled “Raff” in the first two sentences of the fourth paragraph. Another wonderful piece by Dan Stumpf.
August 11th, 2016 at 7:32 pm
Sometimes those things just slip on by me. Thanks, Randy!
August 11th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
“Fat girl”? Really? Uh, no.
August 11th, 2016 at 8:40 pm
And SEXTETTE is still better than MYRA BRECKENRIDGE.
August 11th, 2016 at 11:34 pm
Just for fun …
I suppose you all know that George Raft’s birth name is Ranft (pronounced as it’s spelled).
August 12th, 2016 at 3:28 am
Deb, there’s an old joke that ends with “For a fat girl you don’t sweat much.” In her later films, Mae West was definitely on the chubby side, but still graceful and lively!
August 12th, 2016 at 4:24 am
In June 1932, Paramount wanted the better known actress TEXAS GUINAN [1884-1933] for the part of Joe Anton’s ex-girlfriend Maudie Triplett. But there were complications. TEXAS GUINAN was under contract to Warner Bros. and busy making a talkie based on Walter Winchell’s script “Broadway Through a Keyhole.”
And also George Raft wanted Mae, his sometime lover, to get a chance to break into the screen trade.
Obviously, people don’t realize that Mae West was actually doing a TEXAS GUINAN impersonation onscreen — including several echoes of well-known Guinanisms such as “no sale” and “goodness had nothing to do with it.” When Raft later commented that Mae “stole everything except the cameras,” he also meant Mae grabbed a few of those choice Guinanisms.
. . . Anyway, I wish you had included “I’m No Angel.”
. . . And since I’m here, I invite you all to my Annual Mae West Tribute on August 17th. It is free and we even serve food.
. . . Come on up, Steve, ya mug!
See more on my Mae West Blog – – MaeWest.blogspot.com
August 12th, 2016 at 9:31 am
Mike, No I did not know George Raft was born as a Ranft. It would have been funny if the OCR scanning (which is what I used to reproduce and post this review) had come out that way instead of Raff!
August 12th, 2016 at 9:43 am
Mae Westside
I just made the link to your blog active, and I highly recommend that anyone reading these comments go visit it.
Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad we caught your eye!
Steve
August 12th, 2016 at 6:30 pm
In the movie NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, Raft has two ex-girlfriends: one is needy and whiny and she moves the plot along. The other is Mae West, who contributes nothing to the story and everything to the movie.
I found out later that Mae was originally signed to do the whiny-girl part but when she saw the script she insisted on writing her own dialogue and they had to create a new character to accommodate her — which was a smart move!