Wait while I look up who did the singing* for Gloria Grahame on the excellent and terrifying number, "Ace in the Hole," in Naked Alibi, because it was so not her. She certainly did her own her "dancing."

It was a packed house at the Castro Theatre last night for the "Bad Girls" Noir City X double feature, Naked Alibi  (1954) and Pickup (1951) and worth every yawn and creaking joint this morning. What a wacky picture Naked Alibi is. Everyone was slapping somebody or shootin' 'em or stabbin' 'em or kissin' 'em...hard.  Sterling Hayden plays a seemingly-psycho cop who is convinced that the seemingly-innocent Gene Barry, local baker and family man, has murdered a few cops (one of whom was the ubiquitous Max Showalter) and becomes obsessed with proving it even after he is dismissed from the police force for brutality. Then for some reason they all go to Mexico.

Once over the border, we learn that Gene Barry has a hot cookie on the side in the form of Gloria Grahame and that Sterling Hayden has virtually no police instincts, as he is lured into a dark alley, stabbed and robbed within an hour of arriving. Billy Chapin, shoeshine boy, becomes the catalyst for Hayden meeting Grahame so they can begin their doomed romance. Eventually everyone (except Billy Chapin) goes back over the border and Gene Barry is revealed to be the murderous heel Sterling Hayden always knew he was. Gloria Grahame doesn't make it, sad to say, and I'm sorry, but Sterling Hayden is still psycho.

Gloria Grahame to Sterling Hayden: "I don't understand you, you don't understand me. We have a lot in common."
_________
* The singing was done by Jo Ann Greer, says the excellent site "Movie Dubbers" and the angel who posted the song on YouTube (it starts about a minute in). 

Beverly Michaels is my new best inappropriate girlfriend who my parents think is a bad influence and forbid me to hang arround with. I can't express how much I enjoyed her performance in Pickup, a surprisingly funny, moderately suspenseful glimpse into the life of bored bad girl in a small town.

Hugo Haas starred in, wrote, and directed this picture. Apparently, this was the first in a series of films Haas made throughout the 1950s on exactly the same topic — hot, mean girl takes shlubby middle-aged man for all he's worth (this from Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir, who gives a short lecture before each movie. Muller, bless him, is kind of a toolbag, but he really knows a lot, so it's worth sitting through the smarm). I'll be trolling for more of Haas's pictures, so stay tuned.

Contrary to what the posters would have you think, Pickup, isn't especially hardboiled. Each character is believeable and flawed; their choices stupid and human. Yes, it's a B noir, but the story is ultimately about loneliness, companionship, and forgiveness — even "Betty" (Beverly Michaels) isn't completely rotten. I'm not going to elaborate, because you really should see it if you can.

Betty stepping out of Hunky's jalopy once she sees the railroad "shack" he lives in: "When's the floor show start?"

Two words sum up The Caretakers (1963) pretty nicely and those words are "Jerry Paris." Why? Because the picture is lousy with directors, actors, producers, and writers of 1960s televsion. Jerry Paris himself has a writer and producer credit on this film, which turns out to be a cross between The Snake Pit (1948) and The Cobweb (1955), also borrowing liberally from both.

The movie opens with Polly Bergen running frantically through the streets trying to escape the noise in her head. She winds up in a movie theatre where the trailers are all about rollercoasters, racecars, and guns and such, so Polly breaks into a cold sweat and runs screaming to the front of the theatre, from which she is taken to the mental hospital, then the Nuthatch, while concerned husband, Robert Vaughn, stands outside doors wringing his hat.  This Nuthatch has a new director, the wooden Robert Stack, who is trying to bring a kinder, gentler type of treatment to the patients (a veritable smorgasboard of 60s B actresses) — over the dead body of Head Nurse Joan Crawford, who doesn't even show up until 31 minutes into the picture, where, I swear to god, in every scene,  the shadow from a louvered door or window fell across her forehead. Nurse Crawford is Old School.

The music (Elmer Bernstein) was quite good, especially during the scene where Polly Bergen finds herself in the men's ward. Not the best situation for an attractive brunette.

I thought it was interesting that Jerry Paris was so involved in this picture, because it is quite a departure from his usual projects. The only other producer credits he has are 123 episodes of Happy Days (a hundred and twenty-three) and three TV movies:

** Ernie, Madge and Artie (TV 1974): The ghost of dead husband threatens marriage of remarried widow. Starring Cloris Leachman Dick van Patten.

** Every Man Needs One (TV 1972): Male chauvinist architect pressured into hiring a feminist assistant. Connie Stevens, Ken Berry [NOTE: Don't you wish there were a Crappy TV Movies of the 1970s cable channel? CrapTV?]

** But I Don’t Want to Get Married (TV 1970); widowed accountant dumbfounded to have  marriage-minded women descend upon him. Herschel Bernardi, Shirley Jones, Brandon Cruz.

See? Not a hint of mental illness (putting aside Potsie, obviously). It must have meant something important to him  to make this picture, so it's a shame that it couldn't have been more original.  That said, Lucien Ballard was nominated for a Best Cinematography, Black and White Academy Award (he lost to James Wong Howe for Hud — totally), and was nominated for Golden Globes Best Picture, Best Director (Hall Bartlett of Jonathan Livingston Seagull), and Best Actress (Polly Bergen) Awards.

Just under three weeks until the 10th Annual Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco. I saw the preview last week while waiting for Singin' in the Rain to start (second on the program with On the Town) and wished they'd cut it about 40 seconds shorter. Alas, they did something unfortunate typographically with the "X" that signifies "10" and the "Y" in "City" and decided to go soft porn in the promo, which is both a misinterpretation of noir and a lame design treatment. Very 1982.

Happily, The program itself looks good. I'll miss Angie Dickinson and a bunch of great San Francisco-based films, but I will get there just in time for Gilda and The Money Trap and won't have to leave until right after The Great Gatsby (with Ruth Hussey!!) and Three Strangers.

Stay tuned for pre-program preparatory and in-program notes. Meanwhile: Happy New Year!

"John, when you're kissing me, don't talk about plumbing."

I always forget about Christmas in Connecticut, showing now on TCM, and it's such a sweet picture. Barbara Stanwyck is so good at not knowing how to do anything remotely domestic. Plus S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall is in it, fresh from an earlier appearance on TCM this morning in the painful Never Say Goodbye (1946), with Errol Flynn, Eleanor Parker, and the precocious (see "painful") Patti Brady. I confess that I had been confusing him with Gregory Ratoff, Max Fabian from All About Eve, which was a terrible mistake.

No one can convey distaste for a man like Stanwyck. Or desire.

Speaking of which, she's about to pounce on the affable,  eligible Dennis  Morgan so I'm going to cut this short. But first, I've noticed two striking sociological oddities for  the time. First, an African-American restaurant worker defined the word  catastrophe for "Cuddles" Sakall without "dialect" and in an obviously well-educated way. Not bad for 1945. Second, the women who drop off the babies for the ruse are working women, unphased and unapologetic at having their kids looked after while they work at the war plant.

Interesting.

And short lived.

You know, it just occurred to me that the reason I'm not as crazy as the rest of you are about Jimmy Stewart is because his character was so cluelessly mean to Ruth Hussey's Elizabeth Imbrie  in The Philadelphia Story.  Yes, this is unfair, but she's just that good, I guess. Or he's really like that.

Today is Ruth Hussey's 100th Birthday, born in Providence, Rhode Island, October 30, 1911. I can count the number of pictures I've seen her in on one hand and a couple of toes, but she makes a big impression in all of them. Make it easy on yourself and watch the easiest to get: The Women (1939) or The Philadelphia Story (1940), which also grants you a double dose of Virginia Weidler.
 
Meanwhile, here she is in a strange episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "Mink" (1956).

According to the web stats for my little Blorg, the term that drove people to  istavisio.com the most this month was "Max Showalter Gay." Lower down, but still  on the list are "max showalter married" and "Max Showalter + Gay." Sure enough, if you type "max showalter gay" in the Google, Mildred's Fatburgers comes up  second, but doesn't go to the right post.

This  is the right post, for all the curious (or bi-curious) Max Showalter fans out there: What's Up With Max Showalter? (2/18/2011).

He really was a fine character actor, playing sad clowns especially well (see peculiar YouTube post below) and you've probably seen him in at least three things if you've ever caught a Late Late Show or watched television with any regularity between 1954 and 1983.

Max Showalter was much loved by his peers, fans, and community, as this memorial tribute in Variety (10/9/2000) attests. My blog-friend, Carl, author of the excellent Hollywood Movie Memories site remembers Max Showalter fondly as a great promoter of the arts in Connecticut, where the Max Showalter Foundation contributes to support local theater in his honor.

Let's see, including this next one,  I've mentioned Max Showalter 11 times. Take that, number one Google search return.

p.s. my favorite term on the list was "joan fontaine posture," but I
suspect that was my sister.

I've been reading Adam Hochschild's excellent book, To End All Wars, and just got to the part where famed explorer Ernest Shackleton washes up on the shores of  a Norwegian whaling station after a year and a half of wandering across the Antarctic and sailing in a small boat by dead reckoning more than 800 miles from Elephant Island. Because the expedition began around the same time the Great War started, he wanted to know when and how it ended, only to learn that it was still going on. "Millions are dead and the world has gone mad,"  he was told, instantly rendering the particular type of heroism demonstrated by Shackleton and his crew obsolete.

It reminded me that I had seen a documentary some years ago about the voyage of the Endurance that contained film footage taken by a member of the expedition, Australian photographer, Frank Hurley. So I decided to track it down and watch it again.

I couldn't remember whether I'd seen the The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition (2001), starring the voice of Liam Neeson, or some accidental channel-surfed episode of Nova, Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance (1999). I found the latter on YouTube and watched it in little pieces and realized the film I was remembering was, in fact, South, the silent film made by Frank Hurley himself and the one I'd stumbled across on the shelves of the late, great Video Vault, the only store in my area of its kind that was choked to death last year by exorbitant rent and (yes, I know) Netflix.

The photographs and stills from the expedition are breathtaking. I present some of them here in this slideshow.

The story is heroic, terrifying, deeply moving, and true. If you want to know what happened to all those dogs, please watch the playlist of (what I think is) the Nova documentary on YouTube.

I broke down and put South on my Netflix queue. But I feel sick about it.

Night of the Hunter is one of those movies I always think of as being in color and am always wrong and am always surprised that I'm wrong. Because I recall scenes — Robert Mitchum riding a horse, singing that creepy tune in the dawn light across the horizon from Billy Chapin's terrified vantage point; the children floating up river in the skiff — in rich, Michael Powelly colors. And yet, not in color afterall, which makes it, to me, an excellent movie. In fact, I am also repeatedly fooled in this way by Powell's The Edge of the World, which is not that great, but some shots are so lovely it makes you want to cry.

There are obviously things wrong with it:  the cloying little girl; having Lillian Gish address the camera when no one else does; the frequent beating over the head with metaphors from nature; not ending when it should — when Billy Chapin breaks down under the burden he's carried and Gish carries him off; and, frankly, a good portion of the soundtrack. But so much of it is beautiful, terrifying, and dreamlike.

I watched it last night on my computer (thanks Netflix) somewhere over Denver in an airplane. We'd just passed over an impressive line of active thunderstorms and it only seemed fitting to watch an equally beautiful and terrifying picture during what I was certain were my last moments on earth. Robert Mitchum turns in one of the best representations of evil ever and Shelley Winters isn't all that bad. Yes, she winds up under water — AGAIN — but that was kind of her "thing."

Perhaps one reason the film didn't do so well when it came out is because the trailer (thanks again, Netflix) promises it to be about the wantonness of females and retribution of many types, when it turns out to be about how very hard it is to be bound to people by blood and the awesome responsibility people have (or take on) when they decide to form meaningful relationships with  one another — as a parent, a wife, a sibling, or a trusted friend.

As Icey Spoon, Evelyn Varden gives her take on the unhappy necessity of conjugal responsiblities by explaining that she "just lies there and thinks about my canning." Her husband is standing Right Over There, by the way, shrugging. Clearly they're companionable. By the way, Evelyn Varden had a similar role in the more flawed, less chilling, but ever entertaining film, The Bad Seed.

Varden's character goes nuts (and drunk, apparently) with the guilt of not protecting her friend, Shelley Winters, from the evil Robert Mitchum and the possible destruciton of her children. See? Giving crappy advice to a friend has consequences!   

And speaking of sibling attachments, my sister and I apparently share a seasonal inclination to watch The Night of the Hunter.  Here is an exchange from a blog post to my Daily Earworm that took place almost exactly this time last year.

The original question was whether my sister recalled us having the 45 of the Close Encounters theme, which she answered "nah" and included the excellent aside, "Owl. Bunny. AAAGH."  Of course I know Shelley Winters didn't drown in this film, but she was dead and under water, and that's all that counts. 

(Ooh, that sounds like a good name for a stoner band). Before I recap yesterday's events I have to say something about the show "Celebrity Ghost Stories," which I'm watching right now. Never heard of it before this morning, but it looks like several C- and D-List celebrities come on and relate a personal experience with the paranormal. 

I tuned in on the middle of some lesser Baldwin's account of a phantom bellhop, but watched all of Tempestt Bledsoe's story about a dead relative warning her to get out of a hotel room that was about to catch fire. Tracy Nelson (who I've always quite liked) is now talking about Erroll Flynn's haunted house, where the Nelson family lived for a short time.

So the thing about this show is that the stories are re-enacted by re-enactors to illustrate the experience of actual actors. Wacky! Said re-enacting takes all the spookiness out of the retelling and, honestly, who hires these people? The guy they picked for Erroll Flynn was a pimply insult!

Anyway, anyway... about yesterday. It was lovely, particularly since none of us went outside at all for hours. Here are some thoughts about the program.

I was the only one who watched All the Kings Men, which I did while cutting up canteloupe and veggies and such. It's a pretty good movie, but I've always found Mercedes McCambridge difficult to like. Granted, she generally plays unlikeable characters, but she's not even someone I love to hate. I just kinda hate her. 

But she won an Academy Award for her performance in this film, which I can understand. Sort of. As a film, All the King's Men is better as a book.

As for Advise & Consent, the consensus around the room was that it could stand to lose about 45 minutes of civics exposition at the beginning, but once the blackmail kicked in, it really got going.

Also, none of us could believe that Franchot Tone was only in his mid-50s at the time because he looked like a corpse, and George Grizzard needed to work on his Inside Voice.

Of course, there's much more to The Manchurian Candidate than the improbable beginnings of the romance between Frank Sinatra's character and Janet Leigh's, but that's what we all talked about.

Unlike Mercedes McCambridge, Angela Lansbury is delightful to hate! Chilling!

Tip: if you can watch this film with someone who grew up in a Soviet Republic, you'll get a lot more of the jokes between the Chinese and the Russians.

Network totally holds up. It was much funnier than any of us who'd seen it before remembered and also much scarier, because it's all pretty much come true.

The most disturbing parts of course were the love scenes between William Holden and Faye Dunaway. Just ick. And ickier than the supposed reverse ick of Sunset Boulevard, Bill, don't you see that?

Plus what kind of idiot would leave Beatrice Straight for that skinny, mean thing with the bad lower teeth? There was a Brit in attendance who pointed it out, I might add, so come on — get caps!

Well, I should really go. Diane Ladd is telling a story about a ghost at the Watergate Hotel.

In honor of the heat and what's going on (or not going on) over the river in D.C., I'm having some friends over to watch a few films about political intrigue, power-mongering, and sensationalism. Updates to follow.