cinema obscura: Mervyn LeRoy's "Home Before Dark" (1958)

A shameless, obscenely entertaining guilty pleasure, "Home Before Dark" is a tangy, campy soap opera in which director Mervyn LeRoy out-Sirks Douglas Sirk. This handsome 1958 Warner Bros. film deserves the success - and the following - that Sirk's "Imitation of Life" enjoyed a year later. Instead, it has fallen into oblivion. Who knows what happened? Perhaps, at 136 minutes, the film was a tad too long to be fully companionable for audiences. Too long? Personally, I wouldn't sacrifice a minute.

Or perhaps Joseph F. Biroc's handsome black-and-white cinematography put off people who were expecting Technicolored glamour. Or maybe, Jean Simmons, its leading lady, was more of an actress than a Star, unlike "Imitation of Life's" Lana Turner who clearly relished the high-camp theatricality of Sirk's piece.

The skeletal plot, written by Eileen and Robert Bassing (based on a novel by Eileen), is also something of a heartbreaker, with Simmons cast as Charlotte, a woman unwanted by her pretentious husband Arnold (Dan O'Herlihy), who conspires with her stepmother Inez (Mabel Albertson) and stepsister Joan (Rhonda Fleming) to steal Charlotte's inheritance from her father. Charlotte is especially fragile, having just been released from a state mental facility in Massachusetts - and it becomes clear what drove her there. Exacerbating matters, her husband is having an affair with the stepsister.

LeRoy masterfully exploits the juiciness of his material, taking it into camp when necessary, such as the delicious sequence in which, Charlotte, more unstable than usual, has her hair done up like Joan's platinum 'do, buys a dress that Joan would wear and generally makes a fool of herself at a dinner party - all to impress Arnold and win his love.

Simmons, who gives a quiet, relatively simple performance considering the material, won the New York Film Critics award for this top-notch, seriously neglected film that has never been made available in any format. Bring it back already.

Cinema Obscura is a recurring feature of The Passionate Moviegoer, devoted to those films that have been largely forgotten. Suggestions welcome.

(Artwork: Studio publicity shot of Jean Simmons in Warner Bros.' "Home Before Dark")

What's with HBO?

Can anyone out there please explain why HBO, the premiere cable channel, doesn't show any of its feature films in wide screen? Never. Ever.

Yes, it shows its own original films letterboxed in wide screen.

And it shows its original series, such as "The Sopranos," in wide screen. Even Bill Maher and Bryant Gumble.

Their theatrical trailers are shown in wide screen, but not the films themselves.

Why?

Does anyone know? Can anyone explain this bizarre inconsistency? If so, share.

Enlighten me.

(Artwork: It isn't TV, it's HBO)

Gidget Goes Washington

"............Hey, what's so tough about running the country?............"

For better or worse - probably worse - we live in a celebrity-conscious country with a particular communal, unhealthy weakness for Movie Stars.

Our obsessions are dictated by a media which force feed us a controlled diet restricted to one personality, usually to the exclusion of others.

Case in Point: Twenty years ago, Tom Cruise was the Chosen One, singled out from among an auspicious group of young actors, many of them much more accomplished than Cruise. Today, it's Shia LaBeouf, whose exact appeal actually confounds me even more than Cruise's.

The process has to be relentless because the public, way too easily distracted, eventually gets bored. But you also run the risk of overkill.

All of this is in preamble to commenting on the state of politics in general and the current election in particular, a situation wherein the power of "personality" has somehow managed to trump important issues.

Less than two weeks ago, opinion-makers were preoccupied with the impossible chic of Barak Obama. Now, we have a popular new flavor - one Sarah Palin - popular at least with the scoop-driven media.

To be perfectly honest, I really have no idea at all what the public actually thinks of Sarah Palin - does anyone? - only what the pervasive, intrusive, repetitive pundits/opportunists at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have to say.

Right now, she's being marketed to a fare-thee-well - like a movie star. Her party has shrewdly given her an exclusive air, making it about as difficult for the press to get to her as, say, Angelina Jolie. Two weeks ago, very few people even knew who she was; now she's on the cover of Time.

And she already has her own action figure. The machine seems to be moving faster than ususal.

A Star Is Born. Overnight.

The question is, will the public permit itself to be manipulated by the media noisemakers once again, follow suit on cue and obediently, and eagerly, queue up at the box office - er, I mean voting booth?

Only time will tell, but for what it's worth, I purposely avoided using a shot of Palin here because, frankly, she already bores me. Overkill.

(Artwork: Sandra Dee, left, Mary LaRoche and Arthur O'Connell as Sarah and The McCains)

life, documented: God Backwards Is Dog

If there is a God - and at this point in my life, I seriously doubt that there is - how can He (or She) explain the likes of Michael Vick and the animals at his notorious dogfighting compound?

I'm not talking about the four-legged animals that were routinely exposed to horrors there, but to the alleged humans that performed these horrors on innocent creatures - babies, really - on a daily basis.

The picture above is of Georgia, a female pit bull that was rescued from Vick's disgusting Bad Newz Kennels by members of Best Friends Animal Society, who are profiled tonight (at 9 p.m., est.) in Darcy Dennett's new documentary, "Saving the Michael Vick Dogs," airing as a two-hour episode of National Geographic's DogTown series.

Doesn't Georgia have wonderful, trusting eyes?

She was forcibly bred on a daily basis, with her tormentors using what Vick called "rape stands" to keep the females stationary while they were being... Well, you know. Georgia also had all of her teeth pulled, presumably by a professional vet (and reprehensible human being) so that she would not bite the males sexually mauling her.

Yes, the ugly idea of dogfighting is just the tip of a really treacherous iceberg. What precedes it is truly grotesque and has rarely been documented - until now. This is a story that even Oprah, an avowed dog-lover, ignored.

These poor, unsuspecting creatures, unlucky to be adopted by animal abusers, were enslaved and tormented 24/7 for their fights - in genuinely horrific training programs. I've always been rather disturbed by the arbitrariness of animals' fates - some end up as pampered pets, some as food. In the case of dogs, they can be fortunate enough to become someone's companion - Man's Best Friend - or arbitrarily (there's that word again) condemned as cheap cash cows for the greedy and inhumane.

The females, like Georgia, are literally bred to death producing puppies that are then (1) strapped onto treadmills for hours at a time, (2) conditioned to hate their own species, (3) starved for days at a time and (4) punished in unspeakable ways when they fail to "perform."

And other animals – cats, kittens, puppies and other dogs – are sacrificed as "training bait."

I think it’s safe to assume that these animals weren't cuddled or played with, or walked, brushed or even patted on the head. Instead, they have their ears cut off, probably while still conscious. And then, as we've read, they are "executed" via hanging, drowning, body slams and worse when they are no longer useful – i.e., profitable.

I can’t even begin to imagine the constant stress that all these animals experience during their short, sad lives. It still goes on - in other "kennels." And I truly believe these poor animals are driven insane by this treatment.

Dennett's documentary profiles Georgia and three other unfortunate, traumatized dogs that Best Friends is trying to rehabilitate.

The odd thing - what's so touching - is how forgiving these animals are, how gentle they are. I find it hard to wrap my mind around a God who would put these innocents at the mercy of thugs.

As Anita Gates points out in her excellent review in The New York Times today, it is unlikely that Vick needed the money brought in by this cruel, dubious business. He made millions tossing a ball. He had it made.

No, this is simply a matter of pure, mean-spirited cruelty for the sake of cruelty - cruelty almost gleefully executed. And that a black man, whose ancestors more than likely experienced approximately what Vick's dog endured, would participate in this torture is truly mind-blowing.

Vick, still serving his 23 months in prison, apologized to the kids he let down. He never bothered apologizing to the animals he casually abused.

So much for Man’s Best Friend, right?

Note in Passing: Check out the hugely affecting Peace for Dogs video. Sweet. Not at all graphic.

(Artwork: Two views of Georgia, saved from a life of forced breeding and other assorted daily cruelties in the documentary, "Saving the Michael Vick Dogs," presented as part of National geographic's "Dogtown" series; two dogs tear apart Vick - only in effigy unfortunately)

hearsay

Old movies, because of what they are, serve as their own documentations. If one is curious about a certain title – or about a performance in it – there’s no reason to resort to archival materials or to research what was written about the film at the time of its release.

As wonderful as it is to peruse the vintage reviews of critics Stanley Kaufmann, Pauline Kael, James Agee, Manny Farber, Dwight MacDonald, Graham Greene and Andrew Sarris, the fact is, one simply has to look at the movie itself, first-hand, to form an educated opinion.

Thank God for film.

With theater, it’s different. Until recently, stage productions were not preserved on film or video (and most contemporary shows, for some bizarre, short-sighted reason, still aren’t). A reputedly legendary theater performance would die when the show folded and, consequently, all that’s left of stage hits from 50 or so years ago – Broadway’s celebrated Golden Era – are the dim memories of the remaining few people who saw them.

I bring up this contrast because, in a depressingly routine piece in today’s New York Times, titled “Singing! Dancing! Adapting! Stumbling!,” second-string theater critic Charles Isherwood continues the legend of just how great Ethel Merman was in the original 1959 production of “Gypsy.”

Isherwood flat out states that it was a “fatal” decision not to cast Merman in a film version of the show – “fatal” being an awfully dramatic adjective even for an excitable theater critic to bandy about so freely.

But wait.

Exactly how does Isherwood know that Merman was great? Is he basing his opinion solely on the creaky old Columbia original-cast recording? He certainly didn’t see the original 1959 production. He couldn’t have: My references show Isherwood being born in 1964, five years after “Gypsy” opened and closed on Broadway. (Ben Brantley, the Times' chief theater critic, was only five when "Gypsy" opened.) No, Isherwood's comment is based strictly on Broadway folklore, dusty opinions handed down from generation to generation and most likely distorted with each passing.

It’s hearsay - hearsay written with authority, albeit empty authority. And I’m not sure that hearsay, repeating an old opinion, has a valid place in an essay trying to pass itself off as original critical analysis.

Hearsay comes cheap.
At the risk of seriously dating myself here, I happened to actually see the original Broadway production of “Gypsy” – it was my first Broadway show – and have memories of Merman as a loud, forceful singer but a rather indifferent, aggressive, although not-altogether-unpleasant actress.

For some reason, the word “overrated” comes to mind.

Except for a few solipsistic theater types, I doubt if anyone seriously thinks that Merman could have carried a film of “Gypsy.” I’d be willing to wager that even Ethel herself was realistic enough to know that it would never happen, her film work being generally uneventful up to that time.

Exacerbating this matter, the Times TV section ran the following unsigned opinion when Turner Classics recently aired Warners’ 1962 version of “Gypsy”: “Russell can’t touch Broadway’s Merman.” Wanna bet that this anonymous Times writer didn’t see the original stage production either?

Hearsay. It’s all hearsay. And it’s ... worthless.

Much more worthwhile would be an analysis of why "Gypsy" has never been particularly popular with the general public. True, critics and theater aficionados love it, and gay men adore it, but the fact remains that it has never enjoyed a long run in any of its various incarnations.

Even such lesser shows as "Beatlemania" and 1989's all-but-forgotten "Grand Hotel" had longer runs. The public likes "Gypsy" alright but it also seems to keep it at arm's length, rather cautiously. Let's just say that, to Middle America, it's no "Phantom of the Opera."

The Russell referred to in that Times TV quote is, of course, Rosalind Russell, who gave a nuanced, fully-realized performance in the film. In a way, the Times is right, in spite of itself: Russell can’t touch Merman. That’s because she’s way ahead of Merman in the role. Russell’s better.

To paraphrase what I said earlier, we can’t go back and evaluate Merman’s performance. We can only read tattered, yellowed old reviews. But Russell’s performance on film – and on video and DVD – speaks for itself. It’s there to see and to savor. We don’t need hearsay.

We can see for ourselves that she's actually very good in the film.

Incidentally, Russell, who sang in “Wonderful Town” on Broadway just a few years earlier, couldn’t meet the demands of the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim score, and the great Lisa Kirk was brought in to dub most of the songs. The vocal match-up remains uncanny. And one more thing: The late, husky-voiced Kirk, with her driving, razor-sharp delivery, is inarguably the definitive interpreter of the Styne-Sondheim songs – better than Merman and, yes, way better than (dare I say it?) Patti Lupone.

I’m curious. What do you think of critics clinging to hearsay in reviews, giving the impression of having seen something that they, well, haven't?

It’s a habit I personally find hugely deceptive and vaguely disreputable.

But critics do it all the time. I mean, Peter Bogdanovich’s exquisite "At Long Last Love" is usually damned by people who haven’t seen it, who have only heard about it - although it does have a loyal following.

Note in Passing: BTW, the Times piece that inspired this post is one of those journalism perennials - in this case, a critic’s self-debate about the pros and cons of stage musicals and their film versions.

Am I imagining things or is this the umpteenth time that New York’s paper of record has wasted precious news space on this subject? It seems every time a new film musical is released, this standard piece is hauled out.

Anyway, reading it – or trying to read it – I was reminded of a weary old whore tired of using the same dated tricks on her johns. Flailing around for a hook this time out, the Times uses the occasion to trash, once again, the new movie version of “Mamma Mia!,” one of its film critics already having had a go at it. But the Times isn’t alone here. No, critics in general have been disproportionately enraged by "Mamma Mia!"

With their noted attention to (easily-manipulated) minutia and with all the subtlety and pettiness of schoolyard bullies, America's diminished and diminishing movie critics have ganged up on this harmless, purely pleasurable film as if they were engaged in a personal fight with something the approximate size of - oh, let's see - the U.S. government.

You know, there's a reason why critics have been traditionally stereotyped as miserable people deserving of their misery.

(Artwork: We only have dimmed memories - and old photos - of Merman in "Gypsy"; Russell, with a little help from Lisa Kirk, performs the seminal "Rose's Turn" at the conclusion of the 1962 film version)