Fallen Angel (1945): A Blend of Good and Silly

 

FALLEN ANGEL (1945).

Directed by Otto Preminger

20^th Century Fox, 97 minutes, not rated.

★★ ½

 

There are at least three other movies titled Fallen Angel, but his one is from 1945, just as World War II was ending. In American mythology, the troops came home to a booming economy. That’s not so; it took several years for the economy to convert to peacetime use. Fallen Angel stars, Dana Andrews as Eric Stanton, a veteran but also a drifter. He jumps on a bus headed for San Francisco, but is booted out in the small town of Walton, California, as he can’t afford the entire fare.

 

Stanton decides to stay in Walton for a while, because he’s a grifter as well as a drifter. He enters Pop’s Eats and bums a meal from Pop (Percy Kilbride) and overhears him telling Mark Judd (Charles Bickford), an ex-New York City policeman now working in Walton, that he worries about where Stella (Linda Darnell) might be. Judd tells Pop and others in the greasy spoon diner not to fret because Stella is a free spirit who will appear when she feels like it. Sure enough, the lusty Stella comes waltzing in as if nothing is out of the ordinary. She’s quite a looker, but is not impressed by Eric’s pick-up banter. Eric nonetheless identifies Stella as flirtatious and licentious, so he is not deterred by her rejection.

 

Eric needs money. At this point of the film, we have a drifter pursuing a femme fatale, classic film noir material. Alas, Director Otto Preminger stuck too carefully to the forgettable novel from which the script devolved. A contrived set-up leads Eric to the Faye sisters. He encounters Joe (Olin Howard) the “drummer” for a mentalist/fortune teller, but he’s a poor salesman. Eric grabs some tickets and hands out some for free, gambling that word of mouth will swell the box office. He’s right, but he also has to convince “Professor” Madley (John Carradine) to jazz up his show. Madley’s performance is trite, but when channels the spirit of Abraham Mills, everyone is drawn to his instant séance, as Mills was a beloved mayor and the richest man in Walton.

 

Eric continues to see Stella, but so too do other men (single and married). The implication is that Stella is also a hooker, but Eric finds himself falling for her. Stella’s morals aside, she has a clear goal; she wants to marry a handsome man who can provide her with a home of her own. That’s not Eric! He’s making some money from the professor, but not enough to buy a house. Eric tries another scheme to make money. The séance attracted the attention of Clara Mills (Anne Revere), the eldest daughter of the late Abraham Mills. She doesn’t think much of Eric, but his goal is to marry Clara’s younger sister, the naïve June (Alice Faye), the heir to most of the Mills fortune. If he can marry June and gain access to some of her dough, he can divorce her and provide for Stella. Sure enough, June is swept off her feet by the smooth-talking Eric. Their honeymoon evening is not exactly poems and flowers. Eric waits until June is asleep and goes to Stella. Big mistake!

 

That very evening, Stella is murdered and nearly every man in Walton who dated Stella, including Eric, is a suspect. Judd tries to beat a confession out of Dave Atkins (Bruce Cabot but he’s not Judd’s real target, and Eric knows it. He convinces June to flee with him to a dingy hotel room in San Francisco until he can work out who killed Stella. You might think that June would give him the bum’s rush, but she actually loves Eric.

 

Again, Preminger waded into water so shallow that Eric’s revelation of the true killer would scarcely get your feet moist. Preminger had a hard time getting this film made. Andrews was not his choice for leading man, but Alice Faye had been a big musical star for 20^th century Fox and wanted him. She was also promised she could sing a torch song for the film, but it didn’t make the final cut. Nonetheless, Faye called the shots, which perhaps explains the film’s unevenness. Andrew is actually very good as Eric, but so many things were over the top that we think of the film that could’ve been rather than what was.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Man With the Golden Arm Highlights Sinatra's Acting Chops

 

Preminger wouldn't allow anyone to replace the above design

 

 

 

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955)

Directed by Otto Preminger

United Artists, 119 minutes, Not-rated and Not-approved

★★★

 

Younger readers might not know that crooner Frank Sinatra was also a pretty good actor. He was the star of The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1955 movie directed by Otto Preminger. Perhaps only a director with the gravitas and moxie of Preminger could have made it. It was based upon a 1949 novel by Nelson Algren, and the first American film of the sound era to deal with heroin addiction.

 

The movie rights to Algren’s book were sold to John Garfield in 1949, who planned to star in it. The first script was rejected by the Movie Production Code Authority (MPCA) and the Catholic League of Decency (CLD). Garfield died in 1952, and when filming started as “An Otto Preminger Production,” Algren sued based his 1949 contract promising he’d get a large percentage of the royalties. (Algren ran out of money and dropped his suit.) Preminger began to shoot before the script got MCPA or CLD approval, which were not forthcoming. Preminger simply ignored them. Moreover, the script was sent to both Sinatra and Marlon Brando; Sinatra agreed almost immediately as he was still angry that Brando got the lead in On the Waterfront.

 

Sinatra played the role of Frankie Machine, an addict recently released from a federal narcotics farm in Kentucky. The old crowd welcomes him back to Chicago, including Sparrow (Arnold Stang), an oddball–perhaps mentally slow– who makes his living selling street dogs, even if he has to put shoe polish on canines for those who want a “black” dog. Sparrow, in turn, follows Frankie around like a puppy. In lockup, Frankie learned to play the drums and harbors dreams of landing a place in a big band jazz outfit. He also insists that he’s clean and wants no part of drugs, no matter how often street provider Zero Schwiefka (Robert Strauss) offers, or Frankie’s wheelchair-bound wife “Zosh” Sophia (Eleanor Parker) begs him to help her relieve her pain. She too clings to him like glue and, though he doesn’t love her, he feels beholden as she was injured in an auto accident when Frankie was driving while drunk.

 

Zero also wants Frankie to “deal” for him, by which is meant a card dealer for Schwiefka’s all-night, high-stakes poker games. Frank is also burning the midnight oil pursuing Molly Novotny, a stripper and escort. She was Frank’s flame before he married Zosh out of guilt. Band tryouts further exhaust Frankie and Schwiefka is only too happy to stick a needle in his arm to give him a boost or bail him out when he’s pinched in a suit stolen for him by Sparrow.

 

Preminger’s Chicago bears resemblance to the slums of Hoboken in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront–gritty, filled with temptation, and easy-to-fall. As Zosh guilt-trips Frankie to the point where he’s smothered by her, he retreats to Molly’s first-floor flat and rekindles their romance. There’s a lot about Zosh that’s fishy, even as Frankie spirals downward into new addiction. Why, for example, has “Nifty Louie” Fomorowski (Darren McGavin) been hanging around with Zosh? Even as he becomes more and more dependent on a fix, Frank knows the wheels are about to fly off for him, though he’s on the eve of realizing his dream. When he tries to bum fix money from Molly, she proposes a different solution; she will help him if he agrees to go cold turkey. If not, she will never see him again.

 

The Man with the Golden Arm implies that the golden arm is Frankie’s drumming riffs, but we all know that the real reference is to injecting heroin and/or morphine. By today’s standard, the film is predictable and melodramatic, but Sinatra is terrific in it. His was one of the most extended and harrowing depictions of going cold turkey in cinematic history. Call it also a film with an A-level cast: Sinatra, Novak, McGavin, and Strauss were all big stars, even if the eccentric Stang stole a few scenes. The film didn’t do as well as On the Waterfront, but it did get three Oscar nominations and was added to the National Film Registry. The jazz soundtrack from Elmer Bernstein (not related to Leonard) was big hit, as was Saul Bass’s poster design.

 

Rob Weir

This July 4th Feels Wrong

What is July Fourth to a Progressive?

 

 

Americans are gearing up for the July 4^th holiday in various ways. For some it’s a way to express their patriotism; for others, a show of support for American troops or relatives in uniform. A hardy few want to revel in Donald Duck’s Trump’s warped view of American might and his lies about prosperity and global respect. I suspect, though, that most Americans simply see July 4^th as an opportunity to have a picnic, see fireworks, or–in that greatest of American spectacles–take advantage of retail sales.

My title is a riff off a famous 1852 speech delivered by Frederick Douglass titled “The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro.” https://masshumanities.org/files/programs/douglass/speech_complete.pdf

Douglass reminded us that one’s standing in society is more important than bang-the-drum symbolism. I recognize that this July 4^th is the 250^th birthday of the United States. I recall driving to Boston to watch fireworks explode across the Charles and listen to the late Arthur Fiedler lead the Boston Pops in patriotic tunes. That was when Gerald Ford was president, and one year after the Vietnam War ended and Richard Nixon resigned as POTUS for his role in the Watergate coverup. (Let the last one sink in; even Nixon had more honor than the national embarrassment currently in the White House.) I was ready to celebrate after years of protest against the war. I was also glad to see the back of Nixon, though I felt a minor twinge of pity as he was clearly suffering from a combination of acute depression and alcohol abuse.

For the 250^th, I’m thinking of donning black mourning garb and lamenting America’s fall from grace. This year’s celebration will feature Kremlin-like military spectacles, White House bombast, and attacks on all I hold important and sacred. I’d not be surprised were molten gold to drip from Trump’s forked tongue. It’s this simple, I am a pacifist Quaker who believes truth matters, knows a conman when I see one, believe that starting wars to look strong is an evil act. Sending fishermen to their deaths and pretending they are drug smugglers is pathetic and immoral.

American might is a myth, as is Trump’s “leadership.” Some of what he says is risible; a lot of it is so dangerous that what Trump likes to call the “radical left” is not exaggerating in calling it fascism. During the Trump years I’ve made it a habit to vacation in New England, where sanity still reigns; Canada, where it never left; and Europe, which has an educated population that can detect BS. In New England, Trump is an annoyance in the way a carbuncle is an annoyance. We get grumpy because we can’t wait to have him excised. Canadians fear him because they think he’s after something and they are probably right; Canada has more than 20 percent of the world’s potable water. So does the U.S. but almost all of it is in the Great Lakes shared with Canada. Subtract the lakes, not coincidentally bordering blue states, and it drops to seven percent. Even deep aquifers are disproportionately concentrated in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic, and the Far West.

Most Western Europeans act as if Trump is irrelevant. Neither they nor Canadians hate Americans. They feel sorry for us and say so in private conversations. They can see that their countries have more services, a stronger infrastructure, better schools and, yes, more freedom. Aside from a handful of Baltic states with a history of authoritarian rule, few Europeans see the U.S. as enviable. Their primary fear is that military power is under the control of an impulse-driven manchild who confuses missiles with the size he’d like his phallus to be. Can you say Armageddon?

As for me, I’m tired of trying to explain things to hardcore Trumpanzees. I don’t think all of his supporters are uneducated hillbillies. Some dislike taxes and have made out well, the white working class correctly feels left out by Democratic technocrats, and some vote out of party loyalty. Perhaps the majority feel lost in modern America and fear for their futures. It’s not wrong, though, to see a large swarm of Trumpanzees as militaristic rah-rah boys, racists, end-of-the-world evangelicals, isolationists, misogynists, and losers. The hardcore is immune to reason and would turn back progress. On July 4^th I will mourn the loss of democracy.

RW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 CLOSE TO DEATH (2024)

By Anthony Horowitz

Harper Penguin, 432 pages

★★★★★

 

Close to Death is subtitled “A Literary Whodunnit about a Murder in a Gated Community.” I’m sure every published author thinks their work is “literary;” Anthony Horowitz has the chops to say that without provoking an eye roll.

 

This is a continuation of the Hawthorne though in previous books, private investigator Daniel Hawthorne’s partner is John Dudley. Tony Horowitz’s role is akin to Dr. Watson’s in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels; he writes about how the cases were solved. Like Holmes, Hawthorne’s agency never takes credit for the solution; they allow local loan enforcement to wallow in kudos.

 

In Close to Death, Hawthorne and Dudley have parted ways and Horowitz has taken Dudley’s place. Is it literary to be a character, a guide, and the author of the same tale? If you can tell it like Horowitz, it does. The title is a pun. In England, a close as a small gated community, in this case, just six homes clustered around a half circle in Richmond Upon Thames.

 

Things have long been tranquil, but that changes when pushy social climbers Giles and Lynda Kenworthy buy the largest home in the Close. There is only one way around the half circle and the Kenworthys park so many cars there that it’s hard to get out. Their three kids are said to have ripped up flower beds, skateboarded underneath windows, and tossed a ball that smashed a chess set belonging into Adam Strauss. He is a ranked Chessmaster, who often wins matches in which he competes with more than 20 other opponents simultaneously. Adam insists the ball broke an invaluable set given to him by an Indian Raja, though the figures are from “Lord of the Rings” and appear to be plastic.

 

Others in the Close include Dr. Tom and Genna Beresford; Tom insists the Kenworthys are literally guilty of murder, as a patient died in his surgery because he couldn’t get out of the driveway blocked by the Kenworthys. Roderick Browne’s wife Felicity is an invalid, and the kids make noise that disturbs her rest. Mary Winslow and Phyllis Moore, two ex-nuns who also operate a mystery murder bookstore, think Giles threw their dog down a well, and even quiet Andrew Pennington, a retired attorney, thinks the new family is unfriendly.  

 

Adam calls a Close meeting and invites the Kentworthys to address the complaints. When they are no-shows, their thoughtfulness seems unbounded. When the family next announces plans to build a swimming pool that would uproot a beautiful magnolia tree, and the village council surprisingly approves the plan, Giles’s body is soon discovered outside his garage with a crossbow bolt in his throat.

 

Police Detective Tariq Khan comes to investigate the murder. The crossbow belonged to Roderick, but everyone in the Close–including Giles’ wife–had a murderous motive. Each also has an airtight alibi. So, who did it? Could it have been the gardener? Perhaps the Kenworthys’ Australian nanny? How about Lynda’s trainer who is probably her lover? Khan agrees to call in Hawthorne and Dudley to consult on the case. Dudley is unkempt and uncouth, and Hawthorne is a grating know-it-all. Khan is happy to dismiss them when Rodrick leaves a confession/suicide note ostensibly to spare Felicity more pain.

 

Five years later, Horwitz is Daniel’s new partner. He’s also a writer who owes his publisher a book but because Hawthorne has no new cases, Horwitz wants to write about the Close. He wonders why Daniel warns him not to touch the case. All of his reasons seem odd. Why can’t he ask Dudley about the case? Where is Dudley? Tony does some investigating of his own and lots of things don’t add up, including the number of meetings that were held. But things have changed and in the five years since the murder. Only Andrew and Lynda still live in the Close. Adam died a month after Giles by falling off a bridge, though no one saw him tumble. The more Tony ponders, the clearer it becomes that no one in the Close was who they appeared to be.

 

Yet his dilemma is the same as Hawthorne’s and Dudley’s: If everyone is a suspect, where do you turn? This novel has more red herrings than a large Dutch city! Horowitz’s multiple voices–in and separated by time–enhance the intrigue. Multiple people are fingered as the probable murderer, until they are not. This mystery will certainly engage your mind. It’s like a sophisticated game of Clue, except you can’t trust your gut, your logic, or any conclusion without reservation, even when Horowitz the writer offers one.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Keeper: Intrigue and Death in an Irish Village

 

 

 

THE KEEPER (2026)

By Tana French

Viking, 480 pages

★★★★

 

Author Tana French gets tabbed as one of Ireland’s greatest living novelists. She happens to live in Dublin, but she’s a Vermont-born lass who considers herself a homeless vagabond. Her father was an international development economist; Tana has lived in America, Italy, Malawi, Ireland, and several other places. If you’ve read the first two books of the Cal Hooper series, French is a bit like Cal. The Keeper is book three of a series whose very names tip readers of a major theme. The Hunter, The Seeker, and The Keeper are set in the fictional Western Ireland village of Ardnakelty. It’s in the heart of a farming region whose residents have a love/hate relationship to change. How do farmers keep up with Irish modernization without surrendering its historical and cultural identity? This delicate balancing act is at the heart of The Keeper.

 

For those who haven’t not read the previous two books, it’s preferable to do so, but not necessary. French gives plenty of detail about village life and characters that you can quickly catch on to who’s who in Ardnakelty. Cal was the seeker, a former Chicago police detective whose wife chucked him. He, in turn, quit his job and moved to Ireland for a slower, less stressful lifestyle. He got the first, but not always the second. He restored an old cottage away from Ardnakelty’s center, but that alone did not erase the reality of being an outsider to village customs and mores. As “seekers” know, small places often treat outsides with suspicion. Cal is, however, a talented woodworker who helps young vagabond “Trey” (Theresa) Reddy the trade and serves as a surrogate father to her. Cal also begins an affair with the fiercely independent widow Lena Dunne. 

 

The Keeper picks up Cal’s story at a time in which he is in his 50s and “engaged” to Lena Dunne, though it’s a bit of a ruse. Neither has a great desire to remarry, but it gives a respectable veneer to their long-standing romance. It helps that her sister Noreen runs the store where villagers buy essentials and consume another Ardnakelty staple: gossip. Cal’s neighbor is the cranky but amusing Mart(in), a lover of American music, TV, and films. He calls Cal “Sunny Jim” or “Columbo,” named one of his dogs “Kojak,” and is the voice for local farmers. Mart also helped Cal form a group of mates down at Séan Og’s pub. Trey is now an older teen who thinks of quitting school to become a woodworking apprentice, despite her mother Sheila and Cal pushing her to finish her final year before deciding. Telling Trey what to do isn’t a good way to go. She has enough confidence to assert her own will and has acquired mates who roam the woodlands and hills, engage in minor mischief, gang swarm bullies, and play soccer together.  

 

The first part of The Keeper is quite funny as it touches upon the foibles, superstitions, and shenanigans of village life. The locals find themselves deeply divided by the activities of Tommy Moynihan, a local mover, shaker, and (some say) crooked politician who has his finger in every pie. Much of the village is beholden to Tommy because he brought jobs into the area, but there are those who wonder why he has been buying up local land, especially adjacent farms. Rumors circulate that he is about to close a deal that would build a massive factory that would transform Ardnakelty. In true Ardnakelty style, no one takes a direct route to find out, nor would they trust Moynihan if he told them. When it appears that Tommy’s browbeaten son Eugene will stand for a controlling seat on the local council, tongues wag faster.

 

A crisis arises when Eugene’s about-to-be fiancée Rachel drowns in the river, and both the coroner and local Guarda rule it a suicide. Mart encourages those who think it’s a coverup. Lena does some investigating of her own, which leads Tommy to push back so hard that Lena fears she’ll be sent to an asylum. Vigilantism, barfights, and whispered words set villagers against each other. Was Tommy “riding” (having sex with) Eugene’s girlfriend? After the death of another local, does truth matter anymore?

 

French deftly moves from eccentricities to mystery to malleable conclusions. Can Ardnakelty can hold fast to the old ways, or must it change to survive?

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Make Sports Seasonal Again

Sports Outrage Roundup

 

 

We live in the Age of Outrage. I maintain some degree of equilibrium by ignoring as much of the noise as I can. I used to devour the news in various newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasts, and radio. One by one they melted away. We dumped cable because we were too busy to watch it. Magazines began to fold, but not in a good way, and newspapers melted away like creamsicles in 90-degree heat. Hearing loss led me to turn off NPR.

I’m not a total ignoramus. I read the Boston Globe thoroughly on Sundays and skim the Globe and New York Times on weekdays. I ignore Trump as nothing short of resignation or arrest would impress rather than depress me. Even sports have disappointed me. They have become a veritable Snide World of Sports. (Only those over a certain age will understand that pun!)

Texas Tech and quarterback Brendan Sorsby win the Dirtbag of the Year Award; Sorsby for trying to get an easy paycheck and Tech for not telling Sorsby to take a barefoot hike through rattlesnake country. Sorsby has already played at the University of Indiana and the University of Cincinnati. He sought to transfer again and engineered a $4-6 million Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) package from Texas Tech. This, though, he was facing charges of betting $90,000 on college football games, including some involving his own team.

Betting violates NCAA rules, though to be fair, the NCAA is as crooked as Sorsby. Cincinnati has countersued Sorsby for $1 million when he entered the portal to go to Tech. Surprisingly, Tech faces boycotts from schools scheduled to play them. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that several NFL teams have expressed interest in Sorsby if he is not be allowed to play for Texas Tech, though NFL bigwigs nixed a supplemental draft for his rights. A remaining complication is that a judge declared that he remains eligible to play for Tech. (If this doesn’t tell you that “college football” is an oxymoron and that some judges have dollar signs dancing in their heads, I can’t help you.)

What should happen is that Tech practices a few times and cuts Sorsby. If he’s not on the squad, NIL value disintegrates. Tech would probably need to negotiate a buyout (get-out-my-sight money and fire the AD responsible for this hot mess. In all likelihood, what will happen is the NCAA will tell other schools they must play Texas Tech. After all, in Texas, gridiron ball is BIG MONEY and actual education begs for pennies. 

 

 

The World Cup brings me joy, even though host cities are milking visitors as if they were cows about to explode. No matter what NFL image-makers claim, the World Cup is real football and gridiron a mere curiosity item. Not that FIFA, its governing body, is much of an improvement over the NCAA or NFL, but sometimes one must settle for small gains.

I may not be around to see it, but the gridiron obit is already being written. As the USA becomes more brown and yellow, soccer is the sport of the future. I’d love to see the NFL relegated to ESPN’s Night Owl programing after darts and duckpins for dollars. Use your own eyes and see how many kids are playing soccer and how few are willing to risk CET. In the immediate future, I foresee numerous colleges dumping gridiron programs because only handful of schools make money or can realistically compete against super conferences. High school gridiron makes even less economic sense when so many districts are under pressure to add teachers and programs. Imagine that. Spending money on education!  

 

 

I’m Sooo Bored. The Stanley Cup was lifted on June 14 and the NBA crowned the New York Knicks champions one night earlier. Major League Baseball is on the cusp of completing the first half of its season and probably won’t have a World Series winner until mid-November. Games have been added to the NFL season, the NBA, and the NHL. I find it impossible to maintain interest in all the noise happening at the same time. Why does it? Money, not athleticism is what’s on view. Oh please, please show that Liberty Mutual ad again.

What should happen but won’t: Sports should become seasonal again. MLB should go back to 154 games by eliminating Interleague play. The season should open April 15 and end the first week of September.

As for gridiron football, the NFL should return to a 12-game schedule with the regular season beginning September 15, and the Superbowl one week after the conference championships. As for college ball, absolutely no team with (or potentially with) a losing record can play a bowl game. I’m sure we can live without 6-6 Futile State in the Catheter Bowl against 5-7 Lameseville A & Ouch. The NBA and NHL must crown a champion before May 10.

Rob Weir

The Correspondent: Slow at First, then a Whallop

 

 

  

THE CORRESPONDENT (2025)

By Virginia Evans

Thorndike Press, 304 pages.

★★★

 

The Correspondent is an epistolary novel and the debut offering from Virginia Evans. Think of a bundle of letters that someone has squirreled away. Were you to read them, you’d probably find that they were not in chronological order. Everyone it seems has a “system” for filing personal papers: size, importance, subject, or randomly. My wife Emily faithfully wrote to her great aunt Frances in Maine for 40 years before Frances passed away. This is to say that Evans reveals letters in her novel covering the years between 1953-2021, but not sequentially.

 

The central character is Sybil Stone Van Antwerp, a retired law clerk living in Annapolis, Maryland. Though she does use email, think of her as among the fading breed that carefully composes letters. She writes to many people, including authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ann Patchett, Larry McMurtry, and Joan Didion. Her favorite pen pal is Rosalie Boyd, who has been her BFF for 60+ years. They know everything about each other, though Rosalie now lives in Connecticut. It helps that Rosalie was once married to Sybil’s son Bruce. In addition to news, joys, and sorrows Sybil and Rosalie discuss what books they are reading.

 

This is not a Hallmark happy book. We learn that Sybil is divorced from Daan, who left the marriage and moved back to Belgium. Sybil is complex, can a bit of a snob, and lives vicariously through books and letters. She is estranged from her daughter Fiona, does battle with a University of Maryland dean who won’t allow her to audit a course, and wishes that her gay brother Felix who travels a lot lived nearer to her.

 

Yet, Sybil also has a soft side that grows more prominent as she ages. She is very proud of her law career and when Judge Landy tells her of his son’s social problems, Sybil takes on young Harry as a correspondent. She recognizes his math genius and they continue to write and visit until Harry is a young man. She also writes to Liz Donnelly, the wife of the late Judge Guy Donnelly for whom she clerked. That’s a gutsy thing to do as rumors flew that she was once more than a “work wife” to the judge. Was she? Sybil doesn’t dignify such whispers with a response. She is happy to intervene to help a Syrian man get an engineering job, but she flat out refuses to speak to the press about a 1981 murder case whose verdict was controversial.

 

Apparently, Sybil remains an attractive woman into her seventies as she is being courted by her kind German neighbor Theodore Lübeck and Mick Watts, a very rich Texan.  Nonetheless, it doesn’t take much to knock Sybil off her stride. She’s upset when Felix gives her a subscription to Legacy, one of those DNA testers that tell you stuff like you’re related to King Waldorfsalad III. Against her better judgment she takes the test and freaks out when she finds out she has a 49% match with a woman in Scotland. That probably wouldn’t throw you for a loop, but Sybil was adopted when she was a 14-month-old baby. Felix was also adopted, so it’s doubtful he’s a blood relative. And who is the mysterious D.M. who periodically sends her hate mail? Why does she throw a fit when she finds out that Fiona came to the States and spilled her heart to Rosalie but didn’t tell Sybil, her mother, that she was in the United States? Would you get so angry that you’d cut off contact with your best friend? To top it off, Sylvia is going blind. How will she survive without being able to read or write?

 

This is a novel in which what is not said or faced reveals more than what is. Who is the mysterious “D.M.” who periodically sends Sylvia hate mail? As she ages, can Sylvia find a balance between being in charge and being kind?

 

The Correspondent became a surprise hit months after it was released, a rare case in which reviewers followed the lead of readers rather than vice versa. In my view, though, it’s half of a brilliant book. I was initially bored by the constant parade of letters, but by the end, I was quite moved by it.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Laura Revisited: Preminger's Best?

 

 

 

LAURA (1944)

Directed by Otto Preminger

20^th Century Fox, 88 minutes, pre-ratings system

(In black and white)

★★★★

 

This review originally ran in 2021. I offer it again as I am in the midst of films directed by Otto Preminger (1905-86). This version is lightly edited.

 

There are many reasons to prefer Laura for film noir fans wishing to discover/rediscover actress Gene Tierney. They begin with Otto Preminger. He was a legendary director, whereas various remakes by other directors, including a 1968 made-for-TV film were at best middle-of-the-road. I’ve never seen Fiona on Fire, a porn film based on Laura, but let us assume that Gene Tierney was a superior actress. Preminger had the sense to tantalize rather than fetishize. His noir classic in black and white exemplifies how films about shadowy characters should be done. Preminger dusted his frames with psychological theory rather than encasing them.

 

Laura is a study in obsession. It begins when New York City Police Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is assigned to a grisly murder scene. Wealthy advertising executive Laura Hunt (Tierney) is the presumed victim of a shotgun blast to the face. Although she was beautiful and accomplished, she also had a reputation for being difficult and ruthless, which means any of a number of people had motives to dispatch her. At first, McPherson centers his investigation on her snooty, no-account fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). Carpenter is a classic “kept man” with no discernible skills of his own, hence his motive for murder doesn’t add up. Maybe Hunt’s aunt, Ann Treadway (Judith Anderson), knows more than she lets on. She has also been bankrolling Carpenter and may have been having a side affair with him. There’s also a matter of a missing murder weapon and the ace in the hole: Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb). He’s a newspaper writer who “made” Laura by lifting her out of her uncultivated bumpkin ways, mentoring her, and showering her with expensive gifts, including her pricey apartment and most of its flashy appointments. Lydecker insists their relationship was non-sexual, but he speaks of Laura as if she is one of his possessions. 

 

McPherson finds himself making repeated trips to Laura’s apartment, and we soon suspect that his motive is to solve the crime because he has become creepily attracted to the large portrait of Laura hanging above the fireplace mantle. One night, McPherson falls asleep beneath her picture. When he awakes, Laura is standing before him!  It’s not a dream. McPherson concludes that the actual victim was one of Hunt’s models, Diane Redfern. McPherson arrests Laura for Redfern’s murder, a complication as he has fallen in love with Laura. Can he do his duty or will he help her, even if it means letting a murderer walk away? We know what Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade would do, but is McPherson cut from the same trench coat cloth? And is Laura actually guilty of anything?

 

Laura is a corkscrew mystery involving a cast of oil-covered, morality-challenged characters. Who, if anyone, is telling the truth? And where is the rifle that killed Diane Redfern?  I called it a study of obsession and that should be interpreted literally and broadly. It seems that everyone–especially Lydecker and McPherson–is obsessed with Laura. She, in turn, seems demure, but perhaps she’s infatuated with herself. Or maybe not!

 

The acting–though affected in 1940s’ ways–is superb, even Vincent Price and Tierney’s who at this stage of his career was a character actor more than a star. He’s quite good as Tierney’s castoff lover. The much-underappreciated Dana Andrews strikes the needed balance between believability and cheesy fascination, and Tierney scores as a raven-haired femme fatale. (Don’t believe those garish 1940s posters in which she’s colorized to look like a redhead!) Clifton Webb, though, comes close to stealing the glory. His is a performance that walks several lines, not the least of which is the thin one between utterly contemptible and wholly fascinating. For what it’s worth, elements of Preminger’s own personality can be read into Webb-as-Lydecker. One could easily become obsessed by this film. Several Preminger films are considered superior, but few surpass Laura.

 

Rob Weir

Anatomy of a Murder: Antique or Pathbreaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anatomy of a Murder (1959).

Directed by Otto Preminger

Columbia Pictures, 160 minutes, not rated.

★★★★

 

Americans like to believe that our justice system is mostly fair, especially when it comes to jury trials. Yet there are circumstances in which the verdict is open for conjecture. The 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder, though an old film, raises questions that remain relevant. I do caution, that as in most older movies, one must remember that today’s “normal” is often not that of earlier times.

 

Anatomy of a Murder takes place in the upper peninsula of Michigan and is loosely based upon a real case. A novel of the same name was written by “Robert Traver,” but that was the pen name of John Volker, a Michigan Supreme Court justice. Volker fictionalized a 1952 case in which he was a defense attorney. One of the most controversial situations for any criminal court, then or now, occurs when a defendant pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

 

The movie involves a semi-retired folksy lawyer named Paul Biegler (Jimmy Stewart). Who would rather fish than lawyer. He is persuaded, though, to meet Army Lieutenant Frederick “Manny” Manion (Ben Gazzara). The facts are not in dispute. Manion walked into a bar and shoot Barney Quill. Biegler, though, thinks Manny was driven to blind fury; Manion claimed that Quill raped his wife, Laura (Lee Remick). Yet, given the statutes of the day, that’s not a defense. Biegler is reluctant to take the case until his former partner Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O’Connell), now the town drunkard, thinks Biegler should take the case. Did Parnell’s pledge of sobriety convince Paul to take Manny’s case, or was it that Laura is quite a looker?

 

The prosecution offers a plea deal to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. At the urging of Manny and Laura, Biegler says no deal. The trial is presided over by visiting judge from Lansing named Weaver (Joseph N. Welch). His appearance is one of many surprises in this film. If Joseph N. Welch sounds familiar, he was the lawyer who took on Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s in one of the first televised trials. McCarthy was impugning the reputation of a young man who Welch knew was innocent. It was Welch, who brought down McCarthy with a simple question: “Have you know, decency, sir? Have you at long last no decency?” That moment spearheaded McCarthy’s downfall. In Anatomy of a Murder, Welch plays a judge with a sense of humor, but he also attempts to run a tight ship.

 

This 1959 film is sometimes said to be the first American movie in which the words “rape” and “panties” were spoken aloud. The latter might induce a guffaw, but not so funny is that until 1994, it was acceptable to cite a woman’s provocative appearance as a mitigating factor in sexual assaults. Laura’s “sexy” attire consisted of wearing slacks and going about barelegged! Biegler faced some pretty fancy prosecutors, district attorney Lodwick (Brooks West) and a polished advisor from the Attorney General’s office, Claude Dancer (George C. Scott). They are the kind of attorneys that you might conjure today, sharply dressed, erudite, and keen cross-examiners. Anatomy of a Murder at times reminded me of screwball comedies directed by Frank Capra. This is especially the case when McCarthy and Biegler discover an 1886 precedent in Michigan that allowed for an “irresistible impulse” to be cited as a defense.

 

Who will win, the down-to-earth team of attorneys or the slick guys from the city? The case will turn on a few special witnesses not the least of which is Mary Pliant (Kathryn Grant). As in today’s insanity pleas, psychiatrists testify for both the defense and the prosecution. Not surprisingly, they came to different conclusions! One of the expert witnesses is Orson Bean, who older viewers will recognize. Music fans will spot Duke Ellington in a scene with Jimmy Stewart. Another delightful part, that a Biegler’s wisecracking secretary is played by Eve Arden, another who was famous in her day. In other words, this is a heavyweight cast.

 

You can watch Anatomy of a Murder two ways. It’s either a laughable antique, or a pathbreaking film whose frankness helped alter how sexual allegations are today handled in court. It probably won’t settle opposing views on insanity defenses.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing with Fire: Excellent Mystery, Terrible TV

 

So yes!

So no!

  

 

PLAYING WITH FIRE (2004)

By Peter Robinson

Avon Books, 405 pages.

★★★★★

 

I doubt I need to tell the readers of this blog that books are almost always superior to movies made about them. TV is a little bit more complex. We subscribe to Brit Box off and on. Right now, it’s on because we wanted to binge watch the excellent Shetland series, which is based on novels by Ann Cleeves. I liked the TV productions better. I was hopeful that the BBC series Inspector Banks would be equally good. Alas, no! Not even close.

 

To further test my belief, I re-read # 14 of the DCI Banks novels by author Peter Robinson, Playing with Fire. Then I watched the two-part BBC dramatization of the same book. I hated it! But to make sure I wasn’t overly biased because I loved the book so much, I watched a few episodes made from books I’ve not yet read. Same verdict. Part of it is that actor Stephen Tompkinson was unconvincing as DCI Alan Banks. His performances were so wooden that it often looked as if he knew he was miscast. He would have been better off playing a hard-boiled American detective the sort whom likes to throw his weight around. The problem is that Robinson’s Banks is both cerebral and on the world-weary side of life. He’s a music aficionado with a massive record collection and a near-photographic memory of who played with whom, which recordings are definitive, and can even recall labels and their catalog numbers. The genres seldom matter, as he loves rock, classical, punk, jazz, and opera. That guy isn’t Tomlinson.

 

I also fault the ITV’s production choices. Robinson’s writing is more subtle, even when presenting horrible situations. Playing with Fire involves a possible serial arsonist and begins when two canal boats are burned at their moorings in Yorkshire Dales. A burnt body is found in each. The first victim involves an investigation of its own as it was the home of a recluse surmised to be a painter because of the boat remains; the second is 16-year-old Tina Aspern, an emotionally damaged runaway who despises her stepfather. The first suspect is her boyfriend, Mark Siddons, who lived on the boat as well but spent the night in question in a pub and in the arms of another. He is wracked by guilt, both for his infidelity and for his belief that he could have saved Tina if he had been there. The stepfather, a doctor, is perfectly willing to believe that Mark, whom he sees as a rock-the-cradle freeloader, set the fire but Banks doesn’t think so. Is it because he believes Mark or that he sees something of his own son, Brian, in Mark? (Banks has long been divorced and his wife got custody of their two children. He has since been quite unlucky at love.)

 

Robinson gives us meticulous detail on how police investigate arson. Cranky egoist Geoff Hamilton shows how he knew that the first boat was set afire while Tina slept in the second one. That first boat’s resident was Thomas McMahon, who was indeed a local painter, but of little renown. This stands in marked contrast to the TV show, which goes for the gore, showing us McMahon’s charred body and Tina’s as a grotesque “floater.”

 

You name it and Banks’ life is complicated by it. Another fire, Mark’s preference for jail–he’s hard worker but also homeless after the fire–Tina’s stepfather’s arrogance, his own bumbled pursuit of DI Annie Cabot, the emergence of a possible lost painting by J. M. W. Turner, the fact that an old flame is dating an art expert who makes Banks queasy (or is it jealousy?), his sadness over Tina’s life (or is he projecting his daughter’s unsettled life onto Tina?), etc. In other words, the book is nuanced in every way the TV production is gratuitous.

 

As noted, I tried some other episodes as Playing with Fire is among my favorite of Robinson’s novels. My gut tells me that the TV series couldn’t (ahem!) hold a candle to the novels.

 

Rob Weir

Boomerang: Is Turnabout Fair Play?

  

 

BOOMERANG!  (1947)

Directed by Elia Kazan

20^th Century Fox, 88 minutes

★★ ½

 

I thought I had nearly exhausted the film noir collection at the Forbes Library until I found a listing titled “More Notorious Film Noir.” Some of them stretch the definition of film noir but if a movie keeps my attention, the label becomes secondary.

 

 Boomerang! is a film whose genre is debatable. It is a film noir or a crime drama? Some film historians call it a “docudrama,” a good compromise. This one dates from 1947 and is not the 1992 film of the same name starring Eddie Murphy. I remind you that it’s hard to copyright a movie title, so it’s not unusual for unrelated films to bear identical titles. The 1992 movie Boomerang was panned by critics and audiences alike, but the 1947 film starring Dana Andrews got three Oscar nominations. It was (and still is) an unusual production. 

 

 The “docu” part of the “drama” is that, with a few name changes, it parallels a real-life event. In 1924, Catholic priest Father Hubert Dahme was gunned down on the streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was well-liked and the public pressured law enforcement to solve the case. A World I vet was fingered for the crime, but the States Attorney concluded that police coerced a confession based on weak circumstantial evidence.  The attorney’s name was Homer Cummings, who went on to become the U.S. Attorney General (1933-39) under FDR and served three terms as mayor of Stamford, Connecticut, before going into private law practice.

 

 Director Elia Kazan echoed that narrative and in partnership with cinematographer Norbert Brodine made a film that looked like a documentary. They shot gritty street locations in Stamford and courtrooms in White Plains, New York, used music sparingly, and sought to preserve realistic police and courtroom procedures. In the film, the priest’s name is Father George Lambert and the States Attorney is Henry Harvery (Andrews). Richard Murphy’s screenplay added political twists that enhanced the drama. The “Reform” party has just turned out a longtime corrupt regime. The title Boomerang! comes from unexpected turnabouts and the manner in which it forced viewers to weigh questions of “dirty politics.” A central consideration is morality of using comparable low tactics against corrupt powers in the name of reform and overlook those who hold party purse strings. 

 

 Harvey is, at first, anxious to prosecute veteran and drifter John Waldron (Arthur Kennedy) for Father Lambert’s murder, but the more he contemplates the evidence–lineup identification, a generic gun, a confession–the more the case smells like rotten fish. Methods that today that are patently illegal were not so in 1947. Now, the moment an accused person asks for a lawyer, all police questioning must cease. Waldron was interrogated for two full days, beaten, and deprived of sleep until he “confessed.” As in 1924, police and the new reform government faced strong public demands to catch the killer. At a preliminary hearing, Harvey advises that he has changed his mind and moves that the case against Waldron be dropped. A veritable lynch mob is turned back by the police chief (Lee J. Cobb) but personal pressure is applied by reform party boss, real estate mogul Paul Harris (Ed Begley). He’s even willing to (mis) use a donation for a public park made by Henry’s wife, Madge (Jane Wyatt) to threaten the Harveys with homelessness. Will Henry relent or do what is just? Which will prevail, truth or power? Popularity or real reform? That Kazan would raise such issues is ironic given his role as a “friendly witness” during the House Un-American Activities Committee* five years later.

 

The acting in Boomerang! is uniformly strong, but I must warn that the script has holes that sometimes makes it hard to follow. It is, again, a period piece in which many standards and values differed from those of today, though the power of money might ring distressingly true. Kazan’s film style is long on verisimilitude, but its lack of flash can be jarring for modern film viewers. It’s not my favorite docudrama, but Boomerang! is worth watching.   

 

 Rob Weir

 

 * Kazan’s testimony during guilt-by-association HUAC hearings led numerous individuals to be blacklisted during the Second Red Scare. When Kazan received an honorary Oscar in 1999, many inside the auditorium turned their backs on him. It did not escape notice that, when pressured, Kazan opted to save his career instead of following the path of Harvey/Cummings.