I've been shot five times, knifed twice, bit on the ass by a pig, stomped on by a horse and sat on by a mule. And once, in the winter of '91, a grizzly chewed off my big toe. And I've survived two avalanches, three blizzards, five Indian uprisings and seven Presidential elections… but I've never been owned by no woman nor dog…and I've come too far down the road to let it happen to me now. Sam Longwood, The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday

August 29^th of this year will mark 20 years since the death of Lee Marvin. Marvin was not the first celebrity passing in my life (I turned 26 a couple days after his demise), nor the most traumatic… and yet I think of Lee Marvin often and I miss the old bastard every day. It’s not as though I knew him – I never met him, never got nearer to him than a movie screen, know almost nothing about him personally (apart from his helping to coin the legal term “palimony”). I just miss knowing he’s in the world and I resent the fact that his particular candle was snuffed out so early in the game.

There's only one guy who's not afraid to die – that’s a guy who's already dead. Charlie Strom, The Killers

The critic David Thomson has called Lee Marvin “the last of the great wintry heroes.” I like that. A lot of action stars try to do the thousand yard stare, they try to come off tough as nails, they want you to believe they’ve been three times ‘round the Horn and twice through Hell but nobody could walk as tough as Lee Marvin. He could be sweet, he could be comical, he could lose big and fall hard but throughout Lee Marvin had an essential hardness that seemed to speak of a life not so much lived day to day as we slobs do it but hammered out, one furious stroke after another, the way a Seminole brave flattens an arrowhead. At the end of his life, Lee Marvin seemed artifactual, carved out by wind and rain and time

Who cares now… or even remembers? Rico, The Professionals

I’m hereby calling a Lee Marvin Blog-a-Thon for August 29, 2007. Marvin’s resume certainly gives us a lot of to work with: The Big Heat, The Wild One, Gorilla at Large, The Caine Mutiny, Bad Day at Black Rock, I Died a Thousand Times, Attack, Raintree County, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Donovan’s Reef, Cat Ballou, The Professionals, The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank, Hell in the Pacific, Paint Your Wagon, Monte Walsh, Pocket Money, Prime Cut, Emperor of the North, The Klansman, Shout at the Devil, The Big Red One, Death Hunt, Gorky Park, The Delta Force… and so many more. I’d love for someone to talk about the (now) more obscure Marvin titles, such as Ship of Fools or The Spikes Gang or Dog Day or his Twilight Zone appearances or his NBC cop show, M Squad. Did you know Marvin once played Nostradamus? Has anyone seen that?

I’ll send out word as wide as I can. If you’re reading this, please take the time to spread the information about The Lee Marvin Blog-a-Thon to at least one website where you think the idea might land.

At first you don't think you can stand to get hit, then you realize you can take it 'cause the blood don't matter. It's a great gift I'm goin' to give you – to know it don't hurt to fight! Kid Sheleen, Cat Ballou

Already revered for making the seminal anti-war (World War I) film and the third Academy Award Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), producer-director Lewis Milestone selected Harry Brown’s novel (and screenwriter Robert Rossen) to make this highly thought of WW II drama which tells a story about the lead platoon of the Texas Division (United States Infantry) that came ashore at an Italian beach near Salerno in 1943. Earl Robinson wrote a song and Millard Lampell provided the lyrics that are hauntingly & soulfully sung by Kenneth Spencer, comprising most of Freddie Rich’s background score and filling in the details behind what was more than “just a little walk in the sun”, to become an anthem for foot soldiers then and now.

A few years later, Dimitri Tiomkin’s title song (with Ned Washington’s lyrics) would similarly enhance director Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952), earning the composer his first two (of four) Academy Awards out of 22 career Oscar nominations – Tex Ritter’s crooning “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’” has no greater impact, but it’s certainly better known today.

The credits open with narration from an uncredited actor, Burgess Meredith, who ironically would go on to play real life war correspondent Ernie Pyle in a documentary style drama that similarly chronicles the lives of infantry soldiers (during the same war) titled Story of G.I. Joe (1945), the film which earned Robert Mitchum his only Academy Award nomination. After introducing the major characters, Meredith’s voice-over is supplanted by the title song:

One of the things the Morlocks do best is remember.  We remember performers we loved, movies we watched, and so many other things.  Today I’m remembering Beverly Wills, the comic actress whose mother was the talented comedienne Joan Davis.  Beverly was born on August 5th back in 1933, but the end of her story is rather a sad one, like many told here by the Morlocks.

Aging Baby Boomers no doubt will remember Joan Davis probably best from her 1950s TV situation comedy I Married Joan, an I Love Lucy-esque madcap romp which was quite popular in its day but had nowhere near the staying power of Lucy in syndication, where true legends are spawned.  Born in 1907, Joan honed her talents in vaudeville after starting out life as a child performer, and after playing a stop in Los Angeles managed to nab a part in a Mack Sennett short.  Stints at various studios, none very successful, led her back onto the vaudeville stage, where she was again tapped for the movies, this time by 20th Century Fox who used her as comic relief for their more refined musical stars like Sonja Henie or Alice Faye.  She became a star in radio on Rudy Vallee’s show, and later had a series of her own which became one of the top-rated shows on radio and made her rich. 

At this point Joan was able to migrate between movie studios, choosing her roles, none of which were perhaps A-level pictures but all of which showcased her athletic hilarity.  Particularly memorable is her appearance in 1942’s Hold That Ghost with Abbott and Costello.  She was also a favorite of Eddie Cantor, and in fact legendary performer Fannie Brice, when asked who should play her in a Brice biography, could only come up with one possible choice:  Joan Davis.  Joan was that well-regarded and beloved in her profession and by the public. 

In the early 1950s Joan turned to TV, where she teamed with her ex-husband Si Wills to create I Married Joan, the story of the bird-brained wife of Judge Bradley Stevens (played by Jim Backus) and her misadventures.  (You probably remember the I Married Joan theme song, even if you don't recall anything else.) Joan tapped her own daughter, Beverly Wills, to play her adult sister, named Beverly.  Beverly had been appearing in small parts in movies and TV since her childhood, and was an able partner in her mother’s comic antics.  The show lasted two years, at which point  the hard-working Joan Davis essentially retired from show business, tired out from her long and successful career.  She divided her time between homes in Bel Air and Palm Springs, where her time was often filled with her two grandchildren from Beverly, and Joan’s elderly mother. 

In 1959 Beverly had a role as one of the supporting musicians in Marilyn Monroe’s all-girl band in the comedy classic Some Like It Hot.  Her personal life was also fascinating; she had been involved with William Bast, one of James’ Dean’s best friends, and reportedly Dean at one point was also closely (possibly romantically) connected with Beverly during their time at UCLA, socializing with her and her famous mother in Hollywood. 

But the conclusion of the story of Joan Davis and her daughter Beverly Wills is nothing less than tragic.  In late 1960, Joan’s home was hit by a fire, destroying family photographs and many souvenirs of her long show business career.  The memorabilia of a lifetime went up in smoke.  This shock behind her, in May 1961, while at her Palm Spring’s home, Joan Davis complained of severe back pains and her mother rushed her to Palm Springs’ Desert Hospital.  Those pains were symptoms of a severe heart attack, and Joan died there at the age of 53.  (A word of warning to all women:  we tend to get pains in our backs instead of chest or the left arm, like men do, when we’re having heart attacks. So noted!)   Beverly continued to make occasional film and TV appearances in the years after the sudden and early death of her mother, including roles in Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies Man and Disney's Son of Flubber.

And if there hasn’t been enough distress in this story so far, here’s how it ends.  In late October of 1963, while staying at her late mother Joan’s Palm Springs house, with her 7-year-old and 4-year-old sons, and Joan’s mother Nina, a house fire broke out and Beverly, her two sons, and Nina were killed.  That’s it.  Joan Davis’ incredible show business and personal legacy was gone, wiped out. 

Thank goodness that some of the work of Joan Davis and Beverly Wills is easily accessible.  I Married Joan occasionally surfaces on TV, and a few episodes are now on DVD; the same is true for some of Joan’s motion picture output.  There's also a biography available on Joan Davis, written by Ben Ohmart.  You’ll have to look harder for Beverly, but do look for her alongside her mother in I Married Joan and you’ll end up thinking she’s a chip off the old block.  These two talented ladies who lived to make people laugh deserve to be remembered. 

And they are. 

Irving who? The name may not be familiar to you but perhaps the film MURDER BY CONTRACT rings a bell? A once relatively obscure film noir thriller shot in Los Angeles and released in 1958, it has often been championed by Martin Scorsese over the years and more recently by several film bloggers who were lucky enough to see it in retrospectives such as Film Forum’s noir series in 2006. It’s a tautly directed minor masterpiece with a fascinating performance by Vince Edwards. He plays Claude, a coldly efficient hit man who likes to make a nice clean kill with no mess, no slip-ups, and no surprises due to poor planning – “I wasn’t born this way; I trained myself! I eliminated all personal feeling.”   READ MORE

Some people you just know backwards. You know the last of them first and then, like a detective, you work backwards to piece together the life they lived, the life you missed. Such is the case for me with Lloyd Nolan.

Growing up, I knew the San Francisco-born actor as Dianne Carroll's crusty but benign boss on the NBC series Julia, from the disturbing 1973 TV movie Isn’t It Shocking? (a geriatric murder mystery also featuring Edmund O’Brien, Will Geer and Ruth Gordon) and from various disaster movies – Airport (1969), Earthquake (1974), Fire! (1977) and Flight to Holocaust (1977) – in which he seemed to play the same engineer called in to help the heroes sort things out. He seemed ancient to me. On Julia, he was pushing 70, white haired, turkey necked. His voice quavered a bit. Back then, I hadn’t the slightest suspicion of how cool I’d find this actor twenty years after his death.

I’ve been brushing up on my Lloyd Nolan lately, after a chance viewing of a few minutes of Johnny Apollo (1940) on American Movie Classics. Nolan would have been 38 then. I only saw a couple of scenes but his performance was a revelation. Loose-limbed and amiable as gangster Mickey Dwyer, Nolan steals the show from the combined forces of Tyrone Power, Dorothy Lamour and Marc Lawrence (cast as a minor gunsel – go figure). Looking sharp in a black suit and keeping up a breathless line of patter, Nolan blithely uses a meat cleaver¹ to hack the lock off of the icebox door to get a piece of steak for Power’s black eye. It’s a brilliant bit of business and all at once I felt a sense of mourning for an actor who has been dead since 1985. In that moment, Nolan’s last performance, as Mia Farrow’s actor father in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), became doubly poignant (his unsteady but heartfelt rendition of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”) and triply funny (“Two drinks and she turns into Joan Collins” – I’m quoting from memory.)

New out as a deluxe DVD box set from 20th Century Fox are some of the Michael Shayne mysteries Nolan did for the studio starting in 1940. On the side of law and order this time (as long as there’s a profit in it), Mike Shayne is a good fit for the actor. Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940) is a fine introduction to the character (a helluva departure from the gumshoe as-written by Brett Halliday) but not the most satisfying as far as whodunits go. The series got better as it went along, with the fifth entry, The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942), being a highpoint: Nolan enters this singing an Irish ditty and involving himself in some haunted house shenanigans in the company of Owin Howland and a very young Jeff Corey. Not part of this box set is Dressed to Kill (1941 – not to be confused with the 1946 Sherlock Holmes mystery or 1980 Brian DePalma transvestite slasher film of the same name), a fun backstage whodunit with William Demerest, Henry Daniel and Mantan Moreland along for the bumpy ride.  The fourth entry in Warners Mike Shayne series is for some reason available as a  no-frills single disc from 20^th Century Fox.

Also out on DVD is Nolan’s cinema debut, in “G” Men (1935), with James Cagney and Robert Armstrong. Nolan plays Hugh Farrell, an FBI agent so good natured and friendly that you just know he’s doomed. Still, he makes the most of his early scenes, teaching Cagney ju-jitsu and taking a team to capture dapper gangster Edward Pawley, whose bowler hat conceals a .45 snub-nosed. Nolan goes down in a hail of gunfire in a scene patterned after the Kansas City Massacre and his presence is missed through the rest of the movie, as intended.²

My investigation of Lloyd Nolan has scarcely begun and you can bet I’ll be reporting back. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. While Johnny Apollo remains criminally unavailable on DVD at this time a number of Nolan’s 1940s crime pictures are on the market: The House on 92^nd Street (1945), Somewhere in the Night (1946), Lady in the Lake (1947), The Street With No Name (1948) and The Girl Hunters (1966), with Mickey Spillaine as Mike Hammer. I’m also looking forward to Bataan (1943), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) and Island in the Sky (1953).

I’ve got my work cut out for me but I’m up to the job.

Notes:

1. Nolan would be replaced as Mike Shayne when the series shifted to PRC by Hugh Beaumont, whose claim to fame is playing Leave It to Beaver’s Ward Cleaver. A coincidence?
2. An early scene in Michael Shayne, Private Detective copies the opening of "G" Men by having Mike punch a shady client straight out the door of his office into the hallway, as Cagney's Brick Davis had done in the earlier film.
   

Hey, it’s not like I have anything against dentists.  My own dentist is hilarious, and I have two very nice dentists for neighbors.  It’s just that, well, in the movies, dentists are often portrayed as either dull and boring or sadistic and scary.  One is more about their personalities, and the other is about what they do, which is indeed sometimes scary and potentially painful (though really, it’s so much better than I remember as a kid.)   So let’s take a look at a few interesting examples.  Now, you might feel a little pinch….

Believe me, there are hundreds and hundreds of movie dentists, but one of the most memorable and classic is the portrayal by the glowering Gibson Gowland in Erich Von Stroheim’s mishandled masterpiece Greed, from 1924.  Truncated and re-edited during the time of its original release, but later partially restored by Turner Classic Movies, Greed is – and this is the short and simple version – the story of an unscrupulous back alley dentist and his wife, and what happens when they win some money in a lottery.  I’m probably not giving anything away when I tell you it’s not a pretty story.  Gowland is huge, ham-handed and unsavory, and definitely not the kind of dentist you want pawing around in your own mouth.

Comedy also follows dentists around onscreen, with many slapstick situations rising out of the intimate, submissive and just plan tug and yank business of the profession.  It’s never been funnier or more explicitly played out than in W.C. Fields’ famous comedy short The Dentist from 1932, where Mr. Fields famously drills his female patient and she moans and wraps her legs around him so suggestively that the short was banned in some cities.  It’s one long dirty joke, and a pretty good one, too. 

Another comedy dentist – or played for laughs at least – is the sadistic D.D.S. in both versions of The Little Shop of Horrors, the original Roger Corman film from 1960 and the musical version from 1986.  You can also take a look at Dentist on the Job or Dentist in the Chair, two early 1960s British comedies in the Carry On vein, with the same kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge bawdy goings-on.  Bob Hope was a hapless dentist known as Painless Potter who meets up with Jane Russell’s Calamity Jane in the Western comedy The Paleface from 1948 (remade with Don Knotts as The Shakiest Gun in the West twenty years later). 

And in the scary dentist category, of course the winner in terms of classy sadism has to be Laurence Olivier’s performance as an ex-Nazi dentist in 1976’s Marathon Man, where he famously gets poor Dustin Hoffman in his clutches.  Out and out horror was the object as Corbin Bernsen portrayed the title character in The Dentist (from 1996) and its sequel, where he’s the dentist of your nightmares and everybody else’s, too. 

I could go on and on, but a real-life dentist from New Rochelle, NY named Sal Longo has a marvelous page on Dentistry in the Movies, and I highly recommend that you check out his nice photos and listings.  Great job! 

The uneasy personality profile mixing mirth and madness that we attribute to the denizens of the dental world is understandable from the POV of somebody about to undergo a root canal procedure, say, but  boy, doesn’t it feel great when you walk out of there knowing that you’re all fixed up?  Until you get the bill, that is….  Sometimes real life is way scarier than the movies!

Come Live With Me (1941) is a pretty good romantic comedy featuring James Stewart (August 5th) and Hedy Lamarr, whose character has to be cinema’s most beautiful illegal alien. She’s been the kept woman of a New York publisher, played by Ian Hunter; he can't/won't get a divorce from his wife (Verree Teasdale) to marry his mistress (e.g. in order to keep Barton MacLane’s character from deporting her). So, when she meets a struggling author (Stewart) that will do just about anything to survive, they strike a bargain – he’ll marry her and she’ll meet his financial needs. Naturally, Stewart’s character grows to regret their platonic arrangement. After writing a story about his situation, he peddles it to (you guessed it) Hunter, whose wife often reads submitted books to offer her opinion. Of course, she loves Stewart’s story and advises her husband to read it … after recognizing himself in it, the race is on for Lamarr’s hand. Clarence Brown produced and directed this movie that features a Stewart-Lamarr sequence at the farm of his Grandma (Adeline De Walt Reynolds) which is reminiscent of the "Walls of Jericho" scene between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra’s Academy Award blockbuster It Happened One Night (1934).

Two for the Seesaw (1962) is a pretty good (if talky) romance drama directed by Robert Wise that stars Robert Mitchum (August 6th) and Shirley MacLaine. They play a couple of lonely souls from different worlds: he’s an out-of-work lawyer from the Midwest that’s in the process of divorcing his wife; she’s a part-time dancer from Greenwich Village (where the story takes place) that lives off her unemployment insurance. The story begins rather slowly, and ends pretty poorly too, but its middle (about two thirds of the film's two hour length) is a fascinating, compelling relationship study between these two diverse characters, excellently portrayed by Mitchum and MacLaine. Mitchum’s character is almost suicidal at the beginning; he’s unable to engage others or take on any responsibilities (after his failed marriage). He’d married a wealthy lawyer's daughter and been thrust into the profession; after 12 years, his revelation of what he’d become led to his escape to New York, where he meets MacLaine. She's fairly free with her (sexual) love, and therefore can't seem to keep anyone for very long, but she doesn't seem to be overly troubled about it. What bothers her most is an ulcer that flares up when she imbibes, smokes, or gets too emotional. The two end up helping each other (the strength of this picture is the many revealing conversations between them) and, as a year passes, the characters grow as believably as their relationship does Unfortunately, the quality of the dialogue peters out before the end of the film.

His Kind of Woman (1951) is on DVD, but I just have to recommend Vincent Price’s eccentric performance (and any movie that features the singing of my alma mater’s fight song – "The Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech", sung by Tim Holt). If you’ve enjoyed Peter O’Toole’s Best Actor Oscar nominated performance in My Favorite Year (1982), you’ll likely love Price’s character, an action actor who’s an avid hunter on vacation looking for a real adventure; he tries to save Mitchum’s life from gangster Raymond Burr. Jane Russell (August 7th) in the title role; Price gets his own day August 10th.

The Murder Man (1935) is an entertaining (if predictable) crime drama that features James Stewart’s film debut. However, it’s Spencer Tracy (August 18th) that’s the star in the title role of this one. Both actors play reporters (as does veteran character actor William Demarest), but Stewart's is really just an admirer of Tracy’s legendary character, dubbed the "murder man" because of his ability to solve homicide cases, scooping his fellow reporters and the police. Virginia Bruce plays a copywriter on the paper that cares deeply for Tracy's; Robert Barrat plays his editor. After solving a crime, Tracy’s character is usually found in a bar, or some other place recovering from a bender. When he’s needed on a new case, Stewart is sent to find him and Bruce is usually able to point him in the right direction. After Tracy’s testimony helps to convict a man that is then sentenced to die, his newspaper wins an exclusive with the condemned … and Stewart has to track down Tracy once again.

Auntie Mame (1958) is on DVD and is also airing in prime-time, but the comedy hasn’t been on the channel in a while and simply must be seen for Rosalind Russell’s (August 20th) last (of four unrewarded) Best Actress Oscar nominated performance. Her title character’s justification for her own joie de vivre couldn’t have been more aptly summarized than when she uttered "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

Period of Adjustment (1962) – perhaps you don’t like dramas written by Tennessee Williams because they’re too depressing, feature characters to whom you can’t relate, or you have an aversion to stories about dysfunctional Southern families. If so, you might want to give this lighter comedy drama a try. While much of what’s funny about Jane Fonda’s (August 23rd) character is her white trash accent, and the rest of the cast members (Tony Franciosa, Jim Hutton, Lois Nettleton etc.) play typically unique and over-the-top characters, George Roy Hill’s (The Sting (1973)) directorial debut is fairly entertaining. The title is a quasi pop psychology phrase that is repeated by Franciosa’s character until it is taken to heart by Fonda’s and becomes ingrained in her philosophy towards her newlywed husband, Hutton (the resemblance between father Jim and his Oscar winning son Tim is uncanny).

One for the Book (1947) aka The Voice of the Turtle (1947) is an above average romance drama that will remind many of The Clock (1945) with Judy Garland and Robert Walker. It stars Eleanor Parker and Ronald Reagan (August 24th). Parker plays an actress that lives alone in an apartment in New York City. Shortly after her boyfriend (Kent Smith) fails to commit to their relationship, she finds herself in a rebound romance with a soldier on leave (Reagan). Eve Arden deliciously plays Parker’s man-eating girlfriend, who had two dates for the same night – a Commander played by Wayne Morris and the Sergeant played by Reagan – so she’d pawned the lower ranking officer off on her friend. In those more innocent times, Parker ends up letting Reagan, whose character is a perfect gentleman, stay in her apartment for the weekend. The result is predictable. The New York Times lists this one in their "Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made".

The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) is a Western that covers the genre’s most popular stereotype like no other before (or since, save The Gunfighter (1950)?), featuring Glenn Ford in the title role. The best of this drama and its tension is contained within the last third of the film, and I won't spoil it, but the rest of the movie is certainly worth watching for the atypical way in which it deals with the subject matter. Ford plays a tortured shopkeeper trying to escape his past, and he hides the secret of his ability as does his expectant wife (Jeanne Crain, looking as beautiful as ever, and not one bit pregnant). When his gunfighter skills are revealed and impressively demonstrated, much to his wife's dismay, the inevitable challenger (Broderick Crawford, August 25th) arrives. Crawford’s character is a bank robber that’s obsessed with being known as the fastest draw. His gang (which includes John Dehner and Noah Berry Jr.) ends up in Ford’s town while on the run from a heist in another, which brings the story to its compelling third act. Leif Erickson, J.M. Kerrigan, Rhys Williams, and Russ Tamblyn (as out of place as his lengthy dance solo is) play some of the town folk that must face a decision of their own as the truth unfolds.

Two Arabian Knights (1927) – Howard Hughes produced this terrific silent film which won its director (Lewis Milestone) the one and only Best Director, Comedy Picture Academy Award. It features ("Hop-Along Cassidy") William Boyd and Louis Wolheim as American soldiers that rescue an Arabian princess (Mary Astor, August 29th) during World War I. Boris Karloff also appears. Wolheim plays Boyd’s sergeant; both men are captured, while distracted fighting one another, by an invading German army. Once they’re in a prisoner of war camp, however, the two Americans work together to escape. In this comic team, Boyd provides the brains while Wolheim provides the brawn. Eventually, the duo ends up on a cargo ship in the Mediterranean. While onboard, they witness a small boat capsize; Boyd jump in to save its passengers and Wolheim jumps in to save Boyd. One of those rescued is Astor’s character; the veiled Arabian princess not only attracts the attention of the two soldiers, but also the captain and crew (Karloff). After Boyd wins her heart, the sheik – to whom she’d been promised by her father – reenters the picture.