Vincent Sherman's The Return of Dr. X
(1939) was meant to be nothing more than an affordable sequel to
Warners' earlier two-strip Technicolor shocker Dr.
X (1932), starring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Most notable for
its rare casting of rising star Humphrey Bogart as a literal dead man
walking, this odd little B-picture capped a fascinating decade for
American horror films, in which grim situations, graveyard humor and
psychologically and physiologically damaged characters were
routine – an approach that was softened considerably in the next decade,
as Universal's monster rallies made fright films less complicated
and less interesting.

The Return Dr. X
originated with an original story, "The Doctor's Secret,"
by British writer William J. Makin. Warners purchased the piece for a
small sum and set actor turned writer/director Crane Wilbur to the task
of adapting it for the big screen. (Wilbur's stage play The
Monster had been adapted in 1925 by Roland West as a vehicle
for monster maker Lon Chaney.) Initially, Warners had big plans for the
project, dreaming up another Technicolor extravaganza with
Frankenstein (1931) star Boris Karloff as a
groundbreaking/taboo shattering man of science brought back to life by
another surgeon, to be played by Dracula (1931) star
Bela Lugosi, who realizes he has created a monster. By the time cameras
rolled in May of 1939, budgetary concerns had favored a standard
black-and-white presentation and nixed the Karloff-Lugosi reteaming in
favor of more affordable actors, while Crane Wilbur's adaptation had
been rewritten by Lee Katz.

As in Dr. X, the sequel
concerns a series of ghastly murders occurring within the heart of
modern New York City, with ace reporter Walt Garrett (Brother
Rat's Wayne Morris) and physician Mike Rhodes (Dennis
Morgan, later of Kitty Foyle) tracking a killer whose
victims share a rare blood type. Discovering the lifeless corpse of
stage actress Angela Merrova (Lya Lys, then the girlfriend of director
Anatole Litvak), the headline hungry Walt phones in the lead… only to
be disgraced the next day when Merrova appears in his paper's city
room to demand a retraction. Walt and Mike eventually deduce that
Merrova was in fact murdered but returned to a semblance of
life by hematologist Dr. Flegg (a monocled John Litel, with a demonic
beard that recalls Bela Lugosi's White Zombie
voodoo master Murder Legendre ), creator of a type of synthetic
blood, who confesses that Merrova was not his first experiment. Earlier,
Flegg had resurrected Maurice Xavier, a brilliant but wrong-headed
surgeon executed in the electric chair for conducting illegal and
inhumane experiments on children.

According to
biographer Richard Gehman, Warners contract player Humphrey Bogart was
none too happy about this assignment but soldiered through the
production (in flammable make-up!), giving the part of the eponymous mad
scientist his professional all. Sporting a Bride of Frankenstein
streak of white hair, a pronounced limp and a withered left
hand, Xavier's damaged body habitus recalls that of Duke Mantee, the
convict character Bogart had played in The Petrified Forest
(1936), whose hands continued to hang in front of him as if
still in handcuffs. Xavier is an remarkably disgusting character, and
not only because of clammy, pallid skin that makes him look like "a
piece of white marble… like something dead." Xavier's crime
is revealed to have been starving children to death in an abandoned
hunter's shack in the New Jersey Meadowlands, a plot point that
rings all too true in this age of endless sexual predators and high
profile child kidnappings. It's amazing that the censors allowed
this disturbing backstory and that Bogart (no stranger to refusing
assignments), risked career suicide to play it. Of course, The
Return of Dr. X did Bogart no harm in the long run. Within two
years he was playing Sam Spade in John Huston's The Maltese
Falcon (1941) and in three starring in Casablanca
(1942) alongside Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains.

Its climax a
batty mixture of Gothic horror tropes (a swampland shack surrounded by
lifeless trees with gnarled, twisted trunks and a screaming heroine in
Rosemary Lane) and gunplay more suited to a Warners gangster picture,
The Return of Dr. X carried forward a morbid streak
that had been in evidence in American horror films since Dracula
broke box office records nearly two decades earlier.
Bogart's Xavier (who cuddles a white rabbit, presumably for its
warmth!) is a bona fide "wrong'un" in the tradition of
Dracula's fly-eating Renfield, Boris Karloff's
necrophiliac architect in The Black Cat (1934), Peter
Lorre's Mad Love (1935) headcase Dr. Gogol and
Sandor, the creepy manservant of Dracula's Daughter
(1935) played so memorably by Irving Pichel; his physical
infirmities also recall the disfigured characters of Dr.
X and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932),
The Raven (1935), Mad Love (1935),
Son of Frankenstein (1939) and
The Face Behind the Mask (1941), as well as
the medical mishaps of
Frankenstein and Island of Lost Souls
(1932).

Most of these creatures are not
monsters by nature so much as nurture (or the lack thereof), creatures
created by circumstance, societal others existing along the fringes of
civilization, bastard children locked in society's attic.
Life-taking, blood-drinking, flesh-eating, corpse-loving, grave-robbing
and profaning God by tampering with the forces of life and death -this
was the shock syllabus of American horror between world wars. After the
attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II in
1941, dark themes and funereal motifs were largely left behind as the
nation struggled to remain upbeat. Horror films of the 1940s (most of
them sequels to 30s hits) were bigger, brighter, cleaner and easier to
laugh off on the walk home. It was truly the end of an era… but it had
sure been one hell of a decade.

Vincent Sherman's The Return of Dr. X (1939) was meant to be nothing more than an affordable sequel to Warners' earlier two-strip Technicolor shocker Dr. X (1932), starring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Most notable for its rare casting of rising star Humphrey Bogart as a literal dead man walking, this odd little B-picture capped a fascinating decade for American horror films, in which grim situations, graveyard humor and psychologically and physiologically damaged characters were routine – an approach that was softened considerably in the next decade, as Universal's monster rallies made fright films less complicated and less interesting.

The Return Dr. X originated with an original story, "The Doctor's Secret," by British writer William J. Makin. Warners purchased the piece for a small sum and set actor turned writer/director Crane Wilbur to the task of adapting it for the big screen. (Wilbur's stage play The Monster had been adapted in 1925 by Roland West as a vehicle for monster maker Lon Chaney.) Initially, Warners had big plans for the project, dreaming up another Technicolor extravaganza with Frankenstein (1931) star Boris Karloff as a groundbreaking/taboo shattering man of science brought back to life by another surgeon, to be played by Dracula (1931) star Bela Lugosi, who realizes he has created a monster. By the time cameras rolled in May of 1939, budgetary concerns had favored a standard black-and-white presentation and nixed the Karloff-Lugosi reteaming in favor of more affordable actors, while Crane Wilbur's adaptation had been rewritten by Lee Katz.

As in Dr. X, the sequel concerns a series of ghastly murders occurring within the heart of modern New York City, with ace reporter Walt Garrett (Brother Rat's Wayne Morris) and physician Mike Rhodes (Dennis Morgan, later of Kitty Foyle) tracking a killer whose victims share a rare blood type. Discovering the lifeless corpse of stage actress Angela Merrova (Lya Lys, then the girlfriend of director Anatole Litvak), the headline hungry Walt phones in the lead… only to be disgraced the next day when Merrova appears in his paper's city room to demand a retraction. Walt and Mike eventually deduce that Merrova was in fact murdered but returned to a semblance of life by hematologist Dr. Flegg (a monocled John Litel, with a demonic beard that recalls Bela Lugosi's White Zombie voodoo master Murder Legendre ), creator of a type of synthetic blood, who confesses that Merrova was not his first experiment. Earlier, Flegg had resurrected Maurice Xavier, a brilliant but wrong-headed surgeon executed in the electric chair for conducting illegal and inhumane experiments on children.

According to biographer Richard Gehman, Warners contract player Humphrey Bogart was none too happy about this assignment but soldiered through the production (in flammable make-up!), giving the part of the eponymous mad scientist his professional all. Sporting a Bride of Frankenstein streak of white hair, a pronounced limp and a withered left hand, Xavier's damaged body habitus recalls that of Duke Mantee, the convict character Bogart had played in The Petrified Forest (1936), whose hands continued to hang in front of him as if still in handcuffs. Xavier is an remarkably disgusting character, and not only because of clammy, pallid skin that makes him look like "a piece of white marble… like something dead." Xavier's crime is revealed to have been starving children to death in an abandoned hunter's shack in the New Jersey Meadowlands, a plot point that rings all too true in this age of endless sexual predators and high profile child kidnappings. It's amazing that the censors allowed this disturbing backstory and that Bogart (no stranger to refusing assignments), risked career suicide to play it. Of course, The Return of Dr. X did Bogart no harm in the long run. Within two years he was playing Sam Spade in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) and in three starring in Casablanca (1942) alongside Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains.

Its climax a batty mixture of Gothic horror tropes (a swampland shack surrounded by lifeless trees with gnarled, twisted trunks and a screaming heroine in Rosemary Lane) and gunplay more suited to a Warners gangster picture, The Return of Dr. X carried forward a morbid streak that had been in evidence in American horror films since Dracula broke box office records nearly two decades earlier. Bogart's Xavier (who cuddles a white rabbit, presumably for its warmth!) is a bona fide "wrong'un" in the tradition of Dracula's fly-eating Renfield, Boris Karloff's necrophiliac architect in The Black Cat (1934), Peter Lorre's Mad Love (1935) headcase Dr. Gogol and Sandor, the creepy manservant of Dracula's Daughter (1935) played so memorably by Irving Pichel; his physical infirmities also recall the disfigured characters of Dr. X and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932), The Raven (1935), Mad Love (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Face Behind the Mask (1941), as well as the medical mishaps of Frankenstein and Island of Lost Souls (1932).

Most of these creatures are not monsters by nature so much as nurture (or the lack thereof), creatures created by circumstance, societal others existing along the fringes of civilization, bastard children locked in society's attic. Life-taking, blood-drinking, flesh-eating, corpse-loving, grave-robbing and profaning God by tampering with the forces of life and death -this was the shock syllabus of American horror between world wars. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II in 1941, dark themes and funereal motifs were largely left behind as the nation struggled to remain upbeat. Horror films of the 1940s (most of them sequels to 30s hits) were bigger, brighter, cleaner and easier to laugh off on the walk home. It was truly the end of an era… but it had sure been one hell of a decade.

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, but found a few spiffy photos of actress Shelley Winters and her then-fiancée, Italian actor and heartthrob Vittorio Gassman.  Shelley and Vittorio made an attractive couple, and in addition to a successful love life, Winters was also experiencing a terrific career moment.  She had been nominated as Best Actress for her role as the hapless Alice Tripp in 1951’s A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens, after a previously busy but undistinguished career path with appearances, both credited and (mostly) uncredited in over thirty films since her screen debut in 1943.

Many of us remember Shelley in her later years, as a larger-than-life character actress who would tackle anything with bravado and good humor.  From the TV series Batman to Bloody Mama, from Alfie to television’s Roseanne, Shelley seemed to have grit and gusto as she racked up appearance after appearance and penned two best-selling autobiographies along the way.  The two-time Oscar winner (for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue) and nominee (A Place in the Sun and The Poseidon Adventure) was a serious actress blessed (or cursed) with a curvaceous frame which kept getting in the way of her being taken completely seriously by Hollywood.  In a career filled with many ups and downs, Shelley nevertheless was never less than vibrant and also a dedicated playgirl of a sort, racking up countless romantic encounters with some of Hollywood’s best known leading men — Brando, Holden, Flynn, Gable — as well four marriages, including two to actors (Gassman and Anthony Franciosa).

Gassman was an Italian movie idol, a gorgeous hunk of man who was also a serious actor, with a successful stage career as well as a long list of movie credits in prominent Italian productions.  Combining brains as well as brawn, Gassman was irresistible, a Continental charmer who joined Shelley in Hollywood, made a few movies — 1953’s Sombrero (as a Mexican), The Glass Wall (as a WW II refugee), swamp drama Cry of the Hunted, Rhapsody (opposite Elizabeth Taylor) and Mambo (opposite Miss Winters) — then returned to Europe to resume his career. 

Shelley and Vittorio were married for two years, and they had a daughter Vittoria together, Shelley’s only child.  The passionate union of these two talented performers wasn’t fated to last, however; their divorce was official on June 2, 1954, after only a little more than two years of marriage.  Obviously the 1950s-era paparazzi loved catching Winters and Gassman together on the town, her blonde locks and solid American good looks contrasting nicely with his dark-haired European masculinity. 

That’s the way it was, fifty-six years ago; Shelley Winters died in 2006, Gassman passed away in 2000.

 In last year’s Academy
Award winning Best Picture No Country for Old Men
(2007), there’s a chilling exchange between the
serial killer (Oscar winner Javier Bardem) and an owner/operator of a
remote roadside service station in the desert during which a coin toss
determines the life or death of a man.  Known for
their love and paeans to the classics in their films, the Coen brothers
paid their own brand of cinematic tribute to the romantic idea of these
types of outposts, before they shattered the illusion of their serenity
and security with this sequence.  It made me recall
the many Westerns that first established the idea of these oases in the
vast territories of our as yet unsettled country, where tired cowboys
could water their horses, throw down a whiskey and either raise hell or
bed down for the night before continuing on their journeys. 
After watching the drama Heat Lightning
(1934) on TCM several days ago, I remembered some others
that were told from the perspective of the proprietors of such places
and their experiences with the eclectic visitors to their
establishments.

As moira
has written, Heat Lightning (1934) is
about a woman (Aline MacMahon) who believes that she has escaped her
past after being a victim of love; she’d renounced her feminine
fragility by becoming a mechanic where she and her comely younger sister
(Ann Dvorak) have relocated – to their desert outpost. 
However, when her former lover (Preston Foster) returns with a
fellow bank robber (Lyle Talbot) in tow, she is forced to deal with her
feelings which fluctuate from one extreme to the other. 
The cast is spiced with a wide varied of character actors (Glenda
Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, even Jane Darwell and Edgar
Kennedy) that provide either grounding to the story or comic
relief.

A
couple of years later, Warner Bros. produced a very similar drama, based
on Robert E. Sherwood’s play The Petrified Forest
(1936), starring Leslie Howard as an itinerant poet, Bette
Davis as an artist-cum-waitress in a roadside restaurant owned by her
father (Porter Hall), and Humphrey Bogart in his star-making role as
Duke Mantee, a John Dillinger-inspired convict killer on the run that
decides to use the remote locale for his gang’s hideout until
things cool down.  This one also includes a variety of
characters played by a very capable supporting roster, and its story
divides them into two groups:  those that are dreaming
for something different and those that have accepted their lot in life
(no matter how mundane).  Genevieve Tobin, Dick Foran,
and Charley Grapewin are among those in the
cast.

RKO set their B drama One Crowded Night
(1940) in a tourist camp on the edge of the Mojave Desert,
and proceeded to fashion one coincidence after another until the
improbable contrivances became too many for any semblance of
credibility.  One wonders if it had been done as a
subtle comedy instead, which its director Irving Reis was capable of
given his later tongue-in-cheek work on the
Falcon series, whether it could have become a ‘cult
classic’.  The basic plot is much like those
already mentioned:  a family runs a motel/gas
station/diner stop in the desert on the way to San Diego from parts
east, and the action starts when various guests from different walks of
life – including gangsters – arrive to disrupt the otherwise
idyllic location.  Among the more recognizable members
of the cast are J.M. Kerrigan, Paul Guilfoyle, and Anne
Revere.

A much different (kind of) story was the basis for Warner
Bros.’s Oscar winning Holiday short Star in the Night
(1945), which featured J. Carrol Naish, Donald Woods,
Rosina Galli and a couple of uncredited staples: 
Irving Bacon and Dick Elliott (among others). 
It’s a contemporary version of the Birth of the Baby Jesus
set in the desert at the remote roadside diner/motel owned and operated
by Nick Catapoli (Naish) and wife Rosa (Galli).  When
the film opens, Nick is a life hardened pessimist that’s weary of
everyone’s self-centeredness and skeptical about their
motives.  Rosa tells everyone that ‘her
Nickie’ is a good man, “never mind his tough
exterior”, and the course of the narrative bears it
out.  He sees the selflessness by which everyone
pitches in to help the young couple with the birth of their son on
Christmas Eve, and experiences a transformation in attitude towards the
penniless loner (Woods, as a forgotten man).  The most
surprising thing about this one is not the fact that it won six time
Oscar winner Gordon Hollingshead the Academy Award for Best Short
Subject, Two-reel, but something else that many who have seen it on TCM
during December probably don’t know – it was the directorial
debut of Don Siegel, who’s best known today for his collaborations
with Clint Eastwood including Dirty Harry (1971) but whose
career resume also includes directing Richard Widmark’s
Madigan (1968) and John Wayne’s farewell performance in
The Shootist (1976).

For remote roadside
establishment scenes in more recent movie, see John Carpenter’s
Starman (1984) or the Coen’s first use
of such a locale in their hilarious (and best?) black comedy
Raising Arizona (1987).

Perhaps our MovieMorlocks
readers can think of some others?

 In last year’s Academy Award winning Best Picture No Country for Old Men (2007), there’s a chilling exchange between the serial killer (Oscar winner Javier Bardem) and an owner/operator of a remote roadside service station in the desert during which a coin toss determines the life or death of a man.  Known for their love and paeans to the classics in their films, the Coen brothers paid their own brand of cinematic tribute to the romantic idea of these types of outposts, before they shattered the illusion of their serenity and security with this sequence.  It made me recall the many Westerns that first established the idea of these oases in the vast territories of our as yet unsettled country, where tired cowboys could water their horses, throw down a whiskey and either raise hell or bed down for the night before continuing on their journeys.  After watching the drama Heat Lightning (1934) on TCM several days ago, I remembered some others that were told from the perspective of the proprietors of such places and their experiences with the eclectic visitors to their establishments.

As moira has written, Heat Lightning (1934) is about a woman (Aline MacMahon) who believes that she has escaped her past after being a victim of love; she’d renounced her feminine fragility by becoming a mechanic where she and her comely younger sister (Ann Dvorak) have relocated – to their desert outpost.  However, when her former lover (Preston Foster) returns with a fellow bank robber (Lyle Talbot) in tow, she is forced to deal with her feelings which fluctuate from one extreme to the other.  The cast is spiced with a wide varied of character actors (Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, even Jane Darwell and Edgar Kennedy) that provide either grounding to the story or comic relief.

A couple of years later, Warner Bros. produced a very similar drama, based on Robert E. Sherwood’s play The Petrified Forest (1936), starring Leslie Howard as an itinerant poet, Bette Davis as an artist-cum-waitress in a roadside restaurant owned by her father (Porter Hall), and Humphrey Bogart in his star-making role as Duke Mantee, a John Dillinger-inspired convict killer on the run that decides to use the remote locale for his gang’s hideout until things cool down.  This one also includes a variety of characters played by a very capable supporting roster, and its story divides them into two groups:  those that are dreaming for something different and those that have accepted their lot in life (no matter how mundane).  Genevieve Tobin, Dick Foran, and Charley Grapewin are among those in the cast.

RKO set their B drama One Crowded Night (1940) in a tourist camp on the edge of the Mojave Desert, and proceeded to fashion one coincidence after another until the improbable contrivances became too many for any semblance of credibility.  One wonders if it had been done as a subtle comedy instead, which its director Irving Reis was capable of given his later tongue-in-cheek work on the Falcon series, whether it could have become a ‘cult classic’.  The basic plot is much like those already mentioned:  a family runs a motel/gas station/diner stop in the desert on the way to San Diego from parts east, and the action starts when various guests from different walks of life – including gangsters – arrive to disrupt the otherwise idyllic location.  Among the more recognizable members of the cast are J.M. Kerrigan, Paul Guilfoyle, and Anne Revere.

A much different (kind of) story was the basis for Warner Bros.’s Oscar winning Holiday short Star in the Night (1945), which featured J. Carrol Naish, Donald Woods, Rosina Galli and a couple of uncredited staples:  Irving Bacon and Dick Elliott (among others).  It’s a contemporary version of the Birth of the Baby Jesus set in the desert at the remote roadside diner/motel owned and operated by Nick Catapoli (Naish) and wife Rosa (Galli).  When the film opens, Nick is a life hardened pessimist that’s weary of everyone’s self-centeredness and skeptical about their motives.  Rosa tells everyone that ‘her Nickie’ is a good man, “never mind his tough exterior”, and the course of the narrative bears it out.  He sees the selflessness by which everyone pitches in to help the young couple with the birth of their son on Christmas Eve, and experiences a transformation in attitude towards the penniless loner (Woods, as a forgotten man).  The most surprising thing about this one is not the fact that it won six time Oscar winner Gordon Hollingshead the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Two-reel, but something else that many who have seen it on TCM during December probably don’t know – it was the directorial debut of Don Siegel, who’s best known today for his collaborations with Clint Eastwood including Dirty Harry (1971) but whose career resume also includes directing Richard Widmark’s Madigan (1968) and John Wayne’s farewell performance in The Shootist (1976).

For remote roadside establishment scenes in more recent movie, see John Carpenter’s Starman (1984) or the Coen’s first use of such a locale in their hilarious (and best?) black comedy Raising Arizona (1987).

Perhaps our MovieMorlocks readers can think of some others?

This is a continuation of last week’s blog in which I paid tribute to some of the late, great film people who inspired, entertained and fascinated us through the medium of film such as animator Ollie Johnson, scream queen Hazel Court and Chuck Heston. Instead of attempting career overviews, however, I chose to either highlight a favorite film or those that are often overlooked and worth seeking out.

ABBY MANN (died 3/25/2008)

A pioneer of the early days of television, Mann was a talented screenwriter and dramatist who worked on such productions as “Robert Montgomery Presents,” “Studio One,” and “Playhouse 90”, before his breakout critical success with JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1964), his first solo feature film screenplay (for director Stanley Kramer) which won him an Oscar. Like Kramer, Mann was a liberal in the entertainment industry and his work often reflected his social and political interests which could occasionally revert to message mongering in films such as A CHILD IS WAITING (1963), a drama about a school for mentally challenged children, and THE DETECTIVE (1968), a hard-boiled urban crime film starring Frank Sinatra in which Mann tries to address issues of public housing, civil rights and the treatment of homosexuals in the context of a murder mystery. Besides JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, Mann is probably most famous for creating the TV series “Kojak” but I single out his film adaptation of Katharine Anne Porter’s SHIP OF FOOLS (1965) as a career highlight. He may have overstated the anti-Semitic aspect of the story in his treatment of Siegfried Rieber (Jose Ferrer) and his German companions in order to illustrate the growing Nazi menace. And the volatile young lovers, Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley) and David (George Segal), are overly strident caricatures. But most of the other characters are beautifully observed with witty and insightful dialogue to match. It also helps that Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Michael Dunn, Oskar Werner and Simone Signoret are on board to breathe life into these literary creations. Mann’s screenplay deservedly received another Oscar nomination. 

JULES DASSIN (died 3/31/2008)

The expatriot American director who left the U.S. in 1953 after being blacklisted and settled in Europe was lucky in that he saw a resurgence of interest in his career at the end of his life with prestige distributors such as The Criterion Collection releasing some of his key film noir titles – THIEVES’ HIGHWAY (1949), NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950), THE NAKED CITY (1948) and RIFIFI (1955) – in pristine, remastered versions for new generations of fans. And then there was the other Jules Dassin, director of earthy European art films, many of which starred his wife, Greek actress Melina Mercouri. NEVER ON SUNDAY (1960), PHAEDRA (1962) and TOPKAPI (1964) are, of course, the most famous of their collaborations but I’d like to single out one of the lesser known ones – 10:30 P.M. Summer (1966) – for its dynamic visual style and rhythm which is apparent from its mesmerizing opening credit sequence where clapping hands multiple in the frame, beating out a wild, impassioned flamenco dance.

The film, based on a screenplay by Marguerite Duras from her novel, depicts a sexual triangle in which Peter Finch is at the center with his disillusioned wife (Mercouri) on one side and their beautiful traveling companion (Romy Schneider) on the other. It’s self-consciously arty, loaded with stereotypes about Spanish culture and its people, and some of the dialogue is so risible you’ll burst out laughing. For example, in one scene Schneider asks Mercouri: “What would you do if you came face to face with a murderer?” Mercouri answers, “I would take heem in my arms.” But of course! Who wouldn’t in this crazy, hothouse fantasy world created by Duras and Dassin. Still, despite the film’s excessive nature, it casts a spell and is unlike anything else Dassin has done. Even if I personally prefer his prison melodrama BRUTE FORCE or NIGHT AND THE CITY I still recommend this as a fascinating curio to any Dassin follower who hasn’t seen it. 

CHARLTON HESTON (died 4/5/2008)

What else is there left to say about this iconic actor who reveled in playing bigger-than-life characters? Like my fellow morlocks, I brake for the Heston sci-fi films (PLANET OF THE APES, SOYLENT GREEN, etc.) and am particularly fond of THE NAKED JUNGLE (1954).(Check out these blogs for more Heston tributes from Richard -

http://www.moviemorlocks.com/blog?action=detail&entry_id=8a258bcb192e62a701192ff1ea040005

and from Medusa -

http://www.moviemorlocks.com/blog?action=detail&entry_id=8a258bca192c3c4001192d4a2ef30002)

But there are two earlier roles which stand out for me because they accent Heston’s darker side and are far removed from his more traditional heroic roles as Ben-Hur or El Cid or astronaut George Taylor. One is his opportunistic social climber in RUBY GENTRY (1952), a lusty, over-the-top melodrama directed by King Vidor in the feverish style of his earlier DUEL IN THE SUN (1946), a film this resembles in its depiction of L’amour fou. Heston grits his teeth a lot in this and Jennifer Jones as his spurned girlfriend gives him plenty of reason to as she avenges past wrongs. They end up in a muddy, bloody showdown in the swamp, not a typical ending for Heston’s noble protagonists. More disturbing is Heston’s portrayal as Ed Bannon in ARROWHEAD (1953), who was based on a real life cavalry scout Al Sieber. You won’t find a more misanthropic, racist character in Westerns than Heston’s Bannon who displays his hatred of the Apaches proudly, either through unsanctioned military actions or poisonous remarks. It’s easy to imagine Bannon happily leading massacres of defenseless Native American women and children and feeling like it was his patriotic duty. Jack Palance as Toriano, Bannon’s Apache half-brother, may be just as hateful and bloodthirsty as his counterpart, but he has a valid reason for his behavior. The army is forcibly trying to move his tribe to a reservation in Florida and he takes violent action against them. Heston triumphs in the end, which is probably a lot closer to how the West was really won, but he is NOT a hero which is the strange irony of ARROWHEAD. Who are you really supposed to root for? The Apache are clearly the victims here. This is easily Heston’s most frightening portrayal, right up there with John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in THE SEARCHERS.

OLLIE JOHNSON (died 4/14/2008)

A longtime employee and animator at the Walt Disney studios – his first motion picture credit was TWO-GUN MICKEY in 1934 – Ollie was the last survivor of the “nine old men,” an inner circle of Disney animators who started out together with Walt at his studio during the Depression years of 1934-35 (The rest of this group included Frank Thomas, Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman, Eric Larson, Ward Kimbel and John Lounsbery). Ollie worked on so many of the major Disney animated features that it is hard to pinpoint his exact contributions to each one without extensive knowledge of his techniques. (He co-authored a book with Frank Thomas on animation, The Illusion of Life, and was the subject of the documentary Frank and Ollie which sheds some light on his work). Among all of the legendary films he worked on, from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1939), PINOCCHIO (1940) and FANTASIA (1940), on up to MARY POPPINS (1964), ROBIN HOOD (1973) and THE FOX AND THE HOUND, his final feature, my favorite is actually a short, THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (1949), which was originally distributed as a feature that included the short THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS under the title THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD. I was always fascinated by Washington Irving’s Hudson Valley folk tales, especially the legend of Rip Van Winkle, and Disney’s animated version of the Ichabod Crane story thrilled me as a kid. It could give you the shivers but also provided some well-timed comic relief to offset the horror. Adult viewers may find there is too much humor in the proceedings and that Ichabod is much more sympathetic and likeable than he is in the original short story, a fact that makes the outcome of Disney’s version ambigious. Brahm Bones, Ichabod’s romantic rival, is depicted as no better than an infantile bully so his victory at the end appears to condone his behavior. But, in terms of the drawings and animation, this short perfectly conjures up Irving’s bucolic setting with its supernatural overtones.  

HAZEL COURT (died 4/15/2008)

A gorgeous, green-eyed redhead, Court graced many a low-budget feature in her native England before establishing her niche in the horror/fantasy film genre with such movies as DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS (1954), THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957), in which her sexy body was amply showcased in low-cut gowns, and THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959). Her reputation as a “scream queen” was confirmed when she came to the U.S. and worked for director Roger Corman on three of his popular Edgar Allan Poe film adaptations, starting with PREMATURE BURIAL (1962), followed by the horror parody THE RAVEN (1963), and then THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964), probably her finest hour on the screen. She usually played the proper Englishwoman and projected a sense of elegance and cool reserve but we always suspected that underneath that aloof beauty was a wild woman with a wicked sense of humor waiting to break out and she throws caution to the wind in Corman’s dayglo-colored nightmare. She not only brands her breast with a hot iron to impress the evil Prospero (Vincent Price) but gives herself to the Devil in a satanic ritual before coming to a bloody end, courtesy of some ravenous birds. It’s a shame her part wasn’t bigger but her presence was always welcome in these films. A reviewer for Time magazine covering one of the Poe films featuring Court got even more specific about the actress, noting “in whose bosom, you could sink the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe and a bottle of his favorite booze at the same time.”

Bebe Barron (Died 4/20/2008)

It is hard to believe that Louis and Bebe Barron, who created what is generally acknowledged as the first electronic motion picture score for FORBIDDEN PLANET in 1956, didn’t continue to compose scores for Hollywood films. That soundtrack, which introduced such strange sounds as the theramin to mainstream audiences, would set the standard for all futuristic fantasy films. Yet the real reason they didn’t continue working in feature films is because the Musicians Union denied them membership because it didn’t consider their FORBIDDEN PLANET score “music.” Instead, MGM was pressured to label the Barrons’ contribution as “electronic tonalities” in their promotion and Louis and Bebe returned to what they loved – making electronic music for experimental short films and recording projects. Although the couple divorced in 1970, they continued to collaborate up until Louis’s death in 1989. Bebe continued to compose after that and her final work was a piece entitled “Mixed Emotions” which she created while serving as a guest artist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. It is FORBIDDEN PLANET though that secured Bebe (and Louis’s) reputation as true visionaries and it’s even more amazing to realize it was created through analog circuits and not the technically advanced digital technology of today. As the couple stated in the liner notes to the Small Planet Records reissue of FORBIDDEN PLANET soundtrack, “There were no synthesizers or traditions of electronic music when we scored this film, and therefore we were free to explore “terra incognito” with all its surprises and adventures.” Just reading the musical selections from the soundtrack album conjures up some fond memories: “Robby Arranges Flowers, Zaps Monkey,” “Giant Footprints in the Sand,” “Robby, The Cook, and 60 Gallons of Booze”…….

A year after crime-of-passion murderess Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, Associated British-Pathé released Yield to the Night (1956), a fictionalized summing up of that notorious and divisive cause celebre starring Diana Dors in a career making (but sadly not career defining) star turn as doomed grudge killer Mary Hilton.

Diana Dors had known Ruth Ellis from the London club scene, making Yield to the Night a personal project for the RADA-trained actress. Throughout her life, "the Siren of Swindon" would devote herself to humanitarian causes, with a special focus on the inmates of British prisons. She successfully used her celebrity status to lobby for increased visitation rights for the loved ones of the incarcerated and sent a letter of sympathy and support to the family of Derek Bentley, the 19-year-old epileptic would-be burglar who was hanged at Wandsworth Prison in 1953 for a crime committed by his underage accomplice. (This gross miscarriage of justice was the subject of the songs "Bentley and Craig" by June Tabor, "Let Him Dangle" by Elvis Costello and the 1991 Peter Medak film Let Him Have It). The role of Mary Hilton is a perfect fit for Dors, hoping in vain to escape the label of "the British Marilyn Monroe." Her beauty riding the razor's edge between zaftig and overweight, Dors was as child-like as she was womanly, and is here alternatively alluring and pathetic as the condemned woman whose life between sentencing and execution becomes a bizarre ritual of maintenance and regulation: no more than 10 cigarettes a day, no matches, no forks, no nail clippers, no letters from outside longer than a single page and no lights out… ever.

Yield to the Night swings wide of the known facts of the Ellis affair in a number of significant ways, hedging its bets in an apparent bid to make Mary Hilton more sympathetic. While Ellis, the mother of two, was a nightclub hostess and part time actress (who had in fact appeared as an extra in the 1951 British Lion Film Corporation production Lady Godiva Rides Again, costarring Diana Dors in a supporting role), Mary Hilton is depicted as a childless and unhappily married shop girl staffing the perfume counter of a posh specialty store. The biggest deviation from the facts comes with Mary gunning down not the man who done her wrong (as Ruth Ellis had done to bisexual race car driver David Blakely on Easter Sunday 1955) but rather the tragic affair's other woman, whose face is never shown. Thompson and veteran cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (whose long and distinguished career includes gigs on Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey, George Lucas' Star Wars and John Badham's Dracula) capture the events in canted angles and Greg Tolland-style deep focus photography that fetishizes hands and feet and inanimate objects such as tea cups and burning cigarettes that evoke a suitably sensual world full of wonder, yearning and anguish.

Even though Yield to the Night seems a heartfelt call for the end of capital punishment in the United Kingdom (which came nine years later, in 1965), Thompson and his writers avoid the obvious tack of demonizing society, preferring instead to focus on the rather sad task handed to those entrusted with the custodianship of Mary Hilton: her lawyer (Charles Lloyd Pack), her doctor (Liam Redmond, whom you may know from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken), the prison chaplain (The Third Man's Geoffrey Keene) and the squadron of officers (among them, second-billed Yvonne Mitchell) who monitor Mary's every waking moment. If scorn is affixed to anyone in Yield to the Night, it's to the heartless thrillseekers who toy with the affections of the lovelorn. Even Mary's often cruel lover, Jim Lancaster (Mysterious Island's Michael Craig) is depicted as ultimately powerless in the grip of his passions, as tragic a figure in his own way as Mary Hilton, who will shortly him to the grave.

There's nothing weak or bleeding heart in the compassion and decency of Yield to the Night. The film is peopled by lost souls feeling their way in the dark. Towards the end of the film, Mary accepts a tender embrace from matron MacFarlane, who has recently lost her own mentally unstable mother, the only person in her life, and offers Mary the simple observation "We all, all of us die some morning." The sharp faced, dark-eyed Yvonne Mitchell is well cast opposite Dors and a knowledge of both actresses' later careers adds an unintended layer of poignancy to this scene. Like Dors, whose later life was taken up with appearances in junk like Beserk! (1967) and The Amorous Milkman (1975), Mitchell was a talented stage actress whose rent-paying film work (Crucible of Horror, Demons of the Mind) was often leagues beneath her. Yvonne Mitchell died in 1979 of cancer, a disease that would claim Diana Dors' life five years later.

Yield to the Night is unavailable in the United States but, for those with multi-region players, a nice looking print is available as a Region 2 DVD from Optimum Home Entertainment as part of their Optimum Classics Collection.

Ruth Ellis' story was told in the film Dance with a Stranger (1985), starring Miranda Richardson.  Ellis also appears as a character (played by Mary Stockley) in Pierrepoint (2005), a potrait of British hangman Albert Pierrepoint, played by Timothy Spall.

After catching, in the space of a week, film composer George Duning’s work in my favorite Kirk Douglas/Kim Novak extramarital affair movie Strangers When We Meet, and then his later work in one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, I remembered how much I loved his music.  Incredibly prolific — hundred and hundreds of movie and television credits as music arranger and composer, often uncredited — and hardworking, George Duning created some of the movies’ most beautiful and memorable scores, yet never won an Academy Award.

Duning was born in Indiana in 1908, and studied music at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but after graduation threw off the shackles of classical music to join swing bandleader Kay Kyser’s very successful orchestra as a trumpet and piano player.  Working with Kyser, who in addition to his popular radio show also made a series of movies, gave Duning the chance to work on Kyser’s Hollywood films as music arranger and composer, giving him an entrée into the business.  After a stint in the Navy during WWII, during which time he worked in Armed Forces Radio as a conductor/arranger, the talented Duning was snapped up by Columbia Studio’s musical guru Morris Stoloff as one of his protégées.

From 1944 onward Duning virtually belonged to Columbia, working in various capacities from orchestrator to arranger to credited composer to having his short musical themes used countless times in the background of B-movies (along with the work of other composers).  His first solo credit seems to be for 1947’s crime drama Johnny O’ Clock, and he worked non-stop after that, working in every genre, moving easily from domestic dramas like The Guilt of Janet Ames also in 1947, to flip noir like 1948’s I Love Trouble, to a solid western like The Man from Colorado, to swashbuckler-y The Gallant Blade, with lots of tough little Bs with punchy titles like The Dark Past, Shockproof, Johnny Allegro and The Undercover Man to keep him busy.  Duning’s first recognition by the Oscars was a nomination with Morris Stoloff for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture for their work on 1949’s Jolson Sings Again, which they lost to On the Town.

In 1950 George Duning was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture for his work on No Sad Songs for Me, a melodrama starring the talented but troubled actress Margaret Sullavan.  The Oscar that year was won by Franz Waxman for his score to Sunset Blvd., and Duning went back to his prodigious output, laboring both on solo efforts where he received credit and contributing anonymously to other films, in addition to being part of the pastiche of musical themes cobbled together as scores to Columbia’s various lesser titles, those not-quite-even-Bs, and serials.  Definitely take a look at his official credits on IMDB to get an idea of where you could have run across his music — it’s almost unbelievable. 

In 1953, after tackling Rita Hayworth as Biblical hot stuff Salome in the movie of the same name and a few other lesser titles, got a plum assignment working alongside mentor Morris Stoloff on the score of director Fred Zinneman’s adaptation of James Jones’ daring wartime drama From Here to Eternity.  They received an Oscar nomination for their score, but lost to MGM’s Lili (!).  Thanks in part to Duning’s lush scoring, the sea foamy clinch between Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster on that Hawaiian beach was just a little more erotic, a little more romantic, than it might have been under the influence of a different composer, and it’s impossible to envision that scene without its accompanying musical theme.  Then it was back to work, work, work, with movie after movie — Miss Sadie Thompson, 5 Against the House, The Man from Laramie, My Sister Eileen, Queen Bee, and more — coming out for the next couple of years. 

1955 was a very good year for George Duning.  He was called upon to compose the score for director Josh Logan’s screen adaptation of William Inge’s hit play Picnic, an erotically-charged slice of Midwestern life starring the ravishing Kim Novak and the almost-too-old (but he pulls it off) William Holden as the two lovers.  In addition to brilliant and evocative underscoring, Duning contributed to one of the most memorable — next to that Kerr/Lancaster beach kiss — and sensuous scenes in 1950s cinema:  the dance on the lantern-lit dock between Kim Novak as Millie and William Holden as Hal, as they move together to the old standard “Moonglow” (by De Lange, Mills and Hudson) intermixed with the luscious theme from Picnic (composed by Duning).  Hubba hubba!  You know how they always used to say that you could tell how great somebody’s going to be in bed by the way they dance?  Well, let’s just say that Millie and Hal certainly passed that test with flying colors.  It doesn’t get much more intense than that little dockside interlude; be sure to take a look at the scene right here now.  It’s also very effective just listening to the music on its own, which you can find here (click on the Morris Stoloff link); the blending of the two tunes is pure magic.  (I’m shocked to report that though nominated, Duning did not win the Oscar that year, but lost to Alfred Newman’s Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, chiefly, I’m sure, because of that title song, which also won an Oscar.  Duning not winning for Picnic was a total robbery.)

The next year Duning and Stoloff were nominated again for their scoring of The Eddy Duchin Story, but it was won by The King and I.  George Duning continued to turn out great score after great score, including the Judy Holliday comedy/drama Full of Life, the tough Glenn Ford Western 3:10 to Yuma, Kim Novak’s foray as silent screen star Jeanne Eagels, the Ernie Kovac comedy Operation Mad Ball, a Danny Kaye comedy/drama Me and the Colonel, a brief sidetrip to Paramount for the Cary Grant/Sophia Loren comedy Houseboat, then back to Columbia for one of his most popular scores, for the Kim Novak/James Stewart/Jack Lemmon supernatural comedy Bell, Book and Candle in 1958.  This one allowed Duning to shine, with eccentric jazzy melodies which perfectly captured the kooky spooky vibe of the material. 

Duning continued his seemingly unending string of terrific scores in the early 1960s, including the aforementioned Strangers When We Meet, supplying suitably romantic and clearly sexy music for Kirk and Kim to do their thang to, and the list goes on and on (and not always for Columbia):  The World of Suzie Wong, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, Two Rode Together, The Devil at 4 O’Clock, The Notorious Landlady, That Touch of Mink, Critic’s Choice, Toys in the Attic, Ensign Pulver, Any Wednesday and more.  He also began to work more in television, composing the title theme to The Big Valley, working several times on Star Trek, including scores for some of the most romantic episodes of the original series, including episodes like “Metamorphosis” and “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” and “The Empath”.  He also did the very memorable (if you’re a Trek fan) Nazi theme for “Patterns of Force” (guest-starring the great Skip Homeier), and composed the title theme song for the short-lived but iconic 1969 Michael Parks-on-a-motorcycle series Then Came Bronson.

Many more assignments followed, along with heavy involvement in the Hollywood music community as an officer of ASCAP and on the Board of AMPAS.  Several of his wonderful scores have been reissued by film music preservation organizations, and it’s safe to say that once you’ve tuned into to George Duning’s unique and never-less-than-perfect musical style, you’ll enjoy looking out for his movies and hearing his scores. 

George Duning passed away eight years ago, in February of 2000, at the age of ninety-two.

We recently screened Kino International’s new 35mm print of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) here at the International Film Series. I’m pleased to announce that the film still draws an appreciative crowd who filled the auditorium with laughter. Our particular print went on to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it plays this Friday and Saturday. I also know it’s playing at the Film Forum in New York City on May 1st. So consider this a gentle reminder that a cinematic presentation of one of Chaplin’s most celebrated films might be coming to a theater near you. READ MORE