Tag Archives: spencer tracy

“It all went wrong, and I don’t know why. That’s what I want to know–why!”

Posted on by under blogathon, from stage to screen, lit adaptations

In 1949, twenty-eight year old British actress Deborah Kerr starred opposite screen veteran Spencer Tracy in Edward, My Son. Though Kerr had already won critical acclaim for a handful of popular films in her native England–among them I See a Dark Stranger (1946) and Black Narcissus (1947)–Edward was only her third American film, and in my mind, presented the young actress with one of the most interesting roles of her career.

The film is framed by narration from Arnold Boult (Tracy), who reflects upon his life from the birth of his son, Edward (who is never seen during the course of the movie), through Edward’s untimely death as a young man. The flashback begins in 1919: Boult (a native Canadian) lives in London with his British wife, Evelyn (Kerr), and their infant son. On Edward’s first birthday, Arnold decides to go into the furniture financing business with his old friend Harry (Mervyn Johns), who has just gotten out of prison, and is optimistic about the venture despite Evelyn’s hesitation about his working with a convicted felon. The happy couple celebrates the day with Harry and with their close friend (and family doctor), Larry Woodhope (Ian Hunter). Arnold toasts the sleeping Edward, stating, “To Edward … This is just to let you know that down here, we have the matter of your future well in hand, all four of us. Sleep safe, Edward. The world shall be your oyster.” Evelyn wonders aloud, “What does that mean, the world his oyster?” To which Arnold replies, “That means that nothing is going to be too good for him–ever.”

We jump ahead five years to Edward’s sixth birthday. A specialist diagnoses Edward with an “atrophy of nerves in the hip” and informs the Boults that the only cure is an expensive operation in Switzerland. Though Edward will eventually recover without the operation, the doctor tells them that the boy will have a permanent limp, much to Arnold’s disappointment, as he dreams of his son being active in sports. Arnold tells Larry that he will find a way to pay the one thousand pounds to cover the cost of the procedure: “Somehow or other, my son’s going to have what’s best for him.” Arnold’s solution is to burn down the furniture store and collect the insurance, and he convinces his business partner, Harry, to reluctantly go along with the scheme. The plan works, and Edward’s operation is a complete success.

Time passes in a montage of birthday cakes and the story picks back up again in 1930, around the time of Edward’s twelfth birthday. Edward is enrolled in prep school, and Arnold has, by this time, grown wealthy and become “Sir Boult.” According to the headmaster and Edward’s instructors, the boy is a disrespectful “little stinker” and they plan to expel him from the school. However, Arnold, who has also grown incredibly arrogant in the ensuing years, refuses to acknowledge Edward’s faults and instead reveals that he owns the mortgage to the school and that he will close the academy if Edward is not permitted to remain there.

By 1935, as Edward turns sixteen, Evelyn expresses concern to Larry that Arnold has spoiled Edward to the point of ruining the boy’s chances to be a “normal,” well-adjusted man. Larry, for his part, has distanced himself from the Boults due to his suspicions about Arnold’s behavior and his growing love for Evelyn. Harry, who had in previous years been implicated in the collapse of a business venture with Arnold, is released from prison and comes to Arnold’s office looking for work. But when Arnold indicates his unwillingness to help, Harry goes to the roof of the building and jumps off, committing suicide. Arnold’s secretary, Eileen (Leueen Macgrath), covers for her boss, lying to the police to cover up Arnold’s involvement with Harry in order to downplay any possible scandal.

This leads to an affair between the two, which lasts for over a year, until one night the pair discovers a detective staking out Eileen’s apartment. Arnold and Eileen confront the detective, who is there to gather evidence of the affair, as Evelyn has decided to divorce her philandering husband. Arnold promptly dumps Eileen flat (we later learn that she commits suicide by overdosing on pills) and flies to Switzerland to see Evelyn and Edward. Evelyn informs Arnold that she plans to divorce him very publicly so as to reveal to Edward the truth about his father, but Arnold remains unfazed. He threatens to ruin Larry’s career by insinuating that Larry seduced Evelyn while she was his patient. Evelyn, trapped and frightened, collapses on the bed and weeps, knowing that if she wants to remain a part of her son’s life, she must remain inextricably bound to Arnold.

As three more birthdays pass, Evelyn becomes withdrawn and haggard, losing herself in an alcoholic haze. Meanwhile, Edward is preparing to marry the rich and well-connected Phyllis Mayden (Harriette Johns), but has impregnated his lower-class mistress, Betty (Tilsa Page). Arnold summons Larry to the house in an effort to convince the doctor to “take care” of the situation (a not-so-subtle hint at abortion), but Larry refuses and offers to help the young woman after Arnold informs Betty that Edward will not marry her. Betty tells Arnold that he doesn’t have to worry about paying her off, because she will take care of herself.

Two years later, in 1941, the country is in the midst of World War II. Edward has recently died in a plane crash, killing himself and his crew while “showing off” during a routine drill. Larry stops by the Boult house, bringing his condolences, and finds Evelyn hosting a one-woman “celebration” of Edward’s birthday as she sinks into a drunken stupor. When Evelyn goes to bed, Arnold reflects on Edward’s life, telling Larry that he did the best he could for his son, and doesn’t think he could have done anything better.

As Arnold’s story winds to a close, we find that Evelyn died in 1945, shortly before the end of the war. A year later, Arnold appears at Larry’s office, seeking his old friend’s help in locating Betty, for Arnold wants to take possession of Edward’s child. Larry, however, refuses to assist him. The movie ends with Arnold addressing the audience once more. He explains that the government had found him liable for burning down the furniture store all those years ago, and that he had just recently been released from prison after four years (side note: Arnold’s conviction and jail time was added to the film per the request of the Production Code office, which demanded that Arnold be held liable for his crime). Arnold concludes by vowing that he will never stop searching for his grandson, showing that despite all of the tragedies he had engineered over the years in his own life and the lives of his family, he has yet to learn his lesson.

Edward, based on a British play co-written by Noel Langley and Robert Morley, was adapted by screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart (who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for 1940′s The Philadelphia Story). That film’s director, the incomparable George Cukor, also directed Edward, and at one point pushed for longtime friend (and Philadelphia star) Katharine Hepburn to appear as Evelyn. Tracy and Hepburn ultimately nixed this idea, however, as the not-so-secret lovers reportedly sought to limit their onscreen pairings (nonetheless, Hepburn and Tracy would go on to costar in Adam’s Rib for Cukor only months later). The door was open for Kerr, who had played Evelyn on the London stage, to take the lead. And while Tracy may have been the bigger star–and his turn as the heartless and devious Arnold is quite effective–this is undoubtedly Kerr’s movie.

The film’s storyline requires Kerr’s character to age from her early twenties through her forties and, perhaps more dauntingly, also requires her to portray Evelyn’s gradual descent into drunkenness. She handles both with aplomb. Her development from a rather innocent young wife to a bitter, slurring, and graying alcoholic is a natural progression on the part of the actress. Subtle changes in Evelyn’s expression–from open to shuttered, wide-eyed to narrowed, smiling to grimacing–reveal the depths of degradation. Kerr even pitches her voice differently in Evelyn’s later years, injecting a note of shrill disregard in the character’s late interactions with Arnold. Her booze-soaked sorrow and bitterness in the wake of Edward’s death is utterly heartbreaking. All in all, it’s an intriguing performance, and an indication of the sheer breadth of talent that Kerr would display in her later films.

Edward, incidentally, would present Kerr with the first of her six Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. For all that recognition (and for all she deserved a victory), however, Kerr never won a competitive Oscar, though she was awarded an honorary statuette in 1994.

This post is my (somewhat belated) contribution to the “Darling Deborah” blogathon hosted by Sophie at Waitin’ for a Sunny Day. Check out the other entries here.

“She may be his wife, but she’s engaged to me!”

Posted on by under blogathon, screwball legends

In the mid-1930s, the screwball comedy was still a relatively new subgenre of film. Many critics label It Happened One Night, released in 1934, as the first “screwball” picture ever produced, and subsequent films such as Twentieth Century (also 1934) and Hands Across the Table (1935) built upon the elements that would become typical tropes of the screwball picture: daffy dames, class warfare, rapid-fire zingers, and a never-ending battle of the sexes.

But the genre really came into its own in 1936 with the release of Libeled Lady. Combining elements of farce, romance, social commentary, and slapstick, Lady is a veritable treasure trove of hilarity, delivered by one of the most talented comedic quartets to ever grace the screen.

Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy), the editor of the New York newspaper the Evening Star, mistakenly runs an unsubstantiated (and ultimately untrue) story accusing heiress Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) of being a homewrecker. Connie and her father, J.B. (Walter Connolly), declare their intention to sue the paper for libel to the tune of five million dollars. Warren tracks down former employee Bill Chandler (William Powell) and convinces him to help force the Allenburys to drop the lawsuit. Bill’s plan is to marry a woman–in name only–and then trap Connie into “breaking up” the marriage so that she will have no choice but to forgo the lawsuit against the paper. Warren offers up his own fiancé, Gladys (Jean Harlow), who has grown increasingly tired of Warren’s repeated delays in marrying her. She agrees to the scheme on the promise that Warren will finally make Gladys his wife once it’s over. But Bill doesn’t count on actually falling in love with Connie … and no one counts on Gladys deciding that marriage to Bill is infinitely more enticing than marrying the reluctant Warren …

By all accounts, the making of this film was nothing less than sheer pleasure for its four main stars, who shared a great friendship and camaraderie that shines on and off the screen. Each actor plays off the others beautifully–it’s truly an ensemble, in the best sense of the word.

As the male leads, Tracy and Powell are dynamite, sparring with their female partners in an increasingly frenetic pas de deux. Loy matches them step for step, and Connolly gives a typically wonderful performance as Loy’s put-upon father. But if I had to name the true “star” of the film, it would be Jean Harlow, hands down. She certainly got some of the best quips in the film, at any rate:

Warren: “Gladys, do you want me to kill myself?”
Gladys: “Did you change your insurance?”

I think Libeled Lady is the film where Harlow’s comedic talents finally gelled into something damn near close to perfect. She had always exhibited an instinctive comic ability in her roles, even from the earliest days of her career, when she was a contract player at the Hal Roach Studios. After MGM acquired her contract from millionaire producer Howard Hughes in 1932, Harlow reached superstar status in the wake of sex-bomb roles in pre-Code potboilers like 1932′s Red-Headed Woman and Red Dust–characters that were equal parts smolder and smart-ass. These parts were followed by more mainstream comedic roles in films such as Dinner at Eight and Bombshell (both in 1933), movies that showcased, in part, the depths of her hilarity.

But Harlow, who often felt typecast in the role of a wisecracking sexpot, reportedly sought to cultivate a less sexualized air on-screen. She attempted to move in a more refined direction with some of her later films, including Suzy and Wife vs. Secretary (both 1936), which muted the brassier tones of her past shtick into something a bit more dignified (at least in comparison).

Libeled Lady represented a sort of “return to form” for Harlow, presenting the actress with a practically custom-made role that combined her innate sexiness with the kind of rapid-fire, quick-witted dialogue at which she excelled at delivering. And this did not go unnoticed by critics. New York Times film reviewer Frank S. Nugent, in his 1936 review of the movie, expressed his thanks to the studio for Harlow’s return to her forte, writing:

“[W]e are so pathetically grateful to Metro for restoring Miss Harlow to her proper metier that we could have forgiven even more serious lapses” than the “slackening of pace toward the picture’s conclusion.”

Indeed, throughout the movie Harlow shines brightest of all, and her performance as Gladys is the one that draws your eye every second she is on the screen, from the moment she storms into the newsroom–in full wedding regalia–to claim her absent groom … 

… up through the film’s conclusion, when Gladys finally decides that Warren is the right man for her, despite his predilection for newsprint. In every scene, Harlow makes you laugh even while you marvel at her sexy swagger (and even when she’s undergoing the torture treatment known as a permanent, you can’t help but envy that gorgeous mug of hers).

Not for nothing is Jean Harlow still remembered as one of the most beautiful women to ever grace filmdom.

The movie marked a personal milestone in Harlow’s life–it was during the shooting of Libeled Lady that she formally changed her name from Harlean Carpenter to Jean Harlow. The film also gave Harlow the opportunity to work with her real-life love, William Powell, in the second of their two films together (after the previous year’s Reckless). Though she seems like a perfect fit for the role of Gladys, Harlow initially expressed interest in playing Connie because she wanted her character to end up with Powell’s in the end. The studio, however, wanted to cash in on the public’s love for the on-screen team of Powell and Loy, which had come to such great fruition two years earlier in the first Thin Man film. Still, as Gladys, Harlow got to play a wedding scene with her man, fulfilling (at least cinematically) her desire to become Mrs. William Powell. Sadly, that union never materialized in reality before Harlow’s untimely death the following year.

Jean Harlow was so beloved as a brash, sexy comedienne that, had she lived beyond the age of 26, she may very well have found herself typecast in those sorts of roles for the remainder of her career. But would that have been such a bad thing, in the end? Could she have made the transition from ingenue roles to more “adult” fare with aplomb, or would she have found it difficult to maintain her position as one of the brightest stars in the cinematic sky? It’s a futile exercise to play the ”what if” game, but it’s nonetheless interesting to consider where Harlow’s career may have taken her if circumstances had been different.

Happy one hundredth birthday, Baby.

This post is our contribution to the Jean Harlow Blogathon, sponsored by the Kitty Packard Pictorial in honor of Harlow’s centenary. To see more entries in the blogathon, check out the Pictorial. And for more information about Harlow’s years in Hollywood, pick up a copy of the new biography Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937, by Darrell Rooney and Mark A. Vieira.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Really.

Posted on by under 4-star films, brandie's faves, ensemble films, hahas

I love introducing people to classic film, particularly younger people. Hook ‘em young, I always say. Okay, so I don’t always say that. But I should. And so it’s now my new motto.

Getting back to the point …

Last night, I introduced Jamie, my friend Michelle’s seventeen-year-old son, to the uber-hilarious 1963 farce, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Now, I’ve had my experiences with introducing non-classic fans to some of my favorite older movies. Some of these attempts have been successful, and some of them have been less so–for example, attempting to get Michelle, who loved The Tudors with a passion, to sit through the amazingly awesome 1968 classic The Lion in Winter was like trying to get Mike Tyson to control his anger without anti-psychotic medication. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when Jamie and I sat down in front of the television and fired up the DVR.

The result was rewarding and highly amusing–watching Jamie roll around in the recliner, holding his sides from laughing so hard, made me laugh even harder (and louder) than normal. Which, unfortunately, resulted in waking up the other two members of the household, who were taking naps at the time. But that’s the price you pay when a movie is as riotously funny as this one.

At three-plus hours long, Mad definitely requires an investment of your time, but it’s well worth it. The movie begins with a car weaving in and out of traffic on a California highway; it eventually flies off a cliff and crashes, sending the driver, a crook named “Smiler” Grogan (Jimmy Durante), through the windshield. He is found by five passengers of the cars he has just passed: Russell (Milton Berle), who is traveling with his wife (Dorothy Provine) and annoying mother-in-law (Ethel Merman); Melville (Sid Caesar), a dentist traveling with his wife (Edie Adams–side note: Caesar’s part was originally meant for Ernie Kovacs, Adams’ husband, who sadly died in an automobile accident before the movie could be made); Lennie, a truck driver (Jonathan Winters); and comedy writers Dingy and Benjy (Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett), who are traveling together. As Smiler dies, he tells the men that he buried $350,000 “under a big W” in the state park about two hundred miles away. When the men depart, following one another down the highway, all of them begin to suspect the others of trying to go for the loot. But after trying–and failing–to negotiate a fair split of the money, it becomes an every-man-for-himself race to the finish line, and the competitors use anything and everything in their arsenals to get ahead, with increasingly frenetic results.

The movie is directed by Stanley Kramer, who up to this point in his career was mainly known for directing a string of heavily dramatic films: The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). And Mad remained an anomaly on Kramer’s resume–he did not direct another outright comedy in his career. But he demonstrates a deft hand with juggling the numerous stories and characters in this movie (a technique he would reprise somewhat in his next film, 1965′s Ship of Fools).

Mad is a true ensemble piece, with some of the most notable names in comedy in the leading roles and even more of them appearing in small cameos throughout the movie. Almost everyone who was anyone in comedy in the early 1960s is in this film, from Berle to Hackett to Winters (in his first film role) to an as-far-away-from-Andy-Hardy-as-you-can-get Rooney. And the movie pays particular homage to some of the forebears of this younger comedy crop: Buster Keaton, the Three Stooges, Jack Benny, and Durante, among many others, show up in the damnedest places throughout the story.

And as the straight man, we have Spencer Tracy, whose brand of sly, bantering humor doesn’t sparkle as much without an equally sly sparring partner (such as his longtime paramour, Katharine Hepburn). Tracy was in his twilight years while making this film, and reportedly so ill that he only worked a few hours every day and was largely shot via close-up to disguise the extent of his deterioration, which was ultimately due, in large part, to his alcoholism, a not-so-well-kept secret in Hollywood (in fact, Tracy would only make one film after Mad, the 1967 interracial marriage drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, incidentally also directed by Kramer). Nevertheless, despite his shortened hours on the set, Tracy was the star around whom all of the comedians gravitated; reportedly, every single one would go out of his way to try to impress Tracy with a gag or a well-timed one-liner, and according to Kramer, Tracy admired each and every one of them in return.

Every type of humor you can imagine is on display in this film: madcap screwball hi-jinks (including my favorite part: Jonathan Winters destroying a garage practically with his bare hands); painful physical comedy (watch Sid Caesar’s expression after he’s thrown from an unstable firetruck ladder); bitingly sarcastic retorts; quick-witted comebacks; and broad, flailing, “look at me!” grabs for attention. There’s even the old slipping-on-the-banana-peel gag. All that’s missing from this film are a couple of pies in the face! Whatever your brand of humor, you’ll find something that tickles your funny bone in this movie.

For me, the real joy in watching this film is to see all of these wonderful funnymen at their frantic best, years before appearing in the roles with which I identified them when I was younger. I mean, when I was growing up, Sid Caesar was the coach from the musical Grease. Mickey Rooney was old Lampie in Pete’s Dragon and Henry in The Black Stallion. Milton Berle was Mad Man Mooney from The Muppet Movie. Jonathan Winters was Mearth on Mork & Mindy. Buddy Hackett was Tennessee in The Love Bug and the unmistakable voice of Scuttle the seagull in The Little Mermaid. The alcoholic pilot (Jim Backus) was the millionaire from Gilligan’s Island. The list goes on and on! So not only do I laugh my fool head off while watching this film, it’s an exercise in nostalgia, recalling those great childhood television and movie memories and really making me appreciate this talented cast anew.

You can find Mad on Amazon for a pretty decent price right now; it will also be airing again on TCM on September 4th at 4:45PM EST, so be sure to set aside a few hours to enjoy it.

Aside: The Simpsons (one of my very favorite shows of all time) features an hysterical homage to Mad in the fifth-season episode “Homer the Vigilante.” For some reason, I can’t get the Hulu clip to post properly (even with Vodpod … grrr), so just click on the photo above to watch, and enjoy all of the references to the original film (note the W palm trees to the left of the big T!).

“And after you shot your husband, how did you feel?” “Hungry!”

Posted on by under 31 days of oscar, 4-star films, brandie's faves, classic pairings, hahas

Adam’s Rib (1949)

March 3rd, 11:30AM EST

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy starred in nine films together, some of them quite good (1942′s Woman of the Year, incidentally their first on-screen pairing),  some quite forgettable (the same year’s Keeper of the Flame, anyone?), and still others slightly overrated (1967′s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, incidentally their final pairing). Even the less enjoyable films in their shared repertoire, however, still have more sparkle and heart than some of the crappy excuses for rom-coms being churned out by Hollywood these days. More than perhaps any other couple in screen history, Tracy and Hepburn had a sharp, witty repartee that did not overshadow or disguise the genuine, mutual respect and love that existed between the pair, both on and off the screen.

The funny, yet moving partnership of these two is perhaps most evident in what I believe to be their best pairing, 1949′s Adam’s Rib, a riotous comedy in which they play husband-and-wife attorneys arguing opposite sides of a case. When Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) shoots her cheating husband (Tom Ewell) at his lover’s apartment, the ensuing case attracts lawyer Amanda Bonner’s (Hepburn) attention. Though her husband, Assistant District Attorney Adam Bonner (Tracy) is assigned the case at trial and discourages her from interfering, Amanda decides to defend Doris in order to challenge societal double standards attached to male and female behavior (which Amanda sees as the root of the case). Throughout an increasingly nutty trial, Adam and Amanda continue to challenge one another, both in the courtroom and at home afterward, each trying to get the other one to admit that their line of thinking just might be wrong.

The credit for the film’s amazing verbal volleys belongs to husband-and-wife writing team Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, who loosely based the story on a real-life case: actor Raymond Massey’s 1939 divorce. Massey, who is perhaps best remembered for playing Cary Grant’s scary brother Jonathan in 1944′s Arsenic and Old Lace, had been married to stage actress Adrianne Allen for ten years when they sought to end their union. After the divorce was finalized, their husband-and-wife attorneys then divorced each other, and each of them proceeded to marry one of the Masseys. Obviously, that plot line didn’t make it into the film, but the idea of sparring, legal-eagle spouses provided great inspiration, and the guiding hand of George Cukor, one of Hepburn’s favorite directors, helped make the movie a great success for its stars.

Not only is the film hilarious, it seems somewhat ahead of its time in its depiction of Hepburn’s Amanda as a so-called “New Woman,” demanding equality with men and deriding society’s ingrained patriarchal bent. Her argument in the closing statement of the trial sounds almost revolutionary for 1949:

“An unwritten law stands back of a man who fights to defend his home. Apply the same to this maltreated mother. We ask no more. Equality! Deep in the interior of South America, there thrives a civilization older than ours, a people known as the Loreanoes, descended from the Amazons. In this vast tribe, members of the female sex rule and govern and systematically deny equal rights to the men, made weak and puny by years of subservience–too weak to revolt. And yet how long have we lived in the shadow of a like injustice?”

Tracy’s response throughout the film is interesting, too. A man’s man through and through, he ably conveys a somewhat expected sense of confusion in the face of  his wife’s seemingly new-found feminism, gazing at her in some moments as if she is a strange creature in a stranger zoo: “I want a wife, not a competitor! Competitor! Competitor! If you want to be a big he-woman, go ahead and be it, but not with me!” And impressively, though this statement gives Amanda pause, she doesn’t sway from her viewpoint … not until later, anyway. With Adam’s Rib,we see one of the first pop culture celebrations of feminism, at least throughout the first two-thirds of the film, and f0r me, that’s a large part of why I enjoy it as much as I do (though, as I’ve indicated, the denouement leaves something to be desired, in my opinion; but in the spirit of not spoiling the ending, I’ll refrain from further remark).

Thankfully, the delightful snap and fire of Hepburn and Tracy’s pairing doesn’t overshadow the equally delicious supporting performances from Ewell, Jean Hagen (as Ewell’s illicit lover), and, in her first major film role, the fantastic Holliday. In fact, Hepburn, realizing Broadway veteran Holliday’s talent, pushed for her co-star’s scenes to be padded and for her performance to be talked up in the publicity for the film–all of this an effort to convince Columbia studio head Harry Cohn that Holliday should be cast as the lead in the upcoming film adaptation of Born Yesterday (a part she originated on the stage). And it worked; the rave reviews for Holliday’s performance led to her star-making (and Academy Award-winning) turn as Billie Dawn.

If you miss this one, it will air again on April 1st at 8PM EST, or you can get it for a great price right now at Amazon (but try not to miss it, because that would make me sad. Do you really want to make me sad? Or make Carrie’s lip tremble? Because that lip tremble’s like a nuclear weapon).

Oscar checklist:

Nomination: Best Screenplay