The Best American Poetry

What is the Sexiest Film Noir? [An exchange between David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

Suzanne Lummis

For the chemistry between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, as “Slim,” the drifter who’s been living by her wits and an occasional lifted wallet, and Harry “Steve” Morgan, expatriate American with a fishing boat for hire, and for their subtly charged exchanges, that’d be To Have and Have Not.  And, of course, it includes perhaps the most sexually electric lines of dialog on film—certainly from that era—beautifully delivered by Bacall in her low, sly, silky voice: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, you don’t have to do anything. Or, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve…”

Director Howard Hawks, together with the writers, primarily Jules Furthman, William Faulkner, and some contributions from Papa himself, pulled apart and re-imagined Ernest Hemingway’s story, setting it in the French territory of Martinique during the Nazi occupation of France.  So, in this 1944 movie the balmy island paradise becomes a microcosmic setting for the global battle between good and bottomless evil, while the evolution of the script involved a dance between the Production Code people and the writers.  The censors curtailed what the movie-makers could show, and the writers kept striving to outwit them with smoky, sultry dialog.  Amidst this battle, and this dance, Bacall, the young actress in her first role, and Bogart, by now a star, were falling in love. Does it come across on camera? Does it ever. 

Small wonder that shortly after this movie wrapped, Bogart ended his fraught, unhappy marriage, and Bogart/Bacall became one of the most celebrated couples in Hollywood history. 

If some know To Have and Have Not only from the "...you know how to whistle" line, c'mon now. Take the time to see the whole movie.  Like Casablanca, it charts the evolution of a laissez-faire type of guy coming into his own sense of moral conscience. However, it includes some flavors Casablanca does not. 

David Lehman

Many would say Out of the Past should get the award for sexual heat. Three reasons are Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. Greer is as fatal as cyanide without the after odor of almonds, and the dialogue is hot. For example,

Kathie (Jane Greer): Did you miss me?
Jeff (Robert Mitchum): No more than I would miss my eyes.

 

While I would divide my own vote between Out of the Past and Double Indemnity, I would also register my admiration for the sexuality of Gun Crazy (1950). Joseph H. Lewis directed, and the script was written by MacKinlay Kantor and the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. The leading characters, Bart (John Dall) and Laurie (Peggy Cummins), seem young and ordinary; they’re not stars on the magnitude of Mitchum or Barbara Stanwyck, and you can see in them younger versions of yourself. There’s all that phallic imagery, all the guns, and how comfortable she is handling one. It’s significant that Dahl is a pacifist before sharpshooter Cummins casts her spell over him. She is the “bad” one, and it is the power of the fatal female not only to corrupt her partner but to bring out the manly beast in him. The partnership between hero and heroine is a bond which they can’t dissolve, try as they might. They are in it till death do them part. They go on a robbery spree, though they know it will lead to a fatal end after, of course, one last job. They can’t help themselves. Their very desperation adds to the sexual energy between them.

This is the eleventh in a series on film noir. Click here to see the others.

"The Big Clock" -- Kenneth Fearing's novel, John Farrow's film [by David Lehman]

On TCM today at 10 AM and last night at midnight Eddie Muller of Noir Alley showed The Big Clock (1948), a great movie adapted from the fearless Fearing novel centered on a magazine empire that puts out such periodicals as Newsways, Crimeways, Sportsways, Airways, Styleways, and Artways. Charles Laughton is the Luce-like villain; Ray Milland the magazine editor  who happens to be in the wrong place at the right time and is the object of a manhunt that he is supposed to be in charge of. Watching it, and enjoying Elsa Lanchester's splendid performance as a kooky painter modeled on Alice Neel, I recalled writing this paragraph years ago from American Heritage. Here's what I wrote when asked to name an "underrated" detective novelist:

<<< The 1940s was a great period for the indigenous American crime novel, and Kenneth Fearing was a notably sophisticated master of suspense. A distinguished feature of his Dagger of the Mind (1941) is that it is set at a venerable artists’ colony like Yaddo or MacDowell, where intrigue and amorous affairs are usual but homicide is not. The Big Clock (1946), one of the greatest murder mysteries, has inspired two movies (the one from 1948 with Ray Milland and Charles Laughton has it all over the 1987 remake with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman, No Way Out). Fearing offers a clever variant on the law of the purloined letter, which stipulates that the elusive object of a search may be most effectively concealed if it is left out in the open. The Big Clock —the title is an allusion to Time Inc.—also features a manhunt organized and led by the hunted man, an editor at a magazine empire whose publications include Newsways, Crimeways, Homeways, Personalities , and The Sexes . How can I, a poet who has written for a newsmagazine and has a passion for detective novels, fail to embrace Kenneth Fearing, a hugely undervalued poet with a splendid last name who wrote for a newsmagazine and produced several masterpieces of detective fiction?
>>>

Smoking Noir [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

What do you make of the cigarettes that get smoked in any Noir movie?

David Lehman:

Goddamn, they’re sexy.

Suzanne Lummis:

Sure are, and it’s clear that cigarettes had to go—no question about that—but the cinema lost a language. Aside from the smoking, the lighting of the cigarette could be handled so many ways with such different effects. Richard Conte, Robert Mitchum, all those guys—in two smooth gestures they’ll slide out that silver lighter and make the flame leap up, and we get the message—this is what unflappable cool looks like, virile confidence. 

Sometimes, men light each other’s cigarettes and that has meaning; often it’s about camaraderie. In Out of the Past, an easy-going ritualistic exchange occurs at the start of the first meeting between Mitchum’s Jeff Bailey and Kirk Douglas as the gangster Whit Sterling. Whit offers Jeff a cigarette almost before he’s got his foot in the door, but he already has one so he smoothly lights Whit’s who is reaching for his matches. It’s all quite friendly. Then, the camera cuts to Whit’s unsmiling gunman, Joe, whose eyes shift darkly between the two, sizing up this new guy, watching for unconscious indicators or one false move.

Those who don’t watch much noir, early or neo-, probably think a woman never has to light her own, a man’s always near-by and quick on the trigger, but, no, not always. For example, Faye Dunaway in Chinatown shakily lighting up, and Nicholson’s nasal drawl off-camera, “You’ve already got one going, Misses Mulray.” (The camera shows us her bejeweled hand rubbing out the live cigarette in the ashtray.) “Does my talking about your father make you nervous?”

Most often, and most memorably, men light women’s cigarettes.  I like Clare Trevor everywhere I see her, and I like a moment in Murder, My Sweet, when Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) fires up his lighter and she puts her hand on his and moves it toward the tip of her cigarette, “You will help me, won’t you?”  Marlowe: “Am I doing this for love, or will I get paid with money?”

But those moviemakers could achieve other affects outside of social interactions. I’ve never come across a mention of this in any writings about film noir, but I spot an eerie, ominous illusion near the end of Murder, My Sweet when, outdoors, Marlowe’s starting to make his way up to the luxurious piece of property perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. It’s night. He’s going to confront Helen, who is actually Velma, who is actually a killer. Inside the shadowy beach house, the camera focuses on the couch sunk in darkness. Heavy smoke rises from it and, all along, specks of light begin to glint like embers. Someone, something, set fire to the couch—this whole place is going to go up. Then Velma rises from the shadows with her cigarette, in her gown slashed with stripes of glinting sequins.   It’s a premonition of danger embodied by this woman. Soon, characters will be lying all over the room, dying of bullets.  

And me? I smoked for years then gave it up overnight. It was easy. It was nothing—I was never hooked on caffeine.  I did love the play of hands, the motions, the waving away of smoke, that mysterious shared thing between myself and whomever I was talking to, man or woman, who, without fail—in those days—was also smoking, both of us reaching for the same ashtray. Nothing can replace that wordless, silent lexicon of gestures, and I will never stop missing it. It just wasn’t worth dying for. 

David Lehman                   

I miss them. If I may quote myself, "Watching the stars / as they smoke in film noirs" makes me want to throw caution to the winds and light up an unfiltered Camel or Lucky. There’s an entire ritual involved: pulling the cigarette out of the pack, tapping it (if it’s unfiltered), lighting it with a match or lighter, taking the first satisfying long drag.  I have considered writing an ironic “modest proposal” in the vein of Jonathan Swift advocating the return of cigarettes to movies, but people have dissuaded me on the grounds that the irony would not be grasped.

This is the tenth in a series of exchanges about noir. For previous posts, click here 

Why We Paint it Noir [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

Why are poets attracted to film noir?

Suzanne Lummis:

 

Well, out this way there aren’t as many poets who double as film noir buffs as one would expect, but, for some, my YouTube series produced by poetry.la, They Write by Night, has been their introduction to film noir and the poem noir, or my UCLA Extension Writers’ Program workshop, “Poetry Goes to the Movies.” In Los Angeles, the poet Cece Peri has struck black gold with her poems noir, which get published and re-published.   

The poem noir, when it works, can be remarkably appealing, and not necessarily as grim as one might think—so many different values, tones and approaches can come into play. Some of these poems conjure a kind of dark laughter in the face of the inevitable. That’s certainly an element of noir’s appeal for me, in film or on the page.  

One thing for sure, these days more women poets than men seem drawn to these movies, and they’re bringing unexpected perspectives. The poet Marsha de la O did something extraordinary—right after my own heart—with Janet Leigh’s appearance as the preyed upon Susie in Touch of Evil followed by her role as slashed-to-death Marion Crane in Psycho. “Janet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz” reads as one long hysterical plunge from damage to death, and—without being heavy-handed about it—speaks to the specific vulnerability of women in a violent world. 

David Lehman:

Many of us are attracted to the shadows, the stuff beneath the surface of human relationships, the things we do or fantasize doing when no one is looking. In noir, sex is the ultimate prize, but also the consummate killer. We love forbidden fruit. Of all the mammals, only humans have sex for reasons other than to perpetuate the species. The intensity of desire creates the motive for murder, whether acted on or not, and makes guilt and paranoia inevitable.  The tensions between man and woman animate this genre, are palpable, feel real. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them”: the fundamental things apply as time goes by. The genre recognizes that we are fallible people, sinners, gamblers, drinkers, addicts, dreamers, losers. We occupy the night as night-club singers, piano players, thieves, detectives, kept women, greedy men with criminal minds almost as infinite as our lust for sex first and money second.

In a curious sense the poet’s identity in our society has more in common than meets the eye with a hard-boiled detective or noir loser.

Also, the genre has a certain charm. I can never get over the fact that gangsters and hit men wear double-breasted suits in these movies, the women are as stylish as they are dangerous, and many of the background songs (“Tangerine,” “How Little We Know,” “Laura,”” Too Marvelous for Words”)  have lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

Finally, this column appears on September 1, 2019, exactly eighty years to the day that Germany invaded Poland, World War II began, and W. H. Auden wrote "September 1, 1939." That poem more than any other explains we love noir.

This is the ninth in a series of exchanges about noir. Pictured: Janet Leigh on set and in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil. For previous posts, click here

The Images of Noir [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

What image or images from noir films come to mind as particularly striking and memorable? 

Suzanne Lummis:

For irony and paradox—and pathos— I guess not much tops the pietà that closes Double Indemnity, where instead of mother and crucified son it’s Boss kneeling by his fallen Star Employee, insurance salesman Walter Neff, blood seeping from his bullet wound.  Turns out it was a love story after all—the kind the Greeks called philia.

But also…

Another visual impression sticks with me, not the most striking in terms of lighting and composition but explosive in its day. Or, it would’ve been except for the sexual naivetë, of that era—after all, back then no explicit imagery in movies, advertising, early TV, and certain books had to be sold under the counter. A significant portion of the audience wouldn’t have fully grasped its implications.  And some people would have. It must’ve set their hair on fire. 

The image appears in The Big Combo, 1955, directed by Joseph Lewis and lit by master cinematographer John Alton.
Well-bred Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace) has fallen into the clutches of ruthless gangster and homme fatale manipulator of women, Mr. Brown (Richard Conte).  She tells him she’s leaving—she hates him.  All that changes, when after a fierce kiss he slides down and out of the frame of the camera. 
Jean Wallace was married to the star, Cornell Wilde. Lewis made sure the husband was nowhere near the set when he shot this scene. When Cornell did see the film, he was furious—never spoke to Lewis again.

The image I’m talking about involves a few seconds while Mr. Brown’s off camera—Jean Wallace’s face.   

Even though the Hays Production Code had begun to lose power in 1953, I wondered how Lewis got this past the censors in ’55. Well, it’s a great story, and proves that women weren’t the only ones who could be smart by playing dumb. The Production Code people were extremely displeased by what appeared to be a depiction of taboo erotica. Lewis pretended he didn’t know what they were talking about—‘Gee, she’s just thinking of the great kiss and, you’re right, I can’t see quite see Conte in the frame. I must’ve made a mistake…’  They believed him, and the several seconds of 35 mm film that has been called “arguably a cinematic first”—for Hollywood movies anyway—slipped through.       

David Lehman

The only way to do this without cheating is to rely on memory and association. Very well, then . . . The dollars flying out of the open valise that falls out of the cart at the airport as Sterling Hayden watches aghast at the end of The Killing. . . the same actor dying as he drives back to the farm of his youth in The Asphalt Jungle . . .in the same movie, the boy and girl dancing the lindy with nickels for the jukebox provided by Sam Jaffe. . .the beach café in Central or South America where Bogart waits for Bacall while Jo Stafford sings “Too Marvelous for Words” at the end of Dark Passage. . . the hall of mirrors in the fun house at the end of The Lady from Shanghai. . .the boiling hot coffee that Lee Marvin hurls in Gloria Grahame’s face, and disfigures it, in The Big Heat. . . Richard Widmark’s fingers in another man’s pocket on the subway in Pickup on South Street. . and Jimmy Cagney consulting with his dead mother in White Heat as well as his triumphant “Top of the World” as he stands atop the burning tower.  Hmm, I see that six of my choices are from the films’ final sequences.

And may I compliment you, Suzanne, on the “pietà” metaphor for the final tableau in Double Indemnity.

Gloria Graham is pictured bottom left; Jean Wallace, middle right. This is the eighth in a series of exchanges about noir. For previous posts, click here.

Why should there be two happy as we? [from "Show Boat": music Kern, lyrics Hammerstein]

Charlie Parker and the Mrs. loved this song. . .

I'm in the seventh heaven / there's more than seven / my heart discovers. . .

Homage to Hitchcock [by David Lehman]

The multiple-choice form seems to suit a moviemaker as complex as Hitchcock:

(1) Which of the following did not play the male lead in a Hitchcock movie?

a) Sean Connery in Marnie
b) Cary Grant in Notorious
c) Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil
d) Laurence Olivier in Rebecca 
e) Robert Cummings in Saboteur

 Answer: c), Orson Welles, who directed and who dominates the screen in A Touch of Evil. Note the difference between Welles and the other four on the list. Each of the others is a non-method or pre-method actor; three are from Britain. Unlike Welles in his portrayal of evil as ugliness, at least three of the Hitchcock heroes named may be said to have an everyman quality in spite of the fact that three are very handsome, while the fourth has boyish good looks, and the same three may be said to be suave. Hitchcock can project versions of himself as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Rod Taylor, the young Gregory Peck, even Olivier as a toff. But it doesn't work with Monty Clift in I, Confess.and it wouldn't work with Welles or Brando.

(2) The title North by Northwest is a reference to

a) The Tempest and magic
b) Hamlet and madness
c) A popular route flown by Pan American Airlines in 1959
with change of planes at O'Hare and Mt Rushmore the final destination
d) Emily Dickinson's poem "After great pain a formal feeling comes"
e) Cary Grant's use of a road map as a disguise in the dining car 

Answer: b) Hamlet and madness. Hamlet says he is mad only "north by northwest," reinforcing the doubt that he is truly mad rather than calculatingly capable of an "antic disposition." The plot of Hitchcock's movie is mad, fantastic in the old-fashioned sense. Yet there is method in the apparent madness -- and there is as much comedy in this thriller as that category can hold. The title also encapsulates the movie's locations and its motion. This is a movie of movement: in taxicab, motor cars, train, plane, bus. Cary Grant's journey begins in New York City -- Madison Avenue, the Plaza Hotel, and the United Nations. Then the film takes a trip to the Midwest with its unending fields of corn and finally culminates on the top of Mouth Rushmore, which is north by northwest from New York City. Finally, there is a sense of playacting in the movie and the sort of temporary insanity that accompanies excursions into the absurd. From the moment Cary Grant, advertising executive, is kidnapped at the Plaza Hotel, each scene is more implausible than the scene preceding it. A prodigious amount of liquor is consumed by our hero, who reveals himself to be quite a resourceful, witty, charming, romantic, fast-on-his-feet character as the movie goes along -- whereas, at the start, he is merely adept at stealing a cab, playing the field, and reporting to mother.

(3) Identify Ambrose Chapel.

a) Albert Hall's younger brother
b) The kidnapper in The Man Who Knew Too Much
c) A London church
d) The MacGuffin
e) Montgomery Clift's parish in I Confess

Answer: c) a London church in The Man Who Knew too Much, but metaphorically it is also a) an anticipation of the Albert Hall, scene of the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Like Albert Hall, Ambrose Chapel is a name that can also be taken to refer to a person, the way James Stewart and Doris Day approach it at first. While b) is incorrect, it is relevant. Only  e) is just plain wrong.

  (4) Hitchcock favored blond actresses because of

a) A childhood crush on Marlene Dietrich
b) Unresolved Oedipal issues
c) See (d)
d) Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Doris Day, Joan Fontaine, Lorraine Day, Priscilla Lane, and Tippi Hedren
e) The idea, which occurred to him with the force of an epiphany, that blond-versus-brunette mirrored the American power structure
f) The belief that in movies an actor's looks are more important than his or her talent.

Answer: d) the actresses named. It must however be admitted that b) and f) are decided possibilities. As for both a) and e), each is random speculation. The birds' savage attack on Tippi Hedren is probably the worst ordeal any Hitchcock blonde endures, though the company is stiff. Kim Novak dies twice in Vertigo. Ingrid Bergman is poisoned to the brink of death in Notorious. And of course there's Janet Leigh's lifelong fear of showers, which originated with the one she takes as Marion Crane in Bates's Motel after she has decided to to return the money, concealed in a newspaper, to the bank from which she absconded with it

(5) Which of these did Hitchcock invest with uncanny significance, and what does that tell you?

a) A glass of milk
b) A shattered pair of eyeglasses
c) A giant Sequoia Redwood 
d) The key to the wine cellar
e) A burning mansion

Answer: Some would argue for symbolism. The shattered eyeglasses at the amusement park signify the death of the girl in Strangers on a Train. The key leads to the wine-cellar and its secrets in Notorious. You might say that the glass of milk in Suspicion, like the coffee cup and saucer in Notorious, accentuates the innocence that is menaced. The homely domestic objects contain lethal doses of poison; the threat of murder can be disguised in the least threatening of objects.

(6) Which of the following is not an authentic Hitchcock moment?

a) Grace Kelly cozies up with Harper's Bazaar while her beau, nursing a broken leg, takes a nap
b) Raymond Burr signs a contract to play first base for the New York Yankees after the death of Gary Cooper
 c) Ingrid Bergman offers her beau "a leg or a breast" as they stand on the terrace on a tropical evening
 d) With one exception, everyone watching a tennis match moves his or her head as the movement of the ball dictates
 e) Doris Day belts out Che Sera, Sera at a posh party peopled by diplomats in London

Answer: (b). Gary Cooper played Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees. Raymond Burr had nothing to do with it. In movies he played a minor character, usually a heavy, until he emerged as television's "Perry Mason." God bless his agent. Hitchcock would not have been interested in Lou Gehrig or any element of his story, which lacks a violent death, grounds for suspicion, murderous motives. There are foul balls but no foul play. On the other hand, each of the others is perfect: a) Rear Window, c) Notorious, d) Strangers on a Train, and e) The Man Who Knew Too Much, which is underrated, perhaps a natural consequence of having been made in a period of masterpieces on the order of Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.

(7) In Vertigo

a) Who is real, Judy or Madeline?
b) Who is real, Johnny or Scotty?
c) True or false: The age difference between James Stewart and Kim Novak helps explain the nature of their relationship, which is passionate but not exactly sexual -- it is more like an event in the man's psyche, which he is destined to repeat.
d) What does Bernard Herrmann's music contribute?
e) Why does the detective reject fashion designer Barbara Bel Geddes?
f) Why are they both named Charlie, Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt, and can you make the case that this, even more than Saboteur, is Hitchcock's most patriotically American movie?

Answer: You're on your own here. Go to town..

8) In the auction scene in North by Northwest, Cary Grant violates the hushed-room decorum by making wacky and contradictory bids in order to

a) attract attention because he is a certified narcissist who thinks he is Cary Grant
b) attract attention and get ejected because the cops were preferable to the kidnappers awaiting his exit
c) fulfill his part of the bargain with Ingrid Bergman, who has done her part by going to Brazil and enduring a near-lethal dose of poison administered slowly so it looks like sickness and not murder
d) warn about an imminent terrorist threat in a way that wouldn't panic the public because only one man present would understand the message
e) arouse the admiration of co-star Eva Maria Saint, who has aired her doubts about his skill as a comic actor

Answer: b) is correct. a) and e) are amusing fictions. d) is Borgesian. c) refers to the plot of a different movie, Notorious.

(9)  Which of the following does not qualify as a typical Hitchcock prank?

a) to cuff his hero and heroine during rehearsals, clear the room, and lock the door
b) to pose as the fat man in a weight-reducing ad that is espied if not read on a lifeboat full of the survivors of a shipwreck 
c) to employ Otto Preminger to play the commandant of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp
d) to suggest the act of fornication by showing a speeding train enter a tunnel
e) to kill Kim Novak twice, in both cases at the top of the church tower at Mission San Juan Batista in California

Answer: (c) Refers to Billy Wilder's movie Stalag 17. The rest are pure Hitchcock.

(10) To appreciate Hitchcock's movies,

a) you need to see them
b) You need to see them more than once.
c) you need to take into account that he was raised Catholic
d) you have to consider that he was born British but was American by choice
e) you have to acknowledge that the McGuffin is to plot as psyche is to drama and the dream
f) you must remind yourself that you, the viewer, are both the male and the female leads in the film

Answer: a) for sure, but a strong case can be made for each of the others.

Note: The multiple choice form, with which we are all familiar, is little used for the purposes of exposition. This is part of a little experiment. -- DL

a) Sean Connery in Marnie
b) Cary Grant in Notorious
c) Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil
d) Laurence Olivier in Rebecca 
e) Robert Cummings in Saboteur

 Answer: c), Orson Welles, who directed and who dominates the screen in A Touch of Evil. Note the difference between Welles and the other four on the list. Each of the others is a non-method or pre-method actor; three are from Britain. Unlike Welles in his portrayal of evil as ugliness, at least three of the Hitchcock heroes named may be said to have an everyman quality in spite of the fact that three are very handsome, while the fourth has boyish good looks, and the same three may be said to be suave. Hitchcock can project versions of himself as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Rod Taylor, the young Gregory Peck, even Olivier as a toff. But it doesn't work with Monty Clift in I, Confess.and it wouldn't work with Welles or Brando.

(2) The title North by Northwest is a reference to

a) The Tempest and magic
b) Hamlet and madness
c) A popular route flown by Pan American Airlines in 1959
with change of planes at O'Hare and Mt Rushmore the final destination
d) Emily Dickinson's poem "After great pain a formal feeling comes"
e) Cary Grant's use of a road map as a disguise in the dining car 

Answer: b) Hamlet and madness. Hamlet says he is mad only "north by northwest," reinforcing the doubt that he is truly mad rather than calculatingly capable of an "antic disposition." The plot of Hitchcock's movie is mad, fantastic in the old-fashioned sense. Yet there is method in the apparent madness -- and there is as much comedy in this thriller as that category can hold. The title also encapsulates the movie's locations and its motion. This is a movie of movement: in taxicab, motor cars, train, plane, bus. Cary Grant's journey begins in New York City -- Madison Avenue, the Plaza Hotel, and the United Nations. Then the film takes a trip to the Midwest with its unending fields of corn and finally culminates on the top of Mouth Rushmore, which is north by northwest from New York City. Finally, there is a sense of playacting in the movie and the sort of temporary insanity that accompanies excursions into the absurd. From the moment Cary Grant, advertising executive, is kidnapped at the Plaza Hotel, each scene is more implausible than the scene preceding it. A prodigious amount of liquor is consumed by our hero, who reveals himself to be quite a resourceful, witty, charming, romantic, fast-on-his-feet character as the movie goes along -- whereas, at the start, he is merely adept at stealing a cab, playing the field, and reporting to mother.

(3) Identify Ambrose Chapel.

a) Albert Hall's younger brother
b) The kidnapper in The Man Who Knew Too Much
c) A London church
d) The MacGuffin
e) Montgomery Clift's parish in I Confess

Answer: c) a London church in The Man Who Knew too Much, but metaphorically it is also a) an anticipation of the Albert Hall, scene of the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Like Albert Hall, Ambrose Chapel is a name that can also be taken to refer to a person, the way James Stewart and Doris Day approach it at first. While b) is incorrect, it is relevant. Only  e) is just plain wrong.

  (4) Hitchcock favored blond actresses because of

a) A childhood crush on Marlene Dietrich
b) Unresolved Oedipal issues
c) See (d)
d) Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Doris Day, Joan Fontaine, Lorraine Day, Priscilla Lane, and Tippi Hedren
e) The idea, which occurred to him with the force of an epiphany, that blond-versus-brunette mirrored the American power structure
f) The belief that in movies an actor's looks are more important than his or her talent.

Answer: d) the actresses named. It must however be admitted that b) and f) are decided possibilities. As for both a) and e), each is random speculation. The birds' savage attack on Tippi Hedren is probably the worst ordeal any Hitchcock blonde endures, though the company is stiff. Kim Novak dies twice in Vertigo. Ingrid Bergman is poisoned to the brink of death in Notorious. And of course there's Janet Leigh's lifelong fear of showers, which originated with the one she takes as Marion Crane in Bates's Motel after she has decided to to return the money, concealed in a newspaper, to the bank from which she absconded with it

(5) Which of these did Hitchcock invest with uncanny significance, and what does that tell you?

a) A glass of milk
b) A shattered pair of eyeglasses
c) A giant Sequoia Redwood 
d) The key to the wine cellar
e) A burning mansion

Answer: Some would argue for symbolism. The shattered eyeglasses at the amusement park signify the death of the girl in Strangers on a Train. The key leads to the wine-cellar and its secrets in Notorious. You might say that the glass of milk in Suspicion, like the coffee cup and saucer in Notorious, accentuates the innocence that is menaced. The homely domestic objects contain lethal doses of poison; the threat of murder can be disguised in the least threatening of objects.

(6) Which of the following is not an authentic Hitchcock moment?

a) Grace Kelly cozies up with Harper's Bazaar while her beau, nursing a broken leg, takes a nap
b) Raymond Burr signs a contract to play first base for the New York Yankees after the death of Gary Cooper
 c) Ingrid Bergman offers her beau "a leg or a breast" as they stand on the terrace on a tropical evening
 d) With one exception, everyone watching a tennis match moves his or her head as the movement of the ball dictates
 e) Doris Day belts out Che Sera, Sera at a posh party peopled by diplomats in London

Answer: (b). Gary Cooper played Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees. Raymond Burr had nothing to do with it. In movies he played a minor character, usually a heavy, until he emerged as television's "Perry Mason." God bless his agent. Hitchcock would not have been interested in Lou Gehrig or any element of his story, which lacks a violent death, grounds for suspicion, murderous motives. There are foul balls but no foul play. On the other hand, each of the others is perfect: a) Rear Window, c) Notorious, d) Strangers on a Train, and e) The Man Who Knew Too Much, which is underrated, perhaps a natural consequence of having been made in a period of masterpieces on the order of Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.

(7) In Vertigo

a) Who is real, Judy or Madeline?
b) Who is real, Johnny or Scotty?
c) True or false: The age difference between James Stewart and Kim Novak helps explain the nature of their relationship, which is passionate but not exactly sexual -- it is more like an event in the man's psyche, which he is destined to repeat.
d) What does Bernard Herrmann's music contribute?
e) Why does the detective reject fashion designer Barbara Bel Geddes?
f) Why are they both named Charlie, Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt, and can you make the case that this, even more than Saboteur, is Hitchcock's most patriotically American movie?

Answer: You're on your own here. Go to town..

8) In the auction scene in North by Northwest, Cary Grant violates the hushed-room decorum by making wacky and contradictory bids in order to

a) attract attention because he is a certified narcissist who thinks he is Cary Grant
b) attract attention and get ejected because the cops were preferable to the kidnappers awaiting his exit
c) fulfill his part of the bargain with Ingrid Bergman, who has done her part by going to Brazil and enduring a near-lethal dose of poison administered slowly so it looks like sickness and not murder
d) warn about an imminent terrorist threat in a way that wouldn't panic the public because only one man present would understand the message
e) arouse the admiration of co-star Eva Maria Saint, who has aired her doubts about his skill as a comic actor

Answer: b) is correct. a) and e) are amusing fictions. d) is Borgesian. c) refers to the plot of a different movie, Notorious.

(9)  Which of the following does not qualify as a typical Hitchcock prank?

a) to cuff his hero and heroine during rehearsals, clear the room, and lock the door
b) to pose as the fat man in a weight-reducing ad that is espied if not read on a lifeboat full of the survivors of a shipwreck 
c) to employ Otto Preminger to play the commandant of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp
d) to suggest the act of fornication by showing a speeding train enter a tunnel
e) to kill Kim Novak twice, in both cases at the top of the church tower at Mission San Juan Batista in California

Answer: (c) Refers to Billy Wilder's movie Stalag 17. The rest are pure Hitchcock.

(10) To appreciate Hitchcock's movies,

a) you need to see them
b) You need to see them more than once.
c) you need to take into account that he was raised Catholic
d) you have to consider that he was born British but was American by choice
e) you have to acknowledge that the McGuffin is to plot as psyche is to drama and the dream
f) you must remind yourself that you, the viewer, are both the male and the female leads in the film

Answer: a) for sure, but a strong case can be made for each of the others.

Note: The multiple choice form, with which we are all familiar, is little used for the purposes of exposition. This is part of a little experiment. -- DL

The Case of Lizabeth Scott [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

The latest installment of the dialogue between Lehman and Lummis on film noir centers on this question:
What is your opinion of Lizabeth Scott as a noir heroine?

Suzanne Lummis:

I have a feeling I’ll enjoy hearing you talk about her. I like her fine, but I think the noir actresses who fare best within our contemporary understanding of acting, how spontaneous and authentic it should be, are Barbara Stanwyck and Gloria Grahame. Oh, and Claire Trevor. Back then, actresses especially were either permitted or required to be phony—and sometimes it sets my teeth on edge.  In The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers, where Scott's not a femme fatale but a friendless woman down on her luck, in one scene she did this thing that would be unthinkable for an actor on the screen today—out of the blue, she put her head in her arms on the table and made crying sounds.  Have you ever seen anyone do that in life, cry noisily face down on a table?  And in Dead Reckoning you can see the glycerin under her eyes.  It didn’t matter to audiences then, but our expectations have changed. I shouldn’t blame Lizabeth Scott; it was symptomatic of a larger problem re. how actresses (far more than actors) were trained. Also, I haven’t seen all her movies—I hear she did one with Dan Duryea that’s her best performance.  

David Lehman:

I became aware of a bias against Lizabeth Scott some time ago; she was disparaged as the poor man’s Lauren Bacall. Dead Reckoning is pretty terrible, but that’s not specific to her. On the other hand, her work in Too Late for Tears – the movie with Dan Duryea to which you refer – is marvelous. Eddie Muller showed it on TCM recently and she was, in her own blonde way, as superb a noir heroine as you could want, dispatching both Arthur Kennedy and Mr. Duryea and outfoxing a lot of other folks until she meets a bad end in Mexico. She is as ruthless, as narcissistic, as beautiful and blonde, and as exploitative of her gender as one could ask for in a noir heroine. 

Click here to read last week's installment and here for the whole series, of which this is #6 in the series.

Why Poets Love Noir #5 [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis in dialogue]

What is the relationship between a Hitchcock movie and the noir genre?

Suzanne Lummis:

These days, for certain complicated historical reasons, the noir scholars maintain that film noir is not a genre— that most of these movies didn’t know they were “films noir” when there were being made. They thought they were “crime thrillers.”  On the other hand, Hitchcock movies are part of a genre. And that genre is called. . . Hitchcock. He’s one of a handful of directors with a subject area and style so consistent and distinctive that they became their own genre. (The way no one says, ‘I’m going to see a Swedish movie about suffering people searching for the meaning of their lives.’ They’re going to see a Bergman movie.)  In terms of similarity, both types of movies have crime at their center. However, Hitchcock was engaged in an almost clinical exploration of how the sense of suspense is created in the audience then exploded on the screen. The Psycho shower scene—78 camera set ups, 52 edits. Film noir isn’t as good in that area. Most were made quickly on a budget. Who had that kind of time?   

David Lehman:

The quick answer is that Hitchcock is in a category all his own. That said, some of his films are as noir as you get: Vertigo, where the hero loses his lover twice – and possibly his sanity; Psycho, where the terminal revelations, the solution to the case, are far from reassuring; The Birds, where nature erupts as if in a vicious rebuke of mankind; and the lesser Suspicion, where Cary Grant carries a glass of possibly poisoned milk up the stairs to Joan Fontaine, his timid wife quaking in bed. Others, too, have pronounced noir elements notwithstanding the feeling of relief, at movie’s end, once the culprit has been captured. The murderer dies in Shadow of a Doubt, but Teresa Wright does lose her uncle; Guy Haines in Strangers on a Train is now free to marry his true love, but the violent death of his wife was not the way he wanted it to happen; the jig is up for Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder, but how happy can Grace Kelly be, knowing her husband has tried to kill her? There are noir elements in Notorious, Spellbound, and Rear Window, but the very mention of these reminds me that Hitchcock is in a category of his own.

I’ve written an essay titled “Hitchcock’s America” that appeared in American Heritage. Maybe I should include a link. Or this poem from my new book Playlist, where I get to sneak in a mention of five Hitchcock titles in two of the lines.

I live in Hitchcock’s America
What does that mean
It means the ride always ends in an amusement park
and a girl and her uncle can have the same first name
Cary Grant is suave Jimmy Stewart has a broken leg
or a bruised psyche Doris Day’s voice fills the house
Even the Jews and the blacks are white
Even the brunettes are blonde
I confess I’m at the end of my rope,
spellbound by the notorious master of suspicion
maybe Janet shouldn’t have taken that dough or had that tryst
Joel McCrea tells America that all Europe’s lights are out
and Priscilla Lane recites Emma Lazarus’s lines
atop the Statue of Liberty

Click here to read last week's installment and here for the whole series. 

Why Poets Love Noir # 4 [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

The soundtrack in noir movies, and the popular songs incorporated in them, whether in whole or in part, contribute significantly to the effect of the film. Which example(s) would you single out?  

Suzanne Lummis:

Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950), has Dix Steele and Laurel Gray—Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame [see image on left] —sitting at a piano with other couples, listening to the silky smooth rendition of the lounge singer, vocalist and pianist Hadda Brooks, I was a lonely one, till you. I used to lie awake and wonder, if there was someone in this wide, wide world made for me…  He lights a cigarette for her, and she takes it in her mouth, such an intimate gesture. He whispers to her. They are so in love. And it will never be that good again. Nothing is going to be that good again, for either of them. If these characters had lives beyond the credits at the end, we know that each on their dying bed looked back and thought, ‘that's what happiness felt like.’  And because someone who unsettles their composure enters the club, that happiness didn’t even last the length of the song.  That’s noir. 

David Lehman

Like the cigarettes, the drinks, and the clothes -- the fedoras and trench-coats, the women's hats and hose -- the music is a critical part of the noir charm. You have composers on the order of Bernard Herrmann [pictured right] doing the soundtracks for Hitchcock's most noir films, Vertigo and Psycho. You have jazz soundtracks from Duke Ellington (Anatomy of a Murder) and Miles Davis (Elevator to the Gallows). You have songs like “Put the Blame on Mame” in Gilda that seem to sum up an entire aspect of the noir attitude. (Click here for an enjoyable detour.) You have David Raksin’s “Laura,” without which that Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney classic would be a lesser work. You have these great American standards that show up almost as facilitators of the plot: “Tangerine” when Stanwyck and MacMurrary realize the jig is up in Double Indemnity; the same song on the car radio when Stanwyck is a spoiled heiress in Sorry, Wrong Number; “Too Marvelous for Words” when Bogart holes up in Bacall’s place in Dark Passage. (What else do these three songs , "Laura," "Tangerine," and "Too Marvelous for Words," have in common? Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for all three.) You have unforgettable scenes. Sam Jaffe, mastermind of the jewel heist in The Asphalt Jungle, is caught because he can’t take his eyes off the teenage girl and boy dancing the lindy, enjoying themselves with the nickels he provided for the jukebox.

Note: Professor Frank Tomasulo recommends this essay, "Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir." http://www.f.waseda.jp/norm/filmnoir/visualmotifs.pdf

Why Poets Love Noir #3 [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

This is part three of a dialogue between two poets who are hooked on film noir.

Do you believe "The Maltese Falcon" should be categorized as "noir"?

Suzanne Lummis:
It's a terrific movie but ultimately not as dark as others -- Noir Gris. But regardless of the quality of darkness, I'd feel funny about any poet of my generation, or the one following, who hadn't seen John Huston’s classic with the great Warner Brothers cast (Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha J. Cook). I'd wonder what else they hadn't seen, or read. Had they seen On the Waterfront? Had they read Orwell's 1984, or only read about it?  Et cetera. But re. Noir or Not, there's an undercurrent of pessimism that we usually feel from film noir and don't in The Maltese Falcon. However, it has many noir elements, the dialogue certainly, especially in the final scene where Bogart tells Mary Astor,  "I don't care who loves who. I won't play the sap for you! You killed Miles and you're going over for it. If you're lucky you'll get life and be out in twenty years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you."   

David Lehman

The Maltese Falcon, one of my all-time favorites, is similar to a noir movie but not the same thing, mainly because the male protagonist does not succumb to the wiles of the femme fatale.  Compare Bogart in The Maltese Falcon to Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. The former belongs to a different genre, the detective story, in which justice, however much compromised, does prevail in the end.  Sam Spade refuses to “play the sap” for his femme fatale; that is alas exactly what Mitchum does with Jane Greer in Out of the Past. The division is epitomized in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. The detective stories such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” stand on the one side, and the gothic horrors (“The Fall of the House of Usher”) on the other.  The detective story affirms the possibility of justice, of the restoration of order. The noir movie suggests the opposite and introduces the figure of a femme fatale to ensure that failure or death is the likely end of any criminal or questionable enterprise.

Beyond its antithetical relation to Out of the Past, there are plenty of reasons to consider this, John Huston’s first movie, in the context of noir.  Sam Spade is not unambiguously a servant of law, order, and ethical kashruth.  The brilliant Warner Brothers cast – Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Mary Astor join Bogart – arouses noir expectations, and the status of the sculpted bird,  a fake responsible for at least three deaths, elevates the tale to the level of a parable about fortune, value, and desire.

There are a lot of other movies that I like to consider in relation to noir: Le Jour se leve [Daybreak] (Marcel Carne), if only because of the number of cigarettes that Jean Gabin smokes, and A Bout de soufflé [Breathless] (Jean-Luc Godard), primarily because of Belmondo’s imitation of Bogart. Neither is noir, but the former is like it, and the latter is an homage to it that testifies to the genre’s success. 

Click here for last week's exchange in which Night and the City and The Asphalt Jungle are discussed.

On Barbara Stanwyck's Birthday: An Astrological Profile [by Walter Neff]

Born in Brooklyn Heights on July 16, 1907, Barbara Stanwyck was an atypical Cancer, with both her moon and her rising sign in Virgo. Gemini, the sign of the twins, rules her midheaven. A talented actress (Mercury in Leo), she was able to project a wide variety of women -- a paranoid hypochondriac, a confidence artist, a calculating femme fatale, an unflappable witness to a murder, a spurned lover, a scheming sophisticate -- in modes tragic or comic.

According to Isaac Babylon in The Charts of the Stars, his classic study of six Hollywood starlets from the 1940s (Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Myrna Loy, Olivia de Havilland, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford), Stanwyck's Virgoesque self-restraint balances the gush of liquid emotion that comes from having not only her sun but her Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune in Cancer. She was a good businesswoman (Mars in Capricorn) but prone to morbidity (Saturn in Pisces). 

The actresses of the 1940s – we can add Katherine Hepburn, Ida Lupino and Rosalind Russell to Babylon’s list -- belie the notion that women born before the age of female enlightenment lacked strong models who could either keep their families together despite the stresses of war or be psychiatrists, reporters, or con artists; they could solve murders or commit them, could go crazy, could run a restaurant, pack a gun, slap her daughter, commit adultery, speak Chinese, or risk her life as an American agent in South America during World War II.

Barbara Stanwyck came from a working class background. She went to Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. Thanks to shrewd investments (Mars in Capricorn) she grew rich. It figures that she never won an Oscar though she was nominated four times. Her real name was Ruby Stevens. She was hilarious in “The Lady Eve” and superb in “Golden Boy.” She helped William Holden get the title part and became Holden's lucky star. He was crazy about her as photos taken on the set of “Executive Suite” attest. In 1939 she married Robert Taylor. Whisperers said it was a sham designed to get gullible people to believe the two stars were heterosexual. Taylor was four years younger than Stanny. “The boy's got a lot to learn and I've got a lot to teach,” she said. She kept the ranch and horses when they divorced in 1951. Robert Wagner said he had a four-year affair with her. Could be.

When they  gave her a lifetime achievement award she dedicated the Oscar to her "golden boy," the recently deceased William Holden.

Stanwyck (some close friends called her “Missy”) had a sharp tongue. She defined “egotism” as “usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.” She had a proud notion of her true worth. “Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don't care what happened before. I don't even care if I was IN the rest of the damned thing. I'll take it in those fifteen minutes.” During the filming of Double Indemnity, the Billy Wilder masterpiece, she says that her co-star, Fred MacMurray, would look at the rushes every day. Stanny would say, “How was I?” And Fred, perhaps in keeping with their dialogue in the movie, would reply, “I don't know about you, but I was wonderful!” Actors look only at themselves. Their best repartee is in that film: “We’re both rotten.” “Only you’re a little more rotten.”

On the day we visited, Stanwyck, a self-described “tough old broad from Brooklyn,” took one look at the script and started laughing. What's the matter? “Be a good lad and re-fill my glass. Scotch, rocks, no water. You know what my biggest problem is? My biggest problem is trying to figure out how to play my fortieth fallen female different from my thirty-ninth.” 

Why Poets Love Noir #2 [by David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis]

Name your favorite underrated noir movie?

Suzanne Lummis:

 Night and the City (1950) is only a bit underrated by film noir enthusiasts, who grudgingly say it's Good; but I think it’s better than Good. It was shot in London because director Jules Dassin was blacklisted, so the whole production got kicked out of town. (Studio head Darryl Zanuck continued to support Dassin and the production.) Richard Widmark, probably my favorite noir actor, plays a grifter always looking for a new angle, and now he’s aspiring to take over London’s underground wrestling world. The movie features so many delights, including some fine performances and, at the end, a stunningly shot footrace through the outskirts of the city. 

David Lehman:

While my hat’s off to Jules Dassin (Naked City is my own favorite of his films) and Richard Widmark (Pickup on South Street) -- and while I’m sorely tempted by D.O.A. in which Edmund O’Brien is in the perfect noir predicament of having to solve his own murder (“why me?”), not to mention Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past -- I vote for John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. It’s not exactly underrated, but I’ve interpreted the question as an opportunity to talk about a second favorite. The cast is fantastic, up and down, with special kudos to

-- Sterling Hayden as Dix, the “hooligan” and “big hick,” brawny, trustworthy, an honest crook, no genius, but his instincts serve him well;

-- Sam Jaffe as the brains of the operation, Doc Riedenschneider, about whom Dix says “that squarehead . . . has plenty of guts”;

-- the suave Louis Calhern as Emmerich, who, says Dix, “even double-crossed himself”;

-- Jean Hagen as Doll, sweet, sincere, and smitten with as Dix – she’s even more underrated than Fred MacMurray, and as versatile: compare her work here to that in Singin’ in the Rain),

-- scene-stealing Marilyn Monroe as Angela, Emmerich’s backstreet girl; she calls him Uncle Lon (and tells off a cop, “Haven’t you bothered me enough, you big banana-head?”)

On a recent TCM viewing, I noted that “Soup” is slang for explosive; that, as in so many great noir movies, even the crooks wear jacket and tie, and the getaway car is beautiful; and that the plot – the caper and its deadly aftermath illustrate two essential noir precepts. Emmerich: “Crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.” Doc: “What can you do against blind accident?”

See the first in our series -- about Double Indemnity -- by clicking here.

On Bastille Day, Vive la France: the Marseillaise as orchestrated by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Here's how the whole gang sang it in Paris on 14 Juillet 2016:

And, of course, Paul Henreid is on hand to lead the regulars in a rousing rendition of this brilliant and bloody anthem at Rick's Cafe Americain. And they're still singing it in Paris. Read all about it here. Or sing along with the Casablanca crowd:

 

Why Poets Love Noir #1 [by Suzanne Lummis and David Lehman]

We initiate a new feature today: a running dialogue between David Lehman and Suzanne Lummis, two ardent fans of noir.

Suzanne's film noir and poetry themed series, They Write by Night, can be found on YouTube and the website poetry.la, and features explorations such as "Damaged Women," "Separating the Dark from the Light," and "Are the Femmes Fatale?"  Her essays include "The Poem Noir--Too Dark to Be Depressed" in Malpais Review and "Never Out of the Past: Noir and the Poetry of Lynda Hull" in The Los Angeles Review of Books. Her most recent poetry collection, Open 24 Hours, won the Blue Lynx Prize.

Our columns will go up on Sundays at noon -- timed to coincide with the conclusion of Eddie Muller's noir movie of the week on TCM. Eddie, I like your period-accurate ties and your taste, and this, the first of our exchanges, is dedicated to you, with thanks for today's seventy-minute feature, The Tattooed Stranger, with the shootout amid the gravestones and with the detective and his botanist lady friend in Fort Tryon Park and the GW Bridge in the background. That -- Washington Heights --is where I grew up. -- DL

What is the greatest noir movie?

Suzanne Lummis:
I think Double Indemnity of 1944 is seminal, though a couple of others before it have strong noir elements. But Double Indemnity’s got it all, a terrific script and story, thanks to director Billy Wilder; smart, cracking dialog, thanks to co-writer Raymond Chandler, master of the hardboiled detective novel; and the best (worst!) crime: Two Lovers Kill Husband Then Shoot Each Other. In the annals of immortal crimes, that one’s hard to beat. However, although John F. Seitz is credited with some innovations—such as the smoky look of certain interiors—I prefer the hard, almost glossy, contrasting shadow and light of John Alton and Nicholas Musuraca.  

David Lehman:
We agree. Double Indemnity is the ne plus ultra of noir movies, and if we were to give out noir awards on the model of the Oscars I believe it would win for best picture, best screenplay, best femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck), and best supporting actor (Edward G. Robinson). The underrated Fred MacMurray would get a nomination for best actor in a lead role but would lose to Robert Mitchum (Out of the Past). My favorite moments: Stanwyck as traffic cop, MacMurray as speeding motorist; Edward G. Robinson’s great speech on types of suicide; the movie’s last line (“I love you, too”). It’s a movie I watch at least once a year and could talk about it for an ardent hour.

Give My Regards to Old Broadway on the 4th of July

as performed by Stuyvesant Hgh School alum James Cagney and chorus

 

Amapola (arrangement Ennio Morriconi; with Jennffer Connolly & Elizabeth McGovern)

Now listen to this tenor, Juan Diego Florez:

and now Doris Day with Les Brown and his band of renown:

not to overlook the swing era classic:

 

Here's to Al Dubin, Lyricist, Born June 10 [by David Lehman]

On the day
before my birthday
back in 1891
Al Dubin came
into being he
wrote the words
for great songs
like "We're in
the Money," which
Ginger Rogers sings
in Pig Latin
Er'way in-hay the oney-may
Er'way in-hay the oney-may
Er'way ot-gay a-lay
ot-lay of-way Ut-way
it-way akes-tay o-tay
et-gay a-lay-ong-lay . . .

My favorite line in the song: "And when we see the landlord  / We can look that guy right in the eye ."

The music by Harry Warren. Okay, ake-tay it-lay awaytay. . .

Marilyn Monroe as Chanteuse [by David Lehman]

We don't think of her as a singer, but Marilyn Monroe (whose birthday it is) sang -- and sang well. Unlike Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in Pal Joey, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, she needed no dubbing. (They shouldn't have dubbed Ava Gardner in Show Boat but that's another story.) See Marilyn making the most of a secondary role in Niagara, or fighting with ehr beau in Bus Stop, or teaming with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or joining Ethel Merman and Donald O'Connor on the Irving Berlin bandwagon in There's No Business Like Show Business, or cavorting with cross-dressers Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot. She sings in each of these movies and the songs are noteworthy, each and all. 

Some songs with male chorus and big brass solos, such as "Heat Wave," are extravaganzas of sexual desire and energy. You can't keep your eyes off her, which is as it should be, but one consequence is that you don't hear enough of the voice.

Listen to her sing "I'm Through with Love," or "I Wanna Be Loved By You," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" or "Bye Bye, Baby" -- but listen to the songs without looking at the visuals. You'll hear a melodious voice of limited range, thin but accurate, with a husky low register, a breathy manner, and a rare gift of vibratro. When her voice trembles over a note -- over "you" or "baby" -- the effect is seductive and yet is almost a caricature of the seductress's vamp. The paradox of her singing is that she reveals her sexual power and flaunts her vulnerability -- to flip the usual order of those verbs. She can be intimate and ironic at the same time.

Compare her version of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with Carol Channing's definitive Broadway treatment, and you get the essential difference between theater and cinema, New York and Hollywood. Channing's is the superior theatrical experience: funny, charming, a show-stopper of the first order. But Channing serves the song where Monroe makes her songs sound like illustrations of her life. Monroe's treatment of "Diamonds" may not be as effective as Channing's in its service to Leo Robin's marvelous lyric for Jules Styne's delightful tune. But Monroe's version is younger, friskier, sexier. When she sings it, the song is about her. Music is the food of love, and sexual ecstasy is on the menu, for dessert.

Nowhere is she better than "I'm Through with Love," which she sings in Some Like It Hot. Gus Kahn's lyric, which rhymes "I'm through" with "adieu," is as apt for Marilyn as "Falling in Love Again" was for Marlene Dietrich. In "I'm Through with Love," the singer feigns nonchalance, affects an uncaring attitude. But melodically during the bridge, and lyrically in the line "for I must have you or no one," the song lets us know just how much she does care. Monroe implies this pathos in "I'm Through with Love" at the same time as she struts her stuff. She vows that she'll "never fall again" and forbids Love -- as if the abstraction stood for a Greek god or for the entire male sex -- to "ever call again." But we don't quite believe her, because we know temptation is just around the corner. In a sense, her voice thrusts out its hips when she sings. It's a feast for all the senses.

-- DL

 

 

The Day Doris Day Said Good Night [by David Lehman]

The great Doris Day, who died the other day, was celebrated for her work in romantic comedies of the 1960s. She was box office gold with James Garner, Cary Grant, and Rock Hudson. But her real achievement was as a singer. In musical movies she gave outstanding performances as Ruth Etting (in Love Me or Leave Me in 1955) and as Mrs Gus Kahn (in I'll See You in My Dreams in 1953). One of the finest of all Big Band vocalists, whose version of "Sentimental Journey" is a madeleine that can transport you to 1945, she sang with the Les Brown Orchestra when swing was king.

Maybe her biggest single hit was the Academy Award-winning song of 1956 in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much inwhich she played opposite James Stewart. In honor of Doris Day, "Che Sera, Sera" was sung at sing-alongs in smart clubs all over the nation yesterday.

Doris gets her own day in my Playlist:

1 / 4 / 18

Doris Day is a great screen name because
of Oscar Levant’s witticism  (he knew Doris Day
“before she was a virgin”) but mostly because
of the voice of Doris at break of day or when
driving on Rte 17 and listening to  her sing
“Sentimental Journey” with Les Brown (“and
his band of renown”) and “Dream a Little Dream
of Me” or “Someone Like You,” “A Hundred Years
from Today,” or “Love Me or Leave Me,”
the face cherubic, the flip side of Sinatra’s
brooding in Young at Heart, blonde
and relentlessly upbeat, but there is sex in that voice