Gone With The Wind – As God As My Witness, I’ll Watch It Again and Again!

I often feel a little self conscious admitting that one of my favorite films of all time is Gone With The Wind. Of course I realize the portrayal of the Black actors was demeaning, but maybe it’s because having read the Pulitzer Prize-winning Margaret Mitchell novel, I knew how integral and influential and beloved the matriarch, Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy really was. Also, I fell immediately in love with the exquisite, plotting, and stunning Vivian Leigh, and equally as in love with the virile, sexy and uber-masculine Clark Gable.

And just to keep it real, it’s incredibly important to look back on the portrayal of African Americans in Hollywood film, analyze and accept it as part of our American history. To shun it or try to erase it from memory is to deny where we come from and what harsh stereotypes once shaped not only our view of race, but also our behavior and attitudes. It is critical that we remember even the more difficult to swallow iconic images such as the indelible creation of the character Mammy, as well as the woman who bravely played her, Hattie McDaniel, and the cross she had to bear in doing so.

Not only was my bewilderment around the “shuck and jive” depictions of Black characters a point of fascination, but also how it was framed amidst the old Hollywood epic excess that Victor Fleming and David Selznick employed, literally setting the studio lot on fire for the burning of Atlanta scene that drew me in. Up to that point, GWTW was the longest sound film ever produced, topping out at 3 hours and 44 minutes, plus an intermission! In 1939, long before later epics of that magnitude like Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, and much later Braveheart, Dances with Wolves, or Avatar, they pushed creatively and certainly financially to film lovers’ eternal gain. Truthfully, Victor and David were the real predecessors in whose footsteps directors like James Cameron aspire to fill. But at the time, industry folks and movie-goers simply assumed the GWTW producers were crazy in their budget-busting spending spree (this could have been a 1939 version of Waterworld if the level of talent on and off screen hadn’t been so exquisite)!

But back to my obsession with the film itself, it may have been the fact that I knew Vivian would eventually be diagnosed with bipolar disorder much later in life that I searched her face and performance for any sign of early symptoms. Maybe it was because I knew she beat the odds of being cast, the only Brit to audition for the role, beating out Paulette Goddard (a huge star at the time), and so many other better known actresses, and at the time was merely known as Olivier’s mistress. Maybe it was how she simply became Scarlett, just like she became Blanche Dubois so convincingly 12 years later, that in even later years she had a hard time discerning own identity with the characters she once played.

But the bottom line is that she still soaks up the screen and dominates every scene, her sequences with her male counterparts are delicious – as she flirts with Leslie Howard’s poor put-upon Ashley and then meets her match in Gable’s unbridled Rhett. But the real interplay is her scenes with Hattie, who knows her better than anyone.

Of course the historic event of Hattie McDaniel as the first Black actor or actress to win an Oscar, as best supporting actress, is truly bittersweet. Hattie received a lot of flak from the Black community for playing Mammy, ostracized as a “sell-out” not only for playing Mammy, but for her acceptance speech in which she said she hoped to be “a credit to her race”. That speech was written for her by the Selznick organization, and when she read it, she was being the consummate actress she always was: reading lines that were given to her. In fact, Hattie was invited to the Oscar ceremony but was not seated at the Selznick table with the rest of the cast; she was seated at a small table in the back.

But it is important to recognize her and her counterpart Butterfly McQueen for their courage and grace under fire, and their pioneer status that blazed a new trail for Black actors and actresses. For pushing forward even under demeaning circumstances to set important precedence for those that came decades later.

GWTW won 10 Oscars in 1939, a record that stood for 2 decades. With incredibly astute, touching and often comedic performances by fellow cast mates Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Thomas Mitchell and of course Vivian and Clark, plus the sweepingly gorgeous music by Max Steiner, you simply cannot hate on this classic.

 

Philadelphia Story – A Classic Favorite For Good Reason!

Although I was born in Philadelphia and raised in its idyllic suburban enclave called “The Main Line”, you don’t have to have that experience to fall in love with the 1940 classic, The Philadelphia Story. All three actors, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, were at the height of their talent and appeal in this film, although in fact, Hepburn had already been labeled “box office poison” after a few disappointing runs in Break of Hearts, Mary of Scotland and A Woman Rebels. Despite early success in her career (after all, she won an Oscar for her role as Jo in Little Women), and later fantastic performances in Stage Door and Bringing up Baby, RKO really didn’t know what to do with such a unique talent. There had never been a Katharine Hepburn before and they didn’t know how to market her.

It may seem commonplace today, but her sophistication, independent and strong will, she was a precursor to the feminist movement and visionary of style; Katharine set the stage for later actresses like Annette Benning, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

In a ballsy and shrewd move completely consistent with Hepburn’s style, she commissioned the play A Philadelphia Story (using money from her then boyfriend Howard Hughes), and played it to great acclaim on Broadway. Wisely, she waived salary for a cut of the profits and movie rights, thereby securing it for herself and dictating the choice of director (George Cukor) and co-stars, Grant and Stewart. She received an impressive sum by selling the movie rights to MGM. Cukor, often described as a woman’s director due to his ability to generate and/or revive actresses’ star power in his films, was supremely effective in capturing Katharine’s character, Tracy Lord, feminine defiance and frailty all at once. Many view this film as a key turning point in Katharine’s career, since she then went on to do Woman of the Year in 1942, which of course is where another turning point occurred personally for her: she met Spencer Tracy.

There are so many gems in this film, it’s hard to list my favorites: classic lines like “Oh Mac, put me in your pocket…” when she and Jimmy find themselves tipsy and flirting one magical evening – that line is poetry. Cary Grant was entirely overlooked by the Oscars for his role as CK Dexter Haven, not even receiving a nomination. He only received Oscar nods twice in his career, one for Penny Serenade and the other for None But The Lonely Heart, both incredible performances (he did eventually receive a special Academy Award in 1970, which he cherished the rest of his life). But pay close attention to not only his comedic timing in Philadelphia Story, but his non-verbal expressiveness as he grapples with his anger, resentment and continued love for Tracy as she prepares to remarry.

There is also a great scene where Cary and Jimmy almost break character because Jimmy, playing a very drunk Macaulay (Mac) Connor, actually hiccups by accident. Not in the script, Cary says, “Excuse me” and you can see them both crack up before the next line. Those little glimpses at these iconic actors are delicious gems that leave us craving for outtakes.

It was clear these actors liked each other and liked working together; the scene where Mac tells CK he’d “sell his grandmother for a drink” shows that they barely got through their lines without laughing. Cukor saw this as genuine and kept it in, to our benefit!

But every moment of this film is a joy to watch as the tri-fecta of talent comes together. The script is almost musical and the players artfully dance through each scene, making it look far too easy.

Why the Ox-Bow Incident is Deep on So Many Levels

One of the first movies I remember seeing as a kid had an eerie almost film-noir aesthetic, yet it was a Western: 1943’s The Ox-Bow Incident. What stuck out in my mind was the bravery and vocal honesty of Henry Fonda, the desperate pleading of a very handsome and obviously innocent Dana Andrews (who I first developed a crush on in 1944’s The Best Years of Our Lives, which I saw first), and the otherworldly almost prophetic presence of Leigh Whipper, the Black actor who played Sparks, the preacher and voice of reason to the vengeful mob.

As many know, the film, directed by William Weldmann, is about corruption and the murderous power of a mob that throws law and order to the side in pursuit of revenge and vigilantism. Henry Fonda, who plays Gil Carter, and Harry Morgan (who many remember from his later days on the hit TV series MASH), who plays Art Croft, are two drifters passing through a small subdued town when a beloved rancher is robbed and murdered. With very little information, a mob, led by Marc Lawrence as the plotting Farnley , and Frank Conroy as the amoral Major Tetley, is quickly formed. Soon any voices of reason are not only drowned out by the mob, but also threatened for possibly being in cahoots with the sought after murderers.

The timing of the production is no coincidence, when American audiences saw the film in the early 1940s it was during the progress of World War II, and the implication was obvious that Hitler's evils in Europe could also inhabit the ethos of the sacred American/western frontier. It was a call to action against tyranny everywhere and for America not to turn a blind eye toward the atrocities happening in Germany as well as early rumblings of paranoid concerns around Communism right here at home.

To that latter point, many also view this timeless classic as a condemnation of McCarthyism, although not even a turn of phrase until almost 10 years later, many of the actors and producers of The Ox-Bow Incident were in fact asked to testify and name names of any colleagues thought to belong to the Communist Party.

But I have to say the scenes with Leigh Whipper as Sparks are often the most haunting; it wasn’t very often at that period of time that a Black man was portrayed as the sage voice of reason. Leigh’s story is a fascinating one: Born in South Carolina in 1876, at the end of the Reconstruction Era in which his parents had participated, he was educated in D.C., attended Howard University, before turning permanently to a life in the theater. At a time when work for black actors was limited, Whipper became a successful actor, appearing in more than twenty plays and a greater number of films. He not only joined Actors Equity in 1913 (the first Black actor to do so) and other organizations where African-Americans were few in number, but he also helped fellow African-American thespians by founding the Negro Actors Guild in 1937.

Many people thought Whipper was a white actor playing in blackface because of his keen features, due in part to some Native American heritage.  Already in his 60s during the shooting of Ox-Bow, he was honored a year later by the Ethiopian government for his portrayal of the superior Emperor Haile Selassie in the movie Mission to Moscow (1943), in which he delivers a speech before the League of the Nations.

He appeared in almost two dozen films, but I’ll always remember him singing a gospel hymn in an almost comedic yet stark rhythm once the mob hung the three innocent men, the lyrics are equally as haunting, “You got to go before your Maker, you got to go there by yourself. Nobody here can go there for you, you got to go here by yourself.” Check out Leigh, Dana, Anthony, Henry and Art in this timeless and very TIMELY classic, The Ox-Bow Incident. And while you do, think of the current political mobs who bully and accuse people who think differently as “un-American” or “Communist”….for me, I see a real life Major Tetley in Donald Trump, bull-horning his mob of Tea Party-ers, hankering for a lynching party of our President.

One-Eyed Jacks: An Underappreciated Classic Western

One of my earliest recollections of Old Western film art is of a lesser known film called One-Eyed Jacks, made in 1961. The film stars Marlon Brando as Rio, somewhat past the height of his career 10 years earlier in classics such as Street Car Named Desire and On The Waterfront, and co-starring one of his best friends, Karl Malden who plays Dad Longworth. The film is a bit of a departure for both actors, probably one of the reasons they gravitated toward making the movie; Marlon plays a fellow bank robber/hustler friend of Karl’s who during one of their capers, gives Karl the sack of gold they’ve stolen in order to go ahead to garner horses and ammo so that they can both escape from the Mexican desert standoff they were trapped in. Karl takes the gold but never returns to help Marlon fend off the local authorities; Karl escapes and ultimately violating the guy code of the day: he leaves his boy behind to rot in a Mexican prison.

Marlon ends up doing his bid and Karl’s and 5 years later, remains angry and vengeful over Karl’s betrayal. The movie effectively focuses on Marlon’s singular goal: to find and kill Karl. The twist is that Karl has become the sheriff of the town of Monterrey, has married and adopted his wife’ beautiful daughter. By redefining himself, Karl exquisitely plays a man haunted by his own betrayal of his best friend who he now fears, and a man living a lie in the sense that he is still very much the callous, conniving hustler he always was, but now with a badge. Quite a departure from the actor who so convincingly played the likeable oaf in Streetcar, and the honorable, tenacious and fearless priest in On the Waterfront.

Other notable and hilarious performances include Slim Pickens as Karl’s sidekick Lon Kendrick, and Ben Johnson as Bob Emory. The film also features the debut of the actress Pina Pellicer who plays Dad Longworth’s adopted daughter, Louisa. She showed great promise, despite the fact that she essentially learned to speak English on the set of this film. She came to a tragic end in real life, after falling in love with her co-star Marlon who she had an affair with, and eventually committing suicide. Imagine that happening today to a young ingénue, like say Jennifer Lawrence (from Winter’s Bone) if she had fallen for and killed herself over her co-star John Hawkes! Only a star as monumental as Marlon Brando could move past the tabloid effect of that event fairly unscathed. If say a young Juliette Binoche had even attempted suicide after co-starring with Daniel Day Lewis (some might say, our generation’s Brando) in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the tabloid ripple effect would most likely still plague both actors.

Back to One Eyed Jacks, this was Marlon’s directorial debut, and the movie was originally to be directed by Stanley Kubrick; Sam Peckinpah wrote the screenplay, and went on to great critical acclaim for writing the Wild Bunch just 8 years later in 1969. Brando had actually fired Peckinpah over creative disagreements, and eventually Kubrick was also fired. Brando decided to direct the film himself, and did an excellent job as you’ll see, focusing on human emotion and capturing with great effect the subtleties and tensions between the characters. In fact, the dialogue is loaded with tension and there is a great economy to the characters’ communications. This film is jam-packed with awesome one-liners like Lon’s “You ain’t getting’ no older than tomorrow…” as he teases Rio, sentenced to hang.

Although not meant to be a comedy, there are many funny moments in this film. Keep an eye on when Dad publicly whips Rio, who not only spits in his face, but then whips his hair back in one of the coolest Brando-esque moves you don’t want to miss. Both of these men were one of a kind. The movie did not do very well at the box office, but still remains an underappreciated classic.

Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Monterrey California in the early ‘60s, check out One Eyed Jacks. You won’t be disappointed.