Join Sass Mouth Dames Film Club as we celebrate Christmas with a screwball murder mystery that’s pure gold. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer adapted Dashiell Hammett’s best selling novel The Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, who play the screen’s ideal married couple, Nick and Nora Charles. Directed by ‘One-Take Woody’ Van Dyke in only sixteen days, the picture’s brisk pace, sophisticated style, and urbane banter spawned five sequels and a whole raft of imitations. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the picture was one of the biggest hits at the box office in 1934. We musn’t forget mention their dog Asta, played by Skippy, who steals every scene he’s given.
The following excerpt is taken from Sass Mouth Dames podcast episode 153: Claire Trevor in Born to Kill (1937). You can listen to it here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Deadlier than the Male, written by 21 year-old college student James Gunn, was a critical and commercial success when it was published in 1942. Critics raved about the novel, which gives a fresh take on the hardboiled genre. The novel riffs on the genre without succumbing to the stereotypical cliches.
Unlike novelist Cornell Woolrich, who struggled for years to ink a Hollywood deal, Gunn only wrote one novel, which received a red-carpet welcome by Hollywood. Gunn’s first screenwriting gig was adapting Gypsy Rose Lee’s novel for Barbara Stanwyck in what became Lady of Burlesque. Gunn wrote again for Stanwyck with the script for All I Desire and he wrote the script Harriet Craig for Joan Crawford.
Paramount optioned his book. Director Robert Wise recalled that the studio wanted change the title to Born to Kill, to take advantage of casting bad boy Lawrence Tierney. Wise was never happy about the change. Claire Trevor enjoyed working with Robert Wise, whom she considered to be one of the top directors. In an interview, Claire noted that he was articulate and everything he said was pure gold. The studio assigned Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay to adapt the novel.
I was curious about screenwriter Eve Greene, who had a long career, from 1932 to 1968. I couldn’t find her in the popular books about women writers from the studio era, so I turned to the newspaper archives for something to share. In an interview from 1938, which was printed in Alexander Kahn’s syndicated column, ‘Hollywood Film Shop,’ Greene discussed her origins in the film colony. After leaving Chicago for Hollywood, like thousands of other women in search of a meaningful career, she took a job as a secretary in MGM to get her foot in the door. Greene recalled:
‘I knew that people who wrote scenarios were not picked out of thin air and I made up my mind to learn the business of script writing from the ground up. Every moment I had to spare, I employed it in reading and studying screenplays until I felt I knew the form, at least.’ When a script girl position opened, she got a break and climbed another step on the studio ladder.
Eve learned a lot from working closely with directors on set. She told a reporter that ‘it brought the whole complicated procedure before my eyes. I learned about camera set ups, dolly shots, fades, dissolves, and the rest of the technical knowledge of filmmaking.’
The role as script girl soon led to her dream job writing scripts. She noted, ‘After a time, I began to help on dialogue on the set, and then Zelda Sears took me under her wing, and we worked on a story for Marie Dressler. Miss Sears knew drama and dramatic writing and taught me how to write.’
Zelda Sears mentored Eve Greene through the Dressler hit comedies Prosperity in 1932 and Tugboat Annie in 1933. Dressler was one of the biggest stars in MGM, an Oscar winner and champion at the box office. Eve left Metro in 1935 for a brief stint at Universal, before signing a long-term contract with Paramount studio in 1936. She had an auspicious start in Paramount as the lead writer for Yours For the Asking, starring George Raft, Dolores Costello and Ida Lupino. Eve ended her contract in Paramount with the script for Born to Kill and then switched to writing for television. Her first gig in television was writing four episodes of The Lone Ranger. She worked steadily in TV until 1968, when she wrote one last film script, The Strange Affair, before retiring.
Alice Faye is a playwright, down on her luck, despite having an impeccable literary pedigree. Her grandfather was Edgar Allan Poe, which explains how she can keep her chin up while doing a gloomy job like wearing a sandwich board in the rain. Instead of being accosted by a raven, she must fend off a successful author of popular Broadway musicals, played by Don Ameche. He thinks that she should give up writing and sing on the stage. But Alice Faye plays a highbrow, aghast at his hackneyed productions. Gypsy Rose Lee, gowned to the teeth by Royer, makes her screen debut as the bitchy ‘other woman.’ Gypsy in her prime is not to be missed.
Too Many Husbands (1940)
(Screens 20 November at 7.00)
Jean Arthur, newly married to Melvyn Douglas, discovers that her first husband Fred MacMurray wasn’t lost at sea after all. With two husbands under one roof, until she makes up her mind, Jean has the men bunk together in a frilly satin boudoir that looks like the inside of a music box. Wesley Ruggles directs a sublime screwball comedy where the men behave like absolute idiots to win her hand. When the film was released, in March 1940, Life magazine ran a feature which declared, ‘Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood’s reigning mystery queen.’ Amidst the macho slapstick, she seems like an open book.
The Major and the Minor (1942)
(Screens 27 November)
Billy Wilder left nothing to chance for his Hollywood directorial debut. The script, co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett, is a glorious screwball farce starring Ginger Rogers, who calls it quits on the big city then disguises herself as a child when she can’t afford the train fare home. In pigtail braids, Ginger fools the train conductor, but she also convinces a swoon merchant on board, played by Ray Milland, that she’s only twelve years old. She falls for him while stuck in a masquerade. Ginger wrote in her memoir that she had more fun working on the picture than any other, except Kitty Foyle (for which she won her Oscar).
Modern audiences tend to know Sylvia Sidney from her late-career work with Tim Burton, yet she was an instant star in Hollywood after her screen debut in CityStreets. Dashiell Hammett claimed that he wasn’t pleased with Paramount’s version of his story, ‘After School’ which he later revised and retitled, ‘The Kiss-Off.’ But he was smitten with Sylvia Sidney, citing her as his favourite screen actress. Sylvia plays Nan, a girl in the rackets who falls for a carnival sharpshooter named The Kid, played by swoon merchant Gary Cooper. Will their love survive, or will gangsters tear them apart?
The Story of Temple Drake (1933)
Screens 11 September at 7.00
Temple Drake, played by the luminous Miriam Hopkins, has the world on a string. She’s rich, beautiful, and part of an influential family, which gives her the freedom to thumb her nose at society’s rules. But one night, on a spree, she wanders into a spooky roadhouse, where instead of finding restless ghosts rattling chains, she’s surrounded by cutthroat bootleggers and rapists. Miriam was delighted with the heroine taken from Faulkner’s lurid novel Sanctuary. She noted: ‘that Temple Drake, now there was a thing. Just give me a nice, unstandardized wretch like Temple three times a year, and I’ll interpret the daylights out of them.’
Bonus short: On the Loose (1931)
Since Temple Drake is a lean 70 minutes, we’ll start with a short from Hal Roach comedy team Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts. The gals are fed up with dates who take them to Coney Island. Comic mayhem ensues.
Twentieth Century (1934)
Screens 18 September at 7.00
Set at a breakneck pace that moves faster than the train it’s named after, Carole Lombard and John Barrymore give such animated performances in TwentiethCentury that you could turn the film stills into a flipbook. They gesticulate, glower, and sling verbal darts at each other throughout the run of Howard Hawk’s screwball gem. Carole plays Mildred Plotka, a lingerie model who becomes a star thanks to the maniacal tutelage of Barrymore. Once she’s on top, with the stage name Lily Garland, he refuses to let go. The clash of their theatrical egos zings like a musical score, thanks to a brilliant script by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.
The following text excerpt is taken from the Sass Mouth Dames podcast episode 152: Kim Novak in Bell Book and Candle. Listen to the entire episode here
Harry Cohn’s toxic effect on stars is well known. But in my research for this episode, I discovered the insidious role that another person in Columbia played in Kim’s career. Officially, Muriel Roberts was a publicist. She began working in the studio as a press agent for Jack Lemmon and Cliff Robertson. In 1955, Cohn assigned her to work exclusively with Kim Novak. Reporters and columnists often referred to Muriel as Kim’s ‘travelling companion,’ rather than her publicist.
Publicly and privately, the lines of their relationship blurred between star and publicist, toward something that resembled a close friendship. Surrounded by men in the studio who wanted to maximise her ticket sales, or men from the public who wanted her for sex or romance, Muriel was one person Kim felt she could trust. Kim viewed Muriel as a confidante, whether it was to share a story about Harry being rude to his wife Joan at their anniversary party, or the more private admission that she felt insecure working with William Holden. Muriel was her sounding board. Kim also viewed Muriel as a protector. She was the one who could call off the dogs and keep Harry Cohn at bay. It was the two of them against the front office.
During Kim’s first trip abroad, to the Cannes Film Festival in 1956, Muriel sailed with her in an adjoining cabin. The two-month trip was a blend of publicity junkets and sight-seeing. Muriel wrote a lengthy travel diary for Modern Screen magazine. It reads like two American girls on a spree in Europe, kind of like Edith Wharton by way of Hedda Hopper. Muriel offers a breathless account of five-star accommodation, glamorous parties, dashing escorts and guides, and elegant fashion shows. Muriel lived vicariously through Kim’s fame and fortune.
Photographs made Kim and Muriel look like friends, rather than star and staff. Life magazine printed a photo of Kim lying at one end of the bed, her head resting on pillows, listening as Muriel sat at the other end of the bed reading TheLittle Prince as a bedtime story. In the shot, Kim looks relaxed, yet vulnerable. Kim trusted Muriel but she had no idea what was really going on.
It’s unlikely that Kim would have allowed such intimacy or would have regarded Muriel as a close friend had she known that Muriel was a spy for Harry Cohn.
For the four and a half years she worked with Kim, Muriel was a snake in the grass. Muriel reported the details of Kim’s life and carried out the boss’s orders. When Kim was mixed up with Sammy Davis Jr., Cohn demanded to know how Muriel could have let it happen. Muriel replied that she didn’t think she had to follow Kim and keep an eye on her because she only went home to see her family outside Chicago.
For four and a half years, Muriel stuck to Kim like a pair of false lashes. She wrote publicity gimmicks for Kim, supervised her schedule, her interviews, and promotional tours. In 1959, Muriel was let go, possibly as part of cost-cutting measures enacted as the studio system crumbled. In 1960, she married a writer. Kim still considered Muriel a friend, until the following year, when a book of essays about Hollywood was published.
A Walter Winchell column from October 1961 contains a brief item, written in with his usual tangy wordplay. ‘Memos of a Midnighter: Don’t invite Kim Novak and her ex-pufflicist (Muriel Roberts) to the same precipice. Kim suspects she tipped the author of The Real and the Unreal to the tidbits about Kim in it. Muriel is the author’s wife.’
Author Bill Davidson claims in The Real and the Unreal that although his wife worked for Kim for years, she refused to talk about the star. It’s an obvious lie, since Davidson had no other source for information about Kim’s career except his wife Muriel. In the chapter on Kim Novak, titled ‘The Purple Gang.’ Davidson begins by noting:
‘If the proper ingredients and machinery are used—you have—after the elapsing of a certain period of time—an excellent cheese or a good movie star.’
Davidson argues that Muriel deserves the all the credit for Kim’s success:
‘Muriel was one of the youngest and most attractive publicists in Hollywood when Miss Novak was assigned to her as a project one Saturday morning in 1955. She was with her almost constantly for four and a half years thereafter. During that period, Muriel taught her charge how to dress, how to act with mysterious poise in public, how to acquire some surface intellectuality, how to evade the passes and angers of various male executives at Columbia Pictures, how to beguile members of the press, and to realize that when people spoke of the President, they were not referring to Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures, but to Dwight D. Eisenhower.’
‘My thoroughly honest spouse concocted all sorts of lies about Miss Novak’s background, her hobbies, her romantic life, her discovery by the studio. She pulled one of the master coups of the publicity world by devising a distinctive trademark for Miss Novak—the so-called lavender bit. Although Miss Novak had rarely worn a garment of that color since she was five years old, my beloved dressed her constantly in varying shades of lavender and purple, induced her to decorate her apartment in the same hues, gave her blonde hair a lavender rinse, and even had her answer her fan mail with a purple fountain pen and lavender ink. The gimmick took, but to this day, no shade of purple or lavender is allowed to appear anywhere in the decorations of my home.’
Davidson rehashed the old angle that Time magazine first took in 1957, that Kim was manufactured by Columbia. Only he likens Kim to a hunk of cheese, and then makes it seem like she was nothing but Muriel’s puppet. The way he tells it, Muriel had all the talent. Columbia fired the wrong person. It also sounds like Muriel had only scorn for Kim. No wonder Kim cut Muriel off. The woman she thought was a friend had humiliated her in print. It was an awful betrayal.
It’s worth sharing a postscript about Muriel Roberts Davidson. I wanted to know what happened to her after she crossed Kim in such a lowdown fashion. After she left Columbia, and married Bill Davidson, Muriel wrote freelance features for magazines. She also wrote three novels. More to the interest of my audience, she co-wrote the book, TheWestmores of Hollywood, the story of the family of makeup artists who created a cosmetics dynasty, along with Frank Westmore in 1976. She later wrote the pilot episode for Baretta, the TV show starring Robert Blake.
Then, in September 1983, Muriel was shot and killed at home. Early reports hinted that it might have been a reprisal from the Mafia, since Muriel and her husband Bill had written an expose on organised crime. As part of their investigation, one newspaper reported, Muriel had gone undercover to a Mob-owned casino, with a hidden camera tucked inside her mink coat.
Muriel’s body was discovered by a family friend, who was asked to check on her, since she hadn’t answered her husband’s calls. Bill, then an editor for TV Guide, was in Texas researching another story. Muriel had been shot in the head and back. Nothing was taken in the house, but their car had disappeared from the driveway.
A week before she died, Muriel had been promoted to Vice President of Film and TV Development at Jay Bernstein productions. She had been putting together a package deal on a Mickey Spillane project for television. Hollywood columnist and biographer Bob Thomas told reporters that the Davidsons had recently changed their phone number after a series of crank calls. He noted that she seemed spooked, as though someone were after her. The couple had recently put their Benedict Canyon home on the market. Their realtor said that Muriel instructed her several times against letting anyone know that Bill was out of town and that she was home alone.
Days after the murder, police arrested Robert Thom, former aerospace engineer with Hughes Aircraft. The Davidson’s car had been found in the vicinity of Thom’s house in Pasadena. Newspaper reports stated that Robert Thom met Muriel in St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where she volunteered to lead group therapy sessions for recovering alcoholics. Thom was one of the clients in the programme.
During Thom’s trial, evidence showed that Muriel and Robert had an on and off again love affair during the two years that they had known each other. Police found a manuscript written by Muriel in his possession. It was titled ‘The Nun’s Nurse’s Tale,’ it was a story about a recovering alcoholic who received help from a friend. Muriel had signed it. Muriel had tried to break off the affair. Thom threatened her life. Days after he was fired, he broke into her home and fired the fatal shots. The night he killed her, Thom stopped at a liquor store. Robert Thom asked the clerk if he had ever killed anyone. When the clerk said no, Thom admitted he just had.
Robert Thom wrote in a letter to Bill, ‘I was, and I am, I love with Muriel but failed to show her that I could love by continuous drinking.’ Thom was sentenced to 17 years to life.
