Victor Mature is a publicist who decides that waitress Carole Landis has what it takes to make it in Manhattan’s café society. After she’s murdered, Vic becomes the prime suspect, but her sister, played by Betty Grable, isn’t so sure. Twentieth Century Fox mogul Darryl Zanuck believed that typecasting was as immutable as an astrological sign. Once typed, a star had little hope of changing their aspect in the studio. Zanuck was especially resolute in keeping women in limited roles. I Wake Up Screaming is the only non-musical picture Betty starred in during her Fox tenure. Betty exhibits a knack for dramatic roles in a downplayed performance.
The Harvey Girls (1946)
Screens 12 February at 7.00
In the Old West, we are told, nice women can ruin a town. Instead of the usual beef between ranchers and outlaws, the story whips up a feud among waitresses and saloon girls which looks like a candy-coloured treat. The picture boasts peak Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury with coiffures to die for, deadpan Virginia O’Brien, Marjorie Main, Cyd Charisse, John Hodiak, gorgeous costumes by Helen Rose and Irene, and songs by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren. Director George Sidney and the Arthur Freed unit corral a sprawling cast in one of Metro’s most free-wheeling and feel-good musicals. Judy brandishing two six-shooters is not to be missed.
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.
