When You Are Lost On The Great White Way, Broadway … And Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Varsity Show” (1937)-A Film Review

When You Are Lost On The Great White Way, Broadway … And Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Varsity Show” (1937)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Varsity Show, starring Dick Powell and a bunch of Lane sisters, the inevitable last dance segment directed by max daddy (Seth Garth’s expression) Bugby Berkeley, 1937  

Sometimes you just can’t win when you try to be nice, try to stop a growing dispute with fellow colleagues in what everybody knows is a cutthroat go for the jugular “you are only as good as your last piece” somebody is lurking to take your place profession like film reviews in its tracks. Damn, can’t get any traction out of calling a truce so that you do not have to start off every film review, maybe every piece at this publication with what in normal times would be ho-hum stuff best reserved for titter around the office water cooler. Maybe what the older writers have told me, especially my mentor Seth Garth the film reviewing business does not allow for anything but cutthroat dog eat dog animus. Although that shouldn’t be so apparently to go up, and stay up, on the review food chain you must at least mortally wound whoever your competitor of the day is. For now this brewing confrontation must see the light of day if I am to protect my growing reputation and if I am to keep my hard fought place in the food chain since one Sam Lowell, whom I off-handedly characterized as wizened and in his dotage in my last review of a Dick Powell film from the 1930s Hollywood Hotel  had decided that I need “my comeuppance” over those remarks and what followed.     

Sam bogusly claims that my review of the Powell vehicle was not written, could not be written by me since my only source of information about the period of the 1930s and 1940s musical was my grandmother who was a child held on her mother’s knee back then watching these “feel good” films to get through some tough times. He has suggested that the only way this review could have been does as well as it was is if somebody more familiar with the times wrote the damn thing (his expression). Sam insinuated that the only person he knew who could handle such a review having done a series of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films was his old friend, still friend I assume, Seth Garth my kindly mentor had written the piece and that I put my by-line name on the thing and sent it in to Greg Green as my original work.

Of course Sam is looking for tit for tat since he knows that almost everybody in the office over the age of ten knows that he has a very large reputation going all the way back to the 1960s of having somebody write his reviews for him, usually stringers, usually female stringers to boot or in desperation after some three day drunk or cavorting just used the studio publicity department press releases and signed his name to the document. I hear one time and if I am libeling him so be it he was cavorting with some stringer on a three- day toot or something like that and sent the press release in without clipping the studio name off the top. His old buddy, another one of the half dozen or so guys from high school days who have written for this publication over the years, editor Allan Jackson published it as is Sam’s star was so high back then.  Seth Garth has been kindness itself in helping me up the ladder in the business and had provided suggestions but that is it. I write my own material.  Period.

More grating, more insidious is that Sam has taken up the salacious office water cooler gossip about some relationship beyond the mentoring one between Seth and myself implying that I would get ahead on his coattails if I was nice to Seth. In that Hollywood Hotel review I made it quite clear that Seth and I had merely a professional relationship and that it would be absurd for me to have a personal relationship with a person old enough to be my grandfather. I, moreover, mentioned that my companion has been having fits over these rumors and we have had some shouting matches when she heard the last product out of the rumor mill. Sam, the treacherous little wizened bastard, that wizen thing always gets to him from what Seth has told me has been spreading the word that something is up between us ever since he out of that kindness I mentioned before took me to dinner one night.

Sam’s hook, Sam’s fucking “hook” that is he is forever yakking about as necessary to draw a reader in as if that wasn’t lesson one taught in journalism graduate school is that Seth is just living out the life of Johnny Silver. Johnny, who I don’t know from Adam, is one of their infamous and constantly talked about 1960s high school corner boys who Seth wrote about in a long series of short pieces when he got tangled up with a graduate student from Penn State after they had “met” on Facebook a few years ago. That romance, that intergenerational sex, between the pair who are still together is the hook Sam used to imply that his old corner boy Seth was making the same kind of moves on me. Don’t these guys, maybe gals too but I don’t know about that, ever think anything can be anything other than some sex scheme when guys and gals are out together. Like I said my companion went wild when she heard I had gone to dinner with Seth since he received an e-mail about it from “anonymous.” I know there will be more in this war of words but I will say Seth was right when he told me Sam was not above anything and to be careful. He said he had known the wizened (a joke between Seth and I now when we are referring to Sam in our mentoring sessions) Sam too long to expect any quarter to be given. I have come a long way in a short time, with Seth’s help, so I will not play the wilting violet. To the review.                     

Boy meets girl. Well if you want my opinion that is essentially what this well-worn Hollywood trope is working overtime on when you get to the close of Varsity Club. This a college-based piece of fluff in the days when college entrance was very circumscribed and mainly for the children of the elite, of those who have already made it. Number one in making it was Chuck, Dick Powell’s role, an alumnus of some private small maybe denomination Middle America school like Kenyon or Oberlin Winfield College, who has made it big on Broadway although at the start of the film he is on cheap street after producing a few flops, the kiss of death to backers of such efforts. Meanwhile back at his old alma mater where they are revolting, not revolting against the injustices and inequalities of the Great Depression that my dear grandmother had to survive with lots of trauma, but against an edict by the head of the music/drama department that the annual varsity show should not disturb the dead. Not keep anybody awake. Be pure vanilla meaning no cavorting (which would  by reputations leave both withered Sam and sweetie Seth out), no close boy-girl scenes and above all even in fully-clothed post-Code days no references to sex, or maybe even biology.       

The kids (although most look much too old to have been in college then although today they would not stand out with the demographic mix these days with people going to college for lots of reasons, mostly serious, at older ages to get ahead in the world a bit) don’t know what to do until some bravo latches onto the idea that they contact good old Chuck to see if he can’t bring the thing into the 20^th century. After plenty of built-up, a few songs, a budding romance with a sorority sister, one of the famous Lane sisters but I am not sure if it was the one he snagged in Hollywood Hotel he falls short, cannot move the production forward. Then led by Professor Fred Waring (and his Pennsylvanians in tow) the whole cast winds up in New York City, on the big white way where they will put on a bootleg production since the staid college stage is out. Aside from the boy-girl thing between Powell and Lane the virtue, the reason for existence of this mercifully short film is the Bugby Berkeley show-stopper finale choregraphed to perfection in the way that he and very few others could do. Finis. Well, no, anybody who was not old and wizened maybe a shade bit senile in his dotage could tell in two seconds that this review was written by me, by Sarah Lemoyne. Got it.        

When Your Lost In The Rain In…Hollywood And You Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Hollywood Hotel” (1937)-A Film Review

When Your Lost In The Rain In…Hollywood And You Don’t Know What To Do-Dick Powell’s “Hollywood Hotel” (1937)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Hollywood Hotel, starring Dick Powell, the Lane sisters (important since this film involves mistaken identities, well-known gossip columnist Luella Parson, Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, classic song Hooray for Hollywood by Johnny Mercer, directed by master dance man Bugby Berkeley, 1937    

In case anybody is following the “dispute” between the old wizened ex-film editor and now in his dotage occasional spot reviewer Sam Lowell I can call a truce here in the film under review Bugby Berkeley’s Hollywood Hotel. Reason: Sam Lowell has been quoted, quoted around the water cooler and I have my mentor Seth Garth as witness that he wouldn’t touch a musical, a song and dance film, with a ten-foot pole and when he was, way back when probably when the films came out in the 1930s and he was dodging them, assigned them to stringers or some female in the office. (To set the record, a couple of records, straight Seth and Sam actually go a long way back to their days as what Seth calls “corner boy” days growing up in working class town North Adamsville but Seth is “pissed” off at Sam these days since he, Sam, had been a leader in getting their mutual old friend and former site administrator Allan Jackson dumped, purged some say, under the theme that the, as Seth put it to me, “torch had to be passed” and he has balked at doing so in his own case. But enough of internal office water cooler politics. More pressing, more pressing because my partner is getting “pissed” at the rumors, there is nothing, nothing romantic, between Seth and I although if he was younger and did not have a wife, all these guys, all these corner boys, seem to have set some record for collectively marrying, I would certainly be interested and let’s leave it at that. Hey, Seth is old enough to be my grandfather for Christ sakes.)              

Sam needed not have worried about getting this assignment since I was more than happy to take it as I had recently been talking to my grandmother and she mentioned, after hearing that I had been taken on at this publication although she mixed it up with American Film Gazette which she used to read to find out what critics thought of films she was interested in seeing, that she wished I would spent some time reviewing earlier films, films from the 1930s and 1940s when they were out in Hollywood producing films to get people through the gloomy Great Depression and what she called fretting  through World War II. She mentioned that she would take my mother during the 1960s to Ann Arbor, to the University Cinema, to watch retrospectives from that period. I mentioned that my mother had not done so, had not taken me to such events maybe having four kids stopped her in her tracks I don’t know. Grandma said that my mother had loved the musicals and that would be a good place for me to start. I actually watched a couple of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films with fellow reviewer Leslie Dumont who was doing a retrospective on their ten- film series a while back. When Greg put this on the assignment board I went for it.       

Seth mentioned that if things were true to form, if he knew his old pal Sam Lowell he knew the reason why Sam would have passed this film on to some stringer, somebody down in the food chain. (I can’t resist this but there is a persistent rumor going around that after Sam made his big splash with what they still call the definitive book on film noir back in the 1970s he basically “mailed in,” had stringers do his reviews under his by-line or just ripped the press releases from the studios off the board and passed them in as his own but that is part of our dispute, so I will avoid going further here.) Sam would have turned his nose down at the lead performer here Ronnie Bowers, played by Dick Powell who started out as a song and dance man but who later did some serious noir work, especially in the film adaptation of crime novelist Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (on screen Murder, My Sweet). Old school Sam, very old school if you ask me, would have had a field day comparing the ah shucks, starry-eyed Dick Powell of this Bugby Berkeley production (according to Seth and my grandmother too he was the king of exotic spectacular chorus line dance productions although this film is mainly a musical effort) with the tough guy, wind-mill chasing, searching a little rough justice, dame-chasing, take a punch or two, a slug or two for the cause Dick Powell as Phillip Marlowe. ((The above courtesy of mentor Seth since I have not watched many earlier such noir films.)      

Frankly I liked the starry-eyed going to Hollywood Dick Powell character, big band Benny Goodman sax player, since I once when I was about ten crazy with an idea that I would grow up to be a movie star, a dream like about ten million others trying to beat the odds against success and a trip to the seamy side of the Hollywood experience. Ronnie winds up in Hollywood in the hotel of the title to wait upon stardom, or go back to Peoria, Butte, Boise, Toledo, Portland or wherever he or any star-struck kid came from. Fate takes a hand early since not only can Ronnie play sax, although we never see that being used by our man but can sing which will be his “hook.” This is where the classic Hollywood hook, who knows maybe all of Western literary convention, boy meets girl that has saved many a B-film comes in. (This nugget according to Seth who can sniff out this trope in half the films ever produced according to Leslie Dumont).          

A famous star, Mona Marshall, a drama queen if there ever was one, played by one of the Lane sisters, was to attend a world premier with all the glitter Hollywood can muster and is supposed to attend that event with her co-star, her leading man. But she blows town in a snit. Problem, problem for the studio who is on the hook. Enter waitress Rosemary, played by the other Lane sister, who bears a striking resemblance to Mona. Bingo do the switch and bait. Problem, co-star would know the difference. Enter Ronnie. And the start of the boy meets girl romance (and singing duos too). When Mona gets wind of what happened she went storming creating holy hell. Meanwhile waitress goes back to work and Ronnie waits upon the fates until the next move. Next move turns on the ability to sing on key which co-star cannot as the next film premier demonstrated. Enter Ronnie to save the day for a price. Bingo.  But what about waitress budding romance (the good and steady Lane as opposed to the drama queen Lane). No problem as they do the old switch again and now both Ronnie and Rosemary can sing up a storm on the silver screen while legendary Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons and Benny Goodman and his Orchestra look on. According to my grandmother this type film got her and her family through a few days of the Depression thinking golden thoughts of Hollywood dreams. And she is probably right in her recollections.               

I Wasn’t Planning On This But These Days We Have To Start Thinking About Restarting An International Anti-Fascist United Front-Reflections On Dick Powell’s “Cornered” (1945)-A Film Review

I Wasn’t Planning On This But These Days We Have To Start Thinking About Restarting An International Anti-Fascist United Front-Reflections On Dick Powell’s “Cornered” (1945)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

Cornered, starring Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Morris Carnovsky. Luther Adler, directed by Edward Dymtryk, produced by Adrian Scott, 1945

I took this film review with all hands. This anti-fascist film Cornered from 1945 which featured performances by two  men, Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky and two men director Dymtryk (who would later turn stoolie to protect his oh so very precious career) and producer Adrian Scott, who were to be very soon on the notorious and scandalous Hollywood black-list as the post-World War II red scare Cold War night descended on the Western World is just the vehicle I needed to express some things about what is going on in the United States in an age when the fascists here (and internationally) are hearing the siren call of their return to the glory days. I had not thought as I passed my sixth decade that I would be spending time, much time anyway, worrying about the rise of the fascist movement kindled by events emanating from the White House and other high spots in the Western firmament. So be it. The fascists were buried deep down in some hole and as this film, this now cautionary tale film, points out they are keen to arise like phoenix from the ashes. As the main notorious villain and object of an international manhunt, Jarnac, played by red scare Cold War black-listed Luther Adler, said when confronted by the anti-fascists toward the end of the film as long as there are hunger men (and women) ignored by the “winners” in the global economy there will always be people like him ready to follow any half-mad adventurer. Good point, and a good reason to seriously re-start that international anti-fascist united front while there is still time, while the fascists and their allies, acknowledged and not so, are still relatively small in numbers. Remember 1933 was too late and maybe 1923 had been too (the year of the Munich putsch attempt).             

I should explain that when I mentioned I grabbed this film with “all hands” I was understating the case since the reader may not know that I have not done a film review since the days of the East Bay Other in the late 1970s before it folded like many other alternative hard-copy operations. Then I was primarily interested in French cinema, Godard, Truffaut, Celine, Dubois and other European cinematic efforts with an occasion scape handed to me by editor Sally Simmons doing film noir material helped by my association with Sam Lowell who wrote the definitive book on the subject back in the 1970s. Sam, a guy I grew up with in North Adamsville and I spent many an ill-advised (then) afternoon watching noir double-features at the old Strand Theater which was our home away from home when things got too crazy in our respective large households.

As I mentioned this film can stand as a cautionary tale for our times as well as a summing up for what happened, what ignited the backdrop to World War II. The fascists, called other names like Nazis and ultra-nationalist but fascists will do these days, rose up to smite the calm Europe, the so-called calm Europe from the days when World War I was thought, even by rational men after the carnage, to be the war that ended all wars. But like all mass movements which built up a head of steam they expanded internationally, had supporters who went the German and Axis tanks rolled in across Europe acted as fifth columns, acted in defense of the new world order as if their lives depended on it. Which it did if they lost. But when they were riding high, well, scum, like the main villain Jarnac, a Frenchman, a Vichy when the Fascists came storming into France, taking Paris and leaving the south to be administered by collaborators worked like seven dervishes to keep their power and place. Among Jarnac’s actions, the one that drives the action of the film and which will eventually lie him low he summarily had a cadre of resistance fighter shot and buried in their hideout caves. This Jarnac then left for parts unknown leaving little or no paper or physical trail behind him except that he was to be considered dead, not real dead but fake dead so you know which way the winds will blow hereafter.     

Among the resistance fighters executed in the caves was the too short time married wife of one Canadian Air Force pilot,  Gerard, played by Dick Powell last seen in this space, according to Seth Garth who did the review, in the film adaptation of  Raymond Chandler’s Private Detective Phillip Marlowe classic Farewell, My Lovely ( on screen titled Murder, My Sweet) also directed by Edward Dymtryk, who wanted to know, and know fast as you will find out, who ordered the execution of his own people, of Frenchmen, of his wife so it was personal with him. From various sources we find out that it was Jarnac and his underlings who did the dastardly deed and that Jarnac was presumed to be dead as already mentioned. Marlowe was a tough as nails no nonsense P.I. and Gerard is no less a tough anti-fascist fighter cum enraged widower. The chase is on. 

Not surprisingly, take note, Gerard, picks up Jarnac’s trail in Buenos Aires, meaning that Jarnac was not without resources, contacts or organization. (The “take note” part is today “on the low” there are similar resources available for fascists and their allies to do their dastardly work.) Of course Buenos Aires was a favored watering hole, a pleasant waiting area, for legions of fascists on the run as the clamp closed down on them in Europe so plenty of intrigue and cash are on the line. Getting nowhere for a while Gerard meets an independent agent who will sell his services to the highest bidder, played by Walter Slezak, who is out to make as many dishonest dollars as he can by working the rat hole circuit of scum fleeing Europe. He leads Gerard to Madame Jarnac, the widow, but she is really just a front, hired help to keep the charade going.

From that meeting on it is tag team who will get to Jarnac first-enter what Gerard thinks are some unsavory characters but who in reality are anti-fascist fighters looking for Jarnac too-to bring him to Nuremburg-style justice-to see him hang high if it comes to that. Gerard though keeps getting in his own way (which he will admit at the end) and after fake news Madame Jarnac gives him a sliver of information about where Jarnac might be meeting others to pull off some nefarious caper on the road back to the glory days, to power he is doggedly on the trail. Winds up grabbing Jarnac and killing him to the chagrin of the anti-fascist agents. It can’t happen here, it can’t happen again. Believe that if you will and dismiss this as a nice political thriller. Then look at today’s world headlines. Jesus.     

Life According To The Mayfair Swells-Dick Powell’s “Happiness Ahead” (1934)-A Film Review

Life According To The Mayfair Swells-Dick Powell’s “Happiness Ahead” (1934)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

Happiness Ahead, starring crooner cum actor Dick Powell, Josephine Hutchison, 1934

I am not exactly sure why I drew this film review assignment, an area which I haven’t dealt with much over the past several years doing mostly political commentary during that time. I have a sneaking suspicion current site manager Greg Green, who is the guy who after all makes the assignments of late, has an idea that I will make some pithy social and political comments about the time frame and content of this Happiness Ahead I am stuck with reviewing. A title which while it was produced in the heart of the 1930s Great Depression (I noted the National Recovery Act, NRA, logo a sure fire way to tell the times) could have been the campaign theme of any President or presidential candidate from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Donald J. Trump.

In any case I am sure Greg was not under the impression that he was trying to “broaden my horizons” with this assignment like he had increasingly tried to use as a reason among the younger writers. He knows, and if he does not I am here to tell him, that I was looking to mine political gold from such socially conscious 1930s films which were a specialty of Warner Brother films when he was reviewing B-film horror movies as a stringer for the American Film Gazette. Now if he assigned this beast under the sign of a 1930s “slice of life” nugget to be gleaned then all is forgiven and he will have hit the nail on the head as to why today’s readers would give a damn about this soapy romance posing as a tribute to the possibilities of the American Dream even when the soup kitchens were lengthening, banks were going bust, houses where being foreclosed, shanty camps were establishing new postal zones, and most germane, New York City financiers were jumping out of freshly “massaged” skyscraper windows.         

Wow the reader might ask all out of a film which is about the budding romance of a daughter of the Mayfair swells out slumming and an up and coming white collar go-getter and side door Johnny crooner in the pocket of Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jack Sampson and the like. Well, yes, since as I mentioned Warner Brothers was in love with these social uplift sagas as long as they had enough boy meets girl, or is it girl meets boy here, to avoid some right-wing agents’ accusations of Communist International allegiance. Ms. Smith, in really Joan Bradford, played by 1930s film sweetheart Josephine Hutchison, of the very, very Mayfair swells Bradfords who first reached these shores on the old tug The Mayflower and who had ridden out the first rush of the Great Depression pretty well since Father Bradford not only did not jump out of some Windex skyscraper window but is around to advise his young daughter on the dangers of upsetting high society mother and her “plans” for an upscale marriage and doing what she damn well pleased attempts a jail break-out from the stifling confines of New York high society and a horrible marriage to some male scion of another such family. Fair enough.    

One New Year’s night Joan goes slumming amongst the ordinary folk and winds alone in a Chinese jazz joint where she “meets” Bob, get this Bob Lane, all-American Bob Lane, played by crooner Dick Powell last seen in this space as Phillip Marlowe getting knocked around, drugged and kicked in the teeth by some evil high society forces who don’t want him to find his Velma for the Moose in the film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely dubbed Murder, My Sweet on the screen. One thing leads to another and they get dated up although dear Joan has to go through about six ruses to “prove” she is just ordinary folk. Joan is so starved for reasonable social interaction she plays along for a while even going with Bob to totally plebian roller skating and such holy goof stuff to be at one with the masses.  

Naturally, and that is exactly the right word, this pair are smitten. Big problem though is that while Bob is a go-getter right at that moment he is nothing but a cheapjack office manager for a company who washes the windows of half the skyscrapers in New York City. He has dreams though of running his own window washing company and there is the rub. No dough, or not enough dough and Mother Bradford of the very, very Bradfords is not going to have a window-washer for a son-in-law. That is when Joan to help things along made what looked like a fatal mistake by getting her Daddy Warbucks father to front the necessary dough and thereby incurring the manly wrath on one Robert Lane who finally gets wise to who his sweetie really is. I hope you were paying attention because I already told you this was a boy meets girl story and therefore requires the adequate happy ending, here happiness ahead ending of the title. Bob a little miffed but still head over heels for Joan (which you can tell is true since every once in a while a song telegraphs his desires) and after working out man to man a deal with her father the deal is done. Hope this has broadened your horizons.  

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-The Premature Nazi-Hunter-Dick Powell’s “Cornered” -A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Dick Powell’s film noir Cornered.

DVD Review

Cornered, starring Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Luther Adler, RKO Radio Pictures, 1945

Say a guy, maybe a guy who was a “premature” anti-fascist and fought in Spain in the 1930s, maybe not, but who did his bit, did his soldier bit, against the Nazi hordes trying to run over Europe, took a couple of hits for his efforts, one his own when his plane fell down over France, the other when his wartime bride, a French Resistance fighter, was executed by some bloody Nazi collaborator, a Vichy snitch felt he had to do something, something to get even after the war would that be alright? Everybody would say sure, hey, a guy is supposed to do something when his wife is murdered right. And so he does, not out of some big political motive to rid the world of Nazi scum, not to get even for the million crummy things that happened in Europe (and elsewhere) during those dark night World War II times but to even up the score on his wife. Even if they had only been married twenty days, she had crooked teeth and was too thin. The Nazis and their collaborators weren’t worried about short married lives, worried about fixing a resistance fighter’s crooked teeth or her weight problems, no way, just are you with us or them. And with them meant you were on short rations and short lives. But still a score needed to be settled and our soldier boy (Dick Powell) was just the boy to square things up in his own way.

But the trail was cold, the snitch dead, or supposed to be, and the prospects of getting from England to immediate post-war France to pick up the trail before it got colder through official channels was unlikely. So our intrepid soldier improvised, worked his way around channels (literally and figuratively) just because, well, because he has a hunch, a hunch is all, that things didn’t stack up. And they didn’t. They didn’t stack up in France where the snitch covered his tracks with a too pat staged death paper trail, they didn’t stack up in Switzerland where the snitch’s widow was allegedly “grieving” (and getting hubby’s insurance dough), and they didn’t stack up in Buenos Aires where she had flown the coop and where ex-Nazis, their collaborators, their wives, lovers, acolytes and their just defeated idea were entirely welcome.

Our boy will get many frequent flyer miles before he is through but he winds up in sunny, decayed, decadent Argentina as he circles in for the kill. And he does after plenty of misdirection (provided in part by Walter Slezak), plenty of tough talk, and plenty of dead ends. He finds his man (played by Luther Adler), and gets religion too, religion that these guys, these Nazi guys and their dreams didn’t stop in Europe in 1945. He signs up for the big tour, the big fight on a different front all over again. Welcome aboard, brother. Oh yah, beware, be very beware of guys out to avenge the death of dames with crooked teeth and who are too skinny but willing to fight the monsters of the planet such men, such average men, are dangerous .