Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground-I Hear The Noise Of Wings-A Drifter’s Tale-Alice Faye And Dana Andrews’ “Fallen Angel” (1945(-A Film Review

Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground-I Hear The Noise Of Wings-A Drifter’s Tale-Alice Faye And Dana Andrews’ “Fallen Angel” (1945(-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Fallen Angel, starring Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, directed by Otto Preminger in his prime, 1945

I am not going to fall all over myself spending good cyberspace getting into the thick of the “dispute,” nice tame word for a civil war, that has flared up at this publication. That is the dispute between young Sarah Lemoyne, who in the interest of transparency which seems to be a by-word these troubles days when nothing seems to be what it is on its face, or at least people want to suspect some deeper motive I have given some advice about how to handle my old corner boy from back in North Adamsville high school days her sparring partner Sam Lowell. Grandfatherly advice is the way Sarah put and that seems about right except to the gossips who think “something is going on” between us which is ridiculous although I would have to admit that if I was younger I wouldn’t be late taking a run at her assuming that I was between one of my three marriages not made in heaven. Sam, if he were honest which is not likely these days, would have too although if Laura Perkins sees this I am only kidding. All of this to say I am glad, lemmings to the sea glad, to be doing a film noir review after some time away beating down both Sherlock Holmes’ door and young fellow reviewer Will Bradley’s as well. What has happened is that Sam is so wrapped up in his dispute with Sarah that he let this one get away and Greg Green, our esteemed site manager, tagged me for the assignment. But enough, to the chase.  

My mother, rest her soul, maybe, when I was a kid, when her brood of five boys and two girls were growing up warned me, us against drifters, grafters and grifters, especially the latter since they will take all your money and laugh on the way out of town. Naturally I ignored that warning when I came of age and was totally enchanted by these guys, mostly guys then anyway although more than one woman acquaintance did me worse than any grifter ever did, and had done my fair share of drifting especially after Vietnam did me in about what was what in this wicked old world. So from minute one of this film Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel when Eric, lets call him Eric, Eric Stanton since that was the name he used when he grabbed a marriage certificate in his big end around on-screen scam, played by 1940s heartthrob Dana Andrews, got hauled off a Greyhound San Francisco bus by the world-weary driver after pulling the oldest trick in the book-the sleeping passenger who overshot his ticketed destination- I was all in. Not only pulled off that freaking bus in the dead of night by that bastard driver but wound up in some Podunk town, the name does not matter since such towns were, are, legion the exception being that this Podunk is along the Pacific Coast Highway with nice views of the Pacific heading to the Japan Seas.   

Eric, with a solo buck in his pocket heads to the all-night diner one can find in even the crankiest of towns. The joint, Pops Eats, it figured right will become headquarters for a time for Eric as he tries to turn that dollar bill into some working capital. Yeah, Eric is down and out right this moment but he is a big idea man, some working, some no but in the drifter, grifter racket you play the percentages and watch out for the dirty coppers who want to spoil your play. Here is Eric’s problem, a problem which will dodge him the rest of the film so you know it had to be a woman. A freaking waitress named Stella, played by saucy Linda Darnell, who has half the guys on the West Coast crawling up walls and spending sleepless nights trying to get into her bed (implied remember this is Code Hollywood). This Stella to my mind is nothing but a tramp, maybe not the worst round heels that has hit the streets but working her way up the food chain. Any man’s woman is what we called it back in the day, hell, whore and heart-breaking ball-buster if you really want to know.

Frankly a self-starter like Eric doesn’t figure to get into the claws of a she-devil like Stella (or maybe she was just a girl looking out for herself in a hard-ass world not selling her good looks and trophy wife aspect too cheaply). Maybe I missed something in her allure to the male sex but even senior citizen Pops tried to take a run at her, a run at his employee serving them off the arm at his joint (although her attendance record left something to be desired when she was out with some guy, who knows who, much to Pops’ chagrin). In any case Stella did get her claws into Eric and had him running through hoops to marry her. Problem-no dough. That is when after getting a little working capital doing a promo job for a fakir, a fly-by-night fortune teller, he gets the bright idea of going off and romancing the younger sister, June, played by fetching Alice Faye, who seems to be more his speed but who knows what churns a guy up, of one of the town’s leading families. The play is to marry her, grab her share of the family dough and then divorce her. I liked the play even if it seemed to have too many moving parts.     

 

I need not have worried because dear sweet Stella turned up dead, very dead, one late night after Eric had married June (and had taken off on his wedding night to see, well, to see Stella bad play, very bad). Guess who the number one fall is? Yeah, Eric has to think quickly because otherwise he will take the big step-off at the Q some forlorn midnight and then he really would hear the angelic noise of wings, hear them loud and clear. He and June take off for Frisco town to grab the dough since no matter what he has done she loves the guy, wants him to be whatever he wants to be, no questions asked. While in Frisco June gets picked up by the coppers and sent back to Podunk to put the squeeze play on Eric. This is where this seemingly naïve small-town girl with stars in her eyes shows her grit though. She doesn’t knuckle under, doesn’t rat him out to the local coppers. Meanwhile Eric has finally put two and two together since he didn’t do it. George a guy from Stella’s old home town of San Diego who had dated her on the night she was murdered. No. Pops. Come on. No, it was an old New York City ex-cop named Judd who had been kicked off the force for being too rough on the clientele. He had been sitting in Pops all along seeing what a tramp Stella was, seeing her moving toward Eric and that was that. So, yeah, Judd will be hearing the noise of wings. As for June and Eric, Christ he finally woke up to June’s charms for their own sake. About time. This film and review was certainly better than dodging the Sarah-Sam dispute.             

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Leslie Dumont

Dark Knight Rises, starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, 2012      

[I noted in a recent thumbs down film review of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable’s 1933 Dancing Girl which really turned out to be just a freebie chance to get a lot of stuff off my shoulders since the film itself took about thirty seconds to pan about what had been going on around this publication in the short time I have been here. Here as a result of it turns out a serious decision by new site manager Greg Green to change things around, to get young women, younger everything if not yet more widespread racial and ethnic diversity which the times and American social demographics cry out writing major pieces rather than the old standard stringer role that went on here for years. I have heard, mostly around the water cooler and mostly from Seth Garth who has become something of a mentor to me, that some of the older white writers have not been happy with this new regime, especially one Sam Lowell who I am now locking horns with over what is really the direction of the publication.

Frankly Greg has been all over the place trying new ideas, some working and some even to a novice like me just out of journalism grad school kind of crazy. I will give an example because it directly affects how I wound up doing this review of one of the endless DC Comics Batman sagas that has hit the cinemas. Greg, trying to assert his authority as new site manager, after what appears to have been an all-out bloodless blood-bath to remove former chief Allan Jackson who I really want to talk more about since it turned out he was “resurrected” or according to Seth who was involved in radical politics back in the 1960s with Allan “rehabilitated” to do the successful encore of The Roots Is The Toots series had the “bright” idea to have the older writers broaden their horizons by reviewing various Marvel/DC Comic films. That set of assignments set up a firestorm among the older guys who could not possibility sit through such fare much less understand why hard-working parents are forced to refinance their homes to get tickets, deadly soda and inane popcorn for their loving off-spring under penalty of insurrection-or worse.         

I freely admit I hope that the thing would fizzle giving me a chance to do my thing with fresher eyes and with a less draconian view of such films since they were a staple of one of my journalism classes- The Rise of The Blockbuster. As such thing were bound to do the older writers got squirrelly about things and so Will Bradley, Maura Mason, Lenny Grace and I think a couple of others, younger writers all got the assignments. But that is not the end of the story although I have already detailed my “dispute” with Sam Lowell in that last review mentioned above when he connived to get a prestige assignment away from me and under Seth Garth’s guidance and mentorship screamed to high heavens and got a couple of series of my own including the superhero comics work. Work that I will like Sam did to me on that prestige series rewrite what others have written in the interest of completeness. Since this one got lost in the turnover I will start with the last saga of the Dark Knight trilogy. Sarah Lemoyne]     

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There is a lot the average reader of film reviews, probably reviews of any kind at least professional reviews about what goes on behind the scenes in the selection, assignment and use of the editorial fist. Some of it is generic to any organization but other things are subject to the whims of whoever is in charge. The play of say the New York Review of Books which goes for high-brow twisting reviews is very different from the cloisters of the American Film Gazette which in its long history has reviewed virtually every Hollywood and foreign film ever made in its nearly seventy-five year existence. That who is in charge, who is in charge here is my first point and for a reason having nothing to do with this yet another super-hero comic book come to cinema Dark Knight Rises which frankly I thought had been abandoned once the site manager, the guy who shapes and gives out the assignments here, heard loud and clear from us peon writers that the mass audience for this stuff does not, I emphasize, does not read film reviews in exotic flower publications filled with plenty of other stuff they could care less about.

Greg Green, the guy who shapes the contours of what gets into the public prints here after a grueling internal battle in 2017 before I signed on thought, I believe in order to quell the disquiet after that battle, to solidify his new position and create his own brand, or maybe all of the above that reviewers should feel free, without recrimination, to what old leftie the wizened and somewhat senile Sam Lowell has called “fire on the party headquarters” meaning a reviewer can, if she or he so chooses, go beyond the scope of the review and let readers get an insight glimpse of what goes on in section of the publishing world. I have taken that liberty here and without recrimination since it has seen the light of day. More ominous thought, my second point stab, is why after all of the anguish and gnashing of teeth by serious writers here are we going back to reviewing this kids’ stuff, this comic book madness. That is where the whims and whatever other fluff is going on in an editor’s head comes into play. Greg although he acquiesced ready did believe that action-packed films, above all comic book super-heroes were the wave of the future.

He suffered in silence for a while apparently but once Black Panther came out and he saw the gross ticket receipts he did a big backslide. He called it “in the interest of completeness,” meaning that we collectively had not reviewed every possible film in the genre. So here I am, woe is me, doing hard time going on and on about what mind-numbing stuff I have to review. I had to laugh when in a recent review of one of the million 007 James Bond films, another Greg Green pet project, Seth Garth brought back to memory the old days in the industry when we got paid by the word and he, I, would when we were lowly stringers trying not to starve “pad” our reviews with plenty of stuff which had not much to do with the film and hope to not get edited too badly. Now I have to write this extraneous stuff for a flat fee. And I do so here.     

This Superman, no, Batman long drawn out film is the long- expected sequel to the first one in this series. Stay with me on this since Batman like his buddy Superman has had various reincarnations depending on a generation’s take on what will play, or at least some half-baked Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of what will play, beyond the bang-bang action a minute pace expected of these things. In the first film Batman had taken the sword over the death of some do-gooder D.A. who harbored evil thoughts although he had nothing to do with that good guy turned bad guy’s demise. Except it allowed him, Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, to hibernate in some isolated splendor out on mansion row and not worry about scumbags and creeps returning to fair Gotham (the sky line of which looked amazing like, ah, New York City), to wreak havoc and turn the place into a cesspool of drugs, prostitution, gambling, shady deals and endless corruption-again. A thankless task.  

Maybe someday we will reduce the scumbag and creep population to manageable size but for now every crazy monomaniac with some dough and manpower sees such places as Western Civilization urban areas as fair game, as merely a subject for spoils. Enter one hellish brute Bane and his underground, literally underground, army ready to reduce Gotham to their playground. This guy is relentless, tough and unlike others who have tried to make an end run on the town had a plan, a plan beyond total devastation if he does not get his way. So once word gets up to Mansion Row Batman has the old flame lighted under his ass to save “his” city once again. Save with the sometimes help, sometimes unhelpfulness of Cat Woman, played by fetching Anne Hathaway breaking the mold of her girl next door looks who has her own agenda, has her own rock to get out from under.

Like I said this Bane really was a piece of work, really had his stuff together despite wearing a weird semi-mask to alleviate ancient wounds. As the battled ensues on the first go-round Batman shows some rust after that long hiatus and loses the round, is taken prisoner never to be seen again. At least that is what Bane had thought. Once Bane and crew take some action which includes having access to a nuclear machine which can be turned into a weapon the town’s police force and its general population accept the new regime for a while. At one point the machine was in cold storage but a big- time woman environmentalist has taken charge and so despite her the damn thing was weaponized. A few resistance fighters, including Cat Woman in her better moments, pushed back until Batman escaped coming back to town looking for creeps, scumbags and glory. Push back not only against Bane and his thugs but that woman who controlled the nuclear button turned out to be something like the big guy’s lover, or friend. So chaos looms, looms as long as Batman can’t figure out how to get that freaking bomb out of Gotham City’s harms’ way.           

Bruce/Batman falls on his sword again but really only off-stage in case there is to be another sequel, the desire to make this yet another trilogy which seems to be the way these comic book adventures go. Having said all that I hope, I really hope, everybody can see what a forlorn task it is write this foolishness. I hope Greg is listening-again. Just kidding but I wanted to show that I can do insightful film panning just as well as moribund Sam Lowell, or whoever writes his stuff these days         

Dearest Mommy Can’t Dance-Or Sing-Joan Crawford And Clark Gable’s “Dancing Girl” (1933)-A Film Review

Dearest Mommy Can’t Dance-Or Sing-Joan Crawford And Clark Gable’s “Dancing Girl” (1933)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Dancing Girl, starring Francot Tone, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, 1933

[New Introduction-Sometimes things happen for a reason, for the fates, maybe a portent, at least that is what Seth Garth, my grandfatherly mentor here of late has told me (that “grandfatherly” put in to cut off what is becoming an ugly insinuation that there is some kind of undercurrent romance going on between us which is far from the truth as I have mentioned before but which bears repeating since this workplace has a history of older writers taking their stringers under their wings, despite age, marital status, religion or race for nefarious purposes again according to Seth). This review was supposed to appear several months ago when I first viewed it and turned in my draft review.

Somehow, between Greg Green’s undivided attention on doing the encore edition of a rock and roll series entitled The Roots Is The Toots which the previous site manager (or administrator, I think he was called but don’t quote me on that since that was before I started here), Allan Jackson put together over several years and trying to get a handle of a couple of new series this one fell through the cracks. That is important because now that the dust has settled on that rock and roll series Greg asked me to get it in shape for publication. The happens to have dove-tailed with a “dispute” I am entwined in with occasional reviewer Sam Lowell who old, senile and wizened as he is still thinks he can write reviews, if he ever did in the past which is open to question, serious question.

I have been informed, and I did the research to prove it, that Sam after he got his precious by-line had stringers, mostly Leslie Dumont before she moved on to bigger and better things and Minnie Moore who I don’t know what happened to her and Seth didn’t know either, write his reviews and pass them in and/or he used studio publicity department press releases and just chopped off the top and sent them in from whatever watering hole or backdoor hotel he was hanging out in.

In a recent review of Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba’s Molly’s Game, a good film by the way which Sam essentially panned for no other reason than hubris on this fast-paced and intricate film (and probably had his longtime companion Laura Perkins who watched it with him and liked it write the review and sent it in), he challenged my research. Not the truth of it but a couple of lame excuses about how every stringer here had in those days, all female according to Seth who admitted that his stringers were usually female as well, the hots for him and/or everybody was doing the studio press release stuff on dog day films, his expression but actually about right. I have not had time to get back to Leslie, or to check the stringer employee records or see how many times Sam “mailed it in” with studio press releases (he says a couple but who knows until we get the stats). What is interesting is that the introduction I wrote below several months ago when Sam was beginning his sabotage campaign to get the coveted Hammer Productions series from the 1950s and 1960 reads like it was written by me this week. That says it all and so I will keep it- More later I am sure-Sarah Lemoyne]          

******

[In my very first film review after being hired here by site manager Greg Green I mentioned that this was my first real job in journalism and that I was going to use the introductory space to talk about myself and not go off on some tangent like some of the older writers do rather than deal with the subject at hand. Which I did. I also noted that not being wise to the various “traditions” in the profession like starting out as a stringer I had a lot to learn. Well I am here to bitch just like the older writers this time and to let one and all know that I am a quick learner once the rug has been pulled out from under me by one nasty old has-been Sam Lowell.   

The source of my wrath is centered on Sam, who is supposed to be retired and write an occasional review to let younger and fresher voices come to the fore, who let it be known to Greg Green that he was interested in doing the Hammer Production series originally assigned to me. The series that had six psychological thriller in it from the early 1960s mainly of which I had already done two which have been published here Cash On Demand and The Snorkel. It seems that as a remnant of the “good old boys” network that existed here under previous site manager Allan Jackson that older writers meaning mainly those good old boys got “first dibs” at any decent material. Sam, Judas-goat Sam by the way according to what I heard about the faction fight that led to Jackson’s demise (although he is here still puffing away at some nostalgia rock and roll thing that nobody under about sixty cares one whit about) invoked that privilege and now not only will he complete the series but will give an alternate review to the two that I did have published. That sucks.

Worse if what Leslie Dumont said is true about her time here when she was a stringer before she got that big push of a by-line at Women Today many years ago I will probably be writing the damn reviews while Sam gets on his bong pipe or whatever dope keeps him from toppling over in his dotage or runs away on some tryst with his flame Laura Perkins leaving me here to save his sorry ass. In that first introduction I was, admittedly, naïve enough to take Sam as a kindly old sot but like I said I am a fast learner, very fast. In the meantime I have this dog of a film to review about creeps I never heard of except maybe Clark Gable who my grandmother swooned over whenever his name was mentioned about a million years ago. Sarah Lemoyne]  

****

My good friend Seth Garth, who has given me some good advice, told me that the 1930s and 1940s, my grandmother’s time, was the golden age of musicals, musicals based on Broadway shows or done with the music of well-known Broadway lyric and melody writers like Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers and Barton Lane. Those names provided by Seth since I only knew George Gershwin’s name from Porgy and Bess. He had me watch Babes On Broadway with him which he was reviewing at the time and which has since been published as an example of real talent lighting up the Great White Way with Mickey Rooney and especially Judy Garland in the top roles. I could take my cue from that film and the two others which made up the trilogy and throw in a couple of other Rooney-Garland collaborations and would have the gold standard for the genre. (Bart Webber said throw in the motherlode of Fred-Astaire and Ginger Rogers song and dance flicks and you would not be steered wrong.)

Then there is this dog of film Dancing Lady which must have been produced by lead actress Joan Crawford’s lover or she had something on him that his wife should not know about because however earnest Joan might have been she could neither sing nor dance. Especially not dance with all her flailing arms and out of synch motions which left me wondering what the heck was going on. Of course the plotline (and star power Clark) would have indicated that maybe this would be a better film than it turned out to be.  

  

I have already moaned and groaned about the poor song and dance (hell even Fred Astaire brought in probably from desperation couldn’t make dear Mommy pop) so all we have left is the story behind the story. Joan, from nowhere, meaning probably Hoboken, dreamed the big dream of being a dancing fool on the Great White Way, on Broadway but like a million other well-intentioned young women didn’t make a dent although that did not stop her, or them, from needing food and shelter. Hence, she started out down in the dumps, down in dime a dance, roller rink, burlesque where she was “discovered by a young, wealthy Mayfair swell, played by Francot Tone who didn’t want her to perform but to marry him.

They go on and on about the matter but to his frustration and her sometimes annoyance she is committed to her art. One way or another she used him to make a few contacts on the street, on the Great White Way, and thus enter Patch, played by Clark Gable, who is the primo musical director on Broadway. Needless to say they don’t get along for a while until he sees her as his savior with her dancing and singing skills. Let me tell you though old Patch is no judge of either such skills and the real deal is that at the end after finally dumping Mayfair swell boyfriend and making a smash hit on Broadway they become lovers-fade out.           

I wish I could swear in a review like Seth Garth or even Sam Lowell do when they have a stinker or something that they cannot understand or make heads nor tails out of but I am a lowly stringer working my way up the food chain as Bart Webber said he used to say when he was moving up. But probably the only way I can swear is when Sam Lowell, pretty please, asks me to do one of his Hammer Production film reviews for him. You know I will then.