Dancing Cheek To Cheek, Oops-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Roberta” (1935)-A Film Review

Dancing Cheek To Cheek, Oops-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Roberta” (1935)-A Film Review 

[Sam Lowell, the now retired free-lance journalist who worked with a number of reviewers here has already given his take on being a kid with two left feet in a companion piece to this review. (Actually, in his usual over the top way he only used this review as a foil to express his boyhood frustrations at not being able to dance. I know my man well having worked with him to old days when we were both stringers at American Film Gazette before he moved on and I worked my way up the food chain there before coming over to this publication to finish out my career and once again reunite with the old curmudgeon.) Naturally an over-the-top guy has to try and out shine whoever is doing the companion piece. Unfortunately I don’t have a story at hand to compete with Sam’s high school flame experience meshing with a girl with two left feet whom he did not trip over while dancing the famous, maybe infamous, last chance last dance of the school or church event.

Sam didn’t get a chance to trip over those feet because she tripped over his (to his apparent delight the way he related the story) and full of apologies tried to placate him by accepting his offer to head to the shore and watch the “submarine races.” That is what the teens called it in his locale we just called it fogging up the window shield if in a car and “necking” if not but it was the same heated hormones adventure in either locale. For one of the few times in his life, certainly he never told the truth about any fellow film reviewer during his career in this dog eat dog business, Sam confessed to the girl in question that he did know how to dance either thereafter suggesting that they form a Two-Left Feet Club. He went to heaven when she replied -with only two members. How are you going to compete with a story like that. No way. Truth: I never got a chance to display my own two left feet for except in the acknowledged privacy of my lonely midnight hour room I never went to dances in high school. So I will just have to present this review and take a backseat on this stuff. S.S]

 

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Roberta, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Irene Dunne, music by Jerome Kern, 1935

I can’t dance, can’t dance a lick. Like a lot of guys, maybe gals too but I will just concentrate on guys here, I have two left feet. Nevertheless I have always been intrigued by people who can dance and do it well. Have been fascinated by the likes of James Brown and Michael Jackson growing up. As a kid though I, unlike most of the guys around my way, was weaned on the musicals, the song and dance routines where the couples kicked out the jams. Top of the list in those efforts were the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers whose dancing mesmerized a two left feet kid just at a time when I was coming of age, coming of school dance and checking out girls age and once in a while in the privacy of my lonely room I would try to work out a couple of steps sent on the big screen. No success. Although I had never viewed the Rogers-Astaire film under review back then I got a distinct rush of déjà vu watching this film, Roberta.          

Déjà vu is right since although I had not viewed the film on one of those dark Saturday afternoon matinee double-features when they were running a retrospective at the local theater I already knew what was going to happen. I had seen say Top Hat then and if the truth be known the formula did not vary that much in the whole series of song and dance films Astaire and Rogers did together. It was not about story line although it probably helped the director to have a working script so he could figure out where to have somebody burst out in song, or trip over a table and begin an extended dance routine. That said the “cover” story here is Fred leading a band of upstart Americans into gay Paree (gay in the old-fashioned sense of being happy, thrilled) expecting to have a gig which went south on them. Fred meets Ginger working as Polish countess who is into high fashion which I expect everyone knows old Paris is famous for. That’s allows those bursts into song and dance to go forth without too much interference from the story-line. In short do as I did as a kid and now too just watch Ginger and Fred go through their paces. That’s worth the price of admission.  That and tunes like Smoke Gets In Your Eyes via the magical and under-rated composer Jerome Kern         

Grease Monkey’s Sonata-Mickey Rooney’s “Quicksand” (1950)-A Film Review

Grease Monkey’s Sonata-Mickey Rooney’s “Quicksand” (1950)-A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[This is a DVD that I found of all places in a “for sale” bin of discontinued material at the Cambridge Public Library several weeks ago. This while my transition to emeritus and the ending of the grind of film reviewing under deadlines and Sandy Salmon my replacement on the day to day work was in progress. I had offered the film for Sandy to review knowing (and hoping) from long friendship and competition (mostly friendly as among most film reviewers outside of New York City) that he didn’t give what we called in the old neighborhood where I grew up a “rat’s ass” about reviewing a 1950s film noir. So here I am again in the saddle for a minute.) 

Quicksand, starring Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Peter Lorre, Barbara Bates, directed by Irving Pichel yet another Hollywood figure blacklisted in the red scare Cold War night when the powers- to-be in Tinsel-town and their cowardly hangers-on took a dive on funny little things like constitutional rights-and peoples’ livelihoods, 1950  

Forgot the film noir aspect of the film under review, Mickey Rooney’s Quicksand, although only now is this minor classic noir and probably Mickey’s best performance against type (he spent his early career as the “ah, shucks” cinematic version of Andy Hardy of that classic series of young adult books) being recognized as such. This plotline is strictly from Sister Cecelia’s, maybe Sister Mary Rose’s, or maybe Sister Delores’, hell, maybe all of them, lessons from Sunday school at old Saint Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in mu old home town. The lesson: once you go down the slippery slope of sin (and probably crime as here was the same thing in their imaginations) then there is a serious rollover effect, serious consequences. Yeah, and obviously Mickey’s character Danny, the lowly grease monkey, you know, auto mechanic either didn’t pay attention or was absent those Sundays when whoever was running the Sunday school operation where he worshipped was holding forth about that very prospect. No question, he uncorked every possible evil as he went down the road to perdition.        

Funny from a first look at Danny he didn’t look like a guy who would wind up doing from one to ten in some California penal colony once the dust settled. But then you didn’t know then what steered him down the garden path. Of course then we didn’t know that he would run smack daub into a low rent femme fatale, Vera, played by Jeanne Cagney, who was serving them off the arm at a hash house where the local grease monkeys filled their lunch buckets and he made the fatal mistake of dating her up (a mistake as well since she was too tall for him, maybe too blond as well). Once you know all he was doing was trying to move might and main to get her down among the downy billows then all his fevered actions made a kind of off-hand sense as every guy, including this reviewer, has had first-hand experience with if he goes for the femmes. (Frankly this Vera didn’t have the look of steam-infested career waitress, looked more like a bar girl or a roper on a scam but you never know what has a gal serving them off the arm).

Okay here is what the slippery slope looked like if you follow along (and suspense disbelief as well). It seemed after making that hot date for that very night Danny was cash-shy, needed some dough to carry some weight with Vera. Everybody was tapped out so, and remember, this is where he falls down, gets ready to take the big step-off if he doesn’t catch a break, he grabbed a measly twenty buck from the skinflint larcenous auto boss’s till. Just an overnight loan. No problem because some guy who owned him more than twenty would cover him the next day and that hot date would be worth it he could tell. Problem: the boss’s accountant showed up early the next day for some other reason so he would need to cover the twenty bucks fast. He can’t get the dough to cover so naturally he gets the fever-driven bright idea that if he goes and buys an expensive watch on credit for a hundred bucks (remember this is before cash-back credit cards could have saved his butt even they were charging usurious rates) and then hocked it for thirty bucks.

That idea worked well enough for Danny in the short term, got him a reprieve from the boss’s accountant although just barely and with a very jaundiced eye but then the next hurdle showed up at the garage-the dreaded “repo” man. Seems that in California in those days you didn’t actually own, couldn’t own, an item on credit until it was fully paid for, now too if I am not mistaken. The repo man gave him twenty four hours to ante up the C-note or he was going to stir for grand larceny. What to do, desperately what to do since a hundred bucks was way out of his league on such short notice. Simple, our Danny boy bops a drunk carrying plenty of dough on the head in darkened parking lot (let’s call that one assault and battery in the night time and armed robbery, okay and you get an idea that Danny’s wheels have gotten well off the track). He is in the clear now, his miseries are over as he handed the repo man his piece. Of course Danny is just a misbegotten grease monkey and not some kind of career criminal so when he flashes fifty dollar bills Vera’s way she knows he is the guy who bopped the well-known drunk. Worse, the guy she used to work for at the local penny arcade who seemingly still has a thing for her, Nick, a seedy guy no question, played by the lovely Peter Lorre, knows he grabbed the dough. Has the handkerchief he used as a mask doing the robbery. Nick’s price for keeping quiet-a new car from the auto shop. Or else.                

  

There’s more, believe there is more in this Dante-like descend into hell. Danny grabs the car alright and thinks he is back on easy street and can now enjoy his new honey in quiet, maybe get under the sheets with her finally. Nope, that larcenous auto shop boss has his own scam. He accused Danny of stealing the car (he also accused others in the shop of the same crime in order to blackmail them). His price for keeping quiet three thou for a two thousand blue book car. Jesus. That is where the quick-thinking hustling Vera comes in to save his bacon, maybe. Seems that Nick besides running that seaside arcade does some business in cashing checks for guys-a low rent operation that is still with us unfortunately. She knows where Nick keeps the dough and it is not in a bank. So Danny goes and grabs the dough, hey who would have thought, thirty-six hundred. Now he is only easy street and can get back to the serious business of running around with that femme Vera.

Forget it. Vera, who was a drifter from hunger just like Danny, had her big eyes on a mink coat and while Danny was off doing something she bought the coat for the cash she was holding for him. Eighteen hundred bucks, her half of the heist according to her thinking, and not a bad price when you think about in the days when women craved mink and it wasn’t politically incorrect, very politically correct to wear fur. Danny went crazy and finally saw she was little more than a bent whore. But that left Danny short with his boss. He went to the boss with his eighteen hundred-take it or leave it. The boss took it naturally since he was a larcenous character. Except that was a stall-he was holding out for three thou and was calling the coppers when Danny freaked out and strangled him. Murder, one, the big step off at the Q no doubt. Grabbed his gun too on the way out knowing he was nothing but a desperado now, an outlaw. All for a twenty buck deal to go around with a floozy.            

Things looked grim, very grim as he was going on the lam to Mexico, or someplace very far away from California. This is where we get a little sneak redemption. See Danny had thrown over a nice girl, Helen, played by Barbara Bates, who would have been right up his alley if he was Andy Hardy but he had been in throes to that damn femme. The thing was this Helen was still carrying the torch for him, carrying that flame despite knowing that he was in a heck of a lot of trouble. Yeah, true love which he finally realizes he could have held onto for dear life. She would share his fate whatever happened. So people are like that, thankfully, thankfully for Danny. He tries to talk her out of going with hi but no use. As they try to blow town his damn automobile blows a gasket. So he is back in the bright idea business. He, they will, at gunpoint stop a car on the highway and force the driver to take them away to Mexico. So add on hijacking, kidnapping and who knows what else to the total. And who knows what Helen will get for being his sidekick on this part of the descent.

Then Danny, Helen draw a convenient little break. The guy they kidnapped was a non-plussed lawyer who asked for the whole story. Asked as well whether that auto shop boss was really dead which would have been a tough dollar to get around for what started out as a twenty dollar petty larceny case. As it turned out that auto shop boss was not dead but had just been unconscious. Free, free at last. Well not quite. There was too much of a mess to get him off scot free  so he would be doing that one to ten. Guess who will be waiting for him coming out stir? But wouldn’t Danny have been better off having listened to Sister Cecelia, Sister Mary Rose, Sister Delores, hell, maybe all three of them, about the slippery slope of sin. If you are a noir fan and can find this one take a look.           

A Slice Of Teenage Life-Circa 1960s-With Myrna Loy And Cary Grant’s “The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer” In Mind

A Slice Of Teenage Life-Circa 1960s-With Myrna Loy And Cary Grant’s “The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer” In Mind    

By Guest Film Critic Prescott Blaine

[Prescott Blaine, now comfortably retired, comfortably for those editors, publishers and fellow writers particularly those who have tangled with him on the film criticism beats for the past forty years or so decided he just had to comment about his own growing up in the 1950s teenage life. I had done a short film review on a 1940s film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. Cary Grant the bachelor to Shirley Temple’s bobby-soxer with Myrna Loy more well-known as the helpful detective in her own right wife Nora Charles opposite William Powell’s Nick in the seemingly never-ending The Thin Man series of the same decade. I had in passing mentioned my reasoning for even touching this piece of fluff. The key was in the title, or part of it, the “bobby-soxer” part which represented to my mind one of the key terms from teenage times in the 1940s where bobby-soxers were associated with the fast jitter-bugging set since those socks made it easier to traverse those slippery high school gym floor where sock hops have been held since, well, since they started having school dances to keep unruly and wayward kids in check. I figured I would get a low-down on what was what.

I had followed a false lead though since despite the enticing possibility that I would learn something about teenage life in the immediate post-World War II period the real thrust of the film was the inevitable romancing between Grant and Loy’s characters. I should have sensed that if goody-goody Shirley Temple was holding forth I would learn less about that decade’s teen concerns than if I had asked a surviving elderly uncle of mine.

Oh sure I did learn that girls went crazy for guys with “boss” cars, worried, worried somewhat about their reputations meaning worrying about being known as high school sluts and that they were as perfidious when the deal went down as the teenage girls in Prescott’s and my generation and probably now too. When I mentioned that to him one day in his office at the American Film Review where he still shows up occasionally to do pinch-hit work when the editor Ben Goldman needs a quick “think” piece to fill up an issue he laughed at me. Laughed at me foremost because of my, his term, sophomoric idea that you could learn anything about teen life in any age when you had certified stars like Grant and Loy tangling just short of the satin sheets and because it would not be until the 1980s when Hollywood produced some films based on S.E. Hinton’s novels that you would get anything like an informative look at a slice of real teen life.        

Follow me here to get an idea of what Mr. Blaine is like when he gets on his hobby-horse. From that “profound” (my quotation marks) comment he asked, I won’t say begged because Prescott is not like that most of the time, or at least he wasn’t in the old days, to let me use my space here to go back into his teenage days in the 1950s, the mid-1950s when rock and roll came running up the road (although we are near contemporaries my coming of age teenage time was about five years later and reflected a drought period in rock and roll which I filled in by “discovering” the blues). Needless to say since this piece has Prescott’s by-line he sold me on the idea-for one shot anyway. Below is what he wants to share about 1950s teenage culture-Sam Lowell]    

WTF Sam (a term I would not have used in my professional career in print and certainly not to start an article but as Sam has mentioned I am comfortably ensconced in retirement and besides I am playing on his dime) even a wet behinds the ears kid in the 1950s who didn’t figure out what was what until sometime in the mid-1960s knows that when the fresh breeze of rock and roll hit the planet the whole thing opened up the big three that was on every alive and awake teenager, teenage boy (the girls can speak for themselves but they will tell the same basic story) mind-drive-in theaters, drive-in restaurants and grabbing every loose girl not tied down. (Not literally but then we had a strange male-driven code honored I think more in the breech than the observance that if a girl had a guy that meant she was off-limits to other guys. Like I said honored in the breech much mother that the observance.)

WTF sex is what I am talking about because all three things were connected by a million threads, a million threats that made up  1950s teenage life (maybe now too but since drive-in movies and restaurants and maybe access to girls too depended on the golden age of the automobile car, borrowed or sweated for, which today’s youth are not nearly as enamored of, hell, some of them don’t even have driver’s licenses that premise may be questioned). Tie all that in with rock and roll and the rest of what I have to say makes total sense even to a guy like Sam.

A lot of what was what then had to do with corner boy life something that has for the most part gone by the boards between the rise of the malls (and “mall rats” a totally different thing than on the edge, quasi-illegal corner boy life reflecting certain hungers that never could be satisfied in a strictly legal way which the denizens of the mall do not exhibit since they are fixed up pretty well) and the totally bizarre actions of local police departments to hustle kids off the street corners on behalf of  local businessmen and satraps. Let’s face it the whole mix had to be cemented with dough, dough anyway we could get it, or we would still be standing on those forlorn corners (or doing time in some state or county institution).

Not to belabor the point but it bears notice it is amazing how much our waking hours, maybe dreaming hours too centered on girls (and those dreaming hours included the then forbidden talk about masturbation, about what Father Lally up at Sacred Heart Catholic Church called “touching” yourself but we all knew what he meant even if we were not quite sure what masturbation was and would have never dared asked parents about such an evil thing (according to Lally who would later be transferred out because he “touched” boys and girls and was an early figure of interest in the breakthrough Catholic priest abuse scandal that rocked  the archdiocese of Boston, via the spotlight from The Boston Globe). Nor would they have voluntarily or involuntarily been forthcoming about sex issues and so we learned most of it on the streets-mainly wrong or stupid.                 

There were some funny parts, maybe not funny at the time but funny now and stuff I want to tell about for the record since not only are we fading from the scene but the two- generation social media-driven gap between my growing up time and today is far greater than between box-soxers of the 1940s and the cashmere sweaters of the 1950s. A staple of existence then for poor boys especially was the weekly school and/or church dance since we could not afford other pay dances held in various locations for the progeny of the town swells. The dances although touted by the school and church authorities as keeping us youth from going over the edge on the rock and roll craze which they saw as just an episode, a fade really were our lifeline into social existence. (That Father Lally mentioned early used the dances for laying a trap for his prey as it turned out and more than one teacher chaperone at school dances got a little over the top when the girls came along looking all sexy and serene.)   They at least got us to bathe, shave if necessary, use deodorant, slick our hair and wear something other than cuff-less chinos or blue jeans since sports jackets and dress shirts were required.

But that was all social graces stuff. What we craved, what we spent the week day-dreaming and talking about was who we would dance with (or who would dance with us). Above all else who would we dance the last slow dance of the night with after our night’s efforts. Most of the music of the times, mercifully in many cases, was geared to fast dancing which meant each partner was more or less free to do their own gyrations and keep a safe distance from toes and other vulnerable body parts of that partner but the last dance was always a slow one, one that those “going steady” immediately got up and danced to, and others who had some prior arrangement as well.