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.

Thoughts Upon The Demise Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

Thoughts Upon The Demise Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell, former film editor of American Left History and of the American Film Gazette now emeritus at the latter and a contributing reviewer at the former if anybody needs my credential, my professional CV if you like

Molly’s Game, starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner but he is only window dressing on this one because the former two carry this film, 2017

I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore. Yes, I know that these are famous words that Peter Finch uttered to a sullen world back in the 1970s as a newscaster in the definitive film Network. They fit the occasion however since whatever ailed Brother Finch in those times has got me is a serious snit. As I made sure that I mentioned after my by-line space, a by-line that I have labored in the vineyards of the film industry, book industry too, hell, the art industry when I needed fast money to pay back alimony or the parcel of kids, nice kids, that my three ex-wives and I raised needed college money and until recently, very recently that designation had not been challenged, had not been sullied by young upstarts trying to make a name for themselves now that I am no longer reviewing on a daily basis-praise be.   

      

If the kids want war, hell, I am more than willing to oblige since we seem to have gone down the slippery slope away from social cohesion and not just of account of the Bozo who is running the asylum in Washington at the moment. Over the past few weeks two young, up and coming journalists, reviewers I guess they would call themselves and from what I have read of their reviews they may in fact have promising futures-if they ever get their facts right and maybe stop hanging on my old friend Seth Garth’s every word like it had come down from the mountain-have flat out attempted to besmirch, yes, besmirch is the only word that comes readily to mind my reputation. Everyone knows, or should know, should be assumed to know, that this review business, film, books, music, culture is a tough racket, is as one of the youngsters wrote a “dog eat dog” environment and I will admit, admit freely that when I was young and hungry I was as apt to try to cut up my competitors, hell, my fellow writers wherever I landed as anybody else-as long as I got my facts right. Just ask Seth Garth who still carries the scars from our battles as I do his.         

What these two writers, hell, what Sarah Lemoyne and subsequently young Will Bradley have been running around erroneously trying to sell a distracted public is that back in the day, back after I got my coveted by-line I started “mailing it in,” started having stringers, mostly young fresh females from one of the Seven Sisters colleges that Allan loved to hire to give the place some swag and some eye candy when there were mostly older guys writing their brains out here write my reviews for me. Still worse have accused me of, when desperate, taking whatever press releases the studio public relations departments were putting out, clipping off the tops and sending the rest off as my review so that I could keep drinking and cavorting with women which I freely admit I liked, still like to do-with one woman anyway. Will picked up on these Sarah comments and extended it to his view that while I indeed was the master of the film noir genre in my time after my major definitive book on the subject came out, a book which one and all, even these pups continue to recognize as the “go to” book on film noir I didn’t have a blessed original idea. Had gone the college professor route (and me without even a college degree to my name) and lived off that one big idea through a fistful of conferences, lectures and speaking engagements.

That last comment was what pretty much broke the camel’s back, no, that and the snide insinuation by Will that the only reason that I still was being published on a regular basis and syndicated a few places was that I had been the key vote that ejected my old friend Allan Jackson from the site manager position at this publication and that new manager Greg Green “owed” his job to my decisive intervention. Needless to say with all of that in the basket I immediately went to Greg and asked for the next available review so that I could respond to these wild and wooly children. In the interest of fairness Greg agreed (and not as I am sure will become the “real” reason among certain youngsters that I had “bought” him) and so I got this freaking suck-ass review of Molly’s Game about some smarty-pants ex-jock, played by comely Jessica Chastain, who landed on her feet for a while running on the cuff poker games for rich and famous Alpha males until she got caught in the “feds” bind,” got caught holding the bag. Everybody knows my thing is film noir and other older stuff but I had to take this stinker, well, not stinker because the acting is good and the story line is kind of interesting but who could really care about the trials and tribulations of some over-the-hill jock who couldn’t make the cut, ice-skating, no, I think it was free-form skiing something like that.

I will get to the damn thing in my own good time and still I have probably already given you enough of the “skinny,” the theme if you don’t know what skinny is for you to judge right now whether you want to spend a couple of hours watching the drama unfold. My long-time companion Laura Perkins who writes here occasionally loved it, maybe because of the strong acting by Jessica somebody who played Molly Bloom (yeah, everybody who is anybody except maybe Will and Sarah will gladly steal whatever they can from James Joyce even names named) but I got drowsy about half way through. Like I said this is about setting the record straight about my now besmirched career as about reviewing this baffling film. In any case since Greg has again in the interest of fairness told me that I will have another review to tackle Will Bradley’s allegations I am on the scent of one Sarah Lemoyne today who claimed in her cherished review of the original Star Wars episode from 1977 that she had researched her allegations about my so-called “mailing it in” practices. (Jesus was Greg serious giving that old tattered episode and series to her-hell I rejected doing it out of hand back then when I worked for the legendary Cal Clark over at the Gazette as so much wasted soda and popcorn on Pa’s credit card.)        

       

I accuse, yeah, like Emil Zola in anti-Semite Dreyfus times who one can also fruitfully steal from in a pinch. From what I can gather, and she should be shame-faced but probably won’t be if it is true, Sarah’s source for her accusations was, is one Leslie Dumont who after years at Women Today where she had a big and deserved by-line came back here to do occasional writing in her retirement. Hell, I was the one, along with her then boyfriend Josh Breslin (who in the now obligatory interest of transparency also writes here now), who got her to apply for that Women Today job when Allan Jackson was only taking care of good old boys and she was wasting her time as a stringer. A stringer for me on occasion.

Here is what Sarah didn’t bother to ask about, didn’t even probably have a clue to ask about since they don’t teach this kind of thing in those vaunted Seven Sisters and journalism graduate schools she attended is that despite her boyfriend Josh Leslie was “making a play for me.” Truth, ask her, ask Josh. I admit I asked Leslie to write a few pieces, maybe half a dozen, not a million like Sarah implied before I realized that she was interested in me romantically. I will further admit that in those days I was in an alcoholic/drug daze half the time along with half the guys on the staff, not Josh though, not that I remember. But then I was going through the last phases of my first divorce, was playing around and had no desire to upset any more apple-carts. Sarah, anybody looking for truth check it out. I prided myself on my reviews, saw my by-line not as a privilege but an obligation to do the best I could even under those hazes.

As for the allegations that I would take studio public relations department press releases and sent them to Allan as Sam’s pure gold. Sure I did that for some, some turkeys like The Return Of Godzilla, Sandy Dee Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Benny’s Beach Blanket Bingo, stuff that should never have seen the light of day, stuff that any self-respecting journalist would take a flyer on. What Sarah forgot to ask Leslie, or Leslie “neglected” to mention was that everybody did it, everybody who saw a turkey and would rather face Satan himself in all his fire than have to write two words of original material on the damn thing. And that included Leslie when she went to Women Today. Ask her.  If that isn’t enough egg on your face for one day then come at me again. Yeah, this is a cutthroat business, always has been and always will be. Tell your boy Will I am coming for him next.          

Oh yeah, the film. Like I said not my cup of tea and maybe a little long-winded going through the legal process which Molly Bloom, the notorious poker princess, the notorious real-life poker princess according to the cover blurbs and the front end film introduction although I admit although I love games of chance, like the horse too I didn’t know who she was, had to face before a little rough justice. Not film noir rough justice with some avenging angel private detective clearing the way for her taking some slugs if necessary but a good and capable lawyer who gave as good and he got. Charlie Jaffey, played by Idris Elba. He measured up to Molly’s expectations of what she would have been like as a Harvard Law School lawyer if she hadn’t been waylaid by that whole mock skiing jock stuff which went bust before she could hop on the gravy train. Unemployed and unemployable since who wants snow bunnies who have given up the ghost of Olympic gold, have failed one way or another, to sell their skis and sneakers Molly heads to sunny LA to thaw out for a while.

She does a little of this and a little of that, cocktail waitress, the usual until she hits “pay-dirt” with a guy who has been running, implausibly given his dirt-bagging Molly, high stakes poker games with high profile entertainers and bankers with a taste for the wild side-and who can pay cash on the barrelhead for their table stakes losses. Things go along pretty well for a while and the bright and sharp Molly (she would have made a good lawyer no question one that most lawyers would not want to have to contest) learns the ins and out of the game. Too well for the grafter and he fired Molly but she lands on her feet starting her own LA operation which draws the old crowd in. Plus others recruited in various ways to keep a pool of players in stock, a smart move. Eventually Molly and her ringer top player known as Player X part ways and her operation sinks in LA. Some lessons learned, especially about keeping hands away from the pot, taking her cut which would have put her at legal risk.   

So far so good and Molly heads east to New York to start anew.

No question Molly is a beauty but already she had had  enough

sense to keep business and sex apart, didn’t get involved with the clientele which would do her no good. It is not clear since there is no romance in this thriller whether she cared about sex or was too consumed making the kale to give somebody a tumble. The clientele was probably driven more by beating high profile X, Y, or Z than sex so that could have been an angle. In New York she started to run her operation along the lines she set down in LA. But something changed, she made the biggest mistake of all in getting wrapped around a heavy drug regimen. Moreover her expansion plans went awry. Her judgement got clouded, for example, in New York City of all places, she let a guy named Boris, Yuli, Vladimir, or whatever show up with an off-hand Monet from off the wall if his “art gallery” in a plain brown wrapping paper as collateral and she lets him in.     

This is where she gets in way over her head-she is in the crossfire between the FBI, the federal courts in the city and every bad ass operation from the Russian mafia (you think maybe the Monet guy might have been “connected”) to the Italian who wanted in on the action-strong-arming the deadbeats who she was letting play on the cuff). The only good thing she did through this whole horror show of deceit, fraud, Ponzi schemes, and letting players ride on her credit line was to get Jaffey. Why? Well it is always best, just as when you are looking for a private investigator, when looking for a lawyer to get one who has worked the other side, been a prosecutor. She got off in the end although she didn’t make a very good play by turning down a deal to get her dough back for basically finking. That is to the good in the circles I grew up in. Still she is deep in debt, has a ton of back taxes and a felony rap on her sheet. In the end she really needed a corner boy to guide her through this craziness more than a lawyer but given the situation she at least had that good lawyer. Strong performances by Jessica and Idris but still not my kind of film-sorry     

When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998 ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind -A Film Review

When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998  ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind  -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Zack James

Blues

It is not often that I, or anybody else at this publication has to “fight” over an assignment from Greg Green but in the case of the film under review Blues Brothers-2000 we were begging to be picked. (Usually reviewers are “running away from assignments like when Greg had his big idea that to “expand” our audience, to reach out to the youth we should start running reviews of Marvel/DC Comics film productions of their cohort of super-heroes and most of the older writers bucked before some buckled under or when he thought it would be a good idea to write book reviews of Harlequin-type romance novels. You get my drift.) Starting with older writers like Seth Garth, Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell who cut their teeth on the blues, country and urban, back in the early 1960s when what is now called classic rock and roll ran out of steam for a while and they were looking for something that spoke to their teen angst and alienation, what now would be called in the age of identity politics their oppression. Not only had they cut their teeth on the blues but when former site manager, then called administrator, Allan Jackson, several years ago put together a huge reflection series on the roots of rock and roll and such they were lined up overtime to work the project. A project that new site manager Greg had the sense to do an encore presentation of having the banished Jackson do the new introductions.

Of course no one from the older set, the 1960s cut their teeth set, picked up the blues on their own but had been guided along that path, as usual by Peter Paul Markin, the mad monk of their corner boy crowd in growing up poor Acre section of North Adamsville and something in the sound spoke to them. (In the interest of transparency which seems to be the watchword these days in all kinds of situations where before your word was your bond Markin always called Scribe was a very close friend of my oldest brother Alex but I was just too young being ten years younger to really remember much less be influenced by him like Alex and his crowd were.) That was the present at the creation tribe, the tribe that looked elsewhere when their foundation rock music crumbled for a while. Moving along to guys like me, not many of them here at this publication  whatever reason Allan had to keep the older guys around him especially a couple of years ago when he went over the deep-end with 50^th anniversary commemorations of every odd-ball event of their youth we grabbed onto the blues in the early 1980s when rock took another hiatus and we were scrambling from outlaw country music to Cajun-Zydeco and Western Swing to have a sound that spoke to us. A final grouping would include gals like Leslie Dumont and Laura Perkins, maybe Minnie Moore when she worked here, who didn’t live or die by the blues but who came to appreciate the sound second hand from their respective associations, their companionships is I think the word they use, with Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell. I won the “prize” for the very simple fact that I had recently written a review of the Neville Brothers and how Cajun-Zydeco music has been an important, if temporary, waystation in my own teen alienation and angst moments.                    

Maybe I should dig down a little deeper to explain how a retro-review of this film came about. Somebody mentioned that they had decided to watch the now ancient Saturday Night Live in order to check out Alex Baldwin’s rabid impersonation of one Donald J. Trump, allegedly the President of the United States or POTUS in tweet speak. Discussing that sent-up around the office water cooler one morning brought up, I think by Bart Webber, the start of the show back in the early 1970s with such now iconic comedians as Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Dan Ackleroyd and of course the late, lamented John Belushi. And that of course led to a discussion of the original Blues Brothers film where under the guile of an off-the-wall comic script John and Dan paid homage to the blues influences that had formed parts of their respective personas. The madcap adventures of the pair and a supporting cast of such blues, rhythm and blues, and classic rock and roll greats as Cab Calloway, James, please, please, please Brown, the recently passed on Matt “Guitar” Murphy and show-stopper Aretha Franklin (who came to the genre via her deep gospel roots) drove most of the action. Since that film had already been reviewed (by Seth Garth) the sequel was up for grabs once somebody checked the archives and found that former site manager Allan Jackson had not assigned anybody to do the film.               

Now a sequel, especially of an iconic film like Blues Brothers is a tough nut to follow although Hollywood seldom misses a chance to cash in on a blockbuster, and the producers Dan and John Landis (who co-wrote and directed both productions and again in the interest of transparency the latter who I worked with in the old Boston days at places like The Real Paper and the Phoenix) don’t really try to expand on the original concept. Part of the problem being, as dramatically pointed out in the front-piece dedication, that given the eighteen year interval between productions John Belushi, Cab Calloway and John Candy had all passed away.

That problem aside a certain context has to be provided and some continuity so naturally Dan, Elwood Blues, had to take a beating once he got out of stir in front of the old witch nun who gave the brothers hell when they were growing up in her orphanage. And a runt tagalong whom Elwood was supposed to “mentor.” Jesus was she totally crazy by then.

As the film opens once Elwood got out of that big house, got out of stir for whatever scam he got caught red-handed at, he automatically thought about starting up the band again. That gathering of the old crowd will drive the action for a while as these guys have grown long in the tooth and have “settled” down. But Elwood is persuasive, or maybe he was preaching to an already willing choir. With the addition of an out of work bartender at a strip club owned by one of the former band members played by John Goodman things are on the move. Almost. We need a short, well maybe not so short, diversion to put up a “brother,” a long lost son of old long gone Cab Calloway from his youth before he chained himself to that fateful orphanage and played “father” to the those two reprobates. Problem is this son is total Illinois state cop, a commander, and has no known DNA from papa on the blues scene. But he got “religion” at an out of doors revival stocked with plenty of well-known gospel singers- and James please, please, please Brown so before the end we have four men in black, the order of the day “uniform” for blues guys from a certain period. Well maybe three and one half, with the runt on that number thing.

Getting back on top though in the music game no matter the genre is a tough game and Elwood and mob slogged through the usual backwoods stops before hitting some pay-dirt in a battle of the bands down in the swamps presided over by some voodoo mama. A truly scary woman to set the heart beating. This is really what the film is all about-the homage to then still standing blues greats. The competition, a motley crew called the Louisiana Gator Boys just happens to be made up of B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Taj Majal, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Charles Musselwhite, Gary “U.S” Bonds, and a number of other lesser blues lights all first come to light for this reviewer via that blues records collection of my brother Alex cobbled together by the Scribe’s intelligence. In short, the last serious aggregation of blues greats still standing-then. Needless to say, Elwood and crowd who have their own not inconsiderable list of known blues greats like the late Matt Murphy lose to the “pros.”

The sad part of viewing this film at this remove is that many of the players seen in this sequel have also subsequently passed on headlined by B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Koko Taylor, and James Brown. My question, one which I intent to ask Alex when next we meet, is who will continue the tradition once that small coterie of white, mainly British blues artists like Eric Clapton from his youth fade from the scene as well. See this one to see what it was like when women and men played the blues for keeps. For when the saying “the blues was dues” meant everything.