PRINCE POPPYCOCK

This one is a day late, but trust the Siren. You will read nothing (at least, nothing non-political) in the coming week that will make your blood run any colder than the following anecdote. Have a strong drink ready. This is from Kate Buford's fine biography Burt Lancaster: An American Life. It is 1959, and Lancaster is shooting Elmer Gantry with director Richard Brooks.

Six days were budgeted for shooting the spectacular fire climax scene...The exteriors were shot at the back of a skating rink at the end of an old Santa Monica pier, but six days were not nearly enough for what Brooks claimed was Hollywood's first 'mass interior fire scene.' Lancaster got UA to allow him and Brooks to take the extra $200,000 needed from their fees and the scene was then shot in about five weeks using highly flammable old nitrate films from the Columbia vault to spread the conflagration.

Update: From Yojimboen, in comments:

Let me reassure all concerned, the nitrate film used by Brooks was old print material, badly-deteriorated and slated to be destroyed anyway. I’m old enough to have attended a Q & A session with Brooks at the London Film School in March 1964 at which -- after screening Elmer Gantry with the students -- he spoke in great detail of the fire sequence. Technicians laid single strips of 35mm nitrate print across beams, draped in bunting, etc. Brooks explained they experimented with accelerants but none spread flames at the desired speed. He thought of using nitrate film. He emphasized he was hyper-cautious about safety – the low-angle shots of the flames racing across beams and bunting were filmed mostly without actors present. He also stressed, repeat stressed, that he and Lancaster made sure the old nitrate prints were backed up by other prints and negatives. Brooks was nothing if not a movie lover, with a healthy consciousness of cinema history.

Yojimboen is a new commenter (and most welcome!) but the Siren certainly hopes he (or she) is correct. Many thanks for the additional information. The Siren isn't kidding when she says she'll sleep better tonight. Also check out Karen's comment, concerning the AFI documents about Gantry's censorship troubles. (Buford goes into those too.)

The Siren is continually amazed at the depth and breadth of knowledge of the people who are kind enough to stop by her corner of the Internet.

The Siren reads way too much about movies, although the fabulous Sheila O'Malley may have her beat. After a while you start to come across the same quotes again and again. Some are still funny ("I think that 'e' made the whole fuckin' difference," mused Carole Lombard, born plain old Jean Alice Peters.) Some are just true. ("It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter," said Marlene Dietrich, a theory she tested quite a bit in later life.)

But the Siren realized this week that there are several very famous remarks made by famous movie people that she never wants to hear again, although she will, she will. In reverse order, here they are, starting with the one that triggered this post:

5. "After 40 you must choose between your face and your ass."

This is usually attributed to Catherine Deneuve, but the Siren thinks Zsa Zsa Gabor is a more likely source. We have it on Brian Aherne's authority that Zsa Zsa is quite funny when she wants to be and she was always making remarks like this. One reason to hate this quote is that the age at which you must make this decision is always changing. In this month's InStyle it's pegged at 30. Thirty!! So Amy Adams, currently igniting newstands everywhere on the cover of Vanity Fair, chose one or the other four years ago? Rubbish. Mere mortal women figure on losing both the face and the ass at some point (a point well past 30, thankyouverymuch) unless we're blessed with superb genes and/or an unlimited plastic surgery budget. But for most actresses it isn't true at 40, or even 50. The Siren's favorite example is Diane Lane...

but there's plenty of others. Please, let's not pull out this tired old saying every time we see a woman who's dieted too much or has a face that's been injected too often with the scary stuff du jour. And one last thing. This quote is always applied to a woman.



If that's fair, then tell me, which did Mickey Rourke choose?

4. "For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day..."

Usually attributed to Audrey Hepburn. There's more like that afterward but it always turns the Siren into a version of Daffy Duck, muttering "Easy stomach, don't turn over now," so that's all you're getting. Reason number one to hate this "poem" is that it's insipid nonsense. The Siren feeds hungry children every day and they run their fingers through her hair, as well as anything else that's less than five feet off the ground, but the Siren assures her readers that it has no effect on her looks one way or another. The second reason is that although Hepburn apparently liked this tripe and used to quote the whole thing, in public even (which we will let slide because Hepburn really was a generous lady with otherwise impeccable taste), she didn't write it. It was written by someone named Sam Levenson.



If we are going to talk sensible beauty quotes, let's talk about the wonderful Bette Davis vehicle, Mr. Skeffington. Claude Rains, in the title role, tells his vain, selfish wife that a woman is beautiful when she's loved. Davis retorts, as only Davis can, "A woman is beautiful when she has eight hours' sleep and goes to the beauty parlor every day. And bone structure has a lot to do with it, too."

3. "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in high heels."

Often attributed to Ann Richards, but it predates the late, great Texas gov by some years. Rogers included Bob Thaves' Frank and Ernest comic strip, which appears to be the source, in the photos for her autobiography. The Siren cited Ginger for The Performance That Changed My Life, and will defend her abilities against all comers. But as for this quote--it's cute and all, but again, not true. She wore high heels, sure, although take a good look below--compared to today's skyscrapers they're practically flats.



Rogers also rehearsed on slippery Bakelite floors until her feet bled and she probably fantasized about stuffing Fred's top hat up his nose. But she did not do everything Astaire did. Together they were dazzling, but he was self-evidently the greater dancer, which Ginger herself probably would have admitted if you asked her nicely enough. Plus, their duets, carefully designed for maximum beauty on camera, use a lot of forward and side-by-side steps. The Siren is no choreographer, but she's seen these movies over and over, and Ginger doesn't move backwards all that much. Check out "Cheek to Cheek", and see who's moving backwards during most of the first part.

2. "Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul."

Oh boo hoo hoo, Marilyn. After the past few months of watching our economy do a face-plant, the Siren thinks a thousand dollars for a kiss is a darned good price, even without adjusting for inflation. And meanie-weenie Hollywood sold your soul for cheap, huh. The people standing by the clothing racks and saying "Can I help you?" to grumpy, dead-broke customers, and the ones getting repetitive-motion injuries at their keyboards and jumping every time the boss calls them in the office for fear they're getting the old pre-Christmas pink slip--they all got a much better rate for their souls.

Most irritating is when this quote is used to illustrate how Marilyn Monroe suffered. She was charming and funny, really good in several movies, certainly she was beautiful, and you could say she had a hard time. Though, it seems to the Siren, not as hard as her colleagues did, standing around on the set waiting for Marilyn to get her act together. But you want suffering, real suffering, the kind to make Melpomene weep? Without Googling: Clara Bow. D.W. Griffith. Orson Welles. Gene Tierney. John Garfield. Dorothy Dandridge. Rita Hayworth. Canada Lee. Charles Boyer. Wallace Reid. Montgomery Clift. Lou Costello. Roscoe Arbuckle. Erich von Stroheim.

1. "He gives her class. She gives him sex."

Oh, Katharine. The Siren hasn't been able to track down exactly when and where Hepburn said this (anyone know?) but it was probably a fairly casual observation, not one supposed to substitute for any other analysis of the all-time greatest dancing team. Even when people don't invoke the quote itself, as David Thomson mercifully did not in his well-written but dead-wrong Astaire piece last Sunday, they regurgitate its assumptions. Astaire was plenty sexy. The routines themselves, as often noted, echo the rhythms of seduction and even the sex act itself, and that ain't possible with a sexless male.

As for Ginger needing more class, the Siren wonders if that was somehow a leftover bit of cattiness because Rogers stole Stage Door right out from under Hepburn. Rogers had a wonderful common-girl persona in the 1930s, but her movies relied on her self-confidence and grace. Check out something like Gregory La Cava's charmingly subversive 5th Avenue Girl, in which Rogers poses as a millionaire's mistress without losing a shred of her honor. The point to Ginger Rogers, and what made her such a perfect on-screen American woman, was that she constantly proved class is a state of mind and not birth.

The Siren has a suggestion for anyone itching to use the above-listed quotes. Look up Tallulah Bankhead instead. Now there's someone who could give you an evergreen yarn. The Siren winds this up with Tallulah, from A Southern Album, on the perils of stardom and election season:

"Be careful how you quote me. No swearing, no naughty cracks. This is a campaign year, you know, and I must be discreet. If I'm not, I'll have the whole goddamn Bankhead family on my neck."

Typically upside-down and backwards week at the Siren's place. Working on a bigger post, but in the meantime I did a teensy bit of guest-blogging with an Anecdote of the Week over at The Film Experience. You will want to click on this one, if I do say so myself; nothing but the best for our Nathaniel. The title: "How do you score an orgasm?"

Other things I am reading when time permits:

Fantastic post on Leslie Caron's screening and interview in Los Angeles, over at And Your Little Blog, Too. If you love Lili and Gigi as the Siren does, this one is a must.

Heartfelt, sui generis post from Flickhead, on movies and memory.

Last week the Siren ran into Glenn Kenny on the street in Brooklyn. Glenn waved a DVD at her and asked if she was reading David Cairns. Oh yes Glenn, I'm addicted too, and David is expanding my must-see list exponentially as well. Here he is on the two U.S. movies made by the peerless Jean Gabin, Moontide (just out on DVD) and the Julien Duvivier-directed The Impostor.

Jonathan Lapper is deep into his Kill Fest. The Siren is enjoying it all, but this Universal monster montage will be hard to top.

Do you ever just mosey over to a blog and start digging through the archives? One film blogger who never fails to reward such an enterprise is Dennis Grunes. Check out this piece on The Hard Way. It's typical of Grunes' vivid analysis and intelligence, even if he gives criminally short shrift to the great Jack Carson.

Girish, consistently one of the most original film minds around, has a post on cross-border filmmaker affinities.

The Siren feels as though she's Auntie Mame. Vera Charles just swept in and asked "have you spoken to your broker?" and when the Siren asks what's happening, Vera replies "Oh, not much, just that nothing is WORTH anything anymore." In this version, Vera adds, "And Siren darling, you just bought yourself a nice big banking system." Perhaps it's time for the Siren to get a job in the roller-skate department.

So what better period to be looking at right now than the 1930s? and what better actress than our own dear Kay Francis? The Siren has been planning to recap the Kay movies she caught during TCM's September Star of the Month festival. In order of preference:

1. The House on 56th Street (Robert Florey, 1933). There was a teensy bit of grumbling about this one going on in the comments to the Siren's earlier post and elsewhere, and Kay herself didn't seem to think much of the movie. Most Kay sources tsk-tsk that it was originally intended for Ruth Chatterton, as though film scripts are like evening gowns and shouldn't be handed down lest they get shabby. After revisiting the film the Siren informs everybody, as diplomatically as possible, that she's right and you're wrong. This is an excellent movie, not a standard sudser at all, with a remarkably grim plot that links Kay's fate to the declining fortunes of a New York City townhouse. (For the record, Filmbrain likes it too.) Lawrence Quirk calls it a "sociological romance," a good way to put it; the device of connecting Kay's declining fortunes to the house off Park Avenue is unusual and very effective.

When the Siren tries to pin down what she likes about a movie like House on 56th Street, she always comes back to structure. It's 68 minutes, and there is not one extraneous scene. Director Robert Florey (later of Beast with Five Fingers fame) quickly establishes his set of visual symbols--the house as both Kay and New York itself, the cherub as the dream of family love she will never have, the gambling as a rigged and unwinnable system--then deals them out with careful economy, like the cards that recur through the plot. Since it's a Kay Francis movie, the best analogy the Siren can use is clothing. An item at a typical mall store may look all right on the hanger, but turn it inside out and you'll find a mess: seams unpressed, unfinished and raveling, no tape on the hems, threads escaping from the buttonholes, great big scratchy tags everywhere just in case you forgot the BRAND NAME. Turn a vintage item inside out sometime and you'll be shocked at the difference. The seams are perfectly sewn down and pressed in, there is hem tape on the hem, the buttons are firmly attached and the lining is as beautifully tailored as the outside, with tiny stitches holding down certain folds so they won't bulge.

Here our Kay starts out as a brunette showgirl, dancing on tables and falling in love with a wealthy, upper-class New Yorker, who buys the house for her and tells her she belongs there "forever," as she touches a melancholy little cherub engraved in the plaster over the fireplace. But his family dislikes her, as families do. The plot plays out with such fatalism it might have served as noir if made 15 years later. Kay is imprisoned for 20 years for a crime that she not only didn't commit, but was trying to prevent. Her husband is killed in the Great War, her daughter is told she is dead. And all the while we see the house, earlier connected to innocence and happiness, becoming grimier and shabbier. When Kay is first sent to prison the house's windows are boarded up; the shot is like looking at someone who's been blinded. She gets a terrible blonde dye job explicitly to cut all ties with her past self, and its harshness adds to the theme. Both Kay and the house are still beautiful, but permanently marked.

Kay runs into an old shady acquaintance and winds up dealing cards in a gambling den that's run out of the very house she once lived in. Over at IMDB you can see some viewers rolling their eyes over this, but the Siren has zero patience for such Gradgrindian quibbles. There's a difference between things that make mathematical, logical sense and things that make poetic, symbolic sense. In the world of the movie, no course other than Kay's return to the house would be possible. And her daughter's appearance in the illegal casino is also needed to maintain symmetry, as is the daughter's mistake that occurs after Kay tries to help her, as Kay was trying to help the man whose death sent her to prison twenty years before. Margaret Lindsay as the daughter is, as usual, grating to the nerves, but that is also deliberate. The point is the quality of Kay's love and sacrifice, not the worthiness of the object.

It's very much a Depression movie, one that looks back at past gaiety, beauty and love and can't stop grieving for the way it's all been snatched away. The sheer bloody unfairness of what happens to Kay must have been so real to an audience whose hopes for comfort had been brutally rescinded through no sin of their own.

2. Jewel Robbery (William Dieterle, 1932). Also a Depression movie, and how, but with a far more pleasant conceit--rich people making clowns of themselves and getting taken right down to their garters by someone more clever. William Powell makes off with the rocks of the title, but also with the "jewels" of Kay's virtue, all with criminal panache ("I studied in Paris," he explains). As John McElwee pointed out, this movie must have been great escapist fun in 1933, and still is. It seems to be the favorite of everyone who caught it last month, and if the Siren has a slight preference for The House on 56th Street that's probably due to her mood. Jewel Robbery is a pip, falling just short of being good enough to be called "Lubitschian," but coming damn close with moments like Powell explaining how he lifted a necklace at a charity ball: "The lady stood beside me. The Prince of Wales was announced. I could have removed her dress." The Siren was sure she was going to like this one from the second she saw Kay in the bubble bath--not a chaste Hays office bubble bath, but a heels-kicking, whoops-that-was-close bath. Francis is so lively and happy in these early movies. Powell is deliciously funny although maybe he had pissed off the cameraman, as his overbite was never more obvious than here.

3. Confession (Joe May, 1937). The Siren has her own confession, that she missed the end of this one, but it was going swimmingly up to that point. It's similar in some ways to House on 56th Street, including the theme of mother love and sacrifice, once so common in American movies and now about as frequent a film element as wipes or noble politicians. (In current big-budget movies mothers with plot prominence usually turn out to have committed infanticide. Mothers who actually give things up for their kids are confined to Lifetime, a channel so ghastly that when the Siren sees it advertised as "television for women" she feels like suing for libel on behalf of her gender.) Anyway, Kay appears rather late in this movie, but when she does show up the plot goes from zero to sixty in a scene that reminded the Siren of both The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Letter. Kay's love scenes in flashback are very well played, as she's aided a great deal by Basil Rathbone, who gives a perfect take on the familiar role of "I am an Arteest and therefore a Tomcat." It's said to be an almost shot-by-shot remake of the German original, Mazurka. Julius Epstein had a hand in the screenplay, as he also did with

4. Secrets of an Actress (William Keighley, 1938). One of the supposed throwaways Kay made when Warner Brothers had her with one jeweled heel out the door and the other on a banana peel. But it's very bubbly and cute, with some nice snappy dialogue. Kay plays an aspiring actress with no discernible secrets, so I don't know what that title was about, much less the plot, which hurtles so hard toward the denouement you no more notice the holes than you do bird poop on the rollercoaster. Part of the reason I liked it was--wait for it--George Brent. I swear I'm not saying that just because it's been a while since we've had a good George Brent debate. He was good in this movie, very funny in the scenes with Gloria Dickson as his scheming not-yet-ex wife, and he had some nice chemistry with Kay.

5. Allotment Wives (William Nigh, 1945). One of the three Monogram cheapies Kay made as her career reached its close, this is a well-executed B picture that shows Kay might have made a good noir dame if only given more of a chance. Here she is running a criminal scheme that has women in Europe marrying multiple GIs for their allotment checks. She has a daughter, of course, and tries to keep the girl out of harm's way at a private school. This works about as well as it ever does in the movies. Paul Kelly, more than fifteen years past his real-life role in a memorably violent and sordid Hollywood triangle, plays the hardboiled investigating major in the same way he'd have probably played it if he'd gotten the Otto Kruger role as Kay's accomplice. Kay gets a fabulous B-noir exit, too.


6. Dr. Monica (William Keighley, 1934). Not a good movie, but has some historical interest for those who want to see how unwed motherhood, infidelity and infertility were treated just on the cusp of the Production Code's implementation. Kay plays the titular ob-gyn, and sports the most amazingly chic outfits you ever saw as she glides from office to operating room to drawing room. Her husband (Warren William, so underused his biggest scene has him trimming a Christmas tree) has had an affair with a young friend of Dr. Monica's (Jean Muir) and gotten her pregnant. He doesn't know that. Dr. Monica at first doesn't know that either. Later Dr. Monica does find out but Jean Muir doesn't know Monica knows. Nobody really knows anything in this movie.

7. Transgression (Herbert Brenon, 1931). Stagey tale of a wife straying, then moving back. The Siren thought it was pretty dreary and Kay was not at her best. But I did like the scenes in and around Ricardo Cortez's Spanish country house, which had a nicely sinister air somewhat redolent of the Mitteleuropean settings of Frankenstein and Dracula.


8. Cynara (King Vidor, 1932) and 9. Raffles (George Fitzmaurice, 1930). Hardly Kay Francis movies at all, these are both about Colman, and therein lies the reason the Siren didn't much care for them. Colman, she has recently realized, usually bores the everloving bejesus out of her (A Tale of Two Cities and Random Harvest are notable exceptions). He's so clipped and restrained and polite, there's no underlying pathos and sensitivity, as with Robert Donat, and no dash either, as with Grant or Flynn. If Colman withdraws from the room with a bow, the better to preserve your virtue, he isn't doing it with a wink and a sexy little flash of regret. He's doing it because he really truly does care about your virtue. No wonder David Niven was so much more fun as Raffles. No wonder the Siren didn't believe for a moment that Colman would actually succumb to Phyllis Barry at a swimsuit competition. Like McElwee, the Siren did enjoy Kay's sleek chic and "butched-out hair" but that was about it. I also expected more snappy direction from the Vidor than I got.

The Siren couldn't resist re-watching One Way Passage and a bit of Trouble in Paradise as well. All right, your turn. Any Kay discoveries to share?