Ann Blyth's Concert Career

 

Where has Ann Blyth been all these years?

This was the lead to Stephen Holden’s New York Times review of Ann Blyth’s concert with Bill Hayes at the famed and elite Rainbow and Stars atop Rockefeller Center in November 1992.

…she seemed so physically unchanged from her 1950s self that it was possible to imagine she had been frozen for the last 30 years and had thawed herself out for the occasion.

Their act was called “An Elegant Evening of Beautiful Music,” a collection of theatre and movie songs.

The kind of show that rarely plays in Manhattan nowadays.  Suburban dinner-theater entertainment aimed at audiences over 60, it trades heavily in nostalgia toward these show-business veterans who have aged well and seek only to spread sugarcoated cheer….Miss Blyth’s lyric soprano is still in good condition.

Today we discuss Ann Blyth’s “third act” career as a singer.  I use the term “third act,” though the more common dictum “second act” refers to a career adopted, or revived, late in life.  It stems from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s hard luck observation, “There are no second acts in American life.”  Well, there weren’t for him, poor man, but for others…a second act, a second chance at life, a revival is sometimes possible.

Ann Blyth had more than a second act, she had a “third act,” her singing, which took her beyond both her screen and stage career, in her resilient soprano that is like a metaphor for her resilient career: surprisingly strong, stunning it its loveliness, and carefully controlled.  Her “third act” was not so much a new venture as a reprise.  She always was a singer—before she became a movie star, before she even became an actress, she was a singer.  At six years old, she auditioned for a children’s radio program in New York City, and stood upon a box to reach the microphone, and sang the late hit “Lazy Bones” by Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael.

Years later she would be required to stand on a box to kiss Gregory Peck.  Some of the best things in life are just out of reach.

Unless one perseveres.

She sang, and acted, on many radio programs as child, before her life-changing audition for Lillian Hellman’s Broadway play, Watch on the Rhine.  When her film career was launched in her early teens, she continued to perform as a singer for charity venues on her own time.  Donating her talent to needy causes had a secondary effect: it gave her experience singing live in front of an audience, even if it was just 50 people in a church hall. Gradually, those audiences became larger.  She traveled many miles to perform for them.

Syndicated columnist Sheilah Graham wrote of one such benefit: 

 Ann Blyth is one of the reasons why people like Hollywood.  She is just back from doing a swell show for the Loretto Heights College in Denver.  

Perhaps her largest audience in these years was the combined theater and radio audience who heard her at the 1949 Academy Awards, held March 23, 1950 at the RKO Pantages Theatre, where she sang one of the nominated songs, “My Foolish Heart” in a low-cut red gown.  In one respect, she was announcing her availability as a singer in the industry for those who had forgotten, or else never knew of, her talent, and throughout the 1950s took advantage of other opportunities to sing.  

She sang on Louella Parson’s radio show in September 1951.  After suffering the obligatory and heavily scripted “interview” on whom she was, or was not, dating, Ann soars in a song called “My Golden Harp” to the tune of “Danny Boy” or “The Londonderry Air.”  One imagines it was a payoff for the indignity.

Other radio shows gave her chances to sing, and television would give her a few more, including another Oscar® program in 1954, which we discussed in this previous post.  The fifties was a great era for musical variety on TV.  Among the shows on which she sang were The Perry Como Show, The Dinah Shore Show, The Fisher-Gobel Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, and The Jack Parr Show.  

It was also during this decade that Ann Blyth took an unusual (for a movie star) and brave plunge into nightclub performing.  In the late summer of 1954, still a new mother, her first baby only a few months old, she tested a new singing act for a few nights at the Tops Nightclub, a Streamline Moderne popular spot on the Pacific Coast Highway in San Diego.  

She wowed the crowd, and then brought the act up to Sacramento for a weekend at the state fair in September, all preparatory to opening at the Sahara in Las Vegas in late September for a month’s run.  The Los Angeles Times reported:

Ann Blyth proved that night-club entertainment can be something utterly new and different when she made her debut here tonight.  She received thunderous applause when she wound up her headline singing and intimate conversation with her audience at the Sahara.

 We discussed this nightclub act a bit more in this previous post.

Ann came down with laryngitis during that engagement, and though these comic press photos indicate her brother-in-law Dennis Day came to minister to her sore throat, he really helped out by filling in for her on stage.

There was to have been another appearance at the Sahara two years later in 1956, but MGM, her home studio at the time, called her back for the film Slander (1957), which we’ll discuss next week. 

But it was back to the nightclub circuit in 1958, when after The Helen Morgan Story (1957), which we’ll discuss in a future post, turned out to be her last film.  In September 1958 she opened a new act the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles.  Louella Parsons was in the audience.

Ann Blyth, so refreshingly sweet and beautiful at the Coconut Grove joined us after her show.  She said every night she sings a song about her husband, Dr. Jim McNulty, and that night he was sitting ringside when suddenly she looked and he was gone.  You guessed it—a call from the hospital sent him scurrying there to deliver a baby.

She had broken in the act the previous weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, where again, her obstetrician husband couldn’t make it to opening night because the stork interfered.  The entertainment press at this time conjectured how a two-career marriage and a growing family would work.  

The Los Angeles Timesran a brief blurb to announce the debut of the act that read more like a dossier than a feature story:

Subject: Ann Blyth, singer-film star, female.

Makes local nightclub debut at Coconut Grove, Ambassador Hotel on Wednesday.  Only other such appearance at Sahara in Las Vegas three years ago.  Plans to make club dates another facet of her career.

Sounds like Sgt. Joe Friday wrote that one.

Her planning to make club dates another facet of her career stemmed, in the wake of no upcoming films after The Helen Morgan Story, from practicality as well as her desire to sing.  From a syndicated column in September by James Bacon, which teases Ann as Hollywood’s “little lady” becoming a “saloon singer,” he quotes Ann:

“All the movie scripts offered wanted me to go to Europe and for such long times.  I just felt that I couldn’t be separated from my family that long.”

After the Coconut Grove, Ann would take this act to the Sahara in Las Vegas, and then to New York and Miami Beach, Florida.

In the early sixties, Ann re-joined the theatre world in what would be three decades of touring musical theatre performances, which we covered in this previous post.  Her re-emergence on the concert scene came in the mid-1980s.

In 1985 she teamed up with her brother-in-law, Dennis Day, for a show in Downey, California, that was so well received, they did an encore performance at El Camino College in Torrance, California.  Perhaps there might have been more concerts with Dennis Day, beloved longtime radio sidekick of Jack Benny, but sadly, Mr. Day became ill and was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  He died in 1988.

Ann called upon Bill Hayes to be her singing partner in a series of concerts that would continue for another decade.  Mr. Hayes had appeared with her in Brigadoon on stage in the late 1960s, and most recently had starred opposite Ann in Song of Norway in March 1985.  Many will remember Bill Hayes from his long run on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives.

Together, they joined Ann’s first screen partner, Donald O’Connor, for a two-week stint at The Dunes in Las Vegas in June 1992, then Hayes and Ann continued to take their show to several spots across the country, culminated by a four-week engagement at the exclusive Rainbow and Stars in New York City in late October through November 1992.  At the time she was 64 years old.  For a really stunning publicity photo of Bill Hayes and Ann Blyth together, have a look at Mr. Hayes’ website here.

And here:

Courtesy Bill Hayes, used by permission.

To promote their concert, Ann and Bill Hayes appeared as guests on Casper Citron’s radio talk show on New York’s WOR on November 14, 1992.  The studio was in the same building where Ann started in radio as a six-year-old child singer.  The poignancy of her bringing her career full circle in this very place seemed lost on Mr. Citron, who was a former politician, former theatre critic, and longtime radio host in New York.  He had interviewed many famous people, and yet one is struck by his lack of preparation and frank ignorance in this interview.  One is also struck by Bill Hayes’ gallant explanations to their host on Ann’s accomplishments, when she would not toot her own horn.  Both Bill and Ann were quite patient with their host who wandered off track many times.  Below are a few brief excerpts of a transcript of the interview:

AB:     We do a variety of music from Broadway and Hollywood.  I think a lovely potpourri, songs that everyone can certainly remember, songs that everyone has hummed or sung or whistled.

CC:      Your career in films was not as a singer?

AB:     Well, it didn’t start out that way, that’s correct.  And really, when I did my test, they said, “What else do you do?” and, of course, I said, “Well, I also sing.”  But it wasn’t until…

CC:      Did you sing in The Helen Morgan Story?

AB:     No, they used someone else’s voice, Gogi Grant, who has a completely different sound, a marvelous voice, to be sure, but a very pop sound and for some reason the studio at that time felt that that would be an added, an added dimension for some reason to that movie.

……………..

BH:     But Casper, Ann really did sing in a lot films.  It was just The Helen Morgan Story that…

CC:      What was your biggest singing role?

AB:     Well, I…

CC:      Pardon my stupidity on this.

AB:     I think I would have to say The Student Prince, and…

CC:      Oh, that’s a big singing role.

…………………….

CC:      Do any of these people that you have worked with through the years come up to Rainbow and Stars?

AB:     Oh, indeed, and that’s half of the pleasure of what we do, is, of course, seeing people that perhaps you haven’t had a chance to see in many, many years—the nature of our business being such that you find yourself on one coast and so many of your friends are someplace else.

………..

BH:     We do two different shows.  We do a dinner show and an after-theatre show.  The dinner show is at 9:00.  People come at 7:00 or 7:30 and have dinner, and we work from 9:00 to 10:00.  And then they come after the theatre, we do an 11:00, excuse me, 11:15 show.

CC:      How many times a week?

BH:     We do that five nights a week, so we’re off Sundays and Mondays, and we play Tuesday through Saturday.  And it’s a thrill.  It’s a breathtaking view.

CC:      That’s 10 times a week.  That’s even more than Broadway.

AB:     But it’s such lovely music.  We really do have a good time.  It is a lot of singing, but we do have a good time.  And the view is spectacular.

CC:      It always has been.

AB:     Here I am back in the very same building that I started in.

CC:      A number of years later.  We don’t ask…

AB:     Yes.

CC:      …how many.

AB:     Well, I’m just glad that I’m here.

Some of those old friends mentioned above who turned up in the audience were Claire Trevor; Arlene Dahl; Imogene Coca, with whom Bill Hayes appeared on the wonderful classic TV Your Show of Shows; Ruth Warrick, with whom Ann appeared in Swell Guy (1946); which we discussed here, and her old pal, Roddy McDowall.

Syndicated columnist Liz Smith was also in the audience:

Ann Blyth, who was a movie star when the words really meant something, looks incredible.  Time seems literally to have stood still for her—and not only physically.  The star’s soprano is as lilting and steady as when she was knocking out those MGM musicals…

Blyth, expertly partnered with Bill Hayes, even perched on a piano a la Helen Morgan and belted out “Why Was I Born?”

The room was awash with nostalgia.

Ann and Bill Hayes continued sporadic touring with their show, popping up Florida, Illinois, and a cruise ship from Acapulco to San Francisco.

More gigs in the mid-1990s partnered her with John Raitt, with whom she performed in Los Angeles.  In October 1994, they appeared at the Academy Plaza Theatre for two hour-long concerts, along with Ann’s longtime music director and accompanist, Harper MacKay, on piano.  They performed solos and duets from many musicals, including teaming up on “If I Loved You” from Carousel.

What has become known as The Great American Songbook has achieved a certain degree of “cool” these days, but twenty and thirty years ago was still in a nadir patch of being termed “old people music.”  Some of the articles about their performances have a slightly condescending tone to them. 

Ann Blyth, as on many occasions and in many circumstances of her life, seemed above it all, and serenely took the path, and musical form, that was right for her.

From the Los Angeles Times article by Libby Slate promoting her concert with Mr. Raitt in October, 2004:

Although they have sung many of Sunday’s selections numerous times, both say the songs remain fresh.  “In almost every phrase, there’s such emotion that it would be difficult not to feel it when you sing it, and hopefully, pass it on to the audience,” Blyth says.  “It’s the best way to communicate to those who are perfect strangers; suddenly, they’re not strangers any more.”

Ann Blyth continued into the twenty-first century with an act she performed with her accompanist, singing and telling stories of her film career on the woman’s club circuit in support of charities, once again bringing a facet of her career full circle.  In May 2000 she performed for an audience of 500 at a Holiday Inn in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, to raise funds for the Visiting Nurse Service of Sacred Heart Hospital, opening with “With a Song in My Heart.”

From the Express-Timesof Easton, Pennsylvania: 

Her voice, after nearly six decades of professional activity, was a little rough around the edges, but pleasant, warm and surprisingly powerful for such a tiny person; she wears a size four.  Her upper range is clear and easy, and she holds each phrase for its full value.

She was 71 at the time, and mimicked herself as a small child singing “Lazy Bones” for her very first audition, and playfully following the trajectory of her early career, sang “Peg O’ My Heart,” which was the song she sang for her audition prior to being signed by Universal.

We’ve noted previously that Ann sang at the 2009 Thalians Ball, along with other Hollywood stars, in Los Angeles in support of that charitable organization’s raising funds for children with mental health issues.  These types of charitable venues not only serve the community, but they seem to be, these days, the most receptive to aging singers.  It’s one thing for The Great American Songbook to be accepted by a young person in the form of a young entertainer, like Michael Bublé, or even someone older but tolerated as sufficiently hip, like Tony Bennett, but a roster of old tunes sung by old singers for more than a good cause is still more than the apparently hipper-than-thou can take.  In October 2005, Stephen Holden of the New York Times panned a concert of songs from the movies at Lincoln Center, an over-long event (some three-and-a-half hours)…

– which featured mostly second-and-third-tier performers along with reminiscences by semi-and-semi-semi legends like Ann Blyth, Arlene Dahl, Sally Ann Howes, Jane Powell and Margaret Whiting, strove to connect old-time Hollywood glamor with the New York cabaret world.  

The master of ceremonies was Turner Classic Movies’ own Robert Osborne.  

With the exception of Ms. Powell’s, and to a lesser extent, Ms. Blyth’s, the reminisces of the semi-legends consisted of dull, over long mixtures of trivia, sentimentality, and self-glorification. 

Bad reviews come and go, and so do bad reviewers, as much as bad performances.  The music lingers, at least for those who like it, and for one lady who has sung it all her life.

“I’ve always enjoyed the joy, the excitement, the pure pleasure of singing this music.  It’s so easy to listen to, it stays with you.  Isn’t any art supposed to do that—to climb inside you and give you a wonderful feeling?”

Come back next Thursday when we return to Ann Blyth’s movie career and discuss the power of the press to do more than critique in Slander (1957).

PASS THE WORD!!!!!   Looking for photos and shared memories of the recent TCM Cruise regarding Ann Blyth's talks.  This material will be used for my upcoming book on Ann Blyth's career.  Please contact me at: JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com.

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Bill and Susan Hayes.com - http://www.billandsusanhayes.com

Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1990, special article to the Tribuneby Bill Hayes.

Daily Breeze,(Torrance, California), March 1, 1985, article by Sandra Kreiswirth; October 19, 1922, article by Sandra Kreiswirth, p. C1.

Daily News of Los Angeles, June 21, 1992, “Hayes of ‘Days’ Fame Hits the Road in Song-Filled Gala, by Lynda Hirsch, p. L25.

The Express-Times(Easton, Pennsylvania), May 4, 2000, “Actress Ann Blyth captures memorable career in songs – She is most known for ‘Mildred Pierce’ by Cynthia Gordon, p. B4.

The Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1954, “Ann Blyth Wins Ovation at Sahara in Las Vegas” by Edwin Schallert, p. B6; August 31, 1958, p. D1; June 23, 1988, article by Edward J. Boyner; October 14, 1994, “Playing Their Songs: Concert by John Raitt and Ann Blyth will target a crowd that craves ‘hummable’ music,” by Libby Slate.

Milwaukee Sentinel, September 10, 1958, syndicated article by Louella Parson, p. 6, part 3.

The Morning Call(Allentown, Pennsylvania), May 4, 2000, “Ann Blyth Appears at an Annual Benefit That Raises Money for Children’s Causes in the Lehigh Valley,” by Christian D. Berg, p. B02.

New York Times, November 3, 1992, review by Stephen Holden; October 22, 2005, by Stephen Holden.  

Ocala Star-Banner(Florida), September 2, 1958, syndicated article by James Bacon, p. 3.

The Spokesman Review(Spokane, WA), syndicated article by Sheilah Graham.

St. Petersburg Times(Florida), September 18, 1994, “Onetime Oscar Nominee Picks Stage Over Screen” by Jay Horning, p. 12A.

Toldeo Blade, November 13, 1992, syndicated column by Liz Smith, p. P-1.



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 THANK YOU....to the following folks whose aid in gathering material for this series has been invaluable:  EBH; Kevin Deany of Kevin's Movie Corner; Gerry Szymski of Westmont Movie Classics, Westmont, Illinois; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  And thanks to all those who signed on as backers to my recent Kickstarter campaign.  The effort failed to raise the funding needed, but I'll always remember your kind support.

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TRIVIA QUESTION:  I've recently been contacted by someone who wants to know if the piano player in Dillinger (1945-see post here) is the boogie-woogie artist Albert Ammons. Please leave comment or drop me a line if you know.


mel said...

I consulted David Meeker's authoritative and exhaustive book "Jazz On The Screen - a Jazz And Blues Filmography" (2008) and Albert Ammons is not mentioned as performing in Dillinger (1945).

So my educated guess is a negative.

November 7, 2014

Thanks, Mel.

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 HELP!!!!!!!!!!
Now that I've got your attention: I'm still on the lookout for a movie called Katie Did It (1951) for this year-long series on the career of Ann Blyth.  It seems to be a rare one.  Please contact me on this blog or at my email: JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com if you know where I can lay my hands on this film.  Am willing to buy or trade, or wash windows in exchange.  Maybe not the windows part.  But you know what I mean.

Also, if anybody has any of Ann's TV appearances, there's a few I'm missing from The Dennis Day Show (TV), The DuPont Show with June Allyson, This is Your Life, Lux Video Theatre.  Also any video clips of her Oscar appearances.  Release the hounds.  And let me know, please. 

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A new collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century is now out in eBook, and in paperback here.

I’ll provide a free copy, either paperback or eBook or both if you wish, to bloggers in exchange for an honest review.  Just email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com with your preference of format, your email address, and an address to mail the paperback (if that’s your preference).  Thanks.

Crack-up - 1946

 

Crack-up (1946) takes us to the art world, not usually the sphere of film noir, but this brooding little mystery is unabashed in its take on salons of high culture and waterfront thugs.  Especially appealing is abating this quirkiness by casting veteran priest-coach-boring nice guy Pat O’Brien as the hero.  Pat was 47 when this picture was made, seems a bit long in the tooth for some of the stunts he (or rather his stunt double) is required to do, but his brand of sly, knowing maturity is particularly suitable for this protagonist who must solve the mystery with his brains and his expansive knowledge of art.

I also like that the plot hinges on a phone call he gets regarding his ailing mother, and how he rushes to see her in the hospital.  Real men worry about Mom.

Since this is a mystery, I’ll try to side step the spoilers, but there are some interesting scenes that push the plot along for their atmosphere.  First, we have the pulsating theme music over the opening credits and sounds like the rhythmic pounding of train wheels. A train figures prominently in the mystery.  Look at the lettering on the title.  Just that tells you we’re in for real noir.  Them’s real noir fonts.

We begin with Pat O’Brien in a crazed fit, smashing his fist through the glass doors of a New York City museum, tangling with a cop—in a hall of marble statues where a broken figure of a nude male topples to the floor and smashes—there’s a little artistic symbolism for you.  Pat passes out, psychotic or drunk, we don’t know.  Pat works at the museum.  The museum administrators, in a late meeting, are shocked and try to hush the matter up when detective Wallace Ford wants to haul him in.

Good old Wallace Ford.  He deserves a post of his own someday, for many reasons.

Ray Collins is a doctor on the board of the museum, the voice reason in this mess.

Claire Trevor is a society dame and magazine writer who appears in a different outfit and a different hairdo every time we see her.  She sparkles, but she’s a regular dame.  We gather she and Pat were an item once, and he’s still interested enough in her to be jealous and sarcastic of any man who takes her to dinner, like Herbert Marshall. 

Our old favorite Mr. Marshall is typically elegant and eloquent here as an international man of mystery.  We don’t really find out who he is or what his game is until nearly the end of the movie.  Mr. O’Brien does not disguise his distrust and disdain for him.

Pat is a docent at the museum and gives lectures on art.  (How many cool film noir guys do that?)  We are told that the museum curators regard Mr. O’Brien as revolutionary—in their eyes not a good thing—and that if it weren’t for his service record, they might have sacked him long ago.

This being film noir, nine times out of ten, the protagonist is a war vet trying to adjust to this weird new world he’s come home to but doesn’t recognize.  Especially interesting is that later we get some background on O’Brien’s war record—he worked for the Allied Reparations Committee investigating the Nazi theft of precious works of art. 

We trace Pat O’Brien’s psychotic disturbance to a train wreck he claims he was just in, though there are no reports coming to Wallace Ford that a train wreck has occurred.

Now we go to the requisite flashback as Ray Collins asks Pat to tell them what he remembers happened to him today.

We pick up from Pat’s docent job and his lecture, and the call about his mother.  When Pat rushes to the train station to start his frantic journey to see his mother in the hospital, we follow him pretty much step-by-step—the ticket line, the empty commuter car filling with nighttime stragglers getting off work late, a sarcastic butcher boy selling fruit, magazines and cigarettes.  There’s a guy half-dragging his buddy who appears to have had a little too much to drink.

The train car is already a place of tension because of Pat’s anxiety about his mother and trying to reach her as soon as possible.  He glances with impatience at the people around him, not studying them with interest, but as if they are adding to his annoyance and tension.  We hear the omnipresent sound of the train wheels, which seem to grow louder.  Pat seems to grow acutely aware of all the sounds and images around him, and so we, too, focus on these sensations.

He looks out the moisture-tinged train window, and sees in the distance, around a kind a bend in the track, a beam of light.  To his horror and ours, it appears to be another train on the same track.  Look at Pat’s frozen expression as he’s mesmerized by the sight, a sense of unavoidable doom.  Suddenly, the train whips around the bend and heads right toward us.  The flash of light splashes across his train window, and we hear screams.

 

 

 

 

Then the flashback ends and we are back in the present.  He is physically and mentally exhausted.

He is told by Wallace Ford that his mother is fine.  She was never in the hospital.  There was no train wreck.  They all think Pat is cracking up, and his clothing reeks of alcohol.

Poor Pat, baffled and shaken, and doubting his own sanity, is released by Ford for the time being, but the museum fires him.  You can’t have a loony giving lectures on Salvador Dali in the gallery.  Pat fears he really is cracking up, like other ex-GIs he’s known.  He confesses, “It’s the one fear everybody had.

Claire Trevor and her apparent new beau, Herbert Marshall, take Pat back to his apartment.  It’s all messed up, as if somebody has overturned everything looking for something.  We also see Pat is being tailed.

Pat, scared, but wanting to get to the bottom of this, even if it means he proves he’s a nut, tries to retrace his steps according to what scraps he can remember.

He goes to the train station, rides the same train, tries to track down the same butcher boy or others who might remember seeing him.  Nobody saw him, nobody remembers him.  We are filled with the same sense of tension as before, afraid another “wreck” will happen.  Just at the pivotal moment, that train that looks as if it’s on the same tracks comes barreling at us again, and Pat is panicked.  Then-whoosh!  It passes by.  It was a double track.  The conductor calls out the name of the next stop.

Aha.  Pat realizes this was the moment something must have happened to him.  He gets off at that stop, and the station master in this tiny, empty depot remembers him from the night before, as a drunk guy being dragged off the train and into a car.

Now he knows he’s not crazy, but he’s in somebody’s way.  Mr. O’Brien is mad and on the hunt.

A murder occurs meanwhile, and he’s implicated, and Wallace Ford is after him, so Pat takes it on the lam.  We are taken to a penny arcade where he meets up with Claire Trevor trying to help him hide.  It’s a neat setting, showing what typical urban penny arcades were like in the day, a place for grownups and not kids—see the “No Minors” sign—because there’s nickelodeon peep shows and stuff.

 

Pat slugs people.  He x-rays masterpieces.  He appeals to the mousy secretary of his museum boss to help him investigate a forgery connection to the museum.  Even Mary Ware, played by Mary Ware, is not what she seems.

We go to a cocktail party, end up at a rusty freighter at the wharf, where Pat saves a valuable canvas from a fire.  Ultimately, we have a showdown between Pat and the mastermind of the mysterious gang, and we discover the reason for his psychotic episode at the beginning of the film.  It might seem like a slightly goofball ending after all that noir atmosphere, but it’s a fun movie, especially for being offbeat.  Keep an eye out for Ellen Corby as a maid.

But, especially keep your eye on the graying middle-aged action hero with the knowledge of art history, a devotion to his mom, and a growing paunch at his belly.  Pat O’Brien was lucky to get the part with so many younger pretty boys in Hollywood, but none of them would probably be as interesting.  He earned it, because he gives it not so much an “edge” as a burnished shine. 

 

Besides, film noir protagonists are supposed to be world-weary and haunted—and who is more tired and cynical, and has as deep a back story as a middle-aged man?

As we discussed in last week’s Adventure in Manhattan, also about art theft, the surprise mystery or what we do not expect from a film doesn’t have to be a shocking plot device.  It can just be a little quirk that sticks out and fools us—and intrigues us.

 

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Here's a preview of the cover of Dismount and Murder - number three in my cozy mystery series.  The book will likely come out in November, and I'll post more about that in weeks to come.  The artwork here is by the amazing Casey Koester, the Noir Girl.

 

  

Bogie on the Big Screen

Florida Overseas Highway - JT Lynch photo

 

A few years ago I drove the Florida Overseas Highway from the mainland out to Key West where Route 1 stops and we could go no further. At this point, Cuba is closer than Miami. A stunning scenic route unlike any other. For the motorist, a sense of freedom mixed with a strange sense of risk taking. I loved it. One of the reasons I always wanted to take this trip was the opening sequence of “Key Largo” (1948) where we see Humphrey Bogart’s bus venture out on a thin ribbon of cement over the immense ocean, the bus growing smaller and more vulnerable in a long shot. It represents escape and adventure at the same time. Freedom and risk taking.

Recently I went to see “Key Largo” on the big screen, and this scene on the highway over the ocean -- seen on the big screen -- seems to take the viewer down the road with the bus, rather than as a distant observer. The big screen embraces us, and we become isolated, too.

I love to read about other bloggers’ experiences seeing classic films in theaters, but this was a first for me. A few impressions:

I had seen “Key Largo” many times on TV, so every bit of dialogue was familiar, and yet I was fascinated by close-ups of Bogart and Edward G. Robinson looming down on me, which expressed power and power struggle that I had not noticed on the small screen. A downward glance from either seemed to fix me in their gaze. Facial flaws magnified, and greatness magnified as well. What was merely ugly became grotesque, and what was merely appealing became heroic.

The final scenes where Bogart is taking the gangsters to Cuba on the fishing vessel, and the fog seems to envelop us as well. We are not watching the boat; we are on the boat.

Claire Trevor’s breakdown, so brittle and yet so resilient, and Lauren Bacall’s open curiosity about the stranger Bogart, her telegraphed attraction. The doomed deputy’s face-off with Robinson, and the sheriff’s face-off with the captive, frustrated Lionel Barrymore over the Seminole fugitives. It seemed like a new movie to me, and, perhaps naively, I found myself thinking, “So, THIS is what John Houston meant.”

Other bloggers who’ve written about watching classic films on the big screen often remark on audiences who are sometimes less than appreciative, or openly ridiculing. The theater I attended was the Amherst Cinema, a small college town venue in rural central Massachusetts. Most of the audience appeared to be middle aged or older, with only a handful of college age kids that I could see. School hasn’t started yet, so I imagine there would have been more younger people were this shown in the fall.

Amherst Cinema, Amherst, Mass. - JT Lynch photo

It was converted from an old livery stable in the 1920s and has served as a movie theater for many decades before closing, and then re-opening after renovation about five years ago. It is not a “restored” period movie house, rather is it a modernized facility housing a couple of theaters in the building, small and modern, stadium seating. (The land upon which the theater was built was once the site of the 19th Century Amherst Academy, where Emily Dickinson attended school in her pre-recluse days, and also young Sylvester Graham, who gave us the Graham cracker.)

There were only a couple of chuckles from the audience over the gangsters, but I’m not sure if it’s because their speech sounded corny, or if the audience was just getting a kick out of film which was as familiar to them as it was to me. A little of both, maybe.

The only moment of audience reaction that really bothered me came from a couple of women sitting behind me, who were older than me, and bust out in guffaws when Lionel Barrymore described a hurricane that devastated the Keys. The gangsters are nervous about the approaching hurricane at this point in the film, and they ask him how bad the storm could get. Lionel describes trains wrecked and bodies tossed out to sea, and for weeks afterwards corpses drifting into the mangrove swamps.

These ladies thought that was an absolute hoot. I admit, I was ready to turn around belt them. It ruined an otherwise intense moment in the film.

Then I realized that because Lionel Barrymore holds the whip hand in this scene, they probably thought he was making it up, telling tales to scare the bad guys, since it was the only power he, an older, frail, wheelchair-bound man, had over them. It makes sense, and if that were really the case, then I agree the scene would be funny.

Islamadora Monument to victims of 1935 Florida hurricane - JT Lynch photo

Except the hurricane he describes really happened. The 1935 Florida hurricane was what we now think might have been a Category 5. Several hundred people were killed, including a trainload of World War I vets who arrived for promised relief work with the WPA during the Depression.

There have been generations of risk taking on this route.

Islamadora Monument to victims of 1935 Florida hurricane - JT Lynch photo

At one time, the only link from the mainland all the way out to Key West was not an overseas highway, but an overseas train route. After this horrific hurricane, what remained of the railroad tracks were paved over for the highway. That thin ribbon of cement we see in the opening and closing scenes of “Key Largo” was built (at least in part) because of the hurricane Lionel Barrymore describes.

This is another example of why a classic film will have much more meaning for us if we take the trouble to understand the context of the era. You’re not going to “get it” if you have no concept of what was going on in the real world at the time the film was made.

It’s like driving someplace in the fog. So, these women, surrounded in their own fog of ignorance, laughed.

But, you just can’t stand up in the middle of a movie theater and give a lecture on the 1935 hurricane, can you? Even if you’re struggling to suppress an asinine urge to give a history lesson.

That’s why I blog. I get so much off my chest. And you are the unfortunate victims.

At the end of the movie, however, everybody applauded, which I suppose was why they were there at all -- to share their appreciation with others who felt the same way. Even the ones who laugh at mangrove swamps full of corpses.

For another Big Screen Bogie experience, have a look at this great recent post by The Lady Eve at a stunning and unique presentation of “Casablanca” in her neck of the woods.

Key West, end of Route 1 - JT Lynch photo