A Movie Nearly Every Night: Evelyn Prentice

Evelyn Prentice (1934)
Dir. William K. Howard
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Una Merkel, Rosalind Russell, Isabel Jewell

whoo!

It's a woman's picture, sure. Hey, I like those too, sometimes more than the boy pictures. And my mom recommended it -- can you think of a better way to hear about a woman's picture? Honestly, if you can't trust your mom on girl movies then the world is in worse shape than I thought.

So, pardon me while I put on my feminist hat for this one, boys.

I'm currently reading a biography of Irving Thalberg. Yes, it's the third one I've read and no, nothing terribly new in this one so far, except that it talks a bit more about his relationships with the women on his lot, including my idol Frances Marion, who wrote a stack of movies dating all the way back to The New York Hat (1916). Don't know about The New York Hat? Have you heard of D.W. Griffith? Yeah, he gets a lot of credit for that movie, leaving Anita Loos and Frances Marion out in the cold.

But I digress (and on Frances Marion I can go on for days).

Anyway, another top writer at MGM was Lenore Coffee. According to Mark Viera's book "Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince" Coffee helped save some crappy films, but when she stood up to Thalberg he dropped her like a bag of dirt. Then, when he needed her again, he hired her back without a contract and cut her pay.

Dude. And you know I love Thalberg, but I guess nobody's perfect after all, huh?

Anyway it was good to see Lenore Coffee's name on Evelyn Prentice. It's a juicy little story. William Powell and Myrna Loy are married rich folk who get mixed up in a whole lot of trouble when lawyer Powell has a slight almost-indiscretion with client Rosalind Russell.

The family that exercises together...

I won't tell you what happens, because it's got some twists, but it all takes place in less than an hour and half. Gotta love the swift ones. (Have I mentioned Three on a Match (1932)? Kidnapping, adultery, drug addiction, Bette Davis and Joan Blondell squeezed into 60 fun minutes. See that movie too.)

Obviously Myrna Loy is the big draw. She's fantastic and I don't just say that because my grandmother was her stand-in, but that's part of why I like it, sure. Myrna plays this part with a quiet, I mean whispered quiet, intensity that's very different from her turns as Nora Charles in The Thin Man series, where she's sophisticated, but very there. Her Evelyn is insignificant compared to her husband's great legal life and while she's beautiful, Myrna plays her subdued and forgotten. She slides into the background and when there's tension in the courtroom ... wow, she pulls that tension even tighter when she speaks to lawyer-husband, William Powell.

Mr. Prentice discovers a little too late how to defend his case

Also starring are Una Merkel as the amusing friend who keeps things lively, but also complicates things a little with her meddling...

"The last time I mixed a cocktail four people eloped,
the butler did nip-ups and a man made love to his wife!"

... and, as mentioned before, our own Rosalind Russell, who appears here in her first movie playing the kind of person I don't think she ever played again: a swanking society woman with no sense of humor about herself at all.

Breathless, glamorous
Hildy Johnson's in there somewhere, I know it

Since this is one of the few times Rosalind and Myrna appeared in the same film together, I'd like to think this is where my grandmother and Rosalind Russell became friends. "She was a good Catholic woman," my grandmother told me. Maybe they met here. Maybe they met in church. I don't know, but I'm sticking to the met-on-the-set scenario because it's fun and fabulous. (Personal trivia note: Rosalind Russell had metastasized breast cancer. Ah, Roz Russell = sister.)

By the way, the costumes here are all by Dolly Tree, who also got a little screwed by MGM. (You've heard of Adrian though, haven't you? Yeah... Dolly got the high-hat when Adrian was around.) She's got some fantastic creations in this picture, including Una Merkel's lovely lounging pajamas:


Throwing a bone to the boys -- the set design is by Cedric Gibbons and, even though he did set design for every flippin' MGM film out there, we'll give him a mention on this one for two reasons:

1. The desk drawer of the murdered man is propped with some keys, some cards, a pen, a pencil, a gun, and a worn stick of Wrigley chewing gum.

Dude! Gum! That's awesome ... I don't know why

2. The front page of this paper actually reads "GIRL KILLS GIGOLO" and, again, I don't know why, but that slays me. Slays me.

Sorry, Evelyn, but hahaha "Gigolo" ... too hilarious

But, back to the ladies. Friends, I loves Isabel Jewell. She turns up in all kinds of movies, I swear she worked for every studio at one time or another, and is included here in Evelyn Prentice where she's good girl gone bad, Judith Wilson.

"Alright, I'll tell you everything" -- boy, does she ever

Isabel Jewell always had small character roles in pictures, but never the plum leads. A Hal Erickson bio on The New York Times notes that she was "denied roles because of her height (she was well under five feet)," but Veronica Lake was only 4'11". Ah well ... Anyway, boy-o, I'll tell you what, she could do anything. Need a character who's been cheated by her man? Get Isabel on the phone.

Why you low-down scoundrel. I oughta...

How's about a doxie little bubble blonde who doesn't realize how much trouble she's in until it's too late, like in Marked Woman (1937)?

Whaaaaaaaaat?

Gun mol, goofy pal, secretary -- but then, oh THEN, she could do these out of nowhere dramatic parts, like the little seamstress who rides with Sydney Carton to the guillotine in A Tale of Two Cities (1935).

"When I look at you I'm not afraid."

She breaks your heart. I cry buckets watching the end of this movie. Buckets! All because of the way she and Ronald Colman seem to close themselves together, protecting each other from the tragedy they're riding headlong into. "You're so brave," she tells him. Ohhhhhh the tears are starting just talking about it. Two years later she was a consumptive possible-prostitute in Lost Horizon (1937) again with dapper Ronald Colman, and then the studio decide to cut a lot of her scenes ... man, Hollywood, I tell ya'. Jerks.

But my favorite Isabel Jewell moment lasts only about 45 seconds and you barely hear her even say a word. She's that oft-mentioned "white-trash Slattery girl" in Gone with the Wind (1939) seen here with Victor Jory.

Scarlet: "Who baptized your other brats after you killed my mother?"
Emmy: "Oh!"

Yeah, not a lot of time on screen, but absolutely perfect as always. Isabel, I'm glad you gave us what you did. Thank you. Thank you! You're the best.

"Sir, there's just one more thing..."

Columbo putting the screws on Patrick McGoohan

As part of the recovery process we've been watching a lot of television from Netflix. It's hard to stay alert for a whole movie, so television is a good substitute. This includes discs of Dallas (oh my God, Kristin had that baby and now what's JR going to do?) and a whole collection of great episodes of 1970's mystery television that we stream through our PlayStation.

They've got a pretty good set on that Netflix. So far we've watched some Kojak and McCloud and a little McMillan and Wife, but the best is definitely Columbo.

When I took the television detectives class at U of O only a few of the kids had some idea of who Columbo was. They'd heard of him, but it was "before my time, ya know?" so they didn't bother with him at all. Their idea of a television detective was Jack Bauer.

No. Really.

In trying to explain Columbo to the kids, our professor, Bish Sen (take his classes)(do it), said that Columbo was something of a monster who liked to torture his victims until they confessed.

Nooooooooo. Little Peter Falk? Peter Falk who wanted to read Knut Hamson? For whom I gave up some seriously flirting with an architect so I could help him go through Books in Print trying to find a copy of Hunger? Okay so Knut Hamson was a Nazi, but it was Peter Falk asking and I like to believe he was interested in what makes guys like that tick.

So wait a minute. Maybe Professor Sen was right. Maybe there's more to Columbo than I thought ... more to Peter Falk than the wrinkled sweater, the tuna sandwich and the glass eye. Columbo hides behind his shabbiness so he can really pick at these guys. I mean, think about it, he's dealing with killers. Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, William Shatner, John Cassavetes --- they all came up with elaborate plots to kill people and would get away with it if Columbo didn't stick to them like dirty fly paper. He gets up to them, goes to their houses, invades their space to take them apart and find that thing that made them do what they did. He's got to know and then, when he figures it out, he's got to pin it to these guys so they feel it. He's got to make them break.

And there's no doubt he enjoys it. He starts off innocently enough just looking for information, but when he marks his killer he likes to get at them bit by bit, question by question, irritating persistence by irritating persistence. "Sir. Sir? I gotta tell you, my wife loves [fill in the profession of the killer] and..."

Therefore it's true, he really does like to torture his victims, and this means that he is kind of a slower, more wrinkled version of Jack Bauer.

The End.

Guinness Is Good For You

Platelet Count: 30

Yay.

Red and white count back to normal. Why? Because I had 4 pints of Guinness last week, that's why.

However, sick today. Sooooooooooo very sick today. Stupid shots with their stupid stupidness. Going into work tho' because that's what I do. Coffee is for closers, people.

(and I don't have any sick time left, heh...)

In Which I Become a True Eugenian

I love the Eugene Weekly, mostly because it has Dan Savage, but I also enjoy reading the Letters to the Editor. They're usually written by the same 4 people carping about the police state of Eugene and protecting our neighborhoods from Nike and/or illegal immigrants, etc...

But last week this letter made me want to set the paper on fire:

THINK BEFORE PINK

I would like to thank you for not succumbing to the trend that has, once again, pinkwashed so many this month. In honor of the annual façade that is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM), everything from shoes to booze to buckets of abused, genetically modified chicken are now covered in pink, not to mention the sexual innuendos that have crept from Facebook status’ (I like it on the floor) to the t-shirts of teenage girls. It seems we’ve lost sight of the fact that cancer is a disease, not a joke. Furthermore, the hypocrisy of the NBCAM promoting “preventative” drugs and mammograms (the radiation from which can actually cause cancer) has me wondering whether or not the industry is concerned with cancer prevention, or in fact cancer recruitment.

In the wake of this pink tradition one would think that breast cancer “awareness” would result in less breast cancer, right? Wrong. Women today in the United States have a one in eight chance of being diagnosed with the disease, an increase from only 25 years ago when the campaign began. If women are not benefiting or profiting from the campaign, then who is? NBCAM has become nothing more than a swine merchant, the money hungry daughter of the Cancer Industry, and friend of Big Pharma.

We don’t need cancer-inducing drugs shoved down our throats as a means of preventing cancer. Breast cancer can be prevented naturally. We need an honest non-profit organization to inspire healthy lifestyles and educate; no more corporate agenda, no more exploiting our breasts and sexualizing women in the name of awareness. Education is prevention. Think before you pink!

Brittney Arlint, Eugene

I got angry, REALLY angry, and wanted to go find Brittney and kick her ass with my cancer-riddled un-natural body, because, of course, my unhealthy lifestyle is what gave me cancer. So, being of unsound mind and body, I rattled off an email to the Weekly and felt better immediately. I sometimes write letters to my grandmother or my friend Kelly -- they won't get them, but I feel better just getting it all out on paper. That's kind of how I saw this one. Since it wasn't a letter about the downtown blah-blah-blah zone or making pot legal I figure they'd file it.

This week it was printed. Friends, I am officially now one of those carping Eugene people:

PINK MONTH OK

In response to “Think Before Pink” (letters, 11/4): You need to think before you write. I also have problems with October being “Pink Month,” but not for your anti-corporate reasons. I have stage IV breast cancer. Stage IV survivors don’t get much of the donation money because most of it goes to paying for early detection and women who can’t afford mammograms. But does this mean I’m against Pink Month? No. I think using a disease that’s killing me to sell pink knick-knacks is troubling, but I also know that without those free mammograms many more would be in my shoes and I know that’s wrong.

Buying pink products means someone out there breathes a sigh of relief when the results come or when the doctor pronounces them cancer free. I’ll never be cancer free, but if buying a pink bracelet means someone else will be, then ring it up.

By the way, I had the lump before I’d ever had a mammogram, so mammogram radiation didn’t cause it. Breast cancer does not run in my family, and I was active before fatigue and pain slowed me down — I rode my bicycle to work and school; my cousin and I enjoyed hiking the Skinner Butte or Silver Falls — so it wasn’t caused by lack of exercise, another myth. Oh, and I didn’t take any Big Pharma drugs that “caused” my cancer unless you count Tylenol, but if that’s the culprit, then I guess everyone’s in trouble.

So, here’s a reality check for you: A “healthy lifestyle” may help you get through treatment, but it won’t save you from getting cancer. Before you sucker into that load of garbage talk to an oncologist or, hell, give me a call, I’ll tell you what cancer’s really like.

Li'l Hateful, Eugene

I guess I can stop shaving my legs now and wear tie-dye. It's all over.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now (1979) (regular and Redux (2001)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall

This is the end...

Why do I like this movie? It's a boy movie, a war movie, a violent and disturbing movie, but it's also an incredibly complex and detailed movie.

It's fascinating and absorbing and now that it's on Blu-ray it's clear, deep and hypnotic. The sound, which is a large part of what makes this movie so great to begin with, is even better on the Blu-ray, including this little touch that I missed on the DVD:


Willard is holding up a picture of his wife and I always thought he was just staring at her. Now you can hear the cigarette burning a hole through it.

Man, and the details ... the production design, set decoration, and art direction are all fantastic, intricate and crazy complicated. There are details to every scene: in the papers on Willard's hotel table or in Kurtz's dossier, including a lovely photo of Scott Glenn --


-- and Hopper's 80 lbs of camera equipment slung around his neck --


-- and Chef's beat-up copy of Henry Miller's Sexus --


-- and the bizarre holiday lights spanning the Do Long Bridge (which appear to be taken from the Brooklyn religious festival in Godfather Part II) --


-- and this little scene, cut out of the first version and restored in the Redux where they meet up again with the Playboy Bunnies at the Army outpost.


Everywhere is complete chaos and nothing is empty space. Add Coppola swinging his camera around and the deafening noise that builds tension until it explodes and it's completely recreated war in all its randomness. You can't help but get sucked into it. What makes this frightening spectacle so appealing is that this is all done before CGI. They had one chance to blow up a line of trees and get it on film because there was no going back and doing it again. No wonder Coppola kept threatening suicide and Martin Sheen had "exhaustion" ("He has a heart attack when I say he has a heart attack!" -- Hearts of Darkness, the documentary about making this movie, is highly, highly recommended).

And maybe that's why I can't appreciate movies like Avatar. That's just sitting at a computer and making stuff up. In Apocalypse Now they had to put it together with actual props and people and that takes a lot more work, a lot more precision and a lot more creative people to make it go.

But, sure, war is horror, and that's hard to take when it's this clear and noisy.

"I'm not goin'! I'm not goin'!"

Horror is reiterated again and an again in Kurtz's monologues to Willard ("The horror ... the horror...") and in the visuals that alternate between blowing things and people up and the remains of things and people who have been blown up. Kurtz surrounds himself in horror (not shown here because it's pretty gruesome) so that he's both part of it and master of it, but also completely lost to it. You either try and make sense of the horror and go mad like Kurtz and Willard, or you ride it like a wave, like the "cavalry" officer Kilgore.

"I love the smell of..." oh you know the rest.

Duvall plays Kilgore on a balance between operatic and straight. He's bigger than life, but he's also very matter-of-fact: "If I say it's safe to surf this beach, then it's safe to surf this beach!" Kilgore embraces his job, keeps an eye on his soldiers, and controls his destiny. Opposite him is Willard, the "grocery boy sent by clerks to collect a bill" and Kurtz, the career soldier who fought his way through the ranks until he became "like a god" to his bloodthirsty followers.

So the men in charge are out of their minds or trying to hold onto authority or both, while the masses of men out doing the work are wandering lost and confused ("Who's the C.O. here?" "Man, don't ask me that.") grasping at anything to make their lives in "the shit" bearable.

The USO brings the Bunnies to the jungle with predictable results

Who's in charge? The captains, the men, the colonels, the crazed lunatics who rise above the crap and try to rein in the destruction? No one's in charge, people. You just do your job and hope you can survive it.


John Milius clearly appreciates Conrad's themes of madness and destiny, what constitutes authority and humanity, but this is still its own story with its own statement on good and evil, winners and losers: "You're fighting the biggest nothing in history!"

Which brings us to the Redux and the visit to the French plantation.

You think you can cut me out, eh? Well, I guess you can. merde.

At first, I kind of liked that this was included, but on watching the shorter version again yesterday, I've got to agree that it really does slow down the action. We've been through so much with the PBR crew, and, sure, this gives a touch of civilization to the madness, but it also keeps you from getting to Kurtz. You just want to get to Brando and see it through and if that means losing Christian Marquand ... well, so be it, I guess. Does it change the meaning of the film? No. You already know that it's a crazy world and Willard is neither one of the men nor one of the leaders. He may be one of the civilized who succumbs and then overcomes the insanity at the end, but hanging out with the French doesn't really give you any additional insight into that.

But once you get to the end of the river and Kurtz's bizarre compound, you want to include Brando surrounded by children while he reads Time Magazine. It's a little odd, sure, but I think it should have remained in the first version or maybe traded out for the one of Hopper yakking at Sheen in the bamboo jail.

Brando and what appears to be a young film critic

Finally, my favorite part of the movie, because I always have a favorite part, is the inclusion of Assistant Director Jerry Ziesmer as an unidentified member of the group who assigns Willard to the mission -- the shirt and tie suggest CIA, but he never says who he is. All he says is:

"Terminate with extreme prejudice."

It's his only line.

Not Quite a Romanov

Platelet Count: 26

That's not too bad really. Okay, it's not great, but at least it didn't hit bottom and that's good for something. Got 2 more shots of faslodex yesterday and those are a little painful today, but I found that making stupid chit-chat with the nurse during the shot process makes it go a little faster. "Really? They can give you a ticket for trick-or-treating over the age of 12? Well, I'll tell you, in my neighborhood someone was giving out full-size candy bars and I almost went out there with a pillowcase..."

So, yeah, all this and no surprises --- no, you know there's always something new, some nutty surprise moment of "what the?" that has to happen. I am now "slightly anemic" which means that the red count is low, but not vampire low. It dropped .1 is all (37.9 = good; 37.8 = a little bit not so good) and is another red mark on my blood count sheet. Just one more thing to keep an eye on. I guess I have plenty of white cells ... for now. Yeesh. But no bone marrow biopsy in the foreseeable future. I tell you, every time he says he's going to do it my platelets stabilize.

Anyway, speaking of vampires, we watched Let the Right One In last night and it was really sweet. Okay, a little violent and stuff, but very sweet all the same. I've heard the American version is a straight-forward remake, which leads me to think that a) it's nice that someone saw the value in this one, but b) are Americans really that shallow that we have to remake a movie made last year just to get around having to read subtitles? Oy.