Bingo Crosbyana and his fan club.

Warner Bros. always made the most reliably entertaining cartoons, thanks in great part to Mel Blanc and all the wonderful characters he performed. But Warners also made a lot of first rate cartoons that had nothing to do with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig or any of their other popular characters. In the 1930s, Warners came out with several excellent cartoons that relied more on music and atmosphere than on funny dialogue or amusing plotlines. Here are three of my favorites.

Bingo Crosbyana

“Bingo Crosbyana,” a weird and wonderful cartoon, was released in 1936. If you want to own it, it’s a special feature on the DVD of “Swing Time.” The story is about a heart-throb crooner, Bingo Crosbyana. He’s a housefly in a sombrero with dainty pom-poms dangling from its wide, flat brim; his mellow baritone and languid cool make all the lady houseflies swoon, much to the consternation of their proletarian housefly swains, who cannot compete with his talent and preening self-possession. I particularly like these aggrieved menfolk in their battered, Depression Era hats: they look like the cast from “Waiting for Lefty.” When they see the erotic effect the crooner has on their women, they huddle together and murmur irritably. The ladies are so enraptured by Bingo’s melting voice that they fail to recognize that he’s vain, feckless and sick with self-love. He’s also an incorrigible show-off: he executes spectacular aerial tricks and sky-writes “How’m I doin” with a match; he pantses the gawking men as he zips past, taking their fly-buttons with him as he goes; everything he does delights the ladies and enrages the men. After his air show hi-jinx, he and a lady fly go into a spirited dance routine with fancy footwork that Fred and Ginger wouldn’t be ashamed to perform. But everything changes when a large spider suddenly drops into their midst. One look at the hairy creature and Bingo’s whole person turns bright yellow — the badge of pusillanimity. And as he runs from the marauder in an ecstasy of terror, he literally turns into a yellow streak. When the picture was first released, Bing Crosby sued — and who can blame him? The cartoon attacks Der Bingle’s manhood savagely. That’s reason enough for me to love it. But as cruel as the parody of Crosby is, it is nothing compared to the method used by the beleaguered flies to rid themselves of their arachnid intruder. The closing episode of this cartoon is bracingly, even amazingly, violent.

(The video quality of these next two clips is high, but the streaming site isn’t always reliable, so I have included their respective URLs in case they don’t load properly.)

Katnip Kollege

“Katnip Kollege,” released in 1938, is a special feature on the DVD and Blu-ray of “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” Johnnie Davis, who starred that same year in “Hollywood Hotel” (in which he sang “Hooray for Hollywood”), is the voice of Johnny Cat, whose lack of rhythm and cool makes him the butt of his classmates’ derision. Mabel Todd, who played Davis’ girlfriend in “Hollywood Hotel,” is the voice of Kitty Bright. Much of the underscoring is also from “Hollywood Hotel,” but “Katnip Kollege” is by far the more interesting picture of the two. It’s also a whole lot shorter.

If “Katnip Kollege” doesn’t load properly, try using the following link:

http://pollystreaming.com/Looney-Tunes-Katnip-Kollege_v10604

The Coo-Coo Nut Grove

This last one, “The Coo-Coo Nut Grove” is from 1936. There’s no story at all, but the animation is beautiful and the caricatures are very clever. A partial list of the celebrities includes: bandleader Ben (“Yowza, yowza”) Bernie (Ben Birdie in the cartoon), who is interrupted by columnist Walter Winchell (as Walter Windpipe); Katharine Hepburn (as a horse named Miss Heartburn); Fred Astaire; Lionel and John Barrymore; Wallace Beery; Joe E. Brown; Bette Davis; W.C. Fields; Clark Gable; Greta Garbo; Laurel and Hardy; Jean Harlow; Hugh Herbert; Charles Laughton; Groucho and Harpo Marx; Maureen O’Sullivan; George Raft; Edward G. Robinson; Ned Sparks; Johnny Weissmuller; and Mae West, who dances with George Arliss (as a turtle). Musical numbers are performed by Edna May Oliver as “The Lady in Red,” the Dionne quintuplets, and Helen Morgan, who drowns the stage — and the entire club — with tears.

If “The Coo-Coo Nut Grove” doesn’t load properly, try using this link:

http://pollystreaming.com/Looney-Tunes-The-CooCoo-Nut-Grove_v12290

Original Poster.

Here’s a speech from “Nightmare Alley” that gives a fine example of how much an actor can bring to fairly humdrum material. This speech is spoken twice in the picture — the first time, by a fine actor named Ian Keith; the second time, by Tyrone Power, a fine movie star, but a dismal actor.

Keith plays an alcoholic carny, who was once a celebrated mentalist.  While reminiscing about his glory days, he goes into the act that made him famous.

Keith: Throughout the ages, man has sought to look behind the veil that hides him from tomorrow. And through the ages, certain men have looked into the polished crystal and seen. Is it some quality of the crystal itself, or does the gazer merely use it to turn his gaze inward? Who knows? But visions come, slowly shifting their form . . . visions come. Wait! The shifting shapes begin to clear. I see fields of grass and rolling hills and a boy. A boy is running barefoot through the hills. A dog is with him. A dog is with him.

Power: Yes. His name was Gyp. Go on.

Keith: See how easy it is to hook ’em? Stock reading: fits everybody! What’s youth? Happy one minute, heartbroken the next. Every boy has a dog. I’m just an old drunk, an old lush. Zeena’ll be mad.  Good old Zeena . . .

The material isn’t bad, but it’s certainly not great. It’s no better or worse than the patter from a hundred other phony psychics. But look at what Keith does with it.

Now have a look at Power’s version of the same speech, much later in the picture. Some words are different and Power’s version is a little more cumbersome, with some stuff at the end about a grey-haired mother waiting at a gate. He, therefore, has a little more to work with, but you’ll see that he casts nothing like Ian Keith’s magic spell. Not even close.  Yet the script has been at pains to make us understand that Power’s character is as effective a mentalist as Ian Keith’s was in his heyday.

The speech presents several interesting acting challenges. To draw the audience in, the actor must seem to be in earnest, even though, in both cases, we know that he’s a phony. Both actors do appear to be entirely sincere, but the effect could hardly be more dissimilar. Power takes many of the same pauses that Keith takes, emphasizes the same words . . . but to very little effect. What’s wrong?  Broadly speaking, it’s that Power’s version is too straight-forward, too matter-of-fact. The subtle variations in the writing make Power’s version more wordy and less poetic, but I don’t believe the writing is the main problem — his interpretation is. Listen to the way the two actors handle the line “Every boy has a dog.” Power says it like an anchorman reading the news; the line means what it means on the surface and nothing else.  Keith says it accusingly, almost hysterically, with an interesting rising inflection; the subtext is “What suckers they all are!” And listen to the extraordinary difference between Keith’s reading of “See how easy it is to hook ‘em?” and Power’s. In Keith’s, the line is full of scorn, of hatred for the suckers who used to fall for his act — there’s a whole life in that one line. Power’s reading is simple bemusement bordering on apathy.  Keith pulls you in, then turns on you and laughs in your face. Power doesn’t pull you in, and doesn’t have the firepower to laugh in your face.

The repeated sentence (“A dog is with him. A dog is with him.”) presents a nice little technical challenge.  For a  good actor, it is axiomatic that repetitions must never be taken at face value.  It is never enough merely to say a line twice; the repetition must have more or different emphasis, richer subtext, carry new meaning, or justify its existence in some other, recognizable way. Ian Keith handles the repetition expertly:  the first time, it’s straight-forward description. The second time, he speaks more caressingly, as a hypnotist would; he puts more emphasis on “dog,” as if to suggest that the word has special meaning to him — or to his audience — and he elongates the “m” in the final word, “himmmm.”  His reading coaxes the response out of Power, who answers involuntarily, as if in a hypnotic trance.

There are other, less overt repetitions in the speech, as well. First, there is: “But visions come, slowly shifting their form . . . visions come.” This form of repetition, in which the beginning word or clause is repeated at the end of the sentence or phrase, is a time-honored figure of speech known as epanalepsis, but it’s only effective if the actor emphasizes it.  Then there is:  ” . . . rolling hills and a boy.  A boy is running barefoot through the hills.”  The repetition of an ending word or phrase at the beginning of the next sentence or clause is called anadiplosis. And one other thing to note:  ”A boy is running barefoot through the hills” is in strict iambic pentameter; Ian Keith stresses the iambs, which gives the line wonderful rhythmic propulsion. These figures of speech and regular metrical beats don’t just happen:  they’re carefully planned, they give a speech structure and shape. It’s a bad mistake, a cardinal sin, not to put them to use — but first, an actor must find them. Then he must figure out what to do with them.  Ian Keith may or may not have known the technical names of these and other figures of speech, but he certainly makes good use of the devices. Tyrone Power glosses over them.

Keith came from the stage, and had played a lot of Shakespeare by the time he made this picture, so he knew the importance of rhetorical devices, and how to emphasize and caress words to achieve the greatest effect. Tyrone Power came from a famous theatrical family, but he never got the hang of heightened speech. This sort of acting requires great technical skill above and beyond natural talent; it’s a form of magic, similar to sleight-of-hand and misdirection. As with a magic trick, the audience knows that their eyes are deceiving them, but they shouldn’t be able to tell how the trick is accomplished. Ian Keith is a master magician; Tyrone Power, alas, is not.

Original Poster.

An actress I like very much, Norma Varden, makes a brief appearance in the first scene of “Casablanca.” She plays the wife of Gerald Oliver Smith, the British twit with the silly hat, monocle, caterpillar moustache, sea-bass lips and zebra-striped tie who gets his pocket picked by Curt Bois.  Varden has less to do in “Casablanca” than usual — two lines only — but, as always, she presents a fully-realized personality; because the picture is so popular, it may be the role for which she is best remembered. She was born in London and was a piano prodigy in her youth. She studied in Paris and made her musical debut while still in her teens. Soon afterwards, she switched to acting. In the West End, she became a regular performer in farces at the Aldwych Theatre throughout the 1920s. In the 30s, she made a number of pictures  and eventually landed in Los Angeles with her ailing mother in 1940. “Casablanca” was one of seven pictures she made in 1942. (Over at Paramount that same year, she did an amusing turn in another, much larger role — as the wife of Robert Benchley(!) — in the first Hollywood picture Billy Wilder directed: “The Major and the Minor.”) When she retired in 1969, she had 152 credits. She died on January 19, 1989, one day before her 91st birthday.

Gerald Oliver Smith, Jack Wise, Norma Varden: They also serve who only stand and wait.

Jack Wise is the waiter who stands impassively (but slightly irritably) by, while Gerald Oliver Smith fumbles comically about, looking for his wallet that’s no longer there. Wise appeared in 172 pictures, and just about never got a credit. So I’m giving him a credit here. He’s proof that there are indeed small parts.  It’s a tiny part, and he does it up brown. Like a good waiter, he’s not the center of attention, but he conveys just enough impatience to prove he’s a person, not merely an extra; he has a life beyond this foolish British couple who are wasting his valuable time. Without giving any obvious indications, you can tell that Wise’s nameless waiter hates this Limey son of a bitch, and knows he’s about to be stiffed through no fault of his own . . . and it’s hot.

Speaking of foolish couples, consider Herr und Frau Leuchtag. They, too, have only one scene, but they’re quite unforgettable. Frankly, I’m not crazy about him. Ilka Grüning seems perfect in her role — sweet, without being cloying.

Ludwig Stössel, Ilka Grüning as Herr und Frau Leuchtag.

Herr Leuchtag:  Liebchen . . . Sveetness-heart, vat vatch?

Frau Leuchtag:  Ten vatch . . .

Herr Leuchtag:  Such much?

Carl the Headwaiter:  You will get along beautifully in America . . .

Ludwig Stössel plays the sweet old darling, Herr Leuchtag. Like the horrible, ubiquitous S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, he was from Austria-Hungary, and spent his career on playing courtly, cutesy-pie old gentlemen from “ze olt countr-r-ry.” He achieved his greatest fame in a series of Italian Swiss Wine Colony commercials.  Stössel was “That Little Old Winemaker, Me.”

“That Little Old Winemaker, Me” — Ludwig Stössel in his most famous role.

Those of us who grew up seeing those terrible ads may never forgive him. For those who were too young to see them, here’s a sampling of two — the color registry is atrocious, much in keeping with the product the ads promote. By the way, that’s folk singer Glenn Yarbrough who sings the insipid jingle. When these commercials first aired on television, Yarbrough was accused of selling out . . . but selling out what? Or whom? The Limeliters? It would have been more appropriate to accuse him of scraping the bottom of the barrel — Stössel, too.

The Medicine Dropper Quartet juices up in preparation for the waltz.

Here, with minimal introduction, is my favorite cartoon of all time.  It’s from Metro in 1936.  This cartoon is a Special Feature on the DVD of “San Francisco,” which I wrote about the other day.  I am very fond of “San Francisco,” but am seldom in the mood to look at the whole thing; occasionally, I’m not in the mood to look at any of it.  I am, however, always in the mood to look at “Bottles” again.  As you will see for yourself, it’s nearly plotless; it’s really nothing more than a ten minute acid trip — most of which is charming and good-natured, but it turns nightmarish in the last minute or so.

No matter how many times I see “Bottles,” it never fails to draw me into its enchantment.  I love to see the bath salts dance the Sailors’ Hornpipe while a pair of inflated red rubber gloves whistle the tune.  I love to hear the hot water bottle basso sing “Lost in the Cradle of the Deep” to the accompaniment of a tuba.  I love how the India ink fakir charms the Cobra Toothpaste from his tube by playing on an eye-dropper oboe.  I love the quartet of inebriate medicine droppers who play a woozy waltz melody atop four wine glasses.  (By the way, Hitchcock and Waxman used this same waltz in the first reel of “Rebecca”:  it underscores the scene in the Monte Carlo hotel restaurant, where Laurence Olivier has breakfast with Joan Fontaine.  I have yet to identify its title . . . but I will.)

Look at the fabulous individuality of those four terpsichorean soaks!  Each one of them is distinct; each is at a different level of drunkenness.  The episode lasts only a few seconds, but what lively seconds they are!  The members of the Medicine Dropper Quartet are the drollest drunks I ever saw. They, in particular, take me back to my younger days, when I spent many a carefree night on the dance floor.  I know first-hand the euphoria those droppers enjoy as they go circling round the rims. Et in Arcadia ego. And by the time the talcum powder begins to shake snowflakes out of his bum onto the heads of the Dutch boy and girl skaters (courtesy of the Old Mill Perfume display), I’m completely under the spell of “Bottles.”  The happy hallucinatory atmosphere delights me.  I love the hilarious nightmare that begins at the entrance of the Spirits of Ammonia!  I love the Halloween haunted house orchestration.  I love all the bassoon music.  I love the music throughout the entire cartoon.  I love everything about “Bottles.”

Terpsichor . . . wheeee!

Nothing else from the Hugh Harmon/Rudolph Ising “Happy Harmonies” catalogue (which was Metro’s answer to Disney’s “Silly Symphony” series) ever came close to this blissfully weird ten-minute exercise in cheerful surrealism.

Spirits of Ammooohhhnia! (Brrrrrrr!)
Things that creep up oooohhhn ya! (Brrrrrr!)

“Bottles” was not nominated for an Oscar, of course.  Another, much less interesting “Happy Harmonies” cartoon, “The Old Mill Pond,” snagged a nomination, but the award that year went to “The Country Cousin,” one of Disney’s “Silly Symphony” cartoons.  It’s standard issue:  the animation is excellent, as one expects of a Disney cartoon from that era, but I don’t think it’s half as much fun or nearly so imaginative as “Bottles.”  Worse, it’s rife with that same old Disneyesque scorn for urbanity and sophistication that I see and dislike so much in so many of his pictures.

“The Country Cousin” is an eight minute, wordless retelling of the old Country Mouse/City Mouse story.  The entire first half of the cartoon relies on variations on a single joke:  the newly arrived bumpkin rodent keeps making an unseemly racket and his top-hatted, citified cousin must keep shushing him.  At the four minute mark, the bumpkin swallows a great deal of hot mustard, which causes great clouds of black smoke to billow from his burning mouth as from a locomotive’s smokestack.  To douse the mustard’s fiery corrosion, the rustic innocent drinks off an entire dish of Champagne — this is a Disney cartoon, so drunkenness is immediate and dreadful.  (The comic antics in Disney cartoons nearly always involve intense pain or extreme discomfort.)  The next three minutes are taken up with the harmful effects of demon alcohol:  dizziness, nausea, remorse, loss of balance, belligerence, impairment of judgment, headache . . . the works — everything but the madcap hilarity of light-headedness.  The final minute takes the hungover bumpkin out into the nightmare streets of the city, where he must dodge murderously fast traffic that keeps roaring at him from every direction until at last he comes upon a sign that points him back to the bucolic nowhere from whence he came.  And back he goes, without bidding his host good-bye — like a Hollywood agent.

It’s interesting to compare the Disney cartoon’s censoriousness about alcohol consumption to the pie-eyed hilarity of the bibulous medicine droppers in “Bottles”:  they are seen to be very tipsy indeed, yet while in their cups, they have a grand old time, wear shit-eating grins on their faces and play music in tune.  I’ll take Happy Harmonies’ merry tipplers over Disney’s sorehead sots any day.  In Disney cartoons, the drunks never have any fun.

Original Poster. ‘Together for the first time’ . . . and the last.

When “San Francisco” (MGM, 1936) was first announced, the combination of Clark Gable (as Barbary Coast saloon-keeper Blackie Norton) and Jeanette MacDonald (as fluttery songbird Mary Blake) must have seemed an unlikely one, but they make a surprisingly effective pair.  They have real chemistry:  he seems genuinely to attract and terrify her (as the story calls for), while her nervous bravado genuinely seems to amuse him.  MacDonald frequently played women on the run from the baritone or tenor into whose caress she would inevitably fall, but this may be the only time that the Iron Butterfly (as she was often called) seemed to be in any real danger of losing control of the situation.  She was never funnier.  Here she is near the beginning of the picture, when she comes looking for a job from Clark Gable.

The guy who cracks wise at the end of the scene is Ted Healy, a popular comedian of the era.  Among other things, Healy was well-known for his a long association with the Three Stooges (he and Moe Howard were childhood friends).  In the 1920s, he was the highest paid entertainer in vaudeville.  He died in 1937 under mysterious circumstances.  His death certificate issued by the State of California lists the cause of death as toxic nephritis, but newspapers at the time reported that he died of complications from a serious head injury sustained in a nightclub donnybrook while celebrating the birth of his first child; other reports claimed he died of a heart attack at home.  Take your pick.  I like the head injury story — it comports well with the Three Stooges connection.

As Mat, the manager of the Paradise, Healy plays a small but important one-joke role.  He thinks Blackie’s crazy for hiring this dame — her kind of singing will drive the customers away.  Blackie has big plans for his new discovery, but some changes will have to be made.  The first time he hears her twittering the title song, he stops her.

Blackie:  Wait a minute, whaddya think I’m runnin’ here, a funeral parlor?  Give it this! [He goes to the piano and bangs it out in loud-and-fast whorehouse style]

MacDonald, Gable: ‘Give it this!’

Blackie:  Put something into it!  Heat it up! That’s what it’s about!  San Francisco!

Mary:  But I can’t sing like that, Mr Norton . . .

Blackie:  That’s the way you’re going to sing it, or you’re not gonna sing it for Blackie!

That’s Blackie the pragmatic saloon-keeper talking; in his heart, he knows that she’s slumming, that she’s too good for his trap.  Mat does not:  he has little use for her airs and graces, and none at all for her lugubrious ululations.  So he serves as an insurance policy for low-brows.  Every time she opens her mouth, Mat is on hand to make it all right for us to dislike her kind of singing, too.

The first time we see Mary perform publicly at the Paradise, she’s dressed in one of Adrian’s silliest costumes, though there a few others in the picture to rival it.  She looks like a cross between Big Bird and the Merry Widow, but her prim stuffiness also reminds me of a star-bellied Sneetch.

Jeanette MacDonald, the Toast of the Barbary Coast: Swing out, sister! She’s a good sport, I’ll give her that.

Upon hearing Mary Blake rehearse a number at the Paradise, a visiting opera impresario, il maestro Baldini (William Ricciardi), expresses his admiration by quoting a proverb from Plautus’ comedy, “The Captives”:  ”Ut sæpe summa ingenia in occulto latent!”  After a slight pause, Blackie says, “Ya took the words right outta my mouth.”  Roughly translated, the Plautine maxim is, “How often the greatest talent lies hidden in obscurity!” or more roughly translated, “What’s a nice girl like that doing in a dump like this?”  No translation is offered in the picture.  I assume this is because Latin was still taught in public schools when the picture came out, and the quotation was nearly as familiar to Latin students as Caesar’s “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.”  The quotation has something in common with Shakespeare’s famous maxim, “To thine own self be true”: in both cases, the character in the play who speaks it is a comic scoundrel. In “The Captives,” the speaker of the apothegm is listed in the dramatis personæ as “Ergasilus, the parasite” — he’s an ancient blend of George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer; he says the line as a means of flattering the rich old fool from whom he’s trying to cadge a free dinner.  This strikes me as a nice metaphor for “San Francisco” as an entertainment:  at heart, it’s a roguish stew of romantic comedy, melodrama and cheerfully corny music, but it is tricked out with Latin quotations and operatic sequences to give it class and flatter our intelligence.  Ironically, the highfalutin stuff makes the picture more vulgar, not less.  At any rate, it’s a lot of fun.

The picture also contains more than a few speeches by God-fearing Catholic Cassandras, who assure us that San Francisco’s godlessness is bound to lead to the Armageddon of the final reel.  The first time I saw the picture, the amount of religious chatter about wickedness and divine retribution startled me.  In places, it’s practically a love letter to the Church of Rome.  Not only Father Mullins (Spencer Tracy) gets to spout, but comical old Mrs Burley (Jessie Ralph) has a long, maundering speech about End of Days, and MacDonald sings not one, but three hymns: “Jerusalem,” “Nearer My God to Thee” and, at the very end “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” . . . all this in a picture written by that arch-flapper, Anita Loos!  Lorelei Lee takes the veil.  Is it possible she was serious?  At length, I decided it was just Metro’s way of putting on airs, because they thought it gave the picture gravitas.  It doesn’t.  It doesn’t do any harm, either: it merely makes it a little bit sillier.  It amuses me that il signor Baldini actually misquotes Plautus quite badly (the quotation above is correct:  why rehearse error?) . . . I’d like to think this was intentional, but I doubt it.

Gable, Tim Holt, William Ricciardi: The Plautus thickens . . .

Here’s a scene with Gable playing Big Bad Wolf to MacDonald’s Little Red Riding Hood, and with some Godly rigmarole thrown in.  It offers a fair idea of what the whole picture is like — saints and sinners side by side.  MacDonald’s timorousness in the last seconds of this clip is, I think, the wittiest bit of acting she ever did.  Elsewhere in the picture, she’s up to her usual, artificial tricks — indignant little sniffs, silent era pantomime gestures and so forth. Her acting in this scene isn’t exactly realistic, either, but it’s specific, beautifully timed and very funny. The way her eyes dart about before she she speaks Blackie’s name, and the fraidy-cat whisper she employs when she says, “Blehckie . . .” give the impression that she believes she has just taken her first uncertain step down the primrose path to Perdition. I think it’s hilarious.  Billie Burke couldn’t have played this moment better.

Blackie’s atheism is just scornful enough to let you know that he’ll have to convert in the final reel, after the vengeful God has set his rafters a-rattling and crushed thousands of sinners, women, children and dress extras under piles of balsa wood debris.

As a matter of fact, the earthquake sequence is thrilling.  The special effects are astonishingly realistic; the juxtaposition of ceilings caving in, walls crumbling, buildings collapsing, pavement opening up, followed by moments of quiet and then even more calamitous aftershocks — sudden explosions, fireballs, nearly-rescued victims being buried under new torrents of falling bricks — it’s all very life-like and terrifying.  And unlike nearly every disaster flick that followed “San Francisco,” the story does not seem like it’s simply marking time before the disaster strikes.

Here’s the Judy Garland version of the title song, with the witty verse written specially for her by Roger Edens.

Here are four very dissimilar scenes that have two things in common: they’re all examples of Hollywood’s idea of high-minded drama, and they all make me laugh out loud, no matter how often I see them.

A Woman’s Face

Original Poster.

This first one is from “A Woman’s Face” (MGM, 1941).  It’s hard to tell whether or not the screenwriter, Donald Ogden Stewart, was kidding around.  He wrote a lot of the prestige pictures for Metro in the 30s and 40s, but many of the prestige pictures — “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” “Marie Antoinette,” “The Philadelphia Story,” for example — are damned idiotic.  If Stewart was kidding around with this little exchange, Joan Crawford certainly wasn’t in on the gag, but I’ll bet Connie Veidt was laughing on the inside.  This happens to be one of my favorite exchanges from any picture.

Stage Door

Original Poster.

Here’s the famous “The calla lillies are in bloom again” scene from “Stage Door” (RKO, 1937).  The screen version was radically altered from the original play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman.  When Kaufman saw it, he told screenwriter (and former collaborator) Morrie Ryskind:  ”You should’ve changed the title to ‘Screen Door.’ ”

“Those are not the lines . . . ”  ”No, but it’s the mood!”  Imagine what would happen if actors relied on moods rather than scripts!  Mario Siletti, a teacher at Stella Adler’s Studio, used to warn student actors against playing moods:  ”Mood spelled backwards is doom!”  Then he’d rap his knuckles on a table top and point an accusing finger:  ”Does this make sense to you?”  

The Fountainhead

Original Poster.

I have a great relish for full-speed-ahead wrongheadedness, so this following speech is one of my all-time favorites — I can’t even think about it without laughing.  It’s Henry Hull tearing a passion to tatters at the very beginning of “The Fountainhead” (Warner Bros., 1949).  Ayn Rand insisted on writing the screenplay herself, so it was bound to be loaded with laughs.  The whole picture is played at this fevered pitch — it’s a sustained temper tantrum that lasts one hundred and fourteen minutes.  Ayn Rand’s rants remind me of a freight train highballing around a horseshoe curve:  clattering, intense, dangerously unbalanced and wholly unnecessary.  Don’t try to watch “The Fountainhead” in one sitting — the joke wears thin very quickly.  Taken in small doses, however, it’s chock-full of chuckles.  You can start watching at just about any point, and you’re almost guaranteed to see some hilarious nonsense tout de suite.  At the end of this scene, notice how much trouble Gary Cooper has pronouncing his own character’s name — he almost chokes on his back-palate r’s.  Notice, too, how crooked Hull’s bow-tie is . . . that kills me.  What a shame they didn’t rig it so that it could twirl at every uptick in agita.

Rand wrote only two other screenplays:  ”You Came Along,” a dopey romantic comedy starring “Love That Bob” Cummings, and “Love Letters,” a soapy melodrama involving murder, amnesia and an irrational dread of the mailman.  Both pictures are idiotic, but her heart clearly wasn’t in the work — so they’re not nearly as funny or entertaining as “The Fountainhead.” I am full of ambivalence over this business of laughing scornfully at bad writing and wrongheaded acting, especially when it’s obvious that the people involved were wholly committed to their bad ideas. But that, of course, is what makes it so painfully funny: ever since (and, presumably, long before) the Rude Mechanicals performed “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus/And his love Thisbe: Very tragical mirth” at the end of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the mismatch of high-mindedness and ineptitude has been making audiences laugh. In the case of Ayn Rand, I feel no remorse at roaring with derisive laughter at every word she ever wrote.

The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Original Poster.

“The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse” almost sank Metro in 1962. They had repaired their sagging fortunes three years earlier with a CinemaScope remake of their biggest epic of the silent era, “Ben-Hur,” and now they hoped to do the same thing with the old Rudolph Valentino vehicle. Nothing doing. Vincente Minnelli fought long and hard to get Alain Delon for the romantic lead, but the suits at Metro knew better: they wanted an American star, so they chose Glenn Ford, who turned out to be an Edsel. Ingrid Thulin was also cast in it, but preview audiences found her Swedish accent impenetrable, so Angela Lansbury dubbed her entire part at the last minute. Once you know it’s Lansbury, the voice is unmistakable. The picture is very long and tedious and portrays the Nazis as a very rum bunch indeed. But there is one scene in the first hour that makes the DVD worth owning. It is Lee Cobb’s stupendously over-the-top death scene. Cobb plays an Argentine grandee, the paterfamilias to a family with two distinct branches, one French, the other German. They all gather for his birthday celebration and at the banquet, el señor Cobb discovers that one of his grandsons (Karl Böhm) is a high ranking official in the Nazi party.  Cobb rises slowly from the head of the table, lumbers down below the salt, where the youthful Nazi sits, and demands in a croaking voice, “Say ‘Heil Hitler’ in this house.  Say ‘Heil Hitler.’ ”  The dutiful Nazi does as el abuelo viejo bids him do, whereupon Cobb slaps him as hard as decrepitude and Method acting will allow.  This is what follows:

I feel no twinge of guilt about laughing at this one, either.  Cobb was an incorrigible old ham and it makes me happy to see him tear down the curtains from their rings and stagger out of doors and fall face down into a mud puddle (it’s almost certainly a stunt double).  I love the little aristocratic wave of his hand (like the Queen in her carriage) as he stumbles toward the patio doors, the damask curtains and thence to Eternity; I love the way he tries to out-bellow André Previn’s magnificent score; I love the hammy pauses he takes at the beginning while he revs up his engines. I hope you’ll take my advice and have a look at this picture.  I have shown only a small portion of a much longer scene, and it is all hilarious — every important moment is punctuated by the most tremendous crack of sound effects thunder. There’s a lot of meat and fowl on the dinner table and a lot of hams sitting round it.  And there is that score, which it almost killed me to cut short (believe me, I didn’t want to).  Once Cobb is dead and the story moves to Paris, the picture has little to recommend it, except for the score.  It is beautifully photographed, but God is it ever dull . . . !

Original poster. A truly pretty good motion picture and an awful poster.

When Jane Greer was cast as the femme fatale in “Out of the Past,” director Jacques Tourneur explained what he wanted from her: “First half of film, good girl; second half of film, bad girl. No big eyes!”  In “The Heiress” (Paramount, 1949), Olivia de Havilland pulls essentially the same trick, though she uses big eyes from first to last.  For two thirds of the picture, she plays Catherine Sloper as a ninny, almost a mental defective; she pitches her voice up high and speaks her dialogue like a child reciting “The boy stood on the burning deck.”  Then she gets her heart broken good and hard, whereupon her voice drops an octave and she is instantaneously transformed into a shrewd, cynical, hard-bitten spinster with steel in her spine and ice water in her veins.  She won the Academy Award for her performance.  Taken as a whole, what she does is little more than a parlor trick, but there are individual scenes that she plays beautifully.

Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift

Catherine is an unattractive, painfully shy young woman who lives at 16 Washington Square with her imposing father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson) and his recently widowed sister Lavinia (Miriam Hopkins).  Catherine’s late mother was a great beauty; Dr. Sloper cannot conceal his shame and irritation that their child has grown up to be so untalented, awkward and brainless.

When Catherine falls in love with a handsome young man named Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), Dr. Sloper very quickly concludes that her suitor is a fortune hunter.  Lavinia, a sentimentalist and busybody, believes otherwise.

Catherine has an annual inheritance of $10,000 from her late mother, and stands to inherit an additional $20,000 annuity upon her father’s death.  Dr. Sloper threatens to leave his entire estate to his clinic if she marries young Townsend.  But when the girl proves obdurate, Dr. Sloper loses all patience; the savagery of his scorn is overwhelming.  Richardson played the role in the West End; Basil Rathbone played it on Broadway.  Rathbone must have been excellent, but I doubt anyone could have played, or will ever play, this scene better than Sir Ralph.

You can hear how her voice descends on “Oh, what a terrible thing to say to me . . . ”  There’s more heartbreak on the way for Catherine, but from that line till the end of the picture, her voice stays down at the bottom of her range.

de Havilland as Catherine Sloper: The harassed heiress.

Ruth and Augustus Goetz, who wrote the play and the screen adaptation of Henry James’ novella, “Washington Square,” greatly altered the story by giving Catherine the sort of second act that she doesn’t get in the book.  The same terrible things happen to her, but she responds differently.  For instance, near the end of the Goetzes’ adaptation, her Aunt Lavinia asks, “Can you be so cruel?” and Catherine replies, “Yes, I can be very cruel.  I have been taught by masters.”  It’s a great line, perhaps the best in the play and movie . . . but it’s not in the book; more importantly, Henry James’ Catherine couldn’t have said such a thing:  she doesn’t have that sort of sophistication.

Miriam Hopkins is surprisingly wonderful as Aunt Lavinia; it may well be the only good performance she ever gave.  Richardson is superb as Dr. Sloper; he is reason enough to see the picture. Betty Linley reprises her Broadway role (Mrs Montgomery, Townsend’s sister).  Her scene with Richardson is exquisitely acted.  ”The Heiress” is the only picture she ever made.  Montgomery Clift, alas, is less good. He was never more handsome (even though some of his costumes make him look like Jiminy Cricket), but his posture and casual speech make him seem to exist in a different century from the rest of the cast.

de Havilland, Clift: Promises in the rain.

It’s a great shame that William Wyler hated Aaron Copland’s sparse score.  He had much of it reorchestrated and reconceived by Hugo Friedhofer, who did the Oscar-winning “important” score for Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives.”  Those bars of Copland’s score that remain unaltered offer sad testimony of how great the score must have been before Wyler insisted on a grander, more traditional Hollywood sound.

I’ve never been any good at finding treasures at flea markets, thrift stores or junk shops.  Some people have a remarkable talent for detecting a Rembrandt in the midst of a clutter of paintings of poker-playing dogs and gloomy clowns.  Not me:  all I see is junk.  The same was true about motion pictures until DVDs came along.  Only then did I begin to realize that a lot of great songs and routines are to be found in some of the worst musicals and TV shows.  Here are seven examples of numbers that I think are much better than their surroundings.

Thank Your Lucky Stars 

Original poster.

“Thank Your Lucky Stars” is one of Warner Bros.’ many wartime morale-boosting revues. This one features an exasperating storyline and Eddie Cantor at his most tiresome, twice:  he plays himself and a schlemiel who looks just like him.  Oy.  Yet there are several good numbers in it that make it worth knowing.  Here’s the one I like best, featuring va-va-va-voom Ann Sheridan.

Love Isn’t Born (It’s Made)

Till the Clouds Roll By

1946 Advertisement.

“Till the Clouds Roll By” is not a bad picture, it’s worse.  It’s . . . what can you say about a biography of Jerome Kern, starring that legend of the Jewish Rialto, Robert Walker; co-starring Van Heflin as a frustrated professorial composer (and fictional) best friend; and ending with Frank Sinatra, in a white tuxedo, crooning “Old Man River”? How about: “It’s an abomination”? It is possibly the very worst of all the A-list Arthur Freed musicals (“Yolanda and the Thief” is equally insufferable, and it’s creepy in a way this one isn’t, but it at least has a certain demented imagination). “Till the Clouds Roll By” . . . Clouds? What clouds?  This picture is devoid of dramatic tension of any kind. Will the nice young lady marry Jerry Kern? Why, yes! Will his music find favor in England? Why, yes! Will he find success on Broadway?  Why, yes!  On his very first time out?  Why, yes!  Will Jerry’s fictional loser friend be jealous of his great success? Why, no! As far as I can remember — it’s been a while since I’ve been able to sit through the whole wretched mess — the biggest drama occurs in the scene that begins with Jerry’s astonished voice-over: “I never thought I’d ever keep . . . a scrap-book!” He gives his no-talent, no-count goddaughter (Lucille Bremer, for once in a part that fits) a break — a small part in a show — then has to take her song away from her — but it’s Marilyn Miller (Judy Garland) who does the dirty work for him.  The girl kicks up a rumpus and Jerry has to scold her:  ”There’s a little thing called . . . ‘the Good-of-the-Show,’ ” etc.  That’s it. The girl cries, then repents. So much for turmoil.  Even the names of his shows are free of drama:  ”Hitchy-Koo” . . . ! ”Toot Toot!” . . . ! “She’s a Good Fellow” . . . ! “Night Boat” . . . !  ”Good Morning Dearie” . . . !  But it has several wonderful numbers in it.  This one’s my favorite, and it’s the only time I’ve ever heard anyone sing the verse, which is lovely.

Look for the Silver Lining

It Happened in Brooklyn

TCM Promo.

An appalling picture, very nearly unwatchable.  Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford play a pair of sadsacks just back from World War II, whom no girls want to date.  They’re bashful, you see . . . Jimmy Durante is Cupid.  Why go on?  Yet about forty minutes in, Sinatra introduces one of Jule Styne’s best songs; his performance, in my opinion, is the best of his career.

Time after Time

Small Town Girl

Original poster.

One of the sticky sweet concoctions from the Joe Pasternak unit at Metro. Pasternak went in for the cotton candy operetta white picket fence Americana-style kitsch. In this one, there are several bizarre elements. In the first place, it’s directed by Busby Berkeley, who incorporated a few lunatic ideas into it — as for instance, the Ann Miller number “Gotta Hear That Beat,” in which all the musicians are under the floor, with their arms extending through holes and holding onto their instruments. It’s very weird . . . and pointless. Miller taps around them like crazy. Apparently, this was a difficult number to film and the ordeal of extending one’s arms through the holes while sweltering below was an excruciating torture. At any rate, the effect, though bizarre, isn’t arresting enough to make the torture seem worth the trouble and agony.

Another oddity is the following number, in which Bobby Van, having just received some excellent news, gleefully hops across Metro’s backlot Connecticut village in three or four very long takes.  Along the way, he’s a public nuisance:  he forces his attentions on nearly everyone who crosses his path, shakes maracas at a baby in a pram, rattles a parrot’s cage, upsets a horse, robs a fruit vendor, sets loose a pack of strays from the dogcatcher’s paddy wagon, etc.  The townspeople seem to think he’s adorable, so it’s easy to find his misdemeanors charming and commendable — but it’s awfully strange to see such wanton outlawry being winked at in Old Man Mayer’s law-abiding backlot.  Pay close attention to the little dog in the final seconds — at approximately 2:53. On cue, he jerks himself up onto his hind legs, then skips unsteadily across the street with Bobby, but loses his balance short of the opposite curb and lands on his fore-paws.  When he rises up again, he strains to catch up to the action, executes a sweet little hop over the curb, only to fall down on all fours again . . . then turns miserably in the wrong direction, his back to the camera, tail wagging like mad and scampers awkwardly out of frame — no doubt toward his irate master, who you just know is waiting for him round the corner, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper.  It’s terribly poignant, the way his tail curls down, still wagging, just as he totters off to his doom — I’ve been laughing about it for years.  See for yourself.

Take Me to Broadway

Yet there’s an even weirder number that made its way into the picture.  First, you must understand that the small town where the action takes place is the Whitest place on the planet.  It’s the coyest, whitest, most virginal little hick-town ever to be incorporated on the lily-white backlot of MGM.  Yet smack in the center of the story, a judge’s daughter (Jane Powell), in cahoots with the local turnkey (Connecticut Yankee Chill Wills), lets a man (handsome eunuch Farley Granger) out of jail and accompanies him to an after-hours nightclub where Nat “King” Cole sings this sultry song.  The following day, she stays in her pink bedroom in her pink flannel nightie and listens to the song on her nightstand radio.  All by itself, this song doesn’t seem as weird as it does in the context of this parallel Whites Only Universe of MGM Small Town America.  What is the blackest man in America doing in the whitest girl in America’s bedroom on the backlot of All-White Metro? The only thing lost out of context is its weirdness.  But in or out of context, Nat “King” Cole is fantastic.

My Flaming Heart

And here’s another Bobby Van number.  I make no claim that it’s great, only that the energy and pizzazz are remarkable.  André Previn conducts, and the Metro orchestra is on fire.  And even if there were not all that great hoofing to make it memorable (the first time I saw it on TCM, I couldn’t get over it), there is Bobby Van’s awesome wasabi-colored jacket, which is the greatest sports jacket I’ve ever seen.  I also get a kick out of the girl at the beginning who sings/croaks “We wonder how we ever let the fella get away” . . .

Fine Fine Fine

The Judy Garland Show

This one is cheating a bit, since this song isn’t from a movie, but “The Judy Garland Show,” which was usually quite terrible.  This episode, in particular, was atrocious — Steve Allen did nearly ten minutes about his new musical concerning the life of Sophie Tucker (the show ran exactly eight performances — April 15, 1963 – April 20, 1963:  good riddance to bad rubbish); Mel Tormé, in a tuxedo with ruffled shirt and high-water slacks, sang the Ray Charles’ hit, “I’m Comin’ Home,” on a set filled with white motorcycles; female dancers vogued about him in elaborate hairdos and white gowns, while he was all finger-poppin’ and “with it” — perhaps the funniest (unintentionally) number of all time. (You can find it for yourself on YouTube; I won’t have it here:  to quote the aggrieved elevator-man, Clancy, from Cheever’s “Clancy in the Tower of Babel”:  ”I’m not taking that up in my car!”)  Then at the end of the show, Judy Garland belted out this song by corny old Vincent Youmans, and it’s unforgettable.  It always makes my hair stand on end, no matter how often I hear it.  Every single atom of her is committed to the material.  It has been said that “Through the Years” was her favorite song.  And why not?

Through the Years

Laura: Original poster.

The title role in Otto Preminger’s “Laura” (20th Century-Fox, 1944) was offered to several actresses before Gene Tierney finally accepted it, under protest.  Jennifer Jones was the first to turn it down (thank Christ).  Rosalind Russell felt the part was too small (I feel she was too beefy). When Hedy Lamarr was asked why she had refused, she answered, “They sent me the script, not the score.”

Dana Andrews, portrait of Gene Tierney: Falling for a corpse. The famous portrait is actually a photograph with brush strokes added.

That score . . . David Raksin wrote it. After the picture was released, the main theme became so popular (“haunting” is the word commonly used to describe it) that Johnny Mercer wrote lyrics to it and it became a big hit. Raksin was crazy in love with Judy Garland in 1944, and said when he composed it, the name he had in mind was not Laura, but Judy.  I don’t know why this should please me so much, but it does.  ”Laura” is one of the few pictures — “Casablanca” is another — that’s as famous for its score as for anything else.  Yet there’s very little music in the picture other than its main theme.  ”You Go to My Head” is played on a dance floor in one scene.* In the extended version (more about this in a moment), the song “Heaven Can Wait” is heard in the background.  Max Steiner used the same tune in “Casablanca,” when Rick is introduced to Major Strasser.
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* Incidentally, Judy Garland sang “You Go to My Head” at her famous, Grammy-winning Carnegie Hall concert (April 23, 1961).  Her mind blanked about fifty seconds into the tune; the intrepid Miss Garland acknowledged her distress, but kept on singing. (Two years later, she starred in a picture called “I Could Go on Singing.” Coincidence?) What she sang went approximately like this: “You go to my head with . . . and I forgot the goldarn words/With a honey sicka seesa fa-fa . . . /You intoxicate my soul with your eyes!” In the Japanese release of the album, the lyric sheet dutifully recorded her ad-lib as precisely as possible. Here’s the song, in case you’re interested.

“Laura” is also famous for its gorgeousness: every frame is meticulously lighted and shot — it’s the silver screen at its silvery best.  Joseph LaSalle, who photographed it, won that year’s Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black and White; Lyle Wheeler, Leland Fuller and Thomas Little were nominated for their interior decoration, but lost to Cedric Gibbons, whose interiors for “Gaslight” were even more excessive and ornate.  ”Laura” looks great, but since much of the action takes place in the apartment of the prissy, vitriolic columnist-cum-gasbag, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), and in the home of his murdered protégé, the decor reflects his personality and taste. It’s ostentatious kitsch:  lots of fringe, tassels, lampshades with ribbons and ruffles, sconces with crystal pendants, tchockes strewn about — late Victorian rococo.  The cinematography and clothes are chic; the set dressing is maiden aunt.  (Gene Tierney wears a lot of nice clothes, but most of her millinery is ghastly — some of the things she wears on her head look like a cross between a nun’s wimple and Paddington Bear’s rain hat.)

Gene Tierney, Andrews: gorgeous dame in Paddington Bear’s hat.

As a mystery, “Laura” isn’t much good (the solution is neither startling nor ingenious), nor are many of the performances terribly interesting (Judith Anderson is a notable exception), but it has a wonderful dreamlike atmosphere.  And there’s an overtone of necrophilia — Dana Andrews finds himself falling in love with the beautiful murder victim — which makes it most unusual.

On the DVD and Blu-ray, if you choose to watch the extended version, which is slightly over a minute longer than the theatrical release, this is the message that precedes it:  ”You have selected the Extended View of Laura which contains a montage dealing with remaking Laura into a society woman. According to Film Historian Rudy Behlmer, the scene was cut because  of war-atmosphere in America. The sequence was judged as too off-putting in its decadence.” . . . “Too off-putting in its decadence” . . . !  I like the sound of that!

Andrews, Clifton Webb: ‘Laura had innate breeding.’

Here is the deleted, “decadent” narration, spoken by Clifton Webb.  The establishing shot has him talking to Dana Andrews at a quiet little restaurant, but most of it is done as a voice-over to a montage of various points in Laura’s make-over.

Lydecker:  She had an eager mind, always. She was always quick to seize upon anything that would improve her mind or her appearance. Laura had innate breeding.  [He drinks.] But she deferred to my judgment and taste. [Cut to Laura at a beauty salon, with Lydecker giving instructions to the stylist.] I selected a more attractive hairdress for her. [Cut to Laura at a dress fitting, with Lydecker looking on approvingly.] I taught her what clothes were more becoming to her. [Cut to Laura and Lydecker at an opening; "Heaven Can Wait" plays as underscoring.] Through me, she met everyone — the famous and the infamous. [Cut to Lydecker dancing with Laura.] Her youth and beauty, her poise and charm of manner captivated them all. She had warmth, vitality. She had authentic magnetism. [Cut to Laura and Lydecker being seated at Sardi's.] Wherever we went, she stood out.  Men admired her; [Cut to Laura and Lydecker entering El Morocco.] women envied her. She became as well-known [Webb pronounces it "know-win"] as Waldo Lydecker’s walking stick and his white carnation . . .

It’s certainly plenty wet . . . but decadent?  Not to me — not after the things I’ve seen . . . It seems preposterous to call it decadent — but it was, after all, the middle of the war, and Fox executives were worried that the depiction of wealthy people on the home front expending so much concentrated effort on luxurious fashions and hair styles (what they termed “non-military obsessions”), rather than on the war effort, would offend soldiers overseas.  Well, perhaps they were right.  And, come to think of it, there is something decidedly decadent about the line “I selected a more attractive hairdress for her.” . . . Well, maybe not decadent, exactly . . . At any rate, it’s the queeniest thing I ever heard in a major motion picture.

Makeover madness: ‘I selected a more attractive hairdress for her.’

Yet despite this fine feeling for the soldiers overseas, much of the sequence was used in the trailer — apparently, the Fox executives thought the material was compelling enough to draw in home front audiences. (And why throw out perfectly good, expensive footage without getting some benefit from it?)  Have a look.

Poster: 70th Anniversary edition. Dooley Wilson is finally included.

Here’s a pop quiz:  who was the highest paid actor on the set of “Casablanca”?  It wasn’t Bogart, even though “The Maltese Falcon” had moved him into the front ranks of Warner Bros. leading men the year before.  Nor was it Ingrid Bergman (she was under contract to David O. Selznick, who made her take a $7,000 cut in pay to do the picture).  Nor was it Paul Henreid or, heaven knows, the wonderful Dooley Wilson.  No, Conrad Veidt was the highest paid:  $5,000 per week, much of which he, a grateful British citizen, donated to British war relief.

Conrad Veidt, Claude Rains: ‘Oh, ve Germans must get used to all climates — from Russsssia to the Sahara.’

Major Strasser is Veidt’s most famous role, but hardly his only claim to fame.  He also played a leading role, the somnambulist murderer, Cesare, in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” in 1920. In the 1930s, Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, used Veidt’s image as the model for The Joker in the original comic strip.  Well-known in Germany as a staunch anti-Fascist, the Gestapo tried to assassinate him, but he escaped to England.  He was subsequently blacklisted and none of his pictures were shown in Germany till after the war.

Veidt: ‘You were not always so carefully neutral: we have a complete dosssssier on you . . . ‘

Connie Veidt never got through a Hollywood picture without getting his hair mussed.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play a character who survives the final reel.  Humphrey Bogart drills him in “Casablanca” . . .

Death of Major Strasser: In the words of Daffy Duck (from ‘Plane Daffy’), ‘They lose more darn Nutzis that way!’ 

. . . and in another Bogart picture, “All Through the Night” (1941), Veidt dies in an explosion at sea (entirely his own fault, of course:  a terrorist plot gone haywire).  In “A Woman’s Face” (MGM, 1941), Joan Crawford, swaddled in mink, shoots him in the back at the end of a high-speed chase in horse-drawn sleighs (I’m not kidding), after which he plunges several hundred feet into the icy rapids below.  Conrad Veidt’s actual death came suddenly and too soon, but under far less violent circumstances than the ignominious departures he was wont to suffer in pictures:  he died of a massive heart attack in 1943, the year after “Casablanca” was released, at the eighth hole of the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles.  He was only fifty years old.  He left the bulk of his estate to British charities.  In typical Hollywood fashion, his name was misspelled on his death certificate.

Curt Bois does a memorable turn as the reptilian pickpocket.  I have great admiration for actors like Curt Bois:  in a tiny role built on a single running gag, he is unforgettable and full of  complexities.  We spend less than half a minute with the little scoundrel he plays, yet those seconds are so lively, it’s hard to believe the part is as small as it actually is.

Bois was born in Berlin on April 5, 1901.  He began acting as a child and had become a popular cabaret performer in the decade before Hitler came to power.  He scored a great triumph playing the drag role in “Charley’s Aunt” in Vienna.  During the Weimar years, he toured extensively in vaudeville and cabaret throughout Germany, Austria, Hungary and Switzerland.  In Berlin, he was a popular favorite at at Trude Hesterberg’s political/literary cabaret, Wilde Bühne (Wild Stage). Bois’ performing style was often compared to Charlie Chaplin’s and Harold Lloyd’s.

Gerald Oliver Smith, Curt Bois, Norma Varden: ‘I beg of you, monsieur: watch yourself! Be on guard! This place is fuuuull of vultures! Vultures everywhere . . . everywhere!’

He left Germany for Vienna in 1933; not long afterwards, he moved to Zurich, where he performed at Trude Hesterberg’s cabaret, Corso.  From here, he and his wife (singer Hedi Ury) went to Paris to stay with his sister, Ilse (also a performer).  In 1934, they decided to get out of Europe altogether.  After a time in New York (where Bois appeared on Broadway in two shows — the first, a  drama; the second, a farce), they wound up in Hollywood, where he made his American movie debut in “Hollywood Hotel” (Warner Bros., 1937) — a terrible picture, but notable for the Dick Whiting/Johnny Mercer classic, “Hooray for Hollywood.”  (Mercer also has a small acting part in it.)  His final picture was Wim Wenders’ “Der Himmel über Berlin“  (“Wings of Desire”).  He was ninety years old when he died in Berlin on Christmas Day, 1991.  His eighty-year acting career is said to be the longest in history.  He appeared in 183 pictures.

Then there’s the curious case of Wolfgang Zilzer, the man in the opening scene with the expired papers.  Zilzer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but raised by his German parents in Germany.  In 1933, when he applied applied for a United States visa, he was astonished to learn he was already considered a U.S. citizen.

Wolfgang Zilzer as the man with expired papers.

Zilzer appeared in more than 100 pictures, usually in uncredited roles.  When he did get a credit, he most often appeared under the name of Paul Andor.  The year after he appeared in “Casablanca,” he married a German Jewish actress named Lotte Palfi.  Palfi had fled from Germany in 1934 and then played only bit parts for the rest of her career in America.  She appears in “Casablanca” as the woman selling her diamonds in Rick’s café.

Woman Selling Her Diamonds:  But can’t you make it just a little more . . .?

Moor Buying Diamonds:  Sorry, madame, but diamonds are a drag on the market:  everyone sells diamonds; there are diamonds everywhere . . . Two thousand four hundred.

Woman Selling Her Diamonds:  All right . . .

Like Curt Bois, Lotte Palfi conveys a whole life in a few words.  You can tell the money isn’t enough for her to buy an exit visa, and also that she has nothing more to sell.  What will become of her?  She gets it all across in those two short lines.

Jacques Lory (born in Paris), Lotte Palfi Andor (born in Bochum, Germany). Look at the tragic anxiety in her face . . . !

Does she look familiar?  She should — she played a small, very famous part 34 years later, now acting under the name of Lotte Palfi Andor.  Again, the scene was about diamonds:  she’s the woman who recognizes the Nazi war criminal, Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), on West 47th Street, in the middle of New York City’s Diamond District.  She was still married to Wolfgang Zilzer (a/k/a Paul Andor) at the time . . . but she divorced him in 1991 (the year of her death), because he insisted on moving back to Germany and she refused to leave New York.