Tag Archives: John Barrymore

‘The Velvet Touch’: Grande Dame Guignol

Original Poster.

Original Poster.

O Victory, Where Is Thy Death?

In the opening scene of “The Velvet Touch” (Independent Artists/RKO Radio Pictures, 1948), Rosalind Russell, as Broadway diva Valerie Stanton, ends a heated argument with her producer/lover Gordon Dunning (Leon Ames) by braining him with the first heavy object she can lay her velvet-gloved hand on. The irony is perfect, for the weapon is a theatrical trophy: it is the coveted Players Award, which Dunning won for Excellence in the Theatre; moreover, it is a statuette of Nike, Goddess of Victory, who bears aloft a wreath. The eminent actress has therefore crowned the eminent producer with his own laurels; the blow to his head has felled him for keeps: now needs must Gordon Dunning rest upon his laurels until the edge of doom. I find it all wonderfully funny. And after all, it’s Leon Ames: he had it coming. We’ll learn more about why as the picture progresses. Here’s a fraction of that opening scene.

Much of the rest of the picture is spent in flashback, à la Film Noir (though “The Velvet Touch” is too glossy and high-tone to be so categorized), by which means we learn how Leon and Roz arrived at this fatal contretemps. That he cannot bear the idea of being left for another man, Michael Morrell (played by Leo Genn, who murmurs drolly from the first reel to the last), is the most obvious explanation for his unbecoming conduct. But sexual jealousy is only at the surface: there’s a much deeper reason for his fury, and it stems from a classic case of one of Hollywood’s favorite fictional psychological disorders, which may fairly be called Svengali Syndrome.

Get Thee Behind Me, Svengali!

In Hollywood pictures about the theatre, directors are invariably Svengalis: Warner Baxter plucks Ruby Keeler from the chorus line in “42nd Street,” and, by dancing her off her feet for a day and a half, turns her into an overnight sensation. In “Twentieth Century,” Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) makes a brilliant actress out of an awkward, infantile amateur named Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard). Similarly, in “Maytime,” Barrymore (this time as the crackpot musical genius, Nicolai Nazaroff) turns Jeanette MacDonald into an international prima donna, then shames her into entering into a loveless marriage with him, and in the final reel, the enraged impresario aims a pistol at his rival, Nelson Eddy, and blows a hole through that worthy’s barrel chest. (Well, somebody had to do it.) Clark Gable transforms Jeanette from a hymn-singing ninny into the toast of the Barbary Coast in “San Francisco“: her swinging rendition of the title song apparently sets off the Frisco Quake of Aught-Six, which knocks the nobs off their hill and makes toast of the entire region. In “Lady with Red Hair,” the great Claude Rains, as David Belasco, turns the hopelessly inadequate Mrs Leslie Carter (Miriam Hopkins) into . . . Mrs Leslie Carter, who was known as “the American Sarah Bernhardt.” In “Hello, Frisco, Hello,” international songbird Alice Faye bends over backwards to rescue the scoundrel John Payne from ruin because she believes she owes her success entirely to him. In “All About Eve,” the aging star Margo Channing has a pretty shrewd estimation of her own gifts and self-sufficiency as an actress, yet when her understudy/rival, Eve Harrington, gives a sensational audition, Margo bitterly accuses her director/lover, Bill Sampson, of being responsible for the girl’s stunning performance, which was “carefully rehearsed I have no doubt, over and over, full of those Bill Sampson touches!” (When Eve goes on to win the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance, Eve herself clearly believes the director is responsible for her success.) Most miraculously of all, Dan O’Herlihy turns Lana Turner into the most scintillating actress on Broadway in “Imitation of Life.” We don’t see how he contrives to fashion a silk purse out of that sow’s ear, nor do we get a chance to judge his wizardry for ourselves: Douglas Sirk knew better than to show Lana giving what we’re expected to believe is a great theatrical performance.

Of all these pictures, only “Twentieth Century” and “Lady with Red Hair” offer some evidence of how these directors of genius transform amateurs into great ladies of the stage. (In the former, Barrymore jabs a pin into Lombard’s rump, which does the trick: for the rest of the funny picture, Lombard never stops shrieking. In the latter, Rains stands on an apple box and raises Hopkins’ pigtails over her head to make her stand up straight. Mission accomplished: for the rest of the picture, she’s lousy from a greater height.)

L: Barrymore instructs Lombard in the art of acting. R: Rains instructs Hopkins.

L: Barrymore instructs Lombard in the art of acting. R: Rains instructs Hopkins.

Prelude to a Kiss-Off

As we have seen, when “The Velvet Touch” begins, Rosalind Russell has grown a-weary of dancing on the ends of Leon Ames’ strings; she is determined to play Hedda Gabler in the upcoming season; she is newly in love with Leo Genn. She must therefore cut herself free from her puppet-master’s strings. But, in the great Svengali tradition, he would sooner ruin her than let her go, and sooner than ruin her, he would bring her to heel. So this native son of Portland, Indiana, brings out the big guns: “Yer not good enough fer heavy drammer.” Besides, he tells her, that sort of guff don’t go over with the “suckers,” as he calls the New York City audiences who have made him rich. He knows what slops to serve up to the moron millions, and, sister, Hedda Gabler ain’t no state fair attraction. He will not permit her to make a fool of herself . . . or him. To that end, he has leaked a story to the press that she has already signed on to do yet another frivolous romp in the Fall, and he’s willing to go very much further to keep her dancing to his tune and starring in his productions.

We get a clear sense of the sort of shows he produces from the framed posters on his office walls: “It’s a Gay Life,” “The Gay Lady,” “Scandalous” and the current season’s “Escapade.” He produces and directs these wafer-thin entertainments, yet his theatre and his offices, tricked out with ostentatious, ornamental Victorian kitsch, are more suited to a producer of the blood and thunder melodramas of Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou: his office is crowded with heavy, carved furniture. In the public spaces of his theatre, oil paintings in gilded rococo frames hang on walls that are covered in shimmering damask silk; fluted pillars and pilasters are topped by Corinthian capitals of exuberant gaudiness; heavy brocade draperies and swags trimmed in miles of fringe adorn every landing, niche, entrance; cut crystal chandeliers glitter overhead; there are Turkey carpets as far as the eye can see. It’s the vulgarian’s dream of high class. I imagine Boss Tweed must have looked on similar decor while being fellated at his favorite whorehouse, though he would not have seen a neon sign for the Cabana Café glaring through the bordello window. But if these trappings seem inappropriate for a producer of frolicsome romantic comedies, they are entirely correct for this Tosca-like opening and for the preposterous melodrama that follows.

Rosalind Russell, Leon Ames: Valerie Stanton and Gordon Dunning in happier times.

Rosalind Russell, Leon Ames: Valerie Stanton and Gordon Dunning in happier times.

And just to make it quite impossible to take any of this camp melodrama seriously, there is the stupendously misleading title song, sung in glee-club harmony by an all-male chorus. Written by Mort Greene (lyrics) and Leigh Harline (music), the tune’s jaunty breeziness and idiotic fills (doodle-oodle-oo), lead one to expect the picture will be one of those late-forties disposable situation comedies in which, say, Robert Cummings vies with Brian Aherne for the affections of Virginia Mayo, while Marjorie Main cracks wise, and eggs, in the kitchen. Instead you get Murder on the Main Stem — part Fannie Hurst, part Edna Ferber, part Walter Winchell, part Sardou, part Dostoyevsky — and it’s a whole lot funnier than most of the comedies of the era, but in a sneaky, subversive way (perfect for the McCarthy Era). That is, it is definitely played as high drama — Rosalind Russell and her co-stars (most of them) seem to take it all in deadly earnest, but unless I miss my bet, the screenwriter was having fun at their expense. Anyhow, if you look at it from this point of view, the picture is hilarious, sometimes almost awesomely so.

The picture was produced by Miss Russell’s husband, Frederick Brisson, and her great, elongated full-moon face is rarely out of the frame. Even so, Claire Trevor, as her bitter rival, acts her right off the screen.

Beedle Dee-Dee Dee-Dee, Two Ladies

Moments after Roz flees undetected from the scene of the crime, the body is discovered by Claire Trevor, who makes two serious blunders: (1) she picks up the weapon, and (2) she falls into an hysterical faint. This is a sticky wicket, for it appears to everyone, including (or so it would seem) NYPD Homicide Detective Sydney Greenstreet(!), that she — a woman scorned — must have fainted after having committed a crime passionnel. Meanwhile, Roz has her own fit of histrionics in the privacy of her home, where she sobs, “Oh why did this horrible thing have to happen? Why? Why? . . . Why?” Cue flashback.

First we see how Roz tried to patch things up with Claire a few days before the bludgeoning. Roz is unusually restrained. Claire is (ahem) less so. The result is a nice bit of camp: catfight lite.

Later in the picture, we learn that Claire has been hospitalized. Roz goes to visit her, amusingly attired as if she were a very chic nun in a satin and silk habit and wimple. She makes me think of Caitlyn Jenner as Father Christmas. Roz extends the olive branch, but Claire is having none of it. And to prove it, she speaks two of the greatest camp lines ever.

The screenplay is by Leo Rosten, who wrote the best-selling “The Joys of Yiddish.” I have to believe that Rosten was laughing his head off when he wrote, “Where did you get your luck, Valerie? Or does God pity the wicked?” and “If you had any decency, you’d face it yerself. But you haven’t: yer rotten! All the way through!” At any rate, the brilliantly funny author of “The Joys of Yiddish” simply couldn’t have taken any of this stuff seriously. Believe me, I’m not knocking it. I think it’s great. But it’s great because it’s so funny. Much of “The Velvet Touch” is as fabulously, deliriously foolish as the best parts of “Deception,” and almost as entertaining. It lacks a towering, unforgettable performance to match Claude Rains’ supremely witty sadist Alexander Hollenius, but there is more than enough mad, grandiloquent silliness in “The Velvet Touch” to make it a thoroughly entertaining picture. For fans of Rosalind Russell, Claire Trevor, Leo Genn, Sydney Greenstreet, or for that matter, Leo Rosten, it is not to be missed.

‘Red Dust’: Lewdness amid the Rubber Trees

Original poster.

Original poster.

One of the real treasures from the Pre-Code Era, “Red Dust” (Metro, 1932), is quite possibly the raciest picture Metro ever released during the twenty-seven years that Louis B. Mayer ran the place — I can’t think of another that even comes close. Clark Gable plays Dennis “Fred” Carson, the hard-driving, hard-drinking, womanizing overseer on a rubber plantation in Indochina. Harlow plays an on-the-lam whore named Vantine, who fetches up at the plantation one night. Here’s how they meet.

The passed-out drunk is Donald Crisp, cast against type: in this one, he’s a thoroughgoing swine. He’s not very good in the part, but it’s a relief to see him do something different from the insufferably dignified gentlemen he usually played. Gable’s partner, McQuarg, is played a fine old character actor named Tully Marshall.

Before I saw “Red Dust” for the first time, I never really understood Harlow’s appeal. In “Dinner at Eight,” for instance, the dumb broad she plays is so spoilt and bad-tempered and shrill, I find her far more irritating than amusing. (It doesn’t help that most of her scenes are with horrible Wallace Beery.) But she’s tremendously appealing and funny in “Red Dust,” and she steals every scene she’s in. In his own quiet way, however, Tully Marshall in this next scene gives her a run for her money. (Willie Fung is the racist cartoon of a houseboy. The ugly Asian stereotypes in “Red Dust” are pretty breathtaking by today’s standards.)

Whenever I’m in a bad mood, Tully Marshall’s performance — especially his reading of “If it was the summer of eighteen hundred and ninety-four, I’d play games with you, sister” — is always enough to chase the blues away. Marshall is the sort of old pro that makes me love old movies. Two years before he made this picture, he appeared with John Wayne in Raoul Walsh’s “The Big Trail,” which was shot in Mexico. During the shoot, Wayne was afflicted with a dose of la turista so terrible that he lost eighteen pounds in a single week; for the rest of his life, the memory of that awful week made him shudder involuntarily. When he was well enough to return to work, the first scene he shot involved Tully Marshall and a big jug of liquor. He entered with Marshall slung over his shoulder. According to Wayne, “I set him down and we have a drink with another guy. They passed the jug to me first, and I dug back into it. It was straight rotgut bootleg whiskey. I’d been puking and crapping blood for a week and now I just poured that raw stuff right down my throat. After the scene, you can bet I called him every kind of an old bastard.” Despite his notoriety as a world-class booze-hound, Marshall was in constant demand; he appeared in almost two hundred pictures, including “Ball of Fire” and “Grand Hotel.” Every time I see him, I think of how the old soak and his jug of San Juan possum juice almost turned “The Big Trail” into “The Last Run” for young Duke Wayne. Over the past year, it has become abundantly clear to me that good supporting performances like Tully Marshall’s are very often what I like best about the pictures that give me the most pleasure.

But in this particular case, it’s Harlow who owns the picture. Her combination of vulgarity, street smarts and sunny good-nature has never been surpassed. Like so many movie stars of the Studio Era (and unlike so many of today’s stars), her voice is as unmistakable as her face, but it’s also notable — especially for that era — for its foghorn ugliness. The advent of talking pictures ruined the careers of so many Silent Era glamour queens, yet Harlow’s career didn’t really take off until audiences got a load of the strident clamor that issued from her milk white throat. She rarely sounds perfectly natural — overemphasis and sing-song are two hallmarks of her vocal style — but her commitment to the material is absolute; her facial expressions and body language are so spontaneous and lively that her overtly artificial vocal mannerisms work in her favor (at least, they do in “Red Dust”). In her scenes with Gable, she’s clearly acting — putting on a show — but she’s not acting for us: she’s showing off for the guy she’s trying to hook. Look at how deftly she warms him up and wins him over in this next scene. He’s irritable and she’s exhausted, but she’s so attracted to him that she can’t stop flirting. The more she chatters, the madder he gets, but the more violently he tells her to shut up, the hornier she becomes — she’s impossible to insult. His steely hostility hasn’t a chance against her saucy vivaciousness. She and Gable make a brilliant team, but she’s the one who drives the scene, and she does it with great wit and verve.

This next clip is the best-known scene in the picture: Harlow takes a bath in a rain barrel. She did it topless. We don’t get a peek, but Gable sure did. At one point between takes, she stood up, gave the crew below a good look and said, “This is for the boys in the lab!” The film never left the set, however: Victor Fleming had it removed from the camera. He didn’t want it to turn up on the black market.

“Red Dust” certainly looks like a Metro high-gloss picture of the era: the glamorous lighting for Gable and Harlow, the familiar indoor jungle settings and the backlot shores of Metro’s Lot One Lake (where the early Tarzan pictures were shot) — everything about its look is unmistakably Metro. But it sure doesn’t act or think like a high-gloss Metro picture. The randy banter between Gable and Harlow is breezy and fun-loving, not passionate and earnest — and their complacence about sex is completely at odds with Metro’s fastidious primness. In fact, I can’t think of another American picture of its era in which adult sexuality, promiscuity and marital infidelity are treated with such buoyant nonchalance. Before the picture’s over, jealousy will lead to gunfire, but nobody gets killed or is even seriously hurt. The whole point of view is radically different from Metro’s strict moral code. In this picture, Gable has sex with Harlow the day they first meet; he carries on with her for a month, and when he’s ready to try a new flavor, he gives her a big wad of cash, slaps her on the ass and puts her on the boat back to Saigon. Then he promptly forgets about her — until her boat runs aground and she comes back for more. But when Harlow returns, Gable’s already busy seducing his new employee’s wife (Mary Astor), and treats Harlow badly. Gable carries on with Astor until he discovers that her husband (Gene Raymond) is a decent guy. Angry with himself and disgusted with her, he sends her back to her husband and tells them both to get lost: “You two pack your tennis racquets and go back where ya belong.” It’s hardly what one expects from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And through it all, we root for Gable. It’s not only the sexiest picture Metro ever made, it’s also the most subversive.

There’s something else that sets the sexuality in “Red Dust” far apart from other pictures of its era: sex looks like a lot of fun. Garbo, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford, Jack Barrymore and all the other famous screen lovers of the era made lust look horrible and serious — their idea of wantonness looks like my idea of a hanging judge as he pronounces sentence. But there’s nothing brooding or terrifying about the sexiness in “Red Dust”: it’s happy and fun; it’s a romp. Lust doesn’t make Gable, Harlow and Astor frown and smolder, it makes them light of heart and full of laughs. Me too.