Sunday, June 30, 2024

George Marshall | Destry Rides Again / 1939

the end of evil

by Douglas Messerli

 

Felix Jackson, Henry Myers, and Gertrude Purcell (screenplay, based on the novel by Max Brand), George Marshall (director) Destry Rides Again / 1939

 

The western town of Bottleneck is a corrupt town, ruled over by saloon owner Kent (Brian Donlevy), his lover, singer and swindler Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich), and the tobacco-chewing mayor, Judge Slade (Samuel S. Hinds).

 

     Forget the fact that the former New Orleans-born “Frenchy” speaks with Dietrich’s heavy German accent and sings songs such as “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have” (with wonderful lyrics by Frank Loesser) that might be more at home in a cabaret skit, or that Kent’s huge saloon is, as film critic Daniel Eagan describes it, “filled with more customers than most frontier towns had as residents”; forget that one of the regular gamblers is a henpecked Russian named Boris Callahan (Mischa Auer), or that the Sheriff (Joe King) disappears “on vacation” immediately after his very first scene. The evil trio is right out of the kind of two-reelers (including episodes of The Perils of Pauline) that director George Marshall had filmed in the past, and this is a 1939 feature that was intended, in part, to save Dietrich’s career: it wasn’t ever intended to be “believable.”

     And what a lark the mythical movie tale truly is, although it begins with a serious swindle, wherein, by spilling coffee over a winning gambler, Dietrich helps to make sure he loses, granting Kent the rights to a farm through which nearly all the cattleman and their cows must cross. Kent plans to charge a fee for every head and make a fortune. Drinks are on the house!

   To replace Sherriff Keogh, the Mayor appoints the town drunk, “Wash” Dimsdale (Charles Winninger), believing that by simply threatening to withhold a shot of whiskey, they can control him.

    What he doesn’t know is that Dimsdale used to be the deputy for the noted gunman Destry, and when the drunk wakes up to the fact that he has actually been named the new sheriff, he immediately goes sober without a tremor, calling in Destry’s son, Thomas Jefferson Destry (James Stewart) to be his assistant.

 

     It takes nearly half the movie for Destry’s coach to reach Bottleneck, and in the meantime Marshall and his writers show off Dietrich’s singing and yodeling talents and create a number of backstories, including the Claggett’s standoff with Kent and his gang and the strange relationship between Callahan and Lily Belle (Una Merkel), his wife, who, after Callahan loses his pants by gambling, has a down-and-out dirty cat fight with Frenchy.

      By the time the coach reaches this isolated village, Destry has already won us over with this easy story-telling and aphorisms, and Stewart waltzes into his genial role with all the ease of his later character Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey. Although he’s evidently a master gun shooter, it turns the new deputy is also a pacifist (how I wish he might have been married to the Quaker wife of the High Noon sheriff played by Gary Cooper), and the townsfolk first glimpse of him is with a parasol and birdcage as he helps visitor Janice Tyndall (Irene Hervey) alight [the accompanying picture is of Andy Griffith in the 1959 Broadway musical version of the film].

     At the saloon later that afternoon he even has the temerity to order up a glass of milk! If you’ve seen that comic trope before, this is where it all began.

     Yet, hardly a day has passed and Destry has out-talked and out-witted half of the town, promised real justice to the Claggetts (having secretly called in a district judge instead of the local mayor to hear their case), and peaked the romantic interest of Frenchy by half-complementing her face: “I'll bet you've got kind of a lovely face under all that paint, huh? Why don't you wipe it off someday and have a good look—and figure out how you can live up to it.” As Frenchy’s black maid comments, “That man has personality.”


     Told to get out town, Destry blithely responds:

              

 “Oh, I think I'll stick around. Y'know, I had a friend once used to collect postage stamps. He always said the one good thing about a postage stamp: it always sticks to one thing 'til it gets there, y'know? I'm sorta like that too.”

      

       Of course, we all know it’s not going to be quite that easy, and when, enlisting the help of Callahan, they track down Keogh’s dead body, Kent and his gang threaten to endanger nearly all of the town’s citizens. And we just know that Destry will be forced to put on his holster and pop out those guns.

     In the inevitable shootout with the bad guys, Frenchy gets killed in the crossfire, dying in the arms of her new would-be lover. Yet order has been maintained, and the audience can go home knowing that like Tombstone, Bottleneck has now been civilized—even if we wince a little on our way with the knowledge that, without those gilded saloon hall and its singing wonder, it will be an awfully boring place.


      What Marshall’s comic treatment of the Western on the verge of World War II reveals— particularly by his so delaying his “tonic”—is that good and civilized men and women really have very little to do with the genre. The real excitement of Westerns has everything to do with the evil geniuses and their lusty women as they plot their way to rake in the money or just plain bollix up the plans of those who might desire equality and fairness. High Noon’s Hadleyville would never have been heard of if the evil gunman Frank Miller hadn’t been determined to kill those good folk’s sheriff.

     Destry may certainly be said to have personality, but I fear, if he truly sticks to this community, he may end up a bit like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry sheriff, mostly fishing and whittling. This wonderful film did, in fact, revert Dietrich’s “poison pill” reputation, and she went on to perform in numerous films, whereas the far more romantic and ethereal Greta Garbo, disappeared from the screen forever. The same year as Destry James Stewart went on to Washington. Perhaps, given the predilections of our new national leaders, even Westerns will suddenly come back into vogue, just as film musicals have.

 

Los Angeles, January 16, 2017 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review.

Bob Mizer | Space Mutiny / 1950

pulling rank

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer (director) Space Mutiny / 1950

 

In physique director Bob Mizer’s 1950 black-and-white space epic, the commander of a space ship, dressed only in a posing strap, calls in two of his space-traveling assistants to demonstrate on the controls just what the problem seems to be.



     Both boys, who in these early scenes quickly appear to sprout erections, look on as the commander explains the situation, but apparently they don’t at all agree with his directions, and when in the midst of argument, he strips from their posing jocks what appear to be small decorative tinsel tassels as if they were military bars and stripes, they turn on him in full mutiny.

     Most of the short consists of the trio in full wrestling mode as they undergo the typical Mizer twists and turns of nearly full-naked bodies, filled with sweat, muscular ambition, and erotic evidence. The mutineers win the match and with their leader now passed out, they re-correct their apparent course of action, pleased with their ability to switch the situation.


 


      The lovely last moments of this cute pre-porno cinema, made in the very same year as the important gay classics, Un chant d’amour by Jean Genet and Orpheus by Jean Cocteau, the American boys proudly reveal their names. In those significant treasures of Europe, men surreptitiously meet up through tiny holes in the wall through which they share the erotic touch of rolled paper or in the case of the latter film, when they crash through mirrored realities. In the American version they just immediately get down to business with a good bodily workout of flesh-on-flesh. As brilliantly symbolic as Genet’s and Cocteau’s fables are, Mizer’s sweaty body workouts are far more to the point and say so very much about crass, in-the-mud USA culture—despite its far more intense fear of sexuality—that it’s hilariously profound as well as being just plain campy long before that word was even in the LGBTQ+ lexicon.

     Although it appears there were only three boys involved in the mutiny, Ronnie Wallace, Gerald Sullivan, and Dave Haupert, the naked boys keep appearing, suggesting that either in numerous intercuts or behind the scenes, Jim Lassiter, Chuck Davis, Rocky Ridge, and Louis La Venture were also involved, turning it truly into a Mizer epic.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2024 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog

Richard Day | Girls Will Be Girls / 2003

asteroids

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Day (screenwriter and director) Girls Will Be Girls / 2003

 

In the first decade of the 21st century, gay films were not yet embarrassed by being truly funny or complexly dramatic, a sensibility that in the third decade I am increasingly feeling we have lost.

    Parodying a wide range of campy Hollywood films such All About Eve, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mommie Dearest, and Valley of the Dolls, director Richard Day uses drag performances not to mock and imitate themselves, but to imitate the heterosexual versions of the genre. Despite the wonderful performances of Jack Plotnick as Evie Harris, a washed-up alcoholic C-list actress of various films, Christmas specials, and the disaster epic Asteroid; the near ridiculous love affair between Dr. Perfect (Chad Linsey) and Evie’s mannish, plainish, spinsterish roommate Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp); and the seemingly dingbat but actually all-too-knowing enthusiast characterized by their new roommate Varla Simonds (Jeffery Robinson), these men basically play their female counterparts without winks, nods, and lavish costumes, pretty much convincing us they are simply unhappy over-the-top everyday women like, you know, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward, and Patty Duke—without really trying imitate the drag versions to which we have grown accustomed.


     For at least the first third of this film, we enter a world of quick quips that spin by so fast that sometimes the laughter washes away the next line. Girls Will Be Girls leans instead toward Richard Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre as, particularly the bitchy Evie puts down nearly everyone she encounters, past and present. How anyone can stay in the same room with her for more than 5 minutes is a wonder.

 

      Coco: What do you think about the idea of having a dog in the house?

      Evie: I’m sorry, have I been staring?

      Coco: I’m think of getting one. I mean, let’s face it, at this point I’m probably

                never going to have kids.

      Evie: Oh, Coco it’s not too late. [She waits for a sympathetic moment] I’m kidding.

      [a few minutes later]

      Evie: This new roommate will cheer you right up.

      Coco: I just hope she’s not too loud, or happy. Happy people always makes such

                A racket.

      Evie: Coco, she came by and she was a peach.

      Coco: Were you drunk?

      Evie: It was 12 noon. Course I was drunk.

      Coco: I’m surprised anyone would want to rent that awful bicentennial room.

      Evie: [laughing] I rented Varla your room.


     And that verbal ping-pong match is just for starters. Varla, we soon discover, is not only incredibly “happy,” but claims she wants to be a movie star and singing sensation.

 

      Varla: I know how tough it can be. That’s why I have a plan. I’m gonna spend

                 every afternoon at Swab’s Drugstore. You know, where Tina Turner was

                 discovered.

      Coco: Except it’s a Virgin Megastore now.

      Varla: Are people still discovered there?

      Coco: Yes, but mainly in the men’s room by undercover cops.


   Turns out, of course, that Varla isn’t quite as innocent as she seems. Within moments of meeting a man who describes himself as a movie producer, she’s busy on the street performing sexual tricks and selling drugs at the same moment. Yet she’s shocked when she discovers he’s not really at all what he claims to have been. But then, neither is she. Actually, the daughter of the woman Evie has beaten out and probably killed in order to get the role in her Asteroid movie, Varla traveled to Hollywood from Arkansas just to get her revenge.

     In the meantime, Evie picks up a man so desperate for porn that he’s willing even to watch Evie’s ex-husband’s man-on-man videos.

     Coco, still in love with the doctor who performed her first abortion—she got pregnant again soon after just so that she might meet up with him again—is raped by a doctor who drugs her with morphine, “The pizza of drugs,” who she soon discovers if Dr. Perfect, now an old, overweight, man with whom she falls in love with all over again.


    There are dozens of good moments such as the ones I’ve hinted at, but gradually, things grind down into not such funny one-liners, mean attempts on the two central character’s lives, and a truly series of unhumorous confessions of Evie’s cruel behavior to others throughout her life. In this soap opera it’s all about having to say you are sorry.

     Yet nearly everyone finally finds her man, particularly Varla, who falls in love with Evie’s microscopically endowed but truly handsome son (Ron Mathews).

      This film was funny enough that resulted in a 2007 web spin-off staring Plotnick, Leupp, and Roberson on YouTube.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2024 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog.

 

Hirokazu Kore-eda | 海街diary (Our Little Sister) / 2015, USA 2016

family matters

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hirokazu Kore-eda (screenplay, based on Akimi Yoshida’s Umimachi Diary, and director)海街diary (Our Little Sister) / 2015, USA 2016

 

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister, based on the Japanese manga series, Umimachi Diary, is a slow-moving, yet highly touching film about a family of three sisters, Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) who live together in a large dilapidated house in Kamakura, south-west of Tokyo. Since their father ran off with another woman in their early childhoods, and their mother, unable to live with the shame, also left, the girls have pretty much had to survive on their own, led by the eldest of them Sachi, who as a colleague observes, lost her childhood in the process.



       Still acting much as the mother to the group, Sachi works as a nurse; Yoshino works in a bank; and Chika in a sports goods store. Like any family unit, they often argue over important and unimportant matters, but generally, despite their personality differences, they get on quite wonderfully.

       As the film begins, they hear that their father, who had moved far away with yet a third woman, has died, and when they attend the funeral they discover that their father has had yet another daughter, Suzu (Suzu Hirose), now 14 years of age. At the funeral it becomes apparent that the stepmother is a selfish woman, and that Suzu has been the true nurse to her father during his long illness. For Sachi it seems, perhaps, that their half-sister may not even be wanted by the step-mother, who has a younger son from her previous relationship. In what almost seems like a whimsical decision, Sachi and her two sisters invite the young girl to come live with them.

      So begins a long series of rather episodic events that present the process of assimilation of the new family member into the life they have created for themselves. Trials and tribulations, large and small, occur, the most serious being the temporary return of their absent mother who briefly and selfishly ponders selling the house in which they live. Sachi, dating a married pediatrician, is asked to consider going away with him to the US, which would only repeat what the “other woman” had done to her family. Sachi, who hates her father for his actions, at moments is at odds with Suzu, who loved and cared for the same man. But generally, the family embraces their new “little sister” and is strengthened by the love they grow to feel for her.


      It helps, of course, that this young girl has an infectious smile, is a good soccer player, and seems generally well-adjusted, allowing her to fit into family and school life equally. But, in a sense, that’s beside the point. For Kore-eda’s film is not about “events” as much as it is about a sort of Chekov-like spirit, an acceptance of what life offers and a determination of the survivors to make the best of it they can. This theme is repeated again and again throughout the film as Sachi and her mother make up over a jar of plum wine, as Yoshino helps a restaurateur friend to write a will before she dies, and Sachi accepts a position in the intensive care unit of the hospital, where it becomes her job to help people to die.


     Through Suzu, Chika even gets the opportunity to get to know something about the father she can hardly remember. If their father has been worthless, they conclude, at least he did one thing that was meaningful, bringing a little sister into their lives.

     Like the great Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, this director has long focused his films on family life, subtly exploring how outsiders alter or help to break-down that important unit. For many looser-knit Americans, the seeming uneventfulness of Kore-eda’s film may suggest that, even if emotionally rich, the film is somewhat meaningless.

 


    But that would be to misunderstand what we are actually being shown in this work.  Tensions and small rifts temporarily set them each adrift; they simply do not advertise those hurts the way strangers or outsiders would. Family members may even fight, but as a unit they must equally forgive and forget. Time and again these sisters point out the traits of one another, comparing and linking them to the new sister. Knowing that family is all they truly have, that it is a way of embracing what they do not quite know, and a way to include that world outside. Little acts—cooking, gardening, dressing, eating, and even praying—become major events in such a closed world, yet it is these seeming non-events that help to make a family cohere and survive. And Kore-eda rightfully celebrates them as something more than insignificant moments. This is a film that takes a patient gaze—in its ebb and flow, the movie might have come to an end at several junctures before it finally does—and a viewer that can transcend his or her own cultural perspectives.

 

Los Angeles, July 11, 2016 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review.

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Kenji Mizoguchi | Naniwa erejii (Osaka Elegy) / 1936

no satisfaction

by Douglas Messerli

 

Yoshikata Yoda and Kenji Mizoguchi (screenplay), Kenji Mizoguchi (director) Naniwa erejii (Osaka Elegy) / 1936

 

A young telephone operator in the Asai Pharmaceutical Company, Ayako Murai (Isuzu Yamada) is in love with a fellow colleague, Nishimura (Kensaku Hara), a love which he returns with several excuses and lies. At nights Mr. Nisimura has been accompanying the company director’s wife, Sonosuke (Benkei Shiganoya), to the theater. Ayako notices him being paid for his services, but the young man denies everything, not recognizing his own behavior as a kind of prostitution. Unhappy at home, the company head, Sumiko (Yoko Umemura)—presented from the beginning of the film as a petulant, selfish, and abusive man—attempts to involve the young Ayako in an affair, which she rejects.


     When it becomes apparent that her father, who has embezzled 300 Yen from the company for which worked, will soon be imprisoned if we cannot come up with the money, Ayako attempts to borrow the money from Nisimura, but he refuses. Although Ayako is a spirited young woman, arguing against her father for his transgressions, she finally agrees to become Asai’s mistress so that she might raise the money to save her father.   

    Leaving home, Ayako enters a new nightmare world, expressed by the director’s dark, nighttime images.  Once Ayako has left home, she hardly sees the light of day again. The elderly Asai, setting her up in an apartment, forces her to redo her hair in the manner of married woman so that he might appear with her in public. And much of the day she is forced to sit alone awaiting the return of her unfeeling lover.


     When Asai’s wife encounters the two of them at a puppet play, he forces another of his employees to insist that it was him who is seeing Ayako, not Asai, deceiving the incensed wife. But soon after, she perceives the real truth when Asai’s doctor mistakenly shows up at their house to care for Asai, when, in fact, he has fallen ill in Ayako’s apartment. The affair ends, abruptly, disgracing Ayako. 

     Running into Nisimura in the street, the two former lovers come together again, he asking Ayako to marry him; but embarrassed by her situation, she rushes off. Later, however, she becomes determined to seek out Nisimura, to accept his offer and admit her past. If his love is strong enough, she will marry him, freeing herself from her downward spiral.

     En route, however, Ayako discovers from her sister that her college brother has run out of tuition money, and she agrees to take up with another unpleasant businessman, Fujino (Eitarō Shindō) to secretly raise money for her brother’s education. She raises the money, and attempts to fool Fujino into giving extra money so that she can marry Nisimura. But when she walks out on him, Fujino calls the police, accusing her of soliciting.

      Ayako, meanwhile, attempts to explain her past to a horrified Nisimura, but is interrupted by the police who arrest her. At police headquarters Nisimura denies involvement with Ayako, denying any desire to marry her, and the young girl is forced to admit to a crime she had committed only in search a way to further help her family and give herself a better life.

 

    Released by the police, she returns home, hoping for at least some appreciation for her acts, almost speaking a version of the cliché “There’s no place like home”; Mizoguchi’s irony in that statement almost breaks our hearts, as reality in Osaka is shown to be the reverse of that same The Wizard of Oz platitude of three years later. Over a family meal, of which she never offered a bite, Ayako is shunned by her brother, berated by her father, and even derided by her younger sister. Spurned by all, she is cast out from her home. 

      The film’s last scene shows her walking along the side of the railroad tracks, pondering what might be the “disease of delinquency” for which her family and society have condemned her. Clearly, in answer to that, she must attempt a voyage into a strange new world once more. As in so many Mizoguchu works, women—particularly strong and nonsubservient women—are abused by Japanese society, ultimately having little choice but to use their bodies in order to survive. The delinquency of which Ayako, in the end, is accused, is actually a product of the delinquency of nearly all the film’s male figures, who together scheme, lie, cheat, and abuse the young girls they encounter. And, accordingly, the independent women end up as mere figures of service as if they had never left home in the first place. The only successful woman in this world (head of the Woman’s Association) is the unloving and tart tongued Mrs. Asai, and it is she, as we observe in an early scene, who sleeps with a version of Dorothy’s beloved dog; without a totemic scarecrow, woodsman, or lion to accompany her, Ayako is completely on her own, with only her own brain, heart, and courage to help her move forward.

 

Los Angeles, July 29, 2013

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (July 2013).

Alfred E. Green | Baby Face / 1933

a woman of powerful means

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola (screenplay, based on a story by Daryl Zanuck), Alfred E. Green (director) Baby Face / 1933

 

If there was ever an example of a healthy shift away from the Naturalism of Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser at the turn of the century, it was the almost Grade B movie of 1933, Baby Face— fortunately made with Grade A actors such as Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent.      


     While the Depression may have set everyone spinning back to believing that their personal fates lay outside of their control, Stanwyck’s character, Lily Powers, is a girl of flowering powers, revealed to her by the local cobbler—who a bit like Joseph Stalin, whose father was a cobbler, and carried with him the tools of shoe-making for the rest of life—who has matters more political and philosophical on his mind. A devotee of Nietzsche—at least of Nietzsche’s sayings collected by his sister after the philosopher had gone mad—Adolph Cragg (Alphonse Ethier) consuls his young admirer, Lily, to take advantage of the power of her sexuality, arguing that she should use her sexual appeal, like the men use physical bulk, to achieve the goals she desires. 

     The only problem is that Lily has yet to discover what she truly desires. At one point, as she works in her father’s apartment-based speakeasy, we glimpse that her wishes may be simple; opening the windows and breathing upon her few window-boxed plants, the lights of the oil refineries glistening below; it appears that all she truly wants to is a bit a fresh air, the pleasure of her lungs not filled with the fumes of oil and her attendant life with the crude workers from the refineries.


 

     She seems doomed, however, by the world in which she has been raised, where her father has used his daughter as a prostitute in order to gain friends and obtain the permissions to continue running his illegal still. When a local politician attempts to make good on her father’s promises, however, Lily rebels, clobbering the local politician over the head with a beer bottle, and, in so doing, threatening her father’s livelihood. The interchange between father and daughter reveals what the young girl has had to endure throughout most of her childhood, and sets the tone, in fact, for her actions throughout the rest of the movie:

 

                   Lily Powers: Yeah, I'm a tramp, and who's to blame? My Father.

                   A swell start you gave me. Ever since I was fourteen, what's it been?

                   Nothing but men! Dirty rotten men! And you're lower than any

                   of them. I'll hate you as long as I live!

 

     If the fact that her man-hating manifesto along with even the mention of Nietzsche in this Daryl Zanuck concocted comedy-drama, all seems a bit strange, this film, I warn you, is an unabashedly odd duckling, among the top films that are often cited for assuring the existence of Will Hays’ Production Code, the moral mantle tossed over Hollywood Productions to douse the embers of any pre-code enlightenment. Only in a recent version was it discovered that Lily was only 14 at the time of her first sexual exploits, which can only explain her obvious hatred of men which permeates this film.

     Within moments after Lily’s attack on the male species, her father dies in an explosion of his still, and she, along with her apparently life-long black friend, Chico (the wonderful Theresa Harris) is freed to discover herself.


     Once again, Lily does not really know what to make of that freedom, debating, on another visit to her cobbler friend, whether it might not be best to take the strip club offer she’s just received, where she might be paid for showing off her body. But in the original uncensored version I saw yesterday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art showing, part of their series in “Masters of Hollywood Costumes,” the cobbler proclaims that she must use men like they have previously used her, that she should show no compromises in obtaining what she wants.

     And with that Lily and Chico are off to New York, hinting at what might have been, but of course couldn’t have been realized, the first black and white lesbian liaison ever presented on screen.

      A scene in the empty freight car, as the two women attempt to tramp along as hobos, demonstrates that Lily has suddenly caught on to what the old cobbler has tried to teach her. Discovered by a train official, the two are ordered off and threatened with imprisonment. Looking carefully into her assailant’s face, Lily suggests they “talk it over,” the idea of which, after a quick smirk, the railway man takes up, joining the two women as Chico moves away in a joyously sexually-laced song. In the dark railway car we catch only the glimpse of the line-man’s gloves tossed beside Lily, she carefully moving them aside—obviously to make room for him next to her in the straw. The women here are where the power lies, and the two of them join in on that new aspect of their lives, a sisterhood as old as the most ancient of texts.

     Without the further ado, the two women, having arrived in Eden, walk down the avenue, staring into the windows of wealthy eateries before Lily spots the Gotham Trust tower, which the camera follows from its base to the top of its towers—a motif that will be repeated throughout the film as Lily makes her way, quite literally, up from the employment office to the very top. Flirting with the security guard, she discovers the whereabouts of the employment office, quickly conquering a chubby assistant to the head of personnel before we, breathtakingly, discover her—much like J. Pierpont Finch in How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying—in the filing department.

     Using the men she encounters like so-many sitting ducks, just as they behave, Lily sleeps her way up the corporate ladder. An affair with a youthful John Wayne (as Jimmy McCoy) quickly leads her to his boss, Brody (Douglass Dumbrille). And before we even blink, accompanied by the glorious tones of W. C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, she applies herself to the Mortgage Department, where she is caught in the ladies’ room with by a rising young executive Ned Stevens (Donald Cook). Brody loses his job, but Lily successfully convinces that she was forced into the situation, her job temporarily “saved.”



     What is interesting and of great importance in her dizzying successes is that the script goes out of its way to demonstrate that Lily is not only a competent worker, but is exceptional, that she deserves the promotions that she has sexually obtained. Indeed, without her behind-the-scenes manipulation of the men around her, she would likely never have been awarded what she truly deserves.

     Similarly, despite several times when the men in her life would have her dismiss her maid / friend Chico, Lily remains absolutely adamant that the black woman not only remain in her close relationship with her, but that she equally benefit in the financial gains Lily has used to improve her own appearance through a near-staggering number of hair-styles and Orry-Kelly gowns. Although I wouldn’t argue too stridently for this, I suggest that, given Lily’s detestation of the men of whom she takes advantage, that her relationship with Chico might represent something closer than mere friendship, hinted at, perhaps by the increasing number of dolls which appear upon her bed—which, a few years later Djuna Barnes would speak of in her novel of lesbian love, Nightwood, as surrogate children.

 

    What matters more in this film, however, is Lily’s continued rise in the company echelons. Despite the fact that Stevens is rumored to be morally inculpable and that he is engaged to First Vice President J. R. Carter’s daughter, Lily quickly forces him into an untenable corner, by allowing his finance to discover them sharing a kiss. When Stevens cannot bring himself to fire Lily, he is temporarily sent away by Carter, who himself takes on Lily as his lover, setting her up in a lavish, new apartment attached to her own special bank account! The old codger is delighted with Baby Face’s foolish baby talk, but it is also clear just from the number of conquests she has made, and the fact that those she has destroyed all attempt to return to her, that Lily is just as good at her sexual duties as she was in her official ones.

      When Stevens, however, attempts to return to her arms, despite her cold dismissal of him, he stumbles into her current situation only to kill his would-be father-in-law before turning the gun upon himself. If she has previously been quite able to talk herself out of situations, Lily cannot even hope to wrangle out of this new situation. Immediately reporting the murder to the police (with the understatement of the movie, “There’s been an accident”), she discovers herself on the front pages of the city papers, the subject of a major scandal. Once more, she cleverly attempts to make the most of the situation, negotiating with the Gotham Trust board for a payment to not publish her private journals. But this time, she entraps herself by her pretenses, arguing that what she would really like is to simply have the opportunity to support herself. The new bank president, the former playboy Courtland Trenholm (George Brent) cleverly takes her up on her it, offering her a job in their Paris office. The fact that she linguistically slips back, for a few moments, to her    previous tough-girl dialogue, reveals her disorientation with the sudden shift of situation, and hints, perhaps, at her later fascination of the man who has just out-witted her.

 

    Surprising even herself, Lily takes on her new job as a travel agent within the company with great aplomb, demonstrating herself, once more, as one of the most capable of employees. This may seem like a minor issue, but it proves that Lily Powers, had she been only given an ordinary opportunity, would have succeeded equally, without her sexual offerings. In the depression, however, she most definitely would not have been given that opportunity, would most likely not ever hired and would practically reached no position higher than a secretary, just as Chico, no matter what her relationship to Lily, must continue to counterfeit herself as a maid.*



     But we also sense that Lily is now holding out for something far more desirable, that through her meteoric rise and fall she has discerned that she has still selling herself short. A clue might be in Cortland’s strange last name, Trenholm, which derives from a Nordic words meaning “crane island.” The tall stately birds, clearly representative of social heights and grace of Cortland’s ancestry, suggest a world apart from the others she has previously encountered, a cultural enclave to which she now suddenly wants entry. The film portrays her unexpected patience as she waits, without an umbrella, in the rain, for Trenholm to appear from the building wherein she has just reencountered him, to enter his awaiting car. Naturally, he must offer her a ride and the temporary cover of his umbrella.

     It is also clear that in the time she has spent away from New York, she has plotted a new strategy. Instead of making herself available, she sheaths herself in silence, as if she were judging him, evaluating his behavior, the fact of which he quickly discerns. Using honesty instead of placation, she even tells him that he has somewhat disappointed her in his very ordinariness, in the fact that he, too, has been taken in so easily by her charms. And this time around, Lily is not willing to enter in a sexual liaison without the promise of marriage.

 

    Amazingly, she quickly attains her entry to “crane island,” as he marries her, awarding her jewels and bonds which she dazzlingly displays to Chico as if they were trophies, arguing that they only represent half of what she will one day control.

     We are, however, still in a world where other powers can hold sway over our lives. This film, after all, remains a work of the Great Depression. If Trenholm, called back to New York for having created yet a new scandal through his marriage, the bank which he heads is as subject as all others to failure, even if Baby Face unconvincingly attempts to suggest the cause was its customer’s lack of confidence because of his alliance. Indicted, Trenholm must suddenly raise a million dollars for his defense, half of which he has entrusted to his newly wed wife.

     Deluded, like all the others, Trenholm is suddenly faced with his stupidity when the now heartless Lily outrightly refuses to help him:

 

                      Lily Powers: I can't do it. I have to think of myself. I've

                      gone through a lot to get those things. My life has been

                      bitter and hard. I'm not like other women.

 

     Here, we suddenly discover that her machinations have turned her into a kind of monster, as she perceives even her former achievements as elements in a life of suffering. And, once again, there is a hint in her final disclaimer that she, different from other women, is unable to love men.


    Grabbing her jewels and money, she orders Chico to pack her bags and meet her back at the ship, with the intention, obviously, of leaving her husband in the lurch. It is unpleasant scene, but it fits the pattern of her behavior throughout the film, forcing us to realize that she has never truly come to understand what precisely she has been seeking, to discover the goal of all her so capable acts.

    Just as she as realized that she must use a different tactic to win over Trenholm, however, she must accordingly comprehend that he is not just another man. Trenholm is a taller more gracious being who stands apart from all the others, and in that recognition she rushes back to him at the very moment he attempts suicide. **

    At film’s end, as the couple speed away in an ambulance, we perceive that Trenholm will survive. When one of her attaché cases falls open, revealing its contents, an attendant suggests she might want to protect it, but Lily, focusing upon her husband’s fate, proclaims that they no longer need it. Finally, we perceive, this woman-on-the-prowl has discovered what she has been looking for: a human being who might love her, not a container of baubles and promised payments. Yet, as one critic wittily noted, we can only imagine that, a few minutes later, she will take care of the open case; for they will surely need the money to pay for the doctor’s bill and the lawyers to save Trenholm from imprisonment. She has finally found something worthy of purchasing with her new-found wealth.

 

*Sadly, except for this and a few other films, the obviously talented Harris had to play a maid or chorus singer in most of the dozens of films in which she had small parts. She worked throughout her life to change Hollywood’s attitudes toward black actors, unsuccessfully during her lifetime. Lynn Nottage’s 2011 play, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is based, in part, on Harris’ life.

**Strangely, the later censored version insisted that he was just another lug, returning the couple to Erie, New York where he would work in the refineries like all the other men she had previously rejected.

        

Los Angeles, November 5, 2014

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2014).

My Queer Cinema Index [with former World Cinema Review titles]

Films discussed (listed alphabetically by director) [Former Index to World Cinema Review with new titles incorporated] (You may request any ...