ghosts of pansies past
by Douglas Messerli
Roland Pertwee and Romney Brent (screenplay),
Harold D. Schuster (director) Dinner at the Ritz / 1937
As the 1930s progressed risqué humor of any
kind in cinema became harder and harder to slip in, particularly since the
stereotypical images of perverted sexuality, homosexual men and women, had been
banned forever as referenced types. And as the Hays Censorship Board became
more suspicious and aware of double-entendres and coded messages, in order the
give their audiences a thrill, writers and directors turned to numerous other
genres outside of the straight-forward romance to give a charge to the remaining
possibilities of the now flat dialogue and straight-laced strictures of
romantic sex comedies.
Even in Britain, which after all depended upon the US audiences and code
approval, sexual wit was replaced by historical costume dramas, biographical
pictures, and murder mysteries, as well as the continuation of horror movies.
Many of these contained within them romantic episodes, but tamed down as they
needed be, the writers and directors could still excite their audiences with
the possibility of the heroine and or hero under threat of being kidnapping,
arrestment, or even murder or, just as often, being themselves involved with
the detection of various royal plots, nefarious plans, or murderous escapades.
Harold D. Schuster’s 1937 film, Dinner at the Ritz was clearly
meant to include as many of these hot points as possible. Starring a beautiful
woman with an exotic foreign accent, French actor Annabella as Ranie Racine, up
against an entire consortium of six or seven evil embezzlers, including the
Hungarian born Paul Lukas as the man her father had chosen to marry, Baron
Philip de Beaufort.
As
the film gets under way, however, we discover that despite her good intentions
to marry de Beaufort in order to please her father, Ranie is not at all in love
with the man. Her father (Stewart Rome), meanwhile, has just lost nearly all
his money through the evil work of the embezzlers of the bank’s bonds, and is
about to name six of the guilty men to the Regent of France. Just before
sending the letter off, however, he attempts to visit his future son-in-law de
Beaufort to confide in him, only to discover, through of case of mistaken
identity by a servant, that he is a friend of one of the men on the list,
Brogard (Francis L. Sullivan), and he realizes that de Beaufort might have been
involved as well.
Meanwhile, the reason he has not found de Beaufort at home is that he
has volunteered to drive Ranie to her dressmakers and, in a manner of speaking,
is about to abscond with her to the country when, in argument with her over his
decision, he gets into an accident with another car that just happens to be
driven by the hero of our story, Paul de Brack (David Niven), who is so
immediately attracted to Ranie Racine that he dares to crash a masked ball
party she is hosting that very evening. De Brack, we later discover, is also a
French government agent seeking out the criminals.
We
discern that fact, however, only later after de Beaufort kills Henri Racine at
the party when the older man confronts him about his involvement in the bond
theft and refuses to join de Beaufort and his gang or to rescind his letter,
and after a series of nearly pointless plot convolutions that allow the film to
bring in all the aspects of glamour it needs to wow its audiences.
Encountering a lowly private American detective, Jimmy Raine (Romney
Brent), who unlike the police, does not believe her father’s death was a
suicide, Ranie joins up with him and, as a cover, works with a diamond merchant
who allows the designers to deck her out in jewels as well as the permitting
the makeup artists to die her blonde hair black and the costume artists to make
her over into a rich Spanish marquises, and later an Indian princess—as well as
permitting Annabella to perform in three quite different roles while traveling
to Cannes, gambling in Monte Carlo, and eventually making her way to London.
Paul de Brack trails along as a seemingly hanger on who attempts to make love
to her in all her various disguises. We know that, despite the fact that he too
will come under suspicion, that in the end she will have fallen desperately in
love with him.
I
might take the reader through the various adventures this strange quartet
encounter along the way, but except for a few exciting moments, they’re truly
not worth relating. What is far more interesting is the fact that the man
playing the American detective, Brent, is also one of the screenwriters, who
concocted this pleasing Paella or, since most of the action takes in France,
perhaps we should call it a tasty Bouillabaisse.
Brent was born in Mexico, the son a Mexican diplomat who spent much of
his time in North America. He was educated, accordingly, in New York schools
and began his career with the Theatre Guild, working with Eva Le Gallienne,
Helen Hayes and many others in the 1920s before he began performing on the
British stage. In England he performed in Noel Coward’s famed Words and
Music singing the renowned song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” becoming a close
friend of Coward’s, and being cast in another Coward musical, Conversation
Piece until it became apparent to both him and the writer that he wasn’t
the man for the role, Coward himself temporarily taking on the position. With
Cole Porter, Brent wrote the story for the musical Nymph Errant.
Returning to New York, he performed in numerous other New York stage plays and
musicals and acted in several films.
The
reason I mention all of this is to establish the fact that Brent was clearly a
wit, comfortable with if not himself involved in the gay world. And in the
midst of this otherwise totally heterosexual murder mystery there is one scene
that stands out for its seeming impenetrability or, I am sure to most viewers,
stands as simply a meaningless few moments between other more important plot
events.
Ranie has traveled to Cannes to gamble at Monte Carlo where is attempts
to lose—not very successfully the first time around—so that she might threaten
to bet her diamond necklace and bracelet, luring in other gamblers as clients
for the real thing (hers are clever imitations). While in Monte Carlo she,
Jimmy Raine, and Paul de Brack—on the track of the king-pin of the embezzlers,
Brogard, whose yacht is docked at Cannes—are
all invited aboard. If Raine and de Brack are both interested in Brogard they
also keep busy checking out another one in their attempts to discover what each
other’s relationship is to the villain.
Other than ogling the Spanish countess (Ranie), Brogard spends most of
his time playing what we in the US call “Pick-Up Sticks,” what he describes as
“Fiddlesticks,” the word meaning “nonsense” that was once used as a replacement
swear-word for all other profane interjections. While Ranie sits at the table
trying to encourage Brogard into giving her further information about himself,
de Brack and Raine stand aside. The script goes something like this:
Jimmy Raine (turning to Paul de Brack): Would you fancy a stroll along
the
Crevette (?) as they call it?
Paul de Brack: I would not and that is not what they call it!
Jimmy: (a few seconds later, pointing at his throat) I don’t know about
you
But I have a sort of thing in
my throat and I think a drink would cure.
Paul: Why don’t you go and find out.
Jimmy: Wouldn’t you like to try a similar experiment?
Paul: No.
Jimmy: Ah, be a pal.
Paul: (turning to Jimmy and putting his hand upon his shoulder) Look,
don’t
you ever get tired of my
company?
Ranie has pretended to have a headache and has
left the room, declaring she’s going to take a nap. When Jimmy is rejected by
Paul, he leaves, encountering Ranie at the at the taffrail of the boat and
joins her.
Jimmy: Look, are you getting stuck on this guy de Brack?
(She looks at him
somewhat testily)
Nah, don’t burn up. I
can’t help liking the guy myself.
He then goes on to suggest, however, that he
fears that de Brack is a phony.
Obviously, one could simply overlook the seemingly meaningless chit-chat
that goes on between our three central characters in this scene, but in its
very oddness, not only in terms of its literal meanings but in its grammatical
syntax, one suspects something else is going on, and that something hints at
being quite sexual.
Jimmy, the American does not know French well enough, it is clear, to
say precisely what he means by “Crevette.” In French the word means a shrimp or
a prawn, which makes utterly no logical sense. I have listened to this scene
about 20 times and I am convinced that it is that word he utters, unless he’s
further compounded it with the British word for tie or ascot “cravat,”
mispronouncing it in some French manner.
I
turned on the written word version based on sound recognition which could make
utterly so sense of what was said, rendering it “crevet.” For a while, I
couldn’t imagine what Raine was attempting to say. Might he be asking that Paul
take a stroll along the deck of Brogard’s yacht? Then it dawned on me that he
was probably asking his friend if he’d join him on the famed Promenade de la
Croisette, the popular place for public strolling along the Cannes strand, the
grand crossroads or boulevard of that resort city, where traditionally people
stroll—although not generally late at night as it now is the movie.
Why does he confuse the croisette with crevette? With
Bogard’s statements about “Fiddlesticks,” the nonsense game he is playing, we
have already been invited to play our own (or at least Jimmy’s) game as well.
Shrimp has long been an English word used to suggest a diminutive size,
particularly with regard to the male penis. And yes, Romney Brent is a small
man, particularly in relation to actor David Niven.
But in urban dictionary parlance, moreover, it also means someone who
has a sexy body, but not a beautiful head, just as you delight in the body of
the shrimp but refuse to eat the head. Even in Spanish, camarón, in
street terms, signifies someone with the body of a goddess but a face straight
out of hell. Either he’s suggesting that his face might not be worthy of taking
a stroll with, but his body is, or Paul’s face doesn’t attract him as much as
his lower half does.
But then he goes on with an even more suggestive comment, that he has a
“thing” in his throat that needs curing, and wonders if Paul might attempt a
similar “experiment.” If he were simply in bad need of a drink, he more
naturally would have simply suggested that he’s thirsty and wonders if Paul
might join him for a drink. But here he seems to hint at a different kind of
liquid refreshment, having to do with his diminutive penis. Is he inviting him
to try out a suck, to engage in fellatio, either to try out his or vice versa?
Clearly, Paul is aware that Jimmy has been hanging around him endlessly
and seems to want something more of him. And Jimmy even admits to Ranie, right
after commenting on her sexual attraction to Paul, that he too “likes the guy,”
the “liking” here meaning obviously something closer to her own feelings than
to having simply good feelings about the man. He too seems to found him
attractive enough to attempt to lure him away for a sexual “experiment” in
same-gender sex.
Surely, many will now truly claim, what they have long argued, that I am
taking a perfectly innocent suggestion that Paul join Jimmy in a drink on the
Promenade de la Croisette and turning it into something sexual. But that isn't
at all what he asks. He asks him to join him in an experiment in clearing a
"sort of thing" in his throat. While a scratchy throat might describe
a kind of thirst, a "thing," let's call it a "lump in the
throat," in my dictionary, at least, is usually caused by a feeling a strong
emotion such as sorrow or gratitude--or even more often, sexual desire and
love.
Finally, let us imagine that the word Jimmy is inventing to ask Paul to
take a walk with him is actually “cravat,” closer to the voice recognition’s
choice, “crevet.” David Niven was himself a kind of wit, and many of his bon
mots have been shared over the years. One of his most famous maxims,
however, is “"Tell me that I misunderstood a joke, but don't tell me that
my choice of cravat is wrong." And certainly, a cravat is very much a
thing at if not in the throat. Unfortunately, I have no
indication of when he might have made this particular witticism. Yet it is
almost comical when put into context with an observation made by German clothes
designer Karl Lagerfeld, long after this film or Niven’s comment: “"If a
person steps on your cravat, you are to blame because you were kneeling."
This scene has nothing at all to do with the plot, but simply carries
“nonsense” information that asks the viewer to briefly play along for the wit
as opposed to the story which by this time we already know has to end with them
foiling the villains’ plans, regaining the bonds, and paying off the honest
investors of her father’s former bank. And, of course, Ranie will marry Paul,
the required ending of all such romantic film fantasies.
It is fascinating, however, that this kind of scene happens in several
movies after the so-called Pre-Code days of Hollywood. Everything stops
momentarily as the film takes off in a momentary tangent, almost like the way
it did earlier, when the action stopped and the camera focused on a pansy who
quickly threw a fit, waved his arms while muttering a bon mot, or simply
told his master how to dress or how to properly behave before being wheeled off
as the action of the plot resumed. I might almost describe these instances as
the ghosts of pansies past.
Los Angeles, April 4, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April
2023).
