Flickers in Time

During the filming in Spain of the Biblical epic Solomon and Sheba, one of the scenes was a strenuous, swashbuckling swordfight between 44 year-old actor Tyrone Power and co-star George Sanders . Power suffered a fatal heart attack and died on the way to the hospital.

Producer Michael Todd (the third husband of Elizabeth Taylor) and co-developer of the Todd A-O sound system, was killed in a plane crash near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Taylor went on to ‘steal’ married actor Eddie Fisher (Todd’s best friend) away from Debbie Reynolds.

A small-time gangster named Johnny Stompanato, Lana Turner’s lover, was fatally stabbed with a butcher knife by Turner’s 14 year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane during an incident of abuse in their home in Beverly Hills. During the inquest (filmed for TV), Turner nearly collapsed on the stand during dramatic testimony. The killing was declared a justifiable homicide of self-defense by the coroner’s jury.

21 year-old Jack Nicholson made his screen debut in producer Roger Corman’s low-budget juvenile delinquent drama The Cry Baby Killer.

Elvis Presley was inducted into the Army.  14-year-old Bobby Fischer won the United States Chess Championship.  Pizza Hut was founded.  President Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act into law.  U.S. Marines were ordered into Lebanon at the request of President Chamoun.  The first U.S. earth satellite went into orbit.

A Death in the Family by James Agee won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.  Look Homeward, Angel by Ketti Frings won for Drama.  “Volare” by Domenico Modugno spent ten weeks atop the Billboard charts.  Charles de Gaulle was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

The European Economic Community (Common Market) became effective.  Egypt and Syria merged into United Arab Republic. Khrushchev became premier of Soviet Union.  Gen. Charles de Gaulle became French premier, remaining in power until 1969. Rebel troops under Che Guevara invaded Santa Clara, Cuba. Cuban President Fulgencio Batista resigned two days later.  Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed a patent for the iconic plastic Lego brick.

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I have previously reviewed , , and  on this site.  The films I will select from are here.

Photo montage from the Oscar winners

Photo montage of nominees in the major categories

Old Yeller
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Written by Fred Gipson and William Tunberg from Gipson’s book
1957/USA
Walt Disney Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Katie Coates: If that don’t beat all. I never saw such a dog.

Travis Coates: And you won’t never see another one like him.[/box]

This childhood favorite held up very well.

The Coates family lives on a farm on the Texas frontier.  As the story begins, Pa Coates (Fess Parker) goes off to sell some cattle and earn the first cash money the family will have seen since the Civil War.   Wife Katie (Dorothy McGuire) and two sons Travis (Tommy Kirk), around 12, and Arliss, maybe five, will be left alone for at least three months.  Travis is to be the man of the family.  He asks for a horse as a reward but his father tells him what he needs is a good dog.

Soon enough, a big yellow dog shows up.  He gets on Travis’s bad side initially but Arliss adores and he is soon adopted.  The dog proves to be the best friend the family ever had, helping them out of one scrape after another.  With Chuck Conners as the stray’s owner.

I read the book as a child, before I ever saw the movie, and the ending made me cry and cry.  The movie is both moving and exciting and the performances are all first-rate.  The stand-out, of course, is the multi-talented canine.  It’s a coming of age story as well as a dog movie.  Recommended.

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Love in the Afternoon
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Bill Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
1957/USA
Billy Wilder Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Frank Flannagan: I think people should always behave as though they were between planes.[/box]

When the “May” in a May-December romance is Audrey Hepburn and Billy Wilder is at the helm, a movie is bound to have its charms.

The city is Paris, where Private Detective Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) does a booming business ferreting out infidelity.  He tries to keep his sordid cases away from his daughter, Ariane (Hepburn), but she is fascinated.  Chavasse’s latest case involves a dalliance between Frank Flannigan (Gary Cooper), a notorious womanizing millionaire, and a married woman.  Ariane sees Flannigan’s picture and is smitten.  Then she overhears the woman’s husband plotting to kill him and decides to come to his rescue.

Ariane interrupts the tryst and poses as the woman in question while the real thing escapes.  Flannigan begins to romance the cello student.  She defends herself by regaling him with tales of her other lovers, all borrowed from her father’s files.

Hepburn is as beautiful and charming as ever in this.  The script is witty and the whole thing goes down easily.  Coop just looks very tired to me unfortunately.  It probably would have worked better with Cary Grant or William Holden.

Trailer

The D.I.
Directed by Jack Webb
Written by James Lee Barrett
1957/USA
Mark VII Ltd
First viewing/YouTube rental

[box] TSgt Moore: [shouting] If your brains were made of dynamite you couldn’t blow your nose![/box]

Who knew boot camp could be so much fun?  For the witnesses that is …

Gunnery Sgt. Jim Moore (Jack Webb) is a tough-as-nails Marine Drill Instructor whose job is to change boys to men.  He does this with rigid discipline and intimidation.  Privately, he smiles at the hapless recruits.  All except one of them, Private Owens.  Owens has potential but constantly screws up and malingers, hoping to get discharged.  Moore refuses to give up or let up on him.  Moore’s superior is sick of hearing about the private’s latest misconduct and threatens to discharge him if he is not whipped into shape in three days.

In the meantime, Moore, whose life has been the Marines, starts a relationship with a lady who doesn’t put up with much guff herself.

This movie is really more or less a series of episodes and a chance to bask in Webb’s fantastic performance and the rapid-fire one-liners. I don’t think of myself as enjoying watching people browbeat each other but I was smiling the entire time.  Totally enjoyable and recommended.

Montage of fun, fun clips

The One That Got Away
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Written by Howard Clews from a book by Kendal Burt and James Leasor
1957/UK
The Rank Organization/Julian Wintle Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Franz von Werra: Hello, RAF intelligence? Hello, RAF. I’m looking for the microphone hidden near the window of my room. This is Oberluetnant Von Werra calling the RAF, are you recieving me? Werra calling and testing.

This is an different POW escape/action film in that it is a Nazi that does the escaping.

It is 1940.  Lt. Franz von Werra (Hardy Krüger)  is shot down over Britain.  During his interrogation, we learn that he is cocky to the extreme and a proficient liar.  These qualities serve him well as a POW.  He bets his interrogator that he will escape from camp within 6 months.  We follow a couple of audacious aborted escape attempts.

Finally, the British transfer him to a camp in Canada.  But nothing can stop von Werra and the last act is devoted to his flight over a snowy landscape.

This is a fairly standard POW escape film despite its twist.  I thought it was refreshing that the filmmakers owned up to all the mistakes the British made in the case.  I had not seen Krüger in anything before and thought he was very good.  All in all I liked this movie.

Trailer

Wild Is the Wind
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Arnold Schulman from a novel by Vittorio Nino Novarese
1957/USA
Wallis-Hazen
First viewing/Amazon Prime

I don’t weep or anything, but there’s always some part of me left bloody on the scene I’ve just directed. — George Cukor

Anthony Quinn fails at taming a force of nature – Anna Magnani.

Gino (Quinn) is a prosperous Reno sheep rancher.  He brought a little Basque boy over from Spain in hopes that he would be a natural shepherd and he was right.  He raised the boy as his son and Bene (Anthony Franciosa) is now his foreman.  He has a daughter, Angela, who studies in Boston.  His dearest wish is that Bene and Angie will marry.

Gino’s wife, Rosana, died when Angie was a baby.  Now that his business is booming, he has decided he needs a wife.  He goes to Italy and brings back Rosana’s sister Gioia (Magnani).  She resembles the placid, submissive Rosana in looks but not in temperament.  Gioia speaks no English and the uproar of her welcome by Gino’s extended family is overwhelming.

Gino’s idea had been to give Gioia all the things he could not afford to give to Rosana. The problem is these are not the things Gioia really wants.  The biggest problem, however, is that Gino constantly compares Gioia to her sister and the active, passionate Gioia fails to measure up.  He even calls Gioia Rosana constantly.  Gioia is finally driven to the breaking point and into the arms of Bene.  With Joseph Calleia as Gino’s elder brother.

The plot of the film has a lot in common with They Knew What They Wanted/The Most Happy Fella and I was kind of surprised to find the source material is different.  The acting in this is fabulous as we should expect from the two leads.  Anthony Franciosa was nominated for Best Actor for his performance in A Hatful of Rain in 1957 but he is at least as good here.  There are some magnificent scenes featuring horses and sheep.  I had a tear in my eye at the end.  Recommended.

Wild is the Wind received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (Quinn); Best Actress (Magnani) and Best Music, Original Song.

Magnani sings

The Tall T
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Written by Burt Kennedy based on a story by Elmore Leonard
1957/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Brown-ScottProductions/Producers-Actors Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Usher: Sometimes you don’t have a choice.

Pat Brennan: Don’t you?[/box]

These Boetticher Westerns are all new to me and I’m really liking them.

Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott) worked for years as the best ranch foreman in town.  Now he has bought a place of his own.  He rides into town to buy a seed bull from his former boss.  The boss says he can have the animal for free if he can ride it – he will forfeit his horse if he can’t.  Pat is thrown and loses his horse.  He starts walking the 20 miles back home and is picked up by his friend who is driving a stagecoach specially chartered by newlyweds for their honeymoon.  The groom Willard Mims, an obnoxious social climber, objects but his heiress wife Doretta (Maureen O’Sullivan) makes him relent.

The party arrives at a cattle station where they are met by suave outlaw Usher (Richard Boone) and his hired guns.  The thugs are both mean trigger-happy lunkheads.  While Doretta is inside fixing a meal for the gang, Willard panics and tells Usher that Doretta’s father will pay a large ransom for her.  He sends Willard off with one of the men to deliver a ransom demand and holds Pat and Doretta hostage.

When Doretta discovers that her new husband betrayed her, it is up to Pat to get her to calm down and cooperate in their survival from what looks to be certain death.  With Henry Silva as the meaner of the two thugs.

Once again, Boetticher delivers a really quality film.  He is great with actors, action, and scenery.  Randolph Scott was born to play these roles.  I didn’t care much for him when he was a rather awkward romantic lead in the 30’s.  It was very nice to see O’Sullivan again after several years and she does well as an allegedly Plain Jane old maid.  Boone is also fantastic.  Recommended.

Clip – opening

The Vampire
Directed by Paul Landres
Written by Pat Fielder
1957/USA
Gramercy Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Dr. Paul Beecher: Oh, Will, you told me yourself these pills were from vampire bats.
Dr. Will Beaumont: Exactly, Paul, but that doesn’t make you another Dracula.

This Vampire looks more like the Wolf Man than Dracula but the flick is pretty good as these things go.

As the movie opens, Dr. Matthew Campbell is found collapsed in his lab by a delivery boy. The boy fetches Dr. Paul Beecher (John Beal).  In the moments before the man dies, he tells Beecher he has found the secret to regression.  It is contained in a bottle of pills he gives Beecher.  Beecher pockets the pills.  The widower’s daughter then takes pills from the wrong bottle for her father’s headache.  Mayhem ensues as people start dying mysteriously of “capillary disintegration.”  With Colleen Gray as the doctor’s nurse and Kenneth Tobey as the sheriff.

I thought this was a solid little picture, if one with few surprises or thrills.  The pills turn out to be addictive so there’s a junkie withdrawal sub-plot thrown in.

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