tcm alert thread (Jun '23 - tcm alert: dead)

I meant to ask something about High Sierra -- I noticed Ida Lupino's name was above Bogart's in the opening credits. Was she a bigger star than he was in 1941?

Lupino was going back and forth on suspensions with Warner Brothers at the time but Bogart wasn't yet a star at the start of 41 even following the success of Petrified Forest... here's some wiki info about Bogie's life from '36 until High Sierra/Maltese Falcon made him an unlikely leading man with a few minor bolded emphases on my part:

In spite of his success, Warner Bros. had no interest in making Bogart a top star. Shooting on a new movie might begin days or only hours after the previous one wrapped. The studio system, then at its most entrenched, restricted actors to their home lot, with only occasional loan-outs. Any actor who refused a role could be suspended without pay. Bogart disliked the roles chosen for him, but he worked steadily. Between 1936 and 1940 he averaged a movie every two months, at times working on two simultaneously. Amenities at Warners were few compared to the prestigious MGM. Bogart thought that the Warners wardrobe department was cheap, and often wore his own suits in his movies. In High Sierra, Bogart used his own pet dog Zero to play his character's dog, Pard.

Bogart... made films like Racket Busters, San Quentin, and You Can't Get Away with Murder. The only substantial leading role he got during this period was in Dead End (1937), while loaned to Samuel Goldwyn, where he portrayed a gangster modeled after Baby Face Nelson. He did play a variety of interesting supporting roles, such as in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) (in which his character got shot by James Cagney's). Bogart was gunned down on film repeatedly by Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, among others. In Black Legion (1937), for a change, he played a good man caught up and destroyed by a racist organization, a movie Graham Greene described as "intelligent and exciting, if rather earnest".

In 1938, Warner Bros. put Bogart in a "hillbilly musical" called Swing Your Lady as a wrestling promoter; he later apparently considered this his worst film performance. In 1939, Bogart played a mad scientist in The Return of Doctor X. He cracked, "If it'd been Jack Warner's blood ... I wouldn't have minded so much. The trouble was they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie."

We're likely gonna watch maltese falcon tonight as the gal hasn't seen it, though it'll be my fifth time through or so.

https://learn.canvas.net/courses/748/pages/the-case-of-film-noir-lecture-transcript-number-1

I didn't know Pard/Zero was Bogie's dog! I saw the last 30" the other day, and thought, although his part as written was a bit wet, like everybody else's, he did the best with it. Good to see HB and *Ida Lupino* together, though---did they team up again??

Don't think so... I recall reading they didn't get along?

all the stuff on the mountain is beautiful and brilliant but the multiple nonsensical b-plots (the two dueling toughs for lupino's affections, the effete songbird hotel clerk, cutie mcclubfoot, the crooked cop and the criminal doctor) do not help business.

Yeah, made the mountain chase and showdown even better, breaking through all that clutter! Maybe Bogie's character subconsciously/secretly yearned for such. And Pard proved crucial, at the last second. Good dog.

Well he did get bogie killed so maybe not! I kinda think he's meant to be a jinx.

It was time to *go*,somewhere and maybe B's dead-end character knew that, deep down. Lupino: "Oh, GET IT OVER WITH!" Or words to that effect. She also pointed out that he would never surrender. So it was a mercy, at least as far as she was concerned, and the audience was primed too. He was always something of a jinx, yeah, but good at bringing on the next turning point, and a reminder of life's inescapable details ( for example,chasing down B's car, when the Big Heist was finally underway).

"He" Pard, of course.

Wish I wasn't out tomorrow night: I haven't seen Going in Style since it came out.

"Gentleman Jim" is insanely good.

unsurprisingly, a rewatch of Maltese Falcon was very rewarding.

Woman on the Run was very very good! highly recommended!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP17gzfzO5M

Yeah, that happened to be starting when I knocked off work the other night. Good performance from Sheridan.

I just watched that too, got it from Netflix on a whim. Very enjoyable.

the script is tart, the acting is excellent and san francisco in the late forties looks gorgeous
i did not see the twist coming!

caught most of Dark Passage - not particularly great (well, Bacall is great) mostly caught my eye cuz of the local landscape

man, high sierra is so fucking good.

i'm sick so I didn't get around to posting the schedule last night.
just realizing Detour is on now - i'll have to watch that on demand

Gun Crazy is the only one I've seen today, and I love it. Peggy Cummins is fantastic

Taping everything here:

FRIDAY, JUNE 12
6:00 AM THE GLASS KEY (1942)
7:30 AM LAURA (1944)
9:00 AM MINISTRY OF FEAR (1944)
10:30 AM MURDER, MY SWEET (1944)
12:15 PM DANGER SIGNAL (1945)
1:45 PM DETOUR (1945)
3:00 PM MILDRED PIERCE (1945)
5:00 PM DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946)
6:30 PM JOHNNY ANGEL (1946)
8:00 PM THE GANGSTER (1947)
9:45 PM GUN CRAZY (1950)
11:30 PM TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)
1:15 AM NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947)
3:30 AM NIGHT MOVES (1975)

oh yeah, Ministry of Fear is pretty enjoyable too. unusually light for Fritz Lang.
Laura's a goddamn classic

Glass Key is slept on.

mm been meaning to see Gun Crazy forever

I recorded Ministry of Fear for later, and watched Murder, My Sweet while I waited for work clients to get off their asses.

i was a big Dashiell hammett fan as a kid; never seen Glass Key but it's basically the same plot as yojimbo, right?
this looks like a pretty great lineup for this week.

You're thinking of Red Harvest ... the film that most resembles The Glass Key is probably Miller's Crossing.

right, right: my bad.

I wish they'd included Killer's Kiss in this -- I'd like to see it again.

Has Scarlet Street run this year? So sick. See it with a nurse.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/2015/summerofdarkness/TCM_SummerOfDarkness_Schedule2015.pdf

I'm still shaking my head at TCM giving us a damn PDF

Alright, who watched xpost Nightmare Alley? I saw most of it, but was very sleepy---and passed out for a while, having a dream about the characters which I can *almost* remember, through a translucent, yet blurry and unshakable carny tent flap--- a few questions:
What was the business with the bottles? Wiki says Stan accidently gave Pete the bottle of wood alcohol, rather than the moonshine he, Stan, had just purchased (atypically enough, according to the seller's comments). But Zeena says she kept it in her trunk, which Stan does have access to, since it sits unlocked, in an open area: we see him doing some kind of switcheroo *after* Pete's fatal imbibing. I thought, initially, that Pete helped himself to the easily available wood alchohol, after finishing the moonshine, but there seems to be some shine left? Anyway, something about Stan being the cunning sort re the code, but kinda slipping into self-monitor darkness re psychopathic detailing, how to get from point A to the main goal, acquiring the code.
And this foreshadows the way he finds his way toward the biggest pay-off of all (also lured by the evil shrink, who may not have a clear idea of why she tests Stanton The Great at first; they find each other). But does he also come to believe that he has a real degree of psychic power, despite the element of deceit, and that the latter is a means to a benevolent, healing end? Is that right? Or is he just pretty much aware of bullshitting Molly, and the goal is not money for the church, and the church for psychic healing, but just for the Big Score?
(Also, what is the deal with Molly and Bruno? He seems like a jealous father-boyfriend figure, and "You gotta marry her now," when Stan and Molly have just been hanging out--suppose the book made it seem like they'd been doing more than that--anybody read the book? Gotta find that.)

So I get that Stan is the unstable product of the system, the orphanages and all, at least according to him, and that his smarts and drive can veer off course, but I just couldn't quite track his course (shoulda grabbed a coffee).

I saw NA again a few months ago, and the short answer, i think, is "a little of all that."

The book is apparently a lot more raw and fetid, no surprise there.

Nightmare Alley

Thanks---just realized I have the book, in this Library of America omnibus:
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s
The Postman Always Rings Twice • They Shoot Horses, Don't They? • Thieves Like Us • The Big Clock •
Nightmare Alley • I Married a Dead Man
notes etc.:
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=1#sthash.etEUDNMd.dpuf

detour and glass key last night.

Detour was a muddy print with iffy sound but what a humdinger! Darker than a german chocolate cake and grittier than a mississippi dirt road. Only an hour but packed with sharp turns, great camera work and the battiest, angriest, hottest dame you'll ever see in Ann Savage. Two weeks of filming!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFXQqEoNofA

Glass Key was spectacular, probably even better. Clearly the antecedent of Miller's Crossing, good call pointing that out. Veronica Lake is an angel straight from heaven, Alan Ladd is an excellent tough guy and Bendix is the meanest, most sadistic, vaguely homoerotic heavy you're likely to find.

Well Miller's Crossing is obv based on the Glass Key. I vaguely remember also bits from the Dain Curse? Meanwhile Yojimbo, and then A Fistful Of Dollars, and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing also basically pull from elements of the Glass Key.

precedent, not antecedent duh

Isn't most of that stuff traced back to some old Italian play called "He Serves Two Masters"?

i wouldn't know but it certainly smacks of commedia archetype

Not so much for plot, but for tone and feel, if you're looking for something else with a possible influence on the Coens, I highly recommend On Dangerous Ground which is coming up later in the summer.

Goldoni was the playwright's name

Just realized TCM did put up a non-PDF version of the schedule:
http://summerofdarkness.tcm.com/#/schedule

courtesy of the Nitrate Diva---Australian poster:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHe2QMfUkAEmSLD.jpg

Nightmare Alley was spectacular; unsurprised to note that the off-brand upswing at the very end was entirely studio created and forced on. Would love to double feature this with Freaks someday.
many xxps to Dow: The film presents it as Stan giving Pete the bottle of wood alcohol accidentally and believed (reasonably, as he took a slug himself and thought it was garbage) that he gave him the moonshine. So it's accidental but predestined as per the tarot reading of earlier... he didn't mean to kill him, but with this film's dark ethos, you can argue he was an instrument perhaps more willing than not to allow fate to flow through.
as per the "does he really buy this shit" question; he does seem to believe he's fully justified in his actions. he's certainly working hard to give himself the patina of good intentions but there's a cold subconscious plotting right under the surface.
i LOVED the scene with Molly and Bruno, old carny hands who've seen this act played out before, immediately recognizing, digesting and cynically moving forward with the necessary ends. no discussion, no chance for apology but a definite presumption that they must already be fucking since they're young, we're old and washed up so let's push em to be honest moral kids. which they're not! but there's presumption of circus code of ethics there.

Thanks, forks!
Yeah, early on, he says something like "I'm strange, I can't think about anybody but myself," and the way he tells it, he was dumped in a bad orphanage by his parents; he knows he doesn't fit in anyhwere, but he's eager to claw his way into some safe place, where he can eat his fill, finally. But he gets that other people seem to fit in society, and he wants to justify what he does, be an acceptable minister, with his own church of psychic healing---success in show biz, where he must know or sense that most people get that he's got some kind of gimmick---that kind of acceptance just isn't enough. So yeah I guess the con is conning himself, which may even be necessary, up to a point, but it's like the chef or chemist partaking too much of his own product. He isn't prepared for the consequences of his drive and magnetism---casting the star Tyrone Power, watching him go too far and melt down, might've been too disturbing for audiences seeking the new normal, in the aftermath of WWII; it's fairly disquieting even now.
Tonight, after the epic overdrive of Greed, a couple of Japanese thrillers I hadn't heard of, Zero Focus and Castle of Sand. I've found a few promising descriptions---anybody seem 'em?

I've seen Zero Focus, thought it was really good. I have Greed and Castle of Sand set to record.

this is the studio cut of greed, right? taping nonetheless as i never saw it.

i agree with your assessment there dow; part of the noir sensibility is that we all THINK we can figure out where we're supposed to fit in but there's no hope for mugs like us.
Power is wonderful in Nightmare alley i thought; totally believable and enmeshed in the character.