The Glenda Farrell Project :: Take 4 :: Movie Poster Spotlight :: Joan and Glenda Got What It Takes (and They Take a Lot) in Ray Enright's Havana Widows (1933)

 

When a couple of burlesque performers (Blondell, Farrell) are suspended for refusing to *ahem* dance at a private party, they both conclude a major career change is in order. Here, fate rears its hair-brained head when they run into a former chorus girl who found herself a rich sugar daddy, made a killing in the divorce settlement, and is now living the high life. And so, our gal pals hit on a plan to head to Cuba, where this kind of gold-digging marital turnaround has become a cottage industry and set their sites on a rich fish (Kibbee), hire a seemingly permanently intoxicated lawyer (McHugh) to help grease the scam, and stay one step ahead of the dope (Jenkins) whom they duped into financing the trip. Mayhem ensues... 

  (M'rowr. Gawd I love pre-codes.)

As much as I love Glenda Farrell, I love her even more when she's teamed up with real life gal-pal, Joan Blondell. You want rapid-fire dialogue? Howard Hawks would be eating his own damned heart out at after witnessing the (acid) tongue-tying tête-à-têtes these two got into once they've warmed up. Havana Widows was the first time Warner Bros. teamed this duo and it was only supposed to be a one off, but these blonde-bombshells proved so popular the studio quickly had them paired-up again for about five more films to mine the same, gold-digging vein. (Which is extremely rare for Jack Warner, who liked to spread his stars around to make him more money.) And though Havana Widows isn't the best of the bunch (-- for the ones I've seen, that nod goes to Miss Pacific Fleet), it still has its moments as it tries to find the temperature.  

 

"With Glenda, Warners first paired us in Havana Widows (1933) and we clicked. She’d ask me, “Who’s Laurel? Who’s Hardy?” We’re both in the Pat O’Brien vehicle I’ve Got Your Number (1934) but I don’t think we have scenes together. So we still were not considered a team. But Havana Widows was such a hit we did Merry Wives of Reno (1934)* and Kansas City Princess (1934) and Miss Pacific Fleet (1935). Oh, I forgot Traveling Saleslady (1935), We’re In The Money (1935) . We were in Gold Diggers of 1937 together but not really as a team. The only other female comedy team was Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd, but they only made shorts. I’d go home at night with my sides aching because she was that funny. I recently saw her in a Torchy Blane movie on TV and she was the whole show. Like most of us, she got rotten treatment from Warners. But she did rebound on live TV and we stayed close until her passing last year (1971). I cried buckets I can tell you."
 

-- Joan Blondellxxxxxx

 
Click here for the full interview with Blondell at The Columnist.

* As far as I know, Blondell wasn't in Merry Wives of Reno. 
 

 
One of the things I am most thankful for from 2012 is getting a crash course on the life and times and film career of Glenda Farrell. And the more I dig, the more I love. And so, to share that love, we're kicking off The Glenda Farrell Project for 2013 and beyond, as I will do everything in my power to share my Glenda love in the usual, obsessive compulsive fashion in all matters and means and ways. Stay tuned! Lots more to come.
 

Havana Widows (1933) First National Pictures :: Warner Bros. / P: Robert Lord / D: Ray Enright / W: Earl Baldwin / C: George Barnes / M: Leo F. Forbstein / S: Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Guy Kibbee, Allen Jenkins, Lyle Talbot, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly

Sometimes the Hangover's Worth It :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Archie Mayo's Moontide (1942)

Returning to one of his favorite ports along the California coast, a hard-drinking, free-spirited sailor named Bobo (Gabin) and his mate, Tiny (Mitchell), set anchor and start raising some hell in the local watering holes. Alas, after one particular insane night of debauchery, Bobo gets so blasted he awakens on a stranger's boat wearing somebody else's hat, with no idea how he got there. Worse yet, the hat's owner turns up dead, and, fearing what he might have done during his drunken blackout, Bobo, with Tiny's encouraging, prepares to skip town.

But! This fugitive flight is interrupted when Bobo rescues a girl, Anna (Lupino), who was trying to commit suicide by drowning. Completely smitten with this waif, Bobo decides to stick around, falls in love, and gets married -- much to his old buddy Tiny's annoyance, who tries to sabotage this relationship at every turn. And then things take an even more sinister turn when Anna discovers who the real killer is, making her the next target!

Moontide is a fascinating, proto-film noir whose rocky production and subsequent box-office failure, unfortunately, and unjustly, relegated it to the musty vault of Forgotten Films and the Criminally Overlooked; just a footnote on the failure of Hollywood to import French actor Jean Gabin, who had resisted all Tinseltown overtures until France fell to Germany in 1940. Director Fritz Lang walked away from it during the pre-production phase. Ida Lupino was only in it because Joan Bennett got pregnant and had to bow out. Then, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, producer Mark Hellinger had to move the entire shoot indoors when location shooting on the docks proved untenable due to National Security risks.

And on top of all that, Joseph Breen, Hollywood’s censor extraordinaire, seemed to take a personal interest in this flick and proceeded to stomp the ever-living hell out of anything that came within six nautical miles of the Hayes Code right out of John O’Hara and Nunnally Johnson’s script. And when you take into account all the murder, mayhem, attempted suicides, raping and, yes, cannibalism in Willard Robinson’s source novel, one can only wonder who thought it was even possible to film the doomed characters of Moontide in the first place. But film it they did, and quite remarkably I might add.

Gabin is great, but Lupino is even better, showing a rare vulnerability. I’m telling ya, she’s so good in this. And both are supported by rock solid, out-of-character turns by beach bum Claude Raines and a murderous Thomas Mitchell. Archie Mayo subs in just fine for Lang, too, with lots of shadows and fog, and a nice assist from Salvador Dali for a drunken, phantasmagorical dream sequence. And the move indoors just adds a surreal, dreamlike quality that makes this thing come off as some kind of a demented fairy tale — complete with a Daryl F. Zanuck mandated happy ending. (For the record, I totally agree with him on this change.) And for every five things Breen squashed, one or two things managed to slip through.

Unfortunately, while dancing around Breen's scissors, Moontide can’t quite get its footing on what it really wants to be: a hard-edged thriller or sudsy melodrama — but, eh, whaddaya gonna do. In the film's defense, it does both genres very well, they just never quite jive properly. And please, don’t let that schizo stuff scare you off or you’re gonna miss a really good movie.

Other Points of Interest:

The newspaper ads for Moontide at the Morgue. 
 

Moontide (1942) Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation / P: Mark Hellinger / D: Archie Mayo / W: Nunnally Johnson, John O’Hara, Willard Robertson (novel) / C: Charles G. Clarke, Lucien Ballard / E: William Reynolds / M: David Buttolph, Cyril J. Mockridge / S: Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, Victor Sen Yung

Operation: 00-Oddballs :: Peter Lorre and Jimmy Bond Tortures Us All to the Edge of Madness!

And so, finally, we wrap-up Operation: 00-Oddballs with our Super-Secret Final Feature that ain't so secret anymore. That's right, we're doing Casino Royale -- vintage 1954, which was the very first 007 feature ever put to film, starring Barry Nelson and his Marine buzz-cut as the very American card-shark cum super-spy, Jimmy Bond.

No. Seriously. Lemme explain. You see, back in 1954 Plymouth Motors sponsored CBS' Climax! Mystery Theater, an hour-long anthology series which ran from '54 to 1958. The Casino Royale adaptation came early in the show's run, the third episode, according to most sources, premiering on October 21st of that inaugural year. Other adaptations included Sorry, Wrong Number, Fear Strikes Out, Gore Vidal's take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. 

CBS paid author Ian Fleming $1000 for the rights to adapt his first James Bond novel of the same name. To condense the novel to the show's limited format, scriptwriters Anthony Ellis and Charles Bennet were forced to strip it down to the bare bones and one setting. They also made Bond an American agent working for some combined intelligence agency with the other NATO countries. And once you adjust to the notion of an American Bond, the square-jawed Nelson isn't all that terrible. Honest. Meantime, Linda Christian makes a fine and feisty femme fatale. But it's Peter Lorre who anchors the whole thing and runs away with it as the villain of the piece. I absolutely adore this man and he's fantastic here as the giggling and sadistic Le Chiffre, especially when he gets to say lines like "We will torture you to the edge of madness!"

Now, remember, this was the 1950's and live TV, meaning no matter how much you plan ahead and rehearse, once the lights go on and the camera start rolling what you see is what you get no matter what happens or goes awry. And though there were few technical gaffes (-- including an Urban Legend inspiring mix-up we help debunk), one cannot help but boggle at the magnitude of what they were trying to pull off. Believe me, I know, having worked in live television. And believe me, you know I'm gonna tell you all about THAT in the review, too. No. No. It's relevant. Trust me.

Thought to be lost forever, a kinescope containing the majority of the broadcast was found in 1981 by film historian Jim Schoenberger, except for the ending. Luckily, the missing pieces were eventually found and the whole thing was pieced back together. And luckier still, the 1954 version of Casino Royale is available for all to see as a bonus feature on MGM's DVD for the 1967 version -- or you can a full debriefing on Casino Royale, the final entry in our Operation: 00-Oddballs Spy Spoof Retrospective, over at 3B Theater.

 

Other Points of Interest:

Full film review of Casino Royale (1954) at 3B Theater.

Climax! Mystery Theater Presents: Casino Royale (1954) Americana Entertainment :: CBS Television Network / P: Bretaigne Windust / AP: Elliott Lewis / D: William H. Brown / W: Antony Ellis, Charles Bennett, Ian Fleming (novel) / M: Bernard Herrmann / S: Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, Linda Christian, Michael Pate, William Lundigan

Favorites :: Ensemble Casts :: ALOHA! Where the Soft Island Breeze Brings Strange Melodies of Mystery!

Douglas Mossman

 Mel Prestidge

The Rotating Sign

The Shell Bar

Andre Phillipe

The Arthur Lyman Combo

The Outdoor Office

The rotating pool of secretaries

(Because you'd never know who might show up.)

Poncie Ponce

Grant Williams

Connie Stevens
 

Robert Conrad

Anthony Eisley

And together, they made a show called...

In a series of wonderful discoveries while beta-testing the Warner Archive streaming site one of the most pleasant surprises was finding several seasons of Hawaiian Eye tucked away in the TV section. Honestly, aside from hearing Tom Servo belt out the theme song a couple of times on Mystery Science Theater, I had never seen -- hell, heard of this show before, but after giving a couple of episodes a spin I found myself both hopelessly and helplessly addicted.

(Video courtesy of Dentu-Cream and jaava44.)

For those of you also unfamiliar with the show, the series can basically be summed up as the point on the graph where Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum P.I. meet -- or more appropriately, the series that planted the seed for those later programs' germination. 

Producer William T. Orr basically put ABC on the map back in the 1950's with a series of westerns (Maverick, Lawman) and the detective series, 77 Sunset Strip, which Orr quickly spun-off into three more shows in the same vein, Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6 and Hawaiian Eye, with each set in a different exotic locale (Hollywood, New Orleans, Miami, Hawaii -- but the majority of every one of them shot on the Warner lot), and in an ingenious twist, each existing in the same TV universe, leading to several cameos and cross-pollination of plots and characters. 

Hawaiian Eye (-- a Polynesian spin on private eye, dig? --) centered around a trio of hard-drinking, lady-killing, thin tie-wearing, and two-fisted do-gooders -- Tracy Steel (Eisley), Tom Lopaka (Conrad) and Greg MacKenzie (Williams) -- who own and operated a private investigation and security firm based out of a resort hotel, where they also served as the house dicks for the free room and board, with the comedy relief ably aided and abetted by the hotel's lounge singer, Cricket Blake (Stevens -- who always wore the ginchiest damned hats), and Kim (Ponce), a local cab driver who seemingly knows everybody and everything on the islands. (Apparently a fourth partner, Troy Donahue, migrated over from Surfside 6 in the last season but I never made it that far before the beta-test expired.) 

Now, each episode usually only focused on just one of the detectives getting in and out of trouble -- though I found the rare episodes where all hands were called for -- mostly to get gal-pal Cricket out of danger or off the hook -- to be my favorites. (I'm assuming this formula allowed for multiple script-shooting on a daily basis to get the 30-odd episodes needed for each season. Heh. Remember when TV shows had more than 12 episodes a season?) And speaking of the highly adorable Cricket, each and every episode also allowed a brief and welcomed hiatus from the action for a musical interlude:

 

Ah, Cricket, my Cricket. You are the Most-Ut! *sigh*

(Video courtesy of therealexx.)

Anyways ... Of all those spin-offs, Hawaiian Eye had the most staying power, lasting four seasons. And the majority of the credit for that, I think, goes to the cast (-- how Eisley went from this to The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, The Mighty Gorga and Monstroid baffles me to no end), who expanded these caricatures into characters, and who, together, also brings a sense of family endearment to this dangerous enterprise, allowing the audience to invest themselves in the outcome that much more. And in this day an age of crime-fighting TV shows where the audience is drowning in forensic goobledy-gook and reveling in the sadism of the villains -- no matter how much you white-wash it by focusing on the heroes trying to stop them (c'mon, admit it, you're watching for the former not the later) -- I find these throwbacks and happy-endings to be a welcome respite. Highly formulaic? Sure. But also highly entertaining and highly recommended. 
 

Hawaiian Eye (1959-1963 / 134 Episodes) Warner Bros. Television :: American Broadcasting Company (ABC) / EP: William T. Orr / AP: Stanley Niss, Howie Horwitz, Charles Hoffman / S: Anthony Eisley, Robert Conrad, Connie Stevens, Grant Williams, Poncie Ponce