Sunset Gun

Hapy Birthday to the late, great Howard Hawks. Let's celebrate with one of his best, Bringing Up Baby. Here's my brief ode to Hepburn, Grant, bones, dogs, leopards and… "You're a fixation."

We should all miss the screwball comedy. An inspired, trenchant, romantic, witty, glamorous, sexy (so sexy) genre that went the way of telegrams, automats and men wearing fedoras without looking ridiculous, these pictures, when shifted into high gear, were funnier, racier, edgier and sometimes, exceptionally daring And top baby is Howard Hawks' 1938 Bringing Up Baby, in which the luminous lunatics aren't relegated to amusing supporting straitjackets; they're running the asylum.

That's Katharine Hepburn as Susan, an adventure-seeking, possibly insane heiress who immediately decides she's found her man after setting eyes on David, the bespectacled, uptight, also possibly insane paleontologist playd by Cary Grant. Why is she so smitten? Well, yes, he's Cary Grant, but Grant works this nervous nerd routine so beautifully that you actually wonder. And then, Hepburn! She's so maniacally, gorgeously single-minded in her approach (as you probably well remember, she manages to trap him in Connecticut with a pet leopard, a yapping dog and Grant's missing intercostal clavicle, which results in many amusing double entendre of "where's the bone?"), that she's more Marx Brother than Desperate Daniela. And who doesn't root for Harpo?

Scripted by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde (with some winning moments of ad lib by Grant and Hepburn) and directed by Hawks with such an energetic pace (Hawks told Peter Bogdanovich, "You get more pace if you pace the actors quickly within the frame rather than cross cutting fast"), there's so much joyful, inspiring anarchy here that the movie never grows old. It still feels remarkably modern.

Much like Hawks' frequently comic (and yes, dark) Scarface (my favorite Hawks' picture and I think, one of the greatest American films ever made) in which Paul Muni is the front and center murderous, oddly lovable loon, Baby offers a rejection of how one should conduct oneself in supposed "regular" society, both in living lives with "dignity" (Oh, Grant and that colorless potential marriage) and how one persuasively woos a suitor (is stalking OK? It is with Kate Hepburn), that the picture remains downright radical. Both Scarface and Baby look at the American Dream, what it's supposed to represent in career and marriage, and decide they are going to create those dreams themselves, no matter how crazy. And with some powerful, deadly pets along for the ride. In Scarface it's Tony's tommy gun, in Baby it's Susan's leopard.

And in Baby, all side actors are tested to their limits with this dizzy duo (that's Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, May Robson, Fritz Feld and more) and go along (exasperated), attempt to stop but mainly, endure their tumult. And then there's the lines — here's a famous one, perhaps the most famous: When Grant opens the door to Hepburn's perplexed Aunt Elizabeth (Robson) who demands to know why he's clad in Hepburn's frilly bathrobe, Grant jumps and memorably exclaims, "Because I just went GAY all of sudden!" To this day, that line always, always kills.

But my favorite is one that truly slid by the squares-ville production code: When Hepburn play-acting "Swinging Door Susie," a hardened ex-con who hollers out "Hey Flatfoot!" (can we lose "pig" and bring this copper slur back?), states, "I'll unbutton my puss and shoot the works." Oh, my. Wonderful. "Open up, I'll make you feel hot," she says. Indeed she does. God bless you for keeping that in there, Howard Hawks.

And again, Happy Birthday, Howard Hawks. 

And then there's this scene. And that gown:

*From MSN Movies 100 Favorite Films in which MSN writers pick their favorites. This one made my list. Read them all here.

“La De Da.” A song I never tire of and a revelation the first time I heard the unheralded stunner. Link Wray’s “La De Da” from his sorely underheard 1971 album "Link Wray" was recorded in Wray’s chicken shack on his farm in Accokeek, Maryland and produced by the ingenious Steve Verroca (who also wrote "La De Da"). Boy does it scorch your heart. Soulful, raggedly beautiful vocals and true grit rock by one the great pioneers, the song sounds a lot like the Stone's "Exile" before "Exile" but the genuine article. This is authentic fire and brimstone, sincere swamp ("Black River Swamp"); music full of feeling by a man who had felt and experienced a whole hell of a lot. When compared to Elvis and his impoverished background, "Rumble" Wray said: "He grew up white-man poor. I was growing up Shawnee poor."

And Wray was creating this primo stuff in the 1960s. On the liner notes for "Wray's Three Track Shack," John Collins stated it beautifully: "In the late 1960s there was a studied attempt by such musicians as The Band, Neil Young, Guy Clark and David Ackles, all in their own way, to evoke a rock n roll version of Americana, of white clapboard chapels, dungareed farmers, dusty drifters and outlaws… It turned out that Link and his brothers had been playing the real thing all along, hidden away on the farm. The eponymous 1971 album grew out of the landscape, the struggles and the religious certainties of Link's own past. He didn't have to adopt the pose of a stubble-chinned homesteader. He was one."

Indeed he was. If you can get your hands on it, grab "Wray's Three Track Shack," a compilation containing three Wray albums: "Link Wray," "Beans and Fatback" and "Mordicai Jones." Do it.

I'm glad (and maybe even "so proud," as the Wray song goes) I got the chance to see brilliant legend Link perform live, before he passed away. Whenever I get down I remember that, during that show, Wray handed me his guitar in the middle of "Rumble" — I held the man's guitar! It still feels like a dream. One of the greatest moments of my life. As I wrote rather effusively, but with sincerity, last year, Link Wray is God. Now join me in spray-painting that on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum where Link Wray has, ludicrously, not been inducted. Listen and believe. 

With the 80th anniversary of its first release, I'm dipping into my archives to look at that hot and Hedy enchantress called Ecstasy.

Hedy. Just looking at the woman, it's easy to repeat her name after exhaling a delicious deep breath — Hhheeeddeeey. Her name respires like the title of one of her most famous, and infamous films, Ecstasy. Though some consider the picture a novelty, a ye olden cinematic curio of Hollywood losing its nut over a Czech import, or simply a great place to watch Hedy Lamarr cavort around completely naked, Ecstasy (released in Prague in 1933) is a much richer, liberating, dreamily beautiful experience than all that. 

An intense, enchanting, and, at the time, extremely taboo, study of a young woman's sexuality, the picture actually gets things right, either via magnificent, naturalistic, erotic imagery, or moments of blunt explanation. Without demonizing its subject , without overly squishy emotionality, without outright exploitation and yet, without embarrassing, soft-core erotica sensibilities (that kind of movie didn't really exist yet) and without words (mostly), Gustav Machaty's silent-to-talkies transition Ecstasy gets to the heart of some simultaneously simple and convoluted facts of life: Women desire sex. They enjoy sex. And if they find that attraction, they'll have sex, even if they're a little scared, and even if they're afraid of the resulting guilt. Given that we currently live in an often morally confused society, and specifically, confused about women (the Virgin/Whore dynamic has compounded with Hester Prynne/Fuck me/Stone Me complications), Ecstasy, though willing to explore the sadness, jealousy and tragedy sex can create, is a lot more honest about its confusion. But no stones for Hedy — Ecstasy is actually fond of its sexed up lass. 

Lamarr (then Hedy Kiesler — her real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) stars as Eva, a young bride who marries an older man (Emil Jerman) only to discover on her wedding night that he's uninterested in love-making. With extreme D.H. Lawrence ennui and yearnings (the movie later ventures into Thomas Hardy territory), Eva can't endure this sexless union. Watching and sighing over the presence of blissful, satiated couples, she's filled with depression over her unexplored needs. Fittingly, and, some may think, perversely, she leaves the old man and runs home to her horse-breeder father, who embraces his sad little girl while huffing that he'll never understand women. Well, some understand. Or at least, attempt to try. And so comes the famous sequence.

Eva enjoys a nude swim while her horse stands in wait. Intrigued by the advances of another horse in the distance  , the steed dashes off, taking Eva's clothes with him. Eva pursues this enormous figuration of coitus, until a young, handsome worker also helps and then, (happily) happens upon the naked nymph.

What beauty unfolds. The mesmeric scene is filmed like foreplay, as the water, sky, sweaty laborers, and fondling horses are continually referenced while Eva runs through the woods — a once happy swimmer, now a frustrated, frightened, and soon-to-be thrilled woman. Looking at this obviously — as a representation of her desires –  she, of course, collides into the most fetching man she's ever seen, aptly named Adam (the fantastic Aribert Mog, who sadly died before ever reaching the age of 40). But even after the smiling, flirtatious Adam shows he can place a bee in a flower (how could one resist?), the film wisely holds out — at first.

Come nighttime, Eva's bedroom pacing is too much — she must make her way to Adam's shed.  And again, what beauty. The consummated act is shot lovingly and boldly, holding onto Lamarr's fervent face. Lamarr claims the director pricked her with a pin to induce her rapturous reactions. It worked.

Explained as such it may sound coarse, but Ecstasy paces its sexual awakening so perfectly and with such palpable chemistry between its two leads that its spell is almost overwhelmingly bewitching. Mingling mammals, insects, nature, weather and bodies with the mysterious ions charging a swooning man and woman, the nudity, voyeurism and sensuality feel natural, beneficial and so combustible that the sad ending makes perfect sense.

Naturally the movie was banned. No one was going to convince Joseph Breen that a movie containing nudity and an on-screen orgasm wasn't porn. He called the film "highly, even dangerously indecent." No matter the picture is not classic exploitation, nor does it appear to have been made for mere shock value, but tell that to the judge. It was also one of the earliest films to be banned in the United States by the National Legion of Decency.

Though hailed a masterpiece when it opened in Prague, the film was long censored and much sought after in the states, particularly when its lead became Miss Hedy Lamarr, MGM movie star. Though the gorgeous Lamarr wasn't given enough interesting parts, she was endlessly fascinating and intelligent. And in real life too: her early exploits before fleeing Austria, her invention of the "Secret Communication System" (which basically invented wi-fi, incredible) her later shoplifting. She was quite a creature  — especially opposite Charles Boyer in 1938's Algiers, and as the exotic Tondelayo in 1942's White Cargo, and of course, as a young, non-starlet, natural in Ecstasy.

I love watching Hedy Lamarr — even in her lesser pictures (and she made some dull ones), which taps into another reason why Ecstasy remains so intriguing. Like the movie itself (and Machaty) you want to look at her, but not just, as stated earlier, because she'll eventually find herself in the raw — but because you'll find yourself in her. Raw. Her curiosity and desire is primal and innate  — a simultaneous capitulation and freedom — and yet, wistful, as if Eva is conjuring these events from a special memory. 

Ecstasy is for female desire, but it's also for male desire, and it well understands impotence, jealousy and guilt, not through words, but through cinema, making it all the more mythical. Here, the aftermath of the act is human — strong, but also delicate, perilous and hurtful. And it always hurts someone. No wonder Machaty was prodding his butterfly with pins.

She was some kind of a woman and… some kind of semanticist. Josef von Sternberg may have crafted his own goddess in the form of leggy, sunken-cheek-boned and languid Marlene Dietrich, but Marlene took his tutelage and made herself…Marlene. With classic, otherworldly, baroque beauty (blonde beauty — which functions almost as its own cinematic genre) the Sternberg Dietrich duo created their iconic masterstrokes The Blue Angel, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, The Devil is a Woman, The Scarlet Empress and Blonde Venus. Though I love them all (all of them), Blonde Venus always stood out as the ultimate blonde-semble with Dietrich playing the full spectrum of dar superblondine.

Here's the flaxen facts: She's an ex-German café singer who marries a good-hearted Englishman. She's a happy hausfrau and adoring mother. And then she's a cabaret star and harlot (but of course!) who dances in a gorilla suit and becomes incredibly famous. You know, the whole blonde journey. The picture features two iconic blonde numbers with Miss Marlene in her famed white tux, tails and top hat and, quite unforgettably in a gorilla suit. In one of the movie's most gorgeously surreal moments, Marlene removes her gorilla head to reveal her blonde-haloed face, grabs a handy golden Afro wig, places it on her head and sings "Hot Voodoo." Describing this moment requires two words you don't often see together, but should: blonde genius

After again watching Maximillian Schell's fascinating, unforgettable documentary, Marlene in which the term "kitsch" is uttered unlike no other being on earth (and cross yourself when you speak of Orson Welles), I have been in the midst of a kind of Marlene mania, which usually consists of me re-watching everything Dietrich (from Desire to Destry, Rancho to Evil), breaking out her numerous albums (I love how she announces "Burt Back-RACK!"), and reading the uber Blonde's own personal dictionary entitled Marlene Dietrich's ABC. This is a keeper. I came across the "wit and wisdom of one of the world's most wonderful women" (say that like Marlene) while working at a book store so many years back and it's become a bible. Originally published in 1961, the reference book (and it really is a reference book) contains random, but important words or terms met with Marlene's own special, specific definition.

Yesterday I was a guest on Allison Hope Weiner's show "Media Mayhem" discussing, live, among other topics, cinema, movie writing, tabloids, Bette Davis, Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Monroe, Spring Breakers, William Friedkin and Roger Ebert, who sadly, I had just learned passed away minutes before appearing on camera. Thank you Allison, for allowing such a vast array of subjects. It's rare I get to discuss Bette Davis's performance in The Star on air and with such an enthusiastic Davis fan.

P.S. Happy Birthday Bette Davis.

I'm currently working on a Fredric March piece to be posted soon, this year (get on it, Kim). Five favorite or fifteen favorite — there's so many to list. Nothing Sacred, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Road to Glory, Merrily We Go to Hell, Death Takes a Holiday, The Best Year of Our Lives, The Sign of the Cross, A Star is Born, Design for Living and more. More, more March! I'm watching Elia Kazan's Man on a Tightrope tonight. Fredric March and Gloria Grahame — this will be interesting.

He's one of my favorite actors — such expansive range filled with charm, intelligence, strength, sexiness, vulnerability and a wicked wit. March had it all. As I've been watching and re-watching his long career, flooding my mind in all things Fredric, I came across his 1954 appearance on the show "What's My Line?" Wow. The mystery guest was always an interesting feature, revealing which celebrity could or could not think on their feet and disguise their voice with panache. Proving, not surprisingly, his unique comedic talent and unpredictability, Fredric March kills. This is one of the greatest episodes I've ever seen. Watch him positively stump the panel.

Since I have taken most of January off I'm dipping into my archives and revisiting… Phantom Lady.

There's a dangerous, sickly titillating sexuality to film noir that's not seen enough on screen these days. That thrill, that edge, that mixture of sadism and masochism, that passion, that cold-heartedness, that control and abandon. I'll speak mostly of the genre's women: Peggy Cummins coolly shooting between her legs in Gun Crazy. Decoy’s Jean Gillie laughing with maniac, orgasmic glee after she’s offed her duped boyfriend who’s just dug up the only thing that turns her on — money.

Cloris Leachman running barefoot down a two-lane blacktop, panting and hyper-venting over Nat King Cole’s silky opening song in Kiss Me Deadly. Rita Hayworth's Gilda, who uses her considerable sexuality for her only clutch of power and is then, made miserable by it. Richard Egan getting an eyeful of beautiful six foot Wicked Woman Beverly Michaels — a femme fatale who actually falls in love and is, in the end, alone to continue her manipulations in the next dump the bus drops her off at. Born to Kill's Lawrence Tierney tossing and turning over Claire Trevor — wanting to rape, murder, kiss, kill — and she wanting it too. And, dear lord, Lana and that lipstick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The look John Garfield gives Lana when that tube of red rolls across the floor is worth a hundred contemporary sex scenes. 

Noir reveals complicated sexuality that's not just dishy dames in sexy high heels or snappy men in fedoras (I don't have to say this to readers who actually watch noir). It's screwy sexy, frequently populated by losers (frequently attractive losers) made all the more erotic because even as sex, often toxic sex, motivates many of its character’s actions, the genre’s aim isn’t merely to steam your glasses. It can serve (directly or indirectly) as allegory for many of the power struggles we may endure in the tumult of relationships. If they're easy, they're usually boring. If they're hard, they're usually worth questioning. If they're hot and hard, they're nearly impossible to put down. If they're causing you to saunter into situations that sicken you, you're in mad love. Or a masochist. Usually both. 

Which led me to a movie I hadn’t seen in years — Robert Siodmack’s Phantom Lady — a picture that features a performance by Ella Raines that’s so sizzling, so, at times, sick and yet so alluringly poignant, you’re a little overwhelmed by it.

Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel, Phantom Lady was Siodmak’s first American screen success and he would later craft some sublime noir including Criss Cross, Cry of the City, The Dark Mirror, The File on Thelma Jordan and The Killers (among others). I’ll run down the story: Ella Raines (her character’s nicknamed “Kansas” — which seems like a Wizard of Oz reference given the subterranean world she will find herself in) works as Alan Curtis’s secretary. When he’s framed for the murder of his wife, she sets out to help him because she doesn’t believe he did it.

She's also besotted with him (lucky man). Sexing up her image as cub private dick, she’s off to find this “Phantom Lady” with the help of Curtis’s friend (Franchot Tone) and an off duty police detective (Thomas Gomez, so wonderful in Force of Evil). OK, so that's the story, but what I really want to discuss is Raines's interaction with the hep cat, hopped up jazz drummer, played by noir staple, the great sap/sleaze Elisha Cook, Jr.

I am absolutely gob-smack over their famed moments together. Ella’s seduction of Elisha — a freaky sexy, conflicted, crazily drugged sequence (you can practically smell the booze, marijuana, heroin and dexies permeating the joint) in which Raines plays hot-to-trot, seems to be eating up her vampy method of getting to the straight dirt and yet, is repulsed by both Cook (that kiss!) and herself for having to go this far.

Showcasing Siodmak’s (and cinematographer Woody Bredell’s) evocative, angled compositions (used gorgeously throughout the movie), the style brilliantly underscores the mounting hysteria and varied state of Raines’s psychology. This is an extreme example, but what Raines reveals is something many women feel when finding themselves in the belly of the sleazy beast. It's a little fun and a little horrifying and you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.

It's that screwy, supposedly joyful, yet depressing time of the year again: the holidays. And they're almost over. Thank God, the Master, Freddie Quell or my beloved Marilyn Monroe — my woman of the year (I'll get to my movies in the next few days).

I despise all year-end parties, which is why I'm now enjoying New Year's Eve, safely tucked away on a train, ringing in 2013 somewhere at the Oregon/California border. I only wish Sugar Cane was in the next sleeping car, Manhattan in a paper cup. Or better yet, champagne. Marilyn loved her champagne.

When I see MM holding a champagne glass in a picture, I often think she is New Year's Eve — a glistening light, all bright, blonde, silver, slinky-curvy and drunken and gorgeous and who gives a damn if she's had a few too many? Like our New Year hopes, she always embarked on a new start (and succeeded quite well, brilliantly, at times) but fell, like many of us into those ruts. Those fuzzy ends of the lollipops. But she tried. 

So, this New Year's Eve, I will think of Marilyn and one of my favorite New Year's movies, George Cukor's blissfully ebullient "Holiday." A picture that I think Marilyn (MM obsessive that I am) probably loved. And perhaps related to. Freedom! Expression! It's hard not to. Funny, carefree, silly, inspiring and yet, curiously sad — sad because you get the feeling that all the exploring dreams its lead character (a joyous, lovable Cary Grant) hopes and plans for, well, they may not work out in the real world. Can one be that simple yet complex and happy and live their life that way?

So, for me, it's the perfect New Year movie, filled with fresh starts, all-night parties, dreams, and happy/poignant revelations — those things we make lists of before the clock strikes midnight and usually ditch a few weeks into the month. But not Johnny, we hope.

An extended, wonderful portion of this movie does indeed take place on New Year's Eve during a society party where Johnny is set to announce his engagement to wealthy Julia (Doris Nolan). But he's falling in love wih her rapturous, different sister (a luminous Katharine Hepburn) who's attracted to his counterculture desires. The movie works subtly and elegantly, infused with an almost startling blend of comedy and pathos.

As Johhny and Linda clearly fall for each other and even literally tumble (in a jubilant scene, the two stars perform a beautiful bit of acrobatic talent) they leave us all bubbly MM intoxicated and charged up for something new ourselves. But what? Is it possible to ever feel elation like that? Is it? We can always do as Cary Grant's Johnny does and attempt a little blind faith. Blind faith can get you through the night. I'm sure it helped Marilyn more than a few times. That, and a sweet glass of champagne. Happy New Year.

The Winnipeg Free Press was kind enough to interview me regarding my Playboy Marilyn Monroe essay. Marilyn, Hefner's dedication to classic cinema, Bob Dylan and Rabbit Angstrom are discussed and more. Here's Randall King's introduction and the interview that follows:

Fifty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe is once again on the cover of Playboy magazine for the December issue.

That is appropriate, given that Marilyn put Playboy on the publishing map in December 1953, by serving as the magazine's cover model and its first centrefold. The story goes that Monroe posed for the photograph for $50 before she became one of the most popular movie stars in the world. It had shown up on common nudie calendars before Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner employed it to launch his fledgling magazine.

This month's pictorial, "The Nude Marilyn," includes appreciations by film critic Roger Ebert and novelist John Updike, but is anchored by an article by Los Angeles film critic Kim Morgan, better known in these parts as Mrs. Guy Maddin.

The tone of Morgan's piece is elegiac but also somehow fiercely loyal to Monroe as a woman and an artist….

FP: Congratulations on sharing editorial space with Roger Ebert and John Updike. That is respectable company you're keeping.

KM: Thanks. It's wonderful having the cover story and to share space with legendary Roger, who has become a friend, and Updike, a brilliant novelist and critic as well. Rabbit Angstrom is iconic. That's a big bunny.

FP: The tone of your piece was almost protective, loyal, calling out those who took a more condescending attitude to Marilyn Monroe. Where does this loyalty come from?

KM: I wouldn't say that I was being simply protective, though I do feel loyal towards her. I think there's more complexity to how one approaches Marilyn, whether they know it or not, which is why she remains powerful to this day. And I mentioned Candle in the Wind briefly, a well-meaning song, in opposition to the song that runs through my piece, Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me, even though Dylan didn't write it for MM. But to me, that song feels like Marilyn in all her beauty, complications, mystery and art. 'She's an artist.' Marilyn was an artist.

Read more online at Winnipeg Free Press.

Here's a link to the article online. Thanks again to Randall King. 

The December edition of Playboy is currently available on newsstands.

I'm honored to have written an essay on the genius Marilyn Monroe for Playboy Magazine's cover story. My essay "The Nude Marilyn" (it's really not about her being nude necessarily — it's a lot more than that) along with Roger Ebert's "A Sense of Control" and John Updike's "A Broken Venus" are not available for online reading (though Playboy offers a peek of MM here) so pick up a copy of the print edition on newsstands now.

As Updike wrote, "like a broken marble Venus, she defies time."