Fifty Years of Film in 50 Weeks, #33: Split Second, 1953

"You know, Larry, if you've seen one atom bomb, you've seen them all."

Split Second, 1953

Director: Dick Powell
Writers: William Bowers and Irving Wallace from a story by Chester Erskine
Cinematographer: Nicholas Musuraca
Producer: Edmund Grainger for RKO Pictures
Starring: Steven McNally, Alexis Smith, Jan Sterling, Richard Egan, Keith Andes, Arthur Hunnicutt, Robert Paige, Paul Kelly.

Why I chose it
My interest in Dick Powell was piqued after his role in last week's film, The Bad and the Beautiful, and when this film that he directed popped up on my list, it was an easy choice. I was also interested in seeing secondary player Jan Sterling again. She was reliable and had a strong screen presence as moderately hard-boiled dames during the mid-century in such films as Appointment with Danger with Alan Ladd and Ace in the Hole with Kirk Douglas.

'No-spoiler' plot overview 
In a 1950s version of The Petrified Forest, two escaped convicts, through a couple of well-timed car jackings, take two men and two women hostage and hide out in an abandoned desert town in Nevada that is about to be obliterated by a nuclear bomb test. The lead convict, Sam Hurley (Steven McNally) demands that the physician husband (Richard Egan) of one of his hostages (Alexis Smith) come from the city to operate on his gravely wounded compatriot, who cannot travel any further. While all await the doctor's arrival, alliances form and dissolve, and the hostages' bargaining for their lives grows increasingly desperate as the clock ticks down. 

Production Background
This was the first film ever directed by Dick Powell, the former "song and dance man" and actor/crooner who had made an abrupt change to hard boiled roles in the mid-forties. Directing was another mountain he intended to summit, and he did. In a rather sad but ironic twist, while this film dealt with nuclear explosions, it was a later film that Powell directed, The Conqueror, near a former site of nuclear testing that is considered to have exposed cast and crew to harmful radiation. Many of them, including Powell, succumbed to cancer, although a precise link to that film cannot be proven.

The film was the only one produced at RKO during the brief tenure of entrepreneur Richard Slotkin, who had taken over the studio in a hostile maneuver, but then was ousted after his shady business practices came to light. 

Finally, in the "truth is stranger than fiction" category, actor Paul Kelly, who played the wounded convict, had been imprisoned in San Quentin for manslaughter after having killed his lover's husband in a drunken brawl in 1927. He ultimately married the new widow once they both got out of prison. His acting career resurrected, Kelly was successful on stage and in movies, even playing a warden in San Quentin in Duffy of San Quentin. He died in 1956.   

Dick Powell

Some other notable film-related events in 1953 (from Filmsite.org):

• Following the lead of James Stewart a few years earlier, seven-year contracts with actors were replaced by single-picture or multi-picture contracts.
• Ida Lupino (one of the few female directors of her era) directed the thrilling, noirish B-film drama The Hitch-Hiker (1953) -- the most successful film in her career. It was the story, based on a true-life account, of a cold-blooded, sadistic, psychotic mass murderer and kidnapper (William Talman). Its release during the height of the McCarthy "Red Scare" era reflected US paranoia about strangers.
• 1953 was the first year that the Academy Awards ceremony (honoring films released in 1952) were televised (on March 19, 1953), on black and white NBC-TV, with Bob Hope as host (in Hollywood at the RKO Pantages Theater) and Conrad Nagel (in New York at the NBC International Theatre). It was the first ceremony to be held simultaneously in two locations. It resulted in the largest single audience to date in TV's five-year commercial history - estimated to be 43 million.
• The landmark film of 50s rebellion, The Wild One (1953), by director Laslo Benedek and producer Stanley Kramer, was the first feature film to examine outlaw motorcycle gang violence in America. Marlon Brando portrayed a stunning, brooding, nomadic character - a delinquent archetype - in one of his central and early roles, popularizing the sale of black leather jackets and motorcycles after the film's release.

My Random Observations

• As I mentioned above, I was particularly eager to see another film with Jan Sterling, and she was excellent here. She has a kind of toughness but also tenderness and vulnerability. She seemed to look a little different to me from what I remembered from some of her other roles, and at first I didn't know why. A bit of research revealed that she'd had a nose job before this film, which she was open about at the time. What was a perfectly fine nose became just a bit daintier, but to me she lost some of her unique look.

Jan Sterling, as down on her luck Dottie Vail, who doesn't know yet
how much worse her luck will get.

Here's Jan Sterling in Appointment with Danger, pre-plastic surgery.

• If you're looking to be entertained for 90 minutes, you really can't go wrong if this one pops up at the top of your queue. It's taut, packed with interesting characters, and the interweaving storylines build suspense to the explosive conclusion. The only disappointment for me was the rather one-dimensional villain, Hurley, as played by McNally. Not much nuance there, but there was enough development in the other characters that rather made up for that. 

Does Mrs. Garvin (Alexis Smith) have a thing for her captor
Sam Hurley (Steven McNally)?

Dr. Garvin (Richard Egan) operates on Bart Moore (Paul Kelly) while 
Dottie plays nurse and Hurley looks on.

Mrs. Garvin is scared in a fast car drive by Hurley (McNally) with wounded
Bart Moore between them.

• Noted noir cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca can usually be counted on to deliver atmospheric scenes, and he did here as well. I enjoyed the variety of settings from the ghost town dark interiors to the aerial shots of the desert and nuclear testing ground, to the bright government offices. All in black and white, of course.
  
  

  

  An itinerant miner (Hunnicutt, left) fortuitously shows up to help
  the hostages. Here he confronts Hurley and Dummy (Frank DeKova).

  
  

  

  The business of government and the press collide. Newsman Larry
   (Keith Andes, far left) is told he is to report on a prison break
   instead of the nuclear test.

  
  

  

  Aerial shot of the ghost town - from the RKO lot.

  
  

  

  The only lights in a deserted Nevada desert town glimmer
  through cracks in the walls of an abandoned bar.

  
  
• I liked that the ending wasn't all "bad guys are vanquished and lovers happily reunite" that often accompanies Hollywood films from this era, even noir. While--spoilers here--not everyone survives, the outcome isn't necessarily predictable. I suppose what is predictable, though, is a heavy handed apocalyptic theme.

End credits begin over a mushroom cloud.

Where to Watch
The movie is currently available to stream on archive.org here, and it's been released on DVD by the Warner Archive label.

Further Reading
The excellent TCM article is here. The "Czar of Noir", Eddie Muller, always delivers great information when intro'ing and outro'ing movies on Noir Alley on TCM; check out his offerings for this movie here (intro) and here (outro). They are definitely worth your time.

Fifty Years of Film in 50 Weeks, #32: The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952

'Gaucho': Don't talk like that about Georgia - or Jonathan. He's a great man!

Lila: Hah hah. There are no great men, buster! There's only men!

The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952

Director: Vincente Minnelli
Writers: Charles Schnee, from a story by George Bradshaw
Cinematographer: Robert Surtees
Producer: John Houseman for MGM
Starring: Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Barry Sullivan, Gilbert Roland

Why I chose it
I had tried at least three different times to watch this, and for whatever reason--it being late, or something coming up--I'd never finished it. Now was the time. It didn't hurt that it was a celebrated star-studded MGM feature from the tail end of the Hollywood studio system, a contrast from last week's Italian film.

'No-spoiler' plot overview 
Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) is a powerful Hollywood producer who, during his own career ascent,  helped establish the careers of star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), and writer James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell). Unfortunately, his Machiavellian motives resulted in him abandoning each of them when they were no longer convenient. Fast forward several years, and Shields has found himself on the outs in Hollywood. Through his second in command, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), Shields is desperate to make a comeback employing this aggrieved threesome. With the comeback ploy as a framing device, the film illustrates in sequential flashbacks, the details of his relationships with each of the three.

Harry Pebbel (W. Pidgeon, standing) convenes Jonathan
Shields' former associates Barstow, Lorrison, and Amiel.

Production Background
The original short story that the film was based on a story by George Bradshaw, Memorial to a Bad Man, about a unscrupulous producer on Broadway. It was changed, though, at the request of producer John Houseman at MGM, who had received the film assignment from new studio head Dory Schary. Houseman claimed to be sick of Broadway pictures (from an interview in Film Comment Journal in 1975). Another departure from standard was hiring director Vincente Minnelli, who was better known as a top director of musicals, even though he directed Madame Bovary in 1949. 

Houseman apparently had MGM star Robert Taylor in mind for the pivotal role of Jonathan Shields, but Minnelli wanted Douglas. Minnelli intended that Shields be a three-dimensional character, and told Douglas to play it for charm. Frequently during filming, Douglas would turn to Minnelli and say, "I was very charming in that scene, wasn't I?" (from an 1977 interview with Minnelli by Henry Sheehan).

The film was highly successful, earning over $400K. Gloria Grahame won Best Supporting Actress for her short (9 minutes) of screen time, shortest for an winner in that category for many years. The look of the film had many fans, as it also netted Oscars for screenplay, black-and-white cinematography, black-and-white costume design, and black-and white art direction.

Some other notable film-related events in 1952 (from Filmsite.org):

• The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) negotiated the first contracts in 1952 that granted performers-actors (including singers, announcers, stuntmen, and airplane pilots) residuals paid by studios for feature films sold to television.
• The first film to win a Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture (comedy or musical) - a newly-created category - was An American in Paris (1951), in the 1952 awards ceremony.
• 1952 was the last year that film comedian Charlie Chaplin produced a US film, Limelight (1952). During post-production, he traveled to Europe for premiere openings of the film in London and Paris. His INS application for re-entry into the US (since he was a resident alien) was revoked by Attorney General James McGranery (who called Chaplin an "unsavory character"), and he would have to submit to questions about his political and moral behavior before being allowed to return.
• MGM's swimming star Esther Williams appeared in her only biographical film role, as Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) - a title which became her popular nickname (and the title of her published autobiography in 1999).

My Random Observations

• Having watched so many different types of older films over the couple of decades, I sometimes forget how special it is to view a quality studio-era film that is bursting with stars--not just one or two A-listers, but a bushelful. That's what you get here. To the point that I was surprised that lesser star Barry Sullivan won one of the parts in the trio of characters spurned by Kirk Douglas's Jonathan Shields. And Gloria Grahame's Oscar-winning performance came only in the last third of the film. Folks, there is no doubt that this is truly a "classic Hollywood" gem.

Director Amiel (B. Sullivan, left) realizes he's getting the
shaft from Shields (K. Douglas).

This time it's Georgia Lorrison (L. Turner) who gets
rejected in dramatic fashion by Shields.

Gloria Grahame plays the loyal if flighty wife
of writer James Lee Barstow (D. Powell).

• I loved how this film made you feel that you were walking around an active film studio in late 1940s Hollywood. From the opening shot showing a film in production, to inner office meetings with moguls, it was just ... real. I suppose it didn't hurt that characters in the film were inspired by real folks ranging from directors Josef von Sternberg and Alfred Hitchcock, producers Val Lewton and David O. Selznick, to one-time star Diana Barrymore. 
  

In the opening scene, director Amiel (B. Sullivan) zooms in
on his star in a scene in progress.

A car approaches the gates of Shields Studio in Hollywood.

• One of my favorite Hollywood all-star blockbusters is All About Eve (1950). Watching this one gave me distinct vibes from that classic from just a couple years earlier. From the casts of luminaries, to the dry humor, the skewing of parts of the entertainment business, the melodrama, and of course top notch production teams, these two films seem as kissing cousins.
  
  Both of these films kept the skewering from going over the top, with just enough wit and fun to keep you enjoying your experience watching them. For a completely different portrayal of Hollywood's golden age, watch The Big Knife (1955). You'll feel that you had a knife inserted somewhere in your body after. I wrote about that film here.

Hollywood studio executives and creatives confer in 
The Bad and the Beautiful

The principal stars in All About Eve (from criterion.com)

• For my second installment of "Bit Player Bingo", I spied character actor/forever-associate-of-leading men Paul Stewart here. He had a great mug, a sharp Brooklyn accent perfect for noirs and urban procedurals, and a long resume of films and TV. His first credited role was in none other than Citizen Kane. Second and in an even smaller, and uncredited, role, is everyone's favorite 1950s mom with pearls (Leave It to Beaver), Barbara Billingsley.

Paul Stewart (right) looks on, at his usual position behind
the star Douglas.

Barbara Billingsley (standing) as a studio employee in the
costume department.

Where to Watch
Warner Archive released a blu-ray in 2019. Or you may stream the film on a number of platforms for a small fee. 

Further Reading
Fellow CMBA blogger Leah at "Cary Grant Won't Eat You" wrote an insightful analysis of the themes of the film here.
More background and production information can be found on Albany.edu film notes section here.

Getting to know Busby Berkeley - thanks to the Harvard Film Archive

As a new classic film fan, after I heard the name just once or twice, the first image my mind conjured of Busby Berkeley came directly from the improbable sing-song throwback-style name.  It was an image of a simpler time, but also one of extravagance and fun, decadence and flamboyance. In a vague sort of way I'd picked up that this man was responsible for a number of spectacles in the early years of Hollywood. And that much was true.  He was a musical-number choreographer responsible for kaleidoscopic, dazzling, often surreal visual images of human bodies, mostly leggy women, punctuating depression-era tales such as 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933 or 1935, or 1937, into the MGM musical heyday of For Me and My Gal, and Take Me Out To The Ball Game.

Berkeley (1895-1976) as a young man

Thanks to the retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive over the past several weeks, Mr. Berkeley's image has come into much clearer focus for me.  Here's a collection of some of my observations thanks to the several films (all from the 1930s) that I treated myself to there, as well as a rare screening of a French television interview (Cineastes de notre temps) with Mr. Berkeley in the 1970s.

A typical image of chorus girls in formation as shot from above.  

Interesting Facts from Berkeley's Biography and Career 

• While born in LA, he actually spent a few of his early years in my adopted state of Massachusetts, and toiled away in the legitimate theater locally, before moving to Broadway, and then Hollywood.
• The inspiration for his complex, timed dance maneuvers was stated to have emerged from his days during WWI in the army setting up marching companies of soldiers.  Interestingly, in the French TV interview, he dramatically plays down this influence.  Read more here in this New Yorker piece by Richard Brody.
• By using the camera, through its placement and movement capability to show performances that could *only* be done by the new medium of the moving picture.  In fact, many of his early movies had 'backstage' narratives, allowing multiple moments of stage performances, which would morph, right before your eyes, from rather static two dimensional views to brilliant, ethereal, multi-dimensional moving images disconnected from time, or even gravity  A good example of this can be seen here in this scene from Gold Diggers of 1933.
• He advanced from choreographer to director, but the later films in which he directs aren't quite as visually spectacular.
• He struggled with alcoholism, was married six times, and was responsible for the death of three people from a car accident, which haunted him for many years, and was said to have cost him at least two Academy Awards.
• His work underwent a rediscovery of sorts in the 1970s.  

The Films (those designated with * are new to me from this retrospective)

*Night World (1932) Directed by Hobart Henley for Universal, this one is a dark, *very* pre-code tale of love and loss in a seedy speakeasy.  It stars Lew Ayres, fresh off his lauded performance in All Quiet on the Western Front, Mae Clarke as the showgirl with the heart of gold, and Boris Karloff as the unpleasant owner of the speakeasy.  George Raft also appears in a small role.  There is a staged number in the middle of the film in which a small group of young chorus girls perform a musical number as the nightclub's entertainment, and some of the usual Berkeley touches, ceiling camera, camera through the parallel legs of the girls, etc., are featured.  While not a spectacular film, it's entertaining for it's 58 minute run time.  Lew Ayres was a terrific drunk, and Clarence Muse, an African-American actor, played the club's doorman dealing with a personal problem.  Muse's character was sympathetic and well-drawn, significantly more so than the typical minority character of that era.

Alice Brady & Adolphe Menjou

*Gold Diggers of 1935 No doubt the best in this series is the first Gold Diggers of 1933, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one, Berkeley's first sole directorial feature.  Now that the Production Code was being enforced, much of the pre-code charm of the earlier film was off limits, and a new kind of charm had to be found.  In this case, the film played much more as a screwball comedy, a genre that was on the rise at this time in the mid-1930s.  However, the pacing, musical numbers, and comedy all are in harmony for good time.  Dick Powell is back, but this time his leading lady is Gloria Stuart, a gifted actress but without the infectious personality of a Joan Blondell.  I loved Alice Brady, who'd won me over with her portrayal of Carole Lombard's zany mother in My Man Godfrey.  Here she is...wait for it...a zany mother...who is frugal to the extreme, but wants to see her daughter (Stuart) married off to a wealthy but hopelessly clueless snuff-box historian, of all things.  The family is vacationing in an up-state resort hotel, with Adolphe Menjou as the hired producer to put on a show, and Powell is a hotel employee who has greater ambitions.  Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert, Glenda Farrell, and Grant Mitchell all shine in memorable secondary roles.  

Footlight Parade I saw this one during last year's "Members' Weekend" at the HFA.  In addition to the fabulous choreographed numbers, most near the end of this spectacle, I recommend this one for a young James Cagney in a pre-code in which he was NOT playing a gangster.  As a theater impresario he was a blast to watch. 

*Fast and Furious  This was a relatively minor offering, not to be confused with a series of films from earlier this century starring Vin Diesel, that I saw as the second of a double feature with Night World.  Berkeley directs, ably, but there are no major musical numbers.  It's a cut rate "Thin Man" style murder mystery with sparring husband-and-wife detectives, here played by Franchot Tone and Ann Sothern.  There was a fair amount of slapstick humor with a lion loose in a hotel (the MGM lion??).

*Whoopee (1933)The last film I saw in the retrospective was Berkeley's first.  The HFA located a digital version of a restored print, which looked pretty good, with its two-strip technicolor.   This is a decidedly racist Eddie Cantor vehicle, with a relative mild blackface scene, but outside of those parts I found it hilarious and highly entertaining nonetheless.  A comic/western/romance, this was a big hit on Broadway and the film version was also a winner with the public.

Eddie Cantor as a rich hypochondriac with his smitten nurse,
Ethel Shutta (photo from IMDb)

The other Berkeley films I've seen are:   *42nd Street (1933);  Gold Diggers of 1933, Roman Scandals (1933).

Classic Movies on the big screen in Greater Boston -- Jan 2017 edition

The 'musical' must be the theme for classic movies on the big screen to open 2017 in Greater Boston.

I don't normally feature the TCM/Fathom Events screenings of classic films on this blog, because they are a US-wide initiative, but this January 15th & 18th the screening of Singin' in the Rain deserves your consideration, first because it's a fabulous and fun movie, and secondly, it's Debbie Reynolds' break-out role.  May she rest in peace.  For those who haven't seen it, it's a musical from 1952 that tells the story of the development of the movies from silent to sound through the eyes of fictional cinema star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly).  There are great musical numbers and joy in nearly every scene -- and this coming from one who is not a big fan of Hollywood musicals.  It inspired, among others, the 2011 Oscar winner The Artist.

Use this link to pre-order tickets.  In the Greater Boston area the following theaters are participating:
Fenway 13 (Boston); Assembly 12 (Somerville); Revere Showcase Cinemas (Revere); Burlington 10 (Burlington); Lowell Showcase Cinemas (Lowell); Legacy Place (Dedham); Braintree 10 (Braintree); Patriot Place (Foxboro); Randolph Showcase (Randolph).

Harvard Film Archive

Speaking of musicals. at the HFA the 'Busby Berkeley Babylon' continues through much of January, perhaps an early sign that 2017 might be a good year after all!  There are too many to highlight all here, so definitely check out the link above for the complete listing.  For those new to Busby Berkeley, you must see the classics: 

Fri Jan 6th 9 PM: 42nd Street (1933) directed by Lloyd Bacon, an effort to "marry the dark, urban gangster picture with the spectacular, exhilarating musical", as described by Brittany Gravely of the HFA.  Screened using a 35 mm print.

Mon Jan 23rd, 7 PM:  For Me and My Gal (1942), with Gene Kelly in his film debut, and Judy Garland, when she was particularly vibrant.  This one was directed by Berkeley himself.

Garland & Kelly, For Me and My Gal

The lesser known films are also worth checking out as there are fewer opportunities to see them.  I'm particularly interested in:

Sat Jan 21, 7 PM: Whoopee (1930), which is the first ever film choreographed by Berkeley, featuring musical theater star Eddie Cantor.   

Sun Jan 22, 7 PM:  Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), also directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Berkeley regulars Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, and Glenda Farrell.

Coolidge Corner Theatre

Monday, Jan 2 7:00 PM -- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg screens to open the 'Big Screen Classics' series at the Coolidge.  This French film from 1964 launched the career of Catherine Deneuve.  It's a drama/romance/musical by Jacques Demy in which all the dialogue is sung, like an opera (score by Michel Legrand).  Roger Ebert called it "a surprisingly effective film, touching and knowing, and, like Deneuve, ageless."  I've not seen it, but considering Monday is a holiday, I may go to my neighborhood theater and check it out, if I'm not at the Brattle for the Marx Bros. marathon (see below)!

The Brattle Theatre

I mentioned this last month, but starting tomorrow Jan 1 and going through Tuesday, is the Brattle's 'Marx Brothers' Marathon.'  For those inclined to binge-watching this would be the ultimate experience, as all are early-career pre-code Paramount productions, digital presentations of restored versions of these films.  The lineup tomorrow, starting at 12 noon, and going through util about 8:30 PM, are:  The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup.  Then on Monday, Jan 2, a double feature of Animal Crackers and Duck Soup, then Tuesday it's a double feature of Horse Feathers and Monkey Business.  My favorite of these is Horse Feathers -- in which the brothers take over a college campus and wreak havoc, of course.  

Groucho Marx somehow is appointed the President of Huxley College

Sunday Jan 29: Then for something completely different, as part of the 'Cinema of the Occult' Repertory Series, it's Bell, Book and Candle (1958, Dir. Richard Quine).  I've not seen it, but with the big names James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, and Elsa Lanchester, it should entertain, if nothing else.  

An advantage for the Boston-area cinephile is the proximity of local experts who can curate and illuminate these screenings -- for this particular series, each film will be introduced by scholars/writers Peter Bebergal, Pam Grossman, & Janaka Stucky.  

Tues Jan 31 Also in the series is Night of the Demon aka Curse of the Demon (1957), directed by Jacques Tourneur, perhaps best known for his fabulous noir Out of the Past, and starring Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummins.  I haven't seen this but looking at the film poster, with the statement ''most terrifying story the screen has ever told", it seems one must not miss it!  It's received an average rating of 7.6 on IMDb, which is pretty good for IMDb standards.  I need to see more films by Dana Andrews so this might be a good start for the year.