Checking back in.  I am returning to the blogosphere.   Release the pigeons!

From Fear to Absurdity - The Strange Turnaround of Joan Crawford

It was a strange turnaround for Joan Crawford in 1952 and 1953.  The two back to back films she made(interrupted only by her appearance in a television production of the Revlon Mirror Theatre) are as different from one another as black and white and technicolor.

In 1952's "Sudden Fear", Crawford plays Myra Hudson,  a successful playwrite from a wealthy San Francisco family.   It is a believable, taut noir thriller with Crawford playing her age as a woman who has established herself as a successful playwrite in spite of the fact that she could have coasted through life on her family's wealth.  Directed by David Miller and filmed in black and white, it makes stunning use the streets of San Francisco, and of light and shadow to create some of the most memorable sequences in noirdom.  It was Jack Palance's third film, and as Lester Blaine the aspiring actor with a decidedly lurid off stage life, he is all charm and menace as he stalks, woos, and weds the wealthy famous writer who denied him his big break on Broadway.  Crawford is perfect as Myra Hudson, showing a vulnerability and a range that garnered her a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1952.  Glora Grahame, blonde and ruthless, shows up as Lester's mistress, Irene Neves, and the two hatch their diabolical plot.

Lester starts to creep Myra out.

This film succeeds on all levels, and Crawford delivered a great performance.  It brought about a resurgance of her career that led, unfortunately, to...

"Torch Song" was filmed in blazing technicolor.  Crawford as Jenny Stewart performs "Two Faced Woman", and in a pique of temperment rips her wig off after the curtain comes down.

1953's "Torch Song" seemed like a good idea at the time.  Joan Crawford had just scored a critical and commercial success in 1952's oustanding "Sudden Fear" at RKO, and somebody over at MGM thought it might be fun to bring Joan back to the studio where it all started.  Crawford had been at MGM from 1925 to 1942.  "Torch Song" had been offered to Lana Turner, who turned against it.  The project was there for the taking, and Crawford was available and, well, the rest is camp history.

Crawford wills herself into playing Jenny Stewart, a Broadway star with a heart like a frozen bucket of nails.  She terrorizes everybody except for her maid and her fans.  She is unfailingly kind to her maid/secretary, played by Maidie Norman (later to be done in by Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"), and goes out of her way to memorize the names of a fawning herd of young acolytes who wait for her outside the stage door.  Everybody else she pretty much treats like crap, including her alcoholic playboy guy pal played by Gig Young, who, from all accounts was pretty much typecast.

Maidie Norman, the actress who played Joan Crawford's maid in "Torch Song", Ginger Roger's maid in "Forever Female", Dick Powell's maid in "Susan Slept Here".....um, about that name.....

It is only Jenny's blind replacement pianist Ty Graham, played by Michael Wilding (who was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time) who ultimately breaks through and simultaneously wins and melts Jenny's icy heart.  This happens after Jenny tells him to "get yourself a seeing eye girl."  Ouch.

Crawford was too old for the part.  Her legs looked great, and she made the most of them, but her dancing was hardly at its peak.  She made a valliant attempt to sing her own vocals, but it was wisely decided to give the dubbing gig to India Adams.  Its a silly script, and if that weren't enough toward the end of the film out of nowhere comes the musical number "Two Faced Woman".  Written originally for Cyd Charisse in "The Band Wagon" and junked, it was for some reason resurrected for Crawford in "Torch Song".  It is performed in black - or more accurately, orange face. "Torch Song" was one of the last films ever to use a number in black face.  It is a jaw droppingly strange musical number, totally out of context and a little frightening. 


"Torch Song" was essentially a "B" film - glossy and slick though it was.  Pretty much everything in it was created for something else.  India Adams had already dubbed the vocal for Charisse, and they still had the recordings, so what the heck... the opening instrumental number was lifted from Fred Astaire's "Royal Wedding".  Adams as Jenny did introduce two beautiful standards in the film  "Tenderly", and "You Won't Forget Me".

"Torch Song", however,  was a commercial and critical failure.  But it continues to give joy to those with a taste for the absurd.  Its a shame a great noir classic like "Sudden Fear" was followed up with a technicolor cartoon like "Torch Song", but show business is a cruel and fickle mistress.

I've written some snarky things about Crawford in these posts, and had some fun at her expense.  Truth is, she has had a lot of bad PR in recent decades, and she is not here to defend herself.  She was the most enduring movie star in the history of cinema.  Nobody had a longer career.  She delivered some beautifully wrought performances - "Mildred Pierce", "Sudden Fear", "Humoresque".  She was also actually quite good in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". 

By all accounts, she was a total professional in her work, and respectful to the crew and cooperative on the set. She was the most loyal of friends and capable of great kindness.  After her death director George Cukor revealed that Crawford always kept a hospital room and her own physician at the ready in case anybody on the crew of one of her films needed medical care.  She did this anonymously, at her personal expense, and never discussed it publicly.

Four Particularly Great Things about "Queen Bee" - Five if you count both eyebrows.

Released in 1955, Queen Bee is a southern potboiler supreme.  Joan Crawford plays Eva Phillips, a southern socialite who swoops around the Phillips family manse in knockout Jean Louis gowns psychologically terrorizing her spineless relatives until her dysfunctional family implodes.  Good times in Dixie!

Eva Phillips commands the room in Jean Louis couture while her wimpy cousin and ex boyfriend look on.

The first great thing about this film is the bee hive itself. Art Director Ross Bellah and set designer Louis Diage give us an airy, high ceilinged family mansion, richly and smartly appointed, with plenty of tall windows and french doors to let in the southern light.  Director Ranald McDougal and Cinematopgrapher Charles Lang (who was Oscar nominated for the film that year) photograph the house in pristine black and white with a loving care that borders on architectural fetishism.  In the first scene, Eva's cousin Jennifer Stewart (played by Lucy Marlow) arrives for an ill advised extended visit, and after being let in by the butler stands in the foyer and lets the house steal the scene.   A crystal chandelier softly chimes in the southern breeze.  A graceful stair case rises from the center of the room, splits off and curves up to the left and to the right, like some sort of winged angel providing two routes to heaven.

A great pad in which to make out.

The next great thing is the lady herself - the former Lucille Fay LeSuer.  Released in 1955, "Queen Bee" was smack dab in the middle of a decade that started with "The Damned Don't Cry" and "Harriet Craig" (which features another staircase that functions as co-star) and ends in "The Best of Everything".  It is my favorite Joan Crawford decade EVER.  Crawford was 45 in 1950.  As we all like to tell ourselves, 40 is the new 30, etc.  (I often wonder if that makes 10 the new zygote?)  But in Hollywood in 1955, fifty was not the new forty.  The average life expectancy for a female in the United States in 1950 was 71 (for a male it was a mere 68).  The life expectancy for an average female movie star's career was about thirty.  Crawford was not average.  Crawford, thank goodness, refused to stop, giving us a series of star turns that have become classics.  Her looks had hardened, but there are moments in this period that the camera catches her looking almost beautiful - certain closeups that capture just the right combination of light, angle and expression that give us the remnants of the softer, prettier Mildred Pierce Crawford.  Then, in the next moment she stands in a doorway poised to attack a scene, and she looks very scary indeed.  Her eyebrows are practically screaming their own dialogue, and seem to be leading her around.  But her face has an interesting shape shifting quality during this period.

Crawford and her eyebrows, circa "Johnny Guitar".

Item number three -  Fay Wray, of the original "King Kong" fame,  makes a cameo at the beginning of the film, playing Sue McKinnon, the ubiquitous bonkers southern relative, who is still presentable and coherent enough to appear outside of the family attic. In the mid 1950's Wray's husband, screenwriter Robert Riskin ("Mr. Deeds Goes to Town") succumbed to a terminal illness and left her in need of funds, and after a nine year absence she went back to work in the movies.  In a 1974 interview, Fay Wray said "Joan Crawford hired me for 'Queen Bee' because she like to work with older actresses.  She claimed they made her look younger."  According to IMDB, Crawford was born in 1905, and Wray in 1907.  Fay Wray remained active in film and television into the early 1960's, and died in 2004, surviving Crawford by nearly thirty years.

Fay Wray was terrorizd by both King Kong and Joan Crawford.

The fourth great thing about "Queen Bee" is the slap.  There are many great slaps in the movies, but this one I have to say took me by surprise!  I was expecting yet another bullying comment from Eva Phillips, not a shot to the chops for poor Jennifer. The slap speaks for itself.

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So, to wrap it all up - this is one helluva good ride, with Barry Sullivan playing a drunkard ineffectual patriarch named Avey "Beauty" Phillips (the name "Beauty", see is a nickname because he has this scar, see, caused by a car crash, see...), Betsy Palmer as Carol Phillips, and John Ireland as Judson Prentiss. 

A dog gets shot, there is a hangin' in the horse barn, and the whole mess is wrapped up with a flaming car crash. Enjoy!

Bob Sheppard at Vitello's - A Sense of Community

I scooped up the lovely Carol Bach - y - Rita last night and  we headed over the hill to Vitello's where reed man Bob Sheppard was having a CD release party for his new disc, "Close Your Eyes".  We decided to cut over to the Valley from Hollywood via Outpost.  When we hit Mulholland we were enveloped in a cloud of fog and we gingerly made our way down to Barham as sheets of water from the unrelenting rainstorms slid across the roadway. It was a good night to stay in with a book and a cup of tea.

In all honesty I can't rave about the food or the esthetics at Upstairs at Vitello's.  Its a plain jane kind of space, but what it lacks in beauty it more than makes up for in good sight lines, good sound and an intimate atmosphere.  April Williams has booked the room with care and intelligence, and has turned it into a serious jazz hang.  In spite of the foul weather, the room was packed for the first set.  Joining Sheppard onstage was a trio of musicians from the CD - Alan Pasqua on piano, Larry Koonse on guitar, and Gabe Noel on bass.  Antonio Sanchez on drums and Walter Rodriguez on percussion were absent, replaced by the outstanding drummer Steve Hass. 


Sheppard opened the set with the title piece "Close Your Eyes".  Its an edgy arrangement of the smooth standard, and the group last night meshed perfectly.  Sheppard's originals, "Brain Fog" and "Surface Tension" followed.  I am always amazed at the ability of great composers to conceptualize emotion in sound.  Sheppard is a master at this.  "Brain Fog" has an almost out of kilter, dangerous and angular quality, and would have been the perfect accompaniment to our slightly treacherous trip down Mullholland Drive in the rain storm.  On "Surface Tension" Sheppard's taut sax line skates over the surface, and just below the drums, bass and piano provide murky support.  On Kenny Barron's composition "Phantoms" Gabe Noel provided an extended bowed introduction that perfectly set up the piece.  Joe Henderson's "Gazelle" was performed with a graceful,  headlong tempo, powered by Noel and Hass's sure footed support and featuring superb solos by Sheppard, Pasqua, and Koonse.  Sheppard added the classic "Estate" to the set, a beautiful, sensitive and evocative reading.  His tone on flute was particularly gorgeous, soft and warm like a tropical breeze.

After the set Steve Hass confessed to me that he had been a little nervous about the gig.  Having just returned from being out on the road with The Manhattan Transfer, he was worried that he didn't have enough time to prepare for the ambitious program.  He needn't have been concerned.

It was a completely satisfying performance by world class musicians in an intimate setting on a rainy Los Angeles night.  Perfection!  Adding another element to the evening was the respectful attenition the music recieved from the audience.  Looking around the room, I was so proud to be a part of the amazing aggregation of musicians who live and work in LA.  Drummer Peter Erskine, singers Cheryl Bentyne, Julie Kelly, and Judy Wexler were in the house, as was vocal jazz Grammy nominee for 2010, Denise Donatelli. The sense of community was palpable and warm, as was the affection and admiration for the man himself - Bob Sheppard.

A couple of flickers about working

I watched both "Metropolis" (1927) and "From the Terrace" (1960) this weekend, thinking that there might be some sort of parallel lines between the two - they both center around the stories of the sons of captains of industry.  But that is pretty much where the comparison ends.  Fritz Lang's influential "Metropolis" was UFA's most expensive silent picture, and has been called one of the most important works in the history of cinema.  It was a financial failure, shown only four months in its original form.  Censored in Germany and cut drastically as part of a distribution deal with Paramount and Metro, it was quickly shelved, and the excised footage was destroyed.  It has always been the object of intense interest by film buffs and historians, and has been studied, screened and re-released on numerous occasions, including Giorgio Moroder's colorized version with its pop rock sound track in 1984.  In 2008 an additional 25 minutes of previously lost footage was discovered in the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  In 1926 a distributor from Argentina had seen a screening before the cuts were made, bought it and took it back to Argentina with him, where it ended up in a private collection that eventually made its way to the Museo del  Cine.  The most recently restored "Metropolis" is out now on DVD and is the closest that it will probably ever be to Fritz Lang's original version.  It is amazing to look at. The image of Maria the Robot is one of the iconic images in all of cinema history. 

Reportedly Lang's vision for the film was inspired in part by the New York City skyline when he first arrived via ocean liner in 1924. The still below reminds me of the 10, 210 and 110  freeway interchanges south of downtown Los Angeles.

This new DVD has the beautiful original score by Gottfried Huppertz, performed by the Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, Berlin, and conducted by Frank Strobel.  "Metropolis" is an intense examination of class warfare, profoundly visual, prophetic, and still relevant nearly a century after it was made.

On the other hand, "From the Terrace" is a light weight period piece - a pre sexual revolution 1960's era soaper.  It is the story of the son of a wealthy industrialist played by Paul Newman, who weds a socialite played by Joanne Woodward at her deliciously ash blond best.  It was a serious film at its time based on John O'Hara's novel of the same name, and centers around the sexual and political machinations of the rich, as Newman tries to shake the influence of his overbearing father and strike out on his own after serving in World War II.   Like the character Freder in "Metropolis", Newman's Alfred Eaton rejects all that his father stood for.  Unlike Freder, who literally goes underground to become an anarchist, Eaton stays in the game.  Of course its really not fair to compare the two films.  "Metropolis" remains an influential classic, and "From the Terrace" has weathered into camp.  ("The Best Years of Our Lives" it never was.) Still, "Terrace" is a fun compliment to the uber serious "Metropolis" - like a little dish of raspberry jello after a complex gourmet meal.  In "Terrace" we get to see Paul Newman at his blue eyed dreamiest.  We get to see Myrna Loy play a soused spouse.  We get to see Barbara Eden in only her third big screen appearance do a party cameo as a flirt named Clemmy Shreve.  We get to see Woodward as the spoiled, shallow socialite Mary St. John wearing a lot of great outfits.  We get to see the opulent interiors and exteriors of rich people's houses.  We get to see Elizabeth Allen (who looks very much like my friend the jazz singer Gina Saputo) play a character named Sage Rimmington who, when interrupted making out with Alfred Eaton's best friend Lex Porter on the couch, exits saying, "I think I'll go slip into something more comfortable - like my husband."

I suggest watching "On The Terrace" with a martini and a couple of gay friends.

Maverick's Flat is once again Where It's At....we hope!

Dining with Louie Cruz Beltran and Anastasia Mann tonight, we started talking about our upcoming gig at Maverick's Flat.  I was kinda proud of myself for doing a bit of digging around on the world wide interweb and "discovering" that Maverick's had quite the history.  When Central Avenue started dwindling down as a center for music in the 1960s, the changing nightclub scene moved West. The Crenshaw/ Adams area became the focal point for a vibrant new soul and R&B scene.  Clubs like John Daniel's Maverick's Flat, Wilt Chamberlain's Basin Street West, the Hippodrome, and Redd Foxx's Jazz Go-Go were some of the hot spots.  Turns out that Louie was mentored by John Daniels and toured Europe with one of Daniel's bands at one point.  The resourceful Mr. Daniels also had an interesting acting career, appearing in some awesome blacksploitation films. He played Mr. Jonathan the hairdresser in the racy and silly cult classic "Black Shampoo".  ("This stud is no dud!").  Also appearing in that movie was Skip E. Lowe - but that is a whole different post. I digress.

So Maverick's is re-opening.  We know that they have been fighting the good fight to get the place back up on its feet, and we are booked for Saturday night, December 18th.

Window Dressings

      She seems to be in a festive yet reflective mood.  (Art gallery on the corner of

Melrose and Robertson).

The skull of the ancient Pianosaurus serves as a wreath holder at the entrance

to the Steinway store on  Robertson.

The Pacific Design Center at night.

Tonight I went to Chaya Brasserie to pick up a deposit check for the band I have booked in for their New Year's Eve party.  Instead of cranking up the Honda and driving three minutes over to Robertson and Alden, I decided to walk.  It's about a 20 minute walk. On my way over and back, there were several windows that caught my eye.