Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

Of all the riffs on this particular episode of American mythology, 1957’s big-budget Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is my favorite. Burt Lancaster is a stoic and statuesque as Wyatt Earp; Kirk Douglas does the heavy lifting as Doc Holiday. More often than not that’s how these things play out—producers bend over backwards to animate Earp, while Holiday, with his cards, his cough, and his Kate, rides into the sunset with the film tucked away in his breast pocket.

Gunfight is straight ahead, humorless, and not especially bothered about the opposite sex. Rhonda Fleming makes the expected Technicolor splash as a renowned lady gambler, but she’s not on screen long enough to be merit third billing. Her purpose is merely to oblige Lancaster to choose between a quiet future as her shopkeeper husband and the family honor—answering his brother’s call to destiny in dusty Tombstone. She won’t have him both ways and makes a hasty exit.

That leaves Jo Van Fleet as Kate Fisher, Holiday’s companion. We can tell that she loves him, but it’s a sans-affection, hate-hate relationship in Gunfight. Van Fleet sparkles as a Western femme fatale, stoking the rivalry between Holiday and Johnny Ringo as she vacillates between the two men, neither of whom actually seems to want her. Oh wait, I get it, it isn’t really about her. 

John Ireland turns in a clean-shaven Ringo, perfect for Eisenhower’s America. (Ireland played young Billy Clanton is 1946’s iteration, My Darling Clementine.) In fact, everyone here looks so coiffed and pretty that it can be difficult to tell the good guys from the bad. Perhaps that’s why professional villain caricature Lyle Bettger is Ike Clanton—there’s no mistaking him for a hero.

The climactic gunfight itself is surprisingly short on the bravado that has made this story so irresistible to filmmakers and audiences alike. Damn near every bullet is fired from cover, with combatants hiding in ditches and lurking behind wagons. The finale suffers from not having that expected moment where two enemies stand and face each other, whizzing bullets be damned. It finally winds down with an angst-filled Dennis Hopper cornered in a saloon, a cautionary episode imploring the delinquent teens of the 1950s to steer clear of wasted youth.

In the end, it’s star power (get a load of that poster) and Vistavision that puts this one over. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas (who’s 101 years old and hitched 64 years as I write this—keep punchin’ champ) have a rare sort of chemistry that placed them opposite each other in seven films, each of which is somehow remarkable. Lancaster projects moral authority unlike any other actor of his generation (it’s easy to see why he earned an Oscar for upending that in Elmer Gantry) while Douglas’s screen persona is somehow able to flout Lancaster’s gravity and humanize him. Along with John Sturges’s capable direction and the panoramas we expect from a mid-century western, this is well worth your time.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

Grade: B+

Directed by John Sturges

Starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Jo Van Fleet, John Ireland, Lyle Bettger, DeForest Kelley, Dennis Hopper, Ted DiCorsia.
Written by Leon Uris

Released by Paramount Pictures

Running time: 122 minutes

Availability: Airs on TCM, widely available. 

Where Love Has Gone (1964)

Put Susan Hayward and Bette Davis together and what more could you ask for than the spectacular, wacky trash that is 1964’s Where Love Has Gone — a pot-stirring film adaptation of the Harold Robbins novel, loosely based on the infamous Lana Turner / Johnny Stompanato case affair from the late fifties. A quick glance at the poster design tells you almost everything you need to know: there’s a lot going on and it’s all over the top — this is the Sirkian soaper of the fifties on steroids.

Hayward is at her best here: playing a San Francisco society girl with a classy veneer and mean streak — one that most often manifests itself in rather outrageous outbursts of infidelity. And in typical Hayward style, she’s self-righteous about all of her flaws — and no other actress (save possibly Davis herself, and maybe Elizabeth Taylor) could flavor her imperfections with such deliciously entertaining venom.

In addition to her blue blood, Hayward’s Valerie Hayden-Miller is also a sculptor of some notoriety. In one of the film’s many flashbacks, the story wades into the shallow pool of cliché in order to bring together Valerie and her future husband, war hero Luke Miller (Mike Connors). He’s back in the States (to receive the Medal of Honor, of course) for his exploits in the Pacific; and while taking in some culture he finds himself circling a sculpture at a posh Nob Hill art opening. He unwittingly tees off on the superficiality of the work and the ostentatious venue to the nearest bystander, who just so happens to be Valerie, the artist herself (of course) — happily at home in the upper crust. It’s a tired device we’ve seen in a thousand other films, but it serves well here to introduce our future husband and wife, and fundamentally outline their soon-to-be irreconcilable differences.

Before we know it they are wed, but with the war far from over Valerie has to slog out the early days of their marriage on the home front. We get some early insight into her character when one pal after another questions her ability to remain faithful while Mike is away island-hopping towards Japan. She manages to remain faithful, and life really begins for the Millers in those hedonistic days of 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Yet while she is productive in her studio, Luke fails to find work as an architect on his own merits. Soon he is obliged to take a job proffered up by Valerie’s overbearing mother (Bette Davis — dig all that makeup!) in the Hayden family firm (they already live in a swanky house, again proffered up by said mother-in-law).

As soon as Valerie becomes pregnant, the marriage begins to flounder. He starts drinking and she starts fooling around. By the time little Danielle enters the world he’s guzzling straight from the bottle and she’s making like the village bicycle. They quickly divorce, and Dani grows up not knowing her father, until that fateful day years later when he’s called away from a business meeting to find out that she, now a teenager (Joey Heatherton), has killed a man. And not just any man — her wanton mother’s latest lover!

The best thing about Where Love Has Gone is that it catapults toward excess in a way that few early sixties films even attempted. It’s sublimely trashy, and brought to life by a trio of women perfectly suited to make such a film utterly captivating. Not surprisingly, Heatherton draws the short straw here. She had been much, much better the year before as Nick Adams’s wife-prostitute in Twilight of Honor, but there she had been essentially the only woman in an almost all-male cast (riffing on Lee remick in Anatomy of a Murder). Here she gets swept away by the hurricane otherwise known as Susan Hayward. It’s decisively Hayward’s picture, and she’s comfortably inside her wheelhouse. Even Bette Davis stays out of her way. Davis’s performance is at times shallow: she defers to Hayward is their scenes together, almost convincing you that she’s just going through the motions in order to cash a check, until she gets screen time opposite Mike Connors, when she’s able to drop the shrill exterior and make us remember her extraordinary emotional range.

In the end, Where Love Has Gone isn’t a film that asks you to think, and that’s perfectly fine. Instead it’s garish nonsense, as loud and smelly as a passing city bus plastered with gaudy advertisements and unreadable graffiti — to be gaped at as is splashes up a street of countless potholes — get on board for a little while. Some of those potholes are patched with cliché, but most are simply ignored. Get off if you like, but Susan Hayward is there whispering (no, shouting) in your ear to stay on for one more stop and see what happens. And why not? You bought the ticket, ride it to the end of the line.

Where Love Has Gone (1964)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Reeased by Paramount Pictures
Starring Susan Hayward, Bette Davis, Mike Connors, and Joey Heatherton

Running tim: 111 minutes

Availability: Hard to find on DVD

Grade: B+ trash! 

The Molly Maguires (1970)

If there’s a life-blood that courses through the veins of this country, it’s black. It always has been.

I was born in the center of West Virginia, to a railroad family. After college I hitched my car to a coal miner’s daughter from Wheeling, a decaying, once glorious city where the National Road crosses the Ohio River in the far northern part of the state. Now we find ourselves in Pennsylvania, in what’s called the Coal Region. I teach at one of the myriad small private liberal arts colleges that proliferate in Pennsylvania like no other state save Massachusetts. A few miles from here there’s a modern day ghost town — a curiosity called Centralia — claimed by eminent domain, condemned, and finally abandoned by its residents because of a uncontrollable mine fire that has been burning continually under its streets for fifty years.

The people here are fascinating. They have a culture all their own, a way about them that’s foreign to me even though I come from only a few hours south. Manhattan is three hours by car, but might as well be a million miles away. People here for the most part haven’t made the trip, and really don’t care to. Less easy going than folks in West Virginia, they are more gruff, not so quick to trust. The southern tendency towards public manners doesn’t extend this far north, as if the area’s hard winters somehow keep courtesy at bay. Don’t get me started on the Amish. People around here have an uneasy relationship, or rather an uncomfortable dependency, on the local colleges (every town’s got one), which since the waning of the coal industry have become the driving force behind the local economy. (Natural Gas has recently arrived like a Biblical whirlwind, but that’s another story.) Yet like West Virginians, Pennsylvanians have been defined in some way by coal. The history of the people around here and the black rock is long, very well documented, and bitter. It’s an immigrant history, an American one. It’s a story of the captains of industry, and the backs upon which this country was built. It’s a story of abuses, of resistance, of labor, of unions, and finally of progress.

It has largely been forgotten. Or ignored.

Yet it’s such an alluring story! Dappled as it is with secret societies and violent, sensational crimes. It’s often pure bedtime stuff, and it makes wonderful film fodder, as historians can’t seem to form any consensus as to the truth, or in some cases, even the existence of many of the historical players that populate this modern mythology. That brings us to the Molly Maguires, the subject of a 1970 film starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris. If you don’t know who the Molly Maguires are (I’ve got no perspective there, they are ingrained in the culture here) I encourage you to check out the Wikipedia article — surprisingly, it’s one of the most exhaustive (and fairest) I’ve read. In a nutshell, the Maguires were a secret society of Irish coal miners who violently resisted the working conditions in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Events in Mollie history culminated in the 1870s, when a Pinkerton man infiltrated the group and brought about the arrests, convictions, and executions of numerous men accused of being Mollies. The film, The Molly Maguires, presents a dramatized version of these events.

Sean Connery plays the ringleader of the Mollies, while Richard Harris is the detective. In many ways Martin Ritt’s film follows typical Hollywood formula — sticking to the thirties gangster film tradition: infiltration – acceptance – betrayal – outrage – revenge. Yet the movie shines in its attention to detail. Too often we take for granted the toil that went into the things we see around us. Here’s a film that provides a fair depiction of what life in a mine was like for the men who descended into that unique hell each day of their lives, until the black dust ruined them. It shows us the dirt, the sweat, the blisters, and the constantly looming ceiling of rock, always a moment from crashing down. We see everything from the cruel ritual of payday to drinking company lager and shopping at the company store, but the film manages to never preach at us. Richard Harris plays a police officer that clearly empathizes with the men he suspects of murder, and time and again the script refuses to let us know with whom his loyalty truly lies. Harris’s struggle is the dramatic thrust of the film, yet he’s not engaged enough with his part to make us truly care which way he’ll go in the end. Even Connery seems subdued, as if his efforts to create a “hard man” stifled his ability to show us what’s happening beneath the surface. Director Martin Ritt refuses to take sides, and in his effort to avoid preaching at the audience, he leaves us with a film that feels more like a detached action picture than an emotional human drama.

After watching a movie with such a “can’t miss” pedigree, it isn’t surprising to see how it only scored an Oscar nomination in the set decoration category. As I watched I kept wishing for the passion of Paul Muni in 1935’s similarly themed Black Fury, everyone here just seems to be going through the motions. Such a powerful, yet unknown chapter in American history deserves better treatment than this. 

Private Worlds (1935)

The most avid classic film enthusiasts all have something in common: they can’t tell you how many times they’ve gnashed their teeth upon visiting IMDb and reading this dreaded phrase concerning a sought-after film:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Such is the case with the 1935 film Private Worlds, starring Claudette Colbert, Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, and Joan Bennett. With such a cast it is easy to understand why Private Worlds would be in demand — even more so for a devotee of the Academy Awards like me: Claudette Colbert earned a Best Actress nomination for her work in the film. Many of these 700 films were shown regularly by American Movie Classics back in its heyday, when host Bob Dorian offered the Pepsi to Robert Osbourne’s Coca-Cola across the dial at Turner Classic Movies.

And although AMC, thanks to Mad Men and other original television programs, has redeemed itself in the eyes of many, it still stings that their rather broad idea of an “American Movie Classic” starts and stops with pictures like Steven Seagal’s Marked for Death.

Those of you with a long memory may recall that in the wake of their format change, AMC attempted to spin out a new network, AMC’s Hollywood Classics, that would have maintained their original format, but the channel never materialized. Maybe such a venture is once again possible? I don’t know the ins and outs of cable television, but it’s surprising to me given the phenomenal success of TCM, that there isn’t room for AMC to somehow return to its roots and rebroadcast their vintage film library. Certainly with the ever-growing number of super-specialized networks doing business today there has to be room for another classic film outlet. If nothing else, why not cut a streaming deal with Netflix? Until then, anyone in search of such a film has to do just that: search. Doing so led me to purchase a bootleg copy of Private Worlds from the web, as I have often done in the past. The quality is universally poor, and the running time are almost always a minute or two shy of what’s listed on IMDb — but the films are watchable and, at least, available.

Without actually seeing the film it would be easy to dismiss Private Worlds as merely a romantic melodrama set in a mental hospital (the poster certainly suggests as much), but there is much more happening in the movie to make it worth seeking out. Here’s the story in a nutshell: Claudette Colbert plays Dr. Jane Everest, a psychiatrist in charge of the male ward at The Brentwood clinic, a progressive mental hospital. Her partner is Dr. Alex MacGregor (Joel McCrea), with whom she has partnered for many years. Despite their professional relationship the pair are not involved romantically — MacGregor is already married to Sally (Joan Bennett), an innocent and trusting girl who adores Jane and trusts Alex — until he gives here reason not to, while Jane pines for a love lost during the first world war. Things begin to go awry when a new hospital superintendant is appointed: Dr. Monet (Charles Boyer) who arrives with his sister Claire (Helen Vinson) in tow and begins to shake things up at the hospital. Monet believes there is no place for a woman in the upper echelons of the medical profession, and banishes Jane to the outpatient clinic. Claire is attracted to Alex, and easily pulls him in her direction, while Sally gradually becomes unglued. The consequences of Alex’s transgressions with Claire are the source of much of the film’s dramatic tension, and the final few reels are concerned with all of these entanglements sorting themselves out, with Colbert’s Jane the driving force behind everything.

Based on the novel by Phyllis Bottome (who more famously wrote the book that became the film The Mortal Storm), the film boasts the sort of meticulously interwoven plotting often found in book-to-movie-translations. The script itself is well constructed and progressive. Long before there are any notions of romance we are taken on a semi-documentary-style guided tour of the mental facility and shown firsthand exactly how well Colbert’s character knows her business. Colbert’s Jane Everest is a surprisingly modern breath of fresh air: She’s intelligent, witty, professional, and most importantly, respected as a superior physician by all of her male counterparts — even Boyer’s Monet, in his own time. She stands out against the stereotypically feminine and clichéd constructions of the movie’s other three women: Sally, the clinging and naïve wife; Claire, the manipulative and selfish home wrecker; and the dour, old-fashioned ward matron (Esther Dale), who rails against Jane’s presence in the hospital as anything other than a nurse. The film works hard to break various commonly held beliefs about mental institutions and the mentally ill, with entire scenes (and one character) dedicated to debunking myths. In a key moment that really typifies the movie’s point of view, McCrea’s character says, “I find very little difference between sanity and insanity.”

Gregory La Cava, who did most of his directorial work during the silent era (though he helmed such well remembered movies as My Man Godfrey and Stage Door, among others), does a fine job with this material. One scene in particular stands out and demonstrates how tight the narrative of the film is: early on we are introduced to two of Brentwood’s patients, a muscular man named Jerry who likes to see everything that is happening on the ward, and an dying, bed-ridden old man who murmurs constantly to himself in an unknown language. Late one night, shortly after joining the staff, Dr. Monet is called to the ward, where he looks in on the old man. He tells the nurse that the man is speaking Arabic and merely wants someone to pray for him. Dr. Monet grants the request, but not before placing screens around the gurney in an effort to spare the dying man’s dignity. This infuriates Jerry, who springs from his bed and attacks Monet, seconds after the old man finally succumbs. Jane, just entering the scene, shouts a warning just as Jerry attacks the doctor. The two men struggle while the other patients shout encouragement. La Cava’s camera pans in both directions and zooms in and out on the leering faces of the disturbed patients, as the soundtrack becomes a cacophony of screams and cackles. Combined with the near pitch-black setting the scene takes on an expressionistic feel very much out of character with other domestic films of the time. It’s a visually striking scene that reinforces the notion that Colbert’s Everest understands and manages the patients on the ward to a greater extent than her male counterparts, yet also softens the viewer’s impression of Boyer’s Monet. It culminates a few subtle instances of earlier foreshadowing and punctuates the middle of the film.

Admittedly, as much as I liked Private Worlds, it has its share of flaws. In general, it sells out too much to melodrama in its second half, but given the period and the mood of depression-era audiences it is difficult to hold it against the film. We are asked to accept American actress Helen Vinson as Charles Boyer’s sister, yet are given no explanations as to their vastly different accents. Colbert’s Jane Everest is a little too perfect as well. Self-sacrificing, medically infallible, even angelic at times (if it helps, it’s very easy to imagine Loretta Young in this part), it would have been nice if Colbert had been allowed to be a little more human here — again understandable given the movie’s goal of showing that a female doctor could hold her own, even thrive, in a male-dominated profession. Nonetheless this is a sparkling mid-thirties film that deserves to be seen again.

Private Worlds (1935)

Directed by Gregory La Cava

Starring Claudette Colbert, Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, Joan Bennett

Released by Paramount Pictures

Running time: 84 minutes

Availability: Very Rare

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)

Richard Dreyfuss hustles his way through The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a 1974 period film based on the novel by Mordecai Richler. The young actor, a commodity at the time and a year away from going incandescent thanks to Spielberg and Jaws, is fine as the title character, a jewish kid from Montreal who has dreams of a better future than the one facing him, either supervising workers in his uncle’s garment factory, or driving a cab like his father, played by Jack Warden.

Dreyfuss’s talent is obvious from start to finish, and the role requires a fair amount of range. As the film opens, Duddy is still a good-for-nothing-student at a military school. We follow the events of his life over the course of the next year or so, as he leaves school and begins to make connections waiting tables and schlepping bags at a summer resort. Kravitz has lots of ideas but no direction, complaining early on that he missed out on a windfall when he learned that someone else had already though up Kleenex. He finds the goal he needs when his summer crush, Yvette (Micheline Lanctôt) takes him to a nearby lake and tells him it can be had for a song. Kravitz is entranced by the vistas, and sees the surrounding real estate as his way to make his mark on the world; he begins the arduous task of trying to raise the funds to buy the property, which encompasses the rest of the film.

Most of the reels are concerned with the wheeling and dealing Kravitz goes through to make a buck, from waiting tables and making films, to selling pinball machines and driving a cab. At one point he unwittingly becomes a mule, shuttling heroin across the border and into Manhattan on behalf of the local Jewish gangster. As the film progresses and Kravitz’s need becomes more desperate he responds in kind, making a quick progression from begging and borrowing to swindling and stealing, even from those he loves. Randy Quaid, of all people, finds his way into the film as a dim witted bumpkin Duddy befriends and then takes advantage of in half a dozen different ways. Quaid is an epileptic, and the movie takes a downward emotional turn when he crashes a truck hauling Duddy’s junk from one joint to the next.

The picture’s best sequence features Denholm Elliot, a down and out filmmaker Duddy befriends after a night-school lecture. Duddy dreams up a scheme where they’ll produce Bar Mitzvah and wedding movies — “in color!” — but Elliot’s character insists on maintaining his artistic integrity. Their first project is shown in its entirety as a movie-within-a-movie and makes the whole thing worth watching. It’s a scream — really, you’ll scream — and it’ll forever change the way you think of Bar Mitzvahs and bris.

By the end of the film, we’ve witnessed a fairly original version of an age-old movie story: that of the man who fulfills his ambition, but at a terrible price. There are a few problems, particularly over length, as numerous subplots grab screen time and drain vitality from the film. Mostly they paint a picture of Jewish life in the Montreal of the fifties, but the cost is too much: such films work best in the 90-100 minute range, the extra twenty here are nearly a deal-breaker. This has never been released on home video, but is currently available to watch instantly from Netflix.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Jack Warden, Randy Quaid, and Micheline Lanctôt
Released by Canadian Film Dev. Corp.
Running time: 121 minutes.
Availability: Netflix Streaming

The Big Pond (1930)

“You even turned our song into a gum advertisement.”

The Big Pond is one of those super-rare early talkies from Paramount. I finally broke down and paid for a copy (along with a few other rare films I'll be posting about in the coming weeks). This has good sound but a washed out picture that looked as if it originated as an 8mm transfer to a thirty-year-old VHS. Nevertheless, it was happily watchable — and what a great poster!

Frenchman Maurice Chevalier plays Pierre, a tour guide in Venice who falls head over heels for chewing gum heiress Barbara Billings (Claudette Colbert). Her father is naturally against the pairing, so he schemes to bring the young man back to the states and puts him to work in the chewing gum factory, thinking the dapper continental will fold like taffy under the strain of real work. Pierre thrives instead, and in due time manages to become the son Mr. Billings never had. However, as he rises in the gum business, he craps out with the girl. He wants to succeed in business, while she craves the romance they shared in Italy. All’s well that ends well though, and even in 1930 Hollywood knew how to neatly package a romantic comedy.

For those of you (like me) who can only take Maurice Chevalier in small, infrequent doses, this is a pleasant surprise. There are a few modest musical numbers, fairly catchy, and the whole thing is so innocuous it’s hard to dislike. One interesting notion is that by 1930 when this was made the U.S. was in the throes of the depression, yet The Big Pond lacks much of the ostentatious, audience-pleasing glamour that would characterize the rags to riches comedies of the mid-thirties. Sure, Colbert is bejeweled in every scene, but the sets haven’t yet taken on the glimmering art deco trappings that would soon take over studio productions, and the script clearly focuses clearly on the value of hard work rather than the zany eccentricities of the wealthy. The Big Pond even takes its shots at the Volstead Act: Pierre finally scores with Mr. Billings when he develops a new line of liquor-flavored chewing gums: scotch, rye, bourbon … and champagne.

In only her fifth film, Claudette Colbert’s mature screen persona is solidly in place, and that unmistakable voice cut through the haziness of my poor copy like something soothingly familiar. Her role is smaller than I’d like, but the performance is exactly as you’d expect: competent, charming, and professional. Her on-screen father, played by first-timer George Barbier, manages to steal the show. Barbier is a delight as the chewing gum king, with a deft comic tough — his chemistry is as good with Chevalier as it is with Colbert. This was Barbier’s first film, though from 1931 to 1936 he would make a rather astonishing fifty more!

What a day it will be when Universal, which owns the rights to The Big Pond, and as many as 700 other Paramount products from the same era, decides to cut loose and either release these for television consumption, or push them out as DVDs on demand in the same fashion as the Warner Archive. We’re waiting.

The Big Pond (1930)

Directed by Hobart Henley

Starring Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert

Released by Paramount Pictures

Running time: 72 minutes.

Availability: Almost impossible.

When Worlds Collide (1951)

Run for your lives! Oh wait, that won't work. In the 1951 sci-fi classic When Worlds Collide, a vicious one-two punch in the form of Bellus and Zyra, a rogue star and orbiting planet are hurtling through space directly for the planet earth. Our hero, research scientist Dr. Hendron (Larry Keating) confirms the inevitability of the collision with a year to spare, but is mocked by the newly formed United Nations General Assembly and tossed out on his ear. By the time the rest of the world finally comes to grips with the truth of the situation, it's too late to do anything about it — too late, that is, for everyone except Dr. Hendron and his circle, who have endeavored to build a futuristic Noah's Ark in the form of a gigantic sleek silver rocket. Their plan is to launch at just the last second, and hopefully land and begin civilization anew on Zyra, the small, earth-like (hopefully) planet. A scant forty-four people can be saved, and much of the film's drama concerns preparation for the cataclysm and the selection of the lucky few.

Despite a short running time, there's plenty to hold our attention (it's actually too bad this couldn't have gone on for another twenty minutes or so — there are plenty of threads that could have been woven into a more detailed fabric.) There's a love triangle involving 50s honey Barbara Rush, the ship's M.D., and her reluctant pilot; as well as a great deal of moral and ethical tension generated by the wheelchair-bound gajillionaire who's paying for the whole thing — in exchange for one of the coveted seats.

One of the cleverest plot twists has Zyra passing close enough to the Earth to disrupt the tides and flood all coastal cities nineteen days in advance of the fiery collision with Bellus. It adds a moment of real suspense and worthwhile special effects to the middle of the film, and as an added bonus it solves the problem of pissed-off, gun-toting mob of rejects making a run on the rocket during the eleventh hour — the launch site is on a mountain top, and Zyra has flooded all low-lying territories. The effects are pretty darn good, all the more so because this was shot in very vivid technicolor — good enough to nab the effects Academy Award (not to mention a color cinematography nomination). Most of the tricks are done with miniatures, but they are impressive to say the least and will have you wondering if it isn't the real thing in a few of the cuts. There's an interesting flood sequence that anticipates the likewise Oscar-winning effects in The Rains of Ranchipur. There might be a few seconds of stock footage here and there, but who cares? This is great stuff.

Unfortunately this is 1950s America — no black folks allowed. Asians? Sorry. The script does vaguely reference similar rockets being built in other countries, but the notion contradicts the earlier idea that the initially sceptical would be unable to complete a ship in time. The new civilization on Zyra will be young, white, and good looking — and with cute puppies. The film makes a meager overture to civil unrest amongst the hundred of rocket-builders who don't get a space on the flight, but it takes a nod and a wink on the part of viewers to think the rocket would have ever gotten off the ground. Yet it does, and miraculously manages to set down on the surface of Zyra. The hatch opens to "the sweetest breath" one traveler ever took, and a cartoonish world of green fields, pink trees, snow, and a few rather Egyptian looking pyramids. It's a strange teaser for the film to end this way — if this was a contemporary picture we'd all shout, "Sequel!" The Zyran landscape obviously contains buildings, but we are left to wonder whether or not they contain living beings, friendly or otherwise. The idea of competing rocket projects, particularly those from other countries and other governments, makes the idea of a sequel very intriguing. Apparently George Pal wanted to do a follow-up along those lines, but it just never panned out. Nevertheless, this is a fun fifties sci-fi gem, with enough polish to please all viewers. Plus, it sports one honey of a poster.

When Worlds Collide (1951)

Directed by Rudolph Maté

Starring Barbara Rush, Richard Derr, Peter Hansen, Larry Keating, and John Hoyt

Released by Paramount Pictures

Running time: 82 minutes
Availability: Widely on DVD.

Goodbye, Columbus (1969)

In journeyman television director Larry Peerce’s Goodbye, Columbus, based on the short novel by Philip Roth, the underappreciated comic actor Richard Benjamin plays a New York librarian who falls for an out-of-his-league Jewish Princess played by Ali MacGraw, in her very first film appearance. Although both are ostensibly Jewish, and New Yorkers, they come from different worlds. The film explores the culture clash as the two attempt to move in one another’s circles, and the havoc, internal and external, that occurs when they can't seem to make a go of it.

Judging by the MacGraw-centric poster, this was marketed as a romance and a splash vehicle for the screen deb, which is a more accurate depiction of the film's content that the DVD release, even when one considers than Benjamin is clearly the star. The DVD artwork is suggestive a straight romantic comedy, which this clearly isn't. Goodbye, Columbus fits neatly into that cycle of late sixties / early seventies serio-comic pictures that tries to please all potential viewers and instead only manages to reach the least discerning. It’s nevertheless watchable, particularly when either Benjamin or Jack Klugman is on-screen — less so with MacGraw, who tries too hard (particularly in the story's emotional moments) and vacillates between too shrill, too seductive, or just plain over the top. (It's also worth noting that despite a PG rating, there very little of MacGraw that we don't get to see here…on numerous occasions.)

I was pleasantly surprised by Peerce’s craftmanship — he paces the thing properly considering the lazy plot and episodic structure. He also deftly handles the story’s mildly uncomfortable transitions from the serious to the melancholy to the humorous — most of which is on the wry side. There are a few particularly good moments, again worth noting that the best of them don't involve MacGraw. My favorite finds Benjamin at work in the library, quietly ingratiating himself into the life of a young boy who visits the library in search of art books. The initial scene in the subplot suggests a break for comedy, but as the text develops we realize it’s one of Goodbye’s best moments. I finished the movie wishing more such interludes had been included, and wondered if there wasn’t some potential for another film in there somewhere, or if, at least, a few scenes hadn’t been sacrificed and left at the altar of running time.

Another good scene finds Benjamin visiting Klugman at his place of business: a Bronx plumbing supply company — down, dirty, and a million miles away from the family mansion-ette in Westchester — it’s Roth’s nod of respect to those folks who do things the hard way, and a subtle reprimand to those Anglos who believe affluent Jews don’t earn their pay in the way everyone else does. In the scene, Klugman is measuring Benjamin up for a spot in the business, and their tense interaction give the older actor the chance to show his chops. The characterization is on the money: Klugman says all of the things to Benjamin that he really just wants to say to his own son, a spoiled sports junkie who thinks he’s too good to work in the family business. Benjamin knows this, and out of respect for the older man he lets it all hang in the air — as an actor Benjamin is a great listener, and it’s never more apparent than here. His character serves as something of a lens into the kinds of lives Goodbye portrays, Benjamin is consequently quite well-cast.

In the end the movie seems to be a vehicle through which we learn more about how Philip Roth sees (and rails against) his own place in New York’s Jewish culture (it’s worth noting that in the novel Roth places his characters in slightly less movie-chic town of Newark, New Jersey) than we do about the human emotions of the two young lovers, their rather clichéd families, and what’s really going on in anything less than a superfluous way. It’s a film of loosely connected moments — some of them are very rewarding, but the whole doesn't measure up to the parts. Those looking for a straight comedy from the same period should instead consider Lovers and Other Strangers.

Goodbye, Columbus (1969)

Directed by Larry Peerce

Starring Richard Benjamin and Aly MacGraw

Released by Paramount Pictures

Availability: widely on DVD.

Running time: 102 minutes

With Byrd at the South Pole (1930)

Here's a great film for Independence Day, one that celebrates the American spirit and the American Century — not to mention the most famous son of my own hometown, Winchester, Virginia. With Byrd at the South Pole is one of the earliest and most captivating film documentaries. A deserving Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography, the film chronicles in stark realitytheAntarctic expedition that led to Byrd's famous flight over the south pole.

Richard Byrd seems to be one of the forgotten men of the first half of the twentieth century, possibly overshadowed by his contemporary, and sometimes rival, Charles Lindbergh. Byrd was one of the men who wanted badly to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize for being the first to complete the New York - Paris flight, but Lindbergh captured the award just ahead of him. Byrd would make the crossing a mere four weeks later, but was obliged to ditch his craft in Normandy when Paris was unapproachable due to fog. Yet Byrd was no stranger to the limelightin the twenties and thirties, and enjoyed the life of a national hero. He retired from naval life with the rank of rear admiral, and during the course of his lifetime was awarded with countless citations, including the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The film opens with a somewhat awkward sound introduction featuring the explorer / adventurer himself addressing the viewer. Clad in his white naval dress uniform, Byrd primarily offers thanks a brief explanation of his motivations,all the while looking sheepishly away from the camera — as if reading cue cards. The film then changes gears for the bulk of its duration, into a silent affair with classic titles cards. Although With Byrd at the South Pole was made at exactly the time studios were heavily engaged with the transition into talking pictures, lugging sound equipment into the wasteland of the film's location would have been impossible even a decade later.

We are shown the expedition from beginning to end, from the opening shots of the heavily laden ships leaving New York Harbor to their journey south, eventually to break through the ice pack and make harbor on the barren plateau of Antarctica. We see the dozens of adventurers carve a base camp — known as Little America — out of the frozen landscape; build shelters for the three carefully assembled aircraft, the largest of which is fated to make the flight over the pole; store the seemingly unending supply of rations and equipment, and build friendships with the many Huskies brought to pull sleds and equipment across the expanses ice. In fact, one of the movie's more poignant moments comes when one of the older sled dogs becomes unableto shoulder his load or protect himself from the sub-zero temperatures any longer. We are also greeted by the wildlife of the region, as penguins and seals curiously explore Little America, and pods of whales startle the surface of the ice in search of breathing room. Weare treated to blizzards, gales, and unceasing monotony — including a single night that lasts more than four months.

The greatness of the film is in its camera work. That the work of the two Paramount Studios "ace" cameramen would win the Oscar for their work must have been a foregone conclusion. Although the finished picture runs a mere eighty minutes, over thirty miles of footage was generated over the course of the two-year expedition — and the professional Hollywood filmmakers involved certainly knew their stuff. The juxtaposition of static shots, aerials, even handhelds, combinedwith the inherent drama of the situation, makes for a rewarding film experience as exciting and contemporary as any studio production.

Sound returns for the film's final, climactic sequence, as Byrd and his fellows make their flight over the pole. A professional narrator speaks over spectacular aerial shots as the men back at Little America — and the world at large — wait for Byrd to complete his task. Although the events of the film occurred more than eighty years ago, I was nonetheless on the edge of my seat as the film came to aclose.

This is a must for anyone interested in documentary films, as well as the Academy Awards. Having grown up in the same town as Byrd, his story is remarkably absent from the public memory — undoubtedly pushed aside by our town's somehow even more iconic daughter, Patsy Cline. In a way it's too bad,the example of Byrd's adventurous, quintessentially American spirit is missed.

With Byrd at the South Pole (1930)

Grade: B-

No director credited

Released by Paramount Pictures

Running time: 82 minutes

Availability: DVD, Netflix.

One Eyed Jacks (1961)

Marlon Brando takes his one and only turn in the director’s chair with uninspiring results in the 1961 Western character study One Eyed Jacks. Not surprisingly, he stars in the film  as well, once again opposite Karl Malden. The two actors play a pair of gringo bandits running amuck somewhere in Sonora. They knock over one bank too many before being trapped by the Mexican rurales atop a dusty, wind-swept ridge. A shoeless Malden flees upon their only horse in an effort to secure fresh mounts, but instead high tails it with the loot and leaves Brando to suffer a five-year prison sentence. This is quite a long film at two hours and twenty minutes, yet the action described above takes place in the first few scenes. The remaining two hours cover events following Brando’s escape from prison — how he searches for Malden in hopes of revenge, to eventually find him employed as a sheriff in some idyllic town on the California peninsula.

One Eyed Jacks is an overlong film that suffers greatly from having an auspicious beginning that the rest of the film doesn’t live up to. It’s difficult to care very much about this cast of characters — something Brando seemed to realize. He repeatedly goes out of his way to show himself doing one good deed or another (which usually means protecting a girl from some whisky-sodden stumblebum) in an effort to win viewers over, but in the end we are just left with the awkwardness of trying to accept his brooding, mumbling, needs-to-break-free screen persona in the wide open spaces of the west — he just doesn’t fit. The are a half-dozen subplots going on, each a well-worn cliché: Brando allies himself with some banditos who turn out to be much worse than he realized, he falls in love with Malden’s beautiful Mexican stepdaughter, he busts out of jail, narrowly dodges a hanging, and so forth. The film’s two brightest spots come from its cast, in the form of Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens. Jurado plays Malden’s wife, and she offers a welcome sense of calmness and assured professionalism in an otherwise clumsy film. Pickens is just, well, Pickens — always an asset to any film he’s in.

I streamed this through Watch Instantly on Netflix. The quality of the transfer is horrendous and not worth your time. I share this in acknowledgment that it can be very difficult to enjoy, or at least appreciate a film one hasn’t been viewed under the appropriate circumstances. I haven’t seen the print on the commercial DVD but it has to make for a better experience than I had streaming.

One Eyed Jacks (1961)

Grade: CDirected by Marlon Brando
Starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden
Released by Paramount Pictures
Running time: 141 minutes.
Availability: DVD, Netflix Instant Watch