Ball of Fire

On Christmas day, I could be found at Film Forum laughing along with the rest of the audience at Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire (1941). 

A screwball comedy based on Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, the film is set not in a forest but in New York City where eight professors live and work together in an old brownstone, writing an encyclopedia of human knowledge. They are on the letter “S” when the youngest professor, Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper), realizes that his research on slang is out of date. He roams the city looking for people to make up a research panel and winds up at a nightclub where Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) is performing with the Gene Krupa Band. Potts is entranced and invites Sugarpuss to join his panel. At first she declines but changes her mind when she needs a place to hide from the DA who's looking for her in connection to her mobster boyfriend, Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews). She moves into the house with the professors and quickly changes their lives. She and Potts fall in love, and he proposes marriage. The only problem is that Joe wants her to marry him so she can’t testify against him in court. Everyone winds up in New Jersey where Potts fights Joe for the woman he loves.

The film’s leads are perfect in their roles: Barbara Stanwyck was a street-smart New Yorker in real life and looks gorgeous while Gary Cooper is especially attractive when he's in full fumbling nerd mode (which he plays so well). They are supported by some of Hollywood’s favourite character actors including S.Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Leonid Kinskey, and Dan Duryea. There’s also a great musical performance by Gene Krupa of "Drum Boogie" including a scene where he uses a book of matches to play the drums. The comedy is balanced with some tender moments and the costumes are glorious (one of Stanwyck’s gowns literally shines). And then there is the language.

Screwball comedies are noted for their witty dialogue and this film delivers in spades thanks to a brilliant script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. In the film, Cooper quotes Carl Sandburg who said, "slang is language that takes off it coat, spits on its hands, and gets to work." In this film, the language is working overtime. The erudite words of the professors are juxtaposed with the slang-filled observations of working class people creating numerous comedic moments. 

Early in the film Potts realizes that his slang research is obsolete when a garbage collector comes into the house to ask the professors for some help with a “quizzola” he’s filling out for the chance to win $25. He asks them a question about how Cleopatra died. When they give him the answer, he expresses his thanks and tells them why it’s important:

Garbage Man: I could use a bundle of scratch right now on account of I met me a mouse last week.

Potts: Mouse?

Garbage Man: What a pair of gams. A little in, a little out, and a little more out...

Potts: I am still completely mystified.

Garbage Man: Well, with this dish on me hands and them giving away 25 smackaroos on that quizzola.

Potts: Smackaroos? What are smackaroos?

Garbage Man: A smackaroo is a...

Potts: No such word exists.

Garbage Man: Oh, it don't? A smackaroo is a dollar, pal.

Potts: Well, the accepted vulgarism for a dollar is a buck.

Garbage Man: The accepted vulgarism for a smackaroo is a dollar. That goes for a banger, a fish, a buck or a rug.

Potts: Well, what about the mouse?

Garbage Man: The mouse is the dish. That's what I need the moolah for.

Potts: Moolah?

Garbage Man: Yeah, the dough. We'll be stepping. Me and this smooch…I mean, the dish, I mean, the mouse. You know, hit the jiggles for a little rum boogie.

Potts: Please, please, not so fast.

Garbage Man: Brother, we're going to have some hoytoytoy.

Potts: Hoytoytoy?

Garbage Man: Yeah, and if you want that one explained, you go ask your papas.

Sugarpuss O’Shea’s language is just as colourful as the Garbage Man’s, and she’s better looking. Between her delivery and the gold dress that shows off her midriff and shapely legs, Potts doesn’t have a chance.

When he first meets Sugarpuss in her dressing room she tells him, “Okay, scrow, scram, scraw,” and he responds with delight, “The complete conjugation!”

Sugarpuss also gets some of the best lines. When she first enters the professors’ library she says, “Hey, who decorated this place, the mug who shot Lincoln?” And when trying to convince Potts that she’s getting sick and needs to stay over at the house, she asks him to check her throat.

Potts: There is possibly a slight rosiness in the laryngeal region.

Sugarpuss: Slight rosiness? It’s as red as the Daily Worker and just as sore.

When Potts attempts to kick her out of the house, he tells her, "Make no mistake, I shall regret the absence of your keen mind. Unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body." She responds by playing on his sense of duty as a grammarian.

Sugarpuss: There's a lot of words we haven't caught up with. For instance, do you know what this means, "I'll get you on the Ameche"?

Potts: No.

Sugarpuss: Of course, you don't. An Ameche is the telephone. On account of he invented it.

Potts: Oh, no, he didn't.

Sugarpuss: You know, in the movies.

Potts: I see what you mean. Very interesting.

She finally convinces him to let her stay when she stands on three of Professor Gurkakoff’s reference books (Potts is very tall) and shows him what “yum yum” is. The kisses send Potts running out of the room to apply a cold compress to the back of his neck.

Like when Snow White went to live with the dwarfs, the other professors are enchanted by Sugarpuss and welcome her into their lives. They begin dressing smarter to impress her and instead of conducting research, they dance a conga. They also hang on her every word, trying to understand her world. When the professors turn the tables on the mobsters and pull guns on them, Professor Oddly (Richard Haydn) tells them, “I believe…I think it is known as an “up-stick.” Bless him.

Yet the influence isn’t one-sided. Sugarpuss comes to realize that not only does she deserve something better in her life but that she’s in love with Potts (or Pottsy as she calls him). He's the opposite of Joe, and she can't seem to believe that she's fallen for him. 

“I love those hick shirts he wears with the boiled cuffs. And the way he always has his vest buttoned wrong. Looks like a giraffe, and I love him. I love him because he’s the kind of a guy that gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk. And I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. I love him because he doesn’t know how to kiss, the jerk.”

The film was a hit with audiences and garnered six Academy Award nominations including one for Stanwyck for Best Actress. I think it's one of the best roles she ever played. So if you've never seen Ball of Fire, shove in your clutch and watch it now. Dig me?

Night Nurse

If you’re in the mood for some pre-code Hollywood fun (and who isn’t), then Night Nurse (1931) is the film for you. Directed by William Wellman (whose work I just realized I’ve written about a lot), Night Nurse is fast, slightly shocking (in a 1930s sort of way), and highly entertaining.

Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) wants to become a trainee nurse but is turned away from the hospital for not having a high school diploma. After bumping into the chief of staff, Dr. Arthur Bell (Charles Winninger), on her way out (shades of another Stanwyck pre-code film, Baby Face, comes to mind in this scene), she gets her wish. Accepted into the program, she’s paired up with the gum chewing Maloney (Joan Blondell) who shows her the ropes around the hospital. The two become roommates and friends.

Mortie the bootlegger (Ben Lyon) meets the nurses

One night a gunshot victim, Mortie (Ben Lyon), comes into the hospital. He turns out to be a bootlegger and convinces Lora not to report him to the police. Charmed by the smooth-talking criminal, she agrees. Later he sends her a bottle of rye with thanks to his “pal” and when she and Maloney graduate, his is the largest floral bouquet in the room.

Now certified, Maloney gets Lora the night shift taking care of two little girls, Desney (Betty Jane Graham) and Nanny (Marcia Mae Jones) Ritchey, who Lora met when they were treated for malnutrition and anaemia at the hospital. Now back home with their mother in a Fifth Avenue mansion, the girls’ condition has worsened. Before leaving Maloney, who has the day shift, warns Lora that there’s something “screwy” going on in the house.

The two girls, who had met Lora at the hospital, tell her that they used to have another sister but she got run over and that their dead father had been a nice man. But Nick the chauffeur? He scares them. They also complain that they’re always hungry.

Barbara Stanwyck and a young Clark Gable

After the children go to sleep, Lora learns that nightly parties go on in the house and that Mrs. Ritchey routinely passes out drunk. Lora is assaulted by one of the party goers and nearly raped before she’s rescued by Nick the chauffeur (Clark Gable). Later, when he asks her to pump the stomach of Mrs. Ritchey and she refuses, they struggle, and he knocks her out.

The next day she confronts Dr. Milton Ranger (Ralf Harolde), the man treating the girls, about what’s going on in the house, and he tells her to “let it go.” She quits and reports her suspicions to Dr. Bell who doesn’t feel comfortable interfering with another doctor’s case. He advises her to get her job back and try to find evidence so she can swear out a warrant.

Apologizing profusely to Ranger, she’s reinstated and returns to find Nanny dreadfully weak. Unable to get Mrs. Ritchey to respond to her pleas to help her children or to get Dr. Bell on the phone, Lora resorts to trying a milk bath, an old wives’ remedy that the housekeeper, Mrs. Maxwell (Blanche Friderici), keeps insisting saved her sister’s child. Mortie, who happens to be making a delivery to the mansion, goes on a milk run for her. While waiting to see if it’s working, Mrs. Maxwell, who’s been drinking, tells Lora that Nick is really Mrs. Ritchey’s boyfriend, and that he’s trying to murder the girls so he can marry their mother and get their trust fund.

The bath doesn’t help but Dr. Bell shows up (Mortie tracked him down) and is examining Nanny when Nick tries to stop him. Once again, Mortie comes to the rescue, threatening Nick with a concealed weapon and sitting guard outside the room while Lora offers up her own blood for a transfusion that saves Nanny.

Lora and Mortie ride off into the sunset (sorta).

The following day, Mortie gives Lora a lift downtown so she can give her evidence to the police. When she mentions her concerns about Nick, Mortie tells her that he told a couple of guys that he “didn’t like Nick so good.” The closing scene is of an ambulance pulling up to the hospital with the body of a man dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform.

Like any good pre-code film, Night Nurse is filled with characters with questionable morals. Lora is sympathetic to and ends up with a bootlegger. Mrs. Ritchey is a drunk and negligent mother. Dr. Ranger appears to have a cocaine problem. And violence (Nick seems to have killed the girls’ other sister, Lora is almost raped) is met with violence (Nick’s death) seemingly without any final condemnation from anyone.

Naturally there’s dialogue filled with witty wisecracks, most of which are delivered by the delightful Joan Blondell who always excelled at playing the best friend in films and tended to get the best lines too.

“I thought the hospital would burn down before I could get into it. Now I have to watch myself with matches.”

“Keep away from interns. They’re like cancer: the disease is known but not the cure.”

(To Mortie): “Oh, you make any joint look like a speakeasy.”

Oh, just two roommates getting ready for bed

And then there’s the question of clothing or rather the lack of. The general rule in this film appears to be, when in doubt, have the female leads get undressed. Stanwyck and Blondell remove their clothes constantly throughout the film—when they’re trying on their uniforms, when they’re going to bed, when they’re getting ready for work. Except for an early scene in which one of the interns walks in on Stanwyck (“You can't show me a thing I ain't seen. I just got out of the delivery room.”), the two women are always alone, away from prying eyes except for those of the viewer.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the relationship between Lora and Maloney. There’s no backstabbing or jealousy between these two. Instead they’re friends and colleagues who have each other’s back. Even the swipes Maloney makes at Mortie, Lora’s love interest, are good-natured. The dark-haired Stanwyck and the blonde Blondell visually make a striking duo on screen and their banter comes off sounding natural.

Stanwyck plays Lora as a street-smart working girl with a soft spot for children. While her maternal feelings shouldn’t be brushed aside, Stanwyck is at her strongest when she shows off her tough cookie persona, standing up to Nick and slapping one of the party goers. When she tries to get Mrs. Ritchey to help her children and the drunken woman passes out, Stanwyck looks down at her, shakes her head and says, “you mother,” before dumping a champagne bucket of water on her.

And then there’s Gable. Oh, Mr. Gable. In this, one of his first roles, Gable is young, handsome, and dangerous. Far from the charming rogue movie goers would come to love, Gable is a brute here. The only thing that takes away from Gable's performance is when he announces, “I’m Nick, the chauffeur.” It’s suppose to be filled with menace yet today the lines just come off as a bit comical. It doesn't matter because Gable simply oozes sex appeal. It’s no wonder that he would soon become a box office star.

Even though the attractive Gable is in the second half of the film, it’s the first half, set in the hospital, that’s the most interesting with its shots of the maternity ward and Lora at her first surgery. It also has one of the film's best known scenes when Lora and Maloney sneak back to their room after missing curfew. Stripping down to their slips, they are getting ready to turn in when Lora finds a skeleton in her bed (a trick played by one of the interns). Her screams bring the head nurse to the room who, realizing that they’ve been out, punishes them both with extra shifts. Lora, unwilling to sleep in a bed recently occupied by a skeleton, climbs into bed with Maloney instead. Now that’s a pre-code film.

Remember the Night

December is Barbara Stanwyck month at Film Forum, and I’m sorry to say I missed most of the screenings. Some of the films I’d seen numerous times before (Double Indemnity, Meet John Doe, Baby Face) so I decided to see ones that were new to me. One night I went to a triple feature of early Stanwyck films: one stinker, Mexicali Rose (1929); a so-so mystery, The Locked Door (1929); and a decent sob story directed by Frank Capra, Forbidden (1931). Then on Christmas day I spent the afternoon watching Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Mitchell Leisen’s Remember the Night (1940), written by the brilliant Preston Sturges.

The film opens with a woman nicking a bracelet from a jeweller and being caught shortly after trying to pawn it. She turns out to be Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck), a woman with a record and no permanent home. Later at trial, she’s represented by a blustery blowhard of an attorney whose antics annoy the prosecuting ADA John Sargeant (Fred MacMurray). Worried that the jury will take pity on a woman, especially at the holidays, John manages to get the trial postponed until after the new year. The only problem is Lee is broke and with no place to live. So John posts bail for her and proposes that since she's a fellow Hoosier, she can hitch a ride with him to Indiana where he'll drop her off at her mother's on his way home to his family (this would all happen, right?). Lee agrees even though she hasn't been back since she ran away years ago. 

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray get woken up by an unexpected visitor.

After a detour finds them spending the night in a field, they’re woken in the morning by a nosey cow before getting “arrested” by the farmer whose land they’re trespassing on. With some quick thinking on Lee’s part they get away and arrive at her childhood home only to discover that her mother wants nothing to do with her. 

Feeling sorry for Lee, John takes her home with him where his family warmly greets her. Lee, grateful for such kindness, insists on helping with the washing and cooking, and finds herself enjoying the country life, including the square dance she attends with the family on New Year’s Eve. As to be expected, John and Lee fall in love but after his mother (Beulah Bondi), who knows about her past, tells Lee how hard John had to work to get where he is, she promises to leave him alone.

On their way back to New York by way of Canada (to avoid Pennsylvania where they’re “wanted”), they stop at Niagara Falls, and John suggests that Lee run but she refuses. Back in New York, she stands trial and John tries deliberately to lose the case. But Lee’s love for him makes her decide to finally do the right thing. 

There were some corny elements in the film (mainly plot devices) but it still managed to be a solid film. This was due in part to Sturges’ smart dialogue, particularly the lines given to Stanwyck’s character. 

John: You threw a lighted match into the wastebasket?

Lee: Well I wasn't aiming for the spittoon.

John: You know that's called arson?

Lee: No! I thought that was when you bit somebody!

Incidentally, this was the last of Preston Sturges' scripts to be directed by someone else. His next one, The Great McGinty, would mark his directorial debut.

And speaking of the actors, Stanwyck once again manages to play a dame (there’s no other word for it) like no one else. Few actresses were able to display that combination of street smarts and vulnerability like she could. She’s a bad girl with a heart of gold only there’s no cliché about her because Stanwyck makes her characters seem real.

As for Fred MacMurray, I’ve come to realize that he’s underrated most of the time and it’s only in the hands of a good director that you see how good he can be (watch Double Indemnity if you don’t believe me). Even though his character’s being ridiculous (as in no ADA would ever do what he does in a million years), MacMurray doesn’t invite scorn from the viewer but rather makes one believe that his character is simply doing the right thing. 

Beulah Bondi, Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Elizabeth Patterson after the square dance.

Also kudos to the great supporting cast including Beulah Bondi as John’s mother, Elizabeth Patterson as Aunt Emma, and Sterling Holloway as cousin Willie who supplies a lot of the comic relief (if he sounds familiar it's probably because he would later became the voice of Winnie the Pooh). And then there is Fred “Snowflake” Toones as John’s foolish black valet, Rufus. While not an uncommon role in films from the time it doesn’t make watching his scenes, which are are not even remotely funny, any easier. Unfortunately, a sour note in an otherwise sweet film.

Remember the Night plays at Film Forum through December 31, 2013. For more info, visit here. 

Baby Face

Barbara Stanwyck and Theresa Harris contemplate their future in Baby Face.

This afternoon I saw a screening of Baby Face, part of Film Forum's four-week long Essential Pre-Code Festival. And if the film was anything to judge the festival by, it's going to be a doozy.

Baby Face (1933) stars a brilliant Barbara Stanwyck as Lily Powers, the daughter of a smalltime speakeasy owner in Erie, Pennsylvania. Forced by her father to sleep with his customers, Lily turns to the neighbourhood cobbler, Cragg (Alphonse Ethier), for friendship and advice. He gives her books by Nietzsche to read and urges her to leave town, telling her to “Exploit yourself. Go to some big city where you will find opportunities! Use men! Be strong! Defiant! Use men to get the things you want.”

When her father dies in a still explosion, Lily takes Cragg’s advice and with her best friend Chico (Theresa Harris) in tow heads to New York where she gets a job at Gotham Trust and proceeds to sleep her way to the top.

Barbara Stanwyck and a young John Wayne.

Lily is ruthless in her goal to get rich. Men are tossed aside in her quest and some literally die for her. When one of them asks her for help she responds “I can't do it. I have to think of myself. I've gone through a lot to get those things. My life has been bitter and hard. I'm not like other women.” 

Stanwyck is perfect as Lily. With her lithe body and always knowing, dark eyes, she can turn on the charm in one instance while stopping a man in his tracks with a cutting response in the next. She is so good all of the male actors pale in comparison; the only memorable one is a young John Wayne who makes a brief appearance as one of the men she uses.

Along with the often clever dialogue are some amazing art deco sets (check out the foyer in her first upscale flat), great music (including Harris singing "St. Louis Blues"), and outfits by Orry-Kelly. Watch as the collars and cuffs on Stanwyck’s dresses get larger as she moves up in the company and her gowns become sleeker as she accumulates wealth. All of which makes for a highly entertaining and enjoyable ride.

The original version of Baby Face (before its release in 1933 it had to be re-edited to pass the New York State Censorship Board) was thought lost until 2004 when a copy was discovered in a Library of Congress vault in Dayton, Ohio. It’s since been restored, and is a great example of why film preservation is so important.

The Essential Pre-Code Festival runs through August 11 at Film Forum.