Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952)

Cast: Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft, Donna Corcoran, Jeanne Cagney, Lurene Tuttle, Elisha Cook Jr., Jim Backus, Verna Felton, Willis Bouchey, Don Beddoe. Screenplay: Daniel Taradash, based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong. Cinematography: Lucien Ballard. Art direction: Richard Irvine, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: George A. Gittens. 

Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952)

Robert Ryan and Barbara Stanwyck in Clash by Night 

Mae Doyle: Barbara Stanwyck
Jerry D'Amato: Paul Douglas
Earl Pfeiffer: Robert Ryan
Peggy: Marilyn Monroe
Joe Doyle: Keith Andes
Uncle Vince: J. Carrol Naish
Papa D'Amato: Silvio Minciotti

Director: Fritz Lang
Screenplay: Alfred Hayes
Based on a play by Clifford Odets
Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca
Art direction: Carroll Clark, Albert S. D'Agostino
Film editing: George Amy
Music: Roy Webb

There's a wonderful directorial touch in the middle of Fritz Lang's Clash by Night that almost makes up for the talky melodrama of the rest of the film: Stealing from the romantic gesture executed by Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942), Lang has Robert Ryan light two cigarettes at once and hand one of them to Barbara Stanwyck. She looks at it with distaste for a moment, then tosses it over her shoulder, takes out her own pack of cigarettes, and lights one herself. It's possible that the moment is spelled out in Alfred Hayes's screenplay, or in the play by Clifford Odets on which it's based, but I like to think of it as Lang's own employment of Stanwyck's great gift for playing women in charge. In fact, Stanwyck's character, Mae Doyle, is hardly ever fully in charge -- she can't control her life because of the men in it, which she describes as either "all little and nervous like sparrows or big and worried like sick bears." The problem with Clash by Night is not the cast, which is uniformly watchable, or the direction, which does what it can with the material, particularly by exploiting the film's setting -- Monterey, the bay, the fishing fleet, and Cannery Row -- but the screenplay. It's full of Odets characters who can't resolve their internal conflicts but also can't stop talking about them. Even the secondary characters, like Jerry D'Amato's father and uncle, can't help putting in their two cents, often in florid Odetsian metaphor. The title of the film comes from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," in which the speaker laments the loss of faith in a world that has "neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain." It's a place where "ignorant armies clash by night." That bleak Victorian pessimism, however, doesn't translate very well to a story in which the clashing armies are men and women, a battle of the sexes that's a little too conventional in concept. Mae returns to her family home in Monterey, and immediately starts making a mess of things by attracting not only the good-hearted Jerry but also his cynical burnt-out friend Earl. Since Jerry is played by the somewhat schlubby Paul Douglas and Earl by the handsome Robert Ryan, we can see immediately where this is going to go, and the wait for it to get there gets a little tedious. There's also a rather pointless secondary plot involving Mae's brother, Joe, and his girlfriend, Peggy, who are played by Keith Andes and Marilyn Monroe. The backstories that stars and their personae bring to the roles they play are often valuable. Here, however, Marilyn's presence in the cast has unbalanced our subsequent reaction to the film, which can never be watched without the irrelevant knowledge of the actress's skyrocketing career, troubled relationship with her directors (including Lang, who terrified her so much that she vomited before performing a scene), and pitiable demise. Peggy is a small role, and she plays it well, but it was never meant to be the principal reason many people watch Clash by Night.

Two From Hawks

The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby, 1951)

James Arness in The Thing From Another World

Capt. Patrick Hendry: Kenneth Tobey
Nikki Nicholson: Margaret Sheridan
Dr. Arthur Carrington: Robert Cornthwaite
Ned Scott: Douglas Spencer
Lt. Eddie Dykes: James Young
Crew Chief, Bob: Dewey Martin
Lt. Ken Erickson: Robert Nichols
Cpl. Barnes: William Self
Dr. Stern: Eduard Franz
The Thing: James Arness

Director: Christian Nyby
Screenplay: Charles Lederer, Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht
Based on a story by John W. Campbell Jr.
Cinematography: Russell Harlan
Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, John Hughes
Film editing: Roland Gross
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin

Monkey Business (Howard Hawks, 1952)

Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, and Marilyn Monroe in Monkey Business

Barnaby Fulton: Cary Grant
Edwina Fulton: Ginger Rogers
Oliver Oxley: Charles Coburn
Lois Laurel: Marilyn Monroe
Hank Entwhistle: Hugh Marlowe
Jerome Kitzel: Henri Letondal
Dr. Zoldeck: Robert Cornthwaite
G.J. Culverly: Larry Keating
Dr. Brunner: Douglas Spencer
Mrs. Rhinelander: Esther Dale
Little Indian: George Winslow

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I.A.L. Diamond, Harry Segall
Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner
Art direction: George Patrick, Lyle R. Wheeler
Film editing: William B. Murphy
Music: Leigh Harline

Oddly, the most "Hawksian" of these two early 1950s Howard Hawks movies is the one for which he is credited as producer and not as director. The fact that The Thing From Another World displays Hawks's typical fast-paced, overlapping dialogue and has a heroine who can hold her own around men has led many to suggest that Hawks really directed it. The rumor is that Hawks gave Christian Nyby the director's credit so that Nyby could join the Directors Guild. It was the first directing credit for Nyby, who had worked as film editor for Hawks on several films, including Red River (Hawks, 1948), for which Nyby received an Oscar nomination. He went on to a long career as director, mostly on TV series like Bonanza and Mayberry R.F.D., but the controversy over whether he or Hawks directed The Thing has never really quieted down. In any case, The Thing is a landmark sci-fi/horror film, with plenty of wit and some engaging performances, particularly by Margaret Sheridan as the no-nonsense Nikki, secretary to a scientist at a research outpost near the North Pole where a flying saucer has crashed with a mysterious inhabitant. Nikki's old flame, Capt. Hendry, arrives with an Air Force crew to investigate, and Sheridan and Tobey have a little of the bantering chemistry of earlier Hawksían couples like Bogart and Bacall in To Have and Have Not (1944) or Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru in Red River. Though it's a low-budget cast, everyone performs with wit and conviction. The film has dated less than other invaders-from-outer-space movies of the '50s, partly because of its lightness of touch and a few genuine scares, though its concluding admonition, "Watch the skies," is pure Cold War paranoia at its peak. That's James Arness, pre-Gunsmoke, as the Thing. The screenplay is by Charles Lederer, with some uncredited contributions from Ben Hecht, both of them frequent collaborators with Hawks. Both of them also worked on Monkey Business, a very different kind of movie, whose writers also include Billy Wilder's future collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond. The film evokes Hawks's great Bringing Up Baby (1938) by featuring Cary Grant as a rather addled scientist, Dr. Barnaby Fulton, who becomes involved in some comic mishaps brought about by an animal -- a leopard in the earlier film, a chimpanzee in this one. But the giddiness of Bringing Up Baby never quite emerges, partly because of a lack of chemistry between Grant and Ginger Rogers, who plays his wife, Edwina. The script involves Fulton's work on a rejuvenating drug that the chimpanzee manages to empty into a water cooler, thereby turning anyone who drinks it into an irresponsible 20-year-old. Grant is an old master at this kind of nonsense, but Rogers looks stiff and starchy and ill-at-ease trying to match him -- except, of course, when she is called on to dance, which she still did splendidly. Fortunately, there's some engaging support from Charles Coburn as Fulton's boss, who has a "secretary" played by Marilyn Monroe. ("Find someone to type this," he tells her.) Her role is the air-headed blonde stereotype that she found so difficult to escape -- "Mr. Oxley's been complaining about my punctuation, so I'm careful to get here before nine," she tells Fulton -- but no one has ever been better at playing it. Where The Thing From Another World succeeds despite a less-than-stellar cast, Monkey Business depends heavily on star power, for it gives off a feeling that its genre, screwball comedy, had played out by the time it was made.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)

Given the sexism and vulgarity that underlies the teaming of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell -- two women best known at the time for their bodies, not for their talents as actresses or singers -- it's gratifying that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes turned out to be a landmark film in both their careers. Some of it has to do with the director, Howard Hawks, who despite his reputation for womanizing created some of the most memorable roles for such actresses as Katharine Hepburn, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Lauren Bacall, and many others. Certainly neither Russell nor Monroe ever showed more wit and liveliness than they do here, even though Monroe is playing the gold-digging ditz part that she came to resent, especially after having to play it again the same year in How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco), and Russell is stuck with the wise-cracking sidekick role. Both stars are paired with lackluster leading men, Elliott Reid and Tommy Noonan, but while it might have been fun to see someone like Cary Grant in Reid's part, that kind of casting would probably have thrown the film off-balance. Better that we have Charles Coburn's bedazzled old lech, young George Winslow's precocious appreciation of Monroe's "animal magnetism," and Marcel Dalio's judge overwhelmed by Russell's hilarious impersonation of Monroe's Lorelei Lee. The production numbers, choreographed by Jack Cole, costumed by Travilla, and filmed by Harry J. Wild in a candy-store Technicolor that we'll not see the like of again, are exceptional showcases for Russell and Monroe: The former's baritonish growl blends perfectly with the latter's sweet and wispy soprano (though some of Monroe's high notes were provided by Marni Nixon).

All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

Bette Davis and Thelma Ritter in All About Eve

Margo Channing: Bette Davis
Eve Harrington: Anne Baxter
Addison DeWitt: George Sanders
Karen Richards: Celeste Holm
Bill Sampson: Gary Merrill
Lloyd Richards: Hugh Marlowe
Miss Casswell: Marilyn Monroe
Birdie: Thelma Ritter

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenplay: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Based on a story by Mary Orr
Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner

Talk, talk, talk. Ever since the movies learned to do it, it has been the glory -- and sometimes the bane -- of the medium. We cherish some films because they do it so well: the films of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, and Quentin Tarantino, for example, would be nothing without their characters' abundantly gifted gab. Hardly a year goes by without someone compiling a list of the "greatest movie quotes of all time." And invariably the lists include such lines as "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night" or "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point." Those are spoken by, respectively, Margo Channing and Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, one of the movies' choicest collections of talk. Joseph L. Mankiewicz won the best screenplay Oscar for the second consecutive year -- he first won the previous year for A Letter to Three Wives, which, like All About Eve, he also directed -- and in both cases he received the directing Oscar as well. Would we admire Mankiewicz's lines as much if they had not been delivered by Bette Davis and George Sanders, along with such essential performers as Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter, and, in a small but stellar part, Marilyn Monroe? It could be said that Mankiewicz's dialogue tends to upend All About Eve: The glorious wisecracks and one-liners are what we remember about it, far more than its satiric look at the Broadway theater or its portrait of the ambitious Eve Harrington. We also remember the film as the continental divide in Bette Davis's career, the moment in which she ceased to be a leading lady and became the paradigmatic Older Actress, relegated more and more to character roles and campy films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962). All About Eve, in which Margo turns 40 -- Davis was 42 -- and ever so reluctantly hands over the reins to Eve -- Baxter was 27 -- is a kind of capitulation, an unfortunate acceptance that a female actor's career has passed its peak, when in fact all that is needed is writers and directors and producers who are willing to find material that demonstrates the ways in which life goes on for women as much as for men.

Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953)

Niagara was one of three movies starring Marilyn Monroe that were released in 1953. The other two, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks) and How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco), were hits, confirming what we now know: that Monroe was a peerless comedian, not, as Niagara wants her to be, a film noir siren. She had done earlier turns in legitimate film noir, a small role in The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950), larger ones in Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952) and Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952), so this time 20th Century-Fox decided to go all out in exploiting her as a femme fatale. There are many things wrong with Niagara, one thing being that it can't quite decide whether it's a noir thriller or a Technicolor travelogue about the eponymous falls and their various tourist attractions. But what's most wrong about it is its misuse of Monroe, who is not even the real lead character in the film: Her role is decidedly secondary to that of Jean Peters. And she is grotesquely exploited in her part as Rose Loomis, unhappily married to a mentally unstable man (Joseph Cotten) and plotting to have her lover (Richard Allan) bump him off. The studio can't resist dressing her in skin-tight clothes, with high heels that make it impossible for her to walk without bumps and grinds, and flaming red lipstick that's obviously freshly put on even when she's supposed to be waking up in the morning. A producer less under the control of the studio than Charles Brackett (who also wrote the clunky screenplay with Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen) might have made Rose into a credible character, but here she's only an adolescent boy's fantasy. But even a misused Marilyn is better than no Marilyn at all, as we find out two-thirds of the way through the movie when the focus shifts to the character played by Peters and her grinning ass of a husband (Max Showalter), and we have nothing to marvel at but the Falls. If the screenplay had fallen into the hands of a Hitchcock, Niagara might have been a success, but Henry Hathaway directs as if he's bored by the whole thing.  

Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)

Twenty years ago (!), when I wrote my book about movies that had been nominated for Oscars, I had this to say about Some Like It Hot: "Hilarious farce and one of the sweetest natured of Wilder's usually acerbic comedies, thanks to endearing performances by [Jack] Lemmon and [Joe E.] Brown, [Tony] Curtis' high-spirited mimicry of [Cary] Grant, and [Marilyn] Monroe's breath-taking luminosity." Today, after all we've learned about sexual orientation and identity, after many feminist critiques of Hollywood's depiction of women, and after many explorations of Monroe's tragic history, that comment sounds a little naive. Plumb beneath the surface of what seems to be mere entertainment and you'll find disturbance in the depths. Take the celebrated ending of the film, for example. Sugar (Monroe) gets Jerry (Curtis), but at what price? As he warns her, he's exactly the kind of guy she knows is bad for her. And Osgood's (Brown) shrugging off the fact that Daphne (Lemmon) is a man is one of the funniest moments on film, but in fact, the two men have the kind of chemistry together (as in the tango scene) that works, whereas Curtis and Monroe have no real chemistry. Is the film making a case, well in advance of its time, for same-sex attraction? Probably not Wilder's conscious intention, but what does that matter? As for the difficulties of working with Monroe that Wilder and her co-stars later complained about -- though Curtis eventually retracted the much-quoted (including by me) statement that kissing her was "like kissing Hitler" -- this remains perhaps her best film and best performance. Imagine the movie with Mitzi Gaynor (originally thought of for the part and on standby in case Monroe bailed on it) and you have nothing like the one we now know. In lesser hands than Wilder's the clichés (men in drag on run from gangsters) would have resulted in a second-rate comedy. The real marvel is that Wilder produced something enduring out of clichéd material. Curtis and Lemmon are great, even though their roles are the traditional comic teaming of a bully (Curtis) and a patsy (Lemmon), the formula already worked over by Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Sometimes what you have to do is take the formula and transcend it.

The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955)

Tiresome, talky, and unfunny, this may be Billy Wilder's worst film. Wilder blamed the censors, who squelched all the sexual innuendos that he wanted to carry over from David Axelrod's Broadway play. In the play, the protagonist, whose wife and child have gone to Maine to escape the summer heat in Manhattan, has an affair with the young woman who lives upstairs. The censors insisted that they must remain chaste: She spends the night in his apartment, sleeping in his bed while he spends a restless night on the sofa. The lead of the play, the saggy-faced character actor Tom Ewell, was retained for the film, while the biggest female star of the day, Marilyn Monroe, was cast opposite him. The result is a sad imbalance: Ewell, who is on-screen virtually all 105 minutes of the movie, is allowed to overplay the role as if performing to the rear of the balcony. Monroe, whose role is considerably shorter, works hard at giving some substance to her character, though it's little more than the ditzy blonde she had begun to resent having to play. And the match-up of Ewell and Monroe is entirely implausible. (On stage, the part was played by the pretty but decidedly un-Marilynesque Vanessa Brown.) The film is remembered today chiefly for the scene in which Monroe stands on a subway grate and her dress is blown up by train passing below.