The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine (2005), EJ Fleming.

Bring me either an editor to save this disaster, or some kindling to burn it.  I made a brave effort, but finishing this book was not going to happen.

We have descriptive "facts" repeated differently from time to time:

Page 14:  Laemmle also liked Thalberg because, like him, he was barely above five feet tall.
Page 19:  Thalberg was five foot six and weighed 115 lbs.

Listen, I'm not overly fussy.  I would happily date a man who was five foot six -- but probably not one that was just five feet (sorry).

The first two chapters refer constantly, in an unilluminating way, to the fact that Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg superficially had little in common:

Page 25:  The barrel-chested Mayer and the painfully skinny Thalberg were an unlikely pair.
Page 28:  Mayer and Thalberg were also opposites.
Page 32:  Thalberg was the antithesis of Mayer in every respect.

OK, we GET it.  Yes, that's up to thirty-two pages and well into the second chapter.  You may at this point wonder at what point Mannix and Strickling will make an appearance.

Fleming's storytelling skills are lacking and he repeatedly loses sight of the subject of his study, the potentially very fascinating tale of two men paid to make MGM's problems "go away".  Fleming leaps about in time from the twenties to the fifties and back (however illogically), as though events during the end of the studio era decade had an impact on things around the time sound was finally synchronized.  Nothing unfolds:  chunks of biography are barfed up here and there but do not connect with the surrounding text.  Gossip is just dropped on the pages without analysis, the sources unquestioned. This left me suspicious and distrustful of all claims and of the author's ability to accurately transmit any facts.  The tone of the writing sways from respectable to embarrassing.  When I read that Louella Parsons was described as "a bitchy fat doctor's wife" I had to put the book down for good.  I am no fan of Louella Parsons, people, but where was that comma.  With such a sloppy approach to research and writing, I had no confidence that the author could credibly speak about his topic.

McFarland Press occupies a warm little corner of my heart, publishing unpretentious and generally well-researched books on Hollywood history, but knowing that this amateurish creation saw the light of day despite mis-sized fonts for endnotes and other typos leaves me puzzled and disappointed.  Consider the topic of "the fixers" to remain fair game for others out there to tackle!

Convoy (Sam Peckinpah), 1978.

The saddest little birthday present in the world.

Unwatchable!  OK, well, possibly if I were in my PJs eating a hot dog in a drive in.  Otherwise, not.  Ridiculous CB movie based on the hit song by CW McCall. Kris Kristofferson is "Rubber Duck" and drives a big truck with Ali McGraw as a reluctant passenger.  That is, after he leaves his waitress girlfriend at the truck stop wearing sophisticated, well-to-do McGraw's clothes she doled out for free to all the po' folks.  McGraw's perm is monumentally unflattering.  Ernest Borgnine is a sadistic cop out to get Rubber Duck and his trucker buddies as they race through the desert landscape.

Even Ernest can't save this mess.

Now, I love Borgnine's smug, evil grin and bandy walk and I am currently losing the battle in my house to take the TCM cruise in December with 94-year-old Mr Borgnine and fantasy grandpa Robert Osborne (damn it!) but even I had to walk away from this dreck.  During filming, Peckinpah struggled with addiction issues and may have turned director's duties over to others.  The shopping list of failed gimmicks include:  a heavy use of slow-mo during action scenes, badly overdubbed dialogue and corny double exposure effects (below) set to an orchestral soundtrack.  Why are McGraw and Kristofferson not wearing shirts for most of the movie?  It's like Smokey and the Bandit made by grad students.  Ugh!  

The final straw - what is this?!

The Island (1980), Michael Ritchie.

Worst Caribbean holiday EVER!

Journalist Michael Caine tries to bond with his miserable, spoiled son while investigating a story unfolding in the Caribbean:  why are tourist boats just disappearing?  Could it be pirates?  Note to filmmakers:  if you don't introduce any jollity, pirate movies are hell on earth.  Just like your worst memories of summer camp: uncomfortable in every way, from the not-refreshing sleep you wake from to the ever-present threat of possible child abuse and/or starvation.  That's right, I hate camping, tents, the whole kit and kaboodle even if it's in the Caribbean.  Michael Caine gets chained up and married to one hell of a homely woman, while his son is brainwashed by a primitive tribe of inbred Caucasian castaways.  Luckily there's a pretty fantastic ending worth waiting for.  The father-son hug at the end is truly a testament to the unfailing love parents have for their children.  I would have spanked the little bastard black and blue! 

Death Race 2000 (1975), Paul Bartel.

Logan's Run + Cannonball Run -- how did they blow this?  From the high-school art class pencil crayon visuals to the lacklustre finale, Death Race 2000 was a major letdown.  OK, I realize it was made for something like $5000, but was really counting on a bit more levity.  The tone is gloomy and the characters unlikeable.  Sigh!  At least director Paul Bartel hit his stride eventually, making mainstream hits like European Vacation and The Usual Suspects.

Hey, that looks uncomfortable.  I wonder if Simone Griffeth was raised in a circus.

The Whole Truth and Nothing But (1963), Hedda Hopper and James Brough.

On the recently divorced Dinah Shore:  "She is a forty-five-year-old woman with two children still in school.  The fact that good men don't grow on trees is something most women don't realize until it's too late."

On Sinatra's distaste for the word "clan" to describe the Rat Pack:  " 'I don't like the word "clan",' Frank once said.  'Did you ever look the word up in a dictionary?' I said.  'It means a family that sticks together, like the Kennedys you're so fond of.  They're the most clannish family in America.  I don't like Rat Pack, but there's nothing wrong with the name of Clan."

On Edward G Robinson's second wife Jane Robinson: "The current Mrs Edward G Robinson would like to be a hostess with the mostest, but she has not attained the status of his former wife, who entertained in great style."

On Harpo Marx: "Harpo, whom I adore, once told me he couldn't understand why he couldn't join a local country club.  'That's easy,' was my reply.  'You belong to a different club, where they don't take in Christians.  So in a way you're sort of even."

On Rosemary Clooney: "Next door is a house of sorrow - Rosemary Clooney and her five children live there with no husband or father to guide them."

On fashions of the 1950s: "The cause is glamour, for which I've been fighting a losing battle for years.  Our town was built on it, but there's scarcely a trace left now.  Morning, noon and night the girls parade in babushkas; dirty, sloppy sweaters; and skin-tight pants.  They may be an incitement to rape, but not to marriage."

On Jackie Kennedy:  "When I look at Jackie Kennedy these days, I think: 'If those fellows [Hollywood designers of the 30s] were around today, what they couldn't have done for her!'  She'd be queen of fashion the world over.  Oleg Cassini can't hold a candle to any of them."

On Louis B Meyer.  "The biggest impact I made [as an actress] was on a pudgy little fellow who used to lurk around the set.  When the picture was finished he sidled up to me.  I mistook his intentions. 'I don't want to buy any fur coats,' said I.  'You don't understand,' said he.  'My name's Louis Mayer.  I'm the producer."

Tell me more, my good man!

Hick flicks: the rise and fall of redneck cinema (2005), Scott Von Doviak.

Oh yeah?

Scott Von Doviak's argument that Days of Thunder (1990) is a soulless, corporate rip off of Stroker Ace (1983) is just one example why Hick Flicks might be the best book of film analysis I've read for a long time.  Days of Thunder is basically a remake of Stroker Ace, not a particularly well-respected Burt Reynolds vehicle.  Von Doviak uses it as an example to show how in around ten years the regional "hick flick" had been replaced by slick flicks.  "[Days of Thunder] is a strictly formulaic Eighties Cruise vehicle that already seemed dated when it arrived on screens in the summer of 1990," he writes, "...unfortunately the picture surrounding [Cruise] is strictly ersatz, making its ostensibly gen-yew-wine touches - like the cameos by actual NASCAR drivers...- all the more unconvincing." With this handy slapdown of Days of Thunder in favour of a bottom of the barrel Burt Reynolds movie - when he was at his Burt Reynoldsiest - Doviak nails it!  High five and pass the Mountain Dew!

Von Doviak limits himself to southern-fried 70s B's -- no to porn, biker movies and foreign fare.  Yes to anything wearing cutoff jean shorts, preferably pushing the speed limit!  His writing style is like listening to an affable yet unpretentious moviegoer.  It's clear he knows what postmodernism and feminist readings are, but mercifully he doesn't feel the need to wow us with academese.  His reasonable, lighthearted approach means that  the easily dismissible genre of "hick flicks"  has been given a fair study.

Boy, do they like their cars and trucks down south.  Hick flicks have NASCAR, truckers, CB lingo, even films that give the cars names and their own credits!  But again, Von Doviak's book goes just the extra inch in giving the historical context and rationale.  The traditions behind all this car-lovin' comes from when, during Prohibition, moonshine was made down south and the fastest drivers raced up north (evading cops enroute) where it would be distributed from bigger cities.  See, I didn't know that!  I also had no idea that in an effort to save on gas, Nixon proposed a reduction of the speed limit to 55 miles an hour for trucks and buses, a move that was not popular with commercial trucking associations.  A little background goes a long way in understanding the overwhelming popularity of Smokey and the Bandit, a movie that in 1977 was second place only to Star Wars at the box office!

This book was so delightful I would like to personally request a prequel.  Sure, Robert Mitchum's Thunder Road is held up as a big granddaddy to the genre, but what came before?  The regional theatres sure played a lot of cruddy "classic era" B's....!

Cop Hater (1958), William Berke.

 

 Heat wave!  Robert Loggia asks Shirley Ballard a few questions.

Cop Hater is a by-the-numbers "post Korean war"crime B that I had to watch just to see Robert Loggia and Jerry Orbach as youngsters.  Funnily enough, I had also seen Loggia recently in a Kojak rerun so now I can proudly claim to have seen him in all stages of adulthood thanks to Joy TV, one of the many Christian networks that buys cheap, completely off-topic serials to play at night when all the preachers have gone to bed.  Hallelujah!  Based on Ed McBain's "love them or hate them" mystery novels about the adventures of New York's 87th precinct, you could say Cop Haters follows the same basic template as later TV crime shows like Kojak-- all the same ingredients are there and they thrive on the likability of their leads.  In this one Loggia is the clever, understated rookie on the trail of a cop killer.  There's at least two completely gratuitous partial nudity scenes and Shirley Ballard complains endlessly that she's hot.  What is there not to like here?

Sometimes cops just get snuffed, Daddi-o.  Jerry Orbach as Hispanic leader of the teen gang, The Grovers.

Hollywood Lawyer (1960), Milton Golden.

In 1951, roughneck B-actor and star of Detour Tom Neal gave Franchot Tone a wild beating that left Tone in a coma for eighteen hours.  They had been fighting over actress Barbara Peyton, who later married Tone but was eventually divorced from him when he discovered she had never stopped seeing Neal!  Throughout all of this, there was an invisible character whose only role was to cash everyone's cheques:  lawyer Milton Golden.  

Golden's tell-all book Hollywood Lawyer is cleverly written but doesn't spill enough beans!  Most of the little morality tales are "blinds," which leaves readers guessing who the identity of Mr D- or Miss X. may be.   Maybe back in 1960 it was possible to sniff out who was who, but I was just left scratching my head.  (I wonder if our modern day equivalent, entertainment lawyer Enty from the gossip site Crazy Days and Nights http://www.crazydaysandnights.net/ can help!)  

Here's a sample:  What male Hollywood actor (Golden calls the couple Bob and Cecile De Young)  adopted a baby girl only to unknowingly re-adopt the same child seven years later?  Golden says this was sometime prior to World War II when babies were the "must have" accessory du jour. Bob divorced Cecile, and his next wife "Estelle" retained custody of the child when she then also divorced Bob.  When Estelle was killed in an airplane accident, her new husband gave the child up to his next wife "Shirley," who eventually married Bob De Young!  ....  Is Golden trying to tell me this is Clark Gable?

From the August 18, 1961 Deseret News.

Milton Golden (R) and his client, Tom Neal (1951).

Actor: the life and times of Paul Muni (1973), Jerome Lawrence.

Six of the Seven Faces played by Paul Muni from the movie of the same name (1929).

Realizing that playing "ethnic" was perfectly acceptable (and even a badge of honour) for dramatic actors back in the day now strikes us as baffling, ridiculous, hilarious or simply downright disrespectful.  Reading Actor: the life and times of Paul Muni gave me a new perspective on at least one man's interpretation of this tradition.  For better or worse, author Jerome Lawrence sets most discussions of race or ethnicity in Muni's portrayals aside.  For Muni (according to Lawrence) the goal was simply the most accurate physical depiction of any fictional character or historical personality.  

Understanding that Muni came from an ethnic tradition himself - Yiddish language theatre - is insightful, as is knowing that he was firmly rooted in the tradition of itinerant actors.  His parents, Nachum Favel (Philip) and Salche (Sallie) Weisenfreund earned their meagre living as a two-person troupe, enacting sketches across the Austro-Hungarian countryside.  One routine involved a nudnick and a schlemihl drafted into the Army - a preposterous concept and sure-fire laughs for their Yiddish audience.  ("What was more unlikely than a Yiddish soldier?" asks Lawrence). Muni's father tried unsuccessfully to break into the blossoming Yiddish theatre tradition once the family made its way to New York, but Muni had better luck.  While far more sophisticated than his parents' old world routines, the Yiddish theatre had its own stock characters (rabbis, landlords, not-so-virtuous young daughters).  One strength of Actor is to provide a basic description of the tumultuous world of Yiddish theatre.  Lawrence draws an effective picture of this world, and for appeal of the "uptown" English-language theatres for Yiddish actors.  For some, to perform uptown (as Edward G Robinson did before Muni) was to really make it.

Yes, Edward G Robinson who in his own biography All My Yesterdays grumbles about never having the looks to be a leading man unlike his colleague Muni.  Indeed, in Actor,  actress Sylvia Hoffmann bubbles over with the memory of the "gorgeous" Muni as the last minute replacement for Robinson in a staging of The Fifth Season.  Then there's Paul Muni, whose lifelong tradition was to bury his good looks in fake beards. In almost all his film roles, Muni was slathered in makeup and spirit gum - crafting characters from these substances was a skill he was proud of.  Muni wanted to completely transform into his subject, to be that person.  To look like him, dress like him, to adopt the minutest gestures or tics that made that individual unique.

Actor is a fascinating portrayal of a relentlessly self-flagellating man obsessed with professional perfection, married to a dour wife who was more stage manager / mother than partner.  While written in a chummy style by a personal friend (Lawrence was co-author of the play Inherit the Wind, which helped revive Muni's career), Lawrence's subject seems fussy, rigid and completely unable to enjoy life, success or happiness.  Earning recognition playing heroic historical figures such as Louis Pasteur, Muni dove into ever more serious projects, culminating in the quest to depict Alfred Nobel onscreen with the objective of spreading the message of peace to all mankind (a project he later abandoned when he came to the conclusion that Nobel was probably gay).  Lawrence appropriately chides Warner Brothers for billing Muni as "Mr. Paul Muni" - lending an unnecessarily sombre gravitas to all his performances.  Muni's gravitas became ridiculous as his acting style, described by theatre director Herman Shumlin as "one of those actors who functioned both from an outward realization of appearance, makeup and clothes, as well as an interior examination of the character and his own feelings" grew dated.  By the 50s, wigs were very much out of style -- theatre was innovating and tackling adult themes. Although he felt deeply uncomfortable with these changes and never completely buried his fake beard kit,  Inherit the Wind gave Muni a chance to find success in modern theatre and recapture some of the respect he had earned as the kind of vibrant actor we can still see in I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.  

Paul Muni, Director Mervyn LeRoy and Bella Muni on the set of The World Changes.