Inherit the Wind (1960)

 

Inherit the Wind fictionalizes the famed “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925, but it manages to follow some of the broader outlines of what actually happened. A schoolteacher, played by Dick York (before he became the first Darren on Bewitched), plays the Scopes figure, Bertram Cates, who dares to broach the subject of Darwin’s theory of evolution to his students and is subsequently arrested. Instead of famed attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, the movie features Spencer Tracy’s Henry Drummond and Fredric March’s Matthew Harrison Brady. Providing some acidic cynicism is Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck, standing in here for noted journalist H.L. Mencken. The film is adapted from the 1955 play of the same name, and both the playwrights and screenwriters have done really very little to disguise the connections between the fictional and historical counterparts. The trial is even referred to as the “Hillsboro Monkey Trial.” An interesting addition to the historical account is the romance between Cates and a fellow schoolteacher, Rachel Brown (a solid Donna Anderson), the daughter of the town’s preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Brown (Claude Akins, surprising in his fire-and-brimstone glory). Most of the more interesting events in the film take place in a very hot courtroom; that setting doesn’t help the movie escape its stage-bound origins. Tracy’s Drummond and March’s Brady fight each other and try to outshine each other in the courtroom. March has the flashier role, and Brady has the full support of almost everyone in the small town of Hillsboro. They even give him a huge parade and rally when he arrives in town. However, not everyone, it turns out, is against Cates, and some of them even realize how much of an embarrassment to the town this trial and all its publicity truly is. March can, by turns, be bullying, aggressive, and boastful in the courtroom; Brady is always performing for the crowd, it seems. March is too prone to mannerisms and tics that can be distracting, especially the way he moves his mouth at times, and his character emerges as a tragic, almost pathetic figure by the film’s end. By comparison, Tracy’s performance is much more low key. He’s in his funny, sarcastic mode here, and he finds humor even when he’s frustrated because it’s clear he’s going to be on the losing side from the beginning of the trial. The two lawyers have been friends for a long time and have faced each other in court many times, apparently, but their relationship has changed over time as each has taken a different path in life. Caught in the middle is Brady’s wife Sarah, nicely played by Florence Eldridge, March’s real-life spouse. Eldridge’s Sarah gets one good scene defending her husband and his life and work, and many other supporting cast members have opportunities to shine, including Harry Morgan as the judge and Kelly playing very much against type. The film doesn’t really care much for York’s defendant, honestly, and by the time Drummond calls Brady to the stand to testify as an expert witness on the Bible and its teachings, you know this is not really an examination of the impact of evolution. To be fair, Inherit the Wind is not truly meant as a history lesson even though too many people tend to take such movies as being completely factual. This film version is a fictional account, after all, and it isn’t even really about the supposed conflict between the theory of evolution and Christian belief systems or perhaps between education and faith on a much broader scale. Instead, it seems to warn against narrow-mindedness and the persecution of those who hold different ideas. It’s a pretty stern, clear warning about the dangers of fanaticism and groupthink. (The town is, for the most part, a Greek chorus of ignorance.) Sadly, we seem to be as much in need of this lesson today as they were when the play was written in the 1950s or when the film was released in the 1960s.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Spencer Tracy), Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Film Editing

BUtterfield 8

 

Butterfield 8 would probably not warrant much of our attention these days if it weren’t for the performance of Elizabeth Taylor, who won the Oscar for Best Actress, as Gloria Wandrous, a woman who likes to have fun in the company of men. It’s not a particularly good film, and the dialogue is especially cringe-inducing. For example, one character tells Laurence Harvey’s character about Gloria, “Oh, she’s…she’s frantic! Isn’t she like a rocket off the Earth? Who should know better than yours truly? Ooohh, mother, help me! I’d have left home for that. Nah… she’s got a traveling itch; she’s like a flea. Hop, hop, hop from one dog to another. She bites you, and she’s gone. She picks you up, and she drops you.” Such misogynistic talk permeates the film, and the attitude that it represents accounts, perhaps, for how the film’s plot punishes Gloria but not Liggett (Harvey), the married man who treats both his wife and his mistress, whom he allegedly loves, horribly. Of course, Harvey almost always played a cad in his movie roles, and Butterfield 8 is no exception. The film’s title, which should technically have the first two letters capitalized but autocorrect says otherwise, is the number for the phone service she uses for receiving and sending messages from her numerous male friends and from the agency for which she models clothes. Despite the obstacles – he’s married, she wants to define the terms of her relationships herself – they fall in love after spending a week together. They also have a lot of sex in a lot of places, at his apartment, in a motel room, on a boat, even in the backseat of her car – none of which are shown on the screen, of course. Still, that would be pretty risqué stuff for 1960. An argument over Gloria’s taking of Liggett’s wife’s mink coat leads to the end of their relationship, and Taylor’s reactions to Harvey’s emoting during the sequence at a restaurant and then outside his apartment are marvels of restraint. Remarkably, she won for what is a very subtle performance, not the kind of acting for which actors typically receive awards. The rest of the cast is filled with some strong but short performances by great character actors: Mildred Dunnock as Gloria’s mother, Kay Medford as the owner of the motel where Gloria and Liggett spend time together, and Betty Field as Mrs. Thurber, a friend of Gloria’s mother who has some great repartee with Taylor’s Gloria over the morality of her behavior. Dina Merrill also has some solid moments as Emily Liggett, the wife who seems to know more about what’s going on that she admits. In an unexpected twist, Eddie Fisher, Taylor’s husband at the time of filming, plays her long-time friend Steve Carpenter, a composer who loves and supports Gloria even though he has a girlfriend who doesn’t understand why he stands by a woman like Gloria. Butterfield 8 was also Oscar-nominated for its cinematography, but I don’t see anything about the camerawork that is particularly outstanding. The set design, particularly Liggett’s spectacular apartment, and costume design, especially the many outfits that accentuate Taylor’s beauty, should have gotten some recognition instead. I wondered at times if this film were truly meant to be camp or if it could be considered camp by now, but is some bad dialogue alone sufficient to be camp?

Oscar Win: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Elizabeth Taylor)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography

Pepe (1960)

 

Pepe takes almost three hours to tell a somewhat simple story. Pepe (played by the great Cantinflas) is a ranch hand in Mexico whose prized horse is a beautiful white stallion named Don Juan. Everyone wants to purchase Don Juan, but Pepe tricks everyone into backing out of buying him except for Hollywood director Ted Holt (Dan Dailey), who plans to make money off the horse to fund his comeback picture. Pepe, following the advice of Greer Garson, tracks Holt down and looks after Don Juan in Holt’s crumbling Beverly Hills mansion. He also meets and starts to fall in love with Shirley Jones’s Suzie Murphy, whose parents were never appreciated by the movie business despite their years of hard work. She acts as if she hates Hollywood, but of course, she really wants to be a star herself. Pepe convinces her and Holt that she could be a star in a very foggy dream sequence performed to “Faraway Part of Town” by Judy Garland, one of the few stars who doesn’t make a cameo appearance in the film. In truth, one of the most interesting aspects of Pepe (perhaps the only interesting one, to be honest) is the seemingly endless series of cameos by famous performers: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charles Coburn, Jay North (who played Dennis the Menace on TV), Hedda Hopper, etc. Some stars get a bit more than just a line or two. Bing Crosby autographs Pepe’s tortilla and sings a little of “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way).” Jack Lemmon shows up in his drag costume from Some Like It Hot a year after the earlier movie was released. Maurice Chevalier gets a full production number with both Cantinflas and Dailey. Kim Novak even helps him to pick out an engagement ring. A sequence set at the Sands Hotel, where Pepe wins enough through gambling to get financing for Holt’s film, allows us to see most of the members of the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Even Jimmy Durante shows up in the Las Vegas portion of the film. There’s also a bizarre sequence involving Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who were married at the time, thinking that Pepe is a Mexican movie official. That scene does allow Cantinflas to demonstrate his talent for physical comedy, though, as he drunkenly dances first with Leigh and then with Curtis and even with Dailey. Edward G. Robinson is often listed as making a cameo appearance, but even though he’s playing himself, his part is integral to the plot. Cantinflas is a very charming screen presence, and it’s a shame that this film was his American follow-up to Around the World in 80 Days. He had such talent—a bullfight sequence at the start of the film shows just how impressive he can be—but Hollywood didn’t really seem to know what to do with him. For example, Pepe traffics in stereotypes that should have been cringe-inducing even in 1960. When Pepe first shows up at a Hollywood movie studio to see Holt, he’s mistaken for a shoe repairman and then for a parking attendant. He’s also prone to misunderstanding some idioms in English, and some of his explanations, such as how he considers Don Juan his “son,” confuse lots of other characters. Then there’s his penchant for rubbing a bull’s ear on himself for good luck, an odd take on the lucky rabbit’s foot, I suppose. His character is meant to be the innocent in a corrupt world, so it’s not surprising that he doesn’t always understand what’s happening. He wants to believe that everyone is good and that you have to protect the ones that you love. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking cannot last even in a Hollywood movie, especially one where the lovely young white woman should end up with the delightful Mexican man (but doesn’t). Aside from such racist depictions, one of the other weaknesses of the film is how long and strange some of the musical numbers are. Before she starts work on Holt’s movie, Jones’s Suzie works as a waitress and dancer in what can only be described as a beatnik café. Bobby Darin shows up to sing “That’s How It Went, All Right” while Jones and a couple of male dancers perform something akin to what the lyrics say. It seems to go on forever. Likewise, Jones does a huge production number of the title song that involves what seems like hundreds of extras dancing through the streets of a Mexican town. Cantinflas and Debbie Reynolds emerge from a wine bottle to perform a strange dance to “Tequila” as tiny versions of themselves atop Holt’s desk. None of these numbers really advance the plot, but they certainly lengthen the movie unnecessarily. Pepe received no Academy Awards despite tying with The Alamo and Sons and Lovers as the second most nominated film of 1960. Interestingly, some of the performers making cameos were having success in other 1960 films: Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello, Janet Leigh in Psycho, Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry. All of them were Oscar nominated, and Jones won an Academy Award for a much better performance than the one she gives here.

Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Color Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song (“Faraway Part of Town”), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Best Sound

Sunrise at Campobello (1960)

 

Much of Sunrise at Campobello occurs during a three-year span in the life of future U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. It begins in 1921 with a visit to the family’s summer home on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. Ralph Bellamy’s FDR seems healthy, but he soon suffers paralysis, and his wife and closest advisor, Hume Cronyn’s Louis Howe. have to bolster him physically and emotionally as he adjusts to life in a wheelchair. Eleanor, in particular, nurses him to the point of exhaustion and has to grapple with FDR’s demanding mother, Sara (Ann Shoemaker), who doesn’t want him to return to politics. Eleanor (capably portrayed by Greer Garson despite some awkward fake teeth) has to assume some of the responsibilities of public life for Franklin, and Howe as his closest political advisor keeps trying to keep Franklin interested in running for political office. Cronyn is quite funny in the role, serving as the comic relief in a film heavy with sadness over FDR’s health decline (although the sequence where they try to get FDR aboard a boat without the press finding out generates some humor). Franklin doesn’t want to be an invalid, and he even drags himself up a staircase just to prove his determination. The climax of the film involves a request by New York Governor Al Smith to have FDR nominate him for President at the Democratic Convention of 1924. Sara, unsurprisingly, just wants him to move to the family residence at Hyde Park. He has to walk and stand in order to deliver the speech, and it takes a lot of planning on the part of Eleanor, Howe, and the family to keep the assembled politicos from learning of his paralysis. Even though the film was made with the participation of the Roosevelt family, including Eleanor, it’s still rather astonishing to see how Franklin managed to hide his need for a wheelchair or heavy leg crutches from the public. The film version was adapted from a stage play, and it’s frankly still rather stagey. The performances occasionally devolve into a form of caricature, such as when Bellamy holds his cigarette holder clenched between his teeth. However, as a fictional attempt to show what the Roosevelts endured after Franklin’s diagnosis, Sunrise at Campobello serves as an inspiration.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Greer Garson), Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Color Costume Design, and Best Sound

Psycho (1960)

 

Almost everyone should know the surprises that await a viewer of Psycho. It’s a true cinematic masterpiece, and it features one of the most discussed and analyzed sequences in all of film, the shower scene in which the central character we’ve been following for almost 45 minutes, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), gets stabbed to death. That scene is a very abrupt shift in narrative focus, yet it works brilliantly. Certainly, the shock value of a film like Psycho is not the same today as it would have been in 1960, and we’ve seen far more graphic moments in films in recent years, but the power of the scene (and, truly, of the entire movie) resonates thanks to the strong differences between the two halves. The first hour emphasize Marion’s desire for a relationship with her boyfriend Sam (handsome but stiff John Gavin) and her theft of $40,000 from work so that they can finally marry. We follow her as she tries to reach him with the stolen funds, and there are several moments of suspense even in the first half. A cop awakens her after she naps by the side of the road, she trades her car with a salesman who becomes very wary of her intentions, and she stops at the Bates Motel to rest while a rainstorm passes. After a conversation with Norman Bates (the twitchy, brilliant Anthony Perkins, sadly typecast forever after being so good in this role), she decides to take back the money and fix the problems she’s created. Then there’s the shower scene. The second half of the film is a thriller as we see Norman’s “mother” take over his personality, killing the private investigator, Arbogast (Martin Balsam), who is sent to track Marion down. Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) also try to discern what happened to Marion at the Bates Motel, and the climactic moments provide a great deal of tension and some good jump scares. If the film ended with the discovery of Norman’s mother’s corpse, I would probably love it even more, but unfortunately, Simon Oakland’s psychiatrist shows up to “explain” Norman and his behavior. The coda might have been considered necessary to give closure to some audience members at the time of its release, but the final scene with Norman’s “mother” telling us what’s going on is much more lucid and useful—and horrifying. The film features some memorable dialogue: “We all go a little mad sometimes” and “A boy’s best friend is his mother” and “A son is a poor substitute for a lover.” There are classic lines, not least because they, upon retrospect, they undercut some of the suspense with some levity. The film also features some of the most recognizable, astonishing music by Bernard Hermann, especially during the shower scene. It’s rather surprising that Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director, his last of five nominations, but the film was overlooked in favor of somewhat “safer” choices for Best Picture. And, more surprisingly, it wasn’t one of the five nominees for Best Film Editing. Who studies Sons and Lovers or The Sundowners in film studies classes these days? How many such classes have featured Psycho? Who dissects the editing in The Alamo or Inherit the Wind? How many times has the shower scene been shown as an example of brilliant editing? Sometimes the Academy is not the best predictor of the lasting impact of a particular film.

Oscar Nominations: Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Janet Leigh), Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration

Elmer Gantry (1960)

I was fascinated and puzzled by Elmer Gantry, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1960. It's the story of a down-on-his-luck traveling appliance salesman who becomes part of the rise of evangelism in the 1920s. What is intriguing to me about this movie is that I could never quite get a handle on how we are supposed to feel about the preachers and their followers. I know this movie is an adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis book, and I would expect his novel to be a rather scalding indictment of evangelism. However, given how mesmerizing the central character is and the intensity of his sermons, I'm not sure that the impact of the film is truly to make him into despicable person. Instead, he seems awfully charismatic, someone others would want to follow.

In the capable hands of Burt Lancaster, the title role of Elmer Gantry is a fascinating one. When we first meet him, he is telling off-color jokes to a group of salesmen in a bar on Christmas Eve. When two women from the Salvation Army try to take up a collection, Elmer starts preaching on their behalf, shaming his fellow salesman into making some significant contributions. Given the passion of his talk, you really expect that he believes what he says. However, he then spends the night with a woman he meets in the bar and skips out of the hotel before she awakens.

Elmer has an odd series of what might be considered lucky incidents. He stumbles into a black church and joins the congregation in singing hymns. Lancaster sings every hymn in the movie with such gusto; he has a fine singing voice, strong and deep. After getting help from the minister of the black church, Elmer next stumbles upon a tent revival starring Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). He's immediately intrigued by her and uses one of the singers in her band, Sister Rachel (played by the singer Patti Page), to get closer to Sister Sharon. Initially, Sister Sharon rejects him because she quickly sizes him up as a gambler, drinker, and womanizer--all true, by the way. However, Elmer is nothing if not persistent, and eventually, he worms his way into talking during one of Sister's meetings. After telling the crowd how the Lord helped him to sell toasters--remember that he's been pretty much broke throughout the early scenes of the movie--he's hired for the job on a more permanent basis.

It's not impossible to see that Sister Sharon is physically attracted to Elmer. He's unlike any of the men who surround her. They all tend to be conservative clergymen or the like, men who are timid and prefer to let Sister Sharon take charge of the meetings. That's why she's always tired, she says. However, once she gets to know Elmer, she says to him, "You're amusing, and you smell like a real man." Elmer is a man who seems to enjoy the physical aspects of life to their fullest. Despite warnings from her chief advisor, William L. Morgan (Dean Jagger), Sister Sharon becomes involved with Elmer.

There's a coterie of press people who follow the sister wherever she goes. One of those is newspaperman Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), who eventually digs up enough information about Sister Sharon and Elmer to print an expose about the evangelism movement. Elmer, for example, was expelled from a seminary when he was younger, and Sister Sharon has no credentials to be a preacher. Rather than be upset, Elmer suggests that they use the publicity to draw even bigger crowds. In fact, he befriends Lefferts, admitting that each of them uses the other to full advantage. Elmer even invites the press along as he goes around destroying liquor bottles and trashing houses of prostitution.

The biggest obstacle faced by Sister Sharon and Elmer arises when they reach the city of Zenith, which appears in several of Lewis' novels, by the way. It's there that Lulu Bains, a prostitute who knows Elmer from a few years back, gets involved. She's played by Shirley Jones, who had heretofore done more wholesome fare, such as musicals like Oklahoma and Carousel. This performance marked quite a turning point for Jones, and she was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for it. Lulu, you see, still loves Elmer but tries to cash in on his notoriety by having some incriminating photos taken of the two of them. How Elmer manages to redeem his reputation is really quite interesting to watch during the final third of the film.

As I stated at the beginning, this movie leaves me with more questions than answers. I never can quite tell if Elmer converts or if he's still the con man at the end that he was at the beginning. There's such a fervor to Lancaster's speeches--and that hair doesn't hurt, either--that it's really tough to tell which side you should be on at movie's end. Lewis himself was harshly critical of religion, so I think the film version has taken more than a few liberties with the subject matter. Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to be more balanced; even the atheist newspaperman played by Kennedy is subjected to criticism for his beliefs. There's a lot of talk about the intersection of religion and money, and the film certainly shows many people who are skeptical of evangelism. To call Elmer Gantry an anti-Christian movie, however, would be too simplistic of an assessment.

The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture of 1960, is a funny movie not because of the jokes (although there are some) but because of its situations. It's one of the few "comedies" to have been chosen for the Academy's top honor, but it isn't a traditional comedy. Thanks to a brilliant and insightful script by Billy Wilder (who also directed) and I.A.L. Diamond, The Apartment is a pretty dark examination of the soul of the business world and the male-female dynamics of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon, in one of his greatest performances) literally holds the key to the happiness of several of the executives at the insurance company where he works. He allows them to use his bachelor apartment for trysts with their girlfriends, and he keeps getting "attention" from these same executives when it comes time for promotion. In fact, he is sent to meet with Jeff Sheldrake (played with malicious glee by Fred MacMurray) to discuss his future, only to find that his success depends upon his willingness to give Sheldrake a key as well. He, of course, submits and has to spend more than a few nights outside of his apartment thanks to the last-minute dates that his superiors make to avoid going home to their wives.

One night, though, he comes home to find that the elevator operator with whom he has been flirting, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), has attempted suicide because of her increasingly frustrating relationship with Sheldrake. He tries to get her to wake up and even enlists the help of the doctor next door, who has been under the impression that Baxter must be some kind of sex maniac given all of the women who have been in and out of the apartment. They manage to save Fran, but rather than allow Sheldrake to rekindle a relationship with her, Baxter chooses to walk away from his job. That may sound like I'm spoiling the outcome of the movie, but the last scene is really one of the best ever made, and it doesn't diminish its power to know what I've told you so far.

How could you go wrong with a cast like Lemmon and MacMurray and MacLaine? There's also able support from such great character actors as Ray Walston and Jack Kruschen and David Lewis and Edie Adams. The script is sharp and tells us a great deal about the corporate mentality of the time. It's a pretty humdrum life, from the looks of things, and the early scenes with Baxter at his desk with the typewriter and phone are a marvel of production design. Lemmon always specialized in this kind of character, the sort who was always put out by others but never seems to have minded; it's as if he's accepted his lot in life and plans to make the most of it. This was one of MacLaine's best early performances; you can see just how conflicted her character is. Should she stay with a man she loves but has no chance of keeping, or should she move on with her life and find someone else? That's a difficult dilemma, and MacLaine helps us to understand the pain that Fran feels.

MacMurray is perhaps better known nowadays as the dad on My Three Sons or maybe as the scientist in The Absent-Minded Professor or for his roles in other Disney movies. However, he had a long and distinguished career in the movies, and this performance demonstrates just how much range he had as an actor. He's almost as good here as he was in Double Indemnity (my favorite of his performances). Watching his manipulations of Baxter and of Fran, you get a sense of just how he managed to work his way to his level in the company.

I've seen The Apartment many times over the years. It's always an enjoyable experience. There are chuckles to be had from time to time, certainly, but this is not a happy-go-lucky romantic comedy. Wilder and his various writing partners over the years never seemed to be content with the easy laugh, and that's what makes his movies all the more worthy of the attention (and awards) they received at the time and the praise they continue to receive from moviegoers now.