Movie Poster Spotlight :: Foreign Jobs :: A Set of Italian Foglios, Photobustas and Lobby Displays for Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

Foglios:

 

Photobustas:

 Lobby Display: 

 

Other Points of Interest: 

Newspaper ads for The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly at the Morgue. 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966/1968) Produzioni Europee Associati :: Arturo González Producciones Cinematográficas, S.A :: Constantin Film Produktion :: United Artists / P: Alberto Grimaldi / D: Sergio Leone / W: Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni, Furio Scarpelli, Angenore Incrocci / C: Tonino Delli Colli / E: Eugenio Alabiso, Nino Baragli / M: Ennio Morricone / S: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Mario Brega, Luigi Pistilli

The Glenda Farrell Project :: Take 5 :: Crime-Busting Glenda Solves the Mystery of Robert Florey's Girl Missing (1933)

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"I don't have to get tough, I am tough."

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When two ex-chorus girls are ditched by a sugar-daddy who got wise, left with a $700 hotel bill to contend with, they soon find themselves embroiled in a kidnapping plot when a fellow gold-digger disappears while on her honeymoon. Smelling a rat -- personified by the gigolo who secretly arranged this marriage, our heroines, while in pursuit of the offered reward for the new bride's safe return, soon uncover an inheritance grab and a conspiracy to commit murder!

Girl Missing was Glenda Farrell's first time at the top of the bill. After receiving good notices for her supporting roles in the likes of Little Caesar, I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and The Mystery of the Wax Museum, a movie she absolutely ran away with, Jack Warner decided to finally reward his burgeoning star with her own vehicle, teaming her up with Mary Brian -- "the sweetest girl in pictures." Brian had started in the silents, debuting as Wendy in Peter Pan (1924), made a successful transition to the talkies, and had recently completed Lewis Milestone's The Front Page (1931), where she played the jilted fiance of Pat O'Brien's Hildy Johnson. Now partnered with Farrell, one should note that Girl Missing was one of the first films to feature two female leads in this kind of murder-comedy-romance-buddy picture.

Meanwhile, behind the camera, after serving as an assistant to the likes King Vidor and Josef von Sternberg, director Robert Florey's first big break came when he co-directed and helped rein in the Marx Brothers for their first feature film, The Cocoanuts (1929). Big things seem to be in store for the fledgling director and, after a string of bizarrely avant-garde but well received shorts, Florey was Carl Laemmle Jr.'s original choice for Universal's Frankenstein, then slated to star Bela Lugosi. However, Florey and Lugosi were soon bumped off the project for James Whale and Boris Karloff. Both were given Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) as a consolation prize. Alas, Frankenstein (1931) appears to be Florey's one and only big chance and he blew it. After which he bounced around from studio to studio, mostly working in the B-Picture units. And speaking frankly, there isn't much to commend for his efforts in Girl Missing, but, luckily, his cast, led by Farrell, overcompensates for this pedestrian effort.  

The film was scripted by Carl Erickson and Don Mullaly, who also wrote Wax Museum, and they definitely scribbled to Farrell's strengths -- meaning her motor-mouth, acid-tongue and the application of both to cut anyone around her off at the knees. And this snappy, wise-cracking tale full of pertzel'd twists and unexpected turns was another spin on Avery Hopwood's play, The Gold Diggers (1919), where enterprising ladies hook and reel in themselves a sugar-daddy, making them pay out the nose for the *ahem* milk they expect to get for free; only here, there was no show to put on just money to be made and, in this case, a mystery to be solved.

In the supporting cast, Guy Kibbee has a glorified cameo as the posh who sniffs out their scheme, turns the tables, and abandons our heroines; an act that officially puts the plot proper in motion. Edward Ellis is pretty great as the police inspector who bears the brunt of Farrell's loquaciousness. (And sharp eyes will recognize him as the thin man from The Thin Man.) Helen Ware and Ferdinand Gottschalk are hysterical as a couple of grifting fudds posing as the high society parents of the missing bride, played with much vice and venom by Peggy Shannon. And Lyle Talbot (another frequent co-star of Farrell's) plays a slimy cad whose fault all this is, really. There's also a great secret toy surprise to be found in the form of a then unknown actor playing a bamboozled grease-monkey, who loans out his “flivver” to our gal-pal-amateur sleuths so they can catch up to the hero of our piece (Lyon) before his own sabotaged car does him in:

All told the film is pretty good time and it's fairly easy to see why it got made. The Brothers Warner had a huge hit with The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) and had been spinning cash-ins ever since. Gold Diggers of 1933 would hit theaters a couple of months after Girl Missing premiered, and Warners would continue making sequels and spin-offs mined from both veins of the same premise until these offshoots kinda collided with Gold Diggers of 1937. In Girl Missing, Farrell and Brian definitely have great chemistry together as they run circles around the cops, solve a murder, unravel the conspiracy, save the hero, and, most important of all, make some money. (And they both look positively gorgeous dudded up in all those Orry-Kelly fashions.) And if nothing else, we should be grateful because it showed this kind of film had box-office potential, setting a solid template for a series of films where Farrell was paired up with Joan Blondell, who provided the sturm und drang for Havana Widows, Miss Pacific Fleet and Kansas City Princess to mucho box-office success. 

"Glenda is at all times very natural. She isn't one bit camera conscious ... Her movements are always quick and her speech spontaneous. When she goes into a scene she never follows the script to the sacrifice of her naturalness."

One of the things I am most thankful for from 2012 is getting a crash course on the life and times and film career of Glenda Farrell. And the more I dig, the more I love. And so, to share that love, we're kicking off The Glenda Farrell Project for 2013 and beyond, as I will do everything in my power to share my Glenda love in the usual, obsessive compulsive fashion in all matters and means and ways. Stay tuned! Lots more to come.

Girl Missing (1933) The Vitaphone Corporation :: Warner Bros. / P: Jack Warner / D: Robert Florey / W: Carl Erickson, Don Mullaly / C: Arthur L. Todd / E: Ralph Dawson / M: Bernhard Kaun / S: Glenda Farrell, Mary Brian, Ben Lyon, Lyle Talbot, Peggy Shannon, Edward Ellis, Guy Kibbee

Dear TNT :: You May Know Drama, But I Liked You Better When You Were a 100% Weird!

Video courtesy of Yours Truly.

100% Weird promo for Night of the Lepus and Day of the Triffids.

You're welcome.

Vintage Tuneage :: Like Fleeting Memories, Every Boat Needs an Anchor -- Even the Rocky Ones.

I caught myself mindlessly humming a tune in the shower last night after busting hump on the treadmill. And once I placed it, I smiled and thought of my eldest sister, Chris.

That's me trying to devour Chris in the upper right hand corner.

We lost Crystal Lynn almost 35 years ago. A pretty horrid affair that I'd rather not drudge up at this point. (For those of you who are morbidly curious can click over and read this angry entry written from a very angry place on a long abandoned personal blog, but don't say I didn't warn you.) She was only 17 when she died and, sadly, we were one of those families who grieved by focusing on the fact that a person died, not the fact that they had lived. To this very day, the mere mention of her name reduces my mother to tears, so she remained unspoken of. (The same with my father, actually, who had died just the year before.) We all know memories fade, the bad ones being the most stubborn, the good maddeningly elusive, and so you grab onto what you can before they fade away forever.

Somehow, I managed to come into possession of Chris's old record collection, a stack of 45s kept safe in a plastic tube that I liberated from the closet where the rest of her possessions were enshrined to remain hidden away. Memories hurt for some, folks. Anyways, every once in awhile I'd break those discs out and give 'em a spin. And subconsciously or not, I hope I was trying to anchor some memories of my sister, who, sadly, I wish I remembered better than I do. However, I am determined to keep what little is there fresh and vibrant, renewed with each spin. 

Video courtesy of Akurarising.

My sister lived. And she was awesome. And she had a fantastic taste in music. Thanks for listening.

The Hues Corporation:

 Fleming Williams, Hubert Ann Kelly, St. Clair Lee 
 

In Memoriam :: Jupiter's Darling, Neptune's Daughter, Dangerous When Wet or Dry...

I was on vacation, staying with some old college friends, and we'd been pounding beers and whooping it up pretty good into the wee hours. And after everyone else dropped out and crashed, I, as usual, still wide awake, cracked open another cold one and went channel surfing. Since it was 3 in the am, only a few destinations were offering things other than infomercials, making parking the TV on TCM a no-brainer. What I stumbled into that particular night was a period piece musical. It was quite rousing and colorful and highly entertaining. I was also slightly confused by all the strange, extended underwater interludes the heroine kept finding herself in that seemed to pop-up at an alarming frequency. 

At the time, I was aware of Esther Williams but had never seen her in action. She was great, and the screen just crackled as she and Howard Keel butted heads and rode pink elephants. And that's NOT the booze talking. The film, Jupiter's Darling, is quite the trip. Anyways, I was immediately smitten with the actress and became enchanted with every follow up encounter encountered. And though most were in the same aquatic vein, Williams quickly proved she was more than the gimmick. Much, much more. 

Esther Williams 

(1921-2013)

Recommendations :: Here's a Baker's Dozen of What I've Been Watching, and So Should You! Or Not.

Shadow of the Cat (1961): Highly entertaining Country Cottage Mystery from Hammer where a resourceful cat manages to bump off the conspirators who murdered her owner, one by one, and foil a dastardly inheritance grab from the rightful heir (Barbara Shelley). The film was enhanced with myself, after each feline induced homicide, looking squarely at my own little monster curled up on the couch right in the eyes and declare, with a wag of a finger, "Don't get any ideas."

And I finally managed to see my first Paul Naschy flick (-- even though he only wrote and starred in) Blue Eyes of a Broken Doll a/k/a House of Psychotic Women. Pretty good and fairly grisly gialli inspired whodunit, though the ending was kind of a five car twist pile-up as the real killer is unmasked and his plan to get away with it all blows up in his face due to several revelations that come right out of ether. Typical for the genre, but may cause some consternation; and I'm still a little iffy on what may or may not have been some actual animal snuff. Viewer be wary.

In The Late Show (1977) Art Carney basically plays a graying Philip Marlowe, who is practically deaf, crippled with a bleeding ulcer, and saddled by a bum leg, who grudgingly gets back into the seedier life when his ex-partner is inexplicably killed looking for a woman's cat, which leads him down a rabbit-hole into a fantastic hard-boiled neo-noir in the grubby streets of LA. I can understand why Lily Tomlin (the client) was a thing and this film reminds me to wonder where she went, exactly, and the May / December romance actually works between the two. Also fantastic turns by Eugene Roche as the bad guy and Bill Macy (Maude's husband) as a greasy informant.

As the legend goes, either John Wayne or Frank Sinatra were Don Siegel's first choice to play 'Dirty' Harry Callahan. Obviously, both turned the role down and McQ (1974) appears to be Wayne's mea maxima culpa for that career choice. Directed by John Sturges, it's a solid, though by the numbers, tale of maverick cop fighting against "the rules" that tie his hands (meaning things like evidence and due process) and the corruption inside the department over some stolen narcotics while he tries to solve the murder of his partner. Okay, now, I liked the movie, a lot, and I like Wayne a lot, too, and always felt he's been kinda under-appreciated as an actor, but, to me, he just doesn't seem to fit in these urban surroundings.

An Olympic themed Slasher movie? Yes, Mary Lou Retton, we can have such things. Kind of a messy mash-up of Gymkata and Graduation Day, Fatal Games (1984) is completely awesome in its mounting stoopidity as a mad javelin thrower starts bumping off athletes at an elite training facility. On the plus side, there is some amazing cinematography to be seen, an amazing amount of equal-opportunity nudity, and they actually do pretty good with the red herrings -- especially with the introduction of a dubious X-Factor in that everyone is basically on steroid therapy (to keep up with the Russians, 'natch) making 'roid-rage a likely contributing factor. A strategically placed hot dog kinda gives the whodunit away in the first five minutes but stick around because the reveal of the killer's true motivation is a hoot and a half.

If you ever find yourself yearning for the halcyon days of VHS tapes and wandering the aisles of your favorite local video store and picking out a rental based solely on the most WTF-box art you can find, do I have a movie for you! Night of Retribution (1987) is a squalid chunk of Canuxploitation about a disgraced cop who must save his estranged family from a pack of deranged escaped convicts who hole up in his secluded fixer-upper. Featuring a bravura performance by Robbie Rox as Skull, the head degenerate mass-murderer, who is also pathologically scared of the dark. And I'll leave it you all to pick which is the hero and which is the villain based on the poster art. Good luck with that.

The Yakuza (1974): Sydney Pollack's film is one part revenge actioneer and one part Japanese cultural study as several parties cash in several personal debts to resolve a seemingly simple kidnap caper by the Japanese mafia. But the deeper our heroes get into it, the thicker the family secrets get as they must stay alive, kill their enemies, AND honor a strict set of engrained codes of etiquette on such things. Fascinating flick, with great turns by Robert Mitchum and Ken Takakara who blast and slice their way through the ensuing mayhem.

Dames (1934): Another gob-smacking Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley musical comedy mash-up where (second verse, same as the first) some desperate musicians once more apply some feminine wiles to gold-dig out the financing for their latest show from another stuffed shirt. Highlights include a Joan Blondell torch song to a load of laundry, a rather creepy number about Dick Powell's fanatical obsession over Ruby Keeler, and the joy of watching Hugh Herbert, Zazu Pitts and Guy Kibbee getting inadvertently snockered in the balcony on some 80-proof quackery cure-all.

As a Made for TV movie, Deadly Lessons (1983) certainly comes up short on the sex, nudity and grue; however, I will contend that this tale of murder and mayhem and revenge at a girls prep school is probably the best example of an American made gialli. Seriously, it's barely a hop, skip and a jump away from being Naked You Die. Also, Donna Reed subbing-in in a role usually reserved for Joan Bennett as the headmistress doesn't hurt. Also lurking in the cast is Bill "I don't get punched in the face in this one" Paxton, Larry "CHiPs" Wilcox and Nancy "Bart Simpson" Cartwright.

Ode to Billy Joe (1976): Well, that was depressing. Good. But depressing. So, fair warning. Yeah, this southern fried Gothic tale spun from the groves of Bobbie Gentry's haunting hit single about the mystery surrounding a suicide has a few twists you'll never see coming across the Tallahatchie Bridge. And if nothing else, between this and Macon County Line is all the evidence we need that Max "Jethro Bodine" Baer should have made more movies.

He Knows You're Alone (1980): Moderately effective slasher hampered by a goofy romantic subplot necessitated by the killer's fixation on killing brides-to-be. And to be fair, this thread is salvaged because stars Scardino and O'Heaney honestly sparked the old chemistry set with ease. Still, I think we should all be thankful that most police investigators in real life don't mimic their brethren in these things. *sheesh* Also of note, even though the movie trumpets itself as being the first onscreen appearance of Tom Hanks, he's in it for like 10 seconds; and honestly, the filmmakers probably would've been better served, notoriety wise, if they had actually been the film where Hanks was hacked to pieces. Overall, I recommend the movie immensely as long as you all promise to stop the film with about 30 seconds to go and dump the stoopid twist for the sake of stoopid twist only ending.

Deadfall (2012): Now, even though the plot and characters of this lean and mean tale of a heist getaway gone horribly wrong may very well be Film Noir 101, the film is executed with razor precision and fueled with an outstanding cast including Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, Charlie Hunnam, Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek, Kate Mara and always a Treat Williams. Can't recommend this one enough, folks.

Oh, holy hell on a cracker! To all my B-Movie Brethren out there. Heed my plea. If you gotta watch only one of Embassy Pictures repackaged Sons of Hercules flicks make it Medusa vs. the Son of Hercules. In truth, Perseo L'Invincible (1963) is a retelling of the legend of Perseus. Carlo Rambaldi (Alien, E.T.) provided the go-motion sock-puppet dragon, and his Medusa is a fully articulated, one-eyed mobile tree stump. This thing is fantastic. GO! WATCH THIS! NOW!!!