Showing posts with label Constance Bennett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constance Bennett. Show all posts

Sunday, May 28, 2023

The Classic Film Collective: Topper by Thorne Smith

This was originally published in the former The Classic Film Collective Patreon.


 

Constance Bennett (Marion Kerby)
Cary Grant (George Kerby)
Roland Young (Cosmo Topper)
Billie Burke (Mrs. Topper)


One of the most beloved screwball comedies to come out of the thirties, Topper (1937), directed by Norman Z. McLeod, stars Constance Bennett and Cary Grant as a pair of free spirited ghosts who show middle-aged bank executive Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) what it really means to live. During their lifetime, Marion and George Kerby (Bennett and Grant) happily spent their days enjoying lavish parties, plenty of booze and wild road trips through the countryside. On one tragic day, George’s erratic driving causes them to have a fatal head-on collision with a tree. They shed their bodies but their spirits remain on earth in various degrees of visibility. As ghosts in limbo, their mission to ascend to heaven is to take Topper under their wing. They draw him away from his humdrum life with his uptight wife Mrs. Topper (Billie Burke) and the madcap adventures begin.


Topper (1937) was an adaptation of Thorne Smith’s 1926 novel of the same name. Born out of the prohibition era and the Jazz age, Topper is chock-full of fun alcohol-fueled escapades. Smith mostly wrote comedies and Topper and its sequel Topper Takes a Trip were his best known works. Topper pokes fun at the lifestyles of the upper and upper-middle class families while also driving home the simple but potent message that life is worth living.


At the heart of the novel is the opposition between hedonism and sensibility. Cosmo and Mrs. Topper live their lives as as though it were a “summer of Sundays”. Topper himself is caught in between. He wants to live life but the people who surround him view passion and enthusiasm as personal failures. As though there was a thing as too much enjoyment. Marion and George Kirby are described as “the fastest young couple in town” whose journey culminated in “a gay life and a quick death.” I love this line in particular which compares the Kerbys to the social set that the Toppers belonged to:

“The Kerbys had not belonged to his set, the solid substantial, commuting set, but had gathered round them, from all parts of the country, a group of irresponsible spirits, who would suddenly appear in a swarm of motors, riot around the town and countryside for a few days, and then as suddenly disappear in a cloud of dust and a chorus of brazen horns.”


Throughout the book, the dichotomy between living and just existing becomes the story’s strongest theme. Just existing is considered a form of death and characters who are truly living can either be physically dead or alive. Topper’s journey is referred to as an “incredible vacation,” a way for him to break out of his shell and tap into his inner joy. The Mrs. Topper character in particular serves as a warning that being “half alive” is no real way to live. Here are some quotes from the book that explore the theme of living vs. dying:


“For the first time Topper’s established routine of living gave place to a disorderly desire to live.”

“Mr. Topper came to regard himself as a corpse, without, however, enjoying a corpse’s immunity to its surroundings.”

“Any creature, man or beast, who has the capacity and desire to enjoy life deserves that enjoyment.”


Although in the book the Kerbys don’t need to help Topper to get into heaven, they do make it a mission to help Topper come out of his shell. The Kerbys in the film are ghosts who, when fully visible, inhabit the world of the living as members of society but when invisible cause absolute chaos when invisible. In the book the Kerbys are described as “low-planed” spirits. High planed spirits don’t live on earth nor can they make themselves visible. Low-planed spirits can store up “ectoplasm” (???) to achieve varying degrees of “thickness”. It’s all a very bizarre way to describe ghosts but in a way this works especially when it translates to a visual medium like film.


If you remember from the film, at one point George Kerby disappeared and you may have wondered: where did Cary Grant go? In the novel, George goes off on a seaside adventure leaving Marion behind to galavant with Topper. The scenes where Marion and Topper get into some riotous fun together, sans George, is a way for Topper to have a makeshift affair without committing actual adultery. Marion proclaims she’s no longer married now that she’s dead and Topper is embarrassed when hotel staff come to investigate reports of an unregistered woman in his room. A little tantalizing but never crosses the line which makes the film censorship friendly in the age of Hays Code enforcement. Having an emotional affair with Marion becomes a more important element of the book while in the film it's treated as a light flirtation.


The butler Wilkins, played by Alan Mowbray, who is constantly judging Topper and siding with the more sensible Mrs. Topper, isn’t in the book at all. Instead, Topper’s constant companion at home is his beloved cat Scollops. There are several running jokes about how the Toppers suffer from indigestion (“dyspesia”), how Mrs. Topper insists that Topper always enjoys a good leg of lamb for dinner, the predictability of which annoys Topper. The book also includes three other ghosts that aren’t in the film: the Colonel, his wife Mrs. Hart and their dog Oscar, who struggles to become fully visible and instead can only be seen in partial form.


I’m impressed by how the screenwriting team Jack Jevne, Eric Hatch and Eddie Moran transformed Thorne Smith’s story into an enjoyable 1-1/2 hour screwball comedy that allows the triumvirate of Bennett, Grant and Young shine. The novel takes a while to get to introduce the Kerbys and there are so many stories with Marion and Topper gallivanting around that the more concise approach the film takes allows the story not to lose steam as it does quite often in the novel. Unfortunately the author never lived to see the film adaptation in 1937 because he died at the age of 42 in 1934. Or perhaps, his ghost attended the premiere? We’ll never know.


Topper by Thorne Smith is a bit of a mixed bag but still quite enjoyable. I read Modern Library’s 1999 paperback edition.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Madame X (1966)


"The moments of love are the only ones that matter." - Madame X 

Directed by David Lowell Rich, Madame X (1966) is one in a long line of frothy soap operas that delivers a good old-fashioned sob story. This film pulls out all the stops and leaves nothing behind in an effort to put its viewers' emotions through the wringer. It stars Lana Turner as Holly, later known as Madame X. She starts out as a happy woman, still beaming with that newlywed glow, but over the years her life slowly spirals out of control and she loses everything; her family, her identity and her will to live. Holly is married to Clay Anderson (John Forsythe), an upstart politician with big aspirations for his career. They live at the Anderson family mansion in Fairfield County, Connecticut with Estelle (Constance Bennett, in her final role), the glamorous matriarch who secretly hates her new daughter-in-law. Holly and Clay have a son, Clay Jr., and as Clay's work takes him abroad, Holly finds herself alone and neglected. She seeks solace in the arms of playboy Phil Benton (Ricardo Montalban). When tragedy strikes, Estelle finally finds a way to get rid of Holly from the Anderson family's life for good. Holly is given a new identity and a new life and any semblance of happiness becomes a thing of the past.




To tell you any more about Holly's story and the other characters who come into her life would be to spoil some major plot points. The fascination with Madame X/Holly's story is how many twists and turns it takes. Many men come into her life refusing to take no for an answer including her husband Clay (John Forsythe), her lover Phil (Ricardo Montalban), her Swiss rescuer Christian (John Van Dreelen), her blackmailer Dan (Burgess Meredith) and finally her grown son Clay Jr. (Keir Dullea). She's the pawn in a very cruel game of life and shows just how ugly it can be.

Madame X is one of many adaptations of French writer Alexandre Bisson's 1908 play La Femme X. Film adaptations began in 1916 and over the years it's been remade or has loosely inspired stories. There is a Madame X (1920) with Pauline Frederick, Madame X (1929) with Ruth Chatterton, Madame X (1937) with Gladys George and a 1981 TV adaptation starring Tuesday Weld. By the mid 1960s, the story had long been a property of MGM. When producer Ross Hunter procured the rights to adapt Bisson's play once again to film, he brought the property with him to Universal. He wanted it brought up to date for 1966 and screenwriter Jean Holloway was assigned to work on the script. Hunter had his eye on Douglas Sirk to direct but that plan fell through and David Lowell Rich, who went on to become known for his disaster films, was assigned to the project.

This was a nice plum role for its star Lana Turner. Over the course of the story she undergoes several transformations starting out as a glamorous blonde dressed in Jean Louis gowns and draped in jewels by David Webb and furs provided by Ben Kahn. As we follow Holly's story her look changes to reflect her changes in identity, her downward spiral and the passing of years. Turner effectively plays the character who eventually becomes known as Madame X because she will not say her own name to protect her loved ones. This character suffers one injustice after another and essentially carries the burden of the world on her shoulders. It can be too much even for a melodrama.

Madame X is worth watching for the fine cast of performers but the story is tiresome. There is no respite from all the suffering Holly has to go through and that made me feel exhausted by the end of that 1 hour and 40 minute journey.

The opening sequence and some of the early scenes were shot at the Anderson Estate in Holmby Hills, California. The Gothic Tudor style estate was built in 1927. 5 years after Madame X was filmed it was purchased by Hugh Hefner upon his girlfriend Barbi Benton's encouragement. It was later transformed into the Playboy Mansion. In season 5, episode 1 of the reality show Girls Next Door, Hugh Hefner shows the film to his girlfriends Holly, Bridget and Kendra and explains how the driveway was shot repeatedly to make it seem like it was longer than it was. In the film, we see the opening gate, the driveway, the mansion and a couple other areas of the estate. The interiors were shot at Universal.






Madame X (1966) is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino Lorber Studio Classics. When you use my buy links you help support this site. Thanks!

Kino Lorber's Blu-ray is a must especially if you want to take in the film in all of its Technicolor glory. It includes brand new audio commentary by film historians Lee Gambin and Emma Westwood, English subtitles, the film's theatrical trailer as well as various other Kino Lorber trailers.

Thank you to Kino Lorber for sending me a copy of Madame X (1966) for review.

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