Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944) and the Gold Key Scandal


Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944)
Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944)

The sub-genre of WWII housing shortage films has a following among classic movie enthusiasts. Add Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944) to The More the Merrier (1943),  Government Girl (1944) and Standing Room Only (1944). You'll find this film is the most unusual out of the bunch. Sure it's a comedy about the housing shortage situation but it's also part fantasy and part sex comedy. I could have said romantic comedy but I didn't and you'll see why.

Simone Simon plays Kathie Aumont, a young Quebecoise on her way to Washington D.C. to stay with her friend Sally and take a government job. A fantastical incident on the train puts her face-to-face with a bad luck gremlin (played by Jerry Maren, voiced by Mel Blanc) who follows her around for 7 weeks.

Her first stroke of bad luck comes when she discovers Sally (Gladys Blake) recently eloped with a new guy George (Grady Sutton) and Kathie is no longer welcome. Kathie finds a vacancy with a marine named Johnny (William Terry). He gives her the key to his place so she can stay there while he's on duty. But he's too besotted with the pouty ingenue and forgets to tell her that he's also given out keys to her apartment to several men. Kathie thinks she has the place to herself but a string of male visitors prove otherwise. With every new guy comes Kathie's frequent declaration: "Johnny doesn't live her anymore!" The rotating cast includes James Ellison, Chick Chandler, Billy 'Froggy' Laughlin and others.

Kathie's bad luck, with the help of the gremlin, spirals out of control. The neighbors think she's a floozy, some of these male visitors want to get to know her better and in the end she picks one to marry. Who will it be?

I came to this movie because it features a relative unknown Robert Mitchum had a minor role in the film as the married CFO Jeff Daniels who just needs a place to crash while he waits for his wife. He gets more than he bargained, an epic fight scene ensues and everyone winds up in court. When the film was re-released, Mitchum's star was on the rise and he was given top billing despite his small role.


Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944)

 "Say you're purdy"- Mike
"I'm beautiful" - Kathie


A 1944 review labeled this film "morally unobjectionable". The crux of the story, the fact that Johnny doesn't live here any more, is a plot device to deliver one type of story while seeming to be another. This is really about a young single woman in the city who playfully calls all the fellows Johnny and they all happen to have keys to her apartment. Everyone else within the world of the story thinks she's promiscuous. However, the movie audience knows better. It's all one big misunderstanding. This type of plot device fascinates me. It's one way film makers in the era of Hays Code enforcement titillated audiences while staying "morally unobjectionable".

Simone Simon's Kathie is a strong character in many regards. She's self-assured and understands the power of her beauty. Kathie travels from far away to help the war effort and become a Rosie the Riveter. While Johnny is away, she becomes a veritable handyman and fixes the many problems with the apartment. However, she's a victim of her time and the confines of her story. What I call "the fix" comes when it's necessary for her to fall in love with one of the guys and get married. When the film was re-released four years the title was changed to And So They Were Married further sanitizing the sexy plot.

"I don't want to talk." - Kathie
"Neither do I." - Mike

And this film is sexy. If you don't see it you're blind. Simone Simon's Kathie has incredibly charged interactions with the various men in the film. A sleeping Kathie gets a slap on the rump from the ice man who thought she was Johnny. The confines of a crowded taxi cab forces Kathie to sit on Johnny's lap and their fellow passengers encourage Kathie to give Johnny a kiss because what if she never sees him again?  Kathie plays rough with a sailor, shares a soda with two guys, walks in on a guy taking a bubble bath who then offers to show her his tattoo. Even private things like taking a shower, slathering her face with cold cream, walking around in her pajamas are done around the men. The ending of the film, set five years ahead, strongly suggests Kathie's promiscuity as we try to figure out who is the father of her three kids.

"Don't watch me." - Kathie
"I like to." - Mike

"How did this movie ever get made?" I asked myself many times. And it's not just because of it's sexy plot. It's because of Simone Simon and the Gold Key Scandal of 1938.


"When I saw all those men with those keys…" Mr. Collins


In 1944 Simone Simon was enjoying the height of her Hollywood career. Cat People (1942) was a success and The Curse of the Cat People would follow a couple years later. Simon hadn’t always been successful in Hollywood. She's made a crack at it before. In the 1930s, Simon was new to the US and didn’t speak much English. Ralph Baum of 20th Century Fox took pity on her and assigned his secretary Sandra Martin to be Simon’s full-time assistant.

Nicknamed the “Tender Savage” in Europe and marketed as Europe’s sweetheart in Hollywood, Fox tried to make Simon a star but proved unsuccessful. Simon’s bad luck continued. She took her assistant Sandra Martin to court charging her with embezzling money, forging checks and stealing luxury items from Simon’s home. Martin fought back claiming that Simone Simon had a promiscuous lifestyle that involved scandalous parties and that she favored lovers two 18 karat gold keys to her home. When the defense attorney asked Simon to name one of the lovers she proclaimed “you’ll never know!”.

Martin proved to be a shady character. Her real name was Athena Alexandroff and she had a criminal record that included check fraud. She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in jail. Fox ended Simon’s contract and she fled to Paris to work with Jean Renoir only to come back at the start of WWII.

“She was like a cat... as long as you smoothed her, she purred; when you stopped... she scratched.”  - Sandra Martin on Simone Simon

The gold key scandal became part of Simone Simon’s reputation and eventually her legend. I’m sure producers Frank and Maurice King of the King Brothers were well aware of this when they hired her for Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Maybe Val Lewton remembered Sandra Martin's observation of Simon's cat-like nature she was cast in Cat People (1942).

(Further reading and sources: book, article, article)

Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944) is a fun film, a bit bizarre and a nice curio from the past. It's essentially a promiscuity tale disguised as a chaste romantic comedy. It's made chaste with the circumstances and contemporary audiences will have fun with the not so subtle suggestiveness.



Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944) is available from the Warner Archive on DVD-MOD.


Warner Archive Wednesday - On (random) Wednesdays, I review one title from the Warner Archive Collection.

Sunday, July 3, 2016

The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks

The First King of Hollywood: 
The Life of Douglas Fairbanks
by Tracey Goessel
560 pages
October 2015
Chicago Review Press

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Powells
Your local Indie

"His story is also the story of the birth of an industry -- the transition of the movie business from a nickel novelty to a world wide phenomenon." - Goessel

Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was a film industry pioneer. Not only did he pave the way for how male actors would influence film and culture, he also was a visionary who molded the fledgling business of making movies into what it is today. He used his influence to create United Artists, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Motion Picture Relief Organization and Pickfair Studios. Fairbanks' charm, winning smile, penchant for nice clothes and his physicality influenced the culture. He's the reason why getting a tan was preferred over being pale, why leading men started donning mustaches and his mannerisms in his famous swashbucklers and action flicks became the standard for heroes on screen for years to come.

"He's not good-looking. But he has a world of personality -- just worlds of it. His name is Douglas Fairbanks." - Grace George

Born and raised in Colorado, Douglas Fairbanks' father abandoned the family and he was raised by his mother along with his two brothers. His brothers would become Fairbanks' right-hand men when it came to finances and business decisions. They're astute financial savvy kept Fairbanks wealthy for a very long time. Fairbanks himself was an entrepreneur. Even in the infancy of the film industry he had the foresight to become an independent producer and filmmaker.  His mother's influence on him was strong as well. Her commitment to temperance encouraged the young Fairbanks to abstain from alcohol which he did for most of this life.

In Colorado he studied and became an actor at a young age and avoided the vaudeville circuit for the most part. He immediately set his sights high and it wasn't long before he was in New York and on Broadway. Even when things didn't go well for him Fairbanks had a natural drive to succeed and he wasn't satisfied until he was lead actor in a major Broadway production. When he achieved that goal he set his sights higher to Hollywood.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks
"The next 14 years of their lives would find them inextricably linked in print and in perception and the hearts of the public." - Goessel

The book is a deep dive into Fairbanks' adult life and his career in film as well as his storied marriage to mega-star Mary Pickford. We learn about his first wife Anna Beth Sully, mother of his only child Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and who also served as his first business manager. We also learn about Fairbanks' brief and sad marriage to Lady Sylvia Ashley. But it's his love for Mary Pickford and their famous marriage that drove his career and his fame and made them both the envy of many. Their union is recounted in endless detail in the book with the help of love letters, wires and telegrams.

"If there was one thing that Douglas Fairbanks never did, it was stand still." - Goessel

Fairbanks' personality was what made him famous. He resonated with contemporary audiences and influenced them with his charm and antics. We learn a lot about Fairbanks' quirks including how he could never sit still enough to read a book or even read a full script. He had a major case of wanderlust and loved nothing more than to travel the world. Fairbanks did almost all of his own stunts and was innovative in plotting out action sequences. He was fearless in a way that made him admired the world over.

"He had assumed the role of pioneer so often and so well -- moving from stage to film; embracing production, then distribution; implementing new discoveries such as Technicolor; investing more; building higher; always at the forefront of the new and the better." - Goessel

Fairbanks was a business pioneer in an industry that was still figuring out how to be an industry. He was savvy enough to become an independent filmmaker and producer and made history when he co-founded United Artists along with Mary Pickford and his best friend Charlie Chaplin among others.

"His sunny cheer and astonishing athletic prowess spoke to virtues of America in an era when America had no self-doubts about possessing any." - Goessel

For all his strengths Fairbanks had flaws too. He was incredibly jealous and his restlessness often interfered with his marriages and his work. He had a troubled relationship with his son Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Father and son differed greatly in personality, physical appearance, acting styles and choice of roles. Jr. was a constant reminder to Sr. that he could only be young and popular for so long.
Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
The complexities of this larger than life figure are all captured in The First King of Hollywood. The author weaves a fine a tale delivering to us the most comprehensive look at Douglas Fairbanks' life and career. All of his films are discussed in detail including: The Good Bad Man, Mystery of the Leaping Fish, The Half-Breed, Manhattan Madness, Intolerance, The Thief of Bagdad, The Mark of Zorro, Three Musketeers, The Iron Mask, The Gaucho, The Taming of the Shrew, etc. No film plots were explained which was quite a relief. The focus instead is on the behind-the-scenes making of the film and Fairbanks' involvement.

Years ago author Tracey Goessel purchased a collection of Fairbanks and Pickford's love letters and this treasure trove was the seedling that grew into this book. Goessel is a silent film expert, founder of the Film Preservation Society, on the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and has given many talks about Fairbanks and his films.

Goessel's scholarship shows in the level of detail uncovered and shared within the pages of this book. What should make us willingly give our time to a biography should be rich and deep content we can't get anywhere else. I want the fine details and the bigger picture, I want the context, I want the uncovered gems laid out before me. I want more than IMDb and Wikipedia can provide. Goessel delivers that with this biography.

I did have a few issues with the book. I would have preferred the photographs in the book to be placed throughout the text, especially where they made sense in context, instead of in a glossy insert. The author had a tendency to make some remarks that were intended to entertain but instead come off as judgmental. It disrupted the narrative for me when I had to stop to look up the date of a film because the year wasn't referenced. Adding the year would have helped this reader follow along the chronology of Fairbanks' work.

Goessel comes to us an expert on this historic figure and The First King of Hollywood is the definitive biography on Douglas Fairbanks. For anyone interested in learning about this pivotal time in film history and about the man who influenced it, this book is a must read.

Thank you to Chicago Review Press for sending me a review copy of this book.

This is my first review for the 2016 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge.



Wednesday, June 29, 2016

My Summer Reading List



It's almost July and my Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge is in full swing. If you haven't signed-up yet you have until July 15th! Here is what I'm reading this summer.

The Unconscious Actor: Out of Control, In Full Command
by Darryl Hickman
When I asked Darryl Hickman about fond memories he had of working in Hollywood as a child star, he directed me to his book. He shared a few memories with me during our chat on the TCMFF red carpet but if I wanted to hear anymore I know I'd have to dive into this gem. This book is half autobiography, half a missive on acting and should prove to be an interesting read.

The First King of Hollywood book poster at BEA 2015

The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks 
by Tracey Goessel
My excitement for this title started when I spotted the cover art on display at Book Expo America in 2015. Chicago Review Press is a fantastic publisher with a growing list of excellent classic film books. I'm reading this one now and it'll be my first review for the summer reading challenge.

William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come
by James Curtis
I enjoyed Curtis' 1,000 page biography on Spencer Tracy that I thought I'd try his newest book about master film production designer William Cameron Menzies. I love learning about the people behind-the-scenes beyond just the directors. It takes a team of talents to make films and Menzies left his mark on many of them.

Mark A. Vieira at the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival

Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950
 by Mark A. Vieira
I had a chance to meet Mark A. Vieira at the TCM Classic Film Festival and to get an advance copy of Into the Dark autographed. Content-wise this should be pretty light and I added it to my summer reading list to lighten my reading load. Also I'm still in withdrawal from last year's excellent Summer of Darkness course and noir series hosted by TCM. A little noir during the summer just seems right.

Hitchcock Truffaut (2015) film poster


Hitchcock 
by François Truffaut
I watched Hitchcock Truffaut (2015), the documentary about the legendary interview between the two directors, which is essentially a film about the making of this book. So of course I had to read this book! Hitchcock by Truffaut had been out-of-print but re-released thanks to the documentary.

The Dawn of Technicolor book

The Dawn of Technicolor 1915-1935 
by James Layton and David Pierce
 I started reading this beauty last year but life got in the way and I had to set it aside. I purchased it at Cinefest 35 and got to meet both authors, got the book signed and attended their Dawn of Technicolor presentation (which they also did at TCMFF that same year). I can't wait to read this one in earnest.

What are you reading this summer?

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