Sunday, July 17, 2016

2016 Summer Reading Challenge - First Round-Up

Silents and Talkies - Summer Reading Photo
Arrietty checks out Kate's summer reading stack. Photo courtesy of Silents and Talkies
I'm delightfully overwhelmed by the response to this year's classic film summer reading challenge. Forty people have signed up and we have a wealth of reviews already. Thanks so much to everyone who has participated so far.

Check out what the participants have been reading:

Bernardo of The Movie Rat
Character Actors in Horror and Science Fiction Films, 1930-1960 by Laurence Raw

Christina S.
Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance by Brent Phillips
Women I've Undressed by Orry-Kelly
Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy by Matthew Kennedy
Alma Rubens, Silent Snowbird: Her Complete 1930 Memoir by Alma Rubens

Erin B.
Bendigo Art Gallery & Twentieth Century Fox Present Marilyn Monroe
Natalie Wood by Rebecca Sullivan
Double Feature by Terence Stamp

Grezilda of Doesn't She Ramble
Åke Lindman: Åke ja hänen maailmansa
Divided Heaven by Christa Wolf

Keisha
Audrey and Givenchy: A Fashion Love Affair by Cindy de la Hoz

Java's Journey
You Must Remember This by Robert Wagner

Jennifer T. of Always Classic
A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson by Michael Troyan

Kate Gabrielle of Silents and Talkies
City Lights (BFI) by Charles Maland
More about her summer reading books as seen in the photo above.

Laura of Laura's Miscellaneous Musings
Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays: 1920-1970 by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory

Lindsey of The Motion Pictures
Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister by Evelyn Keyes
Laughing the Dark by Ted Sennett

Marya G.
Zachary Scott: Hollywood's Sophisticated Cad by Ronald L. Davis
Joan Crawford by Stephen Harvey
Butterfield 8 by John O'Hara

Phyllis of Phyllis Loves Classic Movies
Hollywood Legends as Fashion Icons by Patty Fox

Raquel of Out of the Past: A Classic Film Blog
The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks by Tracey Goessel

Rich of Wide Screen World
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Vanessa B.
Garbo: A Portrait by Alexander Walker
Cagney by Cagney
The Cinema Legacy of Frank Sinatra by David Wills
Marlene by C.W. Gortner

If I missed your review, make sure you added it to the review form. Full details are on the challenge home page.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

New & Upcoming Classic Film Books (6)

Publishers keep cranking out new classic film books and there are plenty coming out this summer. I just picked up the reissue of Olivia de Havilland's memoir Every Frenchman Has One and I have my eye on the new book about Twentieth Century Fox. There are plenty more new books to keep an eye out for. Here is my new round-up with publication dates ranging from May to September 2016.
Are you new to my list? Here are the details. Links go to Goodreads and this time I've added buy links. Books include biographies, memoirs, scholary texts, coffee table books and more from a variety of publishers. All publication dates are subject to change.

Make sure you let me know in the comments section below which of these books interesting and what you're reading now!

Every Frenchman Has One by Olivia de Havilland

Reissue for the de Havilland Centennial!

by Olivia de Havilland
Crown Archetype
144 pages – Reissue June 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Brian Hannan
McFarland & Company
492 pages – May 2016


by Douglas A. Cunningham and John C. Nelson
Wiley-Blackwell
472 pages – May 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Simon Willmetts
Edinburgh University Press
320 pages – May 2016


by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
296 pages – May 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Jennifer Ann Redmond 
BearManor Media 
220 pages – May 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by John T. Soister and Henri Nicolella
McFarland & Company
238 pages – June 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's


by Antoine de de Baecque and Noel Herpe
Columbia University Press
608 pages – June 2016
by Kristina Hagman and Elizabeth Kaye
Thomas Dunne Books
272 pages – June 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Harold N. Pomainville
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
332 pages – June 2016

by Kia Afra
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
318 pages – June 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Michael Munn
Skyhorse Publishing
336 pages – June 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Charles L. Epting
McFarland and Company
July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez
Vanderbilt University Press
296 pages – July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's

by Peter Kramer
BFI
112 pages – July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's

by Chris Darke
BFI
96 pages – July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Lyndsy Spence
Fantom Films
July 2016



by Sergio Delgado
McFarland and Company
July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by David Kauffman
St. Martin’s Press
304 pages – July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Scott Tracy Griffin
Titan Books
224 pages – July 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's


by D. A. Miller
University of Chicago Press
208 pages – August 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Mr. Peter L. Winkler and George Stevens Jr.
Chicago Review Press
368 pages – August 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Roberto Curti
McFarland and Company
August 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Tom Williams
Chicago Review Press
384 pages – September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert and Matt Zoller Seitz
University of Chicago Press
288 pages – September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's


by Elisabeth Quin & Francois Armanet
Flammarion
264 pages – September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's


by Scott Allen Nollen
McFarland and Company
September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's


by Laurence A. Rickels
Wallflower Press
216 pages – September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's

by Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham
Laurence King Publishing
44 pages – September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



by Jonathan Baumbach and Miriam Bale
The Critical Press
250 pages – September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's



Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood's Golden Days
by Robin R. Cutler
View Tree Press
328 pages - September 2016
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble


by Michael Troyan, Stephen X. Sylvester and Jeffrey Thompson
Taylor Trade Publishing
288 pages – September 2016 
Buy: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Powell's


Here are my previous round-ups :

New & Upcoming Classic Film Books (1)
New & Upcoming Classic Film Books (2)
New & Upcoming Classic Film Books (3)
New & Upcoming Classic Film Books (4)
New & Upcoming Classic Film Books (5)

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.

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