Young Man With a Horn (1950)

“Crazy young man with a horn.”

            This post today is in honor of Lauren Bacall who passed away yesterday. She was one of the last remaining Old Hollywood stars left alive. I unfortunately cannot remember the first film I saw Bacall in but I remember I liked her immediately. I liked her voice, her poise, her walk, and her beauty but most of all I loved her attitude. It is that attitude, that confidence she put into her character that makes Bacall one of my favorite Old Hollywood actresses. Of the films I have seen her in I have admired and have yet to see her give a bad performance. In honor of her passing I have decided to watch Young Man with a Horn, a film of Lauren Bacall’s I have not seen.

            Being passionate about things in life is what makes us unique. We light up when we get the chance to discuss the things that make our hearts skip a beat and our minds race. Our passions give us purpose to move through life. If you have not guessed movies are biggest passion along with certain TV shows. All day long my mind is filled with my favorite movies and TV shows as I work my boring job of shelving and organizing library books. As soon as I come home from work I put a movie on or I obsess over them and TV shows on Tumblr for hours. I have been told by numerous people that they enjoy hearing me talk about movies because I become so animated and open up. I cannot picture what my life would be like without movies and my favorite TV shows. I can tell you that it would be less complicated and I would get real life things done more but movies are my passion they are my life.

            In the 1947 film Young Man with a Horn, the character of Rick Martin (Kirk Douglas) is a trumpet player. It is the only thing in his life he has ever cared about. When he was younger his parents died and he went to live with his older sister. Rick did not like school and would skip out. One day he was walking by a church when he heard people singing. He went and he watched the piano play. Since that day he would go to the church and teach himself the piano. One day his sister told him he better either go back to school or get a job. Rick got himself a job at a bowling alley that was right across from a nightclub. He heard the sound of a trumpet playing from the club. He would then head over and watch the trumpet player as he would play with the rest of the band.

            The trumpet player, Art Hazzard, took notice of Rick watching him and invited him into the club. After this faithful meeting, Art taught Rick how to play the trumpet and even bought him his own.

            There is nothing Rick loves more than playing his trumpet and he is really good at it. He gets a job playing with an orchestra at a dance hall. There Rick meets the piano Smokie (Hoagy Carmichael). He and Smokie hit it off well when they have a little jam session. Rick tries to play the trumpet the way he wants and not how the bandleader wants him but the bandleader yells at him to follow what everyone else wants to hear. Rick becomes close with the singer Jo Jordan (Doris Day). He wants to go out with her but she tells him that he is married to his trumpet she could never compete. The bandleader one daysteps out and gives control over to Smokie. Rick convinces Smokie to let them and a few other band members to have a jam session. The crowd likes it and the bandleader does not. Rick leaves the orchestra and Smokie goes with him.

            Rick and Smokie are not too successful traveling around playing wherever they can find jobs. At one place Rick gets insulted and humiliated and after Smokie decides to head back home to his family. Rick heads to New York City. In the city he finds Jo has become a successful nightclub singer and goes to see her. She tells him that Art is not doing too well but he is still playing in a club. Rick and Jo go to the club. Art has Rick come on stage to play something. The whole place likes him.

            Soon Rick becomes successful working with the orchestra. He also works at another club where Art works since Art is not doing too well. For one of the shows Jo brings her friend Amy (Lauren Bacall) around. Amy is a strange person from the get go. Her conversation style and attitude are bit odd. But that does not deter Rick from liking her. They begin to date and he stays with her even though she is a strange and cold person. Rick begins not to show up at one of the clubs anymore and everyone is worried. Jo comes by his apartment as he is packing everything up. She went there to warn Rick about Amy about how strange and messed up she is. Unfortunately it is too late, Rick and Amy got married.

            Married life does not work out the way either one of them wanted. Amy becomes a bit jealous of Rick and how he has something to be passionate about. She has lived her life going from one thing to the next and never finishing what she had started. Amy decides to go back to school to make something of herself. That does not go very well and she flunks. Rick cannot take Amy anymore with her mixed messages and her crazy emotions and spontaneous actions. She drives him to drink. Art comes to speak to him one day at one of the clubs. Rick just brushes him off and gets mad. While walking home after speaking to Rick, Art becomes disorientated and gets hit by a car. He does not make and his death blows up Rick’s world.

            Between Amy being all over the place and Art dead the world becomes too much for Rick. He drinks too much and drops out of sight for some time. He drinks to the point where he wanders around aimlessly and becomes sick.

            With all classic films this one also ends on a happy note. Rick, with help from Smokie and Jo, gets back on track and comes to love playing the trumpet again.

            Young Man with a Horn was not the best Lauren Bacall film I could have chosen to watch. It was alright and Bacall’s character is very odd and cold. You really do not like her at all from the moment she comes on screen to her last scene. I hate how it had to be a female that brings Rick to his lowest point and that Bacall had to be that woman. For what she was given to play Bacall did a very good job. It was definitely a different role than I am used to seeing her in. The rest of the cast was very good as well. Doris Day usually gets on my nerves but I actually liked her a lot in this. Kirk Douglas does not really do anything for me. He was not bad at all but he was not great. He felt very mismatched with Bacall and even Day. Young Man with a Horn was interesting because the main character had a tremendous amount of passion that eventually became one of his downfalls. Some people kept telling Rick to get another hobby or playing the trumpet will bring him down. I can only hope my other hobbies such as trolling Tumblr for hours on end, listening to music, or reading a books counters for me be obsessing over movies and TV shows. Other than the cast Young Man with a Horn is not really worth watching. 

A Letter To Three Wives (1949)

“She won't stay mad at him for long. She's too much in love. Pretty soon she'll be full of self-reproach. Ha ha! Women are so silly.”

            One of my favorite plot devices of storytelling is flashbacks especially in films. I love seeing what drove the people to their current situation. I just love knowing what is going on in a character’s head. A Letter to Three Wives is an interesting story mostly told through flashback. It centers around a woman who has connections to the husbands of the three wives.  

            Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell), and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern) and their husbands have been friends for years. One Saturday they are taking a boat trip to a camp ground volunteering for underprivileged children. Each woman is worried about their husbands going away or doing something out of their normal Saturday routine. They wonder about their husband’s activities but they are not necessarily worried until they are given a note at the dock. The letter is addressed to all three of them and is from their friend Addie Ross. In the letter Addie tells her friends that she is leaving town for good… and taking one of their husbands with her.

            On the boat each woman flashbacks to a time when Addie Ross was mentioned in their lives and their husbands were not too happy.

            Deborah remembers her first day in town. During the War she had served as a WAVE where she met her husband Brad. That night he wants her to come with him to a party at the country club. Deborah is nervous because she is from a small farm town and does not have a nice dress. She thinks she is going to embarrass herself in front of everyone. Rita and her husband George (Kirk Douglas) come to the house to go with Brad and Deborah to the party. Brad tells Rita that Deborah is a little nervous. Rita goes up to see Deborah and try to sort out her dress situation. Deborah accidentally cuts off the flower in the front of her dress and puts a hole in the dress. At the party Deborah drinks more than she is use to. She gets dizzy while dancing with Brad and has to run to the bathroom. To make the whole matter worse the flower of her dress comes unraveled and the hole is exposed. Rita helps Deborah fix herself out and return to the party. When Deborah looks for Brad she finds her husband outside on the balcony talking to Addie Ross. Before the War Brad and Addie were close having known each other since they were kids and most likely going to marry each other.    

            The next flashback comes from Rita. Rita works writing radio programs for an advertising company. George is not thrilled with her job. She works until all hours of the night and as an English teacher does not think the type of writing she does is real literature with significant stories. One night Rita has her boss come to the house for dinner. She is in a frantic mood all day worrying about what their maid is going to cook and how the maid will talk. The doorbell rings. A delivery boy brings George a record. It is his birthday that day and Rita completely forgot. She feels terrible. The record is a classic recording from before the War. Addie got it for George. He is so happy with the record. Lora Mae and her husband Porter come over. Porter runs a store and Rita thought it would be good for him to come over to see if her boss could advertise his store. The night does not go as planned. Poor George gets his record broken by Rita’s boss when she excitedly wants to listen to her radio program. After the program George is furious with the boss and the program. He cannot understand why this show is so popular with its awful lifeless plot.

            The last flashback comes from Lora Mae. When she first started going out with Porter she was a salesgirl in his store. He had asked her out. Lora Mae saw her relationship with Porter as a way to get out of her poor life. She lived with her tough as nails Irish mother and younger sister. Lora Mae does her best to act like a lady and to get Porter to treat her as such. Porter though is not a typical man. He is rough and ignores (or maybe does not notice) Lora Mae’s playfulness and teasing. She goes to his house one night. She sees Addie’s photograph in a frame on his piano. Lora Mae tells Porter she wants her photograph on a piano in her own home. Porter tells her he is not the marrying type. With that Lora Mae breaks things off and goes home. On New Year’s Eve, Lora Mae is home by herself. Porter was supposed to go to Addie’s house for a party instead he went to Lora Mae to tell her he loves her and will marry her. Now their relationship is not very happy they hurl insults at each other constantly without either batting an eye.

            That night after their trip they have a party to go to at their club. Rita finds George home as does Lora Mae with Porter. Deborah goes home to the butler telling her that Brad will not be home that night. She thinks Brad has run away with Addie. That night at the party Porter tells George that he thinks Lora Mae does not love him. George lets him know that Lora Mae is crazy about him. Deborah thinking Brad has run away is a bad state. She gets up and announces her belief. Porter grabs her hand and tells her that he was the one who was going to run away with Addie Ross but he loves Lora Mae too much. He turns to Lora Mae and tells her that based on what she has heard with a witness standing by that she has grounds to divorce him. Lora Mae says she did not hear a thing and he gets up to dance with her.

            I liked Ann Sothern and Linda Darnell in their roles. Ann Sothern, up to this point, I have only ever seen her in her comedic roles in the Maisie series. I thought her dramatic acting was great she was very versatile. Linda Darnell I believe I have only seen her in one film before this and her role was small. She was perfect for her character. Lora Mae was a tough girl with a tough attitude and Darnell did a great job. Jeanne Crain I was not too thrilled of. Apparently 20^th Century Fox wanted Crain to play Eve Harrington in All About Eve but Joseph Mankiewicz said she was not much of an actress even though he liked her. I cannot blame him for saying Crain was not much of an actress. Compared to Sothern and Darnell, Crain was not that great. And if you are wondering who the voice of Addie Ross is… take a look on IMDB under the trivia section for the film.

            Vera Caspary, author of the book Laura in which the famous Film Noir is based off, wrote the screenplay for A Letter to Three Wives. It definitely has a touch of Caspary’s wit and intelligence. The story this film plays out very much like the film and book of Laura and I love both book and film version.

            A Letter to Three Wives is a good film. It is dark, dramatic, and, at times, humorous. The film won Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards. It definitely deserved both. A Letter to Three Wives allows you to get into pretty much every character’s head and in turn the characters and the story stay in your head. This is definitely one of the best classic films I have seen and highly suggest seeing it.

 

Seven Days in May (1964)

“I'm suggesting, Mr. President, there's a military plot to take over the government. This may occur sometime this coming Sunday.”

            I am not a fan of learning about The Cold War. To me it was a big pissing match against America and Soviet Union and it was just crazy. I was born in 1987 so I was not alive to be around for all the scary threats and events so I guess I am not a very good judge of The Cold War. Occasionally I do watch some films that deal with the Cold War be it from that era or ones today that have their plot set during that time. I like the whole spying and backstabbing aspect (most likely stemming from my deep obsession with Alias). It also creeps me out thinking that there were or might have been people that would sell secrets to the enemy and plan to destroy the country. The reason I wanted to watch the 1964 film Seven Days in May was because Ava Gardner is in it. I was not too thrilled to read that it was about how America would be destroyed in seven days by someone inside the US military who was working for the Russians. But once the film got going I was hooked and sitting in the edge of my seat.

            Picketers march outside the White House over nuclear weapons and their ban. The picketers from each side- they should be banned and they should not be- begin to fight each other.

            Senators want a treaty with the Russians for disarmament. General James Scott (Burt Lancaster) does not want the treaty. He does not think the treaty will be signed by the Russians and that a treaty will do nothing.

            Colonel Henderson goes to the office in the Pentagon. He talks to a young soldier named Jiggs (Kirk Douglas). Henderson tells Jiggs that it seems the new recruits spend less time training defensively and spend more time training to seize. He is worried about this no else seems to be thinking like he is.

            President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) know that the people are angry with him because he trusts the Russians while they do not.

            Jiggs is invited to a party at the home of a wealthy politician. There he sees Eleanor Holbrook (Gardner). It is obvious they have known each other for years. Someone at the party tells Jiggs that the nation needs to be on alert especially in a Sunday when everything is closed and everyone is not on such high alert.

            The following day Gen. Scott persuades the president to come without the press on a Sunday to observe the army drills. In the Pentagon Jiggs finds a piece of paper with the word Ecom-Con written on it. After he hears and sees Scott’s speech at a convention, Jiggs goes to the president. He realizes what is written on the paper is something Henderson mentioned. Lyman thinks Scott is doing something top secret. Jiggs thinks Scott is planning to take over the government on a Sunday. Paul Girard (Martin Balsam), the president’s aid, does not think anything of the idea. But President Lyman believes in Jiggs. The president takes great caution with this new information. He gathers only the men he feels he can trust. Lyman makes Jiggs an informer to keep an eye on General Scott. When Jiggs returns to his office the following day Scott has him placed on a few days leave.

            A senator helping out the president in this matter tells Jiggs that he heard Eleanor may know more about Scott than his Scott’s own wife and that it would be useful to go and speak to Eleanor. Jiggs goes to see her. She does not want to talk about Scott she like him as friend. He takes some of her letters Scott had sent to her. She thinks Scott sent him to get the letters to clear his name in case of a scandal.

            The senator is send down to El Paso, Texas to inspect a military base. He hears from a local woman that there has been a base built up in the mountains but none of the men have come down.

            There is an admiral in the navy that was in on Scott’s plan. Paul had been sent to get a signed confession from the admiral. Unfortunately Paul’s plane crashes and he dies. All the evidence against the admiral and Scott is thought to be destroyed. Eventually it is discovered that Paul kept the signed confession folded up in his metal cigarette case and it survived the crash.

            The senator in El Paso was kept there against his will. He was able to get away and return to Washington. He tells the president about the base and how he was kept there against his will.

            The president has Scott and his joint chiefs to come for a meeting. Lyman tells them all that he wants their resignations that night. Scott refuses he wants to bring this issue to the public.

            Then American ambassador who was given the confession from the plane crash comes to the White House with the confession. Lyman has copies of the confession made and gives one to General Scott.

            My description of the plot does not do this film any justice. I enjoyed it from beginning to end it truly was suspenseful. So many things happen in this film it was hard to write down every single detail or take coherent notes. I tried to keep up the plot as best as I could.

            The cast was really good. Fredric March as President Jordan Lyman was a bad ass. I adore March but I think seeing him as this powerful man made me adore him even more. I liked all his scenes. It was hard to believe that Burt Lancaster could be the bad guy. He always seems so laid back and quiet. But then again as the saying goes “it’s always the quiet ones.” It was interesting to see Ava Gardner and Lancaster in the same film because they both became famous when they made The Killers together in 1946. They did not have any scenes together though. Gardner’s character was really nothing. Eleanor was supposed to be a notorious madam in DC who had Scott and Jiggs as some of her clients. At forty-two Gardner stilled looked beautiful. Kirk Douglas’s performance was good it was nothing too great.

            Seven Days in May is was suspenseful and interesting and different. This is a story that could never be done today because, well, for one The Cold War is over, and two, Americans do not rest on Sundays like they did back then. I liked the idea of this one general in the United States army had so much pull and power all under the nose of the President. No one knew what he was up to. That is what, to me, makes this film so creepy and suspenseful that this man so high up in the military was doing secretive sneaky things that would have hurt the country. Seven Days in May is a film I highly recommend seeing.