Classic Movie Man’s Top Posts of 2011

The Year in Review
As 2011 comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to revisit the top-ten posts of the year. We lost some classic movie legends, including Elizabeth Taylor and Farley Granger. This year, Classic Movie Man taught another film class at Facets Film School: Elegant and Madcap: The Incredible Versatility of Irene Dunne. It was great fun introducing this remarkable actress and movie star to folks who were not familiar with her body of work.

Below are the top-ten Classic Movie Man posts for 2011. Are any of your favorites on this list?

Number 10—Classic Movie Man’s Guilty Pleasure: “Devotion” This fictionalization of the lives of the Brontë sisters was short on the facts (according to critics of the day), but is great melodrama with Ida Lupino as Emily and Olivia de Haviland as Charlotte. Paul Henried, Nancy Coleman, and Arthur Kennedy round out the talented cast. The film score by Erich Wolfgand Korngold is lush and beautiful, as is the movie’s overall production.

Number 9—Jeanne Crain: More Than Just a Pretty Face. A personal favorite of mine, Crain was one of the most popular movie stars during the late-1940s to early-1950s. So popular was Crain that when she passed away in 2003, Turner Classic Movies’ Robert Osborn called her “the Julia Roberts of the day.” She appeared in some great films, including A Letter to Three Wives, Apartment for Peggy, and Pinky, the latter earning Crain her only Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Fred MacMurray

Number 8—Farley Granger, star of Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train.” Granger was a product of the Hollywood dream factory. Plucked from obscurity and signed to a movie contract by Samuel Goldwyn, he was featured in some popular films during the mid-1940s like The Purple Heart and The North Star. While under contract to Goldwyn, Granger’s best roles were a result of being loaned out to other studios. Two of his most famous films, Rope and Strangers on a Train both directed by Alfred Hitchcock, were made on loan to Warner Bros.

Number 7—Fred MacMurray: Nice-Guy Movie Star. Mostly remembered today for his iconic TV role as Steven Douglas in My Three Sons, MacMurray had a substantial movie career. In fact, MacMurray was the highest paid movie star in the world in 1943.

Number 6—Ida Lupino: A Lasting Legacy in Hollywood. Lupino not only was a great movie star, but she was a writer, director, and producer of independent films in the late-1940s and 50s. She was one of the only women directors working in Hollywood, directing classic TV episodes of The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Untouchables. In 1966, Lupino finally got a big budget production to direct: The classic comedy The Trouble With Angels starring Rosalind Russell and Halley Mills.

Number 5—Classic Movie Man’s Guilty Pleasure: “Elephant Walk.” This action-adventure melodrama starred a very young Elizabeth Taylor, Dana Andrews, and Peter Finch. Released in 1954, the main action takes place on a Ceylon tea plantation run by Finch. Feeling neglected, Taylor turns to overseer Andrews. Some great color cinematography and those stampeding elephants make this a fun movie to watch.

A lovely studio portrait of the very lovely Joan Bennett

Number 4—“Jane Eyre”: A Golden Age Classic. One of my favorite classic films, I thought a review was in order when a new version by director Cary Fukunaga released this past spring. Featuring beatuiful black and white cinematography and a wonderful performance from Joan Fontaine as Jane. Orson Welles is a little over-the-top as Rochester, but it doesn’t take anything away from the overall production. It also features a young unbilled Elizabeth Taylor as Jane’s doomed childhood friend Helen.

Number 3—Joan Bennett: Almost Scarlet O’Hara, But Always a Star. Bennett almost snagged the role of Scarlet O’Hara, but she got over that disappointment fairly quickly. She starred in musicals, comedies, and dramas, becoming one of the screen’s great femme fatales. Bennett gave terrific performances in three films directed by Fritz Lang: Man Hunt, Scarlet Street, and The Woman in the Window. After her movie glory days were over, she became a pop-culture icon as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in daytime TV’s Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. She was also one of the few actresses who could realistically play mother to Elizabeth Taylor (she physically looked as beautiful). She did this twice in Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend.

Elizabeth Taylor

Number 2—This Island Earth: 1950s Science Fiction Classic. One of the best flying saucer flicks, the film benefits from a decent script, great special effects, and more than competent performances by the three lead performers: Rex Reason, Faith Domergue, and Jeff Morrow.

Number 1—Elizabeth Taylor: Born To Be a Star. With Taylor’s passing, an era passed with her. One of the last great movie stars to come out of the studio system, she epitomized Hollywood style and glamour. Her beautiful looks notwithstanding, Taylor gave some memorable screen performances and won two Best Actress Academy Awards during her long career. As famous for her well-publicized off-screen life, she was the quintessential movie star.

Thanks for reading the Classic Movie Man blog in 2011. I hope you’ll continue to read and follow this blog into 2012 and beyond!

Classic Movie Man's Guilty Pleasure: "Elephant Walk"

Part of the fun of loving movies is loving the ones that don’t quite hit the mark and are sometimes so bad they’re good. One of my guilty movie pleasures is 1954’s Elephant Walk. A big-budget spectacle from Paramount Studios, it’s a mixed bag of movie cliches with several allusions to better films.


From London Bookshop to Ceylon Tea Plantation
The plot surrounds a tea planter, John Wiley from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), who comes to England at the end of World War II to find a bride to take back with him. The tea planter is the serious and sober Peter Finch. His young bride is the breathtakingly beautiful and young Elizabeth Taylor (she was 23 when the film was released). From the film narrative, we find that this was some kind of a whirlwind romance, with Ruth, a bookstore clerk (Taylor’s character), hardly knowing anything about her new husband or his family (like Liz Taylor's real life).

Mandalay in South Asia

South Asian Mandalay
As you probably already guessed, Ruth is at first swept off her feet by John. When she arrives at Elephant Walk, the family mansion, a kind of South Asian Mandalay, its beauty and opulence awe Ruth. She learns that her new home was deliberately built on the path the elephants used to get to their water source by John’s father, alternately known as the “Old Master” and “the Guv’nor.” Apparently, the Old Master, even though long passed away, seems to be the force behind Elephant Walk. Two minutes cannot go by without someone talking about the Guv’nor. You know almost immediately that the elephants will be causing trouble, and boy, do they ever.

Appuhamy: Mrs. Danvers with a mustache

“Didn't I See You in Rebecca?”
When Ruth arrives at Elephant Walk, an army of servants headed by Appuhamy, the estate’s majordomo, greet her. Sinister and reserved, Appuhamy is a male version of Judith Anderson’s character in Rebecca. The welcome home scene is similar to the Hitchcock classic. Even though he is a servant, Appuhamy looks at Ruth with suspicion and disdain. If we jump ahead two years, Mercedes McCambridge’s Luz Benedict is a female Appuhamy, giving Taylor’s character, Leslie, the same kind of treatment in Giant (a much better film for sure).

Bicycle polo at Elephant Walk

Bicycle Polo, Anyone?
At a party to meet John’s friends and associates, Ruth is introduced to Dick Carver (Dana Andrews), the plantation boss. Carver is instantly attracted to Ruth, and who wouldn’t be? Taylor’s character is sewn into some pretty remarkable Edith Head creations, showing that 23-year-old body off to its best advantage. When Taylor realizes that she’s the only white woman within miles of Elephant Walk, she begins to wonder if she made a mistake by marrying John. When John and his friends stay up all hours of the night drinking and playing bicycle polo inside the house, Ruth is distraught. As the film progresses, she feels more and more isolated. And then there’s the secret room that only Appuhamy has the key to. It’s the key to the Old Master’s room, a virtual shrine to the dead man, just like the first Mrs. DeWinter’s room in Rebecca. And just like Rebecca, the Old Master’s presence permeates the film. Jeepers, his crypt is in the backyard, just outside Ruth’s bedroom window!

Paris or Bust
While John is confined to bed with a leg fracture from his bicycle polo exploits, Ruth spends time with Dick. As the only one at Elephant Walk who doesn’t worship the Old Master, he becomes Ruth’s confidant. Dick makes a pass at Ruth, but she tries to resist his advances. As time goes by, Ruth plans to leave Elephant Walk and go to Paris with Dick, something Dick was planning to do before Ruth arrived.

Elizabeth Taylor (Ruth) and Dana Andrews (Dick) in a publicity still for the film

But then, a cholera epidemic breaks out, and Ruth decides she cannot leave her husband, even though we’re not exactly sure what she sees in the bore. Dick, as played by Andrews, is a much warmer and sympathetic character; it isn’t hard to understand why she (or any other woman under the same circumstances) might want to run off with him. Dick’s character is dressed elegantly in white and khaki suits, often wearing a lightweight fedora. He looks like the tropical version of detective Mark McPherson from Laura, a role Andrews played ten years earlier.

That Pesky Epidemic
Oh, yes, the cholera epidemic. Servants all of a sudden start passing out, falling down, and the whole area is put under quarantine. This keeps Ruth from running off with Dick to Paris (rats!). After about two seconds, Ruth throws herself into helping the natives fight the epidemic. Looking like Myrna Loy in The Rains Came, she spends her days cutting pieces of cloth, filling jugs with water, disinfecting things, and constantly wiping the sweat off her brow while Appuhamy, her new best friend, tells her to rest. Just when you think things can’t get any worse, the elephants come back, reclaiming their pathway while the estate is left unguarded.

Tyrone Power and Myrna Loy in The Rains Came (1939)

Elephants Rule!
The elephants stampede, Elephant Walk, demolishing the wall that surrounds it. They enter the house, upending the furniture, and knocking over burning candles and chandeliers. And they maul Appuhamy, Ruth's new BFF, right in front of her eyes (she closes them, of course) while she screams in terror. As the elephants destroy the house, it catches fire. Ruth tries to outrun the elephants and escape, but finds herself trapped. Her husband, back from burying the dead cholera victims, rescues Ruth from the fire and the elephants, but Elephant Walk is no more. As the mansion burns to the ground, Ruth recommits herself to John, just like, oh, yeah, Rebecca (and Jane Eyre too)! Dick, coming back for Ruth, sees her on a hill with her husband. Realizing that he and Ruth have no future together, Dick decides to go to Paris by himself since Ruth was the only reason he stayed at Elephant Walk for as long as he did. The End.

The Classic Movie Man's Verdict
Even with all the cliches and sometimes hackneyed dialogue, I still find this film incredibly compelling. Maybe it’s the cast, although my favorite New York Times critic, Bosley Crowther, had these kind words for the three stars: “Miss Taylor's performance of the young wife is petulant and smug. Mr. Andrews is pompous as the manager. And Mr. Finch, as the husband, is just plain bad.” Oh, my. On the plus side, the movie looks good. The on-location cinematography isn’t too bad. The score by Franz Waxman is lush and beautiful. Taylor’s Edith Head costumes are stunning and show the actress off to her best advantage. On the negative side, the process photography looks cheap. There’s a scene where Ruth and Dick are riding horses. The horses are at a slow trot, but the background is practically racing by. Perhaps, audiences in 1954 were more forgiving than we are today, but it looks really fake. The direction by William Dieterle can be described as plodding at best; nothing seems to flow very smoothly. But fortunately, those stampeding elephants save the day by adding some much-needed action and excitement.

I mentioned Rebecca earlier in this piece, and I think it tries to borrow some of the tension and suspense that the movie engendered, but with limited success. The comparisons, some already noted are too obvious: Appuhamy as a male Mrs. Danvers, the room that is a shrine, and the climactic fire that destroys the mansion and the memory of the Old Master. But that’s what films do, borrow from each other. Some do so successfully, some not so. Elephant Walk falls into the not-so category. Still, as mentioned before, it’s somehow compelling. It’s one of my classic movie guilty pleasures. And that’s okay. In spite of it all, enough people went to see Elephant Walk in 1954 to make it a box office hit.

What are your movie guilty pleasures? I’d love to hear from you.