2018: The Year in Old Movies

Being another alphabetical list of the best old movies the Siren saw for the first time this year, with 11 entries, because round numbers are boring.

Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Andrzej Wajda; viewed on FilmStruck (RIP))
In many ways a gangster film, with Poland’s future on the line instead of loot. Zbigniew Cybulski as Maciek, the cynical assassin, is so fiercely present he drags the movie out of its ostensible setting and even the time period in which it was made. Everything in the film lends itself to allegory, like Maciek and Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) lighting fire to glasses of vodka, each symbolizing a fallen comrade, as a bunch of drunks bellow-sing in the next room. But few allegories feel this vivid and searing.

Barbed Wire (1927, Rowland V. Lee; kindness of a Siren commenter)
Film history has been unjust to Pola Negri, usually remembered either as the most flamboyant mourner at Valentino’s funeral, or as the leopard-clad cameo player in a Hayley Mills film. The Siren knew better, as she’s read Negri’s delightful autobiography, but the proof is in the acting. And this tender World War I romance, about a French farmer’s daughter and the German POW (Clive Brook) she falls in love with, shows what a versatile and talented actress she was.

Devi (1960, Satyajit Ray; viewed on Filmstruck)
Powerful statement about how religion devolves into superstition, and how superstition destroys. Sharmila Tagore’s performance as Dayamoyee, the trapped and suffering “goddess” of the title, is riveting. For the record, though some disagree, the Siren most definitely thought there was a villain in Devi (and how) but then the Siren never has been keen on religious fanatics. Track down this masterpiece and decide for yourself.

Douce (1943, Claude Autant-Lara; viewed as part of the Eclipse box set “Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France”)
La Ronde in miniature, with an exquisite and moving Odette Joyeux, then 28, as the reckless upper-crust teenager of the title. Douce is enamored of her widowed father’s (Jean Debucourt) estate manager, Fabien (Robert Pigaut). Fabien wants Douce’s governess Irène (Madeleine Robinson) to run away with him; Douce’s father is also in love with Irène. Douce’s grandmother, Madame de Bonafe (Marguerite Moreno), wants everyone to stop all this nonsense and remember their place. A Christmas film as melancholy as it is witty; alert TCM.

Gabrielle (1954, Hasse Ekman; kindness of a friend)
There’s “personal” filmmaking, and then there’s this movie by Siren favorite (since 2015) Hasse Ekman. The director casts Eva Henning, whom Ekman had only recently divorced, as the title character, married to a man whose memories entwine with jealous fantasies of betrayal to form the bulk of the film. Like another pitch-black Ekman film the Siren loves, Banquet from 1948, Gabrielle is both bitterly funny and suspenseful, with one sequence in particular that brings Hitchcock to mind. It’s also a savage indictment of how a man can drive away love. In another twisted touch, Ekman casts himself not as the husband (played by Birger Malmsten) but rather as the ex-boyfriend who figures as Gabrielle’s lover in the husband’s imaginings (that's Henning and Ekman above). Your best source on the Web for all things Ekman remains Fredrik Gustafsson, whose Ekman study The Man From the Third Row was published in 2016.

Goupi Mains Rouges (aka It Happened at the Inn, 1943, Jacques Becker; viewed on Filmstruck)
The Siren has seen umpteen movies about deranged rural families living in the South, where she grew up. That undoubtedly added to her pleasure in viewing this hilarious mystery set deep in the French countryside. The Goupi clan, who could show the Snopes a thing or two, dominate every local business from poaching to innkeeping. But when the city-mouse nephew (Georges Rollin) comes to visit, murder enters the mix. An immensely satisfying film that the Siren may well venture out to see again when it plays FIAF on Jan. 29. (Bonus: A haunting performance by the infamous Robert Le Vigan, with whom the Siren has become slightly obsessed.)

Salón México (1948, Emilio Fernández; viewed as part of MoMA’s retrospective on the director)
The Siren wrote about this for the Village Voice (another film-supporting institution she greatly misses).

No Name on the Bullet (1959, Jack Arnold; the Siren bought the DVD, and BOY is it on sale at the moment)
What a joy to discover that a movie’s cult reputation is entirely deserved. The Siren loves Audie Murphy anyway, and she hopes one day to write a ringing defense of his acting in Westerns. Murphy plays John Gant, an uncommonly intelligent villain: He arrives in town trailing a violent reputation, and waits for the residents to unravel as they try to figure out who this gunfighter aims to kill. As the citizens turn on one another, right on schedule, Gant begins to seem as much like an evilly insightful philosopher as a killer. This was recommended to the Siren by Laura G., whose write-up the Siren recommends.

That Brennan Girl (1946, Alfred Santell; viewed as part of MoMA’s Republic Pictures series)
Brilliant women’s picture that was subsequently shown on TCM. The Siren mentioned it in an article for the Voice.

The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924, Mauritz Stiller; viewed on a screener as the Siren prepared to write about it for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival)
Mauritz Stiller is underrated.

The Sea Wolf (1941, Michael Curtiz; viewed on Warner Archive Blu-Ray, also a deal at the moment)
A disguised concentration-camp movie set on the high seas. Bleak as all-get-out, startlingly vicious and violent. Whatever the Siren was expecting from this newly reconstructed version of Curtiz’s film, it was not Barry Fitzgerald leering at Ida Lupino and threatening her with gang rape. The Siren had seen the butchered version and promptly forgot it, and as far as she’s concerned, this counts as an entirely different film. (Here is Leonard Maltin on the story of its resurrection. ) The Sea Wolf is an intense anti-Fascist allegory (via then-Communist screenwriter Robert Rossen), and like other such films from its era, feels newly and agonizingly relevant. Stellar work from all concerned, including John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson, and (a pleasant surprise) Alexander Knox. Do read this assessment at the New York Times by J. Hoberman (where has he been?). And the Siren assumes you've all read or are reading Alan K. Rode's Curtiz biography?

Honorable Mention:

Hellfire, Hell’s Half Acre, A Lawless Street, Three Daughters, Transatlantic, Young Desire, Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), Come Next Spring, Ride Clear of Diablo, Contraband, After Tomorrow, Victimas del Pecado, The Late Edwina Black, Love From a Stranger (1937).



Bonus: Not Exactly Good, But Boy Did I Have a Good Time

Love Has Many Faces (1965, Alexander Singer; viewed on Amazon Prime)
Or, as the Siren can't stop calling it, Love Has Many Suntans. (Followed, one hopes, by the sequel, Love Has Many Mole Checks.) Two hours of Hugh O’Brian and Cliff Robertson in Speedos and Lana Turner in $1 million of Edith Head costumes that shouldn’t be viewed without ISO-certified eclipse glasses. Virginia Grey and Ruth Roman have supporting roles, the plot is an ostensible murder mystery with the biggest wet-rag of a denouement you ever saw, and the Siren enjoyed every blessed minute.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948, St. John Legh Clowes; viewed on Filmstruck)
It’s an S&M love story, it’s a gangster movie, it’s proof that British actors are not better at American accents than vice versa, and strangest of all, it's a musical. Or wants to be, what with a bunch of nightclub numbers shown at length and sometimes even in full; one character's reluctance to stop watching the floor show becomes a key plot driver. To the Siren, the high point (if that is the term she wants) was Zoe Gail singing "When He Got It, Did He Want It?". Verse after verse about how boring women get once you've (ahem) had them, winding up with the big finish about how Cellini had the right idea because he poisoned his lays once he was done. The Siren still isn’t sure what hit her.


OK, OK, sorry about that last. The Siren will see herself out, along with 2018 while she's at it. Happy New Year, dear friends and patient readers!

Twitter and Other Links

For what it is worth, and as she re-reads her own contributions the Siren must truthfully answer “not much,” the Siren is on Twitter, until such time as she decides not to be on Twitter anymore. Right here: http:/twitter.com/selfstyldsiren. No second “e” in “selfstyldsiren.” The Siren’s rightful title was usurped by someone, hence at least part of her Bad Twitter Attitude.

And a while back the Siren received some very kind words from City Island director Raymond de Felitta, whom she is happy to call a friend, over at Salon.

We veer away now from self-promotion to what the Siren has been reading and watching around the Web, mostly a little out of date, but this is the Siren, so out of date is a way of life.

Further to our Bonjour Tristesse discussion, the Siren has been remiss in not thanking Vertigo's Psyche for putting up this link to part of an interview Jean Seberg did with Mike Wallace just before the movie's release. Her youth and beauty and the unconscious foreshadowing will send your heart careening into your ribcage.

So you think the Siren is mysterious, do you? Well, she isn't, she's just paranoid, which isn't really the same thing. You want mysterious, go with That Little Round-Headed Boy. We all know he's actually Larry Aydlette, but he comes and goes like the Shadow, leaving no archives, just fond memories of how his intelligence and wit lit up a subject like Burt Reynolds or, in this instance, the criminally underappreciated George Roy Hill. Start here and work your way through. You will not, repeat not be sorry.

The best analysis of the sublime Sullivan’s Travels you could ever hope to read, at David Cairns’ place. Read the comments too.

David Ehrenstein earns the envy of film lovers everywhere by interviewing the too-fabulous-for-words Anna Karina, right here in the LA Weekly.

Glenn Kenny on The Shanghai Gesture, at the Auteurs. She said it at Glenn’s place, the Siren will say it again here—god how I love this crazy-ass movie.

At Allure, Goldwyn’s Folly, the ill-starred Anna Sten, with an addendum here, as always with rare pictures from Operator_99’s vast collection.

Vadim Rizov gives You Can’t Take It With You the fisheye at the Indie Eye, and boy did that movie have it coming.

Raquelle at Out of the Past, true to the film her blog is named after, has been blogging like crazy about lesser-known corners in the career of Robert Mitchum: beautiful screen caps from Ryan’s Daughter (and a meditation on CGI), Mitchum’s son James in Thunder Road, and not one but two posts on Mitchum’s Calypso album (she’s a glutton for punishment, is Raquelle).

At L’Eclisse, a fun post on a topic the Siren loves: classic comfort movies.

At Carole & Co., How the Cold War Aided Film Preservation.

The Siren's latest Youtube obsession: The Tired Old Queen at the Movies. Steve Hayes is a familiar face to the Siren—we knew each other a while back, when he was doing a hilarious one-man show that included such gems as a dead-on imitation of Susan Hayward’s Brooklyn-Meets-Dublin accent mashup in the unforgettable Untamed. Now Steve is doing for Youtube what he used to do for cabaret, and I'm working my way through them. Favorite so far: the Queen's exegesis of Lana Turner's driving in The Bad and the Beautiful.

Finally, the Siren hasn’t mentioned this before, but she has a sister, and her sister has a blog. The Velveteen Hamster has nothing to do with movies; that obsessive gene passed mostly to the Siren. My sister’s blog has mostly to do with raising three boys—my nephews. Two have a serious medical condition, and the third is autistic. Please excuse the familial pride, and Rebecca, please excuse my language—but goddamn it, this is a beautiful post.

Adultery at the Movies; Or, How to Get Rielle Photos Out of Your Head

The Siren is obsessing over a news story again. Briefly distracted by news that Bernie Madoff got the living hell stomped out of him in prison, she found herself confronted by John Edwards. I've been avoiding the Edwards saga because, frankly, I really liked the jerk's health-care proposals. So once it became obvious that I had thrown my support behind a self-regarding horse's ass, I sort of checked out. Tea Parties, Oscars, the bond market, the Finnish dock workers' strike--I would read anything that got me away from John & Elizabeth & Rielle & Andrew.

This week, however, I tore myself away from the fed-funds rate and read that GQ interview with Rielle Hunter, the one where she proves her dedication to the image of women everywhere by stripping to her scanties and plopping down next to Dora the Explorer. I can explain my madness only by comparing it to the impulse that had me watching The Oscar, although in all fairness The Oscar had better photography and Eleanor Parker looks better half-naked. My brain froze, my eyelids drooped, I started to wonder what was for dinner, and still I read on in search of one sentence that would show some form of self-awareness. There are no words for this woman's vacuity, only images--it's the Pyramids, it's the steppes of Russia, it's the pants on a Roxy usher. And I kept muttering to myself, over and over again, "Jesus wept, John, YOUR TASTE."

So, in order to clear her brain of the stuffed-animal clutter that is "Hello America, My Name Is Rielle Hunter," the Siren started to think about Adultery at the Movies, where love is set to Rachmaninoff, "Un Sospiro" or Max Steiner and not the Dave Matthews Band. Here are images from ten movies where people lie and sneak and cheat on their spouses, but by god, they do it with someone worthy and they do it with style.



1. The Earrings of Madame de...


2. Letter From an Unknown Woman


3. Children of Paradise


4. Brief Encounter


5. Now, Voyager


6. The Postman Always Rings Twice


7. A Summer Place


8. That Hamilton Woman


9. Strangers When We Meet


10. Deception

Anecdote of the Week: "Trust Me--I'm an Actor," Plus Links

The Siren just got through reading about the hard times ahead for critics. She also read this piece at Jim Emerson's place and that pointed her to this piece, about how critics are irrelevant in the first place but super-duper-extra-tall-grande irrelevant if they don't like The Dark Knight (got that, Keith)? The Siren must be worse than irrelevant because she never saw the blasted thing and, let's face it, The Dark Knight is not a film she is likely to clutch to her bosom.

However, two can play at this game, damn it. In tune with Jim's first commenter, the Siren plans to start an "Ignore Max Ophuls at Your Own Peril" campaign right after, well, right after she gets done with some other stuff.




However, let it not be said that the Siren refuses all opportunities to expand her viewing horizons. The Siren watched Profondo Rosso some time back. Yes, she did. And she kind of liked it. She didn't like it in the way that might, for example, prompt her to watch it again--ever--but you could say she respected it. So, pending the last of the Constance Bennett thoughts, from another era and continent altogether, the Siren is bringing Profondo Rosso star David Hemmings onstage to cheer us up as we contemplate a world where film critics must love Batman, or suffer the consequences. This one is for Glenn Kenny, who wrote a splendid piece that touched on an encounter with the indefatigable Hemmings in Toronto on 9/11, for Kimberly Lindbergs, who has written of her liking for this unconventional 60s sex symbol, and for Belvoir, because redheads ARE sex symbols, too. Here, in his posthumously published Blow-Up and Other Exaggerations, Hemmings discusses the ways in which actors whiled away their free time in Swingin' London.

...I was invited to join the Bang Club, which involved most of Alvaro's regulars of a Saturday lunchtime and whose principal purpose, as devised by Ian [McShane], was to make friends look foolish.

Once a month, a person was elected 'victim,' and the remainder had to hunt him down, preferably in circumstances that would cause maximum embarrassment. The hunters would then point their index finger with thumb raised and three fingers curled and say, or mouth, 'Bang!', at which point the 'victim' had to die in the most atrocious way possible--in a second. No hesitation was allowed, or procrastination. They had to die on the spot, no matter who the witness or how great the damage. [Screenwriter Ian] La Frenais took out an entire dessert trolley at the White Elephant, having been 'Banged,' and several tables along with it. Few have topped this, and there can't be much more stimulating than to destroy someone's lunch by careering into their table, sprawled across a desert trolley like one of Clint Eastwood's victims across the back of his trusty steed. Of this you can be sure. Trust me--I'm an actor.

McShane suffered an invidious fate, though, at the hands of the Bang Club. As he was being presented, almost on bended knee, to Princess Margaret at the Empire, Leicester Square, at some premiere or other, from behind the silken ropes the rest of us stood up and, over a rampart of black-tied shoulders, as one we pointed fingers and mouthed 'Bang!'

Ian was caught, dead to rights, between the eyes. Eastwood would have been proud. Theoretically Ian should have fallen on the hapless princess, rolled her down a couple of staircases, taken Richard Attenborough and Judi Dench out with him and generally put the proceedings in peril and confusion. But he chickened out and disaster was, sadly, averted. There is, however, a sort of satisfactory conclusion to this short story. At the far end of the line, waiting patiently, was Vanessa Redgrave. She had not an inkling of the Bang Club, but being sightless, assumed the guns--merely fingers, you realize--were the real thing. She clutched the person next to her...and fainted dead away on the podium. All guns were then turned on Vanessa, as if she had been the target all along. But she revived in moments, as Redgraves will, to curtsy elegantly in front of HRH.

"As Redgraves will"--love it. At one point in his book the actor remarks, "They say Hemmings gives good yarn," and he certainly does. Highly recommended, if you can locate a copy. Hemmings has much to say about location work and the vagaries of an actor's career. Also contains the priceless story of how Michelangelo Antonioni kept shaking his head from side to side during each take on Blow-Up. Hemmings was almost prostrate from performance anxiety until he realized that what he thought were emphatic "no good" signals were in fact Antonioni's tremors from a physical condition.

*****

The links to the 20 Actress meme are piling up even as we speak:

David Cairns eschews mere physical beauty and gives Spring Byington her due. (By the by, David, who is this alleged MP who usurps your rightful place at the top of a "David Cairns" Google search?)
Feta at Terminal Sigma comes up with splendid photos of some silent actresses.
Operator_99 of Allure gives some love to number 21 and has a great picture of a very young Ida Lupino.
Marilyn of Ferdy on Film picks Wendy Hiller. Will the Siren's omissions never cease to haunt her?
Flickhead does indeed get very Continental on us.
Laura plumps for the ravishing Hedy Lamarr.
J.C. Loophole demonstrates impeccable taste.
Jacqueline had an equally hard time as the Siren but all is forgiven because she named Teresa Wright.
Sheila O'Malley ties one hand behind her back and picks favorite performances as well. Show-off.
Cinebeats grooves it, baby. I have seen nothing with Meiko Kaji but she is turning up more places than Marilyn.
Brad Wrolsted wins a link by naming Harriet Andersson.
Hazel at Let's Fold Scarves impressed the Siren no end by also naming performances, and including a Bette Davis film that the Siren actually hasn't seen. Well played, ma'am. Careful, you may get tagged next time. Just ask J.C.
MovieMan0283 does a version with clips.



Jon Swift identifies an important new school of film criticism, derrièrism. Surely criticism cannot be dead when brilliant new schools of thought keep emerging. Take that, Cahiers.

And John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows also does his bit for the critical lexicon, writing up the non-Sirk thrillers of Ross Hunter as Fashion Noir, an inspired term the Siren is adopting as of this very minute. Part one, on Portrait in Black, ends with a touching tribute to the Siren's beloved, doomed Sandra Dee. Part two, on Midnight Lace, ends with a vignette of a Hollywood-dream contest in Texas that will haunt you for days.

Roy Edroso of Alicublog evidently moonlights as some sort of medium, achieving whole-mind psychic melding with Jonah Goldberg. Don't take these sorts of risks for us, Roy. It's only blogging.

Tonio, who has been saying Easy Living is fluff? Send 'em to the Siren, she'll straighten them out. Easy Living is manna from heaven, that's what it is.

(Top, David Hemmings demonstrates the apparent future of critics who do not worship The Dark Knight. Middle picture of David Hemmings on set with Dario Argento is blatantly lifted from Cinebeats. Third picture of David Hemmings with Jane Birkin in background chosen as a lagniappe for David Ehrenstein and Yojimboen. Bottom picture of Lana Turner and Lloyd Nolan in Portrait in Black chosen by the Siren for her own amusement.)

Lana

"Rises to the heights of mid-period Lana Turner," remarked Pauline Kael of an actress's performance.* It was in no way a compliment. Over the years Lana built and sustained a reputation as an actress whose personal life was far more compelling than any performance she ever gave. Like most Hollywood reputations, it was undeserved.

For such a lousy actress, Lana was in an awful lot of good movies, among them They Won't Forget (one of the most memorable bit roles of all time), Johnny Eager, Ziegfeld Girl, The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Three Musketeers, as well as some campy but entertaining ones, including Peyton Place, Portrait in Black and Madame X. And then there are two the Siren and others would call genuinely great, The Bad and the Beautiful and Imitation of Life.

Lana's longtime pal Ava Gardner has a shorter list of still-watchable films, and is enjoying something of a revival. The Siren doesn't begrudge that to Gardner, who was one hell of a character. But hey, Lana was a good-time gal too, even marrying Artie Shaw before Ava did. (Perhaps Lana and Ava's bond was shared suffering. Shaw doesn't seem to have been much of a catch, ungallantly referring to Lana as an "airhead" in a late-life interview. For their part, both actresses strongly implied Shaw's performance talent was only musical.)

Of course there is a huge history of actresses who break into films based solely on their magical looks. Lana's distinction was to get a break based on how she filled a sweater. As she walked across a street to her doom in They Won't Forget, who could concentrate on the foreshadowing? Lana's breasts seemed to move independently of Lana, as an awestruck Mervyn LeRoy noted.

As much as the Siren wants to believe in universal sisterhood, there is no denying that dazzling beauty can make a woman off-putting to her own sex. But from the beginning Lana didn't arouse that kind of hostility from other women, instead suggesting the sort of goddess who would still be kind to the ugly duckling. Women liked her.

They could see that in real and reel life, Lana knew her beauty was her best card. Instead of playing that hand with icy hauteur, like Hedy Lamarr, Lana suggested a cheerful, but slightly sad, resignation to the ephemeral nature of her good luck. Sure, one day I'll awaken as a crone, she seemed to say; but in the meantime, I'm having one hell of a good time. In Ziegfeld Girl, why would anyone really want her to settle down with James Stewart's whining character? She's the only one of the girls who really seems to use stardom for all it's worth. She gets the men, the jewels, the adulation, then throws off the misfortunes visited upon her by the Breen Office, rises from her bed and proudly walks off into eternity.

In The Postman Always Rings Twice, probably the peak of Lana's looks if not her talent, the power turns to desperation. See her clinging to John Garfield, throwing every bit of her allure at him like a spear. Can't he see, for God's sake? Lana knows, she knows she's never going to get more beautiful and she sure as hell isn't going to get any smarter. She has to get away from Cecil Kellaway (Flickhead is right, that casting was bizarre), and Garfield's feckless character is unfortunately the only way out. When what she wants is murder, even Lana has to put some muscle into it. The result is that Lana's scenes of persuasion with Garfield are not subtle, but they are entirely true to a woman actually having to work on a man for the first time, after years of having them roll over and play dead.

Vincente Minnelli said he wanted Lana, not Jennifer Jones, for Madame Bovary, but was told by the censors that Lana would bring too much blatant sexuality to the story of adultery. The director had to wait to work with her, but with The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), he got Lana's best performance:

Lana was at the height of her career, one of the top sex symbols in films. Those who made easy judgments said that in being manufactured into a personality, one very important cog had been left out: a consuming talent. This to me was unfair.

I agreed with John Houseman's assessment of Lana's acting ability. 'On a long curve, she's never been capable of sustaining a whole picture as an actress,' he told me. 'But on the short curve she's very good.'

My challenge was to make her portrayal a series of short curves.

"A series of short curves;" clearly he understood her as few directors did. Lana's character is an actress haunted by a dead, brilliant father. But the character is also terrified that she is all beauty and no talent, which must have cut pretty close. Lana nails every scene, but the Siren's favorite is the sequence where Kirk Douglas turns her into an actress in a bizarre historical epic (obviously meant to evoke Gone with the Wind in scope if not plot, David O. Selznick being a loose model for Douglas's character). Here you have Vincente Minnelli coaxing a performance out of an insecure beauty, who is playing an insecure beauty having a performance coaxed out of her. Years later in his memoirs, I Remember It Well, Minnelli said his trick was to blame everyone except Lana for any retake. Darling, you were wonderful, but the lights weren't right, the sound man messed up, etc. By the end Lana was probably convinced she was the most competent person on set. It shows.

Seven years later Douglas Sirk managed the same feat in Imitation of Life. Before we move on to that masterpiece, though, we have to have "the paragraph." That's what Turner and her only child, Cheryl Crane, always called the celebrated episode that landed them both in court and gave them gossip immortality. Any piece on Lana, you see, has to have a paragraph about the death of Johnny Stompanato.

You could write a book, and a whopping big book at that, about Worthless Paramours of the Hollywood Glamor Queens. Maybe the Siren will one day, if she decides her psyche is strong enough to take the strain. In any such book Johnny Stompanato would take pride of place, and that would be the only time he ever came out ahead without a woman propping him up. He was a smalltime hood parlaying his loud, coarse good looks into something of a gigolo sideline. Lana, whose string of husbands was described by John Updike as "the seven dwarfs," never did have much taste in men, but here her very sanity seems to have deserted her. Presumably steamy interludes with Stompanato were punctuated by terrifying beatings. One night the teenage Cheryl, hearing her mother cry out and thinking Lana was being murdered, rushed downstairs and grabbed a knife. That knife wound up in Stompanato, though the story of precisely how will probably never convince everyone. Every once in a while Turner Classic Movies runs footage of Lana at the inquest, and she's believable, all right. The Siren doesn't think for a moment that Cheryl was (or is) covering for Mom. But does anyone, let alone a hardened tough, actually run into a knife?

Anyway, end paragraph. Those wanting a rundown on the aftermath, and Cheryl's later relationship with her mom, which stayed pretty warm despite the late unpleasantness, should turn to the wonderful fansite Lana Turner Online.

The Siren always enjoyed Scorsese's tribute to Lana's Postman entrance with Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull, since the later relationship with DeNiro vividly echos Lana/Stompanato. Even better is the restaurant scene in L.A. Confidential, although something doesn't ring quite true about the way the actress plays Lana. It seems closer to Lana's movie persona than what she may or may not have been like offscreen.

But by 1959, maybe it was hard to know the difference. Certainly the huge box office for Imitation of Life owed a lot to people thinking it was just that, as the plot has Lana's screen daughter Sandra Dee falling in love with mom's boyfriend. Lana's best moments, though, are early, before her character has become a walking hostess gown. The beach scene, where Lana's character of Lora Meredith first encounters Annie (Juanita Hall) and her daughter, is perfect. Check out Lana's reaction to hearing that the straight-haired, olive-complected little girl romping on the beach is Hall's daughter: surprise, then hasty erasure of that surprise, then gooey "understanding." You could put that clip in an online dictionary as a hyperlink from "well-meaning white."

In some ways the most difficult aspect of Turner's role is the early part of the movie, where Annie just sort of "naturally" slips into being a maid. Even in 1959, would the audience believe all black women automatically start bustling around a white woman's kitchen? Maybe not, but they sure believed the relief showed by Lana's character. She executes the pro forma protest at Annie's new role, but you see her relaxing more with each mundane task that her guest takes over. They are slipping into the roles society has laid out for them. Lana is far more comfortable having a black woman as a maid than sitting on a beach wondering why the woman's daughter looks white. The more Hall becomes a mammy figure, the more relaxed Lana gets.

Later, success brings a series of ever-more extravagant gowns, probably sanctioned by Lana herself since wardrobe approval was a glamor gal's most cherished privilege. They are perfect, though, for showing the encroaching artificiality of Lora Meredith's life. Lana's reactions get more stilted, as more and more Lora herself doesn't know when she's offstage and not playing a role she adapted long ago in a cold-water flat. As for Annie's daughter, played as an adult by Susan Kohner, Lana's understanding of her doesn't move beyond that first reaction on the beach--that is, not until the final moments of the film. Lana still doesn't know how to talk to the woman, but Kohner's stark grief has Lana really looking at her at last.

Any one of these movies would earn Lana a blog-a-thon, in the Siren's eyes. I haven't even touched on Lana as a sociology student (!!!) in love with gangster Johnny Eager, another role well worth checking out. And That Little Round-Headed Boy definitely has me wanting to see Somewhere I'll Find You, to check out Lana's comic timing.

*In case you want to know, Kael was talking about Candace Bergen in Carnal Knowledge.


Last night found the Siren ready to start throwing crockery, as her Internet connection is down for absolutely no good reason. She had forgotten that one of New York City's charms is definitely not Time Warner Cable. Please be patient, as the slobs at that company inform her they can't possibly send anyone for a few days. Mr. Campaspe has put up this post for her, but the Siren asks you to be patient with any roughness in the layout and the lack of links. She will come aboard as soon as possible to clean up and contribute to comments, but alas, it may be a while. Please share your thoughts on the piece anyway; it will give the Siren something to look forward to, aside from a long wait for the cable guy. See Flickhead, Coffee Coffee Coffee and That Little Round-Headed Boy (all listed on the sidebar) for more on the fabulous Lana.

Second Look at Sandra

Greetings, patient readers! The Siren and brood have finally landed in Brooklyn and gotten re-hooked to the virtual world. Jet-lag finally shaken, the Siren is gearing up for June 29's Lana Turner tribute.

By way of prelude, I am re-posting a piece I wrote after Sandra Dee died, since few people probably saw it at the time. Sandra Dee leads into Lana because, of course, they co-starred in two movies, one messy but enjoyable (Portrait in Black) and one classic, Imitation of Life.

Re-reading this obit makes the Siren realize that sadness and indignation over the sorry trajectory of Dee's life meant she neglected the films a bit. Not much there to explain exactly why I have always been so fond of her. And I am not sure I can explain it, entirely. Some stars you just connect with on a level that has little to do with talent, though I do believe Dee had that.

"So sweet she caused cavities," sniped the writers of an otherwise highly sympathetic essay in The Bad and the Beautiful, an assessment the Siren finds consistent with most critics, but bizarrely unfair. The actress was not sweet, but rather serene. Most of Dee's movies had her as the calm, centered, preternaturally mature youngster surrounded by adults either ditzy (The Reluctant Debutante, Come September), preoccupied (Romanoff and Juliet, Gidget) or downright malevolent (Portrait in Black, A Summer Place).

She did arouse a protective instinct, with her doll-like face seeming to indicate that she needed to be sheltered from life in general and ravening, louche men in particular. As the movies unfolded you generally learned that Dee could take care of herself. Adults flailed around, plotting murder, getting divorced, trying to marry her off or lock her up. Sandra always turned out all right in the end. To a teenager, which I was when I discovered Dee's movies, Sandra's superiority to her elders is entirely in keeping with the way you perceive the world, and reassuring. Her life was considerably less so.

So anyway, slightly edited in hindsight, here's my re-posted piece on Sandra.



Sandra Dee died Feb. 20. A hard-luck story in death as in life, she died on the same day Hunter S. Thompson blew his brains out. Pity the priest of Gonzo, ran the snide asides, for having to share the obit page with Gidget. Mind you, it had been years since Thompson wrote anything that matched his early glories (his last piece to show much of the old brilliance was, ironically, an obituary--of Richard Nixon). In the end he was every bit the has-been Dee was, but despite his long decline, repellent personality and senseless check-out he received one thing she did not: respect.

Certain elements appear in the biography of a studio-system actress with appalling frequency. Dee's life had them all. Start, as we so often do, with the ghastly stage mother. Mary Douvan was shoving her daughter in front of cameras almost as soon as she noticed the little girl was beautiful. Dee's first modeling gig was for Girl Scouts Magazine. Impatient to start maximizing the Sandra returns, her mother started adding two years to the girl's age when she was four years old, and that lie kept going until Dee's career had long ended.

What with modeling jobs and parading the child before talent scouts, there was little time to notice the small personal details, like the fact that Mary's second husband was sexually abusing Sandra.

Some Hollywood victims of sexual abuse go flamboyantly to the bad, grabbing at alcohol or pills, flinging themselves at men only marginally better than their abusers. Dee, for her part, continued to be a good girl at home and on the set. Her success grew, as she tried to disappear. Anorexia began in adolescence and continued, off and on, until her death. In the 1990s Dee recalled days when all she ate was a head of lettuce.

Knowing Dee's background gives all those sunny movies some pronounced shadows. You start noticing how almost all her characters are trying so hard to please an older figure. The horrific mother in A Summer Place, for example, who forces Dee to submit to a gynecological exam--a rape, in effect--to see if she's still a virgin after a night with Troy Donahue. I wonder how Mary and Eugene Douvan felt watching that one in a darkened movie theater. To a viewer in 2005, the scene is mawkish hokum. Read about Dee's pathetic teenage years, and it becomes a shattering tragedy.

For those who love Imitation of Life, without question the best movie Dee ever made, the story of maid Juanita Hall and daughter Susan Kohner gives the movie its depth and sadness. Those two face the real agony of racial bigotry, while Lana Turner and Dee, as her daughter, deal only with the imitation problems of the wealthy and blonde. Yet Dee's performance deserves more consideration than that. Her confrontation with Turner, where she snaps at Turner to "stop acting" and asks for a little autonomy, echos every woman who ever looked at a neurotic, inadequate mother and decided, finally, to move on.

The year after Imitation's release Dee made Come September, met Bobby Darin on the set and later married him. Her film career began in 1957, and after 1963 it was all but over. The future held multiple miscarriages, probably linked to her eating disorder; one son, Dodd, born in 1961; a divorce from Darin in 1967; and his early death from congestive heart failure in 1973. Alcoholism followed as Dee became a near shut-in. She had never had much of a social life, anyway; people who form their parents' main source of income seldom do. "I've never had any friends," she said in 1959, "but it's like strawberry shortcake. If you've never had it, you don't miss it."

Dee, tied so tightly to Eisenhower's America as the ideal teen--the perfect date, the perfect daughter--found some acting jobs, but never could revive her career. The only thing that could put her back in the public eye was when Stockard Channing donned a blonde wig and held her up to derision with the song "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" in Grease. Dee always said she thought it was funny.

You must excuse the Siren if she withholds her pity for Thompson and saves it for Sandra, whose troubles were far less of her own making.

Loving Lana

Certain actresses blow you away with their talent, some entrance you with their charm; and there are others you love, well, because. For years the Siren has maintained the softest of soft spots for the lady above. Where, may the Siren ask, is the revisionist Blog-A-Thon for Lana Turner? After all, when she died she merited a heartfelt tribute in the New Yorker by no less a literary light than John Updike. February 8 was Lana Turner's birthday, and the Siren is very sorry to have missed it. The fun folks at CoolCinemaTrash.com have an entry up on By Love Possessed that is, as usual, a hoot (though it seems to have been edited a bit oddly). The Siren's favorite Lana moment, however, will always be that walk down the stairs at the end of Ziegfeld Girl. You can quibble all you want with other aspects of Lana's acting, but when it came to walking, she was second to none. For absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about Lana, check out Lana Turner Online.

(Top, Lana pushes a broom with aplomb in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Bottom, Lana's climactic moment from Ziegfeld Girl, courtesy of The Lou Valentino Collection.