Sullivan's Travels

SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS       A                    

USA  (90 mi)  1941  d:  Preston Sturges

To the memory of those who made us laugh: to the motley mountebacks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this picture is affectionately dedicated.  

Preston Sturges began his career as a playwright, earning more than a quarter of a million dollars by his second Broadway play, Strictly Dishonorable, a staggering figure at the outset of the Depression in the late 1920’s, eventually becoming a movie screenwriter in the 1930’s, becoming disenchanted with the way Hollywood directors were handling his dialogue, so he traded in his salary rights for the screenplay of THE GREAT MCGINTY (1940) for the chance to direct the film, something that set a precedent for later writer/directors like Billy Wilder and John Huston, not only to direct their own material, but to assemble their own unofficial stock company.  With Paramount promoting the film, it was a modest financial success, with Sturges winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, his first of three nominations in the category, also including two films from 1944, HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO and THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK.  Though he had a thirty-year career in Hollywood, Sturges’ most prolific output came between 1940 to 1944, writing 7 comedies, four of which were chosen by the American Film Institute (AFI) among their 100 funniest American films, after which his career (still in his mid-40’s) over the next 15 years sputtered, eventually dying bankrupt and forgotten while writing his memoirs in New York’s Algonquin Hotel, a haven for literary figures, very similar, oddly enough, to the fizzled career of actress Veronica Lake in the 50’s, who was arrested later in life for public drunkenness, drifting from various cheap hotels until she eventually died of alcoholism. 

Released just a few weeks after the invasion of Pearl Harbor, the timing of SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS feels unfortunate, as a comic film satirizing the tastelessness and pretentious nature of the movie industry feels secondary to a nation at war, as it questions the reality as presented by Hollywood films at a time when the nation itself was immersed in a devastatingly ugly reality of its own, the American entrance into World War II.  Making matters worse, the film was advertised as a Veronica Lake movie following her rapid rise to fame from I WANTED WINGS (1941), the first film to showcase the actress as a platinum blond, yet she is more of a sidekick in a film that was written for lead actor Joel McCrea as a kind of everyman.  The result is a film that was unsuccessful at the box office, one of the bleakest and most disturbing comedies to ever come out of Hollywood, but whose reputation has only grown over time.  The film is surprisingly complex with two distinctly different halves, with inexplicably surreal moments, evolving through a series of Odysseus-like misadventures, turning into a meandering heroic journey of self-discovery, overcoming plenty of obstacles along the way.  A parody of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, but instead of moving from a cheery optimist to a human misanthrope, this film instead doubts its own relevancy at the outset and slowly discovers its reason for being along the way.  Opening with a film within a film, McCrea as Sullivan is a Hollywood director who’s had a string of lightweight, comedic hits, but now wants to direct something more serious, choosing to explore the destitute world of tramps during the Depression living on the road, hopping boxcars, and living in hobo camps from the novel O Brother, Where Art Thou? (a title later claimed by the Coen Brothers in their tribute to this film in 2000).  While the studio heads hate the idea, claiming it’s too depressing, Sullivan insists upon going on the road and discovering firsthand what it’s like to be poor. 

The absurdity of seeing a Hollywood movie mogul, a college graduate educated in prep schools dressing as a penniless hobo and hitting the road, is patently ridiculous, especially with a motor home of his handlers following close behind.  Thus the journey begins with the most exaggerated, broadly based and stereotypical characterizations, which includes the frenetic pace of screwball comedy and a chase scene right out of the Keystone Cops, where some may take offense by the derogatory racial caricature of a black chef, credited as the “colored cook,” but all the characters revert to the outlandish mannerisms of Silent era films, where Sullivan himself is a throwback to Chaplin’s Little Tramp and his association with poverty, especially when he enters the domain of the downtrodden.  Soon enough, after some unpleasantries performing community service in the home of a sex-starved widow, Sullivan finds himself right back in Hollywood, now a hobo entering a cheap diner for a cup of coffee, where an attractive young actress wannabe known only as the Girl (Veronica Lake) buys him a meal.  Their dialogue together is reminiscent of Lake as a femme fatale in film noir, as she’s got a tough edge to her delivery, but their chemistry together is instantly appealing, especially the way she always seems to smile at his awkwardness and utter male futility, feeling somewhat betrayed when he turns out to be one of those same successful Hollywood directors that have been turning her down for months.  One of the priceless scenes is seeing Sullivan dressed as a tramp walking around his million dollar Beverly Hills mansion showing off his tennis courts and his pool.  Insistent upon carrying out his harebrained scheme, she insists upon going along with him, both dressed as tramps, where she’s dressed as a young boy, where they hop traincars and interestingly sleep together in boxcars and hobo camps.        

In what is easily the scene of the film, precisely the film Sullivan wanted to make, Sturges films their entry into the actual world of tramps as a wordless montage, a seven-minute sequence panning through all the various down-and-out characters of a shantytown, where by now they’re literally no different, wearing sandwich board signs for cash or passing out leaflets, forced to endure the endless church sermons for a free meal and having to sleep cramped on the floor in hobo shelters, where his shoes are stolen while he slept.  In a romantically tender scene that defies belief, the two are alone strolling along a moonlit lake, seemingly in perfect harmony with nature and each other, yet they walk right past a man literally hanging from a tree, where his feet can be seen dangling from the branches, but neither one looks or comments upon it, and there is no reference to it whatsoever in the film.  The reference to evil is like something out of The Night of the Hunter (1955), only seen from an adult’s perspective.  It’s here that a darker realism clearly replaces the lightweight, artificial tone expressed earlier in the film.  In fact, Sullivan accidentally ends up in his own nightmare, like one of his concocted movie adventures, only this time it’s real and there is no escape.  After being hit on the head and left for dead, he ends up charged with a crime he can’t remember (from temporary amnesia) and sentenced to a chain gang, entering a hallucinatory world where he’s quickly woken up by his grotesque mistreatment, denied all privileges like writing or making a phone call, literally becoming a caged animal, caught in a bleaker existence than Hitchcock’s equally downbeat The Wrong Man (1956). 

This prolonged sequence of brutality prevented the film from being exported overseas during wartime, so the enemy could not use it for propaganda purposes.  But this evolves into an utterly enthralling sequence in a black Pentecostal church, where the pastor (Jess Lee Brooks) vociferously asks his congregation “by word or deed” not to make the all-white chain gang prisoners feel unwelcome, singing “Let My People Go” Go Down Moses - Sullivan's Travels (1941) - YouTube (3:31) as they are led into the front rows to watch a movie together with the parishioners.  The race reversal and depth of sorrow of chants from typical black chain gangs does not go unnoticed in this weird twist of fate, where unlike the exaggerated caricature of the black chef early in the film, here blacks are portrayed with utmost dignity and sincerity, becoming the most humane people in the film.  It was Sturges intention to play a Chaplin film, but rights were denied, playing a Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon featuring Playful Pluto (1934), where Pluto’s paws continually get caught on fly paper, where the animated pranks and pratfalls leave the congregation in stitches, a welcome relief from the otherwise harsh human conditions.  Overall this is a clever and extremely witty film, becoming a populist treatise on humor, where the concise film construction itself is continually unpredictable, becoming a film for the ages.  While the film is on a short list of one of the funniest films ever, particularly at the time of its release, it’s perhaps best remembered today for its serious elements, where what’s ostensibly a comedic film brilliantly accentuates the plight of the poor while at the same time highlighting the clueless nature of an affluent class that remains indifferent to their lives, pointing out in an autobiographical context the hypocrisy of a multi-million dollar industry making films about subjects it clearly fails to understand.  The film is stunning in its refreshingly honest insight. 

The Glass Key (1942)

THE GLASS KEY       C                    

USA  (85 mi)  1942  d:  Stuart Heisler

You’re built well, got a pretty face, nice manners, but I wouldn’t trust you outside of this room.      —Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd)

Not to be confused with the earlier version of this film The Glass Key (1935) starring George Raft and Edward Arnold, adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, considered one of his best, this remake stars Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, the second of four films together, adding a love interest that was not in the earlier version.  Made immediately after THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), but prior to the release, where Paramount saw how well the diminutive pair worked together, as Ladd was all of 5 feet and 5 inches tall, while Lake was just under 5 feet, making them perfect screen partners.  The secret to their screen chemistry, however, is the dialogue, as it’s smart and sassy, giving Lake a chance to exert a fierce independent streak, making her an ideal femme fatale, quite demure and emotionally distant in her calculatingly cold and indifferent way.  Directed by Stuart Heisler, who also directed the politically subversive Among the Living (1941), this remake is often thought to be the superior of the two versions, where the crisp dialogue might be sharper and quick-witted, and the extension of Lake’s role in the story doesn’t hurt, but George Raft is better as the slick and street smart Ed Beaumont, a man of dubious character, whose conversion from gambler to political handler is more believable.  Ladd appears kind of wooden for much of the film, especially when he’s working the right side of the law, as he’s more animated playing a tough, wise guy who knows how to talk to and handle small time hoods.  He’s at home in their seedy element, where some of the best scenes in the film are shared with William Bendix as Jeff, a near psychotic hit man who loves to smash people’s faces for a living, used as a bodyguard for gambling operator Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia).  No one can beat the largesse of Edward Arnold’s earlier performance either as Paul Madvig, a corrupt political boss trying to go straight.  He and Raft were excellent partners who seemed to be speaking the same language, as if they came out of the gutter together.  Ladd as Beaumont and Brian Donlevy as Madvig, who actually had top billing in the picture, act like they barely know each other, as Madvig exerts much less influence, so one wonders why Beaumont would be so loyal.

Perhaps more faithful to the book, it’s a complex story of political corruption and murder, where Madvig and Beaumont come from a crooked past supporting prostitution and gambling interests.  So when party boss Madvig comes out in support of a reform candidate for Governor, society millionaire Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen), believing he’ll be rewarded with a key to the Governor’s mansion, his fashion-minded daughter Janet (Lake) is the real object of his desire, making her his fiancé, so he starts shutting down gangster run gambling houses, like Nick Varna’s, which turns heads, and infuriorates Varna who vows revenge.  When Henry’s troubled son is murdered, Madvig is quickly implicated, fueled by rumors fed to the newspaper by Varna.  But when Madvig doesn’t seem very concerned, Beaumont is initially puzzled, as he doesn’t trust Henry and thinks Janet is playing his boss for a chump, thinking both will be dumped after the election.  Pretending to get in a fight with Madvig and leave town, Beaumont has another reason to stick around, as Veronica Lake captures his interest as well The Glass Key Film Noir Veronica Lake 1942 YouTube (2:33).  When he starts sticking his nose in Varna’s affairs, Beaumont runs into Jeff, who’s just waiting to get his mitts on him, giving him one of the more brutal beatings that’s still painful to watch more than a half century later, especially when one learns afterwards that Bendix accidentally knocked Ladd out, catching him with a haymaker to the jaw, which is the take used in the film.  Bendix was so remorseful afterwards that he and Ladd became excellent friends, working together again in The Blue Dahlia (1946), another tour-de-force performance from Bendix.  Wally Westmore’s makeup department deserves special recognition, as Ladd really looked like he was on the wrong end of a crudely savage beating, yet he cleverly manages to escape.

After a hospital recovery, Beaumont engineers what is perhaps the most morally despicable scene in the film, but it starts out like one of those Inspector Hercule Poirot scenes in an Agatha Christie novel, where he gathers all the usual suspects in a room and figures it all out.  Beaumont reveals that Varda owns the mortgage to the newspaper, so the publisher, Arthur Loft as Clyde Matthews, is forced to print all the rumor and gossip as actual news, which the publisher’s wife Eloise (Margaret Hayes) finds a detestable development, especially the realization that they’re broke.  When she and Beaumont cozy up to one another in plain view of the husband, brazenly kissing on the sofa, Beaumont literally shames the publisher into taking his own life.  Beaumont’s actions here are pretty disgusting, where his heartless and amoral reaction may be suitable for film noir, but hardly befitting anyone’s idea of a hero, which is how he’s projected in the film.  Again, George Raft projects having lived among sewer rats so much better than Ladd who always looks like he’s afraid to get his shoes scuffed, as he just doesn’t exhibit the needed range of believability.  There’s a fascinating appearance by Lillian Randolph, Annie the housekeeper in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, whose daughter Barbara sang with the Platters and was initially considered as a replacement member of the Supremes), seen here as a Bessie Smith style nightclub blues singer where the publisher’s widow is seen drowning her sorrows.  Bendix, though, steals the movie when Ladd comes to get revenge, shown here with his mouth flapping and his hair flying, continually calling Beaumont a heel, He's A Heel - The Glass Key (1942) YouTube (3:34).  Ladd doesn’t stop there, urging the spineless District Attorney to bring charges against Janet Henry, a woman he supposedly loves, to root out the real killer.  The film barely touches on the corrupt political angle, using it instead as background information for the budding romance between the two leads, where each projects an unscrupulous nature that all but defines them as untrustworthy.  By the end, do we really believe that they’re going to go straight?  She’s accustomed to the finer things in life, having been spoiled and raised with servants in an immense mansion.  Beaumont’s going to need plenty of bucks to keep her happy, where life on the shady side of the street is often more financially rewarding.   

The Glass Key (1935)

THE GLASS KEY             C+            

USA  (80 mi)  1935  d:  Frank Tuttle

Not to be confused with the later version of this film, which was remade in 1942 with Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd (as the wrong film was shipped to the theater), this is basically the same story, adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, considered one of his best, but this rarer, earlier version omits the love interest, which was expanded to make room for a more noirish version, complete with Lake as a femme fatale.  George Raft grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in New York and hung out with professional gangsters, such as Owney Madden and Arnold Rothstein, learning to imitate their mannerisms before breaking into films, initially as a dancer during the Vaudeville era before landing a part in the gangster classic SCARFACE (1932), playing a coin-flipping gunman.  No one wore hats better, or wore better hats, than George Raft.  He was given the lead in this picture, though he plays Ed Beaumont, a man of dubious character who likes to spend his evenings drinking rye whiskey and winning money at rigged roulette wheels, whose relationship to political boss Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold) is never made clear, though he appears to be his protection, the muscle, the right hand man who is always at the boss’s side, showing little distinction between politics and the portrayal of mob bosses.  Raft was actually the first consideration as Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), but he turned it down, opening the doors to a man named Bogart.  Set during or just after the Prohibition Era, when saloons appear to be nothing more than all-male speakeasy’s, Madvig tries to clean up the city and shuts down some illicit gambling joints, where the owner, Shad O’Rory (Robert Gleckler), along with his muscle, Jeff (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams), don’t take kindly to the action and swear to get even.  This sets the wheels in motion for a blood feud.

Adding to the mystery is Madvig’s support of Senator John T. Henry (Charles Richman), whose daughter Janet (Claire Dodd) he’d like to marry (the role expanded for Veronica Lake), and whose son, Taylor Henry (Ray Milland), is something of a family embarrassment, as he owes plenty of money to loan sharks like O’Rory, putting his father in a precarious predicament.  When Madvig’s daughter Opal (Rosalind Keith) expresses a romantic interest in Taylor, who happens to be standing in the way of Madvig’s desires for Janet, Madvig in a rage decides to set matters straight.  When Taylor Henry ends up dead, Madvig is immediately implicated, as he was the last one seen with Taylor in an angry public dispute on the street.  With the election coming up, the newspapers have a field day at Madvig’s expense, where much of the story is advanced through developing headlines, with O’Rory continuing to feed the paper anonymous tips.  Only when it appears the tide has turned against Madvig, who has been publicly convicted by the press, does Beaumont spring into action masterminding a crafty, behind-the-scenes operation to uncover what evidence O’Rory actually has, which isn’t much except a witness to the arguing.  But that’s plenty with just a few days before the election.  O’Rory, however, is not satisfied, and when he can’t pay off Beaumont to rat on his friend, he sicks his dog and his muscle on him, repeatedly beating him to a pulp, trying to manufacture a witness to the murder.  When he somehow manages to slip away and is treated in the hospital, Ann Sheridan shows some sass with some terrific lines as his nurse.  After rounding up all the available suspects and witnesses having any knowledge in the murder, it all comes together in an Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot style interrogation with Beaumont inventively taking the lead. 

This particular version has little inventiveness or star power, but Raft is convincing as a guy who would feel right at home in Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS (1990), while major elements of this film can be detected in the Coen Brothers highly stylized gangster flick MILLERS CROSSING (1990), also set in the Prohibition era, where one guy lays it all on the line, switching loyalties to the other side, attempting to bring peace to a long standing blood feud between warring gangs, also sounding like the blueprint to Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (1961).

The Blue Dahlia

THE BLUE DAHLIA               B                     

USA  (96 mi)  1946  d:  George Marshall

Bourbon straight with a bourbon chaser.       —Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix)

You've got the wrong lipstick on, Mister.       —Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd)

It’s funny, but practically all the people I know were strangers when I met them.     

—Joyce Harwood (Veronica Lake)

Like all the modern day era directors named Marshall, George Marshall was primarily a comic director before making this film, where he serves in a functional role, little more than moving the right pieces around, but hardly visionary or exemplary, where screenwriter Raymond Chandler may have actually directed several of the scenes.  This film is noted as being the only original Raymond Chandler script in Hollywood, though several of his books have been adapted, where the script was unfinished when filming began and production was about to be shut down as he developed writer’s block.  Already a hurried production, as actor Alan Ladd was being recalled for military service, so the terms Chandler demanded to finish the script on time was to start drinking again, as he felt he wrote better under the influence, also an in-home round the clock nurse to help moderate his alcohol intake, so as an alcoholic he wouldn’t drink himself into a stupor, and a car which drove his finished pages to the studio every day.  John Houseman, from the Orson Welles Mercury Theater group, was the producer on the Paramount film and he felt inclined to agree to these outlandish terms, offering in addition a $5000 incentive to finish on time, which he did, as otherwise everyone would simply be fired.  This is also the third of four films where Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake would work together.  While the two of them were never close, the diminutive Ladd at 5' 5” enjoyed working with her as she was just under 5 feet tall, and this is one of their better efforts.  The snappy and crisp Chandler dialogue, which was the film’s only Academy Award nomination, works to their benefit, as they have some terrific lines together, always keeping one another at arm’s length, but just barely.  After Lake died, it was revealed by her husband, director André de Toth, that she was a heroin addict and an alcoholic during her starring roles at Paramount, earning $4500 a week, which is why they never renewed her contract, eventually working as a barmaid near the end of her life, drifting from one cheap hotel to the next, where she had frequent arrests for public drunkenness. 

Like many of the war pictures in its day, the film opens with out of uniform soldiers returning home to Los Angeles on a bus, where they experienced a close camaraderie of serving together, but become anonymous figures upon returning home.  Alan Ladd as Johnny Morrison definitely fits that bill, even though he has a wife to come home to, while the other two, William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont, are envious.  But when Ladd arrives, his house has been taken over by a drunken crowd of perpetual party revelers, led by his wife, Doris Dowling, who is on the arm of a crooked nightclub owner Eddie Harwood, Howard Da Silva, whose career was blacklisted for the decade of the 1950's.  Da Silva, Dowling, and Frank Faylen (a small-time hood) all just finished working together on Billy Wilder’s THE LOST WEEKEND (1945).  Dowling is from the theatrical school of bold dramatic expressions, wearing lavish and spectacular gowns that might feel more appropriate in a highly decorative Josef von Sternberg film.  Her stand-offish behavior towards Johnny, not to mention being caught in a kiss with Harwood, sends Johnny back out the door, where in typical noirish fashion it has become an evening downpour of rain.  With all the hotels booked, he’s aimlessly roaming the streets, suitcase in hand, until a car pulls up and offers him a shelter from the storm, driven by Veronica Lake.  While exploring the entire Los Angeles vicinity together, from Hollywood, Santa Monica, to Malibu, they immediately hit it off, but with vague sarcasm and clever comebacks.  They are easily the glue that holds this picture together, but keep getting separated after a news report announces the murder of his wife, where Johnny is the lead suspect, spending the rest of the film on the run while the police are searching for him, leaving him little choice except to find the killer himself. 

While some of this does in fact resemble Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SLEEP (1946), another Chandler novel with Bogart and Bacall which may have borrowed liberally from this film, especially the scenes where the hero gets double crossed, beaten up and captured in an out of the way location, the claims that Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961) and the Coen Brother’s MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) also drew wholesale from this film are less obvious, as Ladd is hardly in a position trying to keep two warring sides at bay and instead is a returning war hero who has to reestablish his heroicism back here on American soil.  While not officially a detective, Ladd is placed in the position of being a detective in having to solve the crime before the police make an arrest.  In this respect, the film has more in common with THE THIN MAN (1934), where the non-explicit, bordering on dysfunctional relationship between Ladd and Lake is a stark contrast to the cozy marital bliss of William Powell and Myrna Loy, who represent the security, peace and prosperity of the pre-War years.  After the war, a man’s got to settle his own affairs with little or no help, where Bendix returns with a serious war injury, with a metal plate placed in his head, where he is constantly growing mentally agitated at the least provocation, especially the sound of American jazz music, which causes headaches and mysterious blackouts, continually demanding that people “Turn off that monkey music!”  Bendix was Chandler’s inadvertent killer in the initial script, where in noir films a character suffering from temporary amnesia is as familiar as the common cold, and everything leads up to his odd yet plausible police confession, which was unacceptable by the U.S. Navy, refusing to allow the depiction of a wounded war veteran as the damaged killer in a high profile Hollywood production coming so close to the end of the war.  The Navy threatened to refuse to cooperate in any future Paramount production, causing a hastily altered Raymond Chandler rewrite, which is really just a stab in the dark and the film’s weakest link.  Like the much publicized OJ Simpson murder case which captivated all of Los Angeles for months, there were really no other suspects.