From 1930 to 1934 a group of amazing little films burst onto the motion picture scene, much to the chagrin of self-appointed moralists. These movies, which today we dub pre-Codes, presented a rawer, more realistic view of the human condition, and by implication, they were a blistering critique of American society in general. Among other qualities, pre-Code films were notable for their fast pacing, snappy dialogue, edgy stories, lean, mean set designs, and most of all, tough, worldly-wise characters who more often than not were driven by self-interest, self-indulgence, sensuality, and quick fixes, including (sometimes unpunished) crime. All was presented in just an hour or so and with an obvious theatrical pedigree. In short, the pre-Code movies just had a different look and feel about them. However, under growing public pressure and threats of boycotts, the motion picture industry initiated the Code-enforced era beginning July 1934, which insisted that movies present a more wholesome view of the world. The studios by and large obliged, and, as they say, the rest is history.
Mirroring the era of pre-Code itself, the careers of many stars faded quickly in the mid and late Thirties. These former luminaries are little more than footnotes in cinema history, and they include once big names, today largely forgotten, like Ruth Chatterton, Miriam Hopkins, Karen Morley, Dorothy Burgess, Ann Harding, Mae Marsh, Ruth Donnelly, Glenda Farrell, David Manners, Warren William, Chester Morris, Mae Clark, and Dorothy Mackaill. Alas, for a number of reasons both personal and professional, Ann Dvorak was one of the casualties whose promise never blossomed to the extent that seemed inevitable in her peak year of 1932. Looked at objectively, her career arc is spotty at best, but devotees relish her performances in the pre-Codes, especially Scarface and Three on a Match, two of her best loved films. A fun bit of trivia is that she appeared as Della Street in an early film version of a Perry Mason mystery, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937). But Ann Dvorak had a talent for self-destruction: she committed the unpardonable sin of challenging the big studios (she tussled with Warners over her contract amid rancorous legal battles). As was the norm in them days, she lost. A couple years later Warners let her go, and she was determined never to attach herself to a major studio again; she was now a free agent. But her career never fully recovered. She was an ambulance driver in London in World War II and later in the Forties was mostly relegated to B movies and bit parts. A starring role of some interest during this time was her appearance in The Private Affairs of Bel-Ami (1947), with George Sanders.
She left movies altogether in 1951 at the age of forty. In addition to being a rebel and free spirit, Ann Dvorak was that rare bird in golden age Hollywood: a film star who was an intellectual. Her cerebral pursuits included horticulture, book collecting, writing (a pet project was a history of the world), and most improbably, bacteriology. She spent her final years in Honolulu living in obscurity and semi-poverty and died in 1979 at the – by today’s standards – relatively youthful age of sixty-eight. But due to a number of factors – the revival of interest in pre-Code movies and their exposure via TCM, DVDs and theatrical releases; a growing online presence via various tributes and posts; and not least of all, Christina Rice’s marvelous biography – Ann Dvorak’s star has brightened in recent years and she’s finally getting the recognition denied her for decades.
Christina Rice’s Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel is a triumph. As the author points out tracking down information on such an under-the-radar subject was not an easy task, to say nothing of locating folks who had actually known her personally. But she persisted and her tome is veritably a model for a star biography, and especially for a biography of a once (near) major star who had faded from public view. The book then is a felicitous balance of the scholarly and the popular: reader-friendly but having the usual academic patina in the form of extensive index, notes and reading list, and a complete filmography. Especially noteworthy are the many photographs – most of them culled from the author’s private collection – of the eminently photogenic Miss Dvorak, even when she’s a bit worse-for-wear. It’s obvious Rice has a genuine affection for her subject but manages an objective view, and the sympathetic biography nicely balances professional and personal elements. As expected the big movies receive more extensive treatment but the lesser ones get respectable coverage as well. While we may infer that indeed Ann Dvorak appeared in her share of mediocre movies, even a few bad ones, she brought class and professionalism to every film she was in. The recalling of Dvorak’s attempts to challenge the big studios, mostly on contracts, reminds us of the power of the studio system in moviedom’s ‘golden age’ (the 1930s and 1940s), and the near slave-like hold the corporate giants had over its stars, both major and minor.
For ultimately the Ann Dvorak story isn’t unique in the annals of the entertainment industry, and like other performers with unfulfilled careers, any number of wha-if type questions arise. Would things have turned out differently if she hadn’t been so headstrong and hadn’t challenged the big studios early in her career; if only she’d played the game in the usual way and remained patient and let her career develop along more conventional lines; if she had gotten the role of Sadie Thompson in Rain, rather than losing out to Joan Crawford; if she hadn’t left the movies at such a relatively young age. Alas, as in all these kinds of questions, we have that always frustrating and unsatisfying answer: we’ll never know. What we do know is what she did, and, as much as is possible, who she was. But mostly we have her best films, those handful of pre-Codes, and for that we’re the richer.
Auntie Mame. [videorecording (DVD)]. Warner Bros. Pictures presents; screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green; directed by Morton DaCosta. From the novel, Auntie Mame, by Patrick Dennis, as adapted for the stage by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Originally released as a motion picture in 1958.
Director of photography, Harry Stradling, Sr.; art director, Malcolm Bert; film editor, William Ziegler; set decorator, George James Hopkins; costumes designed by Orry-Kelly; music by Bronislau Kaper. Performers: Rosalind Russell, Forrest Tucker, Coral Browne, Fred Clark, Roger Smith, Patric Knowles, Peggy Cass, Jan Handzlik, Joanna Barnes, Pippa Scott, Lee Patrick, Willard Waterman, Robin Hughes, Connie Gilchrist, Yuki Shimoda, Brook Byron, Carol Veazie.
Summary: In 1928, a 10-year-old boy goes to New York to live with his eccentric, sophisticated Auntie Mame, a lady who throws a party for any occasion, or non-occasion. He grows up and brings home his fiancée and her parents, and Mame finds them uninteresting and snobbish.
style ****
substance ****
A recent viewing, my first ever, of Auntie Mame provided me with one of those magical moments in a cinema buff’s life. This is a movie that’s a complete joy start to finish, and moreover strikes an emotional chord in a very personal way. And how well it’s aged!
By 1958 American culture and society was simmering with a liberal gestalt that would boil over in the Sixties, and the time was ripe for a (relatively) no-holds-barred cinematic treatment of the play that was a recent smash hit on Broadway. The attitudes in the film version of Auntie Mame are actually more Thirties (i.e. pre-Code-ish) than Fifties, and the script and situations get away with a lot of risqué/un-pc material, at least by the standards of the era. Then again, while the Fifties were more repressed than our own times, they were also less pc.
So much of the dialogue still sparkles today, especially when combined with the flawless delivery and timing. Indeed the zingers come so fast and frequent that they reveal themselves only upon repeated viewings. Maybe it has something to do with the story being set mostly in the Twenties and Thirties: those eras, like fine wine, become mellower and better as they age, certainly more so than, say, the Sixties and Seventies, which haven’t aged very gracefully. Continuing the thought, it occurs to me that Auntie Mame is basically a pre-Code movie made in 1958, i.e. all the stylistic trappings of 1950s films but with story line, snappy dialogue and worldly wise-characters that are pure early Thirties.
And true to the film's pre-Code, proletarian spirit, Mame’s character is socially, and, by implication, politically liberal. This is conveyed primarily through her zesty one-liners and verbal comebacks, which she delivers with considerable aplomb. But, curiously, for all the progressive overlay, politics per se doesn’t figure a whit in Auntie Mame. And while it's undeniable that Mame Dennis is more style than substance (and as a result wealth becomes her a lot better than poverty), when the style is this warm-hearted and honest in its, well, stylishness, how can we complain?
Indeed, the sheer force of Mame's personality is such that it obscures her positive, substantive qualities: generosity, tolerance, open-mindedness, sense of adventure, and perhaps most of all, impatience with pretense, snobbery and prejudice.
The above commentary notwithstanding, somehow I always think of Auntie Mame as a musical without musical numbers, probably due to its high gloss look (especially Orry-Kelly’s splendiferous costumes) and Bronislau Kaper’s by turns frothy and sentimental score. And while the film has a widescreen, plush look so typical of the era, suggesting MGM or Fox, it was actually produced, and only rightly so, by Warners, the most pre-Code-ish studio of them all.
A few quibbles: yes, Auntie Mame is overlong, by about fifteen minutes, and for me the first half of the film bubbles with a tastier bouquet than the second. But more important, what happened to World War II? Auntie Mame starts in 1928 then quickly progresses to the crash in 1929, after which the chronology gets murky. Anyhow we jump to 1946 and it’s as though the war didn’t exist, a fussy observation perhaps but I found the disconnect distracting. My only other mild reservation is that for all its flourishes Auntie Mame is at heart very talky, and very stagey, gloriously so, but in the end little more than a filmed play. Or, if you like, a series of (mostly wonderful) set pieces, all dominated by the larger-than-life character of Mame herself.
Another minor, and purely packaging, criticism: the DVD print is beautiful to look at – all those sets and costumes are totally scrumptious – but the disk is skimpy on bonus features. You’d think a film as important as Auntie Mame merits the deluxe edition treatment with commentary, featurette, interviews, etc. Maybe Criterion can be persuaded to release it in the future.
It would be an understatement to say this is Rosalind Russell’s signature role. I’ll invoke the tired cliché: this was the character – and what a character! – she was born to play. She projects with incomparable panache all of Mame’s exuberantly flamboyant glory. However – the supporting performances are wonderful too. I’m especially partial to Joanna Barnes's empty-headed socialite, and even more so, Coral Browne’s alcoholic diva, who’s just as over-the-top as Mame herself and matches her quip for quip. The only misfire among the secondary players is Peggy Cass as Miss Gooch, both the character and the performance.
In sum, Auntie Mame is an always welcome dose of joie-de-vivre and feel good energy. In those times when I'm feeling down or have a world-is-too-much feeling, I play the DVD, or conjure up the memory, and revel in the film’s generous, warm-hearted glory. And for a time, the world is a happy place again.
Further reading:
Les Fabian Brathwaite, Hays’d: Decoding the Classics — Auntie Mame
Richard Tyler Jordan, But darling, I'm your Auntie Mame! : the amazing history of the world's favorite aunt, Kensington Books, c2004.
Eric Meyers, Uncle Mame : the life of Patrick Dennis, St. Martin’s, 2000.
