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OT Potpourri: Sinatra and Novak and Saul Bass; Saul Bass and a "Walk on the Wild Side"

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I've been catching up on some "missed movies" in my life on cable, and a group of them interestingly merged together in a recent several day watch(with a little Hitchcock influence on the side):

I've opined that my replacement actor for the aged James Stewart in Vertigo would be Frank Sinatra at his 1958 star level(huge.) I sort of got to see my theory in action watching Sinatra appear with Kim Novak in 1957's "Pal Joey."

The film is set in San Francisco, with some location footage, and Novak looks and sounds almost exactly as she will in Vertigo the next year. But I noticed something that tied into Hitchcock:

When Hitchcock directed Novak in Vertigo, he told her that she was making too many facial expressions at once. He pulled out a pad of paper and drew one line on it: "This is as you should be acting, just one expression." He then drew a mess of lines all over the pad: "This is how you are acting, too many expressions."

Well, damn in Pal Joey if , while in repose, Novak doesn't overdo a bunch of facial expressions at once on her face. Hitchcock must have seen this film and decided to "cure" Novak of the problem.

Hitchcock famously didn't want Novak in Vertigo(he wanted Vera Miles), but he was evidently more angered her performance in other recent movies (The Eddy Duchin Story and Jeanne Eagels) than in Pal Joey. In Pal Joey, she's a sexy, sexy star starting to peak(alas for top billed Rita Hayworth, who dances sexily too, but is a few dangerous years older.)

Seeing Sinatra opposite Novak in Pal Joey dampened my casting of him in Vertigo. In Pal Joey, Sinatra plays a guy who pretty much gets every girl he wants(every showgirl in the nightclub, with Novak as his Number One Goal; plus rich Hayworth if he wants her.) However, the same week I saw Sinatra opposite Novak in Preminger's "The Man With the Golden Arm" and that was more like it: playing a drug addict, Sinatra hit those physical and mental lows(and angers) that Stewart gave us in Vertigo -- I COULD see Sinatra in Vertigo, now.

I'm also reminded that while Novak famously worked back-to-back with Stewart in Vertigo and Bell Book and Candle; she worked pretty close in time with Sinatra in Golden Arm and Pal Joey. So she's part of a few famous screen couples, at least two.

As a comparative matter, Pal Joey is lush and sassy and sexy, framed by a bunch of great Cole Porter songs("I Could Write a Book" is my favorite); "The Man With the Golden Arm" is a bit too mannered and broad in its study of a "junkie." And Darren McGavin(great voice THAT guy had) is a cartoonish moustached dandy of a "pusher man." This was one of those Otto Preminger movies made without the MPAA code, but it seems pretty quaint to me. His later films of Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent(especially) and In Harm's Way strike me as much more sophisticated and mature than "The Man With the Golden Arm."

Segue: The black-and-white "The Man With the Golden Arm" opens with a Saul Bass animated credit sequence that rather mimics the Psycho credits of 5 years later. I'm reminded that when Hitchcock hired Bass to do the credits for Vertigo, NXNW and Psycho he was rather "giving himself over" to allowing a Hitchcock movie to begin with another auteur's work: Saul Bass. The more one sees of Saul Bass's OTHER credit sequences, the more one realizes that Hitchcock rather submitted to Bass, allowed his movies to open "just like everybody else's movie" in the fifties and early sixties. Perhaps this is another reason why Hitch and Bass parted ways after three films.

Segue: I also watched "Walk on the Wild Side"(1962) as a hoot. I knew it opened with what some consider to be "the greatest Saul Bass credit sequence ever" -- but its a unique Saul Bass credit sequence. Rather than animated, the credits follow film footage of a black cat sinuously stalking the city streets as Elmer Bernstein's thunderous, exciting neo-Western theme plays over it(the story moves from Texas to New Orleans, so Bernstein adds a little spicy lowdown jazz to the overture, otherwise it sounds like The Magnificent Seven.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

"Walk on the Wild Side" is one of those movies I remember from my childhood that the adults talked about. It was for "adults only" and I was not allowed to see it. But I HEARD that great theme over and over on the radio. In the sixties, most new movies came with theme songs as radio hits: all the Mancini stuff , of course(Moon River, Baby Elephant Walk, Days of Wine and Roses, Charade), but also one-offs like "Goodbye Charlie" and "Baby the Rain Must Fall" -- catchy tunes that got you in the mood to see the movie. So it was with "Walk on the Wild Side."

Well, almost 60 years later, I saw it. A bit of a hoot. Lawrence Harvey -- in the same year as The Manchurian Candidate and looking and sounding exactly the same -- is a Texas drifter who travels to New Orleans in search of his lost love, Capucine. Turns out she's working in a New Orleans cathouse, and "lost to Harvey now." Jane Fonda is a sexy as hell orphan girl who makes the trip from Texas to New Orleans with Harvey...seeking to please him sexually but shut out by his love for Capucine. Anne Baxter amusingly plays a black wigged Mexican-American diner owner who employs Harvey. And Miss Barbara Stanwyck plays the iron-fisted madam of the cathouse who employs several men(including her crippled husband, who fights from a postion on his knees while sitting on a rolling cart,) as her enforcement muscle. It is also more than strongly suggested that Stanwyck's madam is a lesbian with a a major crush on Capucine and hence a major jealousy of lovelorn Harvey.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

"Walk on the Wild Side" is one of those Hays Code straddling 1962 movies where the sexual content is everywhere but on the screen. Nothing is spelled out, everything is suggested, but the presence of Jane Fonda in her va-va-voom sexpot period gives the movie a real sexual charge. Unfortunately, the story is hackneyed and told badly, and (1962 and later reviews have proven) everyone except Fonda is miscast. Capucine(a girlfriend of a major Hollywood agent, his Tippi Hedren with actual benefits) is too old, too cold, and too foreign for her part. Laurence Harvey looks pretty good but is all wrong as a dirt poor good ol' boy. And Anne Baxter is laughable in accent and performance as the Mexican lady who also lusts after Harvey.

Only Jane Fonda survives the mess -- and proves why and how she became a star. (Extra points for a coupla scenes with the lovely, sexy and troubled Joanna Moore -- ex-wife of Ryan O'Neal and mother of Tatum O"Neal -- here playing a childlike hooker. Hitchcock had Moore on contract, he only used her on the TV series.)

Still, that Saul Bass credit sequence with Elmer Bernstein's score is exciting indeed. You can watch it on YouTube. You can skip the movie.

Bonus points: the poster for Walk on the Wild Side can be viewed at imdb, its one of those "realistic paintings" of Harvey and all the female cast members. Again, only Jane Fonda -- even in painting form -- stands out as a star on the poster.

Bonus points: as a 1962 movie, Walk on the Wild Side brings in character actors from three major Hitchcocks of the time: Ken Lynch from NXNW(cop in Chicago in that movie), Karl Swenson from The Birds(Tides diner drunk) and John Anderson from Psycho(California Charlie.) They were who you cast in those days, I guess.

These three movies -- The Man With the Golden Arm, Pal Joey, and Walk on the Wild Side -- have been on my "I really gotta see that someday" list for years. I can say that only Pal Joey was satisfying...and nostalgic to boot, with a heavy Vertigo vibe in SF locales and Novak. I'm reminded again that Hitchcock made very unique, very artistic, and very intelligent entertainment against a lot of lazy Hollywood product in those years.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

I'm reminded again that Hitchcock made very unique, very artistic, and very intelligent entertainment against a lot of lazy Hollywood product in those years.

I've had a similar experience watching a whole bunch of relatively well-regarded but not top-tier '30s films recently, e.g., Death Goes On A Holiday, The Bride Wore Red. Compared to Hitchcock and Hawks and Wyler and Cukor and Lubitsch and Stevens and Capra and Walsh films from the same period, these babies are well-meaning but stiff and stagey, characters are all stock and ultimately just not believable, no visual ideas period, plotting is uncertain, dialogue wooden and un-amusing.

As consumers of film history we tend to graze from the top shelf of every decade, and only rarely do we confront the historic counterparts of the completely mediocre, largely unsuccessful film-making we see every day at the multiplex and on Netflix.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

As consumers of film history we tend to graze from the top shelf of every decade, and only rarely do we confront the historic counterparts of the completely mediocre, largely unsuccessful film-making we see every day at the multiplex and on Netflix.

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Yep, there have been a lot of movies made over the decades , from Palace theaters to multiplexes to straight-to-video, which simply aren't very good. I actually like a lot of them, I'm always willing to accommodate for some B dialogue and hackneyed characters if the overall experience is entertaining.

It was Stanley Kubrick who said that he believed many folks in Hollywood WANTED to make good movies, but just didn't have the intelligence to do it(a little snobby, that -- but I guess a little true.)

Funny thing: "The Man With the Golden Arm" had a hard-hitting reputation: a tough look at the cravings of a junkie, essayed by a newly minted top star(Sinatra), but it played to me like Marty with less intelligence: kitchen sink New York melodrama with a hoary central gimmick: Sinatra's "crippled" and clinging wife(Eleanor Parker) is in a wheelchair, but only WE see that she can really walk and is tricking Sinatra to keep him around. This leads to a "wrong man" twist(Parker kills someone who discovers her ruse, and Sinatra is blamed for the murder) but THAT plays out too melodramatic in this "gritty" film about addiction. Ultimately, it just felt like an amateur production to me. And that's a "good" movie that Hitchcock was in competition with.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Still, that Saul Bass credit sequence with Elmer Bernstein's score is exciting indeed. You can watch it on YouTube. You can skip the movie.

It's funny too, this movie is *completely* overshadowed by Lou Reed's song with the same title (one of the most important songs of the '70s) 2 . I'm sure Reed got the title and maybe a bit of louche atmosphere from the film but beyond that all of the content was all Lou's own downtown druggie, LGBT-friendly milieu.

Other examples of movie titles being reused for popular songs where the song ends up much more famous: Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' and maybe 'Badlands', Oasis's 'Wonderwall' and maybe 'Look Back In Anger'. Growing up in the '80s it *felt* as though things like Billy Idol's 'Eyes Without a Face' and New Order's 'In A Lonely Place and The Motel's 'Suddenly Last Summer' were more famous than their movie antecedents, but decades further on, none of those tracks really made much of a mark. They're no 'Wild Side', that's for sure.

Note: I'm excluding from consideration songs that are *from* the movie with which they share a title: 'To Sir With Love', 'Georgy Girl', 'Fame', 'Ghostbusters', 'Xanadu', 'Hard Days Night', Help!', 'Jailhouse Rock', 'Purple Rain', 'You Only Live Twice', etc..

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It's funny too, this movie is *completely* overshadowed by Lou Reed's song with the same title (one of the most important songs of the '70s)

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Yep. Its funny, in writing the OP, I had in my mind only the Bernstein melody (which has words sung to it in the movie, by Brook Benton.) But Lou Reed made the title far more famous in a new melodic context, didn't he? And its a GREAT phrase: how many of us in real life haven't joked "I'm gonna take a walk on the wild side tonight."

I think this adds up to a reason I wanted to see this movie when it came available. This is a phrase that has been around my whole life, it was time to track down the movie that started it all. Alas, its not a very good movie at all.

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2 . I'm sure Reed got the title and maybe a bit of louche atmosphere from the film but beyond that all of the content was all Lou's own downtown druggie, LGBT-friendly milieu.

Agreed. Though I will note that Barbara Stanwyck seems pretty clearly to be playing a lesbian, an older lesbian with a certain jealousy towards the young women under her charge. Its clear that she covets Capucine(her favorite among "the ladies") and I think we are meant to think that Stanwyck and Capucine have been intimate in the backstory (Stanwyck simply won't let Capucine escape with Harvey, or any other man.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Other examples of movie titles being reused for popular songs where the song ends up much more famous: Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' and maybe 'Badlands', Oasis's 'Wonderwall' and maybe 'Look Back In Anger'. Growing up in the '80s it *felt* as though things like Billy Idol's 'Eyes Without a Face' and New Order's 'In A Lonely Place and The Motel's 'Suddenly Last Summer' were more famous than their movie antecedents, but decades further on, none of those tracks really made much of a mark. They're no 'Wild Side', that's for sure.

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Of that interesting group, I think "Suddenly Last Summer" is on point, because it was a powerful contemporary song linked to a "kinky" movie of that late Pre Hays Code era. Certain of us remember that movie(if only from TV) and it doesn't really track with the song.

By the way, one poster for Repulsion in 1965 said: "Makes Psycho look like a Sunday School Picnic"

And one print ad for Psycho in 1960 said: "Makes Suddenly Last Summer look like a Sunday School Picnic."

The 60's were tough on Sunday School Picnics...

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Note: I'm excluding from consideration songs that are *from* the movie with which they share a title: 'To Sir With Love', 'Georgy Girl', 'Fame', 'Ghostbusters', 'Xanadu', 'Hard Days Night', Help!', 'Jailhouse Rock', 'Purple Rain', 'You Only Live Twice', etc..

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Though I referenced the Mancini songs and obscurities like Goodbye Charlie and Baby the Rain Must Fall(because I liked those as radio songs as a kid)...clearly there are a host of movie songs from their movie's titles(let's toss Live and Let Die in there too) over the decades, at least up through Ghostbusters in 1984.

And that, too, has pretty much disappeared from the music scene. We don't really have "Top Ten Radio" anymore, or Easy Listening. I suppose some modern movies can lead a listener to songs on streaming or such but...the "movie song on the radio" era is over. It was the soundtrack of MY life.

Meanwhile: one of the reasons Hitchcock fired Bernard Herrmann off of Torn Curtain(and out of Hitchocck's life) is that he was under short-term pressure to produce a "hit radio song" from a Hitchocck movie in the 60's. Two attempts were evidently dismal failures: a "Marnie" single(by Nat King Cole), and a Torn Curtain single(by the Johnny Mann singers; its on the Torn Curtain soundtrack album) went nowhere. I will assume, however, that in the fifties, "Que Sera, Sera" was a big radio hit.

Trying to imagine a pop radio hit to go with Vertigo or NXNW is near impossible. Trying to imagine a pop radio hit for Psycho or Frenzy IS impossible. And yet, the gory "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" got a title tune radio hit for Patti Page.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

the "movie song on the radio" era is over.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The movie-radio song connection was still going strong in the '90s: truly *massive* hits came from The Bodyguard, that Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie, Titanic, Four Weddings and a Funeral, that Michelle Pfeiffer urban School-teacher film Dangerous Minds, Armageddon, Men In Black, Space Jam, Lion King, Meg Ryan-fest City of Angels.

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Jeez Louise...how could I forget all THAT?

I suppose that one difference "going forward" in movie songs is that while many films of the 60s and 70's often used "fake rock" on their soundtracks (here's one nobody thinks about: the silly fake rock at the diner where Rusk disembarks the potato truck in Frenzy; CLASSIC "rock with no real rock" to it); by the 80's, REAL rock hits were part of the soundtracks of the movies.

Now, I know this began with The Graduate and Simon and Garfunkel, but that seems to be a "one off" while the Hollywood movies continued their inability to cut deals with the rock and rollers for awhile.

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And below that level the tune-laden soundtracks for Pulp Fiction, Singles, Clueless, Forrest Gump, Romeo+Juliet, The Matrix, Good Will Hunting, Trainspotting, and many others both sold very well and got lots of play on *some* radio stations.

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Rock heavy soundtracks, still another matter, though I liked how QT somehow resurrected Dick Dale's hit for the opening credits(Mr. Dale died just a few weeks ago in his 80s as I post this; I was lucky enough to see him in concert a year or so after Pulp Fiction, it really revived his career.)

And then there's that weirdly evocative "Defonics" soundtrack that QT put together to give "Jackie Brown" a 70's soul undertow.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Since 2000, though, the connection's been broken: Eminem had a huge hit from his Curtis-Hanson directed film and Almost Famous put 'Tiny Dancer' back on the radio big time and Twilight had that one great Paramore song 'Decode' that was better than the movie... but really there's just been only the odd explicit musical like Frozen or Greatest Showman or Star is Born breaking through.

It's really very odd that the movie-pop link should break down so suddenly after 3 or 4 decades.

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I suppose the answer there is the death of radio as something everybody listens to, and often in the car. Oh there are some modern radio stations but they don't have the same homogenous audience as past generations. Some listen to Sirrius satellite radio, where one can live happily in the past(Sinatra, The Beatles, Elvis, the 70's, the 80s) Some listen to Spotify songs. I can't see how a movie studio could get its songs played widely in such formats. Even MTV isn't what it once was -- I recall watching all the 80's movies songs arrive with videos, often with clips from the movies.

Its kinda/sorta too bad. It was "emotional" growing up with Moon River and Charade and A Hard Day's Night carrying their movie memories on out through the radio airwaves, enwrapping reality in fluffy cloud of musical fantasy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And I recall this bizarre triple play of movie songs as 1973 gave way to 1974: "The Way We Were"(Streisand singing rather standard schmaltz in the Moon River tradition, with a heavy dose of nostalgia), "The Sting"(Marvin Hamlisch get a hit out of a turn of the century ragtime intstrumental designed to accompany a story set in the 30's), and "Tubular Bells"(the weird instrumental theme from The Exorcist.) Those were three big movies in 73/74(well, two superblockbusters and one hit)...and they were all over the radio even as they stayed in theaters.

"The Way We Were" and "The Sting" both starred Robert Redford. He was probably somewhere between non-plussed and uncaring that his two hit movies had two hit songs. He was on record as shocked that the cutesy-pie "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" from Butch Cassidy became such a big hit -- he didn't think it fit the movie. He didn't even see The Sting until he rented it for his grandkids decades after he made it. I wonder if he even knew how much a part of the culture the songs from The Way We Were and The Sting were. He was/is such an "artiste in glamour boy's clothing"(well, now, OLD glamour boy.)

[–] Martoto (5033) 6 years ago

Having watched Pal Joey recently too, my opinion is that the pair of them together would have made Vertigo far too lopsided.

Sinatra just wasn't in Novak's class as an actor. I almost feel sorry for him at times during Pal Joey. Sinatra's not bad but Novak is just streets ahead of him. It worked ok for Pal Joey but I doubt I could have been convinced of Sinatra's Scottie having the same control over Judy as Stewart's did.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Sinatra just wasn't in Novak's class as an actor. I almost feel sorry for him at times during Pal Joey. Sinatra's not bad but Novak is just streets ahead of him. It worked ok for Pal Joey but I doubt I could have been convinced of Sinatra's Scottie having the same control over Judy as Stewart's did.

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An intriguing analysis. One thing's for sure: Kim Novak was very UNDER-rated in her time; look how she pretty much marches Rita Hayworth off the screen in Pal Joey and makes Sinatra's quest for Novak(when every other woman in the movie wants him bad) a quest for the Holy Grail(He gives up everything.)

And there is this, I think: one thing that Vertigo has proved over the years is that when the story shifts to Judy and her longings and her pain, Kim Novak really takes over. Its HER story, and we are deeply invested in, and on the side of, a woman who was accessory to murder. The pain at the heart of Vertigo lies with Novak's performance.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

. I'm sure Reed got the title and maybe a bit of louche atmosphere from the film but beyond that all of the content was all Lou's own downtown druggie, LGBT-friendly milieu.

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Though Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side is by far the most famous tune with that title, the Elmer Bernstein instrumental turns up from time to time in new places.

Case in point:

Martin Scorsese's Casino(1995) is wall to wall with rock and soul and jazz from the 60s(in the main) -- Scorsese's youth, no doubt.

And at one gripping juncture in the picture, "Walk on the Wild Side"(the Bernstein version, not the Lou Reed version) comes on the soundtrack, but in a weird way:

A red-haired San Diego matron is challenging a casino owner in Vegas court to open the books on the casino. Not good: heavy mob ownership will be revealed. So the mob decides to "settle out of court" by sending Joe Pesci to put some bullets in the angry matron's head, at her breakfast table. Its a brutal scene. Scored to some sudden, incendiary jazz that only manifests fully AS "Walk on the Wild Side" in the next shot: of the "straight" casino owner-front man( Kevin Pollak) being asked, as he disembarks a private jet, what he knows about this woman being executed. Its an outta nowhere brutal scene(an angry citizen in court is summarily executed at her breakfast table) given a turbocharge of sassy 1962 jazz. Rat Pack-ish. '62 was their time(Walk on the Wild Side music), though Casino is set in the 70's and early 80s.