Girls in the Night (1953)

Director: Jack Arnold
Screenplay: Ray Buffum
Music: Henry Mancini, Herman Stein
Cinematography: Carl Guthrie
Producer: Albert J. Cohen
1953; Universal-International; 83min; B&W
Cast: Harvey Lembeck (Chuck Haynes), Joyce Holden (Georgia Cordray), Glenda Farrell (Alice Haynes), Glen Roberts (Joe Spurgeon), Patricia Hardy (Hannah Haynes), Jaclynne Greene (Vera Schroeder), Don Gordon (Irv Kellener), Emile Meyer (Officer Kovacs)

While Jack Arnold directed films in many genres, he will always be known for his string of science-fiction films in the 1950s. His first commercial feature is this dated, obscure but interesting melodrama with young adults eager to break out of the East Side ghetto- by any means. In a rare dramatic role, Harvey Lembeck (best remembered to modern audiences as the bumbling bike-gang leader in the Beach Party movies) is the aimless Chuck Haynes, who lives with his parents and two siblings in a cramped East Side tenement. All of the central characters have a desire to aspire to a better life- especially the father figure (presently disabled from an accident) who wants to put a down payment on a house (only three blocks away!) to get his family out of the ghetto. Chuck’s girlfriend Georgia scrapes up some loose change by shaking her booty at a beatnik party; his sister Hannah wins a beauty contest, but won’t get anywhere with her dopey boyfriend Joe.

One night this quartet robs some loot stashed by some old miser in his house, but unbeknownst to them the man is dead in the other room, as cheap hood Irv and his accomplice Vera had just made a botched robbery attempt before their arrival. Chuck is accused of murder, and his friends conspire to unmask the true culprit. Hannah, previously avoiding the lecherous affections of Irv, decides to turn up the affection towards him in order to spill the beans.

The film already has novelty value because of its director, the atypical dramatic lead, and for featuring the first significant role for ubiquitous character actor Don Gordon (seen in countless 70s movies and TV series). It is also unique in that the central villain of this piece is a woman. The tomboyish Vera is the most complex figure in this piece: calculating, full of sexual longing, clamouring for attention. She is attracted to Irv, and at first is subservient to his every whim. After the murder however, he is wrapped around her little finger, and must cater to her demands, lest she implicate him with the crime. Throughout most of the picture, Vera is commonly referred to in the second person as “Ugly”. (Try getting that one out of the gate today.) But fret not, viewers, for in the end credits when the voice of Universal contract player Jeff Chandler (!) introduces the young newcomers, it is revealed that actress Jaclynne Greene isn’t as homely as her fictional character.

This was made before The Blackboard Jungle ushered in the cycle of “troubled teen” flicks later in the decade, and as such, borrows from an earlier tradition. This space-age chronicle of misspent youth harkens back to the conventions of the Bowery Boys urban melodramas of the 1940s. Almost everyone, cops and teens alike, talks in patter like “Ah shaddap!” and “Look here, see?” (I kept waiting for Leo Gorcey to show up.)

It Should Happen To You (1954)

Director: George Cukor

Writer: Garson Kanin

Producer: Fred Kohlmar

Music: Frederick Hollander

Cinematography: Charles Lang

Columbia Pictures; 86 min; color

Cast:

Judy Holliday (Gladys Glover), Peter Lawford (Evan Adams), Jack Lemmon (Pete Sheppard)

It is a surprise to view It Should Happen To You today, during the glut of so-called "reality TV", where everyone is famous for just being famous.  One doubts that Garson Kanin knew he was writing something so ahead of its time, but years before Warhol's epochal phrase "Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes", this movie is scarily prescient of an age when someone can be a household name for no other reason than for warbling an off-key cover of "Pink Houses" or hoarding too many old pizza boxes.

Gladys Glover comes to New York with the star in her eyes, so much that she decides to blow a chunk of her savings to rent billboard space with nothing but her name on it. (Angelyne, whose real-life rise to dubious fame was also due to self-promotion on billboards, must have taken notes.)  Her celebrity status however arrives indirectly. An ad company, desiring the prime location where Gladys innocently promotes herself, attempts to buy the billboard back from her, and even has their salesman Evan Adams attempt to woo the star-struck gal. After all of these plans fail, she however agrees to let the company in turn buy her ad space on numerous, but smaller, billboards throughout the city. In a delightful moment (that echoes the 40s pictures of Preston Sturges in theme, and in how the frame of the single-take scene is cluttered with eccentric characters), Gladys nonchalantly shops in a department store, only to be asked for autographs by clerks and customers alike, merely because one of her eponymous billboards is across the street! This dubious rise to fame irks the noble filmmaker Pete Sheppard, who lives down the hall in her building. Because he makes documentaries (watch how everyone in a 1954 movie gets tongue-tied on that word), he represents "truth", and thereby sees the lies and exploitation behind what is perceived as showbiz glamour. 

It Should Happen To You also presages another interesting cousin: Budd Schulberg's script for A Face In The Crowd. In their separate ways, both films satirize one unlikely person's rise to fame in the media... merely for being themselves.  Crowd's antagonist, hayseed Lonesome Rhodes however becomes a sensation for telling it like it is, whereas Gladys Glover becomes a media darling precisely because, well, she's so darn human. Her unfortunate wooden delivery, echoing the wide-eyed vulnerability of a deer in view of headlights, and her ignorance of the real world, are precisely what endear her to the public. Whereas Rhodes exploits his fame and becomes a monster, in this film the monster is truly the fame that woos and unknowingly exploits Gladys.

Because this movie is a vehicle for Judy Holliday (in a role originally written with Danny Kaye in mind!), of course it couldn't be as bitter a satire as A Face In the Crowd.  In her fourth and final collaboration with Garson Kanin and George Cukor, the multi-talented actress is completely winning as Gladys Glover.  In the climactic scenes where Gladys appears on several television shows, Holliday masterfully plays her down, to expose all of the character's insecurities. Although Gladys is ignorant of the harsh realities behind the curtains of celebrity and advertising, Judy Holliday portrays her as anything but the stereotypical 50's "dumb blonde". Gladys Glover may be sweetly naive, and her ascension to fame is through a series of happy accidents, but she however still is tough enough to survive a world with lecherous males who attempt to seduce with their wallets. Kanin's screenplay is wise, and often has some genuine belly laughs, however still manages to be bubbly and light. George Cukor's direction is often in uncomplicated setups- gently allowing this film just to happen. This film is also noteworthy for the debut of Jack Lemmon- and he's already patented his fidgety patter. He makes Pete Sheppard the first of his many everyman roles who sees the truth that no one else wants to- and comes to rescue Gladys, even when she is at first unaware she needs salvation.

New York in the Fifties (2001)

I read Dan Wakefield's book New York in the Fifties many moons ago, and remember it to be a nice little treat, if not as revolutionary as it could be. And that is precisely my thought of this documentary, which uses Wakefield's book as the template, adding interviews and archival footage.

The central thesis of this film is that all of the revolutionary acts of the 60s had their seeds in the 50s, in the Big Apple, which was the exodus for those who didn't buy the white picket fence dream. As such, within the memoirs of such interviewees as Joan Didion (her novella "The White Album" is the for me the definitive impression of the end of the 60s), Robert Redford, filmmaker Ted Steeg (the man who gave us Coffee House Rendezvous, a lovely educational film I've raved about incessantly), musician David Amram, and writer Nat Hentoff, we are given whispers of women's rights, equality, and most of all, the general sense of acceptance and community in the period. If the 1960's were drugs and rock and roll, with music being the communicative device of the period, the 1950s were booze, jazz, and literature was the language of the people. As such, the film turns startlingly personal, with interviewee Dan Wakefield candidly discussing battling his own demons with alcohol. In that sense, the era of the "three martini lunch" had its casualties, too.

But also there is some terrific archival footage of author James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen show, and some hilarious excerpts of Norman Mailer talking about womens lib and its alleged lesbianism! I am curious why Mailer wasn't an interviewee. His was such an important voice of the decade, and also a vital example of how an author became a celebrity outside of the printed word, it would have been interesting to hear his take on things. Instead, the filmmakers used some footage of Mailer, in what I believe to be the 1970s! Ironically, I watched this film at about two in the morning Friday night. In a few hours, Mailer would pass away at the age of 84.

Betsy Blankenbaker's film is a joy to watch. While we learn how revolutionary the decade really was, it was a comparatively quiet revolution. As such, this documentary replies in kind, by gently whispering that message.