Blood and Kisses: Ten Fabulous Bette Davis Quotes

cool Bette

By Heather Babcock

The odd one out in a sea of perfect cheekbones and symmetrical faces, Bette Davis was the closest thing to an “every-woman” that classic Hollywood ever got. Dismissed early on in her career by studio heads who didn’t find her “sexy” enough, the feisty trailblazing Davis went on to become one of the most popular, iconic and enduring figures of film and pop culture.

In some ways, Davis was the female Lon Chaney, “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. In films like Of Human Bondage (1934), Mr. Skeffington (1944) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), she portrayed unlikable characters with a relish that bordered on sadomasochism and insisted on using “ugly” make-up to look more hideous than her directors thought necessary. In her breakout role as Mildred Rogers, the vile wretch who cruelly toys with poor, sensitive Philip Carey (Leslie Howard) in Of Human Bondage (1934), Bette, in her own words, “made it pretty clear that Mildred was not going to die of a dread disease looking as if a deb had missed her noon nap.” During the filming of Mr. Skeffington (1944), when her director Vincent Sherman balked at the over-the-top make-up she insisted on wearing to play Fanny Skeffington, a deteriorating socialite who has lost her looks to diphtheria, Bette shrugged. “My audience likes to see me do this kind of thing,” she replied.

Those large, infamous eyes were like that of a doe but onscreen Bette Davis often possessed the look of a startled rattlesnake. Like a razor blade hidden inside a tube of pink lipstick, her kiss – and words – had plenty of bite. In films such as The Letter (1940) and All About Eve (1950), Davis delivered cutting and suggestive lines with her own signature blend of caustic sensuality. Here is a look at some of Bette’s most unforgettable on-screen quotes (with a fabulous off-screen one thrown in for good measure):

Continue reading “Blood and Kisses: Ten Fabulous Bette Davis Quotes” →

Barbie: A Doll’s Uprising

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The only thing bigger than their breasts was their smiles. The women lived in a large pink house, shared a pink convertible and ran their own clothing shop where they sold – you guessed it – little pink dresses. There was no need for men in their world: when the ladies felt like a little romance, they had each other. When they weren’t in the shop, you could probably find them in little striped bikinis, lounging by the pool which doubled as my parent’s bathroom sink.

Yep, I was a Barbie girl and this was my Barbie’s world.

I didn’t know back then that Barbie’s figure – with its itty-bitty waist, huge perky boobs and tippy-toed feet – made her a controversial role model and I definitely had no idea of the origins of that sexy figure; that Barbie owed her bodacious bod to an ancestor named Lilli, an adult toy based on Bild Lilli, a popular comic strip about a high-end call girl.

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Sold at bars and cigar shops, the Lilli doll was meant as a stag gift for adult men. On a 1956 vacation in Switzerland, Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler was inspired by Lilli to create a similar doll – but this one for little girls, who up until then were expected to play with baby dolls.  Back home, male toy buyers scoffed at her idea.

“Each said ‘Ruth, you’ve made a major mistake with this doll. Little girls want cutesy, cuddly baby dolls. They all want to pretend to be mommies.’ No, little girls want to pretend to be bigger girls.” – Ruth Handler

Sixty years later, Barbie is still here and Handler is still right.  Personally, I love that Barbie liberated herself from the trappings of a misogynist joke, morphing from sex object to independent woman. No longer just an object of male fantasy, Barbie became a conduit for girlhood dreams and ambitions.  Over the years, Barbie has been a teacher, a rock star, an astronaut and – most importantly – whatever the little girl holding her in her hand wants to be.

“My whole philosophy was that through the doll, a little girl could be anything she wanted to be. She became not just a doll. She became part of that child through those growing up years. Many of those children set their life’s dreams, their goals, through Barbie. Many of them said Barbie helped them achieve those dreams. That’s a pretty heavy thing, but it’s true”.  – Ruth Handler

I’ve always loved experimenting with fashion and when I was in my 20s, I went deliciously overboard: wigs, PVC dresses, NSFW miniskirts, tiaras – you name it.  Back then, people would sometimes call me a “Barbie doll”.  It’s interesting: when women called me this, it was always with affection and good humor. However when men said it, it was with a sneer: using the doll’s name as a dismissive put-down.

Too bad for them I took it as a compliment.

Remembering the Forgotten: A Look at WW1 through the Lens of Pre-Code Hollywood

heroes for sale

By Heather Babcock

“Pain. Agony. Continual torture. Day after day, like a million ants eating me alive. Do you know what that means? No, you don’t. Because when I was being blown to bits, you were sitting here safe and comfortable. And you’re still sitting here in judgement.” – Tom Holmes (Richard Barthelmess), Heroes for Sale (1933)

Remembrance Day is not about “glorifying war”. November 11th is not about the men, safe in their power, who created the wars. Rather, Remembrance Day is about the men and women who left their homes and their families to sacrifice – sometimes their lives – for us: for the freedoms we can choose to take for granted today. November 11th is about the Veterans who are not here to tell their stories. It is about the Veterans who thankfully are still here to tell their stories. And it is about those who cannot or could not tell their stories because they are/were too painful to verbalize.

Sound motion pictures (“talkies”) were introduced to the public about nine years after the end of World War One. Many of the top directors of early sound films – such as Busby Berkeley, James Whale and William A. Wellman – were WW1 veterans. War films made during this period, while in no means shying away from the death and destruction of the battlefield, are not gory as the war films that would be made in later decades. War films released during Hollywood’s Pre-Code period focus more on the mental, emotional and financial struggles that the WW1 veterans faced after coming home. Perhaps the directors – who may have experienced PTSD themselves – did not want to exploit the real-life horrors and violence they had faced for an audience’s entertainment.  While modern war films focus on battlefield action, Pre-Code war movies focus on humanity and loss.

In the 1933 film Heroes for Sale, Richard Bartelmess plays Tom Holmes, a WW1 soldier whose heroic act on the battlefield is rewarded not with a medal but with a morphine addiction. He gets a job at a bank and attempts to hide his addiction but his drug dealer keeps pushing up the price. Desperate, Tom goes to see his doctor. The doctor refuses to prescribe the drug and instead calls Tom’s boss at the bank, who promptly fires him. “You fellows forget the war is over,” the smug banker chastises Tom. “Time to quit beating the drum and waving the flag.” This scene is interesting for a couple of reasons: as is often the case in Warner Brothers’ Pre-Code films, the banker is presented as sinister and downright evil, which makes a lot of sense in a film that was released about three and a half years after the stock market crash, but even more importantly this scene gives flesh to the feelings of ingratitude and dismissiveness that some WW1 vets were feeling upon returning home. In the groundbreaking 1932 movie I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, WW1 vet James Allen (the wonderful Paul Muni) exclaims in frustration: “No one seems to realize that I’ve changed – that I’m different now! I’ve been through hell! Folks here are concerned with my uniform and how I dance. I’m out of step with everybody.”

In his 1931 book Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s, author Frederick Lewis Allen describes a 1919 Life magazine cartoon in which a personification of Uncle Sam says to a WW1 vet “Nothing is too good for you, my boy! What would you like?” to which the soldier replies “A job.” About fourteen years later, Joan Blondell and Etta Moten Barnett performed the boot stomping finale “Remember My Forgotten Man” in the movie Gold Diggers of 1933. Blondell speaks the song’s opening lyrics:

“Remember my forgotten man? You put a rifle in his hand. You sent him far away, you shouted ‘hip, hooray!’ But look at him today.” (Lyrics by Warren and Dubin)

The elaborate number, choreographed by WW1 vet Busby Berkeley, begins with the forgotten women: the war widows, grieving mothers and the girls whose dreams of home and marriage were ripped away in what is now considered one of the bloodiest and deadliest wars in history with an estimated 37 million lives lost. “Forgetting him means you’re forgetting me,” Blondell sighs, as she wanders the streets looking for a trick. The number then shifts from the women to the men. We see proud men marching off to war in crisp uniforms. Girls throw flowers and toss kisses at them. Blankets of ticker tape and confetti seem to fall from the sky. But new soldiers come to join the parade: these men are bloody and bandaged; some carry dead, broken bodies on their backs. No one cheers these men on for the crowd has long disappeared.  Next, the battlefield transforms into a breadline and young men shiver in the cold as they wait in line for a stale sandwich and a cup of watered down coffee. “We are the real forgotten men,” the soldiers sing. “Who have to lead this life again. We sauntered forth to fight, for glory was our pride but somehow glory died.”

Busby based the number on the Bonus Army of 1932. During one of the bleakest years of the Great Depression, an estimated 15,000 WW1 veterans, out of work and hungry, made their way to the nation’s capital to demand payment of their bonus for serving in the war. They called themselves the “Bonus Expeditionary Force” and set up camp and ramshackle tents throughout Washington, D.C. Their pleas fell on deaf ears though when on June 17 the Senate voted against the House-passed bill that would have given WW1 vets immediate payment of their bonus. With no money and no place to go, the soldiers remained in their man-made camps. On July 28th, 1932 President Hoover ordered the Army to forcibly remove the veterans, along with their wives and children, using a violent force of tanks and cavalry with fixed bayonets and tear gas. Afterwards, the government set the veteran’s make-shift homes on fire.

Public sentiment was largely on the side of the WW1 soldiers: it didn’t matter which political party one followed, nobody – Republican, Democrat or independent – thought it was okay for the government to be gassing American war vets on the White House lawn.

Incidentally, Gold Diggers of 1933 was shot during the same time as Heroes for Sale. Both films are examples of the grit and perseverance of the people who lived through the Great Depression: “It takes more than one sock in the jaw to lick 120 million people,” Tom says at the end of Heroes for Sale, as he shivers in the rain in a Hooverville (an early 1930s term for a homeless camp). People in the 1930s may have been beaten down but they were looking up.

Canadian artist F.H. Varley’s 1918 painting “For What?” depicts a scene from WW1. Although a barrel of folded up corpses is in the painting’s foreground, this is not what immediately captures the eye. Instead we first notice the men in the background: one planting white crosses as another digs graves. Heavy clouds roll above them. This haunting painting is the strongest representation of PTSD (at the time referred to as “shell shock”) that I have ever seen.

On November 11th, we will remember the ones who died and the ones who were left behind to “lead this life again”; the decorated and the forgotten.

We will honor them as these films honored them: by remembering the horrors that they tried so hard to forget.

Creepy Silent Movies You Need to See This Halloween

lon tops

By Heather Babcock

As I watch and explore silent pictures, a common theme emerges: Death. This is not surprising as many of these films were created in the years following WW1. An estimated 37 million lives were lost during what is considered one of the deadliest and bloodiest wars in history. Young men (some still teenagers) from rural areas and working class backgrounds saw enlistment as their one chance to travel and experience adventure – to “see the world” – sadly, many saw their dreams of exploration mutate into real life nightmares of unspeakable horror.

Death and destruction lurk within the shadows of movies made during this period. Feelings of loneliness, disappointment and alienation fuse with fear. What follows is a handful of silent horror films which offer a very different kind of escapism: watching these movies, you may feel as though the world has been upended – leaving you alone to drown in their vast, sempiternal skies. Continue reading “Creepy Silent Movies You Need to See This Halloween” →

Riot Against the Machine: Review of Speedy (1928)

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By Heather Babcock, 2019

A few years ago I was waiting in line at my neighborhood independent dollar store; an elderly woman was in front of me and as the cashier (a young man in his twenties) was handing over her change, he wished her a good day. “I’m 85 years old,” the woman replied. “It’s never a good day for me, all my friends are dead.” The young man reached over and held out his hand to her. “Listen,” he said kindly, “I’m your friend. If you ever feel like you need a friend, just come down here and see me.”

I have thought about this interaction often, as I see more and more self-checkout machines taking the place of human beings. I think about how – when it comes to technology – it is not just about what we gain but also about what we lose, in this case the simple pleasure of human interaction. I thought about this again as I watched Speedy (1928), a Harold Lloyd silent comedy about a habitually unemployed young man named Speedy who makes it his mission to save New York City’s last horse-drawn trolley-car, owned and driven by his girlfriend’s grandfather, Pop.

The delightful comedy follows Speedy as he loses job after job. Pop explains the problem: “Speedy gets plenty of jobs – but he’ll never keep one while his mind is full of baseball.”  Indeed, Speedy’s only requirement of his employers is “that their store be within phoning distance of the Yankee stadium.” After his baseball-on-the-brains obsession causes him to be sacked from his job as a soda jerk, Speedy shrugs. “Aw Jane,” he says to his flapper girlfriend, played by the fetching Ann Christy, “Why worry about losing a job on a Saturday when we can go to Coney Island on Sunday? Besides you know I always get a job on Monday.”  This in turn leads to a dazzling extended sequence at Coney Island’s Luna Park. I’ve never visited Coney Island and have no idea what it’s like today but the fun park is featured prominently in plenty of 1920’s movies, notably Clara Bow’s It (1927) and Lonesome (1928) (the latter boasts one of the most beautiful early two-strip Technicolor scenes I have ever seen). Wearing heels and a swell dress, flapper Jane doesn’t care if you can see her underwear as she joins Speedy on the “Human Roulette Wheel”, the “Double Dip Slide” and the “Revolving Drum”, giving modern viewers a lesson in the fabulousness of 1920’s women’s undergarments.

Adding to Speedy’s time-capsule appeal is a hilarious cameo by Babe Ruth, whom the title card announces as “the idol of American boys – little and big.” Hailing a cab to take him to Yankee Stadium, the Babe has the misfortune of getting picked up by Speedy, in his latest stint as a cab driver. Beside himself with excitement, super fan Speedy gushes: “Even when you strike out, you miss ‘em close!” Sweating in the back seat as Speedy narrowly avoids crashing into oncoming traffic, the Babe replies “I don’t miss ‘em half as close as you do!”

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It isn’t all fun and games for Speedy though: upon finding out that a streetcar magnate is trying to railroad Pops into giving up his horse-drawn trolley tracks, Speedy organizes their blue collar friends and the film climaxes with a literal class war between the “little guys” and the evil streetcar corporation.

Watching Speedy through the lens of 2019 is interesting: the film was released in April of 1928 – just over a year and a half before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. You can almost hear the ticking of the clock: in just a few years, during the height of the Great Depression, Speedy’s carelessness towards employment would seem more ludicrous than charming. Yet even if Speedy might have seemed dated to Depression-era audiences, its central themes are completely in touch with today: like Speedy and Pop, many of us are feeling the anxiety associated with modern technology. With more and more human jobs being replaced by machines (“Office jobs are the next to go in the AI revolution”, the Financial Times recently predicted), a war between the robots and the humans is looking less like a Will Smith action movie and more like reality. Smart phones, Alexa, automated checkouts, self-driving cars: it’s amazing how blasé – and even gleeful – human beings are participating in their own extinction.

Yet Speedy shows that these anxieties surrounding technology have been around since at least the turn of the twentieth century.

In my novel Filthy Sugar (to be released in May 2020 with Inanna Publications), my protagonist Wanda’s daddy is a milkman who “doesn’t trust the automobile” so “when the other milkmen traded in their horses for trucks, Daddy doggedly held on to his beast; a gentle white and grey mare named Sadie”:

“Ya can’t trust anything that doesn’t need ya,” Daddy explained to me one day, as he filled Sadie’s feedbag with oats. “This girl needs me as much as I need her. Now what mess of steel and rubber is goin’ ta beat that?”

I think Speedy and Pops would agree with him.

Heather Babcock, 2019

Silent Film Review: Stage Struck (1925)

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“Jennie Hagen, whose dreams were all of triumphs as an actress, and whose life was all long hours and poor pay in a cheap restaurant.” (Title card from Stage Struck)

 In the silent romantic comedy Stage Struck (1925), Gloria Swanson plays waitress Jennie Hagen, a sweet but kinda goofy young woman who lives in black & white but dreams in color – two-strip Technicolor to be exact. She’s hopelessly in love with Orme Wilson (Lawrence Gray) the pancake chef in the sleazy diner wherein she toils.  Orme, who is as dimwitted as he is cocky, is obsessed with stage actresses so Jennie is determined to do whatever it takes to become a stage star herself in order to win his heart. A fateful encounter with the producer of a showboat promises Jennie a chance at the stardom she’s dreamed of – but maybe Orme doesn’t really think actresses are so swell after all.

Stage Struck (1925) is a black & white movie but its prologue and epilogue were filmed in two-strip Technicolor. If you’ve never seen two-strip Technicolor, thank your lucky eyes.  This is NOT the glorious Technicolor rainbow seen in later films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939).  Two-strip Technicolor was all sickly pinks and greens; it is literally an eyesore. Jean Harlow (Hell’s Angels, 1930) was one of the few stars who actually made early Technicolor look good. Likewise, Gloria Swanson’s beauty also escapes the format unscathed.  The opening sequence showcasing Jennie’s dreams of fame and stardom are a sumptuous showcase of diamonds, gowns and glamour (thanks to Swiss born costume designer René Hubert, a favorite of noted fashionista Swanson). Whatever the film format, Gloria Swanson was always ready for her close-up.

I’d only ever seen Gloria Swanson in dramatic roles in films such as Sadie Thompson (1928), Queen Kelly (1932) and, of course, Sunset Boulevard (1950) so I was surprised at how funny she is here: Swanson, whose plain gingham waitress uniform and apron only seem to emphasize her sophisticated beauty, literally juggles dirty dishes, hilariously flips pancakes – the flapjacks landing on her head (and down the front of an unsuspecting customer’s dress) instead of the plate –  and frequently falls on her ass, all with the fearless dexterity of Lucille Ball. Indeed, the glamorous Swanson got her start in slapstick – most notably at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios. Photoplay, in their 1925 review of Stage Struck, wrote that the film “makes Gloria Charlie Chaplin’s nearest rival. If Charlie is a genius, this picture makes Gloria a genius too.”

Like many films of its period, Stage Struck was clearly aimed at the “little shop girls”: young working class women who, after WW1, had left the domestic service sector behind, with its low wages, long hours and social isolation, in favor of jobs in the burgeoning urban department stores (shorter hours and more fun). Like Jennie, the movies were giving 20th century working class girls and women dreams and hopes – a promise of a way out.

It’s unfair to Gloria, but while watching Stage Struck, I couldn’t help but think of Clara Bow. Indeed, Stage Struck has many similarities with It, the movie that immortalized the red-haired, Brooklyn born Bow as the original “It Girl”: both films are from Paramount Pictures (and produced by Famous Players-Lasky corporation); both feature lovelorn, working class flappers; in Stage Struck, Jennie has a stuffed toy dog named Flea, in It, Bow’s Betty-Lou also still plays with stuffed toys; in It, Betty-Lou cuts up her work dress into a fashionable gown for a night out at the Ritz, in Stage Struck, Jennie (less successfully) takes the scissors to her kid boots and wide brimmed hat in an attempt to look like the modern showgirl of Orme’s dreams.  But It was released in January of 1927, over a year after Stage Struck’s November 1925 release. So can we say that Gloria Swanson started “It” but Clara Bow perfected “It”?

Stage Struck (1925) is a fun, frothy little movie and if you’ve never watched a silent film before, this would be an enjoyable introduction.

Note: Kino Lorber released Stage Struck (1925) on DVD in 2018, stunningly mastered from 35mm film elements preserved by the George Eastman museum and featuring a great musical score composed and performed by Andrew Simpson.

Review written by Heather Babcock (2019)

 

 

 

 

Hitchcock’s 1927 Masterpiece “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog”

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MURDER: WET FROM THE PRESS! MURDER: HOT OVER THE AERIAL!

Although it was director Alfred Hitchcock’s third movie, he considered The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) the first “Hitchcock film”. In this gorgeous nightmare of nail-biting suspense and luxurious cinematography, Hitch criticizes the media’s infatuation with beautiful blonde murder victims, all the while indulging his own obsession with them. “To-Night ‘Golden Curls’,” is both the name of a Broadway show starring chorines in fluffy blonde wigs and what the Jack-the-Ripper inspired serial killer whispers to his fair-haired prey. The news of the nightly murders are spelled out in hot, glittering lights on electronic billboards as citizens clamor to buy the still wet newsprint.

Hitchcock gives his male lead Ivor Novello the Garbo treatment with softly lit close-ups; the lodger appears out of the fog, mouth bound by scarf, eyes kohl-rimmed and tortured. No blood here but plenty of style – and even a bathtub scene, this 1927 masterpiece foreshadowed the terrors to come from “The Master of Suspense”.

– Heather Babcock, 2019