The Postman Always Rings (Twice)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946) Drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) blows in on the Santa Ana wind* and gets picked up along the road by a man called Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), and gets himself dropped off at a local diner-slash-service station called "Twin Oaks" run by a genial old fellow named Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), who has a sign out front that indicates he could use a little help around the place. Frank can use the work, but he's not sure about it until he gets a look at the benefits, when he follows a fallen lipstick across the diner floor and sees Nick's much younger wife, Cora (Lana Turner), who shows up in a midriff-baring white two-piece number that one presumes she doesn't normally wear at job interviews for mechanics. With Nick, he's a bit of toady, but with Cora, it's a sparring match where he always ends up the loser. "The best way to get my husband to fire you is to not do what I tell you to do," she tells him once he's off work the first day. When he grabs her in a clinch later, she just fixes her lipstick and walks away...slowly. She's funny that way.

But Frank is confident. "I can sell anything to anybody," he brags. "That's what you think," she scoffs. But, a moonlight swim (with Nick's approval) starts to get Cora in a buying mood. And when Nick goes away to Los Angeles, Frank seizes his chance—there's a lovely moment when, he's tending the dining bar with one lone customer between him and trying to make his move on Cora and he stares the poor sap down until he's so uncomfortable he leaves...with a tip—closing the diner for business and giving his full attention to Cora. She finally answers the question that's nagged at him—why marry Nick? She tells him that since the time she was 14, she had to fight off a lot of guys—all of them—until she met Nick, with a ring and a proposal. "And you retired," he says. "The undefeated champ." "Not 100% undefeated," she says. And that is that.

Soon after they begin their affair—hours after, in fact, which makes you wonder if they had enough time to have an affair—they run off together. But, as Nash has the only available car, they end up bumming rides to get away, and that's just honest-to-goodness not good enough for Cora (even though it may be good enough for Frank. *CONFLICT ALERT* She doesn't want to start out their life together as bums...like Frank. Besides, if she just up and leaves, all the work she put into Twin Oaks will go waste, as Nick would surely keep it in a divorce. So, the two go to plan "B" by dialing "M" for murder: they decide that Cora will get to keep Twin Oaks if they kill Nick. Well, at least kill Nick and get away with it.

And so, they hoof it back to Twin Oaks, waiting for Nick to come back. He does, conveniently weaving from from too much drink in the city, but not conveniently enough that he's killed drunk-driving all the way from Los Angeles. The plan is for Cora to clobber him in the bath-tub, so he falls and drowns. But, Fate, in the form of passing cars, busy-body motorcycle cops, and a darn cat manage to escalate the dread and foil the plot. Nash only get conked on the head by Cora, but a black-out-by-cat keeps the plot from being completed, and he ends up in the hospital, undrowned, with no memory of it happening at all. The speculation is that it's from his "fall" in the bathtub, but I'd make a case for him being "so drunk last night."

When Nick comes back to Twin Oaks, he decides to sell the place and move him and Cora to Canada with his sister, and that's something that Cora just won't do—so to prevent it, Frank and Cora stage a car accident, hitting Nick over the head—again—and the crash to explain the injuries that killed him.

Nick does die, and Frank is injured, but the District Attorney trying the case is the same Kyle Sackett who drove Frank into town, and, thinking that it's all too coincidental, separates the two lovers and gets a statement from Frank when he only files charges against her. The two turn on each other, and it's only through the machinations of Cora's lawyer (Hume Cronyn) that she only gets a manslaughter charge for being the driver of the vehicle.

Cain's sordid little story is given a veneer of M-G-M glamour throughout, making the affair between Frank and Cora much more romantic than it should be—after all, chicanery and murder are what bring the two together and what will ultimately drive a wedge between them. Everything looks clean and tidy and Frank is one of those lucky mechanics for whom grease never seems to stick, not even under his fingernails. Turner is always photographed in the best possible light and a shimmering gauze in close-up's. One may almost get the impression they're innocent of murder or deception. But, Cain's story ultimately catches up to them and anything illusory becomes tragic reality, when Fate comes a-knocking again and disturbs any complacent slumber and the dreams it may contain. The postman will always ring twice, just to shatter any misconceptions.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981) Cain's story was remade in 1981 with no pretensions by playwright (and ultimately director) David Mamet (his first screenplay), who takes the romance out of it, and with the more low-key direction of Bob Rafelson, makes the circumstances a lot more tawdry. The major difference is that the 1946 M-G-M version is a "PG" version, slouching towards a "PG-13" (if such a thing existed at the time), whereas the 1981 Warner Bros. version is a tumescent "R," where the participants are desperate people, unattractive in body or spirit. The disparities between the people involved are seen in a much harsher light. The novel's depiction of Nick Papadakis ("The Greek") is brought out with more emphasis on his ethnicity and the casting of John Colicos makes one wonder why this version's Cora—in the depiction of Jessica Lange—would "settle" for this particular man for any reason other than being sold to him or by any others means beyond some kind of blackmail.

One even wonders why she would find Jack Nicholson's drifter a more attractive alternative. Not that the actors' ages make that much of a difference—Nicholson was only 43 at the time of filming; Lange was 31. But, Nicholson was only 10 years younger than Colicos, and although a great actor and (sure) a star, he was beginning to get doughy, his hair thinning, and progressing from his younger, angular good looks to a young middle-age. Would a beauty like Lange's Cora risk everything for him? One wonders.

The story proceeds the same, but back in Cain's original era of the Depression years: Drifter. Twin Oaks. Older husband. Male lust. Female need. Clinch. Affair. Murder. Ring-ring. But, there's nothing romantic about the Frank-Cora affair in this one. The two start out just as bitchy as the 1946 version, but when Nick leaves town, there's no embrace and kiss—it's a lunging, violent sex-scene that starts out as a rape, with the major indication that Cora wants it as badly as Frank does ("Come on!") is she clears the bread-table—loaves, dough, bread-knife, flour (one worries about yeast infections)—with a clumsy wave of her arms and it's a big dusty fumble with a lot of flailing and almost comical moans of exertion. 

Ya know...like sex turned out to be rather than what you imagined...

But, it's not enough that Rafelson and Mamet strip away the romantic veneer that played such a part of the M-G-M version, they've also added a sado-masochistic kink to the affair, with a lot of roughage and slapping—Cora spits in Frank's face at one point and there's a disgusted curl to her lip when she says "You're scum, Frank. I knew that when I met you. You'll never change." This is "trading up?"

One gets the impression that this is what she wants and it's what she thinks she deserves and is resigned to her fate. She's certainly not as ambitious as Turner's Cora. She just "settles" for slightly higher increments. And Nicholson's Frank isn't a go-getter drifter, he's just a snake, who'll turn any situation to his advantage. It does make his turning on Cora once Nick is killed a bit more understandable, psychologically. He thinks he's the master of his fate, and a white trash Master of the Universe, who, if he knew about Ayn Rand, would cling to objectivism as an excuse for what is basically selfish self-interest. Maybe he and Cora have more in common than originally thought.

It made me think less of a human drama than of zoology—we're dealing with much more primal instincts that crouch deep in our alligator brains. Cora calls Frank an animal when she sees him drinking milk out of a bottle instead of a glass and one can see their relationship as more bestial—the male lion lords it over everybody while the female is the more practical of the sexes. But, it's a completely different power dynamic than from the '46 version, which has more to do with entymology. In that one, Cora is the queen bee, giving the illusion that the men are more than mere drones...and potential victims. 

"Aren't we ambitious?" Garfield's Frank cracks at Turner's Cora when she talks about her plans for Twin Oaks. Of course she is, and at a level far higher than the men she encounters. And higher than Lange's Cora in the Mamet-Rafelson version.

But, Nature is red in tooth and claw. And, far more powerful than the machinations that preoccupy the creatures that plan and scheme and rut in The Postman Always Rings Twice. It can unravel any scheme that chooses to beat Fate.

* Raymond Chandler wrote about the desert winds that blew into Los Angeles: "On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch (René Clair, 1942) A Preston Sturges production (that he quit over differences with the director), partially written by Dalton Trumbo (who quit over his differences with Preston Sturges—maybe he should have waited until Sturges and Clair started to have meetings), I Married a Witch is one troubled flick, and, sadly, it shows. Where it should be charming (and dare I say "magical"?), it's merely cloying. And all of the behind-the-camera wrangling wasn't the only thing causing havoc on the picture, as there was quite a bit of cursing and hexing among the actors in front of the camera, too. Joel McCrea (who would have been a better match here) passed on the starring role after his difficulties with Veronica Lake on Sullivan's Travels ("Life's too short..." was his comment) and Frederic March—a better actor and no slouch at comedy (see Nothing Sacred) was inserted.  But, his efforts comes off forced and flat, and Lake's antics off-screen soured any chemistry when the two were photographed together. 

And yet, Lake is great.  She didn't take any of this too seriously—it's a fantasy, after all—and she's that perfect combination of alluring and goofy.* Her character, a witch named Jennifer burned at the stake during the witch-trials by one of the ancestors of March's character, places a curse on the male family-line to always marry the wrong woman. By the time, lightning strikes a gnarled tree which frees the spirits (in smoke form), the latest of the Wooley clan is a scion running for political position and is on the hallowed eve of marrying the starchy daughter (Susan Hayward) of his chief supporter, a newspaper publisher (Robert Warwick). Everything seems well-orchestrated and on-schedule, prim and proper and corrupt. What's needed is a little black magic.

And where there's smoke, there's fire. Wooley and Jennifer "meet cute"...in a burning building—whatever the merits of the film, you can't say it's "formula"—and Jennifer's witch starts popping up everywhere, most notably in Wooley's pajamas in his bed, which makes things...complicated. Now, that "formula," which we mentioned earlier, comes to the fore, when the witch decides to seal the deal with a love potion to ensure Wooley's love for her. Guess who drinks it?  You don't need magic powers to guess.

Where the film picks up (and actually does catch fire) is in the drawn-out wedding sequence, where Jennifer's manipulations (along with her father's, played in corporeal form by Cecil Kellaway) manage to derail the most staged of political-social weddings and does so four times.** The wedding singer sings "I Love You Truly," the wedding march begins, and then (boom) something happens and everything gets pushed back to the starting point—"I Love You Truly." Having to pick up the pieces and re-stage something so elaborate that many times is comedy gold, and Clair and the writers (including Robert Benchley who has a prominent role) keep ramping up the stakes when returning to the ritual, leading to a fine capper involving the ceremony's stodgy wedding singer.

But, then, things turn "charming" again, undercutting the satire and the basic push-pull of organization and chaos. But, for a brief time, anarchy reigns supreme, turning the greased gears of prominence and political glad-handing into a thudding, shuddering mess, seeing a processional and wanting to pull the rug out from under it. No wonder Sturges wanted to do it. And Trumbo? He knew a lot about witch-trials (but not as much as he would). Benchley is nicely droll throughout, light on the irony, heavy on the farce. There's a constant battle between the wisenheimer and the twee and the result is rather milquetoast.  What should have bubbled like a cauldron comes across as rather tepid.

But that wedding section. It's crashingly good. 

"that perfect combination of alluring and goofy"

  

* What is it with blondes and comedy?  As much as Hollywood tries to shoe-horn gorgeous blonde-types into drama, some of the most alluring women are at their best doing comedy—Carole Lombard, Grace Kelly, Kim Basinger, Cybill Shepherd, Charlize Theron (all serenely beautiful) were at their best (in my opinion) when they were sly and antic, as if there was something in their DNA (or peroxide) that compelled them to find the "funny" in a situation, especially their own, and blow it up. One of those little mysteries that occupy my brain in stray moments.

** The bride is played by pre-stardom/America's sweetheart Susan Hayward, who's character is such a straight-laced sour-puss that she has to be reminded by her newspaper-editor of a father to smile at her own wedding, which she manages to do only the first three times. It's among the collection of running gags in the extended sequence that builds to a satisfyingly disruptive conclusion.

Harvey (1950)

Hallowe'en is over (but like things in most horror movies, it WILL be back), but it doesn't entirely leave, haunting as it does, so here is a review for a movie that is not quite "Hallowe'en dark," but deals with the supernatural...in spirit.

Harvey (Henry Koster, 1950) Mary Chase finished her play "Harvey" in 1944; she'd been working on it for two years, inspired by a neighbor who'd lost her son in the second world war—"could I ever make her laugh again?" was her spark of inspiration, and, having written a couple of Broadway flops, the work was slow going. She woke up one morning at 5 a.m. with the vision of a psychiatrist being followed by a large white rabbit.

That was Chase 's pilot light for the play which would become one of Broadway's longest-running hits, win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1945, and become a staple of local theatrical troupes when a season of Strindberg, Ibsen, and Albee doesn't bring in the patrons. Long associated with James Stewart in the role of the "bubble-off-plumb" protagonist, Elwood P. Dowd, the play premiered and became a hit with actor Frank Fay in the part, which goes to show how infectiously pleasing the play is; Fay was a popular vaudevillian, but despised in real life for being a drunk, a fascist, and an avowed white supremacist, who (it is rumored) might have been the inspiration for the character of Norman Maine for "A Star is Born" after his 1928 marriage to Barbara Stanwyck saw her rise to stardom, while his career sank...that is, until "Harvey." (Fellow vaudevillian Milton Berle once said that "Fay's friends could be counted on the missing arm of a one-armed man"....ouch).

The film rights for the play were purchased for $750,000—a huge extravagance at the time—and not made until 1950, as the production was contractually bound not to be produced until after the play's stage-run had completed. Many actors were considered for the lead of Dowd ("Elwood P.")—Bing Crosby (maybe, but could get too folksy), Cary Grant (too aggressive), Gary Cooper (if we're thinking Capra, sure), Jack Benny (oh...the comic timing on that one), and James Cagney (a little too authoritative, maybe), but it came around to Stewart, who'd appeared in the Broadway version during Fay's sabbaticals. Josephine Hull as his sister Veta followed from the stage and manages to overshadow Stewart in her scenes, winning an Oscar doing so.

The film follows an eventful day in the life of Elwood P. Dowd, never married, frequent tippler, and affable to a fault, making friends wherever he meets, including with a 6' 3 1/2" tall rabbit named Harvey, a pooka spirit that no one but Elwood can see. Dowd's complacency with his imaginary friend is a constant burr under the bonnet of his sister Veta (Hull), whose main concerns are keeping up appearances and the encouragement of any "gentleman callers" to collect at the door of the Dowd estate that might make an attractive mate for her daughter Myrtle Mae, whom, of all the Dowd's is certainly the Dowdiest.

But, on this day, Elwood has hung a portrait of him and his friend and something in Veta snaps. She decides that she is going to have Elwood committed to the local sanitariun, but to the institution's administrator, Dr. Chumley (Cecil Kellaway), the calm mild-mannered Elwood seems completely sane, while his apoplectic sister, in explaining her situation, comes off as completely bonkers. She ends up being institutionalized, while Elwood is allowed to skip out and make his rounds. This causes enough complications in the lives of the institution's workers, particularly in the threatening of one of the examiner's, Dr. Sanderson (Charles Drake), that Elwood comes under scrutiny for his peculiarities.

It turns into an examination of who might really be the sane among us, calling into question what is "normal" and what is merely a tilted version of the world, with the experts seeming to be at a disadvantage. They come across as neurotic and with unsatisfied needs, as if poking around into other people's souls for so long has prevented them from taking much of a look into their own. 

It's a fairly straight-forward presentation of the play, with a bit of softening of Elwood as a drinker (the Hays Code did not encourage this for characters of a good nature). Stewart was well-versed in the play and gave director Henry Koster the suggestion of filming him off-center, allowing there to be physical space on the screen for the invisible rabbit to inhabit, but also to show the slightly askew demeanor of the seemingly normal Dowd—Stewart plays him so kindly that the visual imbalance only helps reinforce that his character is a bit "off." And, following, the play's dictates "Harvey" is never seen, leaving the audience to question...until the last possible moment...whether he "really" exists, or is merely a figment of Dowd's hazy imagination.

I've always been enchanted by "Harvey," even as a kid, but adulthood has made me entranced with the melancholy aspects of the story...of the fellow, devoted to his parents, who has filled the empty space in his life after their deaths with a wish-fulfillment of the same sort of closeness he had with them. I've seen it played for laughs—as in the movie—and I've seen it (on stage) played for pathos (only semi-successfully) and came to the realization (although that, too, might be imagination) that the fine tightrope that the presentation presents needs to be gingerly trod or else the whole exercise turns into a disaster. I've often contemplated that, and what a more modern version of "Harvey" might be like, even though it hearkens back to old world values and manners. Spielberg was actively trying to do a new version of it, first approaching Tom Hanks to star (who begged off, thinking it would be folly for him to try and follow Stewart's interpretation) and then, for awhile, Robert Downey Jr. was set for it—you'd think that would be a lock, but Downey insisted on script changes that Spielberg was not happy with. Spielberg chalked it up to casting issues and abandoned a remake.

Is "Harvey" a manifestation of Dowd's drinking or his melancholy ache for companionship? Either interpretation works. But, I always had in mind a different interpretation, a more modern one, that hinged on one particular actor who might be able to pull it off—Jack Nicholson. There's something about his persona that I've always thought might fit Elwood Dowd to a tee. Elwood's just a little aggressive ("I would like to invite you to dinner..." "Oh, that would be lovel-" "When?") and a bit vague and lost. Maybe Elwood smokes weed rather than drinks, or maybe he's experimented with hallucinogenics...which might explain the "Harvey" manifestation. But, also not entirely (as it should be). Elwood has no family of his own—he has his parents' family, and with his mother's death, he's more than a little adrift, with death as a seen presence of life. Maybe he's drawn to Harvey...or has drawn Harvey (depending on your point of view)...because Harvey can't die. Already being a spirit, he represents a friendly manifestation of death...that can never be lost to it. It's a win/win that can never be lost. No wonder Elwood's so cheery.

No, combine a bit of Nicholson's Southern lawyer in Easy Rider, his adrift musician in Five Easy Pieces, some of the impishness of McMurphy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and you have a good starting point for a new Elwood, old and wise enough to know the rules of engagement in the modern world, but just not giving a damn. It's his little bubble-verse, damn it, and you're welcome to climb in (glad to have ya), but don't go round poking at the bubble...or it'll burst. I'd like to see that "Harvey." Heck, I'm always delighted to see this version of Harvey.

It's a win/win that can never be lost.