The Bride Came C.O.D.

The Bride Came C.O.D. (William Keighley, 1941) Supposedly, the idea was that Cagney wanted to do something lighter than his typical tough-guy gangster act, brought in his brother to produce, hired the sharp twins-writing team of Julius and Philip Epstein and started casting about for the romantic lead to play opposite him. Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, Rosalind Russell, and Olivia de Havilland were all in the mix at some point. But, somehow, Bette Davis got the part. Evidently, she wanted a change of pace from her dramatic roles and she and Cagney got on famously making Jimmy the Gent seven years earlier, so...why not?

 

But, did anybody consider the trouble that might come from putting the two biggest rabble-rousers on the Warner lot starring together in the same movie? One or two of the studio brothers might have been asleep at the switch, but the film did get made with neither of the stars being "suspended" but up-staged by some of the wiliest character actors ever in supporting roles.

The story is alarmingly close to Capra's It Happened One Night: A socialite, Joan Winfield (Davis) is sand-bagged with a marriage proposal in front of a night-club audience by her bandleader boyfriend, Allan Brice (Jack Carson), who is prodded into making the announcement by gossip columnist (Stuart Erwin) under deadline. Under pressure, she agrees, but California having a 72 hour waiting period before they can get hitched creates a problem. It's decided—by the scandal-monger—that they can fly to Vegas to tie the knot sooner. When her father (the booming Eugene Pallette) finds out he's apoplectic; he doesn't want the wedding to go through at all!

That's where cash-strapped pilot Steve Collins (Cagney) makes a landing in this mess. He's about to have his plane repo'd, but makes a deal with "Pater" Lucius K. Winfield to make a unscheduled stop from Las Vegas to Amarillo, Texas (where the father will pick her up), but with Joan only and it's been negotiated for his standard freight rate—$10 a pound. When the wedding party shows up at the local air-strip, the bridegroom-to-be and the mouth-piece are coaxed off the plane by Collins' mechanic Pee Wee (George Tobias, remembered best as neighbor Mr. Kravitz on the "Bewitched" TV series) and the pilot takes off with the prospective bride much to her protest. Technically, it's kidnapping, even if it's for hire.

But, Joan is a fierce fighter and once she gets ahold of a parachute, she'd determined to jump out of the plane en route, foiled by Collins banking the plane and throwing her—repeatedly—back into the cabin. But, all that maneuvering causes the plane to stall, and they end up crashing in the desert, close to the ghost-town of Bonanza that had sprung up around the old Enterprise mine. Hilarity ensues. The comedy is broad, bordering on slapstick, what with prat-falls and Joan constantly falling into cactus plants ("Oh, there must be something magnetic to a cactus that attracts me right to it...or vice versa!"). And Davis plays it broadly, trying to eke out the last drop of humor from any given situation...while Cagney just reacts to what she's doing, with either exaggerated laughter or venom.

In Bonanza, things get more complicated, what with search-parties looking for the pair under the command of William Frawley, and the town's only existing citizen (Harry Davenport) a mass of eccentricities and a way of changing sides at the drop of a plot-point. Soon, Collins is in jail, Joan goes on a wild desert ride in a flivver, and both end up lost in that abandoned mine, all the while waiting for either the fiancee or the father or both to show up before anything can get resolved. Cagney's character remains a bit stalwart, but Davis' changes her mind every ten minutes of movie-time. Things are further confounded with the minutiae of state law, matrimonial provisions, and some dubious reverse psychology. If everything was under federal law things would be a lot simpler, but the plot wouldn't go anywhere. State laws are funnier and more suited for comedy.

The movie was popular when it came out, and, as something changes every few minutes, one can see why audiences found it entertaining. And while Davis is out of her element, she is amusing, and Cagney doesn't fall easy victim to caricature until his laughing scenes. The only one who really disliked the film, in fact, was Davis, who didn't like the script, hated the desert heat of Death Valley, and was no fan of cactus, as she evidently did fall into one while filming. It's a light-weight vehicle pushed by two powerful steam-engines, so it's a bit of a mismatch. But, seeing the two play off each other rather seamlessly is the film's greatest strengths.

My Man Godfrey

Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month is William Powell, who seems to have fallen out of the consciousness and discussion of Great Hollywood Actors. I will avail myself of seeing a bunch of his films, as I've always found him astonishingly creative and real.

My Man Godfrey (Gregory LaCava, 1936)  Bill Powell isn't given nearly enough credit in Hollywood history.

Popular in his day, he worked just enough to maintain his reputation and dignity, then retired and kept to himself. But you watch him in something like My Man Godfrey—a not quite screwball comedy of the "The Rich, They are a Peculiar Lot" school—and you see him stretch a little bit, and definitely see him playing a different character than the familiar Powell persona (even an extended drunk scene is played differently than his pleasantly soused Nick Charles from the "Thin Man" series), but still retains that measure of insinuation that took every line of dialogue and made it spin on its heels. His character, Godfrey Pike, starts out as a bum living in a dump underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, where he's picked up by socialite-heads as part of a charity scavenger hunt for the idle rich.

He attracts the attention of Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard, formerly Mrs. Powell) probably because he's different, a genuine "find," and he does stick out like a sore, if well-manicured, sore thumb among the derelicts. Articulate and dignified, he's quietly worldly-wise, politely sarcastic (neat trick to pull off, that) and keeps a cool eye on the rich partiers for whom he's an oddity, a curiosity—like watching a car wreck—and slightly discounted, although he's  probably better than all of them as a human being. Mentored by Irene, he assumes a position as a gentleman-butler for her family, a job that's bested a steady stream of other men. But he does the job well, keeping his opinions to himself, the most sane man in a palatial asylum.

And an asylum it is, with the father (the foghorn-voiced Eugene Pallette, staple of Capra comedies) the only one with any sense (or schedule), and who has long given up on his family making any steps to adulthood. Mother (Alice Brady) is a drama queen, who can only be distracted by her protege Carlo (Mischa Auer) and other daughter Cornelia (Gail Patrick) has to fill her empty life with schemes and conspiracies.

But Irene is a dreamer. In Godfrey, she finds a competent supplement, practical, in marked contrast to her flibbertigibbet, caring to her carelessness.

Such a creature, alien to her environment, makes her fall in love with the old boy, while he still tries to make his way through Society, and back to the life he has previously abandoned.

It's all high-style and fast-paced. And even though Lombard's society gal is a comic cry-baby notched up to "11" on a scale of "10," she is leavened somewhat by the tolerating, sly performance by Powell—who insisted that Lombard, his ex-wife, get the part.

Powell was the epitome of well-mannered play-acting, while never, ever betraying a dull moment. He made style which—when done in the hands of amateurs can look confining—seem effortless, while also being insouciant, and fun.

The Male Animal

The Male Animal (Elliott Nugent, 1942) The draw for this one wasn't the director or the stars (although I'm a big fan of Henry Fonda and Jack Carson). 

 

It's the author, James Thurber. Probably a name past it's sell-date in many people's minds, but his legacy in the zeitgeist has burrs that stick. The phrase "My World and Welcome To it"—which was the title of a book he authored and a TV series inspired by him—is attached to Thurber. He was also the author of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and it was adapted for the movies, first (in 1947) starring Danny Kaye and (just a few years ago) one directed and starring Ben Stiller. 

The man was, obviously, a writer, and quite well-known in his time. He was also a cartoonist—appearing in The New Yorker—a playwright, and (as the phrase goes) "a celebrated wit." He was a good enough writer that he probably never used the phrase "a celebrated wit" in regards to himself or anyone else. Thurber wrote the original play with this film's director, Elliott Nugent, and it was adapted for the screen by Stephen Morehouse Avery and the celebrated Casablanca team of twin-brothers Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein.

It takes place in modern times at Midwestern University, where football is the driving force for the college-town rather than higher education. And the weekend of Homecoming with its anticipated game against Minnesota and the return of All-American Joe Ferguson (Carson) for the first time in six years, the streets are filled with flivvers and bobby-soxers and impromptu rallies through the streets. Everyone is in a fervor and rah-rah-ing on a testosterone high (and little thinking to anything else).

So, it's a bad time for there to be any little contretemps on campus, with the boosters and city officials schmoozing around and their blood pressure already on the boil. Even if something is a little subtle in its nuance, it will turn into a cut-and-dried cage-match in arguable hues of black-and-white. It wouldn't seem to be a bad time for English professor Tommy Turner (Fonda) to announce his planned readings for the Monday after the game with the theme of "English prose by non-English speakers). Dull stuff...not unlike Turner, himself. Except Turner has a sister-in-law (Joan Leslie). Sister-in-law has a boyfriend (Herbert Anderson), who's the editor of the campus newspaper and in Turner's class. Said boyfriend writes an editorial in said newspaper praising the professor for including anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti in that list of non-English speakers.

What's the American word for "contretemps?" Taken in context, it must be when you object to something without having read it, or seen it, but you'd "heard something about it." Sure glad something like that wouldn't happen today (he said sarcastically).

By the way, the passage that is being objected to is this:

If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words - our lives - our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives - lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler - all! That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph.

The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) Ale heir Charles "Hopsey" Pike (Henry Fonda) has been up the Amazon for a year as an ophiologist (emphasis on the "oaf."). The trip must have been made without a paddle because he can't tell two snakey grifters (Charles Coburn, Barbara Stanwyck playing a father-daughter con artist team—the family that preys together...) are trying to collect him...and his dough...on the cruise back to the States. She's already beaned him with an apple as he was boarding ship—it's not exactly Cupid's Arrow, but it'll do, in theory. After he gets hit, well, he's not a lot wiser.

 

Sturges' third film (and first big hit) is a distillation of every screwball romance that had come down the pike previously. As with the best screwball comedies, the woman has all the power and nobody could play power better or with more cruel humor than the ungainly Barbara Stanwyck, here as fast as quicksilver and, frankly, a bit tough to keep up with—you want to watch it twice just to see all of her nuances you missed. Her opponent...object of affliction...affection...is a combination of every man-handled man-type that you can have in these comedies. "Hopsey" Pike is well-off, a specialist in his field but a tenderfoot out of it—he can spot snakes in the jungle but not in the grass—somewhat sheltered and clumsy, and saves money on casting Ralph Bellamy by playing his own stuffed shirt. And being on a boat ensures that the ground is never too sure under his feet, the better for the sweeping off of. And the best guy to "take" in a "confidence" game is somebody who doesn't have any.

 

Confidence, that is. 

Henry Fonda didn't play many rubes, as there was always something steely under his baby-blues; you couldn't hide his intelligence and Sturges doesn't try, making Hopsey book-smart, but virginally inexperienced and shy. One would say clumsy, given the right circumstances, which is where Stanwyck's Eugenia comes in, with her foot in the aisle to trip him up, literally. Pretty soon, that becomes Sturges' short-hand for letting you know that "Hopsey" is falling for Eugenia, a 40's comedy substitute for attraction being physically evident. 

But the best un-laid plans... Pretty soon, Eugenia is falling for Hopsey, as evidenced by her getting hot and bothered by his chosen field of study. "Slimey snake!" she yells as she wakes up from a nightmare. Preston Sturges was always one for tweaking the censors, and with The Lady Eve, he's more than suggesting by associations of culture and psychology what's going on here in a knowing way—the biblical way of knowing, complete with snakes and apples and falls from innocence.

Things get complicated as Eugenia must thwart her father's plans for fleecing the golden boy—she does actually care about him, but when Pike finds out what the two are up to, he breaks off with her, leaving her in a huff. If she was honest with him, he'd probably have done the same thing, so with that moral quandary and his making her feel cheap and all, she plots her revenge, with one of the best lines of spite to come out of Hollywood: "I need him like an axe needs a turkey!" Appropriate vindication mixed with a vindictiveness chaser ensues.

Well worth the time and effort to seek out, The Lady Eve is a shining example of how sophisticated and down-and-dirty Hollywood comedy could get. And Stanwyck, one of the wiliest of actors, positively glows on-screen. In 1994, The Lady Eve became part of The National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

 

They don't mention that it's funny as the devil, too.