Black Patch

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. The music's good, though...

Black Patch (Allan H. Miner, 1956) Low budget western best known in film-music afficianado circles for being the first feature scored by Jerry (nee Jerrald ) Goldsmith.* Shot at Gene Autry's ranch town, the film benefited from being filmed in a television hiatus, its screenplay—penned by Black Patch bad guy Leo Gordon—started out as an idea for a "Gunsmoke" episode and utilizing crew from the recently wrapped "Dragnet" season (that show's crews were the fastest in Hollywood). Not quite as "B"-western as a lot of the early Republic Studios product, Black Patch tries to explore the psychological aspects of Westerns—motivations beyond "he wears a black hat"—that was finding its decade with the collaborations of Anthony Mann and James Stewart in the genre.

Black Patch can't hold a...er...patch to them.

George Montgomery plays Marshall Clay Morgan, but he's disparagingly called "Black-Patch" by the folks in Santa Rita, New Mexico for the eye-patch he sports over his right eye, a result from an old Civil War injury. Being one-eyed makes it tough to be a sharp-shooter with no depth perception. And one could say that it's affected him personally as he has a myopically steadfast approach to his job. It's cost him, and the town under his singular watch treat him with a suspicious respect.

So, things get a little squirrelly when Morgan's friend from The War, Hank Danner (screenwriter Leo Gordon) pays a visit to town with his wife Helen (Diane Brewster, who would play the late wife of Dr. Richard Kimble on TV). In a Casablanca-like set-up, Helen and Morgan were once lovers, and so the Marshall is both pleased and conflicted to see them. He starts to question how his actions towards Danner, a known bank robber, are lit by his sense of duty or the torch he's carrying for the man's wife.

It's a small town, so word gets around of the trio's pasts, but it starts to flame up when word comes that a bank on the way had been robbed and Morgan slams Danner in jail for the crime. But, there are "vultures, vultures everywhere," the most prominent being saloon owner "Frenchy" De'vere (Sebastian Cabot, who clearly relishes playing villainous roles) who conspires to spring Danner from jail with an idea to split the ill-gotten gains as a reward. It all further complicates Morgan's life, and threatens it, as things shake out, eventually seeing him put on trial for murder.

It's a good set-up, and the execution is fairly straight-forward—the film was shot in 14 days—but, there are some plot elements that stray into the area of contrivance, that one could only excuse by objecting that Santa Rita must be a pretty small town (with Contrivance being a nearby suburb). The motivations of one character seem extremely opportune, but only if it takes place in a town with very few women. And how quickly can you learn to be a fast-draw? At least to best someone who's been a gun-slinger for years?

It's not all that bad, just not something you want to write home and send pony-express** about. And, for a first score, Goldsmith did a great job...but, then, he'd been doing live-TV for awhile, making changes to his scores on the fly, even as it was being played. He certainly could have handled the technical intricacies of film scoring.

* It's also one of the Goldsmith "lost" scores—nobody can find acetates or tapes in "the vaults" (or somebody's hiding them) and there's never been a release. Although, a Kickstarter campaign was started to re-record the score for this and for The Man, an obscure political film from 1972. They were released by Intrada records.

 

** "When it absolutely, positively has to be there before two weeks..." 

Roxie Hart

Roxie Hart (William Wellman, 1942) Think of it as Chicago without the music and dancing (except for a couple numbers), because that's exactly what it is. This version, adapted (by Nunnally Johnson and Ben Hecht,) from the play and 1927 movie version called Chicago, tells the same story of a dancer, Roxie Hart (Ginger Rogers) near the end of her career, who decides to take the rap for the murder of booking agent Fred Casely, found dead in Roxie's apartment. Roxie didn't do it (a difference from the other versions, thanks to the Production Code), but like a certain hotel developer, when things are sagging somewhat, you should do something really crazy to get attention.

The movie is done in flashback in a bar (one run by William Frawley) that's a hangout for newsies. "The new kid" (Ted North) is working a murder investigation and is full of stories. In an ink-stained version of "Can You Top This?" veteran newsman Homer Howard (George Montgomery) tells him the story to end all bets—a murder case he covered in 1927.

George Montgomery serves as the Teller of the Tale at a bar frequented by newsies.

He tells the story of Roxie Hart and how, when the agent is murdered in the Hart apartment (presumably by her husband as the police suspect), she is persuaded to "takes the fall" because a woman would never be convicted of murder in Chicago. Besides, any publicity is good publicity. Her husband, Amos (George Chandler) hires courtroom sheister Billy Flynn (Adolphe Menjou) to defend Roxie by using the press to gain sympathy, depict her as a weak woman who acted in self-defense...and show a lot of leg to the all-male jury.

Roxie enjoys the headlines and the attention, confident that she'll never hang. But, then disaster strikes—another woman is convicted of a horrible crime and calls are made to be less lenient on female criminals and it knocks Roxie out of the headlines. The only thing to do is up the ante with more salaciousness and hearts and flowers.

For Rogers, who, after letting Astaire lead for most of her career, it was another opportunity to do something a little different and show off her comedy and acting gifts. With Roxie Hart, she takes a big gamble—looking unsympathetic to the audience. Roxie Hart is a deeply, cynical black comedy with a lot of laughs (it made Stanley Kubrick's "Top Ten Favorite Films" in 1963) and an assured directorial hand by veteran director William "Wild Bill" Wellman (who'd already straddled many genres with The Public Enemy, Nothing Sacred, A Star is Born, Beau Geste, and the first "Best Picture" Oscar winner, Wings). Its stinging farcical tone still resonates—enough for Bob Fosse to update it in 1975, where the unholy marriage of justice, news-mongering, and fame felt remarkably contemporary.

But, even the resultant musical doesn't diminish the sense of raucous, crass fun in this film version of Roxie Hart.

In 1963, when asked by Cinema Magazine what his favorite films were, director Stanley Kubrick chose these:

I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953) 
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1958) 
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) 
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1945)
La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)
The Bank Dick (W.C. Fields, 1940)
Roxie Hart (William Wellman, 1942) Note: at one point, he said this was his favorite film
Hell’s Angels (Howard Hughes, 1930)