A Big Hand for the Little Lady

A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook,1966) This entertaining little gambling drama came out of a television presentation—its director, Fielder Cook, was one of the pioneer directors of live television, and one of the few to stick to the medium, only occasionally making a film for the movie studios, finding them more restricting. The source was a drama for "The Dupont Show of the Week" entitled "Big Deal in Laredo" and starring Walter Matthau, Teresa Wright and Zachary Scott. It was written by Sidney Carroll who wrote the screenplay for The Hustler, and knew a thing or two about the mind-games while playing games.

It is the day of the "big" poker game in Laredo, Texas. The richest men in the state all gather on this particular day for a high-stakes game that is legendary throughout the state, having taken place over sixteen years. Undertaker Benson Tropp (Charles Bickford) careens through the Texas territory in his horse-drawn hearse, picking up the participants: lawyer Otto Habershaw (Kevin McCarthy), who abandons a closing argument in a murder trial to make the game; cattle-baron Henry Drummond (Jason Robards) skips out on his daughter's wedding. When the three get to Sam's saloon in Laredo, they are joined by Jesse Buford (John Qualen) and Dennis Wilcox (Robert Middleton) and convene to the backroom of Sam's, leaving the bar-flies to hang out and conjecture about what might be happening behind the door of the invitation-only exclusive "big game."

Not much it turns out. The millionaires all know each other and the game proceeds without many changes except the heighth of the chips.

Then, as they are wont to do, a stranger comes into town. Meredith (Henry Fonda) is moving with his family—his wife Mary (Joanne Woodward) and son Jackie (Gerald Michenaud)—to buy a house and property in the neighboring county, but a busted wagon wheel keeps them put in Laredo until the blacksmith can repair it. They come to the crowded saloon to pass the time until they can get on the trail again.

The prim and proper family makes an odd contrast to the rough and tumble saloon dwellers, but Meredith seems more comfortable in the honky-tonk, and is genuinely interested in the poker game going on in the backroom when he gets wind of it. He gets "the gambler's itch" and pretty soon, he's eyeing the families' stakes for the $500 to buy in. Mary argues with her husband that they've scrimped and saved for a long time for the stake and she doesn't want him risking it. Then, there's his gambling addiction, which he's resisted long enough for them to get that stake. But, that wagon-wheel needs fixing and if they just get a little more...

The regulars at the poker table, particularly Drummond, object to Meredith joining, but Habershaw, taken with Mary, presses the others to let Meredith join the game. 

Things start out okay—Meredith is only a passable poker player—but pretty soon, he's hooked and he starts to lose. He becomes increasingly agitated and starts looking the worse for wear. While Mary frets in the saloon, Meredith is sweating through some mediocre hands until he gets a hand that he knows he can win, but he doesn't have the money to meet Drummond's raised bet. The strain causes Meredith to collapse, stricken.

The town doctor (Burgess Meredith) is called, and he orders Meredith taken out of the room and back to his office for examination, leaving Mary in the situation to play the hand and either lose or keep the family farm. It does not bode well when she turns to Drummond and asks politely "How do you play this game?" 

How does she get out of it? How does she play the hand without the collateral funds to make a bet? How will she buy the farm...without buying the farm?

This is where A Big Hand for the Little Lady really gets interesting...and entertaining. Everything that has gone before is merely a set-up for the rest of the movie and how "the hand she is dealt" plays out.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady crosses a couple of genres. It is, on the surface, a western, that form that allows the problems of today to be seen in a silvered mirror of the past, making the issues complicated in today's world, simpler and deconstructed and standing out in fine relief. It is, in some instances, a comedy, in how it sets up a male-female tension. And it is a satire of how men can be "played," especially by forces that may be outside of their comfort zones.

But, it is also something of a feminist tract (Don't run away, boys, the film is entertaining) and might serve as an audio-visual aid to "The Feminine Mystique," illustrating the secret power of women (not so much hidden, but societally repressed) in a world dominated by subjugating men. It is fascinating to behold not only in a western, but also in something so light (when its equivalent is present in the darker, more resolute—and, one has to admit "camp"—Johnny Guitar). That is part of the delight of the construction and the big pay-out for A Big Hand for the Little Lady.

They Might Be Giants (1971)

They Might Be Giants (Anthony Harvey, 1971) It's the same writer/director/composer team as The Lion in Winter, but a decidedly off-kilter product is this out-of-circulation curiosity from the era immediately following George C. Scott's Oscar win for Patton. Set in the "modern" age, which might be quite a few years too late for it, They Might Be Giants—yes, it did inspire the band's name—tells the story of Justin Playfair (Scott), a retired judge, and in whose grief after the death of his wife, now thinks he's Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes.

That might be useful, actually, but Playfair is now convinced that everything wrong with the world (and there's a lot wrong in New York around 1970) is the work of Holmes' nemesis, the "Napoleon of Crime," the infamous Professor Moriarty. That includes the blackmail being played against Playfair's brother Blevin, who wants to pay up and be done with it, but the Judge, being Sherlock Holmes, forbids it until he can resolve the crime—and he's the one with all the money—so the brother decides to have him committed. Evidently without a decent phone book (they had those in 1970), he picks the worst person in the world to examine the Judge in order to declare him insane, a psychiatrist named (of course) Watson (Joanne Woodward). With a gaffe like that, the brother deserves all the grief he can get.

In the course of her examination, Playfair leads her on the wildest of goose-chases, trying to track down Moriarty, finding random clues in the detritus of the city, and introducing her to his own version of The Irregulars, the niche-dwellers all but abandoned by the hustle-bustling population and see nothing wrong in Playfair's behavior. In fact, they marvel at it, admire it, and wish to emulate it. Meanwhile, Holmes and Watson run the gamut of scenes of crimes displaying apathy, greed, gracelessness, and rampant consumerism in Society while Playfair rails against Moriarty's presence behind it all.* Watson serves as the Doubting Thomas (Scully to Scott's Mulder?), but eventually succumbs to Playfair's way of thinking. Professionalism, be damned.

The writer is James Goldman, brother of William (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Marathon Man), writer of the afore-mentioned The Lion in Winter, as well as Robin and Marian, Nicholas and Alexandra, and...White Nights. And the problems with the movie is in James' screenplay, full of wonderful detail and dialog, but precious (to the point of cloying) in scene concepts relating to the larger point. The mystery's good, but the clues suck. Fortunately, he's got actors like Scott, Woodward, Jack Gilford, Rue McClanahan, F. Murray Abraham, Al Lewis, Gene Roche, Paul Benedict, and Emmet Walsh, all of whom can spin gold from cotton candy temporarily, but can only go so far to improve the material in the long run. 

The film is as twee as twee can be, more in keeping with—Vincent Canby had this right in his negative review—the time of You Can't Take it With You and Arsenic and Old Lace and the sunny-side-up attitude (despite eyes being open to the negative) of Frank Capra. But it's not Capra, it's Anthony Harvey, terrific editor and Hepburn-favorite director. Harvey's really good at designing a film, its ambience and lighting, but he's not the best at forming image to idea, which the best directors can do merely by having empathy with the material. Harvey doesn't judge in his projects, but he also rarely comments at all, good at staging, but not at direction...that is, direction of you, the audience to a feeling the material should provoke. For a former editor, his weakness as a director is editorial. Odd.

The analyst in me cringes at the movie in its romantic notion of insanity—I've long wanted to do an "out there" version of "Harvey" where Elwood P. Dowd self-medicates in all sorts of ways besides booze—but, the wide eyed moon-calf that was me who first saw this film (probably to hear the score, as I am a fan of its composer, John Barry, and will also see anything with Scott in it), still has an affection for it, guarded though it has become. I also have a fondness for its ending, which drives audience members who are looking for air-tight Holmesian solutions crazy and let down, but for me, is a perfect little nugget of an ending whose power (the acting,** the lighting effects, the music?) one can't explain away. I'd put a spoiler alert here, but, really, this ending spoils nothing—it only enhances...and makes up for what has gone before.

Sadly, John Barry's score for this film (conducted by Ken Thorne) has never been released.

 

* Here's two examples, both out of the mouth of Playfair:

"Because, you see, we live in Eden. Genesis has got it all wrong — we never left the Garden. Look about you. This is paradise. It's hard to find, I'll grant you, but it is here. Under our feet, beneath the surface, all around us is everything we want. The earth is shining under the soot. We are all fools."

and

 "Well [Don Quixote] had a point. Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be... well… all the best minds used to think the world was flat. — But, what if it isn't? — It might be round — and bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes."

** Scott's feral growl and playing of "Now!  Do you see him now?" always gives me chills.