Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955) I'm not a big fan of musicals, although there are musicals I'm quite fond of. It's the form that bothers me—the interruption of narrative flow for a serviceable song that may or may not have anything to do with what came before or after it. If it's an operetta, sure, I can go with that if everything is mostly sung, anyway. If the musical involves the musical field, breaking into song is a natural extension. I admit it's a small-minded prejudice and, despite my grumpy attitude, it isn't absolute—I admire things that are exceptions to the caveats. Hey, nobody's perfect. And when I lean away from my prejudices, it's usually because a song is so musically magical or the lyrics so damned clever that they would be sorely missed if they were taken away. Plus, there are musicals that elevate the inherent emotion with song in ways that merely dialog, however well-written, could not achieve. So, my collection of cherished musicals is sparse, with subject matter all over the map and in different formats, animated and live-action. They thrill me, rather than having me carp through a song: "Get on with it..."

"Guys and Dolls" is one of those exceptions. Based on two Damon Runyon stories—"The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", it was a Broadway "smash" when it debuted in 1950 (directed by George S. Kauffman!), with a book by screenwriter Jo Swerling, which was rewritten by Abe Burrows, with songs (composed between the two drafts) by Frank Loesser. The later script had to merge into the songs from the earlier draft, which causes a little bit of a fracas here and there, but it makes for an entertaining and charming evening. 

So, you'd think when the movie adaptation came along, after 1,200 Broadway performances and 555 in London, everything would be on the square and level. But, the movie adaptation, produced by the Samuel Goldwyn Company, compounded issues by dropping songs—some of them ("A Bushel and a Peck,""Marry the Man Today,""More I Cannot Wish You," and "My Time of Day") already made very famous by the Broadway run—and then added three new songs...to accommodate the casting, which was done with an eye toward box office returns, rather than production logic. More on that later, but first give us to introduce personae dramatis:

The story revolves illegal betting in New York City. One of the high rollers is one Nathan Detroit (played in the film by Frank Sinatra), who, through his connections, runs a necessarily "floating" crap game from many locations throughout the city. But, due to the efforts of the local police constabulary, Nathan Detroit, one particular night, cannot get one of his usual locales to provide the hosting duties for the evening's festivities. The Biltmore Garage might do it...but with the first presenting of a security deposit of one thousand clams. This, Nathan Detroit does not have.

But, he happens upon another high roller in the well-tailored form of Mr. Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando), who is a good bet to never turn down any bet. Nathan Detroit then wagers with Mr. Sky Masterson that he cannot convince any woman of his choosing to go to a romantic dinner in Havana, Cuba. To Masterson, this is a cinch of the lead-pipe variety. Until, of course, Detroit chooses Sergeant Miss Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) of the "Save a Soul" Mission. For Masterson, this is akin to drawing a Nothing card hand, or rolling Snake Eyes.

The film then follows Masterson's efforts to win the bet, thus saving himself a thousand G's, and Detroit's efforts to secure a hospitable roost for the Big Game in the happenstance that he should be the loser of the bet. Oh...and to further put-off his fiancee of fourteen years, Adelaide (Vivian Blaine—the only hold-over lead star from Broadway*), a nightclub dancer at the Hot Box Club.

Goldwyn was thinking Gene Kelly for the role of the smooth Masterson, who is the romantic lead role and has quite a few songs to sing, but Kelly's studio—M-G-M—would not loan him out (which is ironic as they ended up distributing the movie for Goldwyn, anyway). The next choice, naturally, would be Frank Sinatra, who desperately wanted to play Masterson. But this circumstance was not to be. Goldwyn chose, in his stead, to give the role to the biggest box office bonanza at the time, which happened to be Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando, who could not sing...maybe could dance a little. It was fine with the director, Joseph Mankiewicz, who had directed Brando in Julius Caesar, a role of some considerable acclaim and status...and moolah made at the box-office. Brando got the role. 

This did not impress Mr. Sinatra, who could sing and could dance and had displayed these abilities in many a previous musical production. The Masterson role was played on Broadway by Robert Alda (father of Alan Alda), who had a rich voice and who could acquit himself well with a song. But Sinatra was stuck in the Nathan Detroit role, which was more of a character type, played by Sam Levene on the stage (and one must say that Levene was not too accomplished a crooner) and so, received simpler "talky" songs. This was a situation for which Sinatra could not be feeling gratified about. He was much aggrieved and could only wish that a stage light would fall on his co-star, so as he might be able to step into the role.

But, he was given a conciliatory song—"Adelaide" (which he sang out of character)—and sat back while the actor he called "Mr. Mumbles" was given voice lessons that he might warble the songs that Sinatra could do at the drop of a down-beat.

 

The results, however, for all the effort, were none too shabby.   

Sure, they had to splice together a usable version of the ditties from many Brando attempts, but Brando brought Method to the madness and "acted" his way through it, which was compelling enough for Mankiewicz and the paying rubes who hadn't taken in the stage version.

And, by the by, it's not a bad production. Mankiewicz doesn't try to make it realistic in any way, creating a stagey New Yawk gangster bubble-world where everything is immaculate—even the sewers!—and there is merely the suggestion of rough-house among these sharps, but nobody really gets hurt...or "offed". No "rods" are produced, and no legs get broken. Not even a nose gets bent out of shape.

And the only "singing" that is done is...well, it's a musical, no matter how many "takes"...it takes.

But, it's not the Tony Award-winning stage version. Oh, folks did get to see a version of Vivian Blaine's performance (with a couple of her songs axed). And they got to see the performance Mankiewicz was most grateful for--Jean Simmons' turn as Sarah Brown. She was a third-choice compromise after the director had been turned down by, first, Grace Kelly, and, second, Deborah Kerr. Simmons was accomplished and well-known (and already Oscar-nominated...for playing Shakespeare, fer crying out loud) and she had the added advantage of already having worked with Brando before (in Désirée the year before). He called her "the dream...a fantastically talented and enormously underestimated girl. In terms of talent, Jean Simmons is so many heads and shoulders above most of her contemporaries, one wonders why she didn't become the great star she could have been."

And, of course, they got to see "the show-stopper" in the play's last act--"Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" performed by the stage-show's Stubby Kaye (who played the role of Nicely-Nicely Johnson in both versions).

It was one of the "sure things" in a production that spent a lot of its time rolling the dice, hoping for the best.

* Marilyn Monroe lobbied for the part.

Battle Circus

Battle Circus (Richard Brooks, 1953) You don't get very far along in Battle Circus before you realize that it is actually, basically M*A*S*H (the 1970 movie, the novel it was based on, and, ultimately, the television series based on it), but without the 1960's counter-culture sensibility of the Robert Altman film. As the P.A. announcements would say "Follow the exploits of some zany Mobile Army Surgeons, cutting up and cutting loose, laughing and loving their way through Korea, dodging bombs and commitments, while passing the penicillin and morphine, but not the 'Mary-Jane.' That is all" (and that last part would be "Bogarting"). 

 

There's even a little flaunting of authority to go along the way, what with Humphrey Bogart as a less-than-regular-Army surgeon, who takes a lot of pride in his meatball-surgery but not a lot of guff from the higher-in-rank. You could almost imagine Richard Hooker, Ring Lardner, jr. and Larry Gelbart writing this stuff, if not, in fact, being inspired from it. It's like there's a pool of Korean War Army hospital stories that everybody is drawing from.

But, Battle Circus came first, and was in production while the war was still going on. Focusing on the arrival of Nurse Lt. Ruth McGara (June Allyson) to the MASH 8666 unit near the front lines, she has to learn her way through the no-better-than-camping conditions, the closeness of the battles, the harrowing work on wounded soldiers on a seemingly endless supply being choppered in, and the "bailing-wire-and-spit" resourcefulness of the unit in tending to the wounded but also the Korean villages caught in the cross-fire.

Then, there's the relations in the camp. Nerves are frayed, but the only way to cure those are to drown them in alcohol. Chief among those patients is Chief Surgeon Maj. Jed Webbe (Bogart), meticulous in the OR but erratic anywhere else. Warned of his tendency to think of breaking hearts as minor surgery, McGara keeps him at scalpel's length. But Webbe, being a brilliant surgeon, has a way of getting under your skin.

When one of the village children is in need of a delicate open heart surgery, she entreats the Camp Commander, Lt. Col. Hilary Walters (Robert Keith) who refuses, due to the man-hours and supplies such a procedure would drain on the already strapped base. But, Webbe knows his way around a heart and goes against the rules and performs the surgery anyway, despite the consequences, winning McGara's regard...and her own heart.

Webbe has a way of going against the grain. When blood supplies are needed at a nearby outpost, he convinces their chief helicopter pilot (William Campbell) to risk taking him there during a bad storm, barely making it, and when they return, going on a bender that Walters tells him it may be the last straw, threatening his career in the Army and probably stateside unless he sobers up. Good thing he stays, because at some point, the colonel takes a bullet, and Webbe has to take command, in a particularly hazardous re-deployment to another site (with some pretty tricky jeep maneuvers down precipitous hills that are done for real, no dummies, and the slipperiest of brakes).

So, who's "Radar?" That would be Keenan Wynn's Sgt. Orvill Statt (nice name in a hospital), loyal, unquestioning, and extraordinarily gifted in the "mother-of-inventions" department. He makes the camp work, seemingly by himself, and if you need a jeep repaired, a route planned, a supply filled, or an orderly on stand-by, he's your man.

Nurse McGara has a tough time adjusting to the craziness, but when a North Korean prisoner is being operated on and pulls a grenade (I think that was on the TV series at least twice), she's able to be disarming, earning the company's respect...and a scar...for her efforts. She wins her stripes in the community, if not from the Army. And it makes the flirtatious banter between Allyson (who's quite good, although I've always found a bit creepy) and Bogart (never one for too light a touch, but who acquits himself well) turn more serious as ties bind and wounds heal.

Richard Brooks wrote and directed Battle Circus from a story by Allen Rivkin and Laura Kerr and Bogart was attracted to the mixture of drama, action, romance and comedy. But, he wasn't entirely happy with the result, falling out with the director with whom he made Deadline-U.S.A. Perhaps it's because Brooks has mostly been a very deliberate, even heavy-handed, director, who, when he sets out to make a joke, does so without much subtlety, and was always more successful when it was sub-text rather than front and center. His subject matter could be controversial and boundary-pushing, but his approach to it rarely was. He was good at action (as movies like The Professionals and Bite the Bullet proved), but seemed to think little of it, aspiring to bigger (and big "I" important) themes that he pushed all too leadenly. Richard Brooks could be quite good, but rarely great. It's why Battle Circus is largely forgotten, while M*A*S*H stole the play-book, and lingers on.

The Lineup

The Lineup (Don Siegel, 1958) Don Siegel directed this film version of the television show he directed the pilot for—itself the TV version of a radio drama police procedural in the same milieu as "Dragnet" only set in San Francisco (the series was syndicated as "San Francisco Beat").* 

You can tell that Siegel could care less about the police in this one because, except for a frenetic action sequence at the top of the film that leaves two men dead, the movie doesn't take on any life until the arrival of the two Miami "business-men," Dancer (Eli Wallach) and his mentor, Julian (Robert Keith), who come to town to do a job for a drug-ring with an anonymous leader ("The Man") with the plan to get out of town fast once the job is done. One gets a whiff of The Killers (which Siegel was on the line to direct in its 1946 version and that he would eventually do another version of the story in 1964) with most of the film's attention-span being with the hoods.

Warner Anderson and Marshall Reed are the only hold-overs from the series. But, their scenes are so minimal, they may as well not even be in the movie, but just part of the guys in cars who've got guns and are tailing the bad-guys, waiting for the eventual shoot-out. We meet Dancer and Julian on the plane to the Bay City, where Dancer is reading a book on how to improve his vocabulary. Julian thinks that Dancer has a big future in their line of business—he just has to learn to control his temper and his violent instincts. What he only sees occasionally is the paranoia that constantly dogs Dancer (Julian thinks he's just being thorough, looking for traps that will stand in their way), a product of an inferiority complex and not wanting to admit the fact that he's a bit dim.

Dancer and Julian make it to the shabby little motel outside San Francisco where they're soon met by their driver for the job, Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel), who's a little too eager to be of help, asking too many questions and getting on Dancer's bad side. It doesn't help that the kid's a bit reckless and doesn't think anything of drawing from a flask while on the job. 

At police headquarters, Inspectors Guthrie and Quine (Emile Meyer) do a little digging and find out a bit more about the incident at the airport that got two officers killed: questioning the owner of the valise that one of the getaway drivers had stolen, they find it belongs to Philip Dressler (Raymond Bailey) a well-to-do collector of antiques, just returned from Asia. But, an inspection of the pieces he bought from a street-vendor shows he got more than he bargained for: the statue is filled with heroin. They confiscate the drugs and return the statue (now filled with powdered sugar) to Dressler and start an investigation of innocent others who may have just returned from Asia, not suspecting that they are mules for the drug-trade.

They're a couple steps behind Dancer and Julien, who find that getting the heroin is not an easy thing to do without collateral damage...at least, when Dancer is the point-man. One grab results in a shoot-out at the pier, another provokes a murder in a steam-room, and the other, turns into a hostage situation when Dancer and Julien take a mother and child hostage after finding out that the heroin has been destroyed...in a rather unique manner. Their failure to produce the last bag of heroin demands an explanation...and a hitherto unheard-of meeting with the usually anonymous "The Man" (Vaughn Taylor), whose air of superiority and disdain can't be a good mix with Dancer's own insecurities.

The kidnapping puts the SFPD on an APB and it allows director Siegel to do what he does best—a chase scene through San Francisco. It will be a treat for appreciators of these types of scenes and those with a sense of history to see it played out on the under-construction Embarcadero, with Siegel's efficiency and surgeon-like editing ramping up the tension until the last bullet is fired.

The result is a top-notch noir...in sunny daylight. Eli Wallach was not fond of the film during shooting, as he thought he'd taken a step down after making his film debut working with Elia Kazan on Baby Doll, where filming was more measured, slower, and had more concentration on acting as if it were a stage feature, as opposed to Siegel's quick set-ups and emphasis on pace. You had to be quick on your feet with Siegel, and although there was less "prestige" to this feature, it holds up as a nifty thriller with an edge, something that never goes out of style.

* Yes, it's not just current times where they make movie versions of TV-shows: they'd made movies of "Dragnet" and "Batman" ("The Man from U.N.C.L.E." had a neat trick where they'd edit episodes together to distribute to foreign markets). The Line-up could increase the filming budget somewhat to bring more value to screen (but not much).