The Man with Bogart's Face

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

The Man with Bogart's Face (Robert Day, 1980) With some television series ("The Rebel" and "Branded"), a couple movies (like Chisum) and a long association with director Irvin Kershner on his resume, writer-actor-producer Andrew J. Fenady began work on his first book, "The Man with Bogart's Face" which was first published in 1977. 

I read it not long after that--the title caught my attention-- but it didn't leave much of an impression on me, other than the guy had done his research and that he had an obvious love for the detective films of the 1940's and '50's. It tells the story of a man so obsessed with Humphrey Bogart, he has plastic surgery done on his face and changes his name to Sam Marlow, all the better to become what he's always dreamed of being—a private detective. 

Fenady had an eye to making a movie of the book, wrote a screenplay, got financing from Melvin Simon—Fenady wrote it to be low-budget—and started the process of getting the movie on the screen.

But, who would play Sam Marlow, the man with Bogart's face? Supposedly, an actor had been cast* when in walked a little known thesp' named Robert Sacchi. Saachi had his own one-man Bogart-tribute touring show which he took around the country and from most angles, he was a dead ringer for Bogart (who'd passed away in 1958), and did an impeccable mimicry of him, if slightly limited in range. Put him in a trench-coat and a fedora and he fit the bill like a slightly rumpled suit. 

George Raft (in his last role) confronts Sam Marlow

But for an entire feature film? Maybe that's going a bridge too far. The plot follows the outline of The Maltese Falcon: after unveiling his new plastically-surgeoned face (in a sequence that resembles a similar sequence in Dark Passage), a valuable "whatsit" is coveted by a variety of outlandish characters and newly-chiseled Sam Marlow (Sacchi), with a newly installed ditsy secretary he calls "Duchess" (Misty Rowe), is employed by almost all of them for the prized "McGuffin." That they all vaguely resemble characters from Dashiell Hammett's original only proves that the falcon doesn't fall far from the tree.

 

But, it's The Maltese Falcon-light.

Light, but not so nimble. His first case is with his sizable landlady whose husband is missing. Then he gets a call from Elsa Borscht (Olivia Hussey), who tells him that her father, Horst, a former prop-man for the pictures, has been getting threatening phone-calls. She tells him this right before they get attacked by two masked gun-men at the Hollywood Bowl. It's enough action to almost make you forget that a character's name is Horst Borscht. It's going to be that kind of picture.

It seems everybody is looking for "The Eyes of Alexander" two perfect blue sapphires once a part of a statue of Alexander the Great. Among the many coveters is Commodore Anastas (Victor Buono)—whose daughter Gena (Michelle Phillips) Marlow thinks looks just like Gene Tierney in Laura (he even has "the portrait" hanging in his office)—the fey-caricatured Mr. Zebra (Herbert Lom), the slimy club-owner Hakim (Franco Nero), and the former Nazi general (with a wooden arm) Wolf Zinderneuf (Jay Robinson, considerably toned down from his performance as Caligula in The Robe). All have eyes on the Eyes and are ready to resort to any sort of skullduggery to get them. And Marlow is forced to dodge bullets and search for the sapphires in some of the seedier, less photogenic sides of Los Angeles.

It starts to get formulaic very quickly: everybody who meets Marlow has to ask: "Has anyone ever told you you look like..." before he cuts them off with a pivot, Marlow's dialogue is always a little too clever by half and sometimes downright irritating at any quarter. Then, there's an omnipresent narration where he waxes philosophic and usually has to include an old movie reference ("Hollywood Boulevard isn't what it used to be, but then it never was" huh?).

 

After awhile, it gets to be a drag, the kind of movie Bogie would say "only phonies like it."

It gets so bad that Sacchi's performance starts to wear a little thin and you start to notice the differences instead of getting comfortable with them. For examples, the forehead is too high, the nose a little pudgy and the chin weak. Plus, every chance he gets, Sacchi runs a finger across his lip "just like Bogie did" but, he never did it this much and although imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, too much of it is the sincerest form of boredom.

Things get really ugly when things get deadly serious and the most sympathetic (although sadly also the most dull) character gets killed. And the movie begins to drag and Sacchi's impression starts going stale. The real Bogie would risk looking ugly or tortured or something at this stage of the mystery, but Sacchi doesn't dare lest the Bogie-illusion suffers for it. And one realizes then that the performance is relentlessly one-note and the whole enterprise starts to slide downhill.

The movie is of its time and you can't change that—the direction and cinematography looks like that of every run-of-the-mill detective television series of the 1970's—But one would think this thing might have played better during the "Bogie renaissance" when he started being a cult-figure on college campuses during the 1960's.

The Man with Bogart's Face just goes to show that unique can't be imitated and that Bogart was and remains inimitable.

* I'm guessing Jerry Lacy, the most obvious choice. Lacy did commercials as a Bogart look-alike and starred as the phantom-Bogart in Woody Allen's "Play it Again, Sam" both on-stage and film. If he was considered, the loss shouldn't have been too upsetting, as The Man with Bogart's Face died a quick death at the box-office. Sacchi died in 2021, outliving Bogart by over 30 years. Lacy is still quite alive at the age of 89.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962) As if Sunset Blvd wasn't perverse enough, Robert Aldrich took the 1960 novel by Harry Farrell and turned it into the Grandest of Guignol's about the passing of Hollywood glamour with two of the greatest stars of the past pitted against each other in a battle for screen supremacy. Reportedly, the filming was contentious as both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford despised each other and didn't care who knew it. That vehemence inspired two very overheated performances that reached deep into both ladies' bags of tricks—Davis' over the top Jane, and Crawford's long-suffering Blanche. Whatever one may think of the picture, no one can't resist looking at a train-wreck...in the middle of a cage-match. And director Aldrich, who could be counted on to make his own fireworks when he needed to, merely had to turn on the camera and watch the material boil over.

And, on occasion, keep it from exploding.

Cautionary placard for ticket-buyers of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

The Hudson family is riding a financial success in 1917, as their daughter "Baby Jane" is a beloved silent film star and doing stage appearances to promote her marketable likeness in the "Baby Jane" doll. America's little sweetheart, however, is, away from the spotlight, a spoiled-rotten brat who dominates the family who give in to her every whim and tantrum to keep the money coming in. Her sister Blanche can only look on and seethe in jealousy.

Cut to 1935. Both Blanche and Jane are appearing in films now, although Blanche's fortunes have eclipsed Jane's and the older film star is drinking to drown her sorrows. But a deliberate auto accident by one against the other reverses all fortunes.

It's modern times (1962) and both sisters live in a Los Angeles mansion in Los Angeles, Blanche (Crawford), confined to a wheelchair from the car accident, watching her old movies on television and reliving her past. Jane (Davis), meanwhile, is still drinking heavily, bitter, and delusional enough that she's teetering on the edge of a psychotic split. Jane is Blanche's "caretaker," with as opposite a definition of "care" as possible. It being 1962, movies didn't show everything involved in caring for a paraplegic, so it's limited to Jane's preparing and bringing of meals. But, in Jane's resentful state, what she uses for protein becomes more than questionable.

What she doesn't make for Blanche is pancakes, presumably because that is what she seems to be using for make-up.

Jane dresses up in woman-sized girly dresses and cakes on the foundation in an attempt to look younger* and acts like a coquettish child while interacting with strangers, but, once you get to know her, she turns into a harridan, dropping the act. Her viciousness is no act, however, and it's escalating, the further she gets away from her fabled childhood and her own dreams of Hollywood success. But Jane is used to getting her way, combined with a twisted guilt for her sister's paralysis, as she was black-out drunk when the crippling accident occurred. 

While Blanche is basically confined to the upstairs, Jane has the run of the house and takes delight in taking any joy she can from Blanche's existence. It is merely the presence of a housekeeper (Maidie Norman) that keeps Jane's more extreme activities in check, and she is beginning to resent it.

It's a battle for control between the two sisters, with Blanche seemingly at the disadvantage. But, she has control of the house, and when she announces to Jane that she intends to sell it, Jane ramps up the abuse, locking Blanche in her room, tossing out her mail and restricting access to the outside world by means of disabling their telephone. Particularly venomous are Jane's manipulation of her sister's meals, at one point using her pet parakeet as an entree, while at the same time living under the illusion that she can revive her career with personal appearances.

But, the public has long forgotten Baby Jane.

Blanche, on the other hand, defends her sister, no matter what cruelty is inflicted on her. Her long-suffering victim-hood has its own deep origins in that accident in ways that are not obvious on the outside.

It is an extraordinary, squirm-inducing example of bat-shit-crazy film-making, with an extra level of cruelty than the usual hard edge Aldrich put on his films as the two sisters have a battle of wills that almost guarantees mutually assure destruction. It has a sardonic nastiness reminiscent of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

It would almost be unwatchable if it weren't for the two actors involved in the struggle (which spilled over to their antics against each other on-set). The casting is key with Davis and Crawford in opposite corners, diametrically opposed in both technique and performance goals, with Crawford falling back on her woman-martyr characterizations and Davis careening in the opposite direction going for manic intensity. Given how the film plays out, it shouldn't work, but both actresses can't help give it their all for screen-domination. It is one of the miracles of casting that couldn't be more ideal.

"We're getting along. Really, we are."

Although she seemed far more stable, there are rumors than "Baby Jane Hudson" was based on 

Diana Serra Carey, who starred in silent pictures as "Baby Peggy"

* When Davis' daughter saw her "Baby Jane" make-up, she reportedly said: "Oh, Mother, you've gone too far this time!"