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Cognitive Dissonance

And the current carries us farther yet from the essay for best director of 1930-31 ...

The ever reliable Wikipedia describes cognitive dissonance as that "uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously" and suggests that most people instinctively try to bring the two ideas into harmony by either changing their belief structure so the two ideas are no longer in conflict or rationalizing away one of the two ideas, again to reduce the conflict.

Yesterday's seemingly innocent picture of Errol Flynn inadvertently created a lot of cognitive dissonance when, between Douglas Fairbanks's dirty joking and my own curiosity, we discovered that Flynn's already shady past cast darker shadows than we here at the Monkey had imagined. Not just a "dashing ladies man who drank too much and tickled Basil Rathbone's ribs with the blade," as I put it on Thingy's blog, "Pondering Life," Flynn was a serial seducer of underage girls (tried in 1943 but acquitted on charges of raping two teenagers and engaged to marry a fifteen year old at the time of his death in 1959), as well as, at least on one documented occasion, an anti-Semitic blowhard.

One biographer has even charged he was a spy for Hitler's Germany (although others contend he was a leftist drinking buddy of Fidel Castro's and the British government a few years ago revealed that during the last days of World War II, Flynn was actually a spy for the British).

In any event, nasty business.

Which is a bit of a problem because I, for one, like Errol Flynn's movies, particularly The Adventures of Robin Hood. Am I required to like Errol Flynn as well or otherwise have to explain away his private behavior before I can admit to such? Or should I just stop watching his movies altogether?

The instinctive sense that I need to choose one of these options is cognitive dissonance.

There was an even bigger example of cognitive dissonance in the movie-fan blogosphere recently when Switzerland arrested Roman Polanski in advance of extraditing him to the United States to face sentencing following his 1978 guilty plea to unlawful sexual intercourse—a subject I hadn't planned to address in any fashion until my cryogenically-frozen head reaches 1974's Chinatown in this blog, sometime around the turn of the next century.

In my notes for the essay about the best director of 1974 (yes, I've made notes that far ahead— I've even written about Amy Adams's 2008 performance in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day and Lord knows you'll be waiting forever before I get around to posting it), I have written: "Judgment of Polanski the man I leave to you, to God, to history, to Polanski's own withered conscience and to the appropriate legal authorities in any event. I certainly wouldn't want anything I've said about Polanski the artist to be construed as a defense of Polanski the man."

That's pretty much how I feel about Errol Flynn. And a lot of other people, too.

The farther I get into blogging about movies and their history, the clearer it becomes that the people who made great movies weren't necessarily great people, and certainly what you see on the screen doesn't reflect what you would have seen in their private lives. John Ford was an insufferable bastard, Henry Fonda was a terrible father, Woody Allen married his girlfriend's daughter. Dalton Trumbo was a Communist, Ward Bond hated Communists, Elia Kazan informed on his friends. Veronica Lake earned the nickname "the Bitch," Margaret Sullavan was a depressed alcoholic and Betty Hutton was as crazy as an outhouse rat. Clark Gable had bad breath and Joan Crawford's and Marilyn Monroe's legendary shortcomings I dare say you know about.

Renee Zellweger was reportedly so difficult on the set of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason that afterwards her co-stars Hugh Grant and Colin Firth announced their (thankfully short-lived) retirements from the movies. Jane Greer, on the other hand, was as sweet as chess pie, as loyal as a faithful dog and as brave as your average Marine, but that doesn't mean she wasn't absolutely riveting as the murderous femme fatale Kathy Moffit in the noir classic, Out of the Past.

There are any number of ways you can handle unpleasant information about the people who make movies. My father refused to watch Jane Fonda because of her politics; my mother-in-law still won't watch John Wayne because of his. Which is a pity from the point of view of the movie fan because it means you miss out on Klute and The Searchers, two great movies with two great performances that, I'll tip my hand now, will win their respective stars Katie Awards.

You can also go the other way and excuse behavior of your heroes you would never forgive of your enemies. Thus you'll find plenty of petitions seeking to free Roman Polanski despite committing a crime you'd insist your neighbor be buried for. Our brains are hard-wired that way, or so scientists tell us, something to remember the next you (or I) want to beat someone senseless for taking a position we don't agree with, but there's not much future for the republic if we're forever choosing to behave like territorial pack animals.

In writing this blog, I have opted for a third way. I have in the past and will continue in the future to distill out the professional from the personal, the on-screen persona from the private one, and though I have written about both, and will continue to do so, I've been choosing awards and reviewing movies strictly based on the former. Some of the winners have been creeps and some have been saints, but all of them have done something on screen that I think is worth your time and attention.

It's either that or stop writing about movies altogether. But then anything you write is guaranteed to offend somebody. After all, I imagine there are still some people out there who insist the world is flat. You can't please everybody.

So when 1938 rolls around, I will go ahead and lavish praise on The Adventures of Robin Hood and its star, Errol Flynn, no matter what he may or may not have done when he wasn't wearing green tights and a feather in his cap.

You're okay with that, right?

Looking Ahead: Errol Flynn

Thingy of the blog "Pondering Life" (I read it every day) has admitted to having a thingy for Errol Flynn.

Flynn made his first movie in 1933 and his first great one, Captain Blood, in 1935 (and then a slew of great ones after that, especially The Adventures of Robin Hood). If we can look ahead to Jean Harlow, we can look ahead to Errol Flynn.

We here at the Monkey aim to please.

Eye Candy, Circa 1931

Of the first 1300 words of my essay on the best director of 1930-31, I've written about the Beatles, baseball, Robert Osborne, Glenn Beck, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Casablanca and the baking of cakes, but I haven't written about Charles Chaplin, René Clair or Fritz Lang—perhaps a significant oversight given that the essay is about one of them.

Obviously, this is taking longer than I had intended.

In the meantime, here is some eye candy for both sexes: Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in 1931's elegant, trash-tastic romance/spy-thriller, Mata Hari.

Brooksie

Working on the award for best director. In the meantime, happy birthday to Louise Brooks, born on this day, 1906, in Cherryvale, Kansas.

Happy Birthday René Clair

It's director René Clair's birthday today. One more opportunity to urge you to put Le Million and À Nous La Liberté on your Netflix queue. If you like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy or any of that kind of comedy, and you're the least bit curious, there's no reason not to take a chance on either of these films.

(And a happy birthday to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, too. If it's 1931 in my blog, he would have been a nine year old boy in Indianapolis, no doubt making his way to the local theater to soak up Warner Baxter in The Cisco Kid, a sequel to the Oscar-winning Western In Old Arizona. Or if he was lucky, he was watching Jean Harlow in Platinum Blonde. But let's face it; nine year old boy? It was The Cisco Kid.)

Oh, and if you're in a mood to remember why we take the day off every November 11th, track down a copy of All Quiet On The Western Front and meditate for a while on "the war to end all wars." The first of several such wars, as it turned out ...

The Nominees For Best Director Of 1930-31

This is probably the richest crop of Katie nominees for best director you'll see for a long while—the three greatest directors of the era each producing the best movie of his career, all within a four month span.

Charles Chaplin (City Lights)

René Clair (Le Million)

Fritz Lang (M)

In fact, 1931 was a good year for directors all the way around: Tod Browning (Dracula), William A. Wellman (The Public Enemy) and James Whale (Frankenstein) (more about him in 1931-32) also served up what were arguably their best movies. Maybe there was something in the water.

(Oh, and what do I think was the best year for directors ever? It happened fifty years ago in 1959 when six of the greatest directors of all time—Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Yasujiro Ozu, Francois Truffaut, Billy Wilder and William Wyler—produced what may well have been the best movies of their careers, Rio Bravo, North By Northwest, Floating Weeds, The 400 Blows, Some Like It Hot and Ben-Hur, respectively. Not to mention that Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film Wild Strawberries was released in the United States in 1959. And there was also Anatomy of a Murder, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Pillow Talk, Imitation of Life, Black Orpheus and Ballad of a Soldier, possibly the best movies ever from their directors. Even Ed Wood, God bless him, gave us Plan 9 From Outer Space. And I haven't even mentioned Oscar winners Room at the Top and The Diary Of Anne Frank. Good year to be a movie goer.)

The Long Lost Sequel To Our Dancing Daughters

Did yesterday's posting of Our Dancing Daughters whet your appetite for more Joan Crawford? Well. Long thought lost, Our Waltzing Whelps would have been the fourth movie in the Joan Crawford Flapper Trilogy. Fortunately, a fragment of this film was recently discovered by me just now in one of my notebooks. So without further fanfare, Our Waltzing Whelps, starring Joan Crawford and Anita Page, filmed in state of the art MonkeyVision.

Too Early For Flappers, Jack?

I believe I promised that if any part of the Joan Crawford Flapper Trilogy showed up on the internet, I'd let you know about it. The first leg of the trilogy, Our Dancing Daughters ("leg" being the operative word, as you will see), is back up on YouTube. I present part one here for your no doubt temporary viewing pleasure and provide links to the other eight parts which might otherwise be a bit difficult to track down.

Our Dancing Daughters was the first movie written specifically for Joan Crawford and it made her a star. It's the story of a rich, wild girl (Crawford) with an addiction to short dresses and the Charleston who loses the love of her life to an even richer, wilder girl (Anita Page, also in a star-making role), all while soaking up Jazz and bootleg booze in fabulous art Deco palaces that could only have existed on the set of an MGM movie. None of this is meant to be taken seriously—just another Hollywood studio clucking its tongue at girls gone wild even as it exploited the phenomenon to rake in box office bucks.

What's not to like?

Hopefully one day Turner Classic Movies in association with Warner Brothers will issue the entire trilogy in one tasty DVD package. Until then it remains unavailable in any format. Pity.

By the way, Our Dancing Daughters is one of those odd silent-sound hybrids of the very early sound era. Made not long after The Jazz Singer, the film has a soundtrack, including several prominently featured songs, but no dialogue, only title cards. I actually find this approach preferable to early talkies such as The Broadway Melody where, for example, Anita Page's dialogue competes with the rustling of her own dress.

Fortunately, sound technology improved rapidly over the course of a year.

Anyway, here it is: Our Dancing Daughters. I hope you get as much of a kick (turn-turn-kick-turn) out of it as I do.



Additional parts: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Note: For those of you who prefer not to watch your movies in bite-size nuggets on a screen the size of your thumb, Our Dancing Daughters is scheduled to air on TCM on February 12, 2010 at 10:30 a.m. EST. I've already marked my calendar; be sure to mark yours.

Monday Is Marie Dressler Day On TCM

In honor of her birthday on Monday (November 9, 2009), Turner Classic Movies is showing Marie Dressler movies from 6 in the morning until 8 at night. They include her Oscar-winning turn in Min and Bill, her Oscar-nominated performance in Emma and Tillie's Punctured Romance from way back in 1914. Directed by comedy legend Mack Sennett, Tillie's Punctured Romance marks a couple of significant firsts—it was the first feature-length comedy ever produced and after years on the Broadway stage, was Marie Dressler's first Hollywood movie.

It may also have been the first performance by a very young Milton Berle in the role of a newsboy who gets slapped. Anyway, he said it was, but no one remembered him—he was only six years old—and no studio records exist to confirm his claim.

Tillie also marked a significant last: other than cameos, it was the last time Charles Chaplin appeared in a movie he didn't direct.

You might also check out The Patsy to see Marion Davies in her prime. Remem- bered now as William Randolph Hearst's mistress, skewered unmercifully in Citizen Kane as the no-talent "singer" Susan Alexander, Davies was actually a deft comic actress (I really recommend you track down Show People as well).

There are a lot of other name acts here as well—Mabel Normand, Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny (in his first movie), Rudy Vallee, William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Wallace Beery, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy, Marjorie Rambeau.

Why, there's even Lillian Gish in a comedy.

Nothing but the best for Marie Dressler who was the biggest star in Hollywood during the Early Sound Era. Check it out.

Here's the schedule from TCM's website (as always times are Eastern Standard Time):

6:00am [Silent] Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)
In this silent film, a con man dupes a wealthy country girl into marriage.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Charles Bennett Dir: Mack Sennett BW-72 mins

7:15am [Silent] Patsy, The (1928)
In this silent film, a romantic young woman falls for her sister's fiancé, then discovers her sister is cheating on him.
Cast: Marion Davies, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler, Dell Henderson Dir: King Vidor BW-77 mins

8:45am [Musical] Chasing Rainbows (1929)
Musical performers fall in love while rehearsing for the big show.
Cast: Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny, George K. Arthur Dir: Charles F. Reisner BW-86 mins

10:15am [Romance] Divine Lady, The (1929)
Lady Hamilton's love affair with Admiral Nelson rocks the British Empire.
Cast: Corinne Griffith, Victor Varconi, H. B. Warner, Ian Keith Dir: Frank Lloyd BW-99 mins

12:00pm [Musical] Vagabond Lover, The (1929)
A small-town boy finds fame and romance when he joins a dance band.
Cast: Rudy Vallee, Sally Blane, Marie Dressler, Charles Sellon Dir: Marshall Neilan BW-65 mins

1:15pm [Romance] Girl Said No, The (1930)
A college sports star surprises everyone with his money-making schemes.
Cast: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler Dir: Sam Wood BW-92 mins

3:00pm [Drama] Min And Bill (1930)
Two crusty waterfront characters try to protect their daughter from a terrible secret.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Dorothy Jordan, Marjorie Rambeau Dir: George Hill BW-66 mins

4:15pm [Comedy] One Romantic Night (1930)
A princess engaged to a prince falls for her brother's tutor.
Cast: Lillian Gish, Rod La Rocque, Conrad Nagel, Marie Dressler Dir: Paul L. Stein BW-72 mins

5:30pm [Drama] Politics (1931)
Two women take on small-town racketeers.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Rosco Ates, Karen Morley Dir: Charles F. Riesner BW-73 mins

6:45pm [Drama] Emma (1932)
A housekeeper faces unexpected snobbery when she marries her boss.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy Dir: Clarence Brown BW-72 mins