Reeling Backward: "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953)

I can't quite decide if "How to Marry a Millionaire" is a daringly progressive film or a horribly anachronistic throwback. Probably one for 1953, and another for 2016.

It's silly to judge the social politics of a 60-odd-year-old movie by today's standards. Back then as women who worked in factories during World War II were pushed back into the home, "marrying well" was not a topic people shied away from talking about openly.

For men, that meant finding a spouse who was pretty, kind and a good mother. For women, it meant marrying a stable guy with a good income.

The problem comes when you put these foremost qualities on a scale, with the assumption that more must be better. If a well-to-do man of prospects is desirable, then why not a fabulously rich fellow? Why settle for next-door beauty when you can get Marilyn Monroe?

Speaking of Monroe, "Millionaire" more or less marked her ascension from breakout star to screen icon. Betty Grable was billed first in the movie, though the blonde WWII pinup girl was closing in on 40 and her legendary duels with the studios meant her career was crumbling. Monroe actually took over her part in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes," which came out a few months earlier and made her a star.

(Though Grable received top billing in the credits, Monroe was usually listed first on the posters and advertising.)

Grable's screen persona was actually somewhat similar to Monroe's, the bubble-headed blonde with hidden qualities beyond a gorgeous face. Their characters in "Millionaire" are rather the same, too; both are sweet and rather dim. They play man-hungry Loco Dempsey (Grable) and nearsighted Pola Debevoise (Monroe), who's constantly bumping into things because she fears to wear her glasses in public.

"Men aren't attentive to girls who wear glasses," Pola says, echoing Dorothy Parker and setting up an inevitable romance with a four-eyed suitor (David Wayne) who appreciates her spectacles.

The funny thing is, the movie really belongs to Lauren Bacall. She plays Schatze Page, the smartest and most outgoing of the trio. She hatches the idea for the girls, all fashion models, to pool their resources and rent out a New York City penthouse as a man-trap for rich men. She's calculating and rather mercenary, but in the end the frozen cockles of her heart melt for a guy she assumes is a gas station jockey (Cameron Mitchell), but is actually worth $200 million.

That's $1.8 billion in today's dollars, folks. Dude even has a city named after his family.

I was pleasantly surprised by the character of J.D. Hanley, a 56-year-old widower played with charm and class by William Powell. He becomes Schatze's main target, but he puts her off due to their age difference. Hanley later changes his mind and agrees to marry her, though she undergoes her own change of heart at the altar.

Hanley is gracious and considerate throughout, even when Schatze breaks his heart. That's the beauty of getting old, he says: you learn how to deal with disappointment.

Probably the most cringe-worthy scene in the movie is when Schatze dreams of how her life will be after she marries Hanley, as she leans over a display of jewelry and points, telling the salesman she would like "That... and that... and that... and that and that and that..." My modern sensibilities recoil at the notion of a woman seeing a man as simply a path to comfort and baubles.

But eventually Schatze evolves from gold-digger to kind heart.

I should point out that models of this era were not the high-paid celebrities we know today. In one of the film's signature scenes, a whole gaggle of women, including our trio, try on clothes and parade around for a client at a snooty retail store, like living, breathing mannequins. (Though how this is less degrading than doing the same thing on a runway for a hundred people escapes me.)

Palo initially falls for a rich Arab oilman, but he turns out to be a conman. She has several unwitting conversations with the man who owns their apartment, who's on the lam with IRS troubles -- he blames them on a crooked accountant -- and sneaks in to retrieve papers from a hidden safe. She doesn't know who he is and assumes it's Hanley because of her poor vision.

They later bump into each other on a plane and share love at first sight -- fuzzy first sight, to be sure, until she dons her glasses.

Loco's story is the most convoluted, and least interesting. She agrees to go up to a lodge in Maine with a crabby millionaire named Brewster (Fred Clark), thinking a "lodge" means a large gathering of men. It actually means his cozy cabin, and she's mortified at the implication.

But then she catches sick and falls into the arms of Eben (Rory Calhoun), a good-looking local bumpkin. She assumes he's rich when he shows her the mountain range and calls it "his" as far as the eye can see, but he's actually a forest ranger talking about his scope of responsibilities. Loco is disappointed when she finds out the truth, and he's disappointed that she's disappointed, but they patch things up in the end.

So when it all shakes out, two of the three women actually do marry millionaires, though Schatze didn't know it at the time and the other fortune is currently in government hock.

It's a beautiful film to look at, with vivid colors and striking costumes (which earned an Oscar nomination.) It was actually the very first film shot in CinemaScope, though "The Robe" beat it to the box office by a few months. Journeyman director Jean Negulesco makes very good use of the widescreen format to show off New York's locales.
Nunnally Johnson produced and wrote the script, which was actually based on two different stage plays, "Loco" and "The Greeks Had a Word For It."

Though it may seem terribly outdated, "How to Marry a Millionaire" is enjoyable as an artifact of a bygone era and (mostly) outgrown attitudes.

Reeling Backward: "Hombre" (1967)

Paul Newman, of course, looks about as much like an American Indian as I do an Aboriginal chieftain. Even as half-breed Apache John Russell, it's an entirely unconvincing portrait -- the bad wig and bandana he wears briefly during the opening scene doing nothing to help.

But Russell is a compelling anti-hero in "Hombre," notable for two reasons. First, he's a powerful advocate for a revisionist look at how Indians are portrayed in Western films, delivering a stern uppercut to white characters who look disdainfully down on his people. To the snooty upper-crust woman who talk in horrified tone about seeing some Apaches eat dog meat, he tells her she's never known real hunger. "You'd eat dog, and fight for the bones."

And that line gives a clue to the other aspect of the character: He is one of the unkindest, most unlikable men  you're apt to meet in a mainstream film. He kills without enjoyment, but he does so with a total lack of hesitation or compassion. Russell is not above shooting a man in the back after he's come to parley if he thinks the other a threat.

Lots and lots of men of this ilk are portrayed in movies, particularly Westerns, but their grimness is always a front for a fairly typical heroic outlook ... or, at the very least, their severity is eventually triumphed by altruistic feelings. Think of the Man with No Name, whose trilogy was recently profiled in this space. Clint Eastwood wears the visage of a selfish killer, but almost from the get-go he's looking to help out the downtrodden.

Not John Russell. Newman's steely performance makes quite clear that he gives not a fig for the Caucasians (and one Mexican) with whom he shares a stagecoach. when they find out he's half-Indian, Russell is forced to ride up top with the driver. When the coach is stopped and robbed by bandits -- one of them hidden among the passengers -- Russell is ready to let them all die so long as he's not harmed.

In the end, of course, Russell does sacrifice himself for the greater good. But it's damn clear he's not happy about doing it. It's an act of heroism, but executed with a sneer and resignation rather than a kind heart.

Elmore Leonard must hold some kind of record for most novels turned into films, due in part to the fact that he leapt through genres gleefully. Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch adapted the book for the screenplay, turning in a spare, economical script with surprisingly little dialogue. Russell himself rarely speaks more than a sentence or two at a time.

Director Martin Ritt was a well-regarded journeyman who had previously worked with Newman on "Hud," "The Long, Hot Summer" and and several other pictures. Visually "Hombre" isn't terribly novel, though Ritt has a flair for extreme close-ups of faces that is in some ways reminiscent of Sergio Leone.

His real strength as a filmmaker, I think, was in eliciting sharp, strong performances from his cast. All the characters in "Hombre," from the lead to the smallest supporting role, have a resonance and authenticity that's gripping. Even a Mexican bandit (Frank Silvera) -- who's only credited as "Mexican bandit" -- gets a few choice lines and a dramatic death scene.

It's no surprise that Ritt, who scored only one Oscar nomination during his long career, saw his films garner an astonishing 11 Academy Award acting nominations, with two wins.

The plot is pretty bare, though it bears some similarities to an updated version of John Ford's classic "Stagecoach."

A party of disparate souls are packed together for a journey through dangerous lands, with one of them an outcast. Russell, who had been corralling horses in the mountains with other Apaches, learns the white father who adopted him has died and left him a boarding house. He takes one look at it and the harried, soulful woman running the place and decides to sell it for a herd of horses.

Jessie (a terrific Diane Cilento), acts as the moral conscience of the group, repeatedly trying to shame Russell into helping the others instead of just looking out for himself. Jessie has her own problems. In addition to just losing her livelihood, she proposes marriage to her boyfriend, the local sheriff Braden (Cameron Mitchell), and is told, "Not a chance." By her own reckoning she's been married, widowed, used and abused, but she has a strong sense of self and is in some ways hardier than Russell himself.

Fredric March plays Favor, an elderly professor and Indian agent who's been robbing Russell's tribe blind, carrying $12,000 in cash along with his much younger refined bride, Audra (Barbara Rush). Also along for the ride are Billy Lee (Peter Lazer) and Doris (Margaret Blye), a very young and recently married couple whose lives seem headed toward misery. Mendez (Martin Balsam) runs the coach line and is the closest thing in the world Russell has to a friend.

Last and least is Cicero Grimes, the head of the robber gang who poses as a passenger (by intimidating a soldier into giving up his ticket). Richard Boone has a splendid turn as the amoral Grimes, who's relentless and folksy at the same time. He's a loathsome man -- at one point he makes a semi-serious rape attempt on Doris -- but the movie only hits its highest gear when he's around.

3.5 stars out of four