Reeling Backward: "Executive Suite" (1954)

While a fairly typical Golden Age drama in a lot of ways, "Executive Suite" diverged from other Hollywood dramas of the day.

Most notably, it was set inside the top leadership of a national furniture company and focuses on a struggle for power when the enigmatic president suddenly drops dead. That's it. There is no spy intrigue, no murders, not very much sex (or the implication thereof, this still being 1954).

Nope, it's a business story set in a business world.

Hollywood has never liked business settings, then or now. Since few writers or directors came up in the business world, they struggle to find something interesting to tell a story about in a common office setting. Even when creative stories are set at work, they tend to focus on the personalities rather than the actual job, like the TV series "The Office."

Try to think of some modern films that are entirely set in the quotidian workplace, and you'll be hard pressed to name many, especially those that aren't "sexed up" with murdery-mystery elements. "Working Girl," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "9 to 5" and "Michael Clayton" are the only ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

Director Robert Wise also made the interesting choice not to use any musical score or soundtrack of any kind, which was very unusual for the day. The board room proceedings play out in tense silence, which I don't think would've been helped with a ladling of syrupy strings.

"Executive Suite" features the prototypical 'cavalcade of stars' that was popular in that era, particularly from MGM., which had a vast pool of talent to pull from. This includes William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Pidgeon, Fredric March, June Allyson, Paul Douglas, Dean Jagger, Louis Calhern, Shelly Winters and Nina Foch.

In a lot of ways it reminds me of a forbear of "Modern Men," focusing on the men and women carousing the Big Apple corridors of power, often winding up in each other's laps or beds. (Or at least what I know of the show from pop culture, having never seen an episode.)

These great actesses are largely relegated to the role of the wife, the secretary, the jilted mistress, the girlfriend -- or some combination thereof.

Produced by John Houseman (who does not appear), written by Ernest Lehman from a script based on the book by Cameron Hawley, this is defintely a tale of a man's world where the womenfolk populate the fringes of the story.

The president, Avery Bullard, is never actually depicted in the film, other than his body being seen put into an ambulance from afar. The film actually opens with a first-person perspective of Bullard exiting the Wall Street headquarters of the Tredway Corporation, filling out a telegram calling for a board of directors meeting for that Friday evening at 6 o'clock, then keeling over dead from an apparent heart attack.

His wallet, which he'd just used to pay for the telegram, flies out of his hand into a street gutter, where it is pilfered for cash and the ID tossed into a trashcan. So it takes a few hours for the police to identify Bullard.

As it would happen, two people in the Tredway building saw the commotion and identified Bullard: George Caswell (Louis Calhern), a conniving playboy board member, and Julius Steigel (Edgar Stehli), an old hand who would seem to be a lawyer or similar advisor. This sets all sorts of higgledy-piggledy into motion.

The men had just been arguing about Bullard's failure to appoint one of his vice presidents as executive VP, thereby anointing an heir apparent. Julius had waved the need off, pointing out that Bullard was a hale 56 years of age, while he himself is almost 71.

Caswell responds to the death by immediately selling off of as much of his stock as possible, anticipating the price will crash when Bullard's death hits the news. But because of the snafu with the wallet, this happens after the stock market has closed, so on Monday he will either turn a handsome profit or be wiped out.

As the story plays on, we learn the identity of the other executives and the background of Tredway. It seems the company's founder died some years ago leaving it in a lurch, and Bullard was able to turn things around and make it very profitable. But in recent years they've gotten away from their hallmark of well-made furniture in favor of cheap stuff like the new K-H line, which is little more than the DIY pressboard so common today.

Don Walling (William Holden) is a hard-charging young designer who was brought in personally by Bullard five years ago to develop new styles and experiment with more efficient production methods. He's mostly a rolled-up-sleeves type hobnobbing with workers in the factory rather than authoring memos in "the tower," aka the NYC HQ. His wife, Mary (June Allyson), is supportive but assertive, insisting that it's time for him to move on from Tredway.

Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon), the treasurer, would seem to be the obvious pick to succeed Bullard. He's been at the company forever, is appropriately grey-haired with a patrician mien, and yearns for a return to the company's glory days.

However, Alderson is outmaneuvered by Loren Shaw (Fredric March), the controller who sees everything in terms of dollars and cents. He gets to the office before anyone, handles the press, the official statement, even arranges the funeral so it will not interfere with Monday's day shift. Shaw also takes the liberty of releasing the company's stellar earnings report early to mitigate the hit to the stock price.

Of course, this has the effect of underming Caswell's little scheme. The two men hatch an arrangement to transfer some of the company's reserved stock to Caswell to cover his wager in return for his vote to make Shaw the next president.

It's a very subtle, internal performance from the great Fredrick March. He plays a man of quiet ambition who has been licking his chops for the top job for years, and obviously has done the legwork to make it happen. If there were an element of intrigue in this story, I'm sure it would be Shaw who had poisoned Bullard's martini or something.

Shaw's not a bad guy, or certainly he would not see himself as such. He's just a (then) new breed of corporate denizen who believes everything should be about maximizing shareholder dividends rather than thinking about and investing in the future.

After Shaw undercuts Alderson's self-confidence, he feels he's blown his own chance at taking over the corner suite, and withdraws his own candidacy. (This is ludicrous, of course; though surrendering after one minor defeat is probably a good indicator he doesn't possess the mettle for the job.)

Alderson and Walling flail around trying to find somebody else who would be less objectionable than Shaw, but the most obvious choice, manufacturing chief Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger), had already determined to retire, tired of the company's decline in quality products. They try to tag Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas), the likeable sales VP, but Walling feels he'd do little to halt the company's wayward path.

What they don't know is Shaw has already secured Dudley's vote by subtly blackmailing him over his affair with his secretary, Eva (Shelley Winters). Meanwhile, Walling puts himself forward as an alternative. Alderson is initially hesitant given his age, and likely his own pride, but eventually comes around.

The other major player is Julia Tredway (Stanwyck), daughter of the company founder and owner of the largest share of company stock. It was also a well-known secret that she had carried on a 10-year affair with Bullard, who ultimately rejected her in favor of the company. She's easily manipulated by the men, particularly Shaw.

Stanwyck has one great scene where she's confronted by Walling, and she nearly throws herself off the skycraper balcony. It's not a big part, but Stanwyck makes the most of it.

Foch plays Erica Martin, the president's secretary and keeper of secrets. It's an interesting role, played very close to the vest as the loyal person who carries out orders. She's the one who makes the calls, arranges the meetings, tallies the votes. Shaw tries to press her for dirt on Bullard but is sharply rebuffed.

Foch is in the only peformer in the film to receive an Oscar nomination, which must have stung for all these male thespians wearing their three-piece suits and spouting urgent dialogue. The film also received nods for the cinematography (by George J. Folsey), costumes (Helen Rose) and art direction.

In general I love black-and-white pictures, though I do wish this one had been in color. All the handsome wood board rooms and costumes probably would've looked quite amazing in Technicolor.

An odd egg of a movie that still slides seamlessly into mainstream Hollywood fare of that era, "Executive Suite" is well-acted and undeniably entertaining. Even if business films have hardly ever been a going concern, this one is cinematically profitable.

Reeling Backward: "Golden Boy" (1939)

"Golden Boy" was William Holden's very first feature film, and nearly his last. The studio didn't like his looks or his acting style, and was determined to fire him in the middle of production. But star Barbara Stanwyck fought for her young colleague, he was retained, the picture was a big success and Holden became a sensation overnight.

Nearly 40 years later, while presenting an award together at the Oscars, Holden momentarily interrupted the ceremony to publicly thank her for saving his career, which was long and illustrious. So should we all.



The movie itself is a rather mushy romance about a young boxer who must choose between the ring and his love for the violin, with his manager, the manager's moll (Stanwyck) and the fighter's family acting as proxies in the tussle over his devotion. The plot isn't terribly interesting, though the dialogue and characterizations, based on the play by Clifford Odets, are quite vivid.

"Golden Boy" probably has the least amount of pugilism of any boxing movie. Director Rouben Mamoulian ("Queen Christina") doesn't bother with even cursory highlights of the matches, simply showing quick montages of Holden throwing punches that last but a few seconds each. Up until the final bout, we don't even get so much as a wink at his opponents.

When the big fight does finally arrive, I have to say Holden's not a terribly convincing boxer. He tends to do that side-to-side punching thing, almost slapping, that is the hallmark of someone who doesn't know how to fight.

The young thespian had to learn how to play the violin for the role, or at least look like he could, and I guess also learning to box would've been a bridge too far.

I'm not sure if the film was shot in chronological order -- which was more common with studio pictures of this era -- but Holden's line deliveries and expressions are indeed rather stiff in the early scenes. As kid boxer Joe Bonaparte, he calls his father "Papa" as if he's trying to caress each syllable like a delicate, newly-laid egg. But he gets a lot better as time goes on, and by midway it's vintage Holden, all fiery drive and passion.

I should also mention the score by Victor Young is quite beautiful, filled with lush strings as you might expect given the title character's musical proclivities. It earned the film's only Academy Award nomination.

The cinematography, by Nicholas Musuraca and Karl Freund, is also quite nice, with a lot of depth and shades of gray in the black-and-white. The film has been well preserved, with virtually pristine prints transferred to DVD and Blu-ray.

As the story opens, Joe is about to turn 21 and is living with his family in the apartment behind his father's grocery. He's been studying violin for the past decade but hasn't been able to turn it into a playing career. He's been spending the last year or so hanging out at local boxing gyms, practicing and studying the techniques.

When a fighter breaks his hand right before a bout, he begs the manger, Tom Moody (Adolphe Menjou), to give him a shot in his stead. Moody is at the bottom of his barrel, wistfully recalling the money days of 1928. His estranged wife is demanding $5,000 for a divorce so he can marry his much-younger girlfriend, Lorna Moon (Stanwyck), a hard-bitten type whose gold heart will eventually be unearthed.

"Oh, leave it to me, Tom. I'm a dame from Newark and I know a dozen ways," she says, in just one of the twinkly lines of dialogue.

You can pretty much guess where things go from there. Joe turns out to be a wunderkind in the ring, quickly moving up the ladder into big money, which of course goes to his head. He and Lorna fall for each other, but she feels loyalty to Tom and manipulates Joe to further his ends, which Joe eventually finds out about.

He accepts a bid from Eddie Fuseli (Joseph Calleia), the local mafia don, to take over his contract so he can get a prime match at the Garden. Soon all the stakes are riding on the fight against big-name contender Chocolate Drop (real life boxer-turned-actor James "Cannonball" Green). I appreciated that this is the rare boxing movie that doesn't end with a crack at the championship.

It was also interesting to me that the movie treats African-Americans in way that's pretty respectful for 1939. White and black boxers are shown training side-by-side, without fuss. Chocolate Drop is heavily favored in their bout, to the point the assembled reporters dismiss Joe as Fuseli's inept upstart. The black and white audience sections, though segregated, cheer lustily with equal fervor for their gladiator.

When Joe accidentally kills Chocolate Drop, there's a very touching scene where Joe goes into his opponent's room to apologize to his family. Clinton Rosemond (uncredited), as the father, gives a terrific little speech when Joe alludes to committing suicide, telling him that everyone has their burden to bear, and this killing will be his.

The father character is a small counterpoint to the other huge figure in the movie, Joe's dad, played by Lee J. Cobb in a masterful performance. Cobb is best known for playing middle-aged anger and strife, most notably as the bigoted jurist in "Twelve Angry Men." But he gives a completely ravishing turn as a simple-minded but big-hearted Italian immigrant who abhors Joe's fighting and only wants him to play the violin.

Outfitted with big curly gray hair and ethnic mustache, Cobb is pitch-perfect in showing the man's utter broken-heartedness when Joe turns away from music, refusing to touch the magnificent Ruggieri violin he saved $1,500 to buy. (That's $26,000 in today's money.) This big, beaming man seems to slowly fade into himself, his shoulders stooped and his eyes hollowing out.

It astonished me to learn that Cobb was barely six years older than Holden at the time -- he had not yet turned 28 when "Golden Boy" debuted. I completely believed him as a broken-down old man.

Like a modern-day Wilford Brimley, Cobb played old early, and often.

Beatrice Blinn plays Joe's sister, Anna, who lives with her husband, Siggie (Sam Levene), at her father's. Siggie is a character unto himself, perpetually schlepping around, wearing a wifebeater shirt and chomping on a stogie butt, complaining about not having enough money to buy his own taxicab. Despite his carping, Joe's father (he's never given a name) treats Siggie with respect, even when his son-in-law playfully slaps Anna on the rear.

Edward Brophy is the resident comic relief as Roxy Lewis, Tom's perpetually flustered partner, who owns 10% of Joe's contract. William H. Strauss has some nice moments as Mr. Carp, the elderly neighbor who comes around to kvetch with Joe's papa. I also liked Don Beddoe as Borneo, the trainer who knows his place is in the corner of the ring, but is still willing to stand up for the kid and offer him advice.

It took a foursome of screenwriters to adapt Odets' play into a movie -- Lewis Meltzer, Daniel Taradash, Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman. There's always a challenge in stage-to-screen translations, but the strength of the distinctive characters, the emotive cast and the smart dialogue carry the day.

Reeling Backward: "The Lady Eve" (1941)

I've been thinking about the Reeling Backward selections I've written about recently, as well as the piles of potential films to feature -- mostly in the form of DVDs/Blu-rays sitting on my desk, stuff I've DVR'd off Turner Classic Movies and titles filling up my Netflix queue (more than 100, counting both streaming and DVD lists).

Conservatively speaking, it'll take me two to three years to get through all the films. And that's not accounting for any flux in the lists, as titles available for streaming suddenly disappear (annoying) or my interests change and I add new movies as I come across them (frequent). But it gives me a good idea of what sorts of things I've been watching or planned to watch.

Anyway, I've noticed a possibly disturbing trend: Reeling Backward has become a very testosterone-laden space. Most of the recent columns and queues are dominated by war pictures, crime stories, sports dramas and Westerns. There hasn't been a whole lot of comedy, and there's been even less of the "chick flick" variety.

The irony, of course, is that back in Hollywood's Golden Age they didn't think to divide films into "women's pictures" or "children's movies" or such. It was assumed that more or less everybody was more or less interested in every genre of film, and that as long as they made good pictures people of all ages and genders would come to see them.

(They most definitely thought of a certain subset of movies as being for "colored people," and indeed there was a little-known subsystem of films produced for and even by black folks. But that's another story.)

Romantic comedies have been one of the mainstays of popular film going back to its silent days, and Preston Sturges was widely considered a master of the genre. "The Lady Eve" is one of his better-known examples. Technically it's best described as a screwball comedy, but since most screwballs were subsets of romantic films, the categorization still works.

What's most notable about the film is the way Barbara Stanwyck completely dominates the film, even with the considerable Henry Fonda as her leading man. Fonda plays Charles Pike, an ophiologist (snake expert) who also happens to be the heir to the Pike's Ale fortune. Charles, having just spent a year doing research in the Amazon, is a socially inept bumbler who seems uncomfortable around the hordes of women zeroing in on him.

Until, that is, he meets Stanwyck's Jean Harrington, a con woman and daughter of hoary card shark "Colonel" (a fictional title) Harrington (Charles Coburn). Jean is a schemer and a shyster, but isn't quite the total mercenary that her father is. She finds herself genuinely falling for the patsy.

Their seduction scenes are quite electric, especially in that the man is totally submissive to the woman in a way you don't usually see in this era of film. First she makes Charles remove her busted shoe and replace it with another, in a paean to foot fetishism that probably drove Quentin Tarantino crazy. Then she nudges him off the divan and and hovers over him, lustily stroking his hair, in a clear stand-in for another part of his anatomy. Her midriff-baring outfit is quite racy for the time.

Later Charles is wised up by his bodyguard/protector Muggsy (William Demarest) that Jean and her dad are con artists, and he gives them the heave-ho. Segue to a few months later, and Jean decides to pull his chain again. Posing as a bogus Brit noble, the Lady Eve, she inserts herself into the upper-crust Connecticut set, and wheedles an invitation to a party being thrown by Charles' father, Horace (Eugene Pallette, famous for his rotund carriage and gravely voice).

Of course, it's ludicrous that Charles wouldn't immediately recognize Eve as Jean. But he insists that someone trying to fool him would change their appearance, so the fact that she looks exactly the same is proof in his mind that they actually are two women. For a scientist, Charles seems pretty impervious to logic.

The dinner scene of Charles falling over himself as he is flummoxed by Eve remains a high point, with the doltish boy having to repeatedly change tuxedos when he keeps getting an array of food spilled on his duds.

In the end he falls for Eve just as he did Jean, and following a quickie marriage she extracts her revenge, fabricating a litany of former lovers (including at least one elopement) as part of the Lady Eve's backstory. Mortified, Charles literally jumps off the train they were riding to their honeymoon destination.

Eric Blore is a real treat as Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith, a fellow scam man who teams up with Jean to help her perpetrate her ruse as an English lady. I love how, when introducing himself to his fellow rascals, he prefaced his name with "at the moment" -- indicating that such things are as interchangeable as the hats he favors.

I liked a lot of little bits 'n' pieces about "The Lady Eve," though as a whole I found it somewhat disappointing. The best screwball/romantic comedies have a little heart to them as well as flimflam -- "It Happened One Night" being the classic example. "Eve" is straight go-go-go comedy, and in the end I felt more breathless than charmed.

Perhaps I'm just too used to manly flicks.

Reeling Backward: "Meet John Doe"

It's always disappointing when you seek out a film that's considered a treasured classic, and you just don't care for it.

It's happened to me before, most notably with "Gone With the Wind" -- a movie I consider in need of a two-hour haircut from its running time. Now I've discovered that my appreciation for "Meet John Doe" is rather skimpier than most people.

I'm not one of those Frank Capra haters. I have happily consumed my share of "Capra corn," the term for his distinctive movies with their All-American values and morality lessons. I still watch "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas, and "It Happened One Night" is one of my all-time favorite Golden Age flicks.

But let's face it, sometimes the Capra corn shtick is, well, just plain corny. That's my take on "Meet John Doe."

The film opens with a scene that was all too familiar to me: A newspaper newsroom on the day they're laying off a good chunk of the staff. The Bulletin has just been taken over by an oil magnate, and the caustic new editor is abruptly bringing in groups of reporters and editors and telling them they're history.

Interestingly, this figure Henry Connell (played by James Gleason) will later be revealed as a heroic figure who stands up to his boss. It's a textured portrayal of a hard-bitten newsman who treats other people harshly, but whose core values are admirable.

Among those given the axe is Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), a hotshot female columnist. She begs Connell for her job, to no avail, so for her final column she dashes off a made-up letter from an anonymous man named John Doe who's so disgusted with the state of civilization, he's going to throw himself off the top of the city government building in New York on Christmas Eve.

It causes a sensation, which is a slight problem since it's fiction. Ann and her editor hatch a scheme to hire a bum to play the role of John Dole, and settle on "Long" John Willoughby, a Bush League pitcher with a banged-up arm. He's been hoboing around the country with an older bum he calls Colonel, played by character acting great Walter Brennan.

The Colonel is possibly the most interesting character in the film, a proudly cynical man who's happily checked out of polite society. He sees a job, home and family as methods of tying a man down. He rails against "Heelots" -- people who are me-first heels, and there's lots of 'em.

He's certainly more interesting than John Doe himself, which is Gary Cooper during his typical stuttering aw-shucks routine. Inevitably, of course, he and Ann fall in love with each other, and I have to say it's one of the more unconvincing cinematic romances I've seen in awhile. Ann is portrayed as a ruthless career gal -- a first-class heelot -- who'll do anything to get ahead. Her 10-to-midnight conversion to truth and goodness falls flat.

Another interesting figure is D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold), the oil magnate who cynically funds the John Doe movement in order to springboard himself into politics. He pays for fan clubs all over the nation, culminating in a huge convention at which John Doe himself is supposed to endorse Norton for the presidency. Long John gets wind of this from Connell, but his attempt to broadcast the truth is undermined when Norton exposes him as a paid stooge.

There's a very brief scene near the end where Norton is shown giving a large donation of money to some Christmas carolers in what looks like a Scrooge-esque turn of heart, but I wonder if he really feels that way. He dashes to the top of the city building to prevent Long John from carrying out his never-made promise to commit suicide, but one senses Norton is still intent on playing the angles rather than truly altruistic.

I think "Meet John Doe" was hampered by coming out when it did in 1941. The strictures of the day prevented Capra et al from taking the film to its logical conclusion: With John Doe killing himself. As it is, it ends with him being talked back from the ledge by some of his fan club members, with one of them making a populist crack about trying to lick "the people" to Norton and his moneymen.

Since the film has an overt parallel with the story of Christ, John Doe's journey only reaches a satisfying conclusion if he sacrifices himself.

2.5 stars