"The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell" is exactly the sort of stolid, mid-century fare Golden Age Hollywood churned out with extraordinary regularity and speed. I wouldn't call it a B-picture because it stars Gary Cooper and was directed by Otto Preminger, both still at their creative peaks.
But it's not a particularly well-remembered movie. Much the same could be said of its titular character, Billy Mitchell, who is regarded as the father of the modern Air Force.
He was a World War I hero pilot who ended up in command of all American aerial forces, back when they were part of the Army. He received a field commission to brigadier general but was busted back to colonel for insubordination owing to his strenuous advocacy of air power, and eventually was court-martialed, a punishment he deliberately brought upon himself because it would lend a public forum for his criticisms.
He threw away his military career to make a point, and almost everything he advocated for eventually came to pass. Mitchell received many posthumous honors after his death in 1936, including a commission to major general by FDR, with whom he'd clashed repeatedly when the future POTUS was Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
Preminger was a master of the courtroom drama ("Anatomy of a Murder," "Advise & Consent"), which takes up the second half or so of this film. That's where it really starts to snap, even though Cooper spends most of his time sitting ramrod in a chair, saving his energy for his big testimony scene at the end.
The film takes a few liberties with the historical record, with a screenplay by Milton Sperling and Emmet Lavery, with uncredited contributions by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, Michael Wilson and Ben Hecht.
For example, it's depicted that it was Mitchell disobeying orders during an air power demonstration that caused him to be demoted, when it was other antagonisms brought on by his testifying before Congress.
In the movie Mitchell is allowed to prove his air force's capability by trying to sink the mammoth German battleship Ostfriesland, but his antagonistic superior, Maj. Gen. Jimmy Guthrie (Charles Bickford), handcuffs him by ordering the planes to attack at high altitude with small bombs. After one ineffectual run, he disobeys orders, swoops in with the big boomers and easily sinks the ship.
None of this actually happened; in fact Mitchell was demoted four years later.
The film also shows Mitchell refusing to challenge the impartiality of any of the 13 judges at the court-martial, saying he wouldn't want to impugn the integrity of a general officer. In actuality his attorneys successfully struck three of them, including the president of the court (depicted, ahistorically, as Guthrie in the movie).
It's a terrific who's-who cast of mid-century actors, including folks who made a bigger name for themselves later on. Jack Lord plays Zachary Landsdowne, a young Naval aviator and friend of Billy's who dies flying a dirigible he knows to be unsafe. The turning point in the trial comes when his widow, Margaret (Elizabeth Montgomery), testifies about his sacrifice and shames the presiding officers into allowing other "justification" witnesses like herself.
Darren McGavin, eternally the dad from "A Christmas Story," turns up as Billy's right-hand man in the aviation unit, Russ. At one point he and the rest of the pilots ask Billy's permission to quit, since so many of them are dying from outdated planes and shoddy equipment, not to mention the spectacular indifference to air power from high command. Peter Graves also appears in a small role.
The meatiest parts go to the attorneys. Ralph Bellamy plays Frank Reid, another friend and a Congressman from Illinois who served as Mitchell's chief defense counsel during the trial. (That may sound strange, but people forget that national politics wasn't always a 24/7/365 gig. When he was president, Harry Truman used to go off on long weekend drives with just a Secret Service agent or two.)
Reid is a classic Hollywood politician: an elbow-twister and a glad-hander, a man who will talk your ear off and then make a job about how he talks too much. During one point in the court-martial, he stages a winding filibuster while the proper witnesses and evidence are gathered.
The prosecutor is Col. Moreland (Fred Clark), a cocksure sort who thinks he's got the case in the bag and finds himself overwhelmed and increasingly mocked. As shown in the movie, the court-martial really did take place in a dilapidated warehouse converted just for the occasion -- a not-subtle attempt to keep the lid on things.
For the final part of the proceeding, a young major, Allen Gullion, is brought in specifically to cross-examine Mitchell. He's played by Rod Steiger, and despite not showing up until the last act he makes a profound impression.
Steiger's Gullion has a slithery sort of charisma, sliding in and out of his chair with hips cocked like he's about to commence sashaying instead of stipulating, plump neck insufficiently contained by a tight military collar. He needles Mitchell and tries skillfully to trip him up. Billy, fighting off a bout of malaria, wipes his brow frequently but maintains his composure.
I think Steiger was really good in these smaller "batting cleanup" parts, whereas he could sometimes be overpowering as a lead.
This is the sort of role Cooper was born to play. He's the epitome of the movie star who always plays himself, or at least their screen persona. For Coop this meant men who were brave, true, humble, faithful, with cagey instincts if not the finest book-learnin', a believer in discipline who wasn't afraid to buck authority when doing the right thing dictated so.
Certainly this latter portion describes the real Billy Mitchell, who spent his last years in exile but whose true legacy was only realized after he was gone. A lot of people aren't aware (I wasn't) that the iconic B-25 bomber is named the Mitchell after him, the first military airplane to be done so.
"The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell," and the man it lionizes, are due for better remembrance.
In the vast and expanding forest of films whose echoes take up much of my cognitive array, "The Natural" stands out like a crowning oak. Its memory towers above nearly all others; its roots are sunk deep into the formation of my perception of cinema.
It's one of the movies that made me fall in love with movies.
I think about it often, though it's probably been close on to a decade since I last saw it in its entirety. I recall flashes, moments, snippets of dialogue -- generally not the big "wow" stuff, like Roy Hobbs smashing the final home run into the stadium lights, setting off a shower of falling stars.
More like, Pop's grumblings about his awful team and the middle-aged rookie they stuck him with; his whistling contest with Red to guess old songs; or the nimbus of light director Barry Levinson continually puts behind Robert Redford's head to give Hobbs a beatific halo.
Like the best sports movies, it's not really about the game. Rather, it's an exploration of the creation of myth.
Roy Hobbs was destined to become a legend, but didn't. Then in the twilight of his youth he decides to make another go of it, and runs into a buzzsaw of disdain, suspicion, sudden fame, greed, envy, betrayal and regret.
Odysseus' journey was no more laborious.
Ostensibly an uplifting movie, "The Natural" has sadness clinging to its every molecule. Bernard Malamud, upon whose novel it was based, had a very pessimistic view of humanity in the days after World War II. If you've read the book, you know that the big difference from the movie is that in his ending Hobbs strikes out, and is forgotten.
(At least, that's what we gather, given Malamud's signature run-on sentence writing style, where trains of thought can go on and on and on and on and on and on and...)
The essential tale is thought to have been inspired by Phillies first basemen Eddie Waitkus, who was stalked and shot by a female fan in a hotel in 1949. He had been nicknamed "the natural" during a brief major league stint prior to the war. However, he was already several years into his career when he was injured, returned to play less than two months later and batted .306 for the season.
Hobbs, of course, was just a kid going for a tryout with the Cubs when he was wounded by a black widow (Barbara Hershey) who'd already killed two other famous athletes and was gunning for the trifecta. She had set her sights on "The Whammer," a not-at-all subtle mirror of Babe Ruth played by Joe Don Baker. But after the young pitching prospect, on a dare, strikes out the pompous star with three straight pitches, her aim is altered.
Hobbs spent two years in the hospital recovering and was told he'd never play ball again because of the silver bullet lodged in his guts. As he reluctantly answers anyone who asks where he's from, he knocked around from here to there, odd jobs of this and that. Sixteen years after his shooting, now in the 1930s, he decides to give his dream one more try.
After two weeks of playing for the semipro Hebrew Oilers -- a fictional team that became a real one -- he's signed to a $500 contract by a scout for the lowly New York Knights.
Aging and the passage of time are very much at the forefront of the film's themes. To my recollection, the book is pretty specific in giving Hobbs' age as around 35 -- which is advanced but hardly ancient for baseball. Even back then, top players continued their careers into their early 40s.
(And, if they're Satchel Paige, allegedly well past that.)
Redford was nigh unto 50 when the movie came out, and looked every day of it. He remained gloriously handsome -- still is, past 80 -- but he wore his years plainly and proudly. Not until "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" has another movie star's aging process been so intrinsically woven into the fabric of a film.
Hobbs isn't the only major character worrying about his last shot at baseball glory passing him by. Pop Fisher is the manager and co-owner of the Knights, who loves the game more than anything but saw his heart strewn to pieces by it. His lament is a refrain: "I shoulda been a farmer!"
It's probably the signature role of Wilford Brimley's career -- he's just two years older than Redford, by the way -- a cantankerous oldster who's capable of small-mindedness and vindictiveness. He refuses to play Hobbs and is ready to send him down to the minors before a batting practice performance in which the lefty right fielder seems to hit every seat in the far stands.
Hobbs has many nemeses in the movie, the chief of which is The Judge, the other owner of the Knights. But the Judge's true antagonist is Pop, from whom he bought controlling shares of the team the previous season when fortunes were down. Unless the Knights win the pennant, Pop is out and the Judge becomes sole owner.
Physically Brimley and Robert Prosky, who plays the Judge, resemble each other so much it could not have been happenstance on the part of director Levinson. They're both older, squat men with thinning hair and owlish glasses. While Pop lives very much in the dirt and the sun, forever traipsing about the dugout, the Judge preens blackly in his high nest above the ballfield, the shutters kept perpetually shut against any ray of sun or inadvertent glimpse of baseball.
The sun-dappled counterpoint to all this darkness is Glenn Close as Iris, Roy's childhood love and (unofficially) betrothed. He was so hurt and embarrassed about being seduced and wounded by another woman that he apparently never bothered to even contact her again -- and likely would not have, if she hadn't gone to a game when the Knights were visiting Chicago. In one of the film's more iconic scenes, she stands in the sun when Roy, in the midst of an epic hitting slump, goes to bat, inspiring him to wallop a titanic homer.
The character isn't well fleshed out -- Close only has a handful of scenes, in which Iris remains rather remote and distracted. Nonetheless, she scored the film's only acting Academy Award nomination. We get the sense that she is reaching out for her own sake, a sense of closure, rather than seeking to rekindle long-dormant ashes. But, of course, she brings the light back into Roy's eyes.
He had been carrying on with Memo Paris (Kim Basinger), niece to Pop but secretly a creature of the Judge and his nefarious partner, Gus Sands. I love that name: Memo Paris; it connotes that she's exotic and beautiful but also somehow lacking a complete humanity. Her story is not a book or a chapter or even a poem -- just a scribble is all you need.
Roy's poor play coincides with his romance with Memo, who distracts him with the high life and moral corrosion. Iris acts as the tonic that cures him of what ails. It's the classic good woman/foul temptress dichotomy straight out of the mythology of the Greeks, Norse, Egyptians, etc.
Gus (a curiously uncredited Darren McGavin) is the bookie who's got a line on everyone, laying odds on everything and always finding a way to come up the winner in the long run. He even claims to have a magic eye to help him pick winners and losers. I had never noticed before this most recent viewing that one of Gus' eyes appears to be larger than the other, possibly even prosthetic. I believe this was achieved with makeup, as McGavin had two good googlers.
Richard Farnsworth plays Red, the laconic assistant manager who acts as Pop's shield man, protecting him as he can from the uncaring fates, but also from Pop's own ornerier instincts. Red's the one who convinces Pop to keep Hobbs around after he shows up unannounced, and quietly nudges everyone to behave better than they are.
Any movie about mythologizing isn't complete without the character of the chronicler, a journalist or storyteller whose job is to bear witness and relate the great events to the world with tremendous accuracy, or not. Here it's Robert Duvall as Max Mercy, a weaselly sports columnist and hustler.
He's happy to use Roy as a springboard to a great story -- oldest rookie inspires kids -- and also more than happy to turn him into a chump as needs be. It's implied that he's on the payroll of the Judge and Sands. He's the one who digs up Roy's salacious past and threatens to use it against him, after the gambits with Memo and outright bribery fail to force Hobbs to throw the big game.
Also bearing witness is Bobby Savoy (George Wilkosz, in his only film role), the plump, smiling batboy for the Knights who becomes Roy's first baseball apostle. He makes a bat of his own, the Savoy Special, as tribute to Hobbs' mighty Wonderboy, which he carved out of a tree split open by lightning outside his boyhood home.
When Wonderboy is shattered in Roy's last at-bat, Bobby offers up the Special like a knight's page surrendering his own sword to his master. Indeed, if Roy Hobbs is a mythological hero straight out of an Edith Hamilton text, then he needs his signature weapon: Hobbs/Wonderboy, Arthur/Excalibur, Thor/Mjölnir
Let me tell you about my favorite scene, which since I first saw it I have been able to recall with near-eidetic clarity:
The Knights are on a roll, playing great team ball on the back of Roy's power hitting. Max, who was witness to Hobbs striking out the Whammer so many years ago, has been unable to recall where he met Roy, or how such a great player could have come out of nowhere. He even drew a cartoon of the event that was going to go out to all the papers that syndicate him, but presumably when Roy failed to show up for his Cubs tryout, the story died.
(How any competent reporter would forget the young lad who struck out Babe Ruth, or fail to follow up on that story, we'll chalk up to Hollywood's general ineptness in depicting journalists.)
Perturbed at this vexing puzzle, Max hangs around the team all the time, even sneaking into the stands during batting practice. Roy saunters in from right field, passes across the pitcher's mound and is challenged by another player to throw one pitch in for fun. Roy pauses, considers, goes into a long wind-up -- possibly for the first time in 16 years -- and throws a heater with such force it sticks in between the links of the chain fence.
Everything goes into slow time; the music dims to practically a hum. Pop, Red and the other players sit speechless, before and after the pitch. The challenging hitter simply lets his bat slide through his hands to the plate, an ineffectual cudgel against such an immortal beast of a throw.
And up in the stands... Max's perched seat is suddenly empty. The lost connection has been made.
Randy Newman's musical score is critical to the success of this scene, and indeed to much of the movie's surging emotional tides. Its soaring crescendos and blaring horns have justly become some of the most recognized musical cues in moviedom.
Director of photographer (as he prefers to be credited) Caleb Deschanel had just scored his first Oscar nomination the year before for "The Right Stuff," and would add his second with "The Natural." There's an elegant washed-out beauty to his cinematography, a slightly gauzy quality that underscores the sense of history unfurling.
"The Natural" may be one of my favorite movies, but it is not one without flaws.
The character of Roy Hobbs is at the center of a tremendous tale, but he is rather uninteresting in of himself, aside from his prowess at baseball. He is good-hearted, unfailingly polite and cherishes the game for its own sake rather than what it could do for him materially. As we know, his only wish in life is to be able to walk down the streets and have people say, "There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was."
Screenwriters Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry translate Malamud's depiction of Hobbs as deliberately flat and pure. Like King Arthur, he is the stuff of legends, and I guess they thought the legends would be enough.
Still, at times it seems like even Redford struggles to imbue Hobbs with the basic shadings of an individual personality beyond the mythic persona.
The plot can be rather languid and shaky, particularly in the third act leading up to the big game. Hobbs has been laid low after being poisoned by Memo, which caused doctors to pump his stomach and inadvertently retrieve the silver bullet -- a totem of past misdeeds that causes the hero to doubt himself.
In short order Hobbs is visited in the hospital by his teammates, Iris and the Judge, who offer him condolences, empathy and $20,000 in cash, respectively. (About $350k in today's dollars.) Tonally, these encounter are all over the map, and for a moment it almost seems the movie will trundle completely to a halt just as it's approaching its denouement.
There's also the matter of Bump Bailey -- the star player played by Michael Madsen in one of his earliest roles, who happens to occupy the same position as Roy. He's a petulant prima donna, a thorn in Pop's side, and an impediment to Roy's rise. So the movie simply kills him off, having Bump ridiculously crash through the outfield wall chasing a long hit. His ashes are scattered over the field by airplane in a comic hiccup that sticks out from the rest of the movie like a sore thumb.
(And granted, my baseball knowledge is bupkes, but is playing right field really that different from center or left? Bump that guy.)
Still, in my long view these faults are less deficiencies in the facade of "The Natural" than intrinsic parts of a great movie's makeup -- like moles on the Madonna. Somehow, the imperfections make the film more approachable, human and eye-level. It's a story about how we come to look up with reverence, but the movie never condescends.
Can a film still be a masterpiece while remaining intrinsically flawed? If so, "The Natural" comes as close as it gets. Here is a movie that swings away.
Seeing "The Man with the Golden Arm" has been on my to-do list for literally two decades. I think I first heard mention of it in one of my cinema textbooks at NYU, in the context of films that were released without a stamp of approval from the Hollywood Production Code. It went on to become a critical and box office success, garnering three Oscar nominations -- accounting for some of the first chinks to show in the impenetrable wall of the code.
Its depiction of a heroin addict was harrowing for 1955, and even more so when you think about an era when you couldn't even say the word "pregnant" on television. "Man" has explicit references to prostitution, illegal gambling, violence, police corruption and much more. Virtually every character is in some way on the take or running a scam. Its view of the modern American city is a disturbing portrait of urban decay where people prey upon each others' weaknesses.
The fact that it starred Frank Sinatra was also a pretty big deal. Here was a mainstream star, just coming off an Academy Award win for his supporting performance in "From Here to Eternity," playing a two-bit junkie who sticks needles in his arms and fools around on his wheelchair-bound wife. Of course, the script by Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer and an uncredited, blacklisted Ben Hecht spruced things up from the novel by Nelson Algren, portraying "Frankie Machine" in a more positive light.
It's a little unclear if that name is his real one, or simply a street moniker. He's also often referred to as simply "Dealer," since his stock and trade is dealing cards for an illicit game. Frankie doesn't simply deal the cards but plays the house's hand against the other players, bringing in big bunks for his scummy boss Schwiefka (Robert Strauss). He's the best, and the high-rollers come to play against the Machine.
Six months ago the game got busted up by the cops, and Frankie was sent to a jail to do his time and dry out. He kept his mouth shut about Schwiefka, who was supposed to send 50 bucks a month to his wife Zosch (Elanor Parker) but didn't always come through. Frankie learned to play the drums while in prison, and has an introduction for an audition with a big-time swing bad. Elmer Bernstein's Oscar-nominated score is a sweet mix of cool instrumentals and hot jazz, trumpets screeching to announce whenever a moment of high dramatic tension has arrived.
Now Schwiefka wants the Dealer to deal again. And his erstwhile partner Louie (an excellent Darren McGavin), the local dandy/drug dealer, keeps whistling in Frankie's ear about a nice fix waiting for him just across the street.
"The monkey is never dead, Dealer. The monkey never dies. When you kick him off, he just hides in a corner, waiting his turn," Louie purrs.
The angel on his other shoulder is Kim Novak as Molly, who is Frankie's once and future girlfriend, and whispers encouragement to keep on the straight and narrow. She's the sort of hard-bitten woman populating film noir; she's used to being used by men.
Director Otto Preminger goes right up to the line of actually showing the heroin being injected into Frankie's arm, depicting Louie cooking the stuff in a spoon with a lighter and drawing it into the syringe, panning away in the moment when he goes to stick it in.
The film's title has several meanings with regard to Frankie's golden arm. It refers to his skill as a card player, and also his natural rhythmic ability that makes him a perfect percussionist. But it's that same arm into which he injects heroin to escape from his troubles, if but for a little while. It's the only time he feels golden.
Sinatra reportedly visited hospitals to witness drug addicts detoxing as preparation for his role, and his performance during those scenes where the monkey is riding his back are utterly convincing. He would earn another Oscar nomination for "The Man with the Golden Arm," and deservedly so.
It's interesting to me that Sinatra went to his grave thought of mostly as a singer, but the middle portion of his career was dominated by his film work. Ol' Blue Eyes was a handsome physical specimen, known to send the "bobby soxers" swooning when he sang.
But before watching this film I had never noticed his physical deformities before -- cauliflower ear, a deep scar in the corner of his mouth, acne-pitted cheeks and a large patch of scar tissue on his neck, the result of a traumatic birth. Read this account to learn how Sinatra got his scars.
The marks have the effect of making Frankie seem like a fallen angel, someone who means to do well but keeps getting sucked into old bad habits and an environment that undermines the idea of reaching for something better.
No character better encapsulates the pitfalls of Frankie's old life than Zosch. A screeching, mentally unstable shrew, Zosch was disabled in a car accident in which Frankie was the driver at fault -- possibly while high or rattled with withdrawal shakes. He married her out of pity and vowed to care for her, but they have absolutely no relationship beyond that transaction of need.
It's later revealed that Zosch actually regained the ability to walk awhile ago, and is playing the ruse of being an invalid to garner pity and support. She violently opposes Frankie's idea of giving up dealing to play the drums in a band, since to her any change represents a betrayal of her entire existence. As long as things stay the way they are, she reasons, Frankie will always be trapped by his commitment to look after her.
She's a (non) walking guilt trip.
The film is wonderfully photographed by cinematographer Sam Leavitt, and the terrific art direction by Joseph C. Wright
and Darrell Silvera received the film's other Academy Award nod for its gritty and bleak depiction of the city's mean streets.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Arnold Stang's comedic supporting turn as Sparrow, Frankie's friend/toady, who's always there with a helping hand -- especially a thieving one -- and an obsequious remark. His side business is stealing dogs, painting their fur to disguise them and reselling them. Chinless, big-nosed, with thick glasses and a fast patter, Stang resembles Woody Allen's low-rent cousin. He enjoyed a long and busy career in radio, film and television.
After 20 years on my must-see list, "The Man with the Golden Arm" did not disappoint. The film's reputation hasn't endured like some other mid-century depictions of crime and addiction, like say "The Lost Weekend." But it's a terrific look at descent and despair, the sort of movie that can end on a sour note but still seem hopeful.
