Villain

This post is part of the Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts

There’s something about British gangsters that seem much more menacing than their American counterparts.

Michael Caine in Get Carter (1970), James Fox in Performance (1970) and Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday (1982) are, despite the posh accents and breaks for tea, a scary, sadistic bunch.

(And taken to a more absurd level, there’s Peter Grant’s gangster "fantasy" in The Song Remains the Same (1976) and Terry Jones’ The Bishop skit on Monty Python).

Richard Burton, as London gangster Vic Dakin in Villain (1971) may be the nastiest of them all: cruel and violent, barely able to keep his back burner of simmering menace from boiling over.

The dichotomy that is Dakin is apparent immediately when he pulls a razor on a suspected informant, slashing him and then leaving him hanging from a window as a warning to others, before getting home in time to bring breakfast to his elderly mum.

Tea time with mum

Modishly attired, always with a suit jacket square, but still wearing a pinky ring, an old school gangster affectation if there ever was one, Dakin lives with his mother, serving her tea in bed and taking her to the seaside resort of Brighton every Sunday (she seems clueless about what preoccupies her sonny outside of their genteel home).

Dakin has nothing but disdain for those who aren’t “in the life” (walking through a residential neighborhood, he looks around and declares, “Stupid punters. Telly all week and screw the wife on Saturday”) and is in a sado-masochistic gay relationship with Wolfe (Ian McShane), a pimp apparently in debt to Dakin. (Dakin’s idea of foreplay is a hard punch to Wolfe’s gut, doubling him over).

Ian McShane and Burton

Although apparently well off, Dakin decides to pull off a reckless daytime payroll robbery, bullying a territorial rival into joining him. They succeed but not before blood spills and cars crash. The gang splits up, agreeing to meet later to divide the take.

Stoical Police Inspector Matthews (Nigel Davenport) is keeping tabs on Dakin and thanks to fingerprints found at the scene of the robbery, he arrests Lowis (Josh Ackland), a gang member whom Dakin also believes has double crossed him and hidden the money.

Although he’s under police guard in a hospital, Dakin’s heavies abduct Lowis and threaten to kill him unless he turns up the money. Lowis takes Dakin and Wolfe to an abandoned warehouse where the cash is supposedly hidden. While Matthews and the police close in, Dakin kills Lowis before he and Wolfe are caught.

As Matthews leads him away, Dakin swears he’ll beat the charges by intimidating the jury, telling him, “If I looked at one of them, they’d piss in their pants. I’m Vic Dakin!”

Burton described the film in his personal diary as “a racy, sadistic London piece about cops and robbers – the kind of bang, bang, calling all cars stuff that I’ve always wanted to do and never have.”

The screenplay was written by British television veterans Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, based on an initial treatment by American actor – and real-life Gambino family associate – Al Lettieri (The Godfather), and is based somewhat on the notorious, real-life British gangsters the Kray twins. (And given Dakin’s mother obsession, there are echoes of James Cagney in White Heat (1949) as well).

"I'm Vic Dakin!"

Here’s Burton again from his personal diary: “Villain was received badly in the US and with rapture in the UK. I know it is cockney and therefore difficult for Yanks to follow but one would have thought the critics to be of sufficiently wide education to take it in their stride. Anyway, I am so delighted it is doing well in UK. The American reaction was a surprise.”

Like rock & roll, gangster movies were an American import that the British put their own stamp on. While Get Carter and The Long Good Friday are admired today, Villain is mostly overlooked. The script is witty, the violence brutal and Vic Dakin is a complex villain played to the scene-chewing hilt by an energized Richard Burton. It’s worth checking out.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians

 The following is part of the It Grew On Me blogathon hosted by 

Taking Up Room 

“How much time is left? (Pauses the DVR). An hour and twenty minutes?

“Kevin McCarthy’s wig looks like the Cowardly Lion’s mane. And is that Paul Newman’s real hair?

“Shelley Duvall? Oh, right, it’s a Robert Altman movie.

“Maybe a tumbleweed got stuck on Kevin McCarthy’s head.”

To say I was distracted the first time I watched Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976) is understating things.

But giving it another try, and overlooking all the superficial criticisms, it clicked.

There’s a first-rate – and the obligatory comment that must be made about a Robert Altman movie – ensemble cast: Newman, McCarthy, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, Burt Lancaster, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine and Will Sampson.

Plus, there’s that Altman touch of dropping everyone into an isolated outpost, then moving back and forth between different plotlines. Here, the setting is Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West, a combination rodeo/historical re-enactment spectacular, all built around its namesake star attraction.

It’s 1885 and thanks to his Wild West show and dime novels, Buffalo Bill (Newman) is one of the most famous people in the world. But Cody’s reputation as scout, buffalo hunter and trailblazing plainsman is a manufactured image. His fabled long locks are a wig, and he finds it increasingly difficult to remember the details of his legendary exploits. The “historical” re-enactments featured in his shows portray Native Americans as either noble savages or murderers.

He’s also insulated from reality, an egotistical ass propped up by sycophants (Grey, McCarthy) and useless relatives (Keitel) and with a weakness for sopranos and booze. (Cody has one drink a day, but it comes in a mammoth chalice).

Grey, Keitel and Newman

Two new arrivals into this world crack Cody’s footing further. One is Ned Buntline (Lancaster), the writer who created the legend of Buffalo Bill and the single person, aside from Cody, who knows it’s buffalo bullshit. “No ordinary man would realize what tremendous profits could be made by telling a pack of lies in front of witnesses like it was the truth,” he says of Cody.

The second is Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts), who has been added to the show. The mute Bull is accompanied by fellow tribesman William Halsey (Sampson), and they unnerve Cody by refusing to participate in a re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand, and by spookily disappearing, then reappearing, seemingly at will.

Bill and Bull

After Sitting Bull leaves the show, he is killed by U.S. Indian agents. One night soon afterwards, Cody confronts the chief’s spirit – and his own self-doubts – yelling and carrying on an imaginary (and one way) conversation, like a frontier MacBeth, with Bull’s ghost.

But with Sitting Bull dead, Cody is free to add a scripted showstopping duel to the death between Cody and the chief, how played by Halsey. Cody, of course, always comes out on top.

Paul Newman is terrific throughout, whether rakishly galloping around the arena to cheering crowds or ranting about the superiority of white people dressed in his nightclothes. Burt Lancaster is quietly charismatic with the marginal yet important role of Ned Buntline, the living embodiment of this famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

Harvey Keitel is studiously dimwitted as Cody’s nephew, and Geraldine Chaplin’s Annie Oakley, outside of Sitting Bull and Halsey, is the film’s most likeable character. For quirky casting, President and Mrs. Grover Cleveland are played by odd couple Pat McCormick and Shelley Duvall.

Released one week before the 1976 U.S. bicentennial celebration and under a heightened awareness of American Indian rights via the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island and Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, Buffalo Bill and the Indians presents its case for the U.S. entertainment industry’s distortion of the truth about the relationship between whites and Native Americans.

Whitewashing U.S. history, we’re reminded, is a long-time tradition, one that continues today.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians can currently be found on the usual free platforms. Hopefully it will grow on you too, once you get past Kevin McCarthy’s wig.

The Outfit

This post is part of the Robert Duvall Tribute Blogathon hosted by 

Taking Up Room – Reviews. History. Life.

Writing as Richard Stark, Donald Westlake authored 24 novels about a career criminal named Parker (just Parker), who has been described as ruthless, amoral, cold, methodical, efficient, murderous and humorless.

They all fit.

Ranking the movies adapted from Parker novels, at least those I’ve seen, the less said about The Split (1967) with Jim Brown the better. Payback (1999) with Mel Gibson is Parker as superhero. The best is Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin and The Outfit (1973) with Robert Duvall.

In The Outfit, Parker is renamed Earl Macklin, who learns upon his release from prison that there are contracts out on him, his brother Eddie and their partner Cody (Joe Don Baker) as payback for a bank the three robbed, not knowing it was a front for the Outfit crime syndicate.

Thugs kill Eddie and threaten Macklin’s girlfriend Bett (Karen Black), leading Macklin to decide that the Outfit owes him $250,000 – “to make things right” – and until he gets the money, he plans to rip them off of whatever he can.

Macklin and Cody knock off a series of Outfit operations, getting the attention of its boss Mailer (Robert Ryan), who agrees to the $250,000 payoff. An arranged meeting is an ambush that Macklin and Cody barely escape and that, plus Bett’s death during a bogus police traffic stop, sets into motion a seemingly suicidal plan to attack Mailer’s heavily guarded compound.

Robert Ryan and Robert Duvall 

Having Bett around is something new for Macklin, and Cody upon meeting her, makes his mistrust known to Macklin: “You start worrying about the girl, you forget your work.” Maybe Cody was spooked by her beret-style headwear reminiscent of Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, knowing full well how that ended.

And unlike Bonnie and Clyde, there’s nothing romantic about Macklin and crew. They move around between crummy motel rooms, Macklin and Cody living in a foxhole, wiling away the hours with trivial small talk, sharing cigarettes and bottles of beer.

Robert Duvall as Macklin: "Cold and ammoral"

Director/screenwriter John Flynn adds some terrific hardboiled dialog. “I don’t talk to guys wearing aprons,” says Macklin to a bartender blocking him from speaking to an Outfit goon. At one point an exasperated Mailer barks, “I want (Macklin’s) ass wrapped in cellophane!”

Along with Ryan, the supporting cast includes film noir veterans Elisha Cook Jr., the always scary Timothy Carey, Jane Greer and Marie Windsor, plus familiar faces Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North, Joanna Cassidy and Henry Jones. In a nod to The Maltese Falcon, Carey refers to Macklin as a “gunsel,” Humphrey Bogart’s name for Elisha Cook.

The Outfit was one of Ryan’s last movies. He died of lung cancer three months before the movie opened.

The grand finale siege of Mailer’s compound involves lots of shooting and explosions courtesy of a bundle of dynamite sticks, complete with timer and suction cup attached to the bottom of a table, right out of a Roadrunner cartoon. Flynn ends the movie with a cheesy Starsky & Hutch freeze frame of Duvall and Baker laughing, an adrenalin rush after beating the Outfit (and which doesn’t quite fit the Parker image).

That's a wrap. Roll credits 

Duvall’s Macklin allows himself moments with Bett specifically when talking about his grandfather where he comes off as human and nearly sentimental, but those are the only glimmers of daylight in an otherwise dark existence. Macklin is grimly professional and intense, and there’s very little that’s likeable about him. But that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Burke's Law: Who Killed Mr. X?

(This post is part of the 12th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts)

Amos Burke (Gene Barry) is captain of the LAPD homicide division, and thanks to an inheritance lives in an 18-room mansion in Beverly Hills, wearing ascots around the house and tuxedos on dates with an endless string of girlfriends. He’s suave and sophisticated, although chaste (always flirting – with the occasional double entendre – never kissing), and shuns police cars for his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.

Nearly all of the 64 episodes of Burke’s Law (1963 – 64) followed the same outline: someone either a) wealthy or b) famous is murdered, Burke is called in to investigate, he and his detective colleagues Tim (Gary Conway) and Les (Regis Toomey) question a list of quirky suspects with the means and motives for killing before Burke solves the crime and wraps up the loose ends.

(I could have chosen just about any episode of Burke’s Law since the show seldom strayed far from formula. A nicely colorized version of Who Killed Mr. X can be found on YouTube).

Aside from the gimmick of Burke’s wealth, the weekly slate of guest stars made Burke’s Law unique, a cornucopia of casting that blended veterans of the Golden Age of Hollywood along with current stars in roles that allowed for plenty of theatricality and over-the-top performances.

The list of guest stars for the show’s two-year run totals more than 100, from A (Mary Astor) to Z (ZaSu Pitts) and includes fathers and sons (Ed and Keenan Wynn), sisters (Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor) stars of silent films (Gloria Swanson and Buster Keaton) and beach party flicks (Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello), future Batman villains (Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, David Wayne, Ida Lupino, Eartha Kitt), Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and the Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester).

In Who Killed Mr. X Elizabeth Montgomery, Barrie Chase and Dina Merrill play three kept women who’ve been signed to “exclusive” contracts by the late Mr. X, who has essentially locked them away in expensive homes and beach houses.

Montgomery flirts and trades snappy banter with Burke; Chase (Dick Shawn’s go-go girlfriend in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) guzzles martinis non-stop; Merrill (another future Batman villain) has turned to picking up strangers off the street and gets a big dramatic scene, smashing a mirror with a fireplace poker.

Barry and Montgomery: I'm sure this was unintentional positioning

The rest of the cast – suspects all – includes Ann Harding (nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in 1931 for Holiday), Soupy Sales (at the time host of a local Los Angeles kids’ program), Charles Ruggles (with a film career dating back to 1915) and Jim Backus (ubiquitous on television and movies in 1963).

Amos Burke questions Soupy 

Shades of Sunset Boulevard color Who Killed Mr. X, and the murderer turns out to be the least likely of suspects who, in a clever turn, is done in by a studio headshot of Robert Mitchum hanging on a wall.

Before Burke’s Law, Gene Barry spent four years starring in the Bat Masterson series, another debonair crime fighter. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that in some fictional crossover universe, Amos Burke is related to Masterson, possibly even his grandson. Did Bat Masterson and Annie Oakley ever cross paths?

But watching the show today makes one think more of Batman than Bat Masterson: the often tongue-in-cheek campiness, a rich guy alter ego, Gary Conway as Tim, the boy wonder detective, and the Rolls, as much of a uncredited major character in Burke’s Law as was the Batmobile. In Who Killed Mr. X, the plot moves along in the car’s backseat as Burke takes a call on his clunky car phone, interrogates suspects and offers Elizabeth Montgomery her choice of music on tape.

Jazz or classical?

Burke’s Law died a sudden death in 1965 when it was rebranded at ABC’s insistence with a new format, titled Amos Burke, Secret Agent. The show was about as awful as the title suggests and was cancelled midway through the season. A revival in of Burke’s Law in 1994, with a 76-year-old Barry, lasted 25 episodes.

C.C. & Company

The following is part of the So Bad It's Good blogathon hosted at 

Taking Up Room – Reviews. History. Life.

It’s never good when the best part of a movie is its first five minutes.

C.C. & Company (19700 starts with Joe Namath, as a member of an outlaw biker gang “The Heads,” pretending to grocery shop while actually making a sandwich for himself by taking food from the shelves (and resealing packages as he goes along – the golden age of product tampering), washing it down with a stolen pint of milk, then helping himself to a napkin and a package of Twinkies, begging the question, do biker gang members use napkins? Or eat Twinkies?

Never underestimate the importance of a nutritious lunch 

From that point forward, C.C. & Company unfolds like an R-rated Elvis movie, with Namath as the loner with a chip on his shoulder but a heart of gold. He even gets a cool Elvis character name, C.C. Ryder. And like many Elvis movies, C.C. & Company ends with a climactic alpha-male competition where the hero wipes the smirk from his rival.

(There’s no way Presley would have signed on for C.C. & Company. There’s beer guzzling, disrespect for authority, a biker chick skinny-dipping, a couple of blurred nude biker asses and Ann-Margret telling a biker to fuck off).

Namath, at the time one of the most recognizable people in America, got the call. When his New York Jets upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, he was everywhere. Books, magazine covers, a syndicated talk show, commercials. The path led, inevitably, to movies.

After their not-so-cute first meeting – C.C. steps in to stop two of his motorcycle buddies from raping Ann (Ann-Margret) when her limo breaks down in the desert – C.C. wins first prize in a motorcross event and leaves The Heads, pocketing the prize money instead of tossing it into the gang’s beer fund, angering head Head Moon, played by the always menacing and excellent William Smith. Other Heads include notables Sid Haig and Bruce Glover, all of whom, in the golden tradition of biker movies, generally behave like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It also leads us to wonder how clean-cut C.C. ever got mixed up these guys. He doesn’t drink or smoke, and while the rest of the Heads are acting up, he works on his motorcycle. Marlon Brando = the Wild One, C.C. = the Mild One.

C.C. quits The Heads, trades in his motorcycle jacket for track suits and striped bellbottoms, and hooks up with Ann. They hit a club where, in an ultra-meta moment, the bizarrely coiffed Wayne Cochran and his band, the C.C. Riders sing the blues/rock standard See See Rider.

Wayne Cochran gets ultra-meta

That’s followed by a Hallmark moment “falling in love” montage, C.C. and Ann feeding ducks and riding a pedal boat as Today: The Love Theme from C.C. & Company sung by Miss Margret provides a suitable soundtrack.

But the Heads are still trying to reclaim the money C.C. took. They kidnap Ann from her huge glass-walled home – we’re not sure what she does for a living. At one point it’s said she owns a New York City “fashion house,” but she also seems to art direct photo shoots and write news releases.

All of it leads up to the big motorcycle race/duel to the death between C.C. and Moon seemingly lit with a flashlight.

Namath is personable, self-deprecating and laid-back. He isn’t given much in the way of dialogue (or at least many lines of dialogue strung together) so there’s no need for any emotional heavy lifting. Ann-Margret and William Smith handle that department.

As biker gang movies go, C.C. & Company is pretty tame. It’s worth checking out, but if you switch to something else after the sandwich scene, it’s understood.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

 

The following is part of the Secret Places and Trippy Houses blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

“I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues

“They brought their cult to California because everybody does.” Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse

One night in 1969, four strangers – kindly Father Flynn (Jeff Bridges), redneck salesman Laramie (Jon Hamm), lounge singer Darlene (Cynthia Erivo) and hippie chick with attitude Emily (Dakota Johnson) – check into the El Royale, a fading Atomic Age lodge built right on the border of California and Nevada – a painted red stripe of demarcation runs down the middle of the lobby.

Including Miles (Lewis Pullman), the hotel’s only employee, none are exactly what they initially seem.

The same can be said for the curiously vacant Royale. Unbeknownst to its guests there is a hidden corridor running behind the rooms, each with a two-way mirror allowing for unseen surveillance or discreet filming.

When Laramie, in truth an FBI agent on special assignment, discovers wire taps and the two-way mirror in his room, he locates the secret passageway. Looking through the mirrors undetected by the room’s inhabitant is like viewing diorama exhibits in a living museum as the guests reveal their secrets in the “privacy” of their rooms: Flynn taking apart his room, floorboard by floorboard, while Emily has a bound and gagged girl in her room.

Jon Hamm on a dark and stormy night

Later, Miles reveals that under orders from “management” he sometimes secretly filmed visiting VIPs. (Flynn looks through one reel revealing a well-known politician in flagrante delicto, a sociopolitical conspiracy red herring that goes nowhere. Director/screenwriter Drew Goddard crams a few other circa-1969 historical events into the script; only one, Miles' Vietnam service, has any bearing on the plot).

Historical aside: While the Hotel Royale is fictional, the Cal-Neva Lodge was a resort and casino straddling the border between Nevada and California on the shores of Lake Tahoe. In 1960, Frank Sinatra purchased the resort with several others, including Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. Allegedly, John and Robert Kennedy used the lodge to carry on extra-marital affairs.

When Emily blasts one of the guests with a shotgun, it sets off a series of events – including the appearance of Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth), a psychotic cross between Charles Manson and Jim Morrison – that bring on the “bad times.”

Hemsworth reviews the mystery film

Goddard knows his way around secret places and trippy houses. In his The Cabin in the Woods (2011), there’s a two-way mirror and secret entrances leading to underground passageways, all central to the plot, gateways to understanding why and how things are happening. In Royale, the secret corridor is an ingenious device that provides glimpses into the characters’ behaviors and intentions, leading us to continually readjust our perceptions: “He’s good, no he’s bad, wait he’s definitely good.”

Like The Cabin in the Woods, which turns teen slasher movies upside down and inside out, Bad Times at the El Royale is another genre-bender, Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians on acid, as a group of strangers assemble in a vacant hotel on a dark and stormy night and the bodies start dropping.

The film’s MVPs are Bridges, Erivo and Pullman. Flynn and Miles are well-realized characters with backstories, although Darlene is a bit one-dimensional; taken together, however, they forge a bond and the emotional core of the movie. Hemsworth’s Billy Lee is scarily evil.

MVPs Bridges and Erivo

Considered a box office flop when it was released, Bad Times at the El Royale is a clever, suspenseful movie that manages to keep its bursting-at-the seams plot and characterization together. It's worthy of a second, or if you’ve yet to check it out, an initial look. 

And be careful standing in front of hotel mirrors. You never know who might be behind them.

Salt and Pepper/One More Time

 (This post is part of the 12th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts)

It’s late 1967 and Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford, several years removed from their Rat Pack/Ocean’s Eleven heyday, are skimming off what they can from the excesses of Swinging London, zipping around Soho on matching motorbikes, hitting the trendy discos in Nehru suits and patched jeans, discovering marijuana and taking full advantage of their fame with the local “birds.”

The duo was in town to star in (and co-produce) the comedy adventure Salt and Pepper, playing owners of an eponymous Soho nightclub who find themselves embroiled in a coup to take over the British government.

Salt and Pepper is yet another late-sixties spy movie, borrowing bits and pieces from everywhere: Goldfinger, Help!, Batman, even Hope and Crosby if you can imagine them smoking, boozing and leering their way through one of their road pictures.

(Davis and Lawford are constantly lighting cigarettes and pouring drinks; one could be led to believe that they serve as mnemonic devices to assist them in remembering their lines).

Directed by Richard Donner (Superman, The Omen, Lethal Weapon) whose credits up till then were primarily in television (Davis worked on an episode of The Wild, Wild West that Donner directed), Salt and Pepper tries hard to come off as being with it, including a groovy musical number with Davis “soloing” on an electric guitar that isn’t plugged in. (For what it’s worth, Donner had previously directed six episodes of the Banana Splits Adventure Hour).

Sometimes it takes more than just long sideburns and bellbottoms to be hip.

Filmed on a reconstructed Soho on a backlot of Shepperton Studios (after gawkers prompted the police to shut down production), Salt and Pepper had a strong initial showing at the box office, good enough for United Artists to greenlight a sequel, imaginatively titled One More Time (1970).

Salt and Pepper can be fast-paced fun. One More Time is only for the morbidly curious.

Shot on location in Herefordshire and London, director Jerry Lewis (yeah, that Jerry Lewis) uses the opportunity to essentially resurrect Martin and Lewis – Lawford the suave, tuxedoed straight man and Davis, an underrated actor who deserved much better, the mugging goofball literally channeling Lewis is some scenes.

Lewis takes a lightweight plot – Salt and Pepper bust a diamond smuggling ring – and milks it into an hour and a half of double takes, surreal visual gags and scenes that drag on forever, none very funny: a soused Davis can’t figure out a teapot, Davis sneezes hard enough from a dose of snuff to knock people down, etc., etc.

Strange moments abound. Like how did Lawford, brother-in-law to John and Robert Kennedy, allow this scene?

The most bizarre moment, below, comes out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. I’d imagine that Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were filming nearby and somehow coerced into these uncredited cameos. Davis’ reaction is straight out of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Following One More Time Lawford, pushing fifty and with serious substance abuse problems, saw his career tumble into a patchwork of television guest shots and B-movies. Davis had two moments of career glory left, his Rhythm of Life number in Sweet Charity (1970), then an unlikely #1 hit with the noxious The Candy Man (1972).

Their bad habits eventually killed them both, Lawford at 61, Davis at 64. Even the coolest and slickest fade away.

Tarzan's New York Adventure

(The following is part of the Adventure-a-Thon hosted by the friendly folks at Cinematic Catharsis and Realweegiemidget Reviews)

Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942) is a movie of milestones: the final MGM Tarzan film before the franchise moved to RKO and Maureen O’Sullivan’s last appearance as Jane. It has a lot more going for it as well.

When a plane lands in the escarpment that Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), Jane (O’Sullivan), Boy (Johnny Sheffield) and Cheeta call home, Tarzan finds a hunter (Charles Bickford, three-time Best Supporting Actor nominee) trapping animals for a circus in the U.S. Tarzan, naturally, has a problem with this and gives him until the next morning to leave.

But Boy is fascinated with this visit from the outside world and despite Tarzan’s warnings, goes out to the plane. Bickford sees Boy as the ultimate circus attraction and under the distraction of an attack from local natives who trap Tarzan and Jane in a brushfire, kidnaps him, the plane miraculously taking off out of the jungle without benefit of a runway.

Desperate to find Boy, Tarzan and Jane trek across Africa to the nearest city where they learn that the plane’s destination is New York City. Paying in gold nuggets, they trade their loincloths for tailored clothes and leave for America, Weissmuller’s shoulders even more impressive in a double-breasted suit.

The “stone jungle” they encounter is the 1940s Hollywood vision of Manhattan: swanky nightclubs, people employed in jobs that barely exist today, like taxi drivers, or not at all: bellhops, cigarette girls, hat-check attendants. All that’s missing is a reference to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jane takes charge and helps Tarzan navigate through modern conveniences like radios, mirrors, telephones and, memorably, walk-in showers.

The other fish out of water is Cheeta, who adapts to city life easily and gets plenty of screentime, including a “soliloquy” running amuck in a hotel room. Based on her performance, I would have supported the superstar chimp’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Tarzan and Jane’s attempt to get Boy back through the legal system hits a roadblock when Jane admits under oath that she and Tarzan are not his true parents. Tarzan, chafing from that suit and from listening to lawyers, chooses jungle justice over a Kramer vs. Kramer custody battle.

Tarzan breaks free from the courthouse, and leads the police on a one-sided, if exciting, rooftop chase, a daring climb up the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge and a death-defying 200-foot plunge into the East River.

(Some online swear Weissmuller really took that leap – pure suicide in reality – when it was all done with rear projection, editing and a dummy tossed into an MGM water tank. The bigger question is how did Tarzan figure out he was swimming toward Long Island, where Boy was being held, and didn’t wind up in Jersey City?)

A group of circus roustabouts (including Elmo Lincoln, who played Tarzan in three silent films) overtake Tarzan and lock him in a lion cage. But with the help of a herd of circus elephants, wise in the universal animal language spoken by Tarzan, he defeats the bad guys and gets Boy back.

Placing Tarzan outside of his world provides context for him to explain the unspoken philosophy of the jungle: “Jungle laws easy. In jungle, man only kill bad animals. In civilization, men kill good men,” a message that may have resonated with audiences in May 1942 when the movie was released, America having entered World War II just a few months before.

Tarzan movies will always be subject to modern-day criticisms about racial and gender stereotypes, but at the same time, viewing this film made more than 80 years ago reveals a progressive tale about the power within non-traditional families, bound not by blood, but by love and commitment to each other.

As with the movie, Cheeta gets the last word

Tarzan’s New York Adventure is a bite of the Big Apple that leaves a sweet taste.