Favorites List --- The Spiral Staircase

I looked at The Spiral Staircase again this week. Among other things, it’s one of the best looking RKO titles around, that being result of the negative reverting to Selznick following general release and being better preserved since. So many of the other RKO’s went into C&C meat grinders and saw logos cleaved and end credits shorn. This one looks a million still and does justice to moody settings by director Robert Siodmak and cameraman Nicholas Musuraca. It’s a high-class scare picture like The Lodger, The Uninvited, and those few that major studios did during the forties when horror subjects were thought better left to low-budgets and kids. Likelier than not 1945-6 patrons wet pants over chill scenes in The Spiral Staircase, as it plows surprisingly inelegant ground, even as producer Dore Schary brings stately opulence to all aspects of production. I’d call it a Val Lewton with money, lots and lots of that compared with belts RKO wrapped around Lewton B’s. His were clearly a source of inspiration for The Spiral Staircase. Shadowy menace lurks about ink-black corners and even Kent Smith graduates up from Lewton’s unit to lend support. Ads called The Spiral Staircase one they dared to film, and it’s sure enough a whoopee cushion beneath mannerly mid-forties thriller-making. If Lewton had produced this story instead of Schary, it would certainly be better regarded. The psycho killer here has a thing for strangling disabled women, and the fact we can guess his identity early on doesn’t necessarily diminish suspense, for he has easy and continued access to would-be (and mute) victim Dorothy McGuire. The Spiral Staircase was consolidation of that actress’ promise as engineered by David O. Selznick, his efficiency at star-making being a hit-or-miss thing depending on what contracted merchandise he loaned where.

Selznick developed the project, cast most principals, then sold his ready work to RKO, reserving a gross percentage and eventual ownership of The Spiral Staircase for reissues and ultimate sale to television. The result was overproduced in that manner unique to Selznick, even if Schary called credited shots. DOS investment in contractee Dorothy McGuire disallowed too much authority being entrusted with others. He didn’t want properties ruined by inept handling (which in Selznick’s view meant virtually anyone outside himself), so even projects sold brought with them ongoing memos and second-guessing out of DOS headquarters. Dore Schary was a Selznick employee as well, so was obliged to listen when the boss expressed concerns. Throwing $968,000 to the final negative cost might have been overkill, considering what Val Lewton achieved with less than a quarter of that for individual entries in his series. Money bespoke class to pupils taught by Selznick. He could be impressed by what former assistant Lewton did with Cat People, as others engaged on The Spiral Staircase undoubtedly were, but no package of Selznick’s was going to be done on short change. The Spiral Staircase has the feel of something made by people determined to bring class to a lowly genre, as if a deluxe model reboot of humble horrors Val cobbled out of near-nothing could somehow remove the stain chiller subjects bore.

Imagine the Amberson house well haunted and besieged with unsolved murders. I wonder how many of those sets made redressed way to The Spiral Staircase. Robert Siodmak suggests the directorial look of Welles at times. Citizen Kane’s influence was felt in so many RKO films that came after it. Did any artists leave deeper imprints there than Orson Welles and Val Lewton? I half expected Amberson family members to lend an investigative hand to mayhem of The Spiral Staircase, if for no other reason than familiarity of backgrounds and approximately same period setting. Siodmak was no stranger to horror themes. Those plus noirs on his resume made this an ideal berth, but how free was his hand to develop stylings we associate with that director? The Spiral Staircase doesn’t list among Siodmak’s best (should, though). Again, it’s more a producer’s accomplishment than a director’s. Not much termite art could bore ways through masonry so solidly built as this. Profits realized by The Spiral Staircase were RKO’s highest for 1945 after The Bells Of St. Mary’s. There was $2.6 million in domestic rentals and $1.2 foreign, with a final gain of $885,000. More’s the pity for not having been around in late 1945 and ’46 when it was playing, as I'll bet The Spiral Staircase generated similar word-of-mouth excitement to the much later Psycho, for both dealt with "sick" murders committed against women and represented steps forward in onscreen violence. The difference is that Psycho still has capacity to shock, while The Spiral Staircase appears mild via passage of time, though I doubt it seemed so in the forties. Were we to classify this one as a horror film, The Spiral Staircase would be the biggest genre succe$$ of the decade, and very likely one that audiences of the day remembered as scariest of them all.

If you shop for The Spiral Staircase on DVD, be sure and get the Anchor Bay release instead of the MGM. DVD Beaver explains why here.

J.D. Salinger --- Film Collector

I found out this week that J.D. Salinger was a 16mm film collector. While everyone was waiting for him to write another Catcher In The Rye, Jerry was holed up watching Bill Fields and The Marx Brothers. He fit the personality profile of many collectors I dealt with. Eccentric … check. Reclusive … yeah. Spoke in tongues and drank his own urine … well, that lost a few of us, although I knew one guy who stayed in the same pair of pajamas for three days as he ran through NTA’s entire package of Gene Autry westerns. So how much did 16mm shape this dean of American writers? I’ve never read a word of his output, being a functional illiterate as to fiction and not proud of it, but will confess to being intrigued by Salinger, more so now that I’ve learned he collected. They say he had lots of prints. Favorites included aforementioned Fields and the Marxes, plus The Thin Man, Lost Horizon, early Hitchcock, and bless him, Laurel and Hardy. Salinger’s daughter wrote a book about life around his Cornish, New Hampshire retreat. Our shared world was not books, but rather, my father’s collection of reel-to-reel movies, she wrote. Salinger would set up a screen in front of the living room fireplace, and they’d watch The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Foreign Correspondent, among others. He’d later switch to videocassettes, but Margaret found them a sterile substitute for the sensuous delight of 16mm. That last part struck a chord, for I’ve heard many a loyalist to film express similar feelings. Perhaps there is something sensuous about handling celluloid, and digital profanes it. Salinger’s ritual of threading and rewinding was crucial to the authenticity of experiencing movies, and his daughter lovingly describes reel changes and splices he executed with precision (He wasn’t scared of getting cut at all …). I particularly enjoyed the part where she talked of running out of the room terrified during suspense scenes in Foreign Correspondent, and how Salinger lambasted her lack of nerve. Christ, all you and your mother want to see are sentimental pictures about Thanksgiving and puppy dogs.

So how did Salinger come by his prints? Sooner or later, every collector has to deal with others. I’ll bet Salinger did too, perhaps under another name. Did we buy, sell, or trade with him without knowing it? Chances are good that his heirs will find old Big Reels when they dig through the house for unpublished novels. But who will get the 16mm stuff? Little of that is worth much now, other than for Salinger having owned it. Consider what The Bank Dick in 16mm might bring on Ebay … then imagine the same with J.D. Salinger’s Personal Print on the header. How many English Department heads can we figure to bid on that? I wonder if a fellow collector could have gotten through Salinger’s barricade. One who tried was Warren French. He’d written the first book-length study of Salinger in 1963 and sent a letter asking if they could exchange lists and maybe a few rare prints. Apparently, French got no reply (maybe Salinger suspected French was using the films as a device to engage the author about his books). Another writer, John Seabrook, was invited by Salinger’s son to come over and watch a movie. That was in the mid-eighties, according to an article Seabrook recently wrote for the New Yorker. He describes how Salinger made them popcorn and ran his print of Sergeant York, with a good time had by all. Seabrook described his host as friendly and sociable. Well, isn’t any collector pleased to share his bounty with appreciative guests? The more I read about this guy Salinger, the more I think we would have hit it off. Not having read his stuff, I wouldn’t have peppered him with dumb questions about Holden Caulfield, Uncle Wiggly, and the rest. It would have been enough for us to ruminate over a screening of Chickens Come Home and discuss finer points of the Marxes at Paramount vs. Metro. I might even have found him an original print of Young and Innocent. From such bonding as this, I’ll bet he’d have taken my calls anytime.

My Son John Again

Turner Classic Movies finally ran My Son John this week. I’ve been hung up on Leo McCarey’s fabled fiasco since driving down to Raleigh for a rare 35mm showing in October 2007, an event covered previously here. Seeing it again on TCM inspired me to further excavations. I wrote before of ABC having run it around 1970, and no one else doing so since, at least on American television. Turns out that network’s broadcast actually took place April 29, 1973, and again on September 2 of the same year. ABC’s Sunday Night Movie played My Son John both times in a two and a half-hour time period between 9:00 and 11:30 PM. The New York Times listing described MSJ as an artful grovel to the late Senator McCarthy, a pretty good indicator of how political winds were blowing by 1973. Most of us too young to have seen it in 1952 made acquaintance here, as Paramount never reissued My Son John theatrically nor in US syndication. Specialty bookings maintained legend gathering around what was said to be the most rabid of anti-Communist tracts. New Yorkers glimpsed MSJ as part of a Leo McCarey Festival held at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (!) on August 24, 1977, while The Collective for Living Cinema, a Lower Manhattan alternative and avant-garde site, played it during November 1980. As My Son John never surfaced on video, some imagined the film had been suppressed, even as there was non-theatrical availability in 16mm from Films, Inc., at least until that rental house closed its doors. Online forums propagated rumors of TCM "banning" My Son John for their not having played the feature, ignoring less provocative likelihood that programmers couldn’t be bothered with such an obscurity.

Turns out Leo McCarey was longer gestating My Son John than I’d realized. He began with anything but a completed script (I have one point, the director said, Does it matter how I arrive at it?). The story was McCarey’s, but he brought on John Lee Mahin and Myles Connolly to flesh things out. He spent autumn of 1950 in pursuit of Helen Hayes to star. Getting her would be a coup, as the self-described First Lady Of The American Theatre had been off movie screens since the mid-thirties save for a cameo in Stage Door Canteen. Hayes’ participation was a major selling point for My Son John, as other casting followed close behind her agreement to star. In December of 1950, McCarey described his project as highly emotional, but with much humor, this being lure that brought Hayes aboard. His films were best loved for gentle humor and heart appeal, reliable handmaidens to a sock boxoffice as proven by McCarey with Going My Way and Bells Of St.Mary’s. My Son John’s story would remain top secret even as the forty person crew arrived in Washington during March 1951 for location work, including principals by then in place. Several weeks were spent there, but little of what they filmed made way to the final print. McCarey admitted that his script is in far from final shooting shape, adding that I knew enough of what I wanted in Washington to do some exteriors and other background shots here. At that point, the director hoped to finish My Son John by early June for late 1951 release, though wandering around town in search of interesting backgrounds wasn’t getting the job done any faster. One entire day was spent filming Helen Hayes in a Catholic church McCarey had come across and liked, but none of this footage would be used. We’ve only shot one scene that was in the original script, observed his star actress. Being producer, director, and busy re-writer gave McCarey authority to make whatever changes suited him, even as slow pace of production brought him closer to rendezvous with Robert Walker’s unexpected passing on 8-28-51.

Walker had been a loan-out from MGM, still home lot for the actor. His participation in My Son John is what gives the film its primary interest for me. Bob brings all the fun of Bruno Anthony to his performance as prodigal son John, a less privileged first cousin reduced to office droning that Bruno would have deplored in Strangers On A Train, with low level treason barely a step above catching the 8:15 in the morning to sell paint or something. And what of detective Van Heflin worming his way into family confidence as means of trapping one of their own, much in the same way MacDonald Carey did in Shadow Of A Doubt? Son John is a clear amalgam of Bruno and Uncle Charlie, so much so as to suggest Alfred Hitchcock himself lent a guiding hand. My suspicion as to that found confirmation in a March 1951 interview Leo McCarey gave to The New York Times during production on My Son John. There’s a lot of the suspense element in the film and McCarey boasts of having gone directly to the master --- Alfred Hitchcock --- for pointers, said the article, while McCarey added: This is my first Hitchcock. He even ran off the first four reels of his new film for me. I’m taking a lot of kidding about how I stop before every shot and try to figure out how Hitchcock would do it. I may even put myself in one scene like he does. Those four reels McCarey referred to were from Strangers On A Train, awaiting July 1951 release as he continued laboring on My Son John. Did Hitchcock suggest the partial recap of his own Shadow of A Doubt? And was Robert Walker’s casting the result of McCarey’s sneak peek at those reels? There’s enough of Bruno in John to suggest AH lent advice as regards the characterization. Certainly McCarey showed a very public willingness to be guided by the Master’s counsel, though he drew a line at staging suspense of a melodramatic, "chase" type. Hoping to start a new trend, according to the article, McCarey identified his My Son John goal thus: It’s more a suspense of ideas in conflict. That may have been the film’s essential problem as things turned out. With Hitchcock fully in charge, we’d have had at the least a full-throttled espionage plot with John at its center, and perhaps a whammo finish atop the Washington Monument. AH would certainly have ditched propaganda in accordance with past policy and delivered a thriller fans might not have waited these forty years to see again. Would My Son John be a classic today if Leo McCarey had collaborated as writer with director and final decision-maker Alfred Hitchcock?