Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Keeping It Confidential Edition, Part II

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's All Go To The Movies

Keeping It Confidential Edition

Part II

Ah, more Hollywood movies keeping it oh-so very confidential.

Former or future Academy Award nominees? Check. Behind the scenes intrigue? Check. Actors trying to keep things on the down low? Check.

A bit of gossip and tons of trivia for those of you who like such things. Plenty of secrets to keep... family secrets, secret trysts, business secrets, government secrets, secret pacts...

So, mums the word, as we peruse this week's film tasty selections.

I won't tell, if you won't! 

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Strictly Confidential

(1919)

"How's your pedigree?"

(A vivacious chorus girl attracts the affections of an English nobleman. He falls hard for her and the two hastily marry. When he brings her home to his ancestral castle to meet the family, she is horrified to discover that she is related, in one way or another, to all 23 members of the house servant staff!)

(Madge Kennedy was a popular Broadway stage and silent screen actress. A contract player for Goldwyn Pictures, beginning 1917, she appeared in dozens of films, successfully making the leap into talkies. Her film career endured into the 1970's with roles in 1969's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, 1970's The Baby Maker, 1975's The Day of the Locust, and 1976's Marathon Man.)

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Strictly Confidential

(1943)

AKA: Broadway Bill

(A high-society heiress breaks away from her controlling family. In the process, she secretly joins forces with her sister's husband in order to race a horse he owns, named Broadway Bill.)

(Directed by Frank Capra, the screenplay is based upon the story Strictly Confidential by Mark Hellinger and it's under that title that the film was initially conceived and advertised. However, while the film retained that title in the UK, in the US it was renamed and marketed as Broadway Bill.)

(Myrna Loy, always a hoot, stars as the wayward heiress. She remains one of my all-time favorite actresses. She was Capra's only choice for the role of the heiress. 1934 also marks her debut as Nora Charles in the popular Thin Man series.)

"The comedy successor to It Happened One Night!"

(Despite a warm critical reception, director Capra was never happy with the film. After audience previews, he re-edited the film based on the audiences comments. He even went so far as to remake it in 1950 as Riding High, with Bing Crosby and Coleen Gray.)

(Clark Gable was originally considered for the lead, but proved unavailable. Capra settled for Warner Baxter, despite the actor's fear of horses which made it nearly impossible to gain close-ups of the actor with the horse. Thus Capra vowed to remake the film one day, with an actor who loved horses.)

(Capra was also dissatisfied with the film's original happy ending, wanting something more bittersweet and ambivalent, to reflect the true nature of American success. With the original screenwriter in Europe on another project, he drafted the help of Sidney Buchman, who provided four additional scenes to replace the ending, for which Buchman received no screen credit.)

(Lucille Ball, who was 23 years-old at the time, can be spotted in a scene as a blonde telephone operator.)

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Confidentially Connie

(1953)

"She knows her way around men."

(A plot only the meat industry could love; a bigtime Texas cattleman comes to Maine to visit his son Joe, a college poetry instructor, and his wife Connie in the hopes of persuading Joe to give up his teaching career and come back to Texas to take over the family ranch so the cattleman can retire. When the father finds out that Connie, who is expecting a baby, can not afford the steaks she yearns for on Joe's salary, her father-in-law, who believes that pregnant women must have meat, arranges for the local butcher to cut his prices in half - with the father-in-law paying the difference - so that Connie can have the meat she desires.)

(Really... that's the whole film.)

(Starring Van Johnson, described as "the embodiment of boy-next-door wholesomeness." In the 1940's and 50's, he made a career playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor, or bomber pilot who used to live down the street." He got his start thanks to Lucille Ball, who, on the eve before he was to depart L.A. for New York, took him to dinner at Chasen's restaurant, where she introduced him to MGM casting agent, Billy Grady. This led to a screentest and, after a short stint at Warner Bros., a long-term contract with MGM.) 

(But Mr. Johnson had a not-so-well-hid secret: he was gay. At one point, to avoid scandal, according to a note left by his wife, Evie - to be read after her death, the studio arranged for her to divorce actor Keenan Wynn and marry Johnson the next day. This resulted in Hollywood's first well-known 'thruple', or, what Ed Wynn, Keenan's father, called a very confusing situation, for it seems; "Evie loves Keenan. Keenan loves Evie. Van loves Evie. Evie loves Van. Van loves Keenan. Keenan loves Van."  In 1985, returning to Broadway for the first time since Pal Joey, Johnson was cast in the starring role of the musical La Cage aux Folles.)

(Janet Leigh was discovered at the age of eighteen by actress Norma Shearer, who helped her secure a contract with MGM. Her career in pictures lasted over five decades. The former wife of Tony Curtis, she is the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis. Leigh's best known role was as Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.)

(Louis Calhern's best remembered for his role as the villain in the film noir, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle. He was nominated that same year for an Academy Award as Best Actor for portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes in the film The Magnificent Yankee.)

(The film also features Gene Lockhart who, as the treacherous informant in 1938's Algiers, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also had pivotal roles in a pair of holiday classics; Bob Cratchit in 1938's A Christmas Carol and the judge in 1947's Miracle On 34th Street.)

(Former leading lady, Mae Clark plays a bit part billed as 'Happy Shopper'. Clark was a huge star throughout the 1930's, however, during the 40's she saw her career dwindle, as she was cast as the lead in pictures with smaller and smaller budgets. By the 1950's, she was reduce to bit parts, frequently appearing uncredited. Her most famous role is that of the girlfriend to James Cagney in Public Enemy. In the film, there is a scene where Cagney famously pushes a grapefruit into her face before dumping her for Jean Harlow.) 

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Strictly Confidential

(1959)

"The rise and fall of two temporary tycoons!"

(In this comedy, a pair of seasoned con-men are freed from prison, only to return to a life of hijinks and crime. Enlisted by the wife of a deceased industrialist in order to gain control of her husband's corporation, things become complicated when her true intentions are revealed.)

(Richard Murdoch made his mark creating and starring in a number of British radio serials. He was also a popular draw in the West End and motion pictures. His co-star, William Kendall was also a West End regular, where he appeared in dozens of musicals.)

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College Confidential

(1960)

"No film ever dared touch this theme before!"

"It's like a Kinsey Report on the campus - Walter Winchell"

(A sociology professor conducting a survey at Collins College about the mores and lifestyles of the students ends up in hot water when some of the good citizens of the college town take exception to his work once they find out it includes questions about sex. When a reporter receives an anonymous tip that the good professor is corrupting local youth, the professor's past comes back to haunt him and all hell breaks loose.)

(The film was an unofficial follow-up to High School Confidential, which had been made two years prior. When asked about the film, Steve Allen said it was supposed to be progressive. Sadly, it has never been released commercially for home viewing in any form. The film also stars Jayne Meadows - Allen's real life wife, sexpot Mamie Van Doren and film critic Walter Winchell.)

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Campus Confidential

(1968)

(Director Stephen C. Apostolof, a contemporary and frequent collaborator of Ed Wood, Jr., made a series of three films in the late 1960's dealing with the 'confidential' sexual appetites of different segments of society, the other two being Motel Confidential and College Girl Confidential.)

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Confidentially Yours

(1983)

AKA: Finally, Sunday!

(An estate agent comes under suspicion when a wealthy man is murdered in the same area he is hunting in. Things grow even more complicated when the estate agent's fingerprints are discovered on the dead man's car and investigators learn that, not only do the two men know one another, but the deceased was also having a secret affair with the estate agent's wife. When the wife also turns up dead, to clear his name, the estate agent's secretary, who remains unsure of his guilt, conducts her own investigation.)

(This was the last film directed by Francois Truffaut before his death in October, the following year. Fanny Ardant, a major film star, first gained international recognition for her role opposite Gérard Depardieu in La Femme d'à côté, directed by Truffaut.)

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Confidential

(1986)

(In 1949, a journalist sets out to research an unsolved axe murder from 37-years earlier, but goes missing himself, necessitating the hiring of a private detective to find him. The detective's search leads him to the son of the woman accused of the murder, who has secrets of his own to protect.)

(Upon release, this stylish Canadian film, amply invoking classic film noir, was dismissed as "a pale imitation of Chinatown, with another critic complaining, "there's mystery here all right, but no logic.")

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Student Confidential

(1986)

"A powder keg of ambition, passion and violence..."

"It's teenage dynamite ready to explode."

(A mysterious millionaire leads four high school students into the world of cheap thrills and adult kicks.)

(A Troma film featuring Marlon Jackson of The Jackson 5, one-time Academy Award Best Supporting Actress nominee Ronne Blakely, former Playboy Playmate, Susie Scott, and the least successful offspring of Kirk Douglas, comedian Eric Douglas, whose act consisted of self-deprecating humor making light of his status as the black sheep of  his famous family.)

(Before her film debut in Robert Altman's Nashville, Blakely composed music scores for films and recorded her own self-penned songs for Elektra and Warner Bros. Records. Her first album features a duet with Linda Ronstadt called Bluebird. Post Nashville, she toured as part of  Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, and her performances are captured on Dylan's The Basement Tapes. She then sang back-up vocals for Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Hoyt Axton and made her Broadway debut in 1982's Pump Boys And Dinettes. She married director Wim Wenders and her career was put on hold while she raised her daughter and recovered from a serious back injury.)

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Comic Book Confidential

(1988)

(A documentary about the artistic history and social relevance of the comic book. It includes numerous interviews with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Robert Crumb, Stan Lee, William M. Gaines, Will Eisner, and Lynda Berry.)

(The project began taking shape in the mid-1980's when the director was doing PR work for the comedy Legal Eagles. He co-opted the studio's crew, money and film stock to interview the comic artists during off hours. Left on the cutting room floor? Footage of Frank Zappa, Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks, All American Comics editor Julius Schwartz, and editor of the first all-woman comic book It Ain't Me Babe, Trina Robbins.)

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And that's all for now...

Tune in next week.

Same time, same channel.

Strictly Confidential - Personal Column