The Love Song of Harry Ritz (Inspired by Repeated Viewings of "The Gorilla")

With apologies to T. S. Eliot.
 

Let us go then, you and I, and Al, don't forget Al

when the evening is spread out against the sky

to that Haunted House

of Fear and Squalor

where danger awaits,

and PLEASE DON'T HOLLER!

   Let us go and make our visit.

   In the room, so dark and smelly, 

   we will talk of Patsy Kelly.

And indeed there will be time

For a gorilla to appear,

Lumbering through the library

of a rich guy looking like Lionel Atwill

Whose murder we will prevent!

For we are detectives on our toes

and not a trio of mugging schmoes.

   In the room, for pity sakes,

   we will do our double takes.

    

And indeed there will be time

for some physical schtick

some vaudeville click

some comic lick

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

because that would scare that gorilla, I bet.

  I have seen the moment of my bravery flicker,

  And I have seen the gorilla stand behind me, and snicker,

  And in short, I was afraid.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

and a hat with a turned up brim,

because people laugh at that stuff.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

They opened for us at the Palace.

I have seen them eating cheesecake at Lindy's

with Milton Berle and Martha Raye

or another girl and Joey Faye --

  Here comes the ending

  like sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
  we get into our jalopy
  and head back to town
  Let us go then, you and I, and Al, don't forget Al

  

"The Solitaire Man," or Nailed Diamond

Welcome aboard Jolly Good Airlines!

As you know, we specialize in flights across the English Channel, helping passengers escape from their criminal pasts in Paris and land in London as well-dressed, anonymous country squires. Since this is 1933, when flying is still a luxury, you will notice that the airplane seats are the size of divans and that the furniture is made from the finest wicker money can buy. You will also notice that the plane holds only a small group of passengers, the better to build a movie around.

I am your steward, and since in-flight videos haven't been invented yet, I will stand in front of you and speak to you about what to expect as we travel.

Oliver Lane, you are a passenger who looks a lot like Herbert Marshall. From all appearances you are a noble, honorable Englishman, but you are also a suave jewel thief known as "The Solitaire Man," and you are leaving Paris because you have just completed your final job. Your appearance and manner is very similar to that of Gaston Monescu, another jewel thief who looks like Mr. Marshall and whose story was told in "Trouble in Paradise." Alas, Oliver Lane, you are just a little more ethical and a little less interesting.

Inspector Wallace, you are from Scotland Yard and you look a lot like Lionel Atwill, the actor in those horror movies like "Mystery of the Wax Museum." You are determined to apprehend the Solitaire Man by any means necessary, including the use of bad manners, but you have a few secrets of your own.

Now to Mrs. Hopkins of Peoria, Illinois, who looks like Mary Boland. You are a big-mouthed but good-hearted American who can be counted upon to break a suspenseful silence with a plainspoken wisecrack.

And finally, we come to Mrs. Vail, who looks like May Robson, and her ward Helen, who looks like Elizabeth Allan. You two women are in cahoots, as they say in American westerns, with Oliver Lane. Mrs. Vail seems prim, but she loves baccarat and has a lovably grouchy manner. Helen, you are in love with Oliver and he with you.




Now I shall talk a bit about the plane's amenities.

The washroom is to my left -- Mrs. Hopkins, this will especially come in handy for you, because you are going to become airsick frequently, which will necessitate many humorous exits.

The light switch is to my right -- this will allow Oliver Lane to kill the lights and get the drop on Inspector Wallace in one scene, but then Wallace turns the tables.

Here is the exit door. You will notice that it opens without much effort, allowing at least one cast member to disappear easily.

Please enjoy your flight -- it promises to involve a battle of wits between Oliver and Inspector Wallace as well as startling revelations involving murder and theft. But the real suspense centers around Oliver's quest to retire to a Devonshire dairy farm, and the Solitaire Man will be no more.  

Will Oliver make it out to pasture? Or will he end up in the yard -- Scotland Yard? (Har har.)

Please expect a flight with a bit of suspense, several jokes about bumptious Americans and a couple of twists and turns before the bad guy is delivered into the hands of justice, and it might not be who you think. Now -- fasten your seat belts, made of the finest hand-tooled leather, and enjoy your trip.

The Maude Eburne Film Festival: "The Vampire Bat" and "Lonely Wives"

"I beg your pardon, young man?"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Maude Eburne (1875-1960) was certainly one of them.

She was born in Ontario, Canada, and appeared in plays there before making her Broadway debut in 1913. The next year she made a name for herself as "Coddles" in a hit farce called "A Pair of Sixes," and appeared in plays until at least 1930.

Eburne appeared in over 100 movies, including the 1918 film version of "A Pair of Sixes." But her Hollywood career really didn't begin in earnest until 1930, when she appeared in "The Bat Whispers."

Her movie roles were usually as busybodies, kind as well as malicious. One nice little change of pace was her brief but vivid appearance in the 1933 pre-code prison film "Ladies They Talk About," wherein Barbara Stanwyck causes a stir while in stir. In this cheerfully cynical film, Eburne plays "Aunt Maggie," a former madame whose seniority in the jug is symbolized by the fact that she has a reserved rocking chair in the prison lounge. Stanwyck is introduced to her by Lillian Roth, as another inmate:

The 1933 film "The Vampire Bat" is a Grade-Z horror movie with a surprisingly big-name cast -- Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Melvyn Douglas. Eburne is fourth-billed, as Wray's Aunt Gussie. Her main job is to provide comic relief while everyone else runs around the village of Kleinschloss trying to figure out who's killing villagers by the dozen. All of them have puncture wounds in the neck and have been emptied of blood, sucked out through what one doctor calls the "jew-gu-lahr" vein.

Atwill is a doctor who might or might not be behind the murders; Wray is his devoted assistant and Douglas is the local flatfoot. Eburne's job is to spout medical malapropisms and scream at opportune moments -- she also faints at least twice, once when she meets demented villager Herman (Dwight Frye, who else?), who carries a bat in his pocket a la Lennie in "Of Mice and Men":



Eburne shows up again at the end. The murders have been solved, but the joke's on Gussie -- Dr. Atwill has given her a dose of Epsom salts for that get up and go feeling:




"The End"! Ha! Ha!

The 1931 film "Lonely Wives," on the other hand, is no laughing matter, even though it's supposed to be a comedy. The leading man, alas, is Edward Everett Horton -- in a dual role, yet.

Now don't get me wrong -- like cilantro, Horton is perfect in smaller doses, adding spice to everything from Lubitsch films to "Fractured Fairy Tales" on "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." But in a lead role, much less a romantic lead, that's just simply too much Edward.

Horton plays Richard Smith, a well-known attorney and ladies' man. As his butler says, "Any pretty woman can twist him around her little finger -- and the prettier they are, the more twisted he gets."

Eburne is Richard's mother-in-law, who looks askance at his slinky new secretary (Patsy Ruth Miller):  



Having mother-in-law around makes it hard for Richard to slip out for his assignations, but help comes in the form of The Great Zero (also Horton), a Vaudeville impersonator who disguises himself as Richard. All goes well until mother-in-law surprises Richard (really Zero) with his wife, who has returned early from a trip. And she's feeling very amorous. (The wife, not Eburne.)

"Lonely Wives" starts with an agreeable amount of wit and spice, but after Richard comes home and he and Zero get mistaken for each other about 75 times, things get tiresome.

As for Eburne, she chugged on through the 1930s and into the 1940s. She had the honor of playing Frank McHugh's mother in "Here Comes the Navy" and she played a supporting role in "Ruggles of Red Gap." In the late 1930s she played Mrs. Hastings the housekeeper in a series of "Dr. Christian" movies, with Jean Hersholt in his well-known radio role. (Most of them are available, in full, on YouTube.) Her final film credit was 1951's "Belle Le Grand," a western made at Republic Studios with Vera Hruba Ralston. By then Eburne was in her mid-70s.

"Mystery of the Wax Museum," or Statue of Limitations

At the heart of 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum" are two actresses doing what they did best in 1930s movies -- Glenda Farrell wisecracking and Fay Wray screaming. Farrell, of course, was cast as the heroine's fresh dame best friend in dozens of Warner Bros. pictures, and Wray is best known as King Kong's girlfriend.

In this movie, they're roommates -- Farrell is a reporter trying to prove herself ("I'm gonna make news if I've gotta bite a dog") and Wray is a demure little thing whose boyfriend is a wax sculptor who works for the mysterious Dr. Igor (Lionel Atwill), aka Dr. Bearded McCrazy.

As the movie opens, we learn Dr. Igor's story -- he ran a wax museum in London where his evil partner (Edwin Maxwell) torches the place for the insurance money. This leads to a striking sequence where the museum is destroyed, with echoes of the melting faces from "Raiders of the Lost Ark":

"The Mystery of the Wax Museum" was shot in an early form of technicolor, using two colors as opposed to the later version, which would use three. It looks a little muddy, and the print shown on Turner Classic Movies doesn't help. Still, the process adds an extra element of creepiness, and it also helps that in you can show dummies being stabbed, melted and beheaded as opposed to real people. Of course, in several scenes, the wax dummies are played by humans, and it's fun to try and catch them blinking or breathing. (Okay, not a LOT of fun, but fun.) 

Anyway, we move forward ten years. The doctor is wheelchair bound as a result of injuries from the fire and he can no longer sculpt. But he has assistants sculpting for him, and his new museum is just about to open in New York City. Farrell, on the lookout for a story, gets interested when she sees a resemblance between the museum's Joan of Arc statue and a recent murder victim that has vanished from the morgue:



Meanwhile, Dr. McCrazy has his sights on Wray, who looks just like his perfect vision of Marie Antoinette, and therefore must be spirited down to the doctor's ultramodern laboratory, where the centerpiece is a very nicely designed art deco cauldron of boiling wax:

   
With its expressionistic sets, lurid tableaus and pre-code (wax) violence and nudity, "Mystery of the Wax Museum" is anything but embalmed.

Here's a list of full cast and credits.