Sex, Death and Jean Arthur

Jean Arthur has been on my mind today. I'm not sure why, except that she is one of those movie people (Lizabeth Scott, Robert Mitchum, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman) who seems to have staked a claim to a certain portion of my mind. So, in a way, I'm always thinking about Jean Arthur.

She was a huge star in her day, but over the years the luster of her fame has dimmed considerably. I guess that's the way of things. It's only our own solipsism and narrow focus that allows us to talk about the "immortality" of movie stars. That kind of talk in nice for Oscar speeches and TCM intros, but the truth is that Jean Arthur was world famous at one point and since her death her fame has shrunk and shrunk with each passing year. She will be all but forgotten one day. Movies are still a young art form. In just another hundred years will anyone know who Jean Arthur is? Or will she exist only as a shadow on a data file in a computer somewhere, accessed once every few years by some bleary-eyed film student writing a master's thesis on Subtextual Transfiguration in the Works of Frank Capra--or whatever the hell they'll be writing about in the year 2112? What about 2212? Keep adding on increments of 100 years. Immortality becomes less achievable the more you think about it.

So this is a lament then. I hadn't planned it that way, I assure you. Someone mentioned Iowa today and it made me think of my favorite Jean Arthur moment, the scene in FOREIGN AFFAIR when she strikes up the Iowa state song in a dirty little Berlin nightclub. The thought, as it always does, made me happy.

Yet here I am talking about--well, if not her passing, then about her absence, about the fact that she is gone and has been gone a long time. Yet I know her, or I know that flickering shadow. I saw that movie for the first time in a theater, saw it for the first time in the dark with her face high and wide and silver on a wall.

I've long thought that cinema is an intrinsically erotic art form. We are allowed to stare at people without them staring back, without them telling us to stop. This is one reason why movie stars tend to be beautiful. But this is also why movie stars tend to be a little odd. Millions of gorgeous people are turned away from Hollywood every day. Beauty is not enough. There has to be something worth looking at besides tan skin and muscles.

Jean was beautiful and odd. She had a tomboy quality. Pretty and scrappy, capable but halting, she was a movie star because she was just so damn interesting. Looking at her is indeed a happily erotic occupation. Classic movie geeks often talk about being "in love" with certain actors and actresses. This is more than a crush, more than simple lust, more than the usual projection of erotic fixation one has for a contemporary celebrity. It's closer to necrophilia.

That's a gruesome way to put it, isn't it? But if being an "old movie buff" is largely the matter of being obsessed with women many years dead, then this obsession touches that bizarre intersection of sex and death, eros and thanos, which is not the creation of cinema but is its essential creator. Life, after all, is largely a matter of sex and death. Movie stars are no more immune to these forces than the rest of us. We may regard them as sexual objects, but they are people and people die. When they die, then, what becomes of the sexual object left flickering on the wall? It becomes an object, oddly, of both sex and death.

All this from the Iowa corn song.

See Jean singing here. For my review of the glorious FOREIGN AFFAIR read here.

A Foreign Affair (1948)

I think I'm in love with this movie. A Foreign Affair, director Billy Wilder's dark comedy about a romantic triangle between a US serviceman, an ex-Nazi, and a Republican congresswoman from Iowa, is a wonder of a film. Jean Arthur stars as Phoebe Frost, an uptight representative from the Hawkeye State, who travels with a congressional delegation to rubble strewn, post-war Berlin in order to investigate morale among the troops. She's offended by the physical and moral squalor that greets her until she meets a fellow Iowan, a captain named John Pringle (John Lund) whom she mistakes as a stalwart Midwesterner like herself. In truth, Pringle is a unscrupulous slickster who peddles merchandise on the black market and keeps the heat off of his German girlfriend, Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich), the ex-lover of one of Hitler's top lieutenants. When Congresswoman Frost accidentally stumbles across Von Schluetow singing for American servicemen in an underground nightclub, she sets out to bring down the ex-Nazi with the help of...Captain Pringle. In order to shield his girlfriend, Pringle starts to romance the congresswoman. His plan works well enough--until the stuffy legislator blossoms into a lovesick girl intent on taking him back to Iowa.

The screenplay was chiefly the work of Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Richard Breen, and even by Wilder's usual standards it's a wickedly funny piece of work. Observing Von Schluetow in a sexy dress, Congresswoman Frost asks Pringle, "I wonder what's holding up that dress?"

He replies, "Must be that German willpower."

When he asks her, "And how is good old Iowa?" she tells him, "Sixty-two percent Republican, thank you very much."

As with much of Wilder's work, however, there is more going on here than a steady stream of one-liners. Wilder was Hollywood's most pungent misanthrope, an artist committed to the discrediting of myths and exposing of hypocrisies. A Foreign Affair is hardly an anti-American film--one of its most likable characters is the gruff Army colonel played with crusty charm by veteran character actor Millard Mitchell--but it is not the kind of self-congratulatory fluff that one might expect from a Hollywood film of the time. It paints a picture of people surviving and adapting to their surroundings--no matter if those people are American, German, or Russian.


Wilder always sees people's faults, but he also keeps a close eye on their humanity as well. This helps explain why the film is so much more than a dark comedy about the moral fluidity that exists among the ruins of a defeated country. For one thing, it is a genuinely touching romance. This owes a lot to the three performers at the center of the film.

John Lund was never a big star, and he failed to ever find a suitable screen persona (he's noticeably stiff in something like John Farrow's Night Has a Thousand Eyes), yet here he's terrific. He's at ease with the snappy one-liners, and he creates a believable rapport with both of his leading ladies, not a easy feat given the vast differences in their style and energy.

But what style and energy they had! The one-two punch of Dietrich and Arthur might seem an odd pairing at first glance: one was the personification of European sexual sophistication, while the other seemed like the kind of girl who probably knew a good apple pie recipe.

Neither of these impressions was strictly true about the real woman, of course. Dietrich had a strong nurturing side--Wilder said she was always looking for a sick crew member for whom she could make chicken soup--and Arthur was one of the most headstrong, eccentric actresses in Hollywood. Each, however, possessed a distinct movie star aura.

They were also two of the best actors of their time, and in this film each gave one of her best performances. Dietrich has the flashier role in some ways--and since she's by far the bigger icon, her face looms largest on the posters and DVD cases. She's pitch-perfect as the morally ambiguous Erika Von Schluetow. Who else could get away with answering the question, "Hey, how big a Nazi were you, anyway?" with "Oh, what does it matter about a woman's politics?" More than any other actress, Dietrich was able to look a man (or woman) in the eye and tell the unvarnished truth about human nature. Von Schluetow is a survivor who survives by sex and wit. She's too smart not to know that Pringle is half in love with her, half repelled by her--and their scenes together have a fascinating undertone of violence. But as Von Schluetow might say, a girl has got to eat. Her last scene here--in which she assesses her dire situation and immediately seizes on the best way to make the most of it--owes a lot to Dietrich's onscreen ethos. When it came to the subject of sex, Dietrich was the most self-actualized actress in the history of cinema.

If Dietrich held out the promise of carnal pleasure without pesky emotional entanglements, then Jean Arthur was like the prettiest tomboy in the neighborhood. She'd become a star as the street smart girl in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but she hated acting. Suffering from a crippling stage fright, she lived in terror of the camera and became, over the years, increasing difficult to work with (even nice guys like Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra tended to be circumspect in their descriptions of her work habits, though not her talent). In fact, although she was a huge star, she'd given up acting when A Foreign Affair was made. She had to be dragged out of retirement to do the film, but the instincts of Wilder and his producers proved correct. As Phoebe Frost, Arthur gives one of her funniest, and most endearing, performances. With her squeaky voice and lopsided grin (whenever she gets determined she talks out of one side of her mouth), she's comic from the outset. The more prim and proper she gets, the funnier she gets. But when she falls in love, Arthur creates the emotional center of the movie. Watch the scene where Lund puts the moves on her in a darkened file room--"Don't tell me it's subversive to kiss a Republican," he coos--and you can almost watch her heart race. After he kisses her, she grabs his hair and yanks his head back, her mouth open in sudden sexual hunger, and then pulls him back for more. That's the point at which, without knowing it, Captain Pringle is in over his head. A later scene of a drunken Ms. Frost, in a beautiful blackmarket night gown, jumping to the front of a Berlin nightclub to strike up a singalong version of "The Iowa Corn Song" is one of the most effervescent moments I've ever seen in a movie.

The genius of this movie is that even though everyone in it is flawed--they're either a cynic, an ex-Nazi, or a Republican--you love them all. It's a juggling act that Wilder, his co-writers, his crew, and his remarkable cast pull off with grace and style.

***

For more on Arthur read here. And here. And here's a brief bio. And watch her singing the Iowa Corn Song here.

Dietrich has one of the best websites of any classic star, Marlene.com.

Finally, here's an overview of Wilder's career.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

What we tend to remember about the films of Frank Capra is the sentimentality of their belief in distinctly American values, what Orson Welles once called Capra's "sweet Saturday Evening Post" quality. What we often forget, however, is that at the center of most of his major work (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe) there is an ineradicable tension between those values and the darker forces of American society. In fact, that tension is the very subject of most of his best films.

This is certainly true of Capra's signature film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Starring Jimmy Stewart as Jefferson Smith, a small town youth leader unexpectedly appointed to a vacant Senate seat by an opportunistic governor, the film is Capra's take on the Washington establishment. Smith comes to DC only to find it overrun with crooked political hacks like his mentor, Senator Paine (Claude Rains), and alcoholic reporters like the cynical Diz Moore (Thomas Mitchell). His only real friend in town is his assistant, Ms. Saunders (Jean Arthur), and even she thinks he's a bowlegged doofus when he first shows up. Gradually, though, his good-natured honesty wins her over even while it's raising the ire of his state's main power broker, Mr. Taylor (Edward Arnold). With all of Washington's power leveled against him, Smith sets out to expose the corruption he's uncovered. The film ends in a justly famous sequence in which Smith takes to the floor of the Senate and, with the insider coaching of Ms. Saunders and some sympathetic gaveling from the Senate Majority Leader (Harry Carey), he essentially saves democracy.

To watch the film again is to be reminded once more what a powerful screen presence we had in Jimmy Stewart. There was something innately humorous about him, of course, but there was something fragile, as well. After the war, that fragility would grow dark and paranoid in films like Vertigo and The Naked Spur, but in either a comedy or a drama something about Stewart pulls you in. He seems normal--an odd quality, actually, for a movie star--and because of that he seems vulnerable to all the things which we the audience are vulnerable to. He's joined by the glorious Jean Arthur as the world weary Ms. Saunders. Capra's favorite actress, Arthur played a similar role opposite Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Blonde and beautiful, she nevertheless had a perfect just-us-boys quality, a kind of spunky, wised-up tomboyishness that stood in contrast to the wide-eyed virgin aura of her male leads.


The film is every inch a fable, and since it came out it's been co-opted by Democrats and Republicans alike. Most American mythology surrounds great men doing great things--Washington defeating the British, Lincoln abolishing slavery, Roosevelt shepherding us through the Depression and WWII, Martin Luther King leading his people in the most successful civil protest in history--but we don't have many tales of Senators launching into heroic filibusters. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington creates a hero out of the procedural workings of Congress, not an easy feat, and it's clear why the film is a favorite of the very Washington establishment it skewers. Everyone likes to think he's the underdog outsider against the powers that be, and every politician tries to sell himself that way, no matter how absurd the claim may be.

If nothing else, this shows the limits, and even the inherent dangers, of democratic mythology. If everyone runs as an outsider, then who is on the inside? If every candidate for office claims the title of Mr. Smith, then how are we to know the real Mr. Smith when he shows up?

This is exactly the point, however, on which Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has something valuable to say, because if we think of Capra as a gullible sentimentalist then we overlook the very essence of his work. His sentimentality is always singing a counterpoint to a deep suspicion of American financial and political institutions. It's not simply that he gives us a behind-the-scenes power broker in the figure of Mr. Taylor, it's that Mr. Taylor is a wholly believable creation. This owes a lot to the flawless performance of Edward Arnold, one of the best actors in our cinema and a man who exuded cold intelligence. His performance here goes hand in hand with his work in what was perhaps Capra's darkest film, Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper. Arnold is joined by the invaluable Claude Rains as the corrupt Senator Paine. Together these two men head a vast and seemingly all-powerful combination of private wealth and political muscle. This film cannot be fully appreciated without acknowledging that it was created during rise of the fascist era--and it is always worth remembering that fascism at the time was a completely legitimized political option. Capra's portrait of a rich media tycoon bamboozling a credulous public into crucifying a well-meaning everyman remains a sobering image.

It was an image he had already mined in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and one he would return to, for its starkest expression, in Meet John Doe. It is Capra's vision of the American people, in fact, that remains the most potent aspect of his cinema. Yes, he enjoys our good humor and our love of family and faith. Yes, he paints an affectionate view of our culture. But more than any other director of his period--even more than Welles--Capra painted a scary picture of society. In a Capra film, a crowd is always a potentially dangerous entity, its enthusiastic support or violent opposition being wholly fungible. Capra's vision of the American people as simple, decent folks is nearly always balanced by an anxiety about their susceptibility to rhetoric and political grandstanding. Simplicity has a dark side, he seems to be telling us, and we should never forget it. (The current media landscape, in which information is controlled by bigger and bigger corporations while at the same time being more easily disseminated, probably would have scared Capra to death.)

So Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a fable, yes, but it's more in keeping with the fables of seventy years ago when parents didn't flinch from telling their children horror stories before bed. Just as fairy tells used to be violent and scary, Capra's fable has rough edges. It has a happy ending, but its big bad wolves are very big and very bad, indeed.

***

Here's an fascinating look at the film's impact in Washington since its controversial premier in 1939.

And you can watch the movie here.