The 2015 Turner Classic Movie Cruise

I had been thinking of taking this cruise since its inception five years ago, and was inspired to finally sign up after receiving encouragement from a fellow Bryn Mawr Film Institute member who sailed on the prior four trips. If you are thinking of going on a future TCM cruise, you should pre-enroll early. The ship fills up quickly. My wife and I checked the TCM web site regularly for the sign-up period and pre-registered in early spring for the November 1 cruise. If you don’t make it on the first round, they put you on a wait list, just like you are applying to a college.

We sailed out of Miami and stopped at Grand Cayman Island and Castaway Key. We were on the Disney Magic, but there were only 17 children onboard. Not your typical Mickey Mouse experience. On the first afternoon the guests were introduced by TCM hosts Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz. These included Eva Marie Saint, Lou Gossett, Jr., Angie Dickinson, Roger Corman, Ruta Lee, Illeana Douglas, and Alex Trebek.

Robert Osborne started out as an actor quite a while back. He became a friend of Lucille Ball, who gave him some career altering advice. She said he could continue as an actor, but he was a journalist major, loved film history, and was a good writer. She said he should write about the movies. He took her advice, and, he said, he found his true calling.

Osborne interviewed Angie Dickinson, and commented that her talents were wasted often. She said that she loved working with John Wayne on Rio Bravo, and felt that his performance in that film showed a range of emotions. She said he wasn’t given enough credit for his acting abilities.

Eva Marie Saint discussed the differences in the directing styles of Elia Kazan and Alfred Hitchcock. In On the Waterfront, Kazan wanted the actress to work from the inside out in the Method Acting style, tapping into a feeling of innocence being lost, since her character was brought up by nuns, and then was exposed to the brutality on the docks and the sexual feelings toward Marlon Brando’s character. Obviously it worked, since she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. On the other hand, in North by Northwest, Hitchcock took her shopping, molding her character from the outside in by fashioning the character’s seductive and deceptive personality through the clothes and make-up she wore. Ms. Saint had praise for those with whom she worked in films except for one person – Gary Marshall, Penny’s brother, who directed her in the early Tom Hanks’ movie, Nothing in Common. She said he cut out scenes which provided insight into her character, and did so without informing her.

Los Gossett, Jr., described how Richard Gere came onto the set of An Officer and a Gentleman with a bit of a Hollywood star attitude. But, after he realized that Gossett and the rest of the cast and crew were there to work hard to make the film the best it could be, Gere came around and pulled out all of the stops, especially in the scene where his character cries out that he can’t quit because he’s “got nowhere else to go.” He added that the two of them trained for months to learn martial arts to prepare for their roles. I had a chance to get Mr. Gossett’s autograph, and I mentioned that I recently saw Skin Game again, the film in which he co-starred with James Garner. This movie is, of all things, a comedy revolving around slavery in the South. Garner’s character sells Gossett’s African American as a slave. Gossett’s character latter escapes, and they split the profits. There is a serious undertone to the film, given the subject matter. Gossett commented to me that the film was ahead of its time. I felt that it could have influenced Quentin Tarantino when he made Django Unchained.

The song “My Way” could have been written for producer/director Roger Corman. He recounted his maverick ways in Hollywood, never bending to the will of the studios. He described how he made films in a week, rehearsing for three days and then shooting for two. Sets were reused to cut down costs. I remember seeing and enjoying those Vincent Price starring movies based on Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Corman gave many movie greats their starts, including Francis Ford Coppola and Ron Howard. In a film clip, a tearful Jack Nicholson expressed his love for the man that ushered him into the movies.

Illeana Douglas acted in several films I have seen, including the remake of Cape Fear and Stir of Echoes. I also admired her performance in the TV show Six Feet Under. What I did not know was that she is the granddaughter of Oscar winner Melvyn Douglas, and that she had a ten year romantic relationship with director Martin Scorsese. She just came out with a book entitled I Blame Dennis Hopper. The title derives from the fact that her father, after seeing Easy Rider, went hippie crazy. He grew his hair and mustache like Hopper’s character in the film, and went around saying “Man” a lot. He also quit his job and the family had little money after the homestead was turned into a commune. Illeana said that her mother would say, “What do you want for lunch – peanut butter or jelly.” She later worked with Hopper, thinking she would tell him off, but he turned out to be a great guy, so her anger was diffused. She told a strange story about Peter Sellers on the set of Being There. She was a big fan of The Pink Panther, and told her grandfather, who later won a supporting Oscar for his performance in Being There, that she wanted to meet Sellers. At one point in their conversation, Sellers said that Illeana should learn how to ride a unicycle. She asked him why and he responded by saying that not everybody can do it. After Sellers death, she happened to go to a medium. The woman asked her if someone had talked to her about a unicycle. Yes, a definite Twilight Zone moment. But, then a couple of days later, she went home, and found a unicycle in the basement. She asked her brother about it. He said he acquired it at a flea market, and thought he might learn how to ride it. Ben Mankiewicz asked her if she wanted to learn how to use it. She said, “Well, not everybody can do it.”

Speaking of Mankiewicz, I asked him what film he feels compelled to watch whenever it is on TV. He said there were several, but he singled out another Kazan movie, A Face in the Crowd, an early fascinating study of the way the power of the media can be used to sway the masses, as one of his favorites. Recent films such as Gone Girl, Nightcrawler, and even The Hunger Games franchise have dealt with this theme.

Alex Trebek interviewed actress Ruta Lee who appeared in Witness for the Prosecution,  and many TV shows. She and Trebek worked on a game show in the past. She dressed glamorously and was very funny and engaging. Trebek conducted two movie trivia sessions, and he is quite knowledgeable about films. These events fill up fast. The first required participants to recognize movie quotes. The second demanded a knowledge of film music scores. There are usually six people per team. The group with whom I sat finished second in the music competition. If you sail on this cruise, beware of the six retired schoolteachers, also known as “The Dirty Half-Dozen.” Rumor has it that they network every week all year preparing for the competitions. They have won every trivia competition in which they participated on all the TCM cruises, sometimes getting every answer correct! Be afraid, be very afraid.

Of course, there were movies being screened all day long. You can watch them in theaters, in your stateroom, and on a huge screen in the pool area, enjoying the stories in tropical warmth under the stars, both celestial and celluloid.

Next week’s discussion is on a recent movie, Roman Polanski’s Venus in Fur.

North by Northwest

I am publishing a couple of days early and will be skipping a week. But, I will be posting again on Nov. 15, 2015.

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

The title of this Alfred Hitchcock directed movie is ironic, pointing to a specific direction, considering all of the misdirection that occurs in the story. This film is primarily about pretending. The main character is Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), who, like Don Draper, is in advertising, and thus a professional in disguising the whole truth. He becomes immersed, possibly as a form of divine retribution, in a situation rich with deception. And deception can lead to danger which is implied by the opening credits which have the names sliding down the side of a building (a foreshadowing of the last scenes on Mt. Rushmore?).

A hotel pageboy calls for someone named George Kaplan at the same time Roger flags him down about sending a telegraph. He is mistaken for Kaplan, and is kidnapped by some thugs. He is taken from Manhattan to the Long Island estate belonging to Lester Townsend. Roger is locked in the library and is confronted by “Townsend” (James Mason) and his secretary, Leonard (Martin Landau). He is questioned as Kaplan and despite his protestations that he is not the man, Mason’s character does not believe him. It appears that Kaplan is a secret agent on the trail of Mason’s organization. Leonard and a henchman force whiskey into Roger, causing him to be extremely intoxicated. They place him in a moving car, hoping he will die in a DUI accident. Roger thus is put onto a road literally and figuratively which he does not know where it will lead him (more misdirection). He survives and then returns with the police to the estate. They meet a woman pretending to be “Mrs. Townsend” who acts as if Roger was an old friend who came to a party there already inebriated. She implies that the stolen car in which Roger had been placed was accidentally borrowed by the drunken ad man. The library is now presented as a different room, with no liquor cabinet and no bourbon stained sofa pillows. Mrs. Townsend says that her husband is at the United Nations, where he works. The man outside appears to be a gardener, but was one of the henchman who kidnapped Roger (more pretending). Since he was drunk and in a car not his own, and the house belongs to a prominent person, the police dismiss Roger’s story.

Mason’s character had told Roger the room number where Kaplan was staying at the hotel. He goes to the room and discovers that Kaplan was not seen by the maid or valet. He pretends to be Kaplan to enter the room, which of course makes it difficult to argue that he is not the man. The room appears to have been occupied since there are clothes, personal items, and a photograph that shows Mason. Roger goes to the UN to confront Townsend (again calling himself Kaplan because he concluded from the photograph that was in the hotel room that Kaplan knew Townsend) only to find that it is not Mason. The real Townsend says the house is currently unoccupied and his wife is deceased. One of the thugs, Valerian (Adam Williams), who pretended to be the gardener at the estate, throws a knife and kills Townsend, who collapses into Roger’s arms. Roger grabs the knife and pulls it out of the victim’s back. A photographer covering the General Assembly session takes a picture. Thus, it appears that Roger is the killer of a person whose house he visited earlier in a drunken state. (There is a flaw in the plot here – the local police went with Roger to the Townsend estate and saw the “wife” who is actually dead. This would lend credence to Roger’s story).

Roger now becomes what is a recurring theme in Hitchcock films – the innocent man pursued for a crime he did not commit. There is then a scene with members of an American spy agency having a meeting. We learn that there is no George Kaplan, who was invented to throw off Mason, whose real name is Vandamm, from discovering the real secret agent on his trail. Roger now has augmented this charade by becoming the physical embodiment of the red herring. In a cold-blooded decision made by the spy chief, The Professor (Leo G. Carroll – yes, he becomes the head of the spy network later in the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), it is decided to do nothing and continue to let Roger remain in danger as a way to preoccupy VanDamm and his men.

Roger, on a train to Chicago to find the fictitious Kaplan at one of the hotels mentioned by Vandamm, encounters Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint). She recognizes him as the fugitive, but is obviously attracted to him and helps Roger hide out in her sleeping car. Eve is also not what she appears, as we find out when she sends a message to Vandamm who is on the train along with Leonard. The next day, Roger escapes detection by the police by dressing up as a railway porter (yes, more pretending) assisting Eve. The police discover the porter whose clothes Roger used, and Roger hides out in the men’s room, lathering up his face for a shave so he won’t be detected (more use of disguise). Eve is supposedly calling Kaplan for Roger so the two can meet, but she is actually talking to Leonard who gives her instructions as to what to do with Roger. Eve seems very upset when after telling Roger to meet Kaplan out in a rural section outside of Chicago. She abruptly leaves him.

Roger is left off at a bus stop in farm country, but Kaplan is nowhere to be found (of course). A man waiting for a bus sees a crop duster plane and comments that it is dusting where there are no crops. Again, the plane is pretending (that word again) to be something else. Roger has been set up and the plane moves in for the attack. Roger again escapes, as the duster flies into a passing truck, and explodes, killing those onboard the aircraft. Roger heads back to the hotel ready to confront Eve about her double-cross, since he is told that the record showed Kaplan checked out at the time Eve was supposedly talking to him. When she sees that he is alive she embraces him, relieved, thus confusing Roger. She receives a call, writes down the address, and takes the piece of paper with her as she leaves. Roger uses a pencil to expose the address etched in the page beneath (for an advertising guy, he is quite adept at getting out of tight spots and tracking things down). He arrives at an auction, where Vandamm is with Leonard and Eve. Vandamm is acquiring a statuette. Roger confronts them, and makes a scene so that the police will take him away from Vandamm’s thugs. The Professor is at the auction, and intervenes with the police. The spy informs Roger about the invention of Kaplan and the need for him to play along a little more by pretending to be him. The government wants to find out about Vandamm’s network which deals in stolen secrets. We now learn that, again, Eve is not what she seems. She is actually helping the spy agency by going undercover.

A meeting is set up between Roger, acting as Kaplan, and Vandamm, who arrives at the Mt. Rushmore attraction center. Vandamm has a house nearby and The Professor said that he will be leaving the country from that location. Roger says he will withhold saying anything about Vandamm’s dealings if he gives Eve to him to get what she has coming for betraying him. Eve pulls out a gun and shoots Roger. It is all a ruse. Eve’s gun fired blanks (a fake gun pretending to be a real one). The deception was acted out to persuade Vandamm that Eve was on his side, despite her revealing emotions concerning Roger. Eve and Roger meet under the supervision of The Professor. She tells Roger that she fell in love with Vandamm before she knew about his criminal nature. Roger now wants them to go off together, but The Professor says she will be leaving with Vandamm to continue her spying. Roger is upset, but pretends (sorry, but it keeps showing up) to go along with the plan. He escapes the hospital room where he has been hidden to keep up the false story about his demise. He goes to Vandamm’s house. He sees the landing strip where the plane will land to help Vandamm escape. He overhears a conversation between Vandamm and Leonard where he learns that the statuette from the auction holds stolen microfilm. Leonard says he does not trust Eve. He found her gun and fires it, showing it just used blanks. Vandamm says he will drop her out of the plane. (There is a possible subtext going on here that Leaonard may be gay and have feelings for Vandamm. Van damm says that Leonard is “jealous” of Eve, and Leonard says his “woman’s intuition” makes him suspect her.)

Roger is able to warn Eve by dropping his monogrammed matchbook with a message in front of her from the upstairs level of the house. After they leave for the plane, Roger is confronted by the maid who stops him at gunpoint. It turns out she has the same gun with the blanks, which Roger recognizes, and the discharging of the blanks distracts Vandamm. Eve grabs the statuette and runs. She and Roger then try to make their escape over the face of Mt. Rushmore. Valerian pursues them, but they prevail, and the thug falls to his death. Leonard grabs the statuette in a tussle with Eve. She stumbles and Roger saves her by grabbing onto her with one hand as he hangs onto the edge. Leonard starts to grind his foot on Roger’s hand, but is shot by park rangers who are with The Professor. The statuette breaks revealing the microfilm inside (another object that is not what it appears on the surface). Vandamm is placed into custody. It first appears that Roger is trying to help Eve off of the cliff, but the scene shifts to him lifting her to the upper birth in a train as they speed off to their honeymoon, another image that is not what it seems.

The use of Mt. Rushmore here is similar to what Hitchcock does with The Statue of Liberty in Saboteur. In both pictures, he depicts, ironically, violence and criminality occurring at locations that symbolize awe-inspiring morality, reminding us that sometimes we only attain a semblance of a civilized state.

Another way that this film isn’t what it seems is the way it subverts the drama with a great deal of humor. Roger is incredibly cool given his circumstances, shooting off one-liners. When he is abducted by the thugs, he asks if he can call his dining partners to explain he is being kidnapped. When he is held captive in the library at the Townsend estate he says it’s good because, “I can catch up on my reading.” At the auction, he says to Vandamm, “I didn’t realize you were an art collector. I thought you just collected corpses.” There is definitely a great deal of double entendre between him and Eve. She says she can handle herself by saying, “I’m a big girl,” To which he responds, “Yeah, and in all the right places, too.” When she invites Roger to stay hidden in her room on the train, she says, “It’s going to be a long night … And I don’t particularly like the book I started.” Once they are in her compartment and he is in the upper birth where he hid he asks her why she is so nice to him. She answers by saying, “Do you want me to climb up and tell you why?” And the last image of the film is the none too subtle image of the train going into a tunnel. Oh, Hitch, you rascal, you.

The next movie is 12 Angry Men.