"There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator. "

When silent films are discussed today, if they are even discussed at all, only a few directors are mentioned. There was D.W. Griffith, F.W. Murnau, Sergei Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock gets lumped in with the silents, all those great comedic directors (Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd) and then Fritz Lang. The great German director, probably had the best transition to sound of any real silent director, Hitchcock doesn’t really count as a silent director since he made only a handful of silent pictures.

The masterpiece of Lang’s silent work is a 1927 science-fiction movie that has influenced other movies as far as style goes and has allowed film theorists to debate its allegorical message. The movie is Metropolis, the first film to deal with the utopian society.

Before getting into the allegorical aspects of the story involving a world literally divided into two halves, the upper and lower, with the workers in the lower half and the elites on the upper and how a mediator is the only one who can bring the two together – lets look at the stylistic achievements of the movie.

Metropolis is a German Expressionism film so it has all those great shadows we associate with the style. Although it is not as good as say Nosferatu (1921) for shadows. What separates this movie from others like it is the art deco architecture. The towering cities and the Tower of Babel of the upper class are brought to full life. All futuristic cities in fiction owe a little something to this movie for their design. The movie Blade Runner (1983) is a good example of a movie that has copied some of the skyscraper features from Metropolis.

Now for a modern audience it is a little hard to watch and see Model T’s roaming the streets in the year 2027. Also the single engine planes look out of date, but the large highways that roam around the tops of the skyscrapers still haven’t happened and are closer to being a reality than any sort of flying car.

A lot more attention could be paid to the different shots Lang got in the movie, but that would turn into a technical discussion of lighting and camera work and I am not qualified to discuss in great detail how Lang got some of this breathtaking shots. All I know is Lang was a perfectionist who demanded the most from his cast and crew. The cast especially.

At the end of the movie a robot named Hel is being burned at the stake. The evil villain in this story is a scientist named Rotwang, who all mad scientists seem to be based off of. He has created a robot who looks a lot like the angelic girl who is going to keep the workers from starting a revolution until a mediator is found. This girl’s name is obviously Maria, a variation of Mary. The mediator’s name is Freder. Freder happens to be the son of the man who owns all of Metropolis and lives above the workers. Obviously there is one allegorical reading of the movie.

Getting back to the fire scene though. The actress who plays Maria, Brigitte Helm, was strapped to the stake and Lang had extras move in and actually set the wood around her feet on fire. Lang was disappointed because there was not enough smoke the first time he shot the scene. So the fire was put out and Helm was subject to more smoke inhalation and the possibility of being burned before Lang was satisfied with the final product.

For his part, Lang wanted a machine like quality from a lot of the actors in the film. To get this effect he made them do the same scene over and over until they were too tired to care what they were doing. This technique is either brilliant or cruel and unusual punishment. Whatever you call it, it worked and looks great on-screen.

Any time a German movie from the 1920s is discussed, it has to be looked at in the contest of what would happen to the country in the next decade. Unfortunately for Lang the movie was Hitler’s favorite. In fact Hitler’s minister of propaganda gave Lang the opportunity to make movies for the Nazi government. Upon receiving the offer, Lang took the next train he could out of the country and left for America. He left behind him his wife, Thea von Harbou, who wrote the movie and was deeply involved with the Nazi party.

Lang himself did not care much for the allegories the film would receive after it was learned that Hitler enjoyed it so much. Some thought it was the perfect Nazi propaganda movie. As the city is basically controlled by one man. Hitler believed if the man had actually been him, there would have been no revolution by the workers, as there is in the movie.

What Lang did care about and what hurt him for many years is the way the movie’s ending was received. It ends with Freder taking the hand of the foreman of the workers and joining it with his father’s. The message of the movie is that the head (Frederson) and hands (workers) can only be joined by the heart (Freder). It is rather anticlimactic and critics said so. Lang would go back and forth throughout his life as to whether the idea for the ending was his or not. Depending on which interview you read you’ll see him defending it or condemning it.

Metropolis is a silent movie. It is also a long one that has pieces of the original missing. This may make it hard for some to watch, but the cinematography is so good that is overshadows the time spent watching and the terrible acting.

"The truth is: I do not know... I seek... I have not yet found. Only with this in mind can I feel alive and look at you without shame. "

Federico Fellini does not seem like a director I would like. Most of his stuff is about film as art and focused more with images than story. But 8½ (1963) is a definitive movie that others can be modeled on. Like The Godfather (1972) is the definitive gangster movie or Star Wars (1976) is the definitive space movie. It is the movie we first think of when we think of the genre. 8½ is the definitive movie made about a director.

Unlike writers, who seem to be obsessed with writing stories that feature writers as their main characters, directors seem to be less concerned with directors as characters in movies. That is except for Fellini here. Maybe this is why no other directors have taken on the movie about making a movie, at least in a dramatic sense. There have been many made in a comedic way.

The movie is about a famous Italian director who is supposed to make another great movie. He faces what appears to be "director block." It is writer's block just transferred to a director.

Obviously this famous Italian director is supposed to stand for Fellini himself. He could have suffered from director block himself and just threw this movie together to be something, much like the director in the movie does. But with Fellini this is all very complex and open to great meaning that could take forever to discuss. So let us keep to the basics.

Like all of Fellini, the movie is filled with beautiful images. Fellini is considered by some to be the greatest director ever, particularly because of the beautiful images that fill his movies. But Fellini was not an outstanding technical director like Fritz Lang or Alfred Hitchcock. He was brilliant at setting up shots and shooting them like a painting, but there are not a lot of pans, crane shots or dolly shots. The beauty of Fellini is static.

Because Fellini is more interested in images than story, his movies tend toward the weird side. This is the case here as there are random images and flashbacks that are included. They work here because the director's mind is so cluttered and indecisive that the whole thing works. Since it works this is called genius, if it didn't it would be called trash.

Images in the movie have been imitated. The beginning of Falling Down (1995) was modeled after 8½'s. The ending has often been imitated as well. The large circle of people involved with the production of the movie's movie and of the movie itself. Fellini as a boy ran away to join the circus. This is why the circus plays a large role in his movies and why we are graced with the presence of the clowns and circus music at the end.

8½ is an autobiographical movie. It is also a movie that defines what it is like to come up with a movie when you are famous. The stresses it puts on the director and his relationship if he happens to be married. It is a movie that needs to be watched more than once so it can take on deeper meaning each time. Constructing a movie like this might not take so long if it was unintended to turn out like this. Fellini wants the audience to think this is a natural progression of the director's thoughts, not that it has been preplanned by him.

Fellini was famous for remarking that he was a liar and to never believe a word he said. So the jury is still out as to how much Fellini meant to show in the movie and how much has been interpreted as greatness simply because it was made by Fellini. Whatever it is, it is a worthwhile movie to watch.

"It can only be attributable to human error."

Movies can be made to entertain people. They can also be made to entertain the director. Those movies that are given a mass release, but were made as a director’s pet project are either huge hits or major disappointments with audiences. One such movie that falls into the huge hit department is 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Granted, not everyone who has seen the movie like it. Most don’t even understand it. It is doubtful that Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick even knew what it was about. Perhaps Kubrick, but his collaborator Clarke, probably was in the dark about a lot of stuff.

Kubrick and Clarke teamed up to make the ultimate space opera. Clarke was a great science fiction writer. Kubrick was interested in space at the time and respected Clarke’s work. Kubrick and Clarke came up with the basic idea for the story, if you believe the movie has a narrative. Anyway, the two worked on a screenplay in which the movie was made.

While Kubrick was shooting the movie, Clarke was working on the novel of the movie. The two were supposed to come out soon after the other. It is one of those rare movies where the novel comes out after the movie. The bad thing for Clarke, but the good thing for audiences, is that Kubrick was making changes to the script while he was shooting. None of these changes were discussed with Clarke and because of this the two are different in ways.

This is a good thing for those who have seen the movie because a lot of what happens is explained in greater depth by Clarke. As Clarke said after the movie was released: “watch the movie, read the book and repeat as often as necessary in order to understand.”

Our movie opens up with a group of human beings in their ape form. Kubrick shows us how humans learned to kill. It appears that a big monolith from some alien civilization gives the apes/humans the spark to discover brutal force. This monolith has been commented on by just about every theorist and critic who has looked at the film. One of the more popular beliefs, and endorsed by Kubrick, is that the monolith acts as a guide for human beings in their evolution. The monolith comes from an alternate civilization that we don’t even know about. Something that can not be seen by human beings. This obviously makes it tough to show on film, but according to Kubrick this is what the movie is about.

After the largest flash forward in film history we arrive at the year 2001 when human kind is colonizing the moon. Obviously this was not an accurate prediction, but Kubrick and Clarke choose a date sometime in the next century when they were writing the movie and it ended up being 2001.

There really are no definable human characters in the movie, which makes this movie rather unique since it is all live-action, not animated. Anyway, some important scientist from the US has been sent to study something on the moon that has recently been discovered. This is another monolith. The alternate beings have told humanity that they have reached another step in evolution – that step is interplanetary travel.

The next segment takes place on a ship and features the most memorable character in the movie, the computer HAL. HAL has been studied ever since the movie was released. He has also been extremely influential in popular culture. There is a Jared jewelers ad running on TV right now that features a GPS system that goes crazy when Dave does not give her the jewelry he just bought. Dave of course is a crewmember of the ship Discovery that has been sent to investigate a monolith transmission on Jupiter.

HAL is a supercomputer that is incapable of error. This is why he is the only one who has been entrusted of the ships true mission – going out into the unknown to meet something that could be potentially dangerous. The humans on Earth believe this mission is too stressful on human nerves, so they don’t tell the crew about it. They misjudged the effect this mission would have on the computer. The computer expresses doubt to both his active crewmembers, other members of the crew have lived in hibernation and will be woken up once the crew gets to Jupiter.

The crew, Dave and Frank, become concerned at the computer’s weird behavior and discuss the possibility of taking him off line. This doesn’t sit well with the paranoid computer. He becomes homicidal and kills everyone onboard except Dave, who happens to kill the computer in a slow, painful death.

From here it is anyone’s guess what happens. Dave leaves Discovery for Jupiter and then there are lots of lights before he ends up in a room where he happens to age rapidly before becoming a Star Child. Kubrick wanted audiences to draw their own conclusions of this section of the movie. He did say that the Star Child was the next step in human evolution in the movie.

2001 is not the typical space movie. It isn't even the typical movie. It lacks dialogue. It lacks definable human characters It lacks a cohesive narrative. It is interesting enough to watch and make you think though.

"Let's just live."

An all-star cast is a dream for both producers and audiences. Only rare movies can afford to have tons of big name stars who are guaranteed to make a box office success no matter what. This is true of The Misfits (1961). The title says it all about the movie’s story and the cast involved in it. It was one of those rare movies that included stars at every position, from director to screenwriter to lead actor to lead actress to supporting actors and actresses. It is also a story that is not the greatest when you consider who wrote the screenplay.

Arthur Miller was married to Marilyn Monroe at this time. Miller and Monroe were expecting a baby, but Marilyn had a miscarriage. This devastated her. As sort of a present, Miller decided to write a screenplay for his wife. That screenplay was The Misfits.

Miller had conquered Broadway with Death of a Salesman and The Crucible by this point. Critics of Marilyn Monroe say Miller’s creativity dried up while he was married to her, but defenders point out that he was starting to wane at the end of his first marriage. Anyway, he would never reach the success of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible for the rest of his career – which lasted many years after Marilyn Monroe divorced him and died.

Miller was not a big screenwriter. He had done a couple screenplays in the ‘40s, but had focused instead on what he knew – the play. So any deficiencies in the story, and there are some, could be attributed to Miller’s inability to master the screenplay format, which forces writers to be more tied to reality than the stage does.

The director of the movie was John Huston. Huston was a man’s man who jumped at the opportunity to direct a movie about the death of the cowboy’s lifestyle. He loved to drink, gamble and on this trip to location shooting in Reno – gamble. Huston was rugged enough to put a macho stamp on the picture even if others involved in the company were not.

One man not afraid of adventure was Clark Gable. Gable was cast as the lead cowboy, Gay. This was Gable’s final film role. A few days after shooting finished, he died of a heart attack. Those who hate Marilyn Monroe blame his death on her. They say because she took so long to get on the set, she made Gable stand around in the heat when he was not feeling well. Whatever they might say, Gable treated Monroe like a daughter. He was respectful of her and always was there to reassure her. This makes it odd to see the two become lovers in the movie. Monroe grew up calling Clark Gable her father, because her real father, who she never met, looked a lot like the actor.

This was also Marilyn Monroe’s last movie. She would divorce Arthur Miller shortly after production finished. Miller and Monroe would arrive on the set in separate cars at times during the shooting. Marilyn’s erratic behavior is what finally drove Miller away. It is also what finally drover her to commit suicide after being fired from Something’s Got to Give in 1962. Fox fired her from that movie because they believed she was making up the fact that she claimed to be sick. She felt better for a few days to continue shooting, but then left the company to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden.

Another misfit in the cast was Montgomery Clift. Clift, the Method actor, was cast as Perce, a rodeo cowboy. Now Clift doesn’t seem like the typical actor to play a cowboy, but he was able to adapt to any role. He was great opposite John Wayne in Red River (1948), even knocking the Duke down in a fight scene. He had been in a terrible car accident and never really recovered after that, always drinking and feeling sorry for himself.

Eli Wallach plays Guido, the cowboy who falls for Marilyn first, but is unable to do anything about because Gay overrides him due to age. If this were a Marx Brothers’ picture he would be Zeppo.

Thelma Ritter plays the role of Marilyn’s guardian for a period in the movie. The great character actress who was nominated for six Academy Awards runs a boarding house in this movie. Marilyn stays there while waiting to get a divorce in Reno.

With stars all around it doesn’t really matter what they are doing on-screen. The basic story is Marilyn’s character, Roslyn, goes to Reno to get a divorce. She meets Guido and the two have some fun together. Guido introduces her to Gay and they all have some fun together. On their way to a rodeo they meet Perce, who wants to compete, but doesn’t have the entry fee. Perce competes and gets knocked around a bit. The cowboys say he is fine, while Roslyn desperately wants to see him go to a doctor. The main fight here is Roslyn, who cares deeply about any sort of living thing, versus the old cowboys, whose way of life demands that they kill living things to survive. Eventually Roslyn’s way wins and Miller wants us to think that this is the end of the cowboy. Maybe he was right.

The movie was the final chapter of Marilyn Monroe’s career. It ended with her appearing in a movie directed by John Huston, just like her first big break did a decade earlier with The Asphalt Jungle.

In the years since her death, Marilyn Monroe has become more of an image than anything. She has been criticized unrightfully, stories have been made up about her, people try to imitate her. But they all can’t stop talking about her. In a way she has not died and as long as people still admire physical beauty, she will always have a place in our society.

"Well, nobody's perfect."

Some Like It Hot (1959) holds a special place in film for me. It was the first movie I had ever seen with Marilyn Monroe in it. Like everyone else, I had heard stories about her beauty and seen publicity images of her throughout my life. But when she appeared on the screen as Sugar Kovalchick – I was disappointed. By the end of the movie I had become delighted.

I learned through the course of Some Like It Hot that Marilyn Monroe was not the most beautiful woman to ever walk the face of the earth, like her image portrays her to be. She was an actual person. This realization led me to delve deeper into her life story and eventually led to me writing a book about her.

So Some Like It Hot is not only a great comedy that irritated censors when it was released, it is the perfect introduction for anyone who has not seen a Marilyn Monroe movie.

It was her must successful picture and the one she is most associated with. The American Film Institute ranked it the number one comedy of all-time during its 100 Years… series. It is constantly ranked in most critics top 50 movies of all-time.

Now you might not agree with the AFI about it being the best comedy of all-time, I certainly don’t, but it is good enough to be mentioned in the top 10.

This year happens to be the 50th Anniversary of the movie’s release. For more on the back story of the movie, I have written an article for Classic Images Magazine that should appear in the March issue or sometime around the original release date.

For now I will just discuss the story. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play musicians in Prohibition Chicago. Their club is raided by the police, leaving the two in need of work. They go around to the musical agencies, but all they are able to find is a gig in Champagne, IL. Curtis and Lemmon are without a car and have to borrow one.

Unfortunately for them, when they get to the garage to pick-up the car they are witnesses to the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The Al Capone character is Spats Colombo, played by veteran of the gangster picture, George Raft. Of course gangster hate it when there are witnesses, so Spats and his gang search for Lemmon and Curtis.

The only escape it seems for these two musicians is to join a band destined for Florida. The only problem is the band happens to be an all-girl one. So, the two dress in drag and get new names. Lemmon becomes Daphne and Curtis is Josephine.

On the train down to Florida, which happens to look a lot like Coronado Beach, the “girls” meet Sugar Kovalchick, a ukulele player and singer for the band. It doesn’t take long before Daphne has to be reminded by Josephine that he is a girl. While Josephine keeps Daphne away from Sugar, he moves in on her.

This does not sit well with Daphne who ends up carrying their bags into the Hotel Del Coronado, or whatever the hotel is supposed to be called in the movie. Daphne gets some help with the bags from Joe E. Brown’s Osgood Fielding III. Osgood has it bad for Daphne. So instead of a love triangle we have two couples. Daphne and Osgood and Sugar and Josephine, or at least Tony Curtis.

In another change of characters, Curtis impersonates a millionaire who talks a lot like Cary Grant. He tries to seduce the materialistic Sugar Kane.

Things seem to be going well for the two men. Each is happy with his mate. Things become a bit complicated though when Spats and his gang make an appearance at the Florida Hotel as part of an Italian Opera convention. Writers Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond are not going long-hair artsy with this stuff. But it doesn’t matter as audiences love it.

From here, Lemmon and Curtis run away from Spats and his gang. Their only escape is Osgood’s boat. Before leaving though, Curtis explains to Marilyn that he is a man and she still loves him. Lemmon does the same thing and gets the same reaction from Osgood in one of the best closing lines in all of cinema.

"Well I had to do something, he was making a fuss in front of all those people. "

One of the movies that has aged the poorest has to be Bus Stop (1956). The movie is about an innocent cowboy who has never been exposed to anything off his ranch in Montana. He and his friend, the owner of the ranch, go to Phoenix for a rodeo competition. They take a bus, hence the name.

Now I don’t know what audiences thought of the movie at the time it was released, perhaps they thought it was a believable portrayal of an inexperienced cowboy, but for today’s audience this is not the case. In the age of the Internet and massive automobile transportation, not to mention the amount of changes in the ranching industry since 1956, this movie does not seem real. It is like a cartoon, a very annoying one at that.

Don Murray plays cowboy Bo Decker, who seems to yell anytime he speaks. John Wayne, James Stewart, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable he is not in his portrayal of a cowboy. It is an over-the-top performance that really annoys the audience. At the time it annoyed the producers at 20^th Century Fox who wanted Murray replaced or at least have his voice turned down.

The producers were told no by director Joshua Logan, who because of a court order had to make a movie for Fox. They were not happy with Logan’s choice of lead actor, but were pleased with the female lead, Marilyn Monroe. At least until she appeared on-screen in torn clothes.

Bus Stop is Marilyn Monroe at her grimiest. She is not glamorous, like her image portrays her. She had recently left New York to start her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, and studied at the Actors Studio. The Actors Studio was home to Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift and other Method actors. So Marilyn was in her artsy phase. This explains the costume, but it doesn’t improve the movie.

Bo makes the trip in the bus to Phoenix. In his first night in the metropolis he meets Cherie, played by Monroe, who is a nightclub singer. Bo falls for Cherie and calls her his angel, his one true love. Being a cowboy, who is used to bossing around cattle, Bo determines he will rope Cherie and carry her off to Montana. Being a person Cherie, and the audience, wish Bo would go back to Montana alone.

For the most part the audience is satisfied, as Cherie keeps Bo from roping her. Bo’s friend Virgil, keeps telling him he can’t act like he is when in the city. Then the inexplicable happens. Bo ropes Cherie and takes her on the bus back to Montana.

Of course Cherie determines she will escape. A snowstorm blocks the road and the bus has to stop off at an inn, causing Cherie to abandon her escape plans.

Bus driver Carl sticks up for Cherie and knocks Bo out. Unfortunately for the audience and Carl, Bo’s knockout causes Cherie to fall in love for him. So things work out for Bo. Things did not work out for the money though.

"I think it's just elegant to have an imagination. I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other things, but I have no imagination."

Controversy was never far from Marilyn Monroe. Her career was filled with scandals and her personal life was far from perfect. She was able to do on-screen what no other actress was capable of doing, despite her problems.

The role she is most associate with today, or at least the image that is most associated with her, is of The Girl in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

The Seven Year Itch began as a successful sex comedy on Broadway. It was one of the hot properties of its Broadway season. But there were going to be some problems for any studio that picked the project up. Some of the dialogue from the play was too racy for censors at this time period.

Fox won the bidding war and went to work on rewriting the play. Director and writer Billy Wilder worked with playwright George Axelrod to tone down the dialogue. It was Wilder’s idea to keep the dialogue mild, but use the actors to create the sexual tension present in the play. There was no actress who exhibited sexuality like Marilyn Monroe. She got the part of The Girl and Tom Ewell reprised his lead role from the Broadway play.

Fox made an agreement with Axelrod that the movie would not be released until the play had finished its Broadway run. This didn’t work out quite how Fox had hoped. When the public found out that Marilyn Monroe was going to be in the movie – they rushed to see the play again. When they saw what she was going to be doing the movie – they rushed to see the play again. Fox ended up having to pay Axelrod a lot of money so they could release the movie because Marilyn Monroe’s unintended publicity prevented the play from closing.

One of the most iconic images in movies is Marilyn Monroe in a white dress, having her skirt blown up by a subway train while she and Tom Ewell are leaving a movie. Wilder and company intended to shoot the scene at 2 a.m. when they thought no one would be around the theater. They were wrong as location of the site was released and people learned what the scene was going to be about. After much trouble, Wilder was able to calm down the hundreds of spectators so he could get the scene shot.

One of the spectators was Marilyn’s husband, Joe DiMaggio. The group of people snapping pictures and whistling at his wife did not sit well with him. He would leave the city for the West Coast the day after. The marriage between Monroe and DiMaggio would end soon after as well because of the incident. DiMaggio did not want Marilyn to have a movie career, especially one that subjected her to being whistled at by all kinds of men.

The footage from the New York street was unusable for Wilder because of all the noise. It had to be re-shot in the studio. It was a much tamer version of what people on the New York street saw.

As for the story of the movie, Tom Ewell plays a husband and father who has been married for seven years. His wife and son leave New York for New England to escape the summer heat. Ewell has to stay home and get work done. He works for a dime paperback company and is reading over the manuscript a psychologist has written that describes “the seven year itch” married men have. The psychologist believes that after seven years of marriage, the male gets the itch to have an affair with another woman, but he still loves his wife.

Ewell has the unfortunate luck of meeting Marilyn Monroe, who is an aspiring actress and happens to be renting out the apartment above Ewell’s for the summer. The summer heat is particularly hot and Marilyn does not have any air conditioning in her apartment. Ewell happens to have some, so Marilyn spends a lot of time there trying to cool down. Ewell of course believes she is there because she likes him.

Ewell makes advances that Marilyn rejects. Eventually he realizes that what he is trying to do is wrong and begins to think of his family. His son forgot his paddle for his kayak and Ewell finally remembers he has to mail it. The movie ends with Ewell vowing to take the paddle to his son while Marilyn waves goodbye to him from his apartment window.

"One thing about this, the longer you last the less you care."

CinemaScope brought a whole new form of filmmaking to Fox. It was not a better brand of filmmaking either. With the new aspect ratio studio heads figured they could pack in more scenery that would impress audiences. This of course detracted from the story, but the studio bosses figured audiences would pay money for just about anything. One such example of a movie that stresses scenery over acting and story is River of No Return (1954).

River of No Return is probably one of the most frustrating movies to watch. There are talented people associated with it, but the story is severely lacking. The scenery looks nice though.

The movie was directed by Otto Preminger. He was a talented director, but it was the last movie he had to make on his contract with Fox. It looked like he was just going through the motions. There were no interesting camera movements, it was basically shot from as far away as possible thanks to the bulky CinemaScope cameras that made it hard to shoot close-ups.

Marilyn Monroe stars in the movie and if there is one thing you want with Marilyn Monroe it is close-ups. She plays Kay, a saloon singer in the Old West around 1875. She befriends a young boy, Mark. Mark’s father, Matt, played by Robert Mitchum, arrives in the small town Kay sings in to claim his son after spending a year in jail for shooting a man. Now the names Mark and Matt should tell you that the screenwriters were lazy. It is hard to tell either name apart because they are so similar. For those watching the movie they know the little boy’s name starts with an M and his father’s name starts with an M, but they don’t know who is Mark or who is Matt.

Anyway, Mitchum brings his son to live on a ranch down river that he has. Father and son get along well. Mitchum tells the boy that he will teach him to do many things, like hunt, that the boy has always wanted to learn.

Things look good for the two until a troubled raft comes downstream. Mitchum and the boy rescue the raft’s contents – Kay and her would be husband Harry. Apparently Harry has won some money downriver and has to go to the town to claim it. The raft has been totaled and he needs a gun for protection, just in case the man doesn’t want give him the money. He tries to go for Mitchum’s gun, but Mitchum says he needs it to fight Indians.

Well, the two get in a fight and Harry wins. Kay is so upset at seeing the little boy cry over his injured father that she tells Harry to go on without her. He does and she nurses Mitchum back to health. Lo and behold Indians come by and torch the ranch. With no gun, the party of Kay, Mark and Matt have to escape on the river.

What follows is a trip down a river that is supposed to be unmanageable. So the movie is a bit like The African Queen (1951), only it is much worse.

In the end, Mitchum gets his gun back. Harry losses Kay and Kay and Mitchum gain a better respect for each other. Most importantly for the heads at Fox, the scenery looked great.

"Look at Roosevelt, look at Churchill, look at old fella what's his name in The African Queen."

With hits like Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Marilyn Monroe stepped into the big time of movies when she costarred with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).

Actually she wasn’t the costar on the set, she was the star. Publicity men and news photographers would gather around Marilyn any time they were on the set. This didn’t sit well with the veteran actors at first, but they eventually took her under their wing and became like older sisters to Marilyn.

Besides catapulting Marilyn to the top of Fox’s box office attractions, and marking the beginning of the end of the acting career of Betty Grable, this was the first movie shot in CinemaScope. The studios were all developing new widescreen techniques to make their pictures seem bigger. The aspect ratios on CinemaScope and Vistavision and all the other widescreen forms made scenery such as mountains look majestic. Here it just makes Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable look bigger. That might not be a bad thing.

Bacall plays divorcee Schatze, who decides she will do it different this time around by marrying a wealthy man. She and her two friends, Loco and Pola, played by Grable and Monroe respectively, take up residence in a New York penthouse apartment. The apartment they are renting belongs to man who is in trouble with the IRS and has to flee for Europe.

So Schatze gets a deal on the place, but things don’t go well for the trio at the beginning. The wealthy bachelors aren’t flocking to their place and the bills are piling up. To raise money, Schatze decides to sell some of the furniture in the apartment.

The apartment becomes bare, but a man comes inside. Tom Brookman helps Loco bring in groceries one night. Tom has it bad for Schatze, but she thinks he is just another low-life, like her first husband. He tries to get her to go out with him, but she never returns his calls.

The trio takes a night out on the town and find three wealthy men. They don’t exactly like the men, but they are rich and that is all the girls are looking for. Schatze is with widower J.D. Hanley, played by William Powell, who happens to be much older than Schatze.

Loco becomes acquainted with a businessman with a bad temper. He takes her for a weekend to his cabin in Maine. She finds out he is married and wants to leave, but he ends up coming down with the measles. She helps take care of him and in the process meets a park ranger, Eben, who she falls in love with.

Pola ends up with an Arab oilman who is actually a speculator. She is nearsighted and refuses to wear her glasses in front of men. Monroe hated this part of the character, but director Jean Negulesco said audiences would feel more sympathy with her character if she bumped into things. He was right and audiences found her charming to go along with her beauty.

Pola ends up misreading an airport sign and gets on the wrong plane. She is supposed to be going to Baltimore to meet the speculator so they can go off and be married. Instead she ends up on a plane to Kansas City and meets a man who also wears glasses and says she looks great with glasses on. With this infusion of confidence she becomes interested in the man.

The three gather once more when Schatze announces she is going to wed J.D. despite the age difference. At the wedding it is revealed that the younger Tom might be a better match for Schatze. J.D. respectfully bows out to Tom and Schatze marries him despite her better judgment.

The final scene occurs at a hamburger stand where it is learned that Tom is actually a very wealthy man. Schatze and her friends can’t believe it. They faint and the movie fades to black.

Writer Nunnally Johnson was capable of providing some funny stuff. There are flashes here, but nothing gut busting. The real reason to watch this movie is the three women who star in it.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

There might not have been a better screen tandem, at least for males, than Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The two were well known for their sex appeal. Russell was brunette. Marilyn was blonde. Their effects on men were the same though.

Groucho Marx remarked that the movie Double Dynamite (1951), in which he starred with Russell and Frank Sinatra, was so named by Howard Hughes in honor of Jane Russell’s breasts. Considering there is no dynamite in the movie and the metaphorical meaning of the title could be lost on most audiences, Groucho might have a point.

The two got along brilliantly on and off-screen. Marilyn had a tremendous inability to get to places on time. Jane would stop by her house every day and drive her to the set so she would be on time. Marilyn was involved in Freud at this time and she tried to get Jane to read some of his work. She didn’t quite take to it. She was more religious and tried to help Marilyn find a religion. Marilyn didn’t quite take to this either.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a musical. Musicals aren’t typically known for their plot. This one revolves around Marilyn and Jane who are best friends. Marilyn is Lorelei Lee, a blonde who covets diamonds and money. Jane is Dorothy, a brunette who is more concerned with true love rather than material love. Lorelei and millionaire geek, Gus are planning an engagement. Gus’ father is not too happy with Lorelei’s lack of brain power. When the two showgirls head out for a European tour, Gus’ father sends out a detective to spy on Lorelei. Comedy and music fill the voyage across the pond. Charles Coburn is wonderful as Sir Frances Beekman “Beekie” to Lorelei. He is a rich man who is enamored with Lorelei’s beauty. She in return, is enamored with the diamonds his wife possesses.

But like in all musicals, it is the music that matters. Three songs from the movie still survive today. “I’m Just a Little Girl from Little Rock,” “Bye Bye Baby,” and most famously, “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” The later is most associated with Marilyn, but the version we all know was sung by Jane Russell in the movie. Still the Technicolor rendition of Marilyn’s version is most frequently replayed when Marilyn Monroe tributes occur on T.V.

The three songs were all taken from the Broadway musical of a book written by Anita Loos. Carol Channing performed the role of Lorelei on the stage. Some believe that Fox missed out when they didn’t get one of the greatest musical performances ever on film by not casting Carol Channing. But Anita Loos stated that Marilyn was the perfect Lorelei.

The only original song included for the movie was “When Love Goes Wrong.” The two actresses did a brilliant job on the number. Audiences came to like it as one of the best in the movie.

With the success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes came the ultimate success for any actor. Both Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe got to put their foot and hand prints in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Legend has it that Marilyn said instead of hand and foot prints, the two should have placed their breasts in the wet cement. Anyways, Marilyn put a diamond over the “i” in her name. It was stolen a few days latter. Today a rhinestone is in its place.

"Why should the Falls drag me down here at 5 o'clock in the morning? To show me how big they are and how small I am?"

The big break is something every actor is waiting for. Today it is amazing to think of some of the movies yesterdays Hollywood stars appeared in that were considered their “big break.” For Marilyn Monroe that movie is Niagara (1953). This is surprising because it is not a typical Monroe vehicle. It is not a comedy and her character does little to arouse sympathy in the audience.

There are two things about this movie that make it different from other Monroe movies and would be duplicated throughout the rest of her career. These two things are what make Niagara the break-out movie for Monroe. First, this is the first time she appeared in Technicolor. After seeing the rushes Marilyn wanted a clause in her contract stating that she could only appear in color movies. After seeing the box office returns, Fox gladly accepted. She was made for color movies. The difference between her in color and her in black-in-white is startling.

Secondly, the movie brought Marilyn’s famous walk into movie theaters across the country. Although she never got the big commotion made over her walking style, male audience members had no problem trying to dissect it. On the first day of shooting, director Henry Hathaway stuck the camera right behind her and had it follow her as she walked around a tourist overlook at the Falls.

These two firsts in Marilyn Monroe films helped make her a superstar. She had already been a hit with audiences, but this movie made the studio heads at Fox notice that she was also bankable in a starring role. Today the movie is still loved by Marilyn Monroe fans. I am not one of these though. I struggle with reasons why. Perhaps it is because this is a movie based around murder and the movie is just not tight enough to hold audiences in constant suspense, like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Speaking of suspense and Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph Cotton stars opposite Marilyn here. The veteran actor was probably taking a step down when he appeared in this picture. He had been with Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941) and The Third Man (1949). He had also worked with Alfred Hitchcock in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Under Capricorn (1949).

Here, Cotton plays George Loomis, a retired solider who has just gotten out of a mental hospital. His wife, Rose, played by Marilyn, believed that it would be good for him to take a trip to Niagara Falls in order to rekindle their marriage. This doesn’t happen and Rose becomes bored with George. She decides to take up a new lover and secretly meets with him while George struggles to find some path in life.

She plots with her lover to have George killed. The plot nearly works as the idea is to have George pushed over the Falls. Someone is pushed off, but it isn’t George. The lover dies and George realizes that Rose wanted him dead. He sets off on a path to kill her.

George and Rose’s relationship is contrasted by the Cutlers, Ray and Polly, a couple who is on their second honeymoon/business trip as the headquarters of Ray’s office is located just across the Falls in Canada.

The Cutlers are probably a big reason why I don’t like the movie. They are static characters who have not aged well. It is hard to watch when they are on-screen. It is also hard to watch Joseph Cotton. He is a much better actor than this. Not enough time is given to his character, which is why there seems to be a lack of explanation for the things he does in the beginning. Marilyn Monroe, however, looks great and steals the show, like she did in every movie she was in.

It wasn’t the most memorable movie, but it was the beginning of superstardom for Marilyn Monroe. The movie is special for its place in her career. It also features some firsts that would later be used to great success in some of her future movies. Although she does die in this movie -- something that would not be repeated in another one of her pictures.

"What's a confidence man without confidence?"

Short stories typically make good movies. At least that is the belief of many directors as, unlike a novel, short stories are meant to be read in one sitting much like a movie. The problem with short stories though, is that they tend to be too short for movies that run 90 minutes, unless the screenwriter decides to add something more to the story. In 1952 Fox decided to make a movie that is a combination of short stories. The movie, O. Henry’s Full House is much like watching a series of anthology television episodes. The only real difference is that there is someone, John Steinbeck, who introduces each of the O. Henry short stories before we see it onscreen.

Fox brought out all the star power it had for this collection of shorts from the master of the unexpected ending. John Steinbeck introduces each story, as mentioned above, by pulling out a book from a bookcase and reading the first few sentences in the O. Henry story before we fade in to the visual story.

The first of the five stories shown is called “The Cop and the Anthem.” It stars Charles Laughton as a bum who wants to get arrested so he can spend the winter months in a warm jail cell. He tries to do everything he can to get arrested. He breaks a window, he attempts to assault a police officer but ends up tripping himself, he even orders a huge breakfast and doesn’t pay for it. All these attempts end up not working. Marilyn Monroe makes a brief appearance as a streetwalker, who Laughton attempts to pick-up. This attempt also fails. Finally Laughton stumbles into a church where he is so moved that he decides he does not want to be arrested, but rather he wants to become a working member of society again. He exclaims that he has seen the light. As he does this, a cop walks by and arrests him for loitering.

Henry Hathaway directed the next installment, called “The Clarion Call.” Here a police officer discovers the suspect to a murder, but since the two were friends, and the murderer has some knowledge about the police officer’s past that isn’t too good, he is unable to make the arrest.

Finally the cop asks his former friend if he could pay him to turn himself in. The murderer says sure, knowing that the cop can never afford the price on his petty salary. The murderer plans on getting his former friend back into the other side of the law. But this plan fails when the friend brings the money to the murderer, who is arrested. The murderer wonders why this happened and the cop explains that a local newspaper was offering a reward for the exact amount agreed upon.

“The Last Leaf” is one of my favorite O. Henry stories. It is brought to life by director Jean Negulesco, Anne Baxter and Jean Peters. The story revolves around two sisters. One who it appears is on her death bed, the other, Anne Baxter, who will not allow her to die. Baxter enlists an upstairs neighbor, who is a wannabe painter, into her fight to make her sister believe that she isn’t dieing. The sister believes that when all the leaves outside of her window have fallen, she will die. Baxter and the doctors know this is not going to happen, but her sister still believes this. It takes some work, but after a rough and brutal night, the sister lives. Amazed at what has happened, the sister asks to see out the window. The window shade is opened and there is one leaf remaining on the branch. Or so it seems. The old painter happened to spend all night outside painting the leaf perfectly so that it would match. The joy of the sisters is interrupted with the news that the painter had caught pneumonia and died.

“The Ransom of Red Chief” is directed by Howard Hawks and written by Nunnally Johnson and Ben Hecht, so it is going to be funny. This humorous tale is about two city thugs who believe it is easier to commit crimes in small towns. They ask around a small town in Arkansas about who the richest man in town is. When they find out who it is, they decide to take his young son and hold him for ransom. This is a great idea until they meet the son, who is too much for the city thugs to handle. The parents are overjoyed that their son has been taken off their hands. They refuse to pay the ransom and demand that they are paid in order to take their son back. The city thugs agree to this, but the son, “Red Chief” as he likes to be called, has taken a liking to them and refuses to go. The thugs are finally able to leave the boy, but they head out of town a lot poorer than they were.

The final story is probably O. Henry’s most famous, “The Gift of the Magi.” It is Christmas time and a struggling young couple has to decide what to get the other for Christmas. The wife has great flowing hair, so the husband decides to get her some combs that she has always wanted. The husband has a great gold watch, so the wife decides to get him a gold chain to match the watch. In typical O. Henry style, the wife sells her hair to buy the chain, while the husband sells the watch to buy the combs. It is the spirit of Christmas at its best.

O. Henry the man was an interesting person. O. Henry the short story writer was one of the best America ever produced. This movie is a fitting tribute to such a great storyteller.