Xmas in Film: The Bishop's Wife

Films that feature characters who wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves (or in this film's case their collar), often fall into the dangerous territory of turning into overly sweetened tripe.  When angels are involved that tripe can become a diabetic coma inducing goo.  Shockingly though, The Bishop's Wife (1947) directed by Henry Koster, manages to sidestep that pitfall, in spite of starring a Bishop and the angel sent down from heaven to help him.  Mind you, it helps that the Bishop is played by the debonair David Niven, and the angel is played the equally suave and endlessly charming Cary Grant.  No Clarence Oddbody types for this movie.

It's Christmas time, and David Niven's Bishop Henry Brougham is trying to finalize the funding for the grand new cathedral that he and his congregation endeavour to build.  Unfortunately, all his efforts are at the expense of his relationship with his wife, Julia(played by Loretta Young).  The trouble is that our Bishop is so focused on the funding issues that he does not even realize the toll it is taking on his marriage.  After praying to god to send him help for his cathedral, Dudley the angel appears in his office claiming to be the answer to the Bishop's prayers. Everyone is charmed by Dudley and he soon inspires a wealthy old woman to donate her large fortune to the needy rather than to the cathedral; helps the community rediscover the old community church, and pretty much thwart all of the Bishop's, attempts to get the funding for his cathedral.  He also helps break Julia out of her sadness, further angering the Bishop.  Things get really sticky when Dudley realizes that he is deeply attracted to Julia. 

The Bishop's Wife is imbued with an incredible amount of wit and sophistication which acts as a safety net ensuring that the film never get too treacly.  When you have to lead actors who both perfectly embody the stereotype of the rarefied English gentleman playing against each other, there's not a lot of room for cheap sentimentality.  Representing the female side of the equation you have an actress like Loretta Young who brings a warm, down-to-earth honesty to Julia.  She is never a victim or a whiner, she puts on a brave face for her husband but her eyes give away the pain she feels at the increasing distance between she and her husband.  When she does start to experience happiness again, the feeling is so infectious that you can't help but smile.  The unusual triangle that springs up between the three never goes into crass territory, and feels original in spite of having a fairly obvious outcome.

Other than three great performances by three greats leads, this film features a wonderful supporting cast, beautiful black and white cinematography, and a merry dose of Christmas cheer.  Here's a most unusual trailer for the film.

What's Your Favorite Flavor of Retro Christmas Party?

There are some awesome scenes in classic films that display the chaos and debauchery of Christmas parties.  While I doubt that most Christmas parties of the era ever reached the level of drunken craziness that the ones in these three clips do, but it's fun to pretend that they did. 

Our first clip comes from the classic detective film The Thin Man (1935), in which the film's two protagonists,  Nick and Nora Charles hold an impromptu Christmas party for Nick's old cop friends (from when he used to be on the force).  Considering that Nick and Nora both consider themselves professional drinkers, it is no surprise that their party is teeming with booze, dancing, and one sad drunk desperately trying to call his dear old sweet, Ma.  Here's the clip...

Our second clip comes from Billy Wilder's Oscar winning film The Apartment (1960).  Behold the wonder of the office Christmas party in the sixties.  Men and their mistress secretaries smooch in the open, women dance salaciously on the desk tops, and the alcohol never stops.  Dionysus himself would be proud.  Take a look...

We travel a decade later in our third and final clip, to another Academy Award winning film, Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).  For this party we see our romantic leads Alvy and Annie (played by Allen and Diane Keaton) head off to a California Christmas party, with all the schmoozing.  There's groovy music, drinks, executives trying to get meetings, and Jeff Goldblum looking for his mantra.  Funny thing is, it seems to be the most sedate of all three parties.  Here's it is...

A Bombshell for the Ages: Barbara Stanwyck

Yes, I'm going to force you all to listen to me gush about Barbara Stanwyck again.  Take comfort though, if you're not on the Stanwyck bandwagon, after this weekend I don't have any plans to talk about her in the near future.  Just allow me two more indulgences.

For me no actress makes me think of Christmas more than Barbara Stanwyck (her male counterpart would probably be Jimmy Stewart) as she has made multiple holiday themed films, making her a natural for December's Bombshell for the Ages.  It is a funny thing to associate Ms. Stanwyck with a happy time like Christmas, given her penchant for playing duplicitous femme fatales, scrappy hardboiled dames who climb their way to the top, and tragic maternal figures; however, she could also deftly play wisecracking showgirls, screwy socialites, and charming con-women with equal vigour.  The bottom line is she did it all extraordinarily well, which is why she often referred to as being the greatest actress who never won an Oscar.  

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Stevens in 1907 to working class parents.  When Ruby was four her mother was killed in a streetcar accident and her father abandoned her along with her four siblings.  Spending her young life bouncing between her sister's care and various foster homes, she fell in love with show business at an early age and spent her teenage years working various odd jobs while trying to find a way into the business (she left school at a very young age with a string of fights and low grades to her name).  At the age of fifteen she got a job as a chorus girl and spent the next few years as a member of several New York choruses, including the legendary Ziegfeld follies.  In 1926 she was give a small role in the Broadway play The Noose.  It was initially a flop; however, after the play was retooled to give the newly re-christened Barbara Stanwyck a larger part, the play became a major hit.  Stanwyck soon was getting lead roles in Broadway plays and in 1928, Hollywood came calling.

Though her first films were not particularly successful, Stanwyck became a sought after actress during the thirties, playing a variety of tough dames who triumphed against adversity.  In the forties, as films grew darker, so too did the roles that she inhabited.  By the late nineteen-fifties film roles began to dry up and Barbara moved to television, where her career continued to flourish into her twilight years.

Throughout her career she was able to imbue all the characters she played with a world-weary grit cultivated in her own troubled childhood.  In day-to-day life she was known as being incredibly kind and friendly to everyone who worked with her, from the most powerful directors to the lowly crew members.  No one else in Hollywood could touch Barbara's reputation of being total class act.  Her own familial life included two failed marriages.  Her first to actor Frank Fay in 1928 ended in 1935 (there are rumours that their marriage was the basis for the multiple versions of A Star is Born).  Stanwyck married actor Robert Taylor in 1939, with their union ending in 1950 after Taylor's many infidelities became common knowledge.

While she never won a competitive Oscar, Stanwyck was nominated for the best actress Oscar four times for the films Double Indemnity (1944), Ball of Fire (1941), Stella Dallas (1937), and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948).  She was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1982.  In spite of her lack of competitive Oscars, she did win a trio of Emmys for her television work as well as several other honours throughout her long career.

Stanwyck passed away in 1990, leaving a massive resume of film and television roles.  Her unusual beauty and sassy brand of tough intelligence has never been duplicated.  I've included a clip of a TCM tribute to Stanwyck narrated by Jennifer Jason Leigh, which describes the awesomeness that is Barbara Stanwyck far more eloquently than I ever could.

A Bit of Holiday Auditory Nostalgia: Christmas Magic

The Christmas season brings out the most amazing array of seasonal music, considering the limited number of songs and the ridiculous number of covers that have been made of each.  Still there is something comforting about those old recordings made in the forties and fifties with their warm acoustic atmosphere, luscious orchestrations, and the use of a choral backing that has long since been abandoned in this age of cold, digitally manipulated music. 

As a child, my mother always used to play an old cassette copy of an LP that my grandparents used to own when she was a child.  It featured a number of orchestrated and choral numbers that to an untrained ear sounded like the usual old timey Christmas music of the era.  What distinguished it were three tracks the featured a singer who literally sounded like a grown woman trying her best to sound as if she were the most insipid five years-old to ever grace the planet.  My brother an I, not so endearingly, dubbed her the Neutered Chick.  A couple years ago I was feeling sentimental about the Neutered Chick and that whole album, and not knowing the name of the album, nor who the artists behind it were took up an evening of tenacious online research led me to both the name of the album and artist: Christmas Magic by The Hugo Winterhalter Orchestra, released in 1958.  The Neutered Chick's real name turned out to be Julie Valentine.  I managed to get a copy of the original LP (it's also available on iTunes now).

The Tracks include an orchestral version of White Christmas and Swing on a Star, the Neutered Chick singing Winter Wonderland, That's What I Want For Christmas, and I Want To Hitch  Ride With Santa Claus, and choral renditions of The Second Star To The Right, Carol of the Bells, I Saw Three Ships, Deck the Halls, I Love That Christmas Feeling, Away in a Manger, and Christmas Island.  Listening to it now, the choral tracks are the ones that really stick out the most to me (although, the Neutered Chick still holds a special place in my heart).

Upon receiving my own copy of the LP, I found a new reason to enjoy this album- the cover artwork is really great.  I enjoy the use of the old fashioned frosted glass Christmas lights draped around the girl and her beau.  It actually inspired a test photo session that a friend of mine and I held last Christmas.  I would like to fully imitate the cover with a couple at some point down the road.  If you and your significant other is interested you can always email us at info@photobombshell.com.  Here's a  sampling of the Neutered Chick.

Classic Holiday Animation Retrospective: Peace on Earth

I was thinking of talking about Hugh Harman's MGM short, Peace on Earth, around Remembrance Day, but I figured with its strong Christmas vibe that I would save it for December.  It's a pretty powerful short that nominated an Oscar for best animated short film way back in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, and it was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.  Peace on Earth features a Utopian earth that has been reconquered by the animals of the world after mankind has successfully obliterated himself from the face of the planet through modern warfare.  It starts with woodland squirrels singing a song that sounds suspiciously like Hark the Herald, but with the key lyrics replaced by the word, "Peace on Earth, good will to man."  A pair of young squirrels don't know what man is, so they ask their wise old Grand Pappy who relates the sad tale of how the race of man ceased to exist.  The short goes into dark territory as Grand Pappy relates the terrifying realities of war, with animated tanks, soldiers in gas masks brandishing bayonets take one and other out.  The animators used rotoscoping (drawing over live battle footage) to accurately portray what war really looked like in 1939.

The result is a harrowing piece of animation that I would imagine flooring audiences who were used to kinder, gentler animated short before and between their features-something from the Wonderful World of Disney, perhaps.  I have to say the ending is more than a little preachy as the animals take their cues from living in peace from the Bible.  It's a little heavy handed for a cynical gal like me... but the message of peace remains as topical as ever.  Little has changed in the world as we still teeter on the brink of complete annihilation.  I take comfort in the fact that in this post-apocalypse the animals survive.  This short was remade in 1955 by Hanna-Barbara, under the new name Good Will to Men.  Here's the original short in all its glory...