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[Not Even Vaguely] Freaky Friday

For no other reason than that the very thought of her cheers me up, the late, great Miss Shelley Winters.  She's apparently and for reasons lost in the mists of time doing a not at all bad Ann Sothern impression, and if nothing else the old girl looks a good deal more ladylike than was her more usually wanton wont.

Today is a bit of a holding pattern, as the various medical and bureaucratic Powers What Am confer on whether or not I'm in a fit state to travel.  If all goes well, we begin the long journey home tomorrow; if not, it's more sitting around.  Our itinerary, should we be able to follow it, takes us back through London, which we'd carefully planned to avoid during the current quadrennial hoo-ha.  The best-laid plans, you know - which is really rather the lesson of the last week or so, in some ways.

Miss Winters Considers Her Options

Shelley passes a humid moment with an anonymous arm.  Just because.

Here She Is, World!

Our mystery lady was indeed, as the estimable Bill guessed, that heavenly creature born Shirley Schrift, but known and loved the world over as Shelley Winters.
It's actually one of a number of candids taken during the filming of one of her early masterpieces, South Sea Sinner (aka East of Java), in which she shared the screen with, of all opposite numbers, Liberace.

Altogether, the series of photos, of the star in strappy sandals and smock on her lunch break, amounts to something of a comprehensive tour of the Universal lot, whose standing sets of saloon and jungle gave the picture what atmosphere it had. Here we have the alarming vision of an infinite number of Shelleys in a set of dressing room mirrors.

And here Shelley proves the skeptics wrong: she was literate.

One thing puzzles me about Bill's guess, though. This, he thinks, is a look that's "too trashy" for Betty Hutton. Huh? Nothing was too trashy for that blonde...

Expectations

New Year's Eve is always so fraught.

You hope and pray it will turn out like this: revelry, glamour, and good times for all...

All too often, though, you end up with the nagging feeling that something not-so-great is about to happen. Or that Red Buttons will show up. Or both.

Grande Dame Guignol

Happy Hallowe'en! TJB has already heralded the holiday by bringing to mind one of Hollywood's scariest phenomena: the auto-trashing of stardom that many of Hollywood's biggest ladies participated in once their careers were heading to the far side of the arc of fame. The biggest stars dove in first, bringing us in 1962 the immortal spectacle that is Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

I thought we might mark the day here at Café by taking a quick look at this same phenomenon, albeit generally one or two (or many, many more) rungs down.


Two years after Crawford and Davis, Olivia de Havilland put a toe into the exploitation waters with Lady in a Cage. She was joined in this macabre romp by none other than Ann Sothern.* She made sure it was a somewhat more old-school experience than Baby Jane by having her costumes by Edith Head and makeup by a Westmore, but even so, her Errol Flynn days at Warners feel very far away.

Nonetheless, she soldiered on; that same year, she replaced Crawford and joined Davis in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

1965 saw Tallulah Bankhead head to the UK to make what turned out to be her last feature, a Hammer horror first called The Fanatic and then re-titled, to maximally exploit her participation, as Die! Die! My Darling!**. Somehow the Italian title above just doesn't have the same ring.

Always eager to follow a trend, a few years later Shelley Winters (most of whose career was semi-exploitation anyway) flew to London for the first of her two "Question" thrillers, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (given the abbreviated title above for its U.S. release). Just about the best thing going for this one is its tag line: "The hand that rocks the cradle has no flesh on it!". Classy.

With that out of the way, Shelley hotfooted it back to LA to join Debbie Reynolds (and a startlingly star-studded cast that also takes in Agnes Moorehead, Dennis Weaver, and Yvette Vickers) for What's the Matter with Helen?. This one actually rises to the level of pretty good entertainment, with the two ladies playing Hollywood fringies in the 30s and more atmospherics than most of these pictures. It's sufficiently popular with at least one fan to have its own blog.

By the mid-70s, there were fairly few Big Ladies who hadn't found themselves wielding a knife, pushing a co-star down a flight of stairs, or otherwise generally trampling on the grave of Louis B. Mayer.

Perhaps the last of them was poor Veronica Lake, who was coaxed out of a boozy, reclusive retirement to appear ("star" just doesn't seem right) in Flesh Feast, a Miami-filmed quickie that makes Joan Crawford's Trog look like Grand Hotel. She plays a lady scientist who dabbles in experiments using maggots to carry out plastic surgery, and then someone wants to resuscitate Hitler, and... Oh, it's just awful, and she's terrible and sad.

Now that the line between "quality" entertainment and schlock has been more or less erased, it's hard to see any of today's star's getting much extra mileage simply out of appearing in shockers. A few decade ago, though, there was a palpable thrill in seeing somene like Bette Davis as a hag, or Olivia de Havilland menaced by beatniks, or even Veronica Lake as a sad shadow.

In any case, they mostly make fine entertainment for this spooky day, although I think myself that I'll induce the creeps by watching what I think is the scariest film to come out of a major Hollywood studio, Leslie Caron in Lili. But more of that anon.

* Moms Smackley's photostream has a snap of Miss Sothern in this that is something you want to see. Trust me.

** Hats off to the clever IMDb reviewer who points out that it could just as well be called Chew! Chew! The Scenery!.

Birthday Girl: Stop Calling Her Shirley

Let's raise a glass - or several - to mark what would have been the 88th birthday of a woman who may not have been the Greatest Star, but certainly might have been the Loudest: that heavenly creature who blazed her way across continents, genres, decades, and, from all accounts, dozens and dozens of gentlemen, the lovely and talented - both true! - Miss Shelley Winters.

As I imagine she would like to be remembered: blowsy and amused

Few stars have done more wildly different things over the course of a long career - Shelley was willing to take a stab at almost anything this side of hardcore to stay, if not on top, then at least along for the ride.

She did glamour (of a sort):
And almost 3o more or less pointless pictures, mostly Bs, before landing 1951's A Place in the Sun and a part that turned her somewhat raddled bombshell image on its side, turning her in the direction of the neurotic, pathetic underdog.

That allowed her to call on her Serious Actress training and revealed one of the secrets of her success: onscreen, an almost total lack of vanity. She was never afraid to go over the top, look bad, and, when called on to cry, really wail, as here in Executive Suite:

By the end of the 50s, most of her fellow former pinups would have died for the roles she was getting: The Diary of Anne Frank, A Patch of Blue, Alfie. She ended up with two Oscars, which is something you don't get just for being blonde and showing up (just ask Mamie van Doren).

She knew that one of the secrets of being a Star was keeping on being a working actress, and she took bad parts with good. She was never afraid of television (and who could have been more at home on "The Schlitz Playhouse of Stars"?), essaying a Batman villainness and, later, turning up on that essential moment of 70s kitsch, "Match Game":

She ensured herself a certain kind of schlock immortality by allowing her natural zaftig self to shine through in The Poseidon Adventure. I have no idea if the following is real, but if it is, darlings, you now know what I must have for Christmas.

Possibly the single greatest toy in history

She continued on, indomitably, through roles good - a hilarious turn as an agent in Blake Edwards's gleeful evisceration of his wife Julie Andrews's career, S.O.B.; her late, brief appearance in The Portrait of a Lady - and bad (anybody up for a screening of that Pauly Shore masterpiece Jury Duty?).

To me, though, Shelley would be an immortal even if her career had ended 40 years before it did - no Ma Parker, no Belle Rosen, no half-riveting, half-horrifying appearances on Johnny and Merv (although it would have deprived us of her oft-repeated stories of her onetime roommate, which usually started, "Marilyn was a Very Troubled Girl," and went on - and on - from there).

If she had never done anything after Willa Harper in Night of the Hunter, Shelley would still very much be on the Short List of Greats.

It is absolutely the apotheosis of her Suffering Prole period, as evidenced in this rather heated poster:

(and no, she does not portray a midget in the picture; but then again, Lillian Gish does not peer on, even more Lilliputian, from the middle distance; blame the illustrator)

The German edition hints at the actual flavor of the piece rather more accurately:

It's a part that captures both her real beauty and her equally evident foolishness; it's a brief turn that ends with one of the most haunting images ever put on film. Leave it to Charles Laughton to turn Hollywood brass (and who, in the end, was ever brassier?) into gold.

Many happy returns, Shirley-also-known-as, wherever you are...

Image du Jour

Saucy!

You know what? I miss Shelley Winters a whole lot more than I probably ought to.