The song “Heavy” appears on my album Fools and Orphans. With a special guest vocal appearance by the late Jeff Ladd. Sadly the world lost Jeff on May 21, 2010
MonsterGirl ( JoGabriel )
Good Afternoon folks!
Just a little note. It’s Sunday. that always gives me a feeling of nostalgia as does Saturday afternoons. Those were the times when I would sit quietly in front of the television set. All the other kids were outside scrambling around getting sweaty and dirty and doing well, what most kids do be mean to each other. Me, I chose to inhabit the mysterious worlds that Roger Corman, Jack Arnold, William Castle, Universal and RKO pictures had the good sense to give us “outliers” of society. Those of us who Identified with the monster. Thus the nickname Monster Girl. A name the neighborhood kids used to taunt me with, not realizing that eventually I would wear it as a badge of honor.
JACK ARNOLD
I owe much of my creativity as a songwriter and artist, to these films that validated my existence. These monsters were my true friends, because they helped me cope with the awkward phases of childhood when you just don’t fit in, and never will. These films are more than just nostalgic memories for me, they were my epiphany into the real world as an imaginative, compassionate, empathetic and yes a visionary in some ways. With my music and my writing. I plan on doing extensive individual posts about some of these great films.
Like Incredible Shrinking Man. Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. It’s Sunday, so I thought I’d share a little tidbit of the old days, when Jack Arnold bestowed upon us Giant Spiders and one little guy who had to fight one off in the basement of his house, a common environment turned sinister and dangerous, where it takes a whole day of strategizing to get a moldy crust of bread the size of a small crouton to us.
During the years of 1950′s horror and sci-fi films made by the great Jack Arnold there was a sympathetic, symbiotic lens that Arnold used towards aliens and “The Other” and the outsider. While working at Universal along side the production of William Alland, he gave us our first venture into the genre offering us benevolent yet mystifying aliens who crash land near a small town, inside a mountain and merely need time to fix the spaceship in order to leave earth.
It Came From Outer Space (1953) based on a story by Ray Bradbury the prolific science fiction writer of that era, as did Richard Matheson who told of bizarre, inscrutable and very advance race of one eyed amorphous creatures who could assume the form of any human in order to facilitate the uninterrupted repair of their ship. The aliens were not here to seize the planet to enslave earth people, nor destroy earth in order to be the ultimate life form in the universe, threatened by the advancement of our weaponry, fear of the bomb in that age engendered many bomb, cold war scare films.
Like Invaders From Mars (1956) and Don Siegel’s Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956),fear of Communism and losing our individual identity as well as the patriotism and national prowess. The visionary writers and film makers knew how to frame this message in their flights of fantasy films. The last major film that Arnold did was the sublime and metaphysical masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). A film that still inspires chills up the back of my neck when Grant Williams realizes that he isn’t disappearing, merely becoming greater as he is subsumed by the vast universal heart beat of the unknown yet interconnectedness and essence of life force itself.
The Incredible Shrinking Man was based on Matheson’s novel and actually scripted by him as well. Shrinking Man and It Came from Outer Space are still considered two of Arnold’s best work. The film that has really become his most iconic as an enduring classic is Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
Creature From The Black Lagoon had no involvement from either writer. In fact, it was because this film was so successful for Universal, that it prompted them to direct their attentions specifically in more productions that involved Sci-Fi and Horror films after 1954 many of which were directed by Jack Arnold.
In a lot of ways, aside from the money that these films made for Universal, it’s really the charm of Arnold’s films that make this specific moment in history for the genres to remain in the hearts of those of us who remember watching them on rainy Saturday afternoons, or like I said the sunny ones when you didn’t fit in with the nasty jerk heads in the neighborhood, so you’d rather hang out with the sort of cute green scaly guy who could stay underwater for days at a time.
David J Skal who’s a hell of a writer, I recommend The Monster Show refers to Creature as the “most vivid formative memories a large segment of American population”
Like The Twilight Zone, Serling’s compact morality plays tied up in fantasy story telling, for a lot of us these offerings became the rituals that were quickly picked up on by the “mass media” The desire for these type of stories became the contemporary trend that inspired great writers and film makers like Stephen King, John Carpenter and even Steven Spielberg.
Much the same way that H.G Wells fantastical tales inspired a hunger for films about science marvels and other worlds.Edgar Wallace, Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft and Hawthorne inspired the Gothic horror, horror mythos and crime thriller.
Arnold’s films evoke formative memories not only of being frightened by the elements of horror, but it brings you right back to the feeling of being that child again. At least if you’re like me and rail against growing older and losing your imagination. King and Carpenter have spoken about the individual films of Arnold that gave them their first cinematic experience which like for me, changed their lives forever. You could say that Arnold’s films could be used as a benchmark and cultural reference or jumping off place for teenagers to identify with feeling alienated by society. The 50′s were a period where the generation of teenagers were influenced by these types of films. Later on filmmakers would self consciously pay homage to Arnold’s films. And every decade or so, we also see a revived interest in the use of 3D, which make movie going a sort of ritual collective event. The glasses, the group experience.
Anyway, I plan on going in depth about Arnold and several of my most memorable beloved films of his. I just wanted to write a little Sunday hail to the king of giant bugs and little people, (not like the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz) I mean people who were once big enough to drive a car, and can now sleep in a match box for shelter.
Have a great Sunday, I think I’ll watch Tarantula (1955) . I’ve got my hot cocoa and it’s raining outside. The cats are all purring and I think it’s a perfect time to watch a little arachnid suddenly growing as large as a Semi and ambushes a whole town. I’m still kind of traumatized by the woman who’s skirt get’s stuck in the car door!
See ya later! MG
PLEASE DON’T HOLD IT AGAINST THIS CAT! Grant Williams was bite size…….
Contemplating man’s place in the universe. The Transcendent Man
Leo G Carroll’s well intended experiment, produces horrific results of great proportions!
Julie Adams is the object of The Creature’s affections.
THE 4D MAN
PETER CUSHING
BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE
DR. PHIBES
DR FRANKENSTEIN
ATOM AGE VAMPIRE
Leo G Carroll playing with the forces of nature
TARANTULA
BEN TURPIN
THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS
IT CONQUERED THE WORLD
THE INVISIBLE RAY
THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE
EYES WITHOUT A FACE
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
JOHN CARRADINE
MONSTER ON CAMPUS
ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE
THE DEVIL BAT
THE DEVIL COMMANDS
DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE
DONOVAN’S BRAIN
DR. CYCLOPS
THE FACE OF MARBLE
DR MORBIUS – FORBIDDEN PLANET
CORRIDORS OF BLOOD
HELP ME HELP ME ….THE FLY
METROPOLIS
THE UNEARTHLY
THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN
DR MOREAU THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS
THE INVISIBLE MAN – CLAUDE RAINS
THE THING -HOWARD HAWKS
THE MAD GHOUL
THE MAD DR OF MARKET STREET
THE TINGLER
Next Saturday perhaps we’ll see inside their laboratories….!
Spoiler Alert: I do discuss the film through to the end. So if you haven’t seen it yet skip the review!
Butterfield 8 - Directed by Daniel Mann and scripted from the John O’Hara novel. One of his early works which garnered a lot of attention, primarily because O’Hara dealt bluntly with matters of social class, sex, and ambition that other novelists didn’t write about during the 50′s and 60′s.He acquired a grasp of social stratification that is pervasive in his writing.
The melodramatic score by Bronislau Kaper is as beautifully dramatic as it is as trashy like a Harold Robbins novel.
Butterfield 8 Stars the great lilac eyed beauty of the golden age of cinema,when the big studio empires ruled over their actors.One of my favorites, Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor won an academy award for her role as Gloria Wandrous and Laurence Harvey plays Weston Liggett(without his groovy sideburns that he sported in the early 70s. Harvey who’s speaking voice is like silk to my ears.)Both actors had played husband and wife in the psychological thriller Night Watch (1973) which I plan on reviewing down the road.
First some blurbs about O’Hara’s novel:
“Gloria Wandrous is New York’s ultimate playgirl–a professional escort in the down and out days of the Depression. O’Hara bitingly paints a portrait of despair in Gloria’s life–from the minute she wakes up in a strange bed, to the moment her life ends. Based on a true story, men flock to Gloria–raped by her father figure as a child, her security with love is thin, though she continues to seek support from her friend Eddie, and her seducer Liggett. In the speakeasy culture of New York, sex and booze is all the rage, and yet Gloria’s one real desire, love, only leads her to her death.”
Angela Allan, Resident Scholar
“Gloria Wandrous is a golddigger extraordinaire in New York City during the depths of the Depression, circa 1931. She escaped a molesting uncle in the sticks and has made her own way in the big city ever since. When she tangles with prosperous businessman and Yale grad Weston Liggett, it’s hard to tell who’s leading whom.
David Loftus, Resident Scholar
Butterfield 8(1960)
The film unlike the novel is set in 60′s era style and not the depression era 30′s.It is a story not just about Gloria Wandrous a tragic figure, at the mercy of her past and present demons that haunt her, the film is about male ego, male control and male pride. In order for Taylor’s character to be redeemed in the end as a good person, she must be obliterated by the plot. Similar to the way Kelly had to leave the clean town of Grantville In The Naked Kiss, Gloria must die in order for her existence to be redeemed.
This is what happens to girls who are either hyper sexual, sexually independent or perceived as wild and immoral. It’s a tragedy of moralizing. For me Butterfield 8 is a story about society’s fear as well as male fear of the female body, when neither are in control of it.
Gloria is portrayed as an amoral sex addict who’s trajectory was formed at age 13 when a man her mother was engaged to marry rapes her over the course of a week.Now her only goal in life is to obtain wealth and power through her body.The abuse is alluded to early on, we catch wind of Gloria’s mother Annie saying that Gloria didn’t like her fiance the Major.
The fact that her self-worth and promiscuity might stem from early child hood sexual abuse,and that Gloria is a victim condemned to repeat the abuse with each man she flagrantly sleeps with isn’t really part of the narrative until much later in the film during a very powerful confession to her dearest friend Steve.Yet another male who needs to look after Gloria, and act as brotherly protector for her.
Not having read OHara’s book I am not sure if he wrote Gloria’s character as sympathetic. Taylor does her best to show us a compassionate woman in turmoil regardless of the moralizing in the film.
Dina Merrill plays Liggett’s wife Emily a “decent” respectable woman of breeding who is also portrayed as having stripped Weston Liggett of his manhood by foisting a life upon him that wasn’t of his own choosing, thus giving him an excuse for why he seeks the comfort of other woman,and the excesses of booze. He too is self deprecating and self destructive like Gloria, but unlike Gloria, he gets the opportunity to find himself in the end, where Gloria had to literally crash and burn.
And yet we don’t see Liggett’s actions as being amoral. He gets a small lecture from an associate Bing who while on a train bound for Long Island, tells him he’s making a mess of his life, but people make excuses for Liggett all the way through. Liggett’s own wife, recognizes her part of the blame in infantilizing her husband therefor taking the burden of blame off of him.
However, Gloria is a walking sexual plague, a virtual epidemic capable of taking men and marriages down with one phone call to Butterfield 8.. She is a rolling one woman demolition team, smashing through sexual encounters like a bulldozer. Until she meets the one man she actually falls in love with, Wes Liggett. Only with this one man can she find self worth and become redeemed. Finally she starts to shed her life and aspire for more than taking from men, by giving over her body. Women are not allowed to be sexual beings, not in the way that men are expected to be.
The wonderful Mildred Dunnock ( she was in one of my favorite episodes of Boris Karloff’s Thriller, The Cheaters) plays Gloria’s fragile and inhibited mother Annie and Annie’s neighbor and best friend Fannie Thurber is played by Betty Field who adds some comic relief to the tension at times. She’s a constant in Annies troubled life, worrying about her daughter and her reputation.
Gloria Wandrous high priced call girl just dial Butterfield 8, wakes up in Wes Liggett’s bed in his lavish apartment. She starts calling for Liggett (Laurence Harvey) who we see stepping into an elevator. The vintage baby blue Crosley phone is off the hook. The oboe is ominous and alienating. She picks up a pack of crumpled cigarettes and flings it when she discovers it’s empty.
She keeps picking at the ashtray looking for the remnant of a cigarette butt that she can smoke.She finds a pack of Liggett’s cigars and lights up, inhales and starts choking on it. Pours herself a glass of scotch. Walks around the swanky apartment in the bed sheets, kicks a silk salmon dress she wore the night before lying on the floor next to her pumps. Picks up the dress and holds it to herself.Remembering last night she crumples it up and throws it back on the floor.Puts her slip on and saunters off to find Liggett calling his name. She steps into an ultra ornate bathroom splattered with flecked pink and gold.
Her curves are accented by the silk slip. She drips sex. Looking in the mirror she wipes the night before out of her eyes. Rinses her toothbrush in the glass of scotch and brushes her teeth, gargles with the scotch and spits into the sink.Sitting at Emily Liggett’s dressing table deciding on which perfume to douse herself with.
The film is photographed in washes of that fabulous vintage muted pink, blue and gold tones fashionable for the 60s style. Gloria goes to the closet and fondles a brown mink coat, holds it close to her body like a lover. Sets it back in the closet and picks the other white fox lined coat, wearing it over her slip. Goes into the bedroom and hangs up the phone.
She then goes over to her gold purse and pulls out a note written on an envelope”Gloria-$250 enough? Will phone you later. L” Lingering on the note a bit, she is visibly upset, this is not something she’s expected
The brash horns underscore her fervor when she grabs her lips stick and writes on the mirror in big red letters “NO SALE” and places the money on an ornate clock atop the mantle. She rips up the note and goes back to the closet to hang up the white fox coat, grabs the more expensive brown mink instead.
Gloria picks up the phone and says “Butterfield 8, it’s Gloria any messages for me…mhm, Charlie, yeah George, yeah, listen a Mr Liggett will try to call sometime today, He might use Mr L…find me where ever I am…this is one call I want to take personally…and immediately” she hangs up. She picks up a bottle of scotch, and then pulls out money for it and places it on the bar and walks out into the gray New York City day. Hails a yellow cab and says she’ll double her tip for a cigarette. As is the assumption of the brash New Yorker attitude, the taxi nearly runs into an older couple crossing the street and yelling ensues.Gloria tells him that he’s in good voice this morning.
This is how Butterfield 8 opens. We see a woman who is insulted that she has been paid for sex by the one man she thought was different.She arrives at her friends apartment, knocks on the door, and finds Steve Carpenter (Eddie Fisher),obviously a poor struggling composer, trying to work on tomorrow’s arrangements on the piano. She hands him the bottle of liquor and says “tribute” for his “faith, hope and charity” and kisses him on the cheek. He says she’s got scotch on her breath, but she says it’s good scotch 20 years old. He says “and the cigar smoke?”"I always said I’d try anything once” Steve says”you ever try common sense?” and she answers “Only in desperation”
She tells him that she stole the fur coat, not for real, just long enough to get even with somebody. He made her so damned mad, he left her money,”he actually left me money!”
Steve tells her that his work is designed to get paid. She says it wasn’t work. Besides, her dress was torn so she borrowed something “spiteful and elegant”She utters his name Weston Liggett, Steve’s heard of him,very social. She says and “very Yale” “what’s with you an Yale?, always Yale” she tells him it’s the last college left, she started with Amherst and worked her way through the alphabet to Yale” and puffs on her cigarette “I’m stuck there…of course I could work backwards again”
Steve and Gloria are childhood friends, and he is very protective of her. Steve tells her to put the coat back on”Half dressed women make it difficult to concentrate” She tells him “don’t think of me as a woman, after all we’re just like brother and sister, remember” He gets agitated tells her to put the coat back on.
He tells her. I’m sick of opening up that door every other day and finding you boozed up, burned out and ugly”
She says “sick for me or sick for you?”he comes back “For you, for everything you’re wasting…why do you come here like this?”he asks. She tells him that she always comes to him, because at least she can be honest with him. He tells her to start being honest with herself.”You’re making a mess out of your life and you’re forcing me to watch it.”
Gloria says ” It’s terrible Steve, I say yes too much, when I shouldn’t and you say no too much when you shouldn’t”
She wonders how she’s gonna get home dressed in only a slip and fur coat what will her mother think. Steve says that her mother knows everything about her. She agrees but says she’d never admit it. “I’m still her innocent little girl…and she’s my dear sweet cookie baking mother”"So go home, give her an innocent smile and have a cookie”
Gloria asks to borrow one of Steve’s girlfriends dresses. Steve’s girlfriend Norma played by the lovely Susan Oliver feels threatened by the friendship between Gloria and Steve. Gloria gives Steve a little of her philosophy on woman.
“The more you ask her to sacrifice, the more she knows you love her…honestly”
Cross Fade
On the LIRR heading to Long Island Liggett is smoking a cigar and lost in deep thought.On the train sitting next him is a colleague Bing who asks “problems Ligg?”he tells him “do you know 3 of the most over rated things in this world, home loving, home cooking and security”
Ligg’s got everything, lots of people would envy him, but he wonders “But am I happy?”Bing says “obviously not” “ever wonder why?” “I have…can you take it from an old fraternity brother…you’re a heel…a low down rotten heel…anything that doesn’t go your way, anything that you can’t have you destroy” This is the one enlightened moment of the film where there is insight into Liggett’s pathology and the narrative holds him accountable for his behavior.Bing tells him he could still come back and be a law partner with him any time.
Now on Long Island Ligg is skeet shooting with his wife Emily. He asks when she’s coming back to town(NYC).But the question is more of curiosity than passion. There is an obvious strain in the marriage. They are shooting at targets instead of engaging in a real conversation.
We’re back with Gloria, who’s borrowing a suit dress from Steve’s girlfriend Norma. She tells Gloria, “just remember that suit has lived a sheltered life…it shocks easily” “well then, it’s time it had a little adventure” a sarcastic banter ensues and Norma asks what happened to Gloria’s dress “It’s a funny thing, one minute it was there, and the next minute it wasn’t” Norma lilts her voice “much like your virtue I presume”
Gloria shows up at home in her little red sports car.Her mother says “Here’s Gloria now” her friend Fannie says”From where girl scout camp?” Mother Annie is holding a little Yorkshire Terrier, and asks her skeptical friend Mrs Francis Thurber who is drinking coffee. “Do I look alright?”setting the little dog down on Fannie’s lap. Fannie wriggles with displeasure, shooing it away. Gloria comes in and hugs her mother. Mrs Thurber asks “how’s church?”Gloria snaps back “why don’t you go sometime and find out”
Her mother remarks about the nice suit, Gloria tells her that she picked it up at the designers last week. Mrs Thurber gives a dig by saying” it must be hard changing dresses in one of those sport car trunks” Gloria shoots daggers back at her.
Then her mother tells her that the modeling agency sent some dresses, one of them they want her to wear to 3 different places tonight, but Mrs Thurber interjects again with yet another dig “the Salvation Army, The Public Library and The PTA in Brownsville” Gloria lets out a fake laugh for Mrs Thurbers benefit.
Gloria’s mother is the only one who doesn’t openly acknowledge Gloria’s lifestyle “Francis don’t joke about Gloria’s work it’s very important to her…she’s one of the few girls of her kind in the city” Gloria asks if Butterfield 8 called?Her mother tells her she’s 2 weeks late on her car payment and Gloria asks to borrow some money.
Ligg is back at his apartment in NYC. He sees the lipstick writing on the mirror NO SALE and picks up the dress from the floor. He calls Gloria, they arrange to meet that night. She shows up at the bar wearing a stunning black dress, black gloves and pearls. “He apologizes about the money. He tells her she’s with him tonight, and she comes back with “by choice, only”
Liggett says “women are all alike, play tough” Gloria says “I’m not like anyone, I’m me!” “That’s right I shouldn’t knock it should I?”He says she’s something different, she says “sure I’ve got the world by the tail” He calls her doll face.
She gets up and says goodnight but he grabs her arm. “You’ve got a great act” She digs the heel of her pump into his shoe. He grabs tighter, holding onto her wrist.It’s a battle of the wills. Neither one winces or cries out in pain.Ligg says “go ahead rub your wrist”, she says “not if it killed me” then Ligg says “I want to carry you out of here.” But Gloria slams him back “that was a lesson pal, not a treatment”
He says he won’t talk about money again, but offers her an apartment as big as she’d like, and charge accounts. “Mr Liggett put your assets away…you don’t have enough” he says to try him, but she tells him about offers she’s turned down “You couldn’t match what I’ve already turned down”, Yachts in the riviera, genuine Van Goghs in every room, paid for by men with “pocket money” annuities for life, jewelry.”
She turned them down flatly, she earned her money modeling clothes. He remarks”now I get it…you pick the man…he doesn’t pick you” “Finally, why I’m not teaching logic at Columbia I’ll never know” ” You also drop the man when you want to” and she snickers ”and without a parachute”
He’s driving her little red sports car but he purposely misses her stop.He says he’s tired of looking and listening. He says nobody treats him that way. She says “oh Weston Liggett the wealthy” he says “no Weston Liggett the man” I wasn’t cut out to be a chauffeur, an escort or a straight man for your nightclub repertoire”
Gloria says “The next time you get angry just remember you sent for me, I didn’t send for you”. She puts a cigar in his mouth and lights it for him. He blows the smoke in her face, and looks at her seductively, then he says “Like hell you didn’t send for me” ” and now what you’re going to drag me up to your cave?”
He says his apartment is close. She tells him “oh no not again.” He says it was alright last night. But she says “last night my sense of direction was slightly impaired by gin” he tells her “That’s okay I’ve got caves all the place” She rests her head on his shoulders. He says “hello” she answers softly “hello”the battle is over,they are seeing each other for the first time.
They Arrive at Happy’s Motel. Happy played by Kay Medford runs this out of the way motel.Liggett calls out for Happy. She looks into the car, and says “oh we always have room for 2 weary travelers” Happy wants to tell him a joke about 2 old maids but he says later. She says “A man’s gotta get his “rest” he’s gotta get it regular”(rest is code for sex of course)
Happy was in Vaudeville once. Looks at Gloria, they enter the motel room. A Saxophone is playing sultry music and the neon lights are flashing red and green in and out invading the darkness every time they blink. We know what’s next as they embrace in the doorway of the room and as the screen darkens they shut door number 9. End scene.
Next morning in a diner, juke box playing torchy music, “You know you’re liable to wind up psychologically famous, a case history in a medical book” He asks “You writing it?” “No, but I have to tell my psychiatrist everything that happens to me” (psychoanalysis was becoming the trend for the bored disillusioned angst of the middle class.)…”even down to the smallest deepest, darkest detail” Ligg says earnestly “That’s a set of notes I’d like to read”
He asks why she needs a psychiatrist. “I’ve never met anyone direct and uninhibited as you” she smiles, “Wild is the word” He says “First genuine wildness I’ve ever come across in a woman”
fade out
Steve and Norma always fight about Gloria so he explains “Gloria and I grew up in the same neighborhood. I’ve known her all my life, we went to the same school together. Her father died when she was very little, her mother went to work, so I sort of became her family”He gets in closer to Norma,”somebody’s got to look after her…I”m gonna do it for as long as it takes, now will you try to understand?”
she says “I understand, I understand that it’s worse than I thought, much worse, you are actually in love with her and you don’t even know it”
“Steve is she or is she not a tramp?” he says” I never liked that word” “Is she not the biggest tramp in this whole city?” Steve says “I especially don’t like to hear you use it”
Norma starts to suppose about marriage and children, Steve is plunking out indescriminate chords on the piano.She asks “do you want her hanging around us all the time, babysitting…nipping brandy out of a hand bag at 8 in the morning and telling them the story of little red riding hood and the 3 lecherous bears. Do we keep a spare room where she can sleep off her hangovers?”
Steve answers “All I know is I worry about her” “but does she worry about you?”now Steve gets up and yells in Norma’s face ” I don’t know and I don’t care, this is something I’m gonna do whether you like it or not Norma”
Continued in Part II
