Jack Arnold’s The Tattered Dress (1957) “When I spill a drink on the carpet, my butler cleans up after me.” “When you spill blood, your lawyer is expected to do the same.” “Exactly”

Jack Arnold’s The Tattered Dress (1957)

A Woman and a Tattered Dress…that exposed a town’s hidden evil!

The Tattered Dress is a story actually utilizing the Noir canon of misdirection. The film appears like a melodramatic pulp fiction court room drama, yet it’s muted focus on the object as Charleen Reston and the ensuing crime is a ruse. The film wrings out the real underlying quality of it’s psychological thrust which winds up telling a very different story in the end.

This is a soft sleepy noir court drama that takes place in a wealthy Nevada desert town and might be considered quite the departure for Jack Arnold who is beloved for his memorable contributions to some of THE best 50s sci-fi cautionary tales. The imposing gigantism in Tarantula (1955) The vast shots of sand and open expanses left me wondering if the large ghastly spider would come creeping out yet again from behind a bolder in The Tattered Dress. Arnold is actually very well known for his contributions to the western (No Name On The Bullet 1959) as well as several vintage television series such as Peter Gunn, Rawhide, Perry Mason, Mod Squad, and It Takes a Thief.

I particularly love Arnold’s transcendental masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man. (1957) And his colonial inspired science fact/fiction, study of the savage jungle reaches with The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954).

To his sympathetic alien castaways in It Came From Outer Space.(1953) But consider that Arnold is also responsible for High School Confidential, (1958) The Glass Web (1953), Girls In The Night (1953) , Man In The Shadow (1957) and The Mouse That Roared (1959), you see that he is a very versatile film maker with a vision toward social commentary.

JACK ARNOLD

The story is written by George Zuckerman and faithful Hollywood make up artist Bud Westmore is on crew for the make up. Produced by Albert Zugsmith.

The film’s music is sensational. The overall vibe that swings between pulp melodrama orchestra and burlesque jazz is invigorating to the script. The score utilizes a Blues style Burlesque/ Show Tune Jazz using bassoon, oboe , horns , clarinet, piano timpani bass and viola and a brass section.

Frank Skinner does the music and it’s supervised by Joseph Gershenson. With an uncredited musical contribution by Henry Mancini. (Charade 1963) Mancini was a genius known for countless film scores and musical direction for television. He died in 1994

It stars Jeff Chandler (Broken Arrow 1950 Merrill’s Marauders 1960 and Return To Peyton Place 1961) as the ego centric top criminal attorney James Gordon Blane, Jeanne Crain (State Fair 1945, A Letter To Three Wives 1949, Leave Her To Heaven 1945 and Pinky 1949) as his wife Diane, Jack Carson (Arsenic and Old Lace 1944  Mildred Pierce 1945 & Cat On A Hot Tin Roof 1958) as Sheriff Nick Hoak, Elaine Stewart as Charleen Reston, Phillip Reed as Michael Reston, Gail Russell  (Night Has A Thousand Eyes 1948 and Angel and The Badman 1947) as Carol Morrow, Edward Platt (the Chief on Get Smart) as Journalist Ralph Adams, George Tobias as Billy Giles, Roger Corman regular Paul Birch as Prosecutor Frank Mitchell, and the familiar, omni present television and film character actor Edward Andrews as Lester Rawlings a seedy, pompous defense attorney.

Jeff Chandler is an interesting actor for me. I don’t particularly like the essence of his acting. He’s stone like, in fact his features are rather chiseled in a way that makes his looks unreal, more like a marble statue spouting lines. Yet there’s something in his face that is equally compelling at times. It’s hard for me to divine it. Having done plenty of war and western films, I’m not as familiar with his work such as Cochise in Broken Arrow 1950 or Away All Boats 1956. I’d like to acquaint myself with his work more as I don’t want to stop on The Tattered Dress and assume Chandler doesn’t possess a range to his acting. It might be a stylistic thing, chemistry is very important, and either the role of Blane turned me off, or this actor just isn’t my cup of tea. I’ll have to study him a little closer from now on. The one fact that popped up in doing this post is that he was suspected of being a cross-dresser.

I think it’s fascinating to take an actor who has worked along side of American masculine icons such as John Wayne the epitome of a certain brand of masculinity and have him secretly playing with the gender continuum. I’m not making a value judgement here, just to be clear. Nor am I confusing being a cross dresser with being gay. There are diverging differentiations between sexual orientation, gender identity and sexuality and projected self image. None of which is an issue with me.

I do how ever enjoy finding out when these male role models of iconic American manhood, secretly like to walk around in  lacy bodices and cover their very male lips and cheeks with fuck me red goo whilst balancing on heels that I wouldn’t even punish myself with on a dare. Then again, I like to wear metal tipped men’s boots and I myself prefer girls most of the time, so there it is. But I’m not pretending to be June Cleaver in a dozen gender appropriate films. Without dwelling on it, here is the wiki link that mentions Chandlers shall I say hidden habit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Chandler_%28actor%29  The wiki bio refers to Esther Williams dating Jeff Chandler then dumping him after she discovers that he is a cross dresser.

Back to the The Tattered Dress!

CHANDLER AND STEWART OFF TO MAKE ILLICIT HAY IN CHARLEEN’S CONVERTIBLE

In short the story starts after a night out where the wealthy wife Charleen Reston comes home to her smarmy husband Michael Reston, with her dress ripped, showing her half naked body. In a controlled bit of rage, he grabs a gun and his wife roughly by the arm and heads out into town, where he proceeds to gun down the popular young man his wife was sleeping with, while he is out walking in the street. Reston Shoots him in the back as he starts to run away. Once lying dead on the street, the couple callously walk over to the lifeless body as if merely to look at a cigarette butt they’ve discarded out their car window. Looking down at the body as if it is nothing more than useless garbage.

A New York Lawyer is chosen to come to a quiet Nevada desert town of Desert View, to defend the wealthy husband for killing this young man who supposedly assaulted his provocatively alluring and cheating wife who is lensed as ‘a bad girl.’

The town is run by an affable man on the surface, yet a very head strong sheriff with a chip on his shoulder, and once Lawyer Blane manages to get a not guilty verdict for rich Mr Reston, the sheriff vindictive nature, concocts a plan to set up Blane on phoney extortion charges out of revenge for not only defending the wealthy playboy who killed his friend, young Larry Bell, but also the humiliation he endures while on the witness stand at the hands of this pompous lawyer from New York. From the beginning Blane is met by a distinctly hostile townsfolk, who not only mistrust him, but despise the Restons and everything they represent. The environment of vast desert wasteland sets the stage for a modern day non conformist flavor, a throw back to the old fashioned western, and the ensuing confrontation between 2 dueling forces.

Jack Arnold’s Existential Sci-Fi Masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957

Jack Arnold’s incredible tale of the eternally evolving man starring Grant Williams.

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 )

Saturday Morning is for Very Big Bugs!!!!!!

The 50s were invaded by several giant creepy crawly things!

JACK ARNOLD’S MASTERPIECE OF THE 50S ATOMIC AGE SCARE FILMS

BURT I GORDON’S CAUTIONARY TALE OF THE 50S CUTE GRASSHOPPERS INVADE

ONE OF THE GREATEST CLASSIC 50S ATOMIC SCARE FILMS OF ALL TIME!

The Films of Jack Arnold: Visions of Giant bugs, sympathetic monsters and little men danced in his head.

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.

MonsterGirl’s: Saturday Morning’s Some Men Who Do Science-posters

It’s Saturday morning so here’s some men who do science posters!

Next Saturday perhaps we’ll see inside their laboratories….!