When I first started blogging on The Last Drive In, I chose one of my most beloved memories, a thing of nostalgia for me, and what I consider to be one of the greatest television programs that contained not only the classic crime mystery drama, but Gothic horrors based on some of the most prolific writers of these genres back then, such as Cornell Woolrich , Robert Bloch and August Derleth.
I recently covered episodes like The Hungry Glass, The Hollow Watcher, The Grim Reaper, The Cheaters, The Incredible Doktor Markesan and Pigeons From Hell.
This time I will be blogging about a few more interesting tales such as The Ordeal of Dr Cordell starring Robert Vaughn. The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk starring Jo Van Fleet and John Carradine, The Premature Burial starring Sidney Blackmer (the piercing Roman Casstavette in Rosemary’s Baby) and Boris himself as Dr. Thorne. And finally Rose’s Last Summerstarring Mary Astor since I’m on a Mary Astor kick what with working on my Aldrich series and Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte post that’s giving me an infarction, it’s so detailed, yet I don’t know how to write any other way.
I’ll be periodically choosing other great episodes from the series,but these were the ones I thought would be really interesting to cover right now.
Also the contributions by directors like John Brahm, Ida Lupino , Herschel Daugherty, Arthur Hiller and Paul Henreid who had a unique visual perspective that created creepy landscapes and lighting that would fit the noir canon very well.Also very notable for me as a musician are the musical scores by Mort Stevens, Pete Rugolo and Jerry Goldsmith that were nothing short of stunning, evocative melodies that tore at your soul and fit the mood of each episode,adding another vivid dimension to the atmospherics.
I have written earlier about some of my favorite episodes from Boris Karloff’s anthology series Thriller, which was an unusual collection of mixed genres. The series seems to be a very popular one here at The Drive In, so I’ve decided to write about a few more that have stayed with me over time, not that I didn’t absolutely love every single episode, all 67 of them. I only wish there had been more, or that someone would discover lost episodes that were never released. I have virtually watched each episode hundreds of times, not only catching little details for the first time with each reviewing, but never do I grow tired of them. That is the sign of something timeless, and masterful. And the more time goes by, I realize even further how preeminent this body of work truly is.
I can only imagine how excited fans like me were when they finally released the box set.I cried, I am not even kidding you. I, like many other devotees, waited a very long time for them to release this masterpiece on DVD. I used to have to wait up until 3am back in the day so that I could set my VCR to record when the Sci-Fi Channel had the good sense to run the episodes. Although I’d always get hocked off that the commercials were ads with nude girls telling me to “pick up the phone” while they were sliding up and down a pole. I know that boys and men love sci-fi and horror, but news flash! girls and women actually can have an avid appreciation for all things scary, thrilling and wondrous like the marvels of science, just as much. We can have a visceral passion for action and frightmares just like anyone else. So having to endure the “babes” of late night Sci-Fi Channel commercial land was irksome. Now I can watch Boris with some undisturbed dignity and I don’t have to be told to “pick up the phone” by some bimbo jutting her tongue over her shiny lip gloss, as if that were sexy to me. I’d rather watch Marisa Mell or Barbara Steele sitting under a tree reading a book. But again I digress as by now you know I am apt to do. Forgive MonsterGirl her little occasional rants.
So anyway, not only was there unmistakable atmosphere to each of Thriller’s episodes, but the stories themselves were lensed in a unique way that was very ahead of it’s time. The actors brought a serious attitude to their characters and the plot development, and didn’t treat them as merely short pulp stories as fodder for the tv masses. This was an intelligent show, and the presence of Boris Karloff only added a charming sage fabulist narration that was like being tucked in by your remarkable grandfather who loved to tell a good spooky tale to you right before bedtime. I’ve said this plenty, I wish Boris Karloff had been my grandfather.
“It’s funny… the world is so different in the daylight. In the dark, your fantasies get so out of hand. But in the daylight, everything falls back into place again.”
“Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can’t go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside” -Suzanna Kaysen from Girl Interrupted (1993)
“But you “are” Blanche, you “are” in that chair!”~ these are the words I often utter to myself or amongst friends, merely cause it tickles me.
I could question whether or not Aldrich made these films as a vehicle in which to translate the lives of the psychologically intricate, often tragic women which he viewed through a sympathetic lens, or perhaps some of his female-driven films are an exercise in misogyny.
So was he a misogynist? Perhaps some might find the portrayal of his female characters unattractive, or maybe he didn’t differentiate between his male and female roles. He was definitely more focused on both genders’ struggles. These outliers of society couldn’t simply fit in, so if the film’s driving character happened to be a woman then it would stand to reason she would also be an outcast or damaged in some way. If he did make a distinction as to gender, he was mostly preoccupied with the character’s system of dealing with the obstacles they faced in their lives. It does appear that his “women” usually are the solitary focus, while his “men” are framed as groups of men trapped by precarious situations.
Robert Aldrich is still one of my all-time favorite directors.
Aldrich always brings us a story that is cynical and gritty with very flawed characters who are at the core ambiguous as either the protagonist or the antagonist. Aldrich studied economics in college, then dropped out and landed a very low-paying job at first as a clerk with RKO Radio Pictures Studio in 1941.
He studied with such great directors as Jean Renoir and it was his training in the trenches that made him the auteur he is, delving inside the human psyche and questioning what is morality. Aldrich went on to become the assistant director, scriptwriter, and associate producer, to various filmmakers who were later on targeted by the blacklist.
Aldrich has a flare for the dramatic, he likes to break molds and cross over boundaries. He also has a streak of anti-authoritarianism running through the veins of his films. There aren’t just traces of his ambivalence toward the Hollywood machine in his film philosophy, he also conflates the ugly truths beneath the so-called American Dream and the “real” people who inhabit that world.
Aldrich’s film really became the turning point in pictures that synthesizes the golden age of Hollywood in theory – that imposes a tragic, painful disjunction for actresses who age out of their prime function as desirable movie stars. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? gave rise to an entire movement on screen that featured Hollywood’s most essential women paraded out either as emblems of archaic desire or in the case of Baby Jane Hudson, a pageantry of the grotesque. Bravo to Bette Davis for taking on the myth and using dark satire to flip it on its head.
At the start of Baby Jane, the screen is pitch black, we can hear a child sobbing. The 1st prologue begins in 1917. The screen still blacked out, we hear a man’s voice say “Don’t you want to see it again, little girl?” This is setting up an eerily invasive narrative as we do not know yet if it is something sinister making the child cry. The male voice adds “It shouldn’t frighten you” then a quick jump cut and we are able to see a Jack in the Box toy popping up, causing terror in the child. Now we actually see the little girl staring at the toy with tear-soaked cheeks as she gasps for air. The toy has disturbed her with its quick movements and odd expression. There is a shot of its peculiar face which has an uncanny shedding of tears down its tin cheeks. The use of children’s toys in horror films has often been used as a mechanism to evoke fear or otherworldly dread in us as if they might embody some incarnate evil. Here is a great link to Horror Film History’s website.
Next, we hear vaudeville music and see Baby Jane Hudson’s name up in lights on the marquee of the theater. The theater is sold out, Jane is tap dancing in the spotlight, to Stephen Foster’s “Swanee River” in front of a packed house. Her father is waiting off-stage with Blanche and their mother. He is rallying her with encouragement from the wings while the wife looks solemnly at him, simultaneously young Blanche is looking at him with resentment. Both figures are feeling left out. Young Blanche is played by Julie Allred who was marvelous as little Priscilla in the Boris Karloff Thriller episode Mr.George.
Mr Ray Hudson played by Dave Willock comes out to a cheering audience holding a banjo and tells the crowd okay folks one final request. A little freckle-faced boy stands up and requests “I’ve Written A Letter To Daddy” And so the lights dim and father sits at the piano to accompany his little girl on this very popular tune. The voice has such a warbling vibrato that it makes little Jane sound bizarre and incongruous (no offense to the singer Debbie Burton) as a child’s voice. She sings with such a sugary exaggeration. Jane’s got the affected style of performer down to all the overreaching body gestures indicative of a ham. Holding the letter to her heart, kissing it, looking upward toward the ceiling sky. “And wish you were here with us to love” As she sings this line she wraps her arms around herself clinging as if the embrace is for a lover but meant for her father.
Mr Hudson, Jane’s daddy comes out from behind the piano and joins his daughter in a dance, which makes them appear as if a romantic couple. From the side of the stage, we see the expressions on Mrs. Hudson’s face and young Blanche, there is obviously no room in the father and Jane’s relationship for either sister Blanche or the mother.
After the performance a little boy runs on stage and hands Jane a replica Baby Jane doll of her very own. Jane’s daddy is a showman all the way, “folk’s have you ever seen such a lovely doll” (he in fact has objectified his daughter, as well as exploited her for profit “a genuine Baby Jane” doll. “And kids remember you can tell your moms that each and every one of these genuine beautiful great big dolls is an exact replica of your own Baby Jane Hudson.” Continue reading “Grande Dames/ Guignol Cinema: Robert Aldrich’s Hag Cinema “But you *are* Blanche, you *are in that chair” Part I”→
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 Mannand 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 50s and 60s.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 as a Harold Robbinsnovel.
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 is Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor won an academy award for her role as Gloria Wandrous and Laurence Harvey play Weston Liggett(without his groovy sideburns that he sported in the early 70s. Harvey whose 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 the 60s era style and not the Depression era 30s.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 whose trajectory was formed at age 13 when a man her mother was engaged to marry raped 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 childhood 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 O’Hara’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 at the end, whereas 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, therefore, 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 byBetty Fieldwho adds some comic relief to the tension at times. She’s a constant in Annie’s troubled life, worrying about her daughter and her reputation.
Gloria Wandrous high priced call girl just dial BUtterfield 8 and 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, and 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, holding 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, and 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 to 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 a 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 friend’s 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 at 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 didn’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, as very social. She says and “Very Yale” “what’s with you 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 backward 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 and 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 girlfriend’s 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 women. “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 to him is a colleague Bing who asks “Problems Ligg?” he tells him “Do you know 3 of the most overrated 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 an 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, and Gloria tells her that she picked it up at the designer’s last week. Mrs Thurber gives a dig by saying” It must be hard changing dresses in one of those sports 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 her 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”, and 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, and 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.
The next morning in a diner, the jukebox 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, and 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 indiscriminate chords on the piano. She asks “Do you want her hanging around us all the time, babysitting…nipping brandy out of a handbag 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”
The Naked Kiss (1965) Part III Meaning it bares no emotion. It’s empty of real substance. It has the taste of perversion to it.
SPOILER ALERT!!!! I DO THE SYNOPSIS RIGHT TO THE END OF THE FILM…
Working at the hospital while Kelly and one of the nurses are bathing the children Kelly notices that she is troubled and asks “Do you want to talk about it? Have you been to a doctor?”She has the intuition that the young girl is pregnant. Kelly instead of bringing the ‘plague’ to Grantville has brought insight and compassion to the women who are troubled in this provincial prison. In this way, the film can be viewed as feminist. She brings her strength and independence.
Crossfade, Kelly, and Grant are slow dancing at Grant’s house. Kelly tells him that she wants to talk about something, something she needs to get off her mind. “I’m afraid our dance is over.”Asks him to sit down and listen to the words. “When I came to this town, the first day I came… I was a prostitute. My first customer was my last one, next morning I quit. Now I’m in love with a man who’s the dream of every woman.” Grant is seated looking puzzled Kelly continues “Every woman who has the right to dream…but the man has got to stop seeing me before the volcano erupts.”
Grant looks up at her and grabs her hand. Pulls her close to him.“I love you Kelly.. .will you marry me?” She says “I’ve got to think it out.. .(now cheek to cheek) Oh I’ve got to think it out.”
Kelly’s in her room drinking from the blown Venetian glass from Venice that Grant gave her. She’s contemplating the marriage proposal. We hear a voice over, it’s Grant’s monologue “I wasn’t cut out to be a monk and you’re not the type to turn nun… but together we’ll prove our whole existence for each other, the only woman I want for my wife.”
Voice over by Grant “I wasn’t cut out to be a monk, and you’re not the type to turn nun. But together we’ll prove our whole existence for each other. You’re the only woman I want for my wife… If they condemn you for your past, I don’t want them for my friends. Kelly darling no one can forbid you your tomorrow. And I’m all your tomorrows.Â
Kelly gets up from the bed, sighs and walks over to the tailor’s dummy, and asks “Charlie, what should I do?” Again we hear Grant’s voice “If they condemn you for your past, I don’t want them as my friends, Kelly darling…no one could forbid you tomorrow, and I’m all your tomorrows, all of them.” Kelly raises her glass and answers to Charlie “That’s right!…why should Grant want to marry a woman like me?.. .confidentially Charley, (her arm around the fake soldier now) we girls are always chasing dreams… why shouldn’t I have a right to catch mine?”
Now Kelly has an internal monologue “Many women had a past like mine, and they made out didn’t they?” She answers aloud asking the question “Or did they?… ah, of course, they did.. .and you know why because there was always the Rock of Gibraltar to give them strength” She raises the blown glass to Charlie in a toast “That’s what Grant is…The Rock…The Rock of Gibraltar.”
So Kelly needs a man to legitimize her self-worth, otherwise, she is still considered machinery. “Oh Charlie”now we hear Grant’s voice again “We’d be living an endless honeymoon” She goes back over to Charlie and hugs him “Oh Charlie, the dread of every woman in my business…is ending up alone…I know that world.”
She looks at the glass again and says “And I know his world( chuckles ironically) and that makes me a woman of 2 worlds… and that’s not good, or is it?” She looks at Charlie’s hat. She’s got her arm around his stuffed shoulders. “With him, I’m complete, a whole woman”the voiceover by Grant breaks in again “I’ll never strike at your past, not even with a flower” Kelly hugs Charlie closer, “Oh Charlie, Charlie Charlie, Charlie…what should I do?…”
Fade to Black.
in this look on Grant’s face, we sense something cold and unsavory deep-rooted in his soul. A removed reptilian hypothermic smile. It is not his fine breeding, it is something dark and unwholesome he keeps bubbling below the surface of his refinement.
At Grant’s house, the doorbell rings, and Kelly comes bursting in “Oh it’s a wonderful day Barney!… it’s a beautiful day!” Barney tells her that Grant is still asleep. She ignores him and yells “It’s a glorious day!” She goes to the stereo and puts on Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and conducts. Barney still in his robe goes upstairs to get Grant. Kelly is conducting the music, she spins the large globe as if she’ll be able to see the world now.
Grant comes down in his silk pajamas, yawning and putting his robe on, he watches as she pretends to conduct the music. She runs to him and grabs his hands “I love you…it’s a deal” He looks oddly at her, pleased but more like he’s just sealed a business deal, not the reaction from a man truly in love. As they discover wedding plans he wants to send her to Paris to buy the most expensive wedding gown. Kelly has always paid for every stitch of clothing on her back. That tells you how independent she has been while working as a prostitute. Not taking any more than for her services to get by. Kelly has throughout shown to be a woman of integrity, thus the challenge in the narrative is to balance the conflict of judging her as a whore with morals.
Dusty gets help from Kelly. Who gives her $1,000 and tells her whether the guy marries her or not she is to keep the baby. Dusty tells her, “Boy or girl I’ll name it Kelly.”
Kip’s gaze, the sadness shared with a child, as he watches Dusty crying. Sympathetic.
Now nurses and orderlies are bringing in the children one by one. And a record begins to spin. Kip the little boy wearing the First Mate pirate hat begins to sing this song which has an eerily tragic poignancy.
“Mommy dear, tell me please, is the world really round” Another little boy takes it from there, “Tell me where, is the bluebird of happiness found” Now a little girl sings “Tell me why is the sky up above so blue” now they all sing in unison “and when you were a child, did your mommy tell you?”
All of the children standing like wounded soldiers with their hats and crutches singing this sad little song together. The song creates an element of melancholy, and pathos in the film. It’s the children asking the question where is happiness?
The children are a diverse group of races, the spirit of these children fuels the film’s angst and alienation, for they are like castaways in a world that is perfect, while they are broken and striving to be whole.
“What becomes of the sun when it falls in the sea” “And who lights it again, as bright as can be” Together they sing again “Tell me why can’t I fly without wings through the sky” Back to Kip who sadly sings “tell me why mommy dear…are there tears in your eyes?”
Now Kelly joins in as an answer to the song’s questions singing “Little one, little one, yes the world’s really round, and the bluebird you search for is surely is found… and the sky up above is so blue and clear (the staff including Mac is watching Kelly serenade the children they are so sullen, yet proud) so that you’d see the bluebird if it should come near… and the sun doesn’t fall in the sea out of sight, all it does is make way for the moon’s pretty light… and if children could fly there’d be no need for birds… and I cry little ones cause I’m touched by your words.”
The children surrounding Kelly sing the song together, she has left a mark on them, she has found a different way to have worth, and she sees herself through these child’s eyes. They are ultimately truly innocent, yet they are the ones who don’t objectify Kelly.
“Tell me please Mommy dear is it true the world’s round, I will search, round the world til the bluebird is found” Then Kelly sings “Little one there’s no need to wander too far, for what you really seek is right here where you are.”
Griff and Grant are walking out of a building. Grant has asked Griff to be the best man at the wedding but Griff can’t fake how miserable he is. Grant tells him to get it off his chest. Bunny comes running over to Grant with her dolly and he picks her up and spins her around. Griff is still visibly upset, holding his cigarette and frowning. Bunny congratulates Uncle Grant on his wedding, and he kisses her cheek, she beams a smile half filled with baby teeth.
Now in the classroom back at the hospital, the children are getting a spelling lesson. Kelly is fixing Kip’s shoelace. Griff knocks on the window glass to get Kelly’s attention. Through the glass panel in the door, we see them talking seriously again a frame within a frame, symbolizing the entrapment of both characters who are stuck by their roles. They move into an empty room so they can continue to talk.
The scene opens with Griff sitting at the bar in Candy Ala Cart’s girlie establishment with “bonbon” girls dressed sort of like hat-check Playboy bunnies, wearing fuzzy hearts on their heads instead of rabbit ears. The girl behind the bar says “Hello Griff” and he says “Hello Marshmallow”Swing music is playing on the jukebox. “Say Griff I can earn more from the refined types than the ones who work in this rat hole…I’ll put Grantville on the map” Griff turns to her “You will, you really think you can?” he says sarcastically, which goes above Marshmallow’s head. “well sure, how can I lose with John ‘Law’ on my team.” another scantly clad girl comes over to Griff and touches his face,
Griff condemns prostitution in his town, but he frequents Candy’s club as a customer, as well as procuring girls right off the bus for Candy’s stable. That would make him pimp by proxy right?
There is a brazen double standard being perpetrated here. Women were objectified, then women were reviled. Even the use of nicknames for the call girls in Candy’s stable is demeaning and denigrating. Hat Rack, for instance, something you’d hang an item on. It dehumanizes these women. Candy even refers to Hat Rack clashing with her “upholstery.”Later on, Kelly is called “new stuff”
The other girl asks “Are you sure you don’t want a bonbon Griff?” just then an older woman Candy dressed in a long sequined gown walks over. “Get back to the stable,” she says in a sandy voice that’s been abraded by years of smoking, reaches over and grabs Griff’s face and kisses his cheek. Marshmallow, tells Candy “he’s not buying your chocolates, Candy.”
Candy played salty by Virginia Greysnaps back “Go earn your money, check the stock.” “Who you looking for Griff?” “Kelly,” she asks “Kelly?…no Kelly here, do I know him?”“Well, I sent her here.”Candy looks slightly perturbed, “another female?” “A pro and she’s got class.” “Well, we could use a little class in this shop.”
“Just get a look at my bonbons, they’re all a broken-down flock of bimbos, all except Hat Rack.” Griff seems surprised, “Hat Rack?” “the name suits her alright, there ain’t a customer here that doesn’t want to hang his fedora on her.” Candy calls over to the tall girl. “Hey Hat Rack, come over here.” “Did I do something wrong?” asking in an ultra-feminine tone. The beautiful brunette realizes that it’s Griff at the bar, “Oh Griff! How are you, Griff?” She puts on an even more seductively whispery voice, “So glad to see you again.” He looks confused “Do we know each other?” “We met in a park in Grantville, near the fountain…on a Thursday?” Pouting she adds “Don’t you remember me?” Then a smile breaks free.
“Oh sure you came in by bus… (Sound Familiar?) sure I remember.” “It was very kind of you to recommend me to Candy… I just love selling bonbons.” Griff says “You were a platinum blond” as he puts his hands on her tray, Candy pulls him away and says “Well she was, but the color clashed with my upholstery, I made her go back to her own natural peasant color.”
Then Candy points and tells Hat Rack “The customer in the booth has a sweet tooth.”“Are you going to stick around for a while Griff?” Candy interjects strongly “The customer!” Hat Rack bends over and kisses Griff on the cheek, walks away, and says “Bonbon sir?” Candy says “Boy you sure pick ’em Griff.” Pleased with himself he says “I sure can” Candy asks “Then why did that hangdog look when you found out that this Kelly didn’t show?” He stays silent, and she says “How about a snort in the office?” He looks at her with a gaze that means something else, and tells her “I’m not thirsty.”
We know from before that when Griff uses the expression thirsty it is what he uses to mean “wanting sex” He used the same term with Kelly in the beginning. Candy gestures with her hand as if to say, she’s disappointed but whatever. Apparently Griff in the past has sampled some of Candy as well.
Back at Miss Josephine’s “Paris…have you been to those places?” looking at beautiful garments in her suitcase Kelly says no, but the old woman says “But these are originals…ultra ultra expensive.”The trunk with the K on the side, is almost like Kelly’s own scarlet A. After all, she is a marked woman, like Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.
“What about that factory outside of town?” “Oh, I’m afraid there’s no job opening at Grant Mill.” “Grant” Kelly says “Grant this, Grant that.” Her hair pulled up in a lovely classic bun, and looking through her wardrobe “he seems to own everything around here.” “His great great grandfather founded this town.” “JL Grant is our most famous citizen.”
Here is the developing back story of the founded patriarchy in Grantville. The old woman continues, “Everybody calls him Grant”Kelly says “JL Grant, yes I’ve read about him, international playboy, chateau in Normandy, Villa along the Riviera, private Yacht in Monte Carlo, societies most eligible bachelor.”Josephine comes back “he’s a hard worker Miss Kelly… he’s no playboy, his very name is a synonym for charity… he’s got the biggest heart in the world. Why he built our hospital… he built the Orthopedic Medical Center and sponsors it all by himself. And it’s open to all handicapped children, with no racial or religious barriers.” Miss Josephine equates Grant’s kindness with his fame and outward appearance, and reasons he’s beneficent. Kelly starts to contemplate what the old woman is saying. She asks “Handicapped children?” Josephine says “It’s a haven of hope for those angels, so little, so helpless and so pitifully crippled.”
Cross fade from Kelly’s face to a single chiaroscuro shot of a nurse’s shadow, the central focal point is now on an empty wheelchair. Two nurses come into focus, the formidable Patsy Kelly (Rosemary’s Baby) as Nurse Mac, says in that broiled steak voice of hers “One more operation and that baby will have straight feet.”
The Naked Kiss (1964) Directed by Samuel Fuller Shown (left of center): Constance Towers
They continue to walk and talk about the various children in the hospital, then we see an office with a nurse seated at a desk. Griff is standing.“That Kelly is some woman Griff” Nurse Mac comes into the room.“One day she walked in here out of nowhere and “Mac chimes in “I’ll fill in lover boy with all the facts June.” Griff turns to face her. He says “Hello Mac, Dusty, where is this new nurse’s aide I’ve been hearing about?” Mac says “You Too?!”
Mac takes Griff for a walk down the corridor. Tells him that “she came out of the clouds one night, without a single reference” There are several allusions to angels in this film. Is Kelly a Whore or a Madonna? How do we perceive her character, how does she perceive herself? How do the townspeople distinguish her? Is she a whore because she is beautiful? or is she an angel because she is beautiful. The messages are mixed.
Nurse Mac tells him that she hired Kelly on the spot. He thought orthopedics called for specialized training. He’s obviously upset that she didn’t take the job at Candy’s. Mac tells him that “it does, some people are born to write books, symphonies, paint pictures, build bridges, but (Mac holds up her hand to the sky), she was born to handle children with crutches and babies in braces.” He looks visibly skeptical “Sounds like one of those sweet Florence Nightingales.”
Griff is clearly fixed on objectifying Kelly as a fallen, marked woman with no potential to be a woman of quality. There is a patriarchal hypocrisy in this town, where the most influential man is actually a despicable pedophile and has most of the power. Kelly who is truly virtuous and compassionate is labeled a pariah even though the men who judge her are the very people who simultaneously use her, without taking responsibility for their own participation.
“Ha, Kelly she’s tough, runs her ward like a pirate ship… she makes Captain Bly look like a sissy.”Now we see framed in the scene from the knees down, the boy Kip is slowly walking with crutches along the floor. On-screen we study the child walking for several seconds, and then we see Kelly’s legs. Full screenshot now, the boy stands stiff in front of Kelly dressed in a nurses aide uniform. Kip drops to the ground. Kelly asks to see him touch his toes. Griff and Mac are watching them from the doorway. Kip is trying to touch his toes. He says “They’re too far away.”He takes a deep sigh and tries again and does it! Kelly seems so relieved. Kip looks at her smiling with pride. Griff is hiding behind the door watching all this in secret.
Crossfade Kelly is sitting at a table with a toy sailing ship. We hear Griff speaking off-screen “That’s a new low, using crippled kids to front your trade” Kelly insists “I quit my trade” He grabs her arm,” You’ll have a problem breaking in those little girls to walk the streets on crutches” Kelly looks disgusted with this accusation and slaps Griff in the face. “I washed my face clean the morning I woke up in your bedroom.”
He says to her contemptuously “You got morals in my room?” She shakes her head reviling him “You had nothing to do with it…Nothing!…it was your mirror.” Griff says “You must have taken a long look.”She asserts “It was the longest look of my life…I saw a broken down piece of machinery.” Here Kelly herself objectifies her body as something that other people utilize. She continues “Nothing but the buck, the bed, and the bottle for the rest of my life…that’s what I saw!”
He turns away, “A hooker moving in with the town virgin, what an act.” He is so indignant “How much did you score honey?…how much did you tap at the hospital?” his hands in his pockets looking down at her like trash. “How much Angel Foam did you peddle?” Kelly’s furious “Oh you ask, you ask the doctors if I made a play for any one of them, ask them!… You were the only buyer I had in this town and my last one.”
“Are you coming with me or I am going to talk to Mac myself.” She grabs his arm and pleads “Look Griff, I’m trying your side of the fence, is there a law against it, is there anything wrong with it?” All Griff says is “Your face might fool a lot of these people, but not your body.”
Griff slams her with “Your body’s your only passport.” Kelly says “You’re right” instead of defending herself. She says “I can renew a passport, but I can’t renew my body…or my face” She shakes her head, tears in her eyes,” Or my health, oh look Griff I’m trying to change, please help me” she beseeches him. “Give me a break.”
Fade To Black
Kelly is telling the children the story of the White Swan Queen who wishes to be transformed into a woman. The film is predicated on the notion of transformation/redemption.
Kelly is surrounded by children dressed up in costumes. She’s telling them a story of the White Swan, a story about wishing to be turned into something else. This is what lies at the core of and is the veritable crux of The Naked Kiss.
Kip, is fantasizing about doing cartwheels outside with Kelly. He is shouting “I have legs, I have legs.” We see a daydream sequence, every little girl and boy running as if they had no handicap. The idea of handicap is a metaphor for Kelly’s past. The film equates her being a prostitute with having an affliction, an illness, or an abnormality. That question is put to us again, towards the end of the film.
Fade To Black
Now at Grant’s house. This is a very short scene introducing us to Grant. Griff is there, Grant has just come back from traveling. His servant Barney has been given a gift. It’s a skull, used as a drinking cup from some ancient city. A rather bizarre item to give his servant. Barney seems uncomfortable with it as well. Grant asks if everything is set up for the party tonight, Griff and Grant go to make themselves a drink, and we Fade To Black
Fade in with a long shot. Kelly’s in a beautiful long black gown at the hospital. The camera views her from a distance, rows of wheelchairs lined along the walls. Kelly is framed in darkness with a single band of light along the floor, like a runway. She pushes a wheelchair up against the wall. Then she walks over to an infant sucking on a bottle. She strokes the baby’s hair so gently, looking upon her with a maternal gaze, then gently touches her little foot in a cast, in traction. The baby looks up at her. We keep seeing glimpses of mothering in Kelly.
Cross Fade is now at Grant’s party. Grant is quoting something in Italian, to a room filled with the elite socialites of the town, he says “This means, All things by gentleness may be made smooth”
Nurse Mac and Kelly arrive, and then Grant focuses his gaze on Kelly, he sees something in her. Their eyes meet. We hear romantic strings, something is stirring. Griff looks up, the camera closes in on Kelly’s face, then Griff’s. The sensual motif of horns is there to remind us who Kelly really is. Kelly looks stopped in her tracks by Griff’s expression.
But we switch back to Grant and Kelly exchanging pleasant looks with each other. The romantic strings play once again. Mac hugs Grant and introduces Kelly to him by saying, she wants him to meet the lady that’s making history with orthopedics. He tells her everybody calls him Grant. Then Griff pipes in “And everybody calls her Kelly”obviously annoyed that she is at the party. Griff spells it “K E double L Y” A dig about their sexual interlude.
Griff still looks so bottled up with anger. Grant hands Kelly a package and tells her it’s something she might like from Venice. It’s blown glass. He tells her it’s Venetian 17th century.” “From Venice?” Kelly is very impressed by his breeding, and worldliness. This is something that has been brewing in her all along. The desire for a life with finer things. Grant has an almost childlike exuberance. He is not an archetypal masculine/male figure at all. Not a naivete, yet an icy calculating kind of assumed innocence.
Cross Fade, we see a reel-to-reel analog tape machine ( I get excited I can’t help it, I’m a musician) the music on the tape is playing once again Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata the camera pans to a bust of Beethoven, and then we see Grant and Kelly lying back on a leopard print sofa, taking in the beauty of Beethoven’s piece. eyes closed. Grant is waxing poetic about the moonlight and Beethoven’s hands playing the sonata. “he carved that sonata out of moonlight” Grant is wearing a silk ascot. There is something so plasticine about his appearance.
Kelly asks “Was he in love when he wrote it?” “Yes” “Did he marry her?”“No, he never found the wife he was looking for” “How do you know he was looking for a wife?” “What man isn’t…a sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle” Kelly turns and faces Grant “Did Goethe write that?” “Baudelaires (Flowers of Evil)” “Beethoven and Goethe were good friends”
Kelly sits up, Grant smiling and says “Griff doesn’t go for Beethoven” Kelly spurts out “Griff is tone deaf” Grant looks over at her “How did you know?” “Well, I…I watched his face when we were singing the other night” Grant looks away from her, and smiles again “You sang very well” she says “I was happy” Grant spouts some more verse, “Happiness was born a twin” Kelly turns to him, leaning on her arm, “Lord Byron”Grant looks over to her as if surprised and she says “my favorite poet.” Grant has been trying to impress Kelly with his knowledge of literature, art, and music.
He sits up “Kelly you baffle me, intellect is seldom a feature of physical beauty” Grant is surprised Kelly is “a woman”, a “beautiful woman” who possesses an intellect and understanding of culture.
Grant continues “And that makes you a remarkable woman…the most interesting contradiction I’ve met in years, with a love of poetry, rare in this age of missiles…”
“Would you like to visit where Byron wrote many of his famous sonnets?” “Venice?” “I’m going to take you there right now. He shows her a movie projector with a travel reel from Venice and men in gondolas and fishing boats. They sit and watch the movies which Grant took from a gondola. He turns to her and says don’t you hear the man in the gondola singing? He tells her “If you pretend hard enough and if you listen hard enough, you can hear his fine Italian voice.”
Pretend is an active verb for the characters in The Naked Kiss, no one is what they seem to be. It comes down to image, embodiment, perception, class, and gender.
She has been taken under Grant’s childlike spell. She smiles and we see her as she imagines the tenor voice singing Santa Lucia. Her desire to inhabit a world with culture and refinement blinds her to Grant’s true identity. She escapes into a daydream where a man in a gondola is rowing she and Grant are lying on silken pillows. Flower petals are falling on her, as they flow through the canals of Venice, and Grant is making love to her.
For Kelly, Grant is symbolic of worthiness, success, and virtue. This is perpetuated by the town which is rooted in these beliefs. Grant is powerful and well-bred, so he must be the epitome of integrity and virtue. She wakes from the dream her hands on Grant’s shoulders, we see now that they are kissing on the couch.
For a brief moment of clarity, she pushes him slightly away, something in her gut reveals his true nature. She has the most curious stare on her face, she senses a tinge of the unnatural. Her hands and fingers splayed like claws on either side of his face. He looks confused. She studies his face. There is a prolonged pause while we hear the travel reel clicking in the background. She’s breathing uncomfortably, and Grant is looking more concerned. His gaze turns almost dark.
Ultimately she dismisses her intuition and gives way. A smile comes over her face, and then Grant’s darkness begins to clear up. Her right hand holding his head now. He goes back in for an embrace, and the camera stops on Kelly’s long legs, her shoes have come off, set against the leopard skin fabric of the couch. We’re left with the movie projector’s blaring lights in our eyes as it spins off its reel. We are blinded and so now unfortunately is Kelly.
Back at the hospital, the children are singing Old MacDonald. Kelly and the nurse Buff played by Marie Devereux are bathing 2 of the kids. Buff tells Kelly that the job is for the birds.“I’m not like you Kelly, I don’t got steel in my veins…I get sick just looking at these poor little babies, let alone handling them…I’m gonna quit, I’m gonna quit this job” she starts to cry, “it’s gonna hurt Griff, it’s gonna hurt Griff bad” Kelly asks “why Griff?” “he’s been like a father to me, ever since mine was killed in Korea…Griff got me this job, and he’s so damn proud of me.”
All the women in this town, need approval from these men, in particular Grant and Griff, as paternal and alpha male figures that Grantville sets up. Kelly tells Josephine that she’s worried about Buff.
Now we see Kelly pacing in her bedroom, in her nightgown. We hear a woman’s heels clicking outside. Kelly goes to the window and whispers “The door’s open Buff” In this scene Kelly is lit like an angel by the window light. Her white crepe gown flowed like wings, a huge divergence from the opening shot of her in black sexy underwear and shaved bald head. Like a mannequin, like an object. Like sexual “machinery” as she referred to herself earlier on.
Buff is wearing the lame’ gown that Kelly gave her, she grabs a box from downstairs as if it’s a tray and mimics the words “Would you care for a bonbon”Then she ascends the stairs to Kelly’s bedroom.
She enters Kelly’s room and tells her that she made $25 tonight, throws her bag on the bed, and shows Kelly the money. Kelly looks disapprovingly at Buff. “where’d you get that money?” A woman gave it to me” Kelly steps closer to Buff “What woman?”“Candy she runs a club across the river” “What’s the $25 for?” “It’s an advance, I’m gonna be a bonbon” Kelly gets angry and shouts “Take off my dress”, she spins Buff around, and starts grabbing at the zipper “I paid $350 for that dress, I’ll take it off myself” she then tells Buff, “those bon bon’s aren’t just there to serve drinks you know,” Buff says “I know” Kelly spins her around to face her, then smacks Buff and she falls onto the bed. Buff starts to sob. Kelly says “you had that coming to you” but Buff says, “Candy says I could make $300 a week.”
Now Kelly sits on the bed next to her and relates to her the hard facts of being a call girl “alright…go ahead…you know what’s different about the first night…?…nothing…nothing except it lasts forever that’s all. You’ll be sleeping on the skin of a nightmare for the rest of your life. You’re a beautiful girl Buff, young, oh, they’ll outbid each other for you ( Buff smiles)you’ll get compliments, clothes, cash. You’ll meet men you live on…and men who live on you ( now Buff frowns ) and those are the only men you’ll meet. And after a steady grind of making every john feel at home…you’ll become a block of ice.”
“And if you do happen to melt a little, you’ll get slipped a tip behind Candy’s back. You’ll be every man’s wife-in-law and no man’s wife. Well, your world with Candy will become so warped that you’ll hate all men…and you’ll hate yourself because you’ll become a social problem…a medical problem…a mental problem…and a despicable failure as a woman.”
Samuel Fuller’s film is very hard on women’s primacy and sexual freedom to choose what they do with their own bodies. If you can get passed the judgemental attitude from all sides of the picture, you’ll find an interesting character study of the early 1960s cinema. It would have been better to see Kelly more empowered and less self-deprecating.
Dressed in simple black Kelly shows up at Candy’s. A fight breaks out between one of the bonbon girls and Marshmallow, over a john. Candy rises from her seat the sequined madame of the joint and walks over to Kelly. She introduces herself and then circles around Kelly like she’s surveying merchandise. Candy says “Griff told me about you.” Then Candy asks where she’s been coasting. Kelly says she’ll tell her in her office. When one of the johns grabs Kelly, a bonbon comes over and says “Listen new Stuff” he’s my john exclusively after she hits him over the head with her tray. Candy remarks that he’s the 3rd guy she’s cold-cocked with a karate punch and laughs.
Candy starts to tell Kelly to sit down to talk business, but Kelly sucker punches Candy with her handbag. She’s good at that, remember Farlunde the pimp in the opening scene. She keeps the onslaught going, bashing Candy with her bag, til Candy falls down on the couch. Kelly keeps hitting her, smashing the lamp. Candy pleads “Cut it out”Kelly puts her knee on Candy’s chest and forces Candy’s mouth open. She counts the money like Buff did, reciting as she shoves the bills into Candy’s open mouth. “Ten, ten, and five…now you stay away from Buff” and Kelly hits her in the face one last time.
The Naked Kiss(1965) Shock and Shame, the story of a Night Girl.
Directed by the maverick auteur Samuel Fuller, with a screenplay by Fuller and black, gray, and white shades in the striking cinematography by Stanley Cortez
-(The Magnificent Ambersons 1942, Since you Went Away 1944, The Night of the Hunter 1955, Shock Corridor 1961), Cortez creates a sense of space that is almost surreal and disconnected from the outside world. The Naked Kiss stars Constance Towers as Kelly, Anthony Eisley as Griff, Michael Dante as Grant, Marie Devereux as Buff, Patsy Kelly as Mac, and one of my favorite unsung actresses Virginia Grey (The Women 1939, All The Heaven Allows 1955, Crime of Passion 1956, Backstreet 1961) as Candy.
Let me say that this is one of my favorite films. I think that it’s such a bold concoction of visual style, specific alienation that we as spectators experience along with Kelly our female Protagonist. The undercurrent of sexual pathology of a perverse nature and raw energy that fuels some crude reactionary moments on film. Normally I wouldn’t write about the ending of a film so as not to ruin it for the viewer, yet Constance Tower’s remarkable performance and Fuller’s raw cinematic veritae must be experienced, the story will not lose anything by my relating it here. I actually consider this part of my Women in Peril series, but more aptly put, it’s a womanhood in peril film.
Samuel Fuller’s B post-noir films are not like anyone else’s. Fuller’s work is often confrontational and visceral considered the kinkiest of all the B post-noir auteurs. Naked Kiss is his most potent work alongside his noir masterpiece Pickup on South Street (1953) starring Richard Widmark and Thelma Ritter as Moe Williams.
Alain Silver and James Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 2 “Fuller’sNaked Kiss“boldly offers a different kind of descriptive pause. Fuller takes on Patriarchy and directly assaults the spectator with a bizarre opening”
In their book they inform us that Fuller actually attached a camera to actor Monte Mansfield who plays Kelly’s pimp Farlunde, the guy she pummels in his swanky apartment right from the tip of the film. He has shaved off her hair and in retaliation she takes her primal vengeance out on his, beating him with her purse and high heels. Kelly only takes the money owed to her. The scene already prepares us, and what is created is an off-kilter and disorienting mood. The opening of The Naked Kiss is perhaps for me one of the most audacious beginnings to any cinematic work. It sort of punches you right in the face along with Farlunde.
The greater theme of the film is its narrative of women’s role within society. In a way not unlike Elia Kazan, Fuller has created a sociological framework, to lay out questions of what womanhood, as well as motherhood, means discursively. While at the end of the film, Kelly is relegitimized as being a savior and not a whore, she is still not allowed to live amongst the clean town’s people. She is still an outsider. Silver and Ursini also correctly bring out in their noir reader the fact that the context of the film is a “discursive-based attack on men and how they define women as well as the limits they place on them”. Also notable is the displaced female rage that only became better articulated later on with feminists during the 60s and 70s.
It reminds me while watching television’s soap opera junk food Peyton Place with its pillory that sits prominently in the middle of the town square as a reminder of New England Puritanical morals and the lurking hypocrisy in the shadows of quiet provincial values, that warn girls to beware of giving away their virtue. Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) learns this when she is condemned as the archetypal whore, the tainted girl who gave up her purity to a boy during a summer fling and then was thrown away like autumn trash. The pillory stands in the middle of the town, 200 years prior a woman like Betty had her head shaved bald, was locked in the pillory to be mocked, and then was driven out by the good town folk of Peyton Place. Much like Kelly who we first meet at the shocking opening of the film (one reason The Naked Kiss is such a uniquely memorable excursion for me) is completely bald and striking back at the man who took her hair, her power away.
The Naked Kiss written, directed, and produced by Sam Fuller, opens wide like a steel trap, with Constance Towers as Kelly viciously beats up a pimp Farlunde in his swanky apartment, smashing away at him with her handbag. Hitting his face and neck, it’s like watching a brutal choreographed dance. Fuller creates this wavering movement to give us a sense of the dizzying brutality. Farlunde begs “I’m drunk Kelly please,” “Enough Kelly please.” The savage jazz riffs underscore the bashing. Her wig comes flying off, and now we see a bald Kelly still attacking the man relentlessly. The jazz is coherent with the hyperactive saxophone.
Stripped of her hair looking like a mannequin (perhaps to show us Kelly as an “object”) she beats him till he staggers to the floor, spraying seltzer water in his face. He’s wasted by the beating, she rifles through his pockets and grabs some cash from his wallet. “Eight hundred dollars… you parasite… I’m taking only what’s coming to me.” She starts counting out bills, throwing them down upon his chest, “Fifty, sixty, seventy-five… I’m not rolling you, you drunken leech, I’m only taking the seventy-five dollars that’s coming to me.”
She crumples up her share, shoves it into her bra, and kicks him while he’s lying there. She stares at us like we’re her mirror. Gratified she puts her wig back on and the title rolls, The Naked Kiss. Sam Fuller’s story of alienation, gender subjugation, and the question of immorality and deviant sexual pathology, opens up in a big way.
The Paul Dunlop score becomes more dreamy, with melodramatic strings and Kelly brushing her wig. getting it right. The credits roll and Kelly are applying her eye pencil transforming herself back into a woman and not a bloodthirsty she-devil. Now the blush is applied, the music fades back into the jazz number and we see Farlunde knocked out, lying on the floor. The saxophone is hurling trills at us, Kelly grabs a photograph down from a collection of beauties and she starts tearing it up to pieces, throwing them on the ground, the Farlunde stirs, coughs a bit, and starts to get up, Kelly slams the door.
As he starts picking up the debris Kelly has left in her wake he puts crumpled-up bills on top of a calendar and we see the date July 4, 1961. A quick cut, flash forward to a banner in the street touting August 12, 1963, and the melodramatic music is serenading us again. The camera pulls out for a wider angle, we can see the entire banner now, it reads 2 years later. August 12, 1963 Fashion Show for Handicapped Children Grantville Orthopedic Medical Center
The top of a bus moving through the street, a parked car, a mostly empty street, with a few people crossing it, and mulling about. This is the suggestion of a quiet, quaint American town.
Then a car horn toots, 3 men standing outside a Bus Depot, Griff (Anthony Eisley) says “Ten bucks, that right Mike?”Mike says “Why spend your own money on that punk?” Griff turns to the young man and says while stuffing it in his pocket “Here’s your ticket”smiles at him and shoves some money into his pocket as well. All the time the young man is looking down as if ashamed. He says “Thanks a lot Griff… I’ll pay you back.” Griff looks at him sternly, “I’m giving you a break, cause your brother was in my outfit… I don’t want to see you in this town again.”The young man looks down again.
Then a Greyhound bus pulls over to the curb. We see the marquee of the movie theater is playing Shock Corridor, a nod to Fuller’s other psychologically wrenching film about a newspaper reporter going undercover in a lunatic asylum, only to become one of the patients.
