Rain Around the Soldier

Another of the actors honored in this year's Summer Under the Stars was Steve McQueen, which gave me the chance to record one of his films that I hadn't seen before: Soldier in the Rain.

McQueen plays Sgt. Eustis Clay, an army drill sergeant somewhat reminiscent of William Holden's operator character in Stalag 17 except that, where Stalag 17 was set in a World War II POW camp, Clay was part of the peacetime draft and seems to be counting down the days until his time in the Army was finished. He's got much bigger schemes planned for when he gets out of the army. Clay serves under MSgt. Maxwell Slaughter (Jackie Gleason), a career soldier who, based on the time the film was released and Gleason's age, was probably drafted in World War II and never found anything better to do than stay in the Army after the war. He's trying to make life as easy for himself as possible before he hits his 20 and out.

Slaughter likes Clay for whatever reason, although Clay looks up to Slaughter more than he probably should. Not that Slaughter is a bad influence; it's that Clay seems like a bit of a naïf and that nobody should look up to another human being the way Clay looks up to Slaughter. Slaughter is married to the Army, and doesn't have a wife or kids, so Clay finds a young local woman off-base, Bobby Jo (Tuesday Weld) and introduces her to Slaughter.

Slaughter eventually develops a liking for Bobby Jo becaue she turns out to be brighter than she looks, although she seems much too young for Slaughter: she's presented as a high school student who's barely legal. You'd think Slaughter's superior officers like Lt. Magee (Tom Poston) would put the kibosh on such fraternizing, but apparently no.

As I said earlier, Clay is a smooth operator type who among other things is trying to pass off PFC Meltzer (Tony Bill) as a sprinter who's going to be able to run the first three-minute mile, at a time when the mile record would have been around 3:55, not that the mile is run much any more since metric distances are more generally run. This is presented as one of the comic schemes Clay is involved in, although it also leads to a traffic incident that Slaughter has to bail Clay out of.

Slaughter will have to bail Clay out for the film's climax, a much more dramatic scene when Clay finds out his dog died. A couple of MPs decide to beat the crap out of Clay at a bar for some reason, and Slaughter has to save Clay's butt.

Soldier in the Rain is one of those films that's more episodic than having a traditional full-movie arc, and it's a movie that doesn't really work. It's partly because the episodes don't quite fit together but more because Steve McQueen took his character in a direction that doesn't work. McQueen plays Clay much too broadly, as a sort of Southern stereotype. It's supposed to be broad comedy, I suppose, but McQueen's performance makes it look almost as though McQueen is a lousy actor, which isn't the case. Supposedly this was because McQueen felt like Gleason was stealing scenes or at least coming out on top, but it doesn't work and the director probably should have spotted it. In any case, it makes the movie rather grating whenever McQueen is on screen, which is a lot.

At least I've gotten Soldier in the Rain off of my list of movies to watch. But, as always, watch and judge for yourself.

Daddy's Dipsomania

Another of the movies that had been sitting on my DVR for a while that I needed to watch before it expired was Papa's Delicate Condition. Once again, having finally gotten around to watching it, it's time to write up a review and schedule it on the blog.

Jackie Gleason stars as Jack Griffith, who works as a railroad superintendent in a small town in northeast Texas in the early part of the 20th century. (The movie is based on the memoirs of silent screen star Corinne Griffith, born in 1894, but the sets look closer to a pastiche of small-town American between about 1900 and 1915.) Jack has a wife Ambolyn (Glynis Johns), and two daughters: younger daughter Corinne (Linda Bruhl) and Augusta (Laurel Goodwin). Corinne is a bit of a mischief-maker, but also unfailingly honest. Dad, for his part, eschews church, which is mildly scandalous for the early 1900s. But that's not the real focus of the movie.

Instead, the main plot driver is what's referred to as the titular "delicate condition". Dad has a tendency to drink "medicinal" alcohol, which is of course not medicinal but just to get Dad good and sloshed. And when Dad does drink, he also gets rather irresponsible with the family's money. Now, he's trying to do good-hearted things with the money, but what he does is still not fiscally imprudent, to the point that you wonder how the family can afford to live in the nice house they have. One would think Dad's spendthrift ways had been going on for years and that Mom would have taken the kids home to her father. After all, her father Mr. Ghio (Charlie Ruggles) is the mayor of Texarkana.

The first time we see Dad spending the family money unwisely, it's to "help" a man who's painted his house in a garish color that Ambolyn doesn't like get the house repainted in white. Sure, it's dumb to see Jack do this, but you can understand him wanting to make his wife happy. Next up, however, Jack stops by a drug store where the guy behind the counter has a wife who's going into labor and can't get the time off bcause of nasty boss Mr. Cosgrove (Charles Lane). Jack takes over for an hour and gets into big trouble by service a kid a banana split. To get out of his trouble, Jack comes up with a plan to have a "syndicate" of his friends buy the place. He then blackmails his friends into co-funding the scheme!

And then the circus comes to town. Corinne like the pony and wishes she could have one. Unfortunately, the only way Jack can buy the pony is if he buys the whole damn circus. And, of course, he's stupid enough to pay the two crooked proprietors cash. They run off, leaving Jack owning a circus that's heavily in debt and has lots of process servers chasing them. Yeah, he really is that dumb. It's here that Ambolyn finally has the good sense to go off to Texarkana to be with her father. Jack, having screwed things up badly, realizes that he has to go where they can't find him, and takes a job as a railroad superintendent with a railroad in Louisiana. But this is also the sort of movie that you know is going to have a happy ending. So how is it going to get there?

I can see why people think a movie like Papa's Delicate Condition has its charms. For me, however, it had a bunch of problems, which are mostly down to the script. Jack Griffiths is, if not a nasty character, one for whom it's hard to have sympathy. He's causing all his own problems, and you keep wanting Ambolyn or perhaps her father to knock some sense into Jack. The other big issue is that Jackie Gleason is miscast for a period piece like this. It's as though he's still playing Ralph Kramden and not Jack Griffith.

Requiem for a Heavyweight

I saw that the Anthony Quinn movie The Shoes of the Fisherman was on TCM recently. I have that movie on my DVR already, and was thinking of watching it to do a review here but decided to hold off because I had just the day before I noticed it watched Requiem for a Heavyweight. So now you get the blog post on that Anthony Quinn movie.

Quinn plays the heavyweight, a man named Mountain Rivera. Mountain is a boxer at the end of his career (Quinn was 46 at the time he made the movie), getting the crap beat out of him by Cassius Clay. In fact, he's beat up so bad that he's got a retina dangerously close to being detached. The doctor won't allow him to fight any more, and if he can't get a license to fight in New York, he won't be able to fight anywhere.

This is terrifying for Mountain, since he doesn't know anything other than boxing, having done it for 17 years and gotten to as high as #5 in the rankings. Mountain's one best friend is his trainer, Army (Mickey Rooney). But Mountain thinks that his real best friend is his manager, Maish Rennick (Jackie Gleason). How wrong he is.

We quickly learn that Maish is running away from a couple of professional gamblers whom he had told that there was no way Mountain could survive more than four rounds with Cassius Clay. They bet on the fight lasting four rounds or fewer, while Mountain, not having been told any of this, fought until the bitter end and lasted into the seventh round. The gamblers would like their money back, thank you very much. And Maish isn't much of a friend to Mountain if he's willing to do this to Mountain.

Army tries to get Mountain some work post-boxing, and takes Mountain to the state Department of Labor, where he gets Grace Miller (Julie Harris) as a case worker. She doesn't really know how to help somebody like Mountain, but she feels an animal attraction toward him -- at least, that's the only explanation I could think of, since there's no other logical reason for her to go above and beyond the call of duty to try to help Mountain. She's got a couple of friends who run a summer camp, and might be able to use Mountain as one of the phys ed instructors.

Maish wouldn't be having any of that if he finds out. He knows a wrestling promoter who could get Mountain a truly degrading job doing fixed wrestling matches where Mountain dresses up as an Indian while his opponent dresses up as a cowboy and they alternate which one wins on any given night. Mountain doesn't want to do this, but Maish is his best friend, or so he thinks.

Requiem for a Heavyweight is one of those grown-up dramas that, despite being about a boxer, really isn't about the action. It's much more an intelligent movie that actually requires some thinking and engagement on the part of the viewer, and is dependent on the performances of the actors as much as it is on the plot. Thankfully, we get a series of fine performances here from all four of the main players.

The production design also captures the thoroughly inglamorous world behind professional boxing as, after fighting for 17 years, Mountain has almost nothing to show for it. He's living in one of those fading apartment hotels, going to cheap bars for his drinks and meals. No pretty women hangers-on for Mountain.

If you want an intelligent movie, then Requiem for a Heavyweight is one that I can highly recommend.