HOT SPELL 1958

What would Hollywood do without the South as the all-purpose, go-to metaphor for all things hot, steamy, and neurotic during the sexually and emotionally repressed America of the 1950s?Hollywood, pandering to post-war propaganda intended to reassure the nation of a return to prosperity and stability, consistently promoted the image of the Midwest and middle-class suburbs as exemplars of familial “normalcy.” To this end, metropolitan cities were represented as cold and impersonal sin-bins, rife with crime and corruption; while the South – where mossy oak trees and people’s accents drooped in languid surrender to the oppressive heat – was a veritable pressure cooker of stifled passions. No wonder the Southern Gothic (a film genre dear to my heart) came to embody the existential frustration, spiritual discontent, and sexual dissatisfaction of an entire nation.

Between 1958 and 1959, Hollywood released no fewer than six southern-fried movie melodramas: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Long Hot Summer, God’s Little Acre, Suddenly Last Summer, The Sound and the Fury, and the focus of this essay, author Lonnie Coleman’s (Beulah Land) little-known but no-less overheated domestic drama, Hot Spell. 

Hot Spell is based on Coleman’s unproduced 1951 play Next of Kin (which was subsequently turned into a novel when the film was released). It's directed by Daniel Mann (Come Back, Little Sheba) from a screenplay by James Poe (Summer & Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Considering its cast and pedigree, I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard of this film, let alone seen it, until relatively recently. 

Hot Spell’s theatrical roots are manifest in the size of its cast (it’s basically a four-character story), the talkiness of its script, and the simplicity of its plot. In the sweltering heat of the eternal summer that is the mainstay of all good Southern Gothics (where a glass of sweet tea is never far from reach), long-suppressed tensions threaten to rupture the gossamer-thin fabric of delusion holding a small New Orleans family together. As frustrations rise to the surface, carefully constructed illusions begin to crack and blister like paint in the scorching sun.

Shirley Booth as Alma Duval

Anthony Quinn as John Henry "Jack" Duval

Shirley MacLaine as Virginia Duval

Earl Holliman as John Henry "Buddy" Duval, Jr.

Clint Kimbrough as Billy Duval

When the film opens, matronly housewife Alma Duval (Booth) is all aflutter over the 45^th birthday party she’s planning for husband Jack (Quinn); a seductively "wild" Cajun whose restless nature she's found – after 25 years of marriage – impossible to fully domesticate. As we observe her nervous attempts to orchestrate (manipulate?) every conceivable variable to assure a favorable outcome for her efforts, Alma’s fervent preparations betray an air of desperation more than celebration.

Armed with the birthday presents she herself purchased for her adult children to give to their father, Alma visits each at their workplace, dispensing behavioral directives and cheery dialogue prompts with every pre-wrapped gift. Perhaps too metaphorically (not for a fan of heavy-handed '50s Freudianism like myself), each child embodies contrasting, narratively-pertinent character traits, and have jobs reflective of their personalities.

Eldest son Buddy (Holliman), all self-seriousness and ambition, works at the family employment agency. Recently out of the army, Buddy is headstrong and restless to make a way for himself in the world. Daddy’s-girl and middle-child Virginia (MacLaine), works at the local 5¢ &10¢ and spends her time lost in fanciful daydreams about her new summer suitor, a pragmatic pre-med student (Warren Stevens). Surrounded all day by valentines, flowers, and perfumes, Virginia is a dreamy romantic. Youngest son, Billy (Kimbrough), is a bookish, sensitive type (coded: gay) who works in a library, and too-keenly feels the tension behind all that remains unspoken in the Duval household. His survival tactic is to escape; first into books, then by going so far as to enlist in the Air Force.

Alma, who refuses to see her offspring as anything but children, charges into these workplace sanctuaries, as heedless of their discomfort as their in-vain efforts to dissuade her from making a big deal out of an event they all know their vain father hardly looks upon as cause for celebration (no one, least of all Jack himself, even remembers the birthday).  It’s Alma’s wish (passive-aggressive insistence, actually) that everyone live the same lie she clings to: to ignore the open-secret of Jack’s mid-life crisis affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and just carry on as  if they are still (if indeed they ever were) one big, happy family.

An absorbing drama that benefits significantly from the top-notch performances of its cast, Hot Spell, with its over-familiar central conflict, falls prey to a fate similar to that which befell The Stripper (1963), the screen adaptation of William Inge’s A Loss of Roses; which is to say Hot Spell, in lacking a certain psychological profundity and depth of characterization, feels more like a Playhouse 90 television production than a feature film. But in spite of much of it feeling as though it were culled from earlier, similar sources (most in the Shirley Booth oeuvre) Hot Spell does provide a fairly moving examination of the what the inexorable passing of time portends to a family fighting hard to evade the inevitabilities of growing up, growing older, and growing apart.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The fact that I come from a large Catholic family that never spoke about our emotions (until the 70s when my mother went through EST, after which we spoke of little else) is perhaps the main reasons I love movies like Hot Spell. Call it fantasy projection, but domestic dramas wherein suppressed hostilities and resentments erupt into biliously confrontational exchanges that ultimately prove to be liberatingly cathartic are a favorite of mine. Double if it takes place in the South of the '50s and '60s.

While no one in Hot Spell adopts a Southern accent, and it doesn’t take place in Kansas, the film nevertheless has the stamp of Tennessee Williams and William Inge all over it. 

The Two Shirleys
MacLaine and Booth appeared in The Matchmaker this same year

As is the custom of the genre, Hot Spell is centered around a social event. An event or occasion necessitating the close-knit interaction of characters (usually under circumstances forcing a display of false emotion or sentiment). Hot Spell’s pivotal birthday party, the catalyst for the film’s domestic upheaval, is largely ironic in function, being that a celebration of growing older is particularly ill-suited for Jack and Alma Duval; a couple deeply invested in living in the past.

In a deluded effort to reclaim his lost, wild youth, Jack imbues a thoroughly common extramarital physical attraction with all the romantic gravitas of true love reborn. Alma, no less delusional, lives in an aspic world frozen in time. Feeling acutely the impending loss of her family, Alma pins all her hopes on a longed-for return to the town of New Paris – a state of mind as much as geographical location – idealized in her memory as the place where everyone was happiest.

Come Back, Little New Paris

Caught in the middle: the children (their main offense being their failure to remain so), nurtured as infants to fill a void, weaned in adulthood to be the guardians of their parent’s illusions. There’s more than enough culpability, regret, and incriminations to go around as the Duvals of New Orleans endeavor to weather their personal hot spell of discontent.

Running at a brisk 86 minutes, Hot Spell may be Southern Gothic-lite, but it’s like a Greatest Hits collection of all I hold near about that obsolete film genre.  

Running Wild
Anthony Quinn was already a two-time Oscar winner when he appeared in Hot Spell.
Here with actress Valerie Allen as Ruby, Quinn's restless character longs for a new life in
Florida, "Land of Eternal Youth"

PERFORMANCES

For those keeping score, this was Booth’s second onscreen swipe at playing a dowdy, once-beautiful housewife delusionally fixated on the past. Perhaps it was an intentional move on Booth’s part to revisit a character almost identical to the one she played in 1952s Come Back, Little Sheba (and won an Oscar for), but the effect created is déjà vu to distraction.

Shirley Booth is a remarkable actress and her performance here ranks among her best. She IS the entire film, as far as I’m concerned, and the nuances of vulnerability she brings to the role (along with a hint of the subtle manipulative strength unique to the very weak) is a tour de force. She single-handedly keeps the film from sinking into a mire of clichés. But I’d be lying if I said that much of it feels like I’d seen it all before. It’s like later career Maggie Smith; she’ always excellent, but she’s always the same. 

Oscar-winner Eileen Heckart (The Bad Seed) steals every scene as Alma's best friend, Fan. The hilarious sequence where she gives Alma lessons in being a Modern Woman is a worth-the-price-of-admission classic.

Fan: "Well what's he gonna say the first time you fish out a cigarette and light up?"
Alma; "He's gonna say, 'Alma, have you gone crazy?'"
Fan: "Yeah, well when he does you just take a drag on the cigarette, blow the smoke in his face and say, 'What's it to ya, lover?'"

1958 was a banner year for Shirley MacLaine, appearing in Hot Spell, Some Came Running (for which she won an Oscar nomination), and the delightful The Matchmaker. As the lovesick daughter, MacLaine isn’t called upon to do anything here that Elinor Donahue didn’t do on TV every week in Father Knows Best, but her easygoing, natural appeal is a major asset to a film as dramatically stagy as Hot Spell. 

Things heat up between Virginia and Wyatt (Warren Stevens) 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the same breast-fixated/blonde bombshell era that produced Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, also found room to appreciate the matronly charms of actresses like Shirley Booth and Geraldine Page. These actresses may not have been the pin-up type, but they played middle-aged women who were still afforded passions, sex drives, and depth. While most of Hollywood was falling over itself looking for the next fetishized male fantasy sex symbol, gay writers like Inge, Williams, and Coleman were creating dimensional roles for real women. 

The often unglamorous women Shirley Booth portrayed were nevertheless
granted a sexuality and impassioned emotional life

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Wasn’t it Margo Channing who said, “I detest cheap sentiment”? Well, normally I do, too, but something about Hot Spell always gets the waterworks going come fade-out. That something is Shirley Booth and the breadth of emotions she brings to her almost stock character. It’s a memorable (albeit familiar) performance in a movie that’s far more enjoyable than it should be. A credit to the cast, to be sure.

I don’t know if Hot Spell is available on DVD yet, but it crops up on TCM from time to time and is definitely worth a watch. It’s not likely to make anyone forget Come Back Little Sheba or invite comparisons to O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, but it is a fine example of a once-popular dramatic genre, that (based on recent posts for The Stripper, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean) I can’t seem to get enough of. 

"I guess the hot spell's over."

BONUS MATERIAL

 Hot Spell: Margaret Whiting sings this promotional song for the film. Written by Burt Bacharach /Mack David.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

PORTRAIT IN BLACK 1960

Although I like to think of my taste in movies as being somewhat broad and varied, the sad truth is that I’m an oddly finicky film fan who only rarely steps outside of his comfort zone of favored tropes, themes, and genres. Case in point: as a rule, I don’t like war movies, westerns, sports films, or sci-fi; thus, there are a great many classic and perhaps marvelous motion pictures made in these genres which I have never seen...nor is it likely I ever will. That’s a hell of a lot of movies to cut out of one’s life. Of course, some of this boils down to plain old discernment (at age fifty-plus, I've seen enough western, war, sci-fi, and sports films to know that, by and large, they’re just not my cup of tea); but there's no denying that some of it is simply kneejerk prejudice and inflexibility.

Back in my film school days, before my opinions and preferences began to fully take shape (read: calcify), I was one of those guys who considered it time well-spent to sit and watch ANY kind of movie; for I was then of the mind that it was possible to learn as much from bad films as from good. Not anymore. When one reaches the age of 50 and beyond, the once-illusory concept of time becomes such a concrete concept, the idea of passing time suddenly morphs into wasting time, and with it, the dawning that the odds are not in your favor.

I've reached the stage where I don’t welcome spending my dwindling hours on this earth slogging through movies my cinephile Spidey-senses signal to me I’m not going to enjoy. These days, it’s my partner who takes the broadminded, democratic approach to movies, while I largely content myself with watching films I’ve already seen or films which I'm instinctively drawn to for whatever reason. I take my chances on the unfamiliar and uncharted only after they've been thoroughly dusted for signs of Tarantino; Sandler; auto racing; handguns held sideways; Katherine Heigl; or anyone wearing a cape and body armor.

Knuckle Sandwich 
Anthony Quinn & Lana Turner engage in a little oral sex

The only time my resolve weakens as to what films I positively, absolutely, will not watch, are on the occasions of my body weakening. Which is to say, when I’m confined to my bed and so sick with a cold or the flu that I’ll literally watch anything to keep my mind off of how miserable I’m feeling.
Occasionally this leads to my being subjected to unfortunate “entertainments” like Gene Kelly’s old coot comedy-western, The Cheyenne Social Club (1970); a film that, 15 minutes in, had me praying for a high-grade fever. But what I like best is when my incapacitated state brings about my exposure to (and enjoyment of) a film I might not otherwise have been inclined to sit through. Such is the case with Ross Hunter’s overdressed opus of melodramatic camp, Portrait in Black; a film I consciously avoided (rather surprisingly, given its reputation for overheated hysterics and histrionics) until it screened on TCM a few years back—when I was laid up with the flu—and has thereafter remained a lasting favorite. For all the wrong reasons. 

as Sheila Cabot

as Dr. David Rivera

as Cathy Cabot

as Blake Richards

Portrait in Black is an old-fashioned reminder that people once paid good money to see the kind of overwrought hand-wringers and melodramas which became standard fodder for TV movies, miniseries, primetime soaps, and the Lifetime Network. All plot, no character, Portrait in Black exists solely as a parade of lacquered hairstyles, overelaborate sets (or San Francisco locations so overlit that they LOOK like sets), and —most importantly—smart fashions for the well-dressed middle-age socialite. Sixties variety.

Propping up all this material display is a workaday murder/suspense plot involving a cantankerous shipping magnate (Lloyd Nolan); his sexually frustrated wife, Lana Turner (“Too bad they can’t find a shot for your condition…a vitamin shot for ‘Love’ deficiency!”); and his morally conflicted physician, Anthony Quinn. Also thrown into the mix as sundry red herrings and narrative speed bumps of varying annoyance are Sandra Dee as the snippy stepdaughter; her scrappy, poor-but-honest suitor, John Saxon; and the dull-to-the-point-of-genius Richard Basehart as Nolan’s legal advisor.

 Yes, Portrait in Black is one of those movies where even the phones are color-coordinated to the leading lady's wardrobe.

There’s nothing going on here that you haven’t seen about a million times before (and better), no plot point or suspense twist that isn't telegraphed ages before it occurs. But thanks to dated acting styles which result in theatrically stilted performances worthy of a Carol Burnett Show spoof; the uniquely kitschy look of early '60s high style (gold vein mirrors, Chinese Modern knickknacks, quilted headboards, gilt filigree); and producer Ross Hunter’s unparalleled gift for making every one of his films look as though it were made at least ten years earlier; Portrait in Black fails as legitimate drama in direct proportion to the heights it hits (and believe me, this movie soars!) as derisible, highly-entertaining camp.

Chinese-American silent screen icon Anna May Wong was coaxed out of an 11-year retirement  for this, her last film role, to appear (along with everybody's favorite Martian, Ray Walston) as an appropriately mysterious member of the Cabot mansion "help." 

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with this blog would think Lana Turner and Sandra Dee co-starring in a film produced by the man who gave us Lost Horizon, Tammy Tell Me True, AND the camptastic Doris Day classic Midnight Lace, would be a no-brainer of a must-see for a man of my particular “tastes.” But the truth is, I’m no great fan of Lana Turner (although I’ve always got a kick out of her very “movie star” name, for me she peaked, both in beauty and talent, in The Postman Always Rings Twice); and in spite of Ross Hunter’s reputation for being one of Hollywood’s foremost purveyors of inadvertent camp, I tend to find his static, studio-bound melodramas to be a little hard going.

Trouble in Paradise
The mortality rate of Lana Turner's movie husbands is never all that great to begin with, but start man-handling her and you're pretty much looking at a cameo. Curious side note: it's been said that Truman Capote harbored a lifelong crush on actor Lloyd Nolan, often speaking of him as the "ideal man"(!) 

Having previously endured his backpedaling remake of Imitation of Life and the arid romance of Magnificent Obsession, I wasn't exactly inclined to give Ross Hunter benefit of a “three strikes” vote when Portrait in Black was recommended to me: hours of my life irretrievably lost to two Ross Hunter productions was more than enough, thank you. Of course, now I see the only things wasted were all the years of laughter I deprived myself of by waiting so long to see this howler. Thank god for that miserable, debilitating, 6-day bout of influenza, huh?

Try not to look suspicious!

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Where to start? There’s something sublimely liberating about watching a potboiler so superficial and devoid of subtext that after it’s over, you needn’t waste a second mulling over what it all signifies. It’s a pleasurable time-killer, pure and simple. And beyond being a tale of illicit lovers implicated in the suspicious death of a despised industrialist, and the thin mystery surrounding the identity of a blackmailer, Portrait in Black is true to Hunter’s oft-stated objective to “…(give) the public what they wanted. A chance to dream, to live vicariously, to see beautiful women, jewels, gorgeous clothes, melodrama.”  Note that at no point does he mention credible storylines, good acting, or simple character development. 

Dr. Rivera: "Look at this. It's more deadly than a gun...a thousand times less detectable!"
A puncture from a hypodermic needle is less detectable than a big ol' gunshot wound? Imagine that.

You gotta love the creaky screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (based on their 1945 play) wherein all the characters find it necessary to say each other’s names even when speaking face to face. It’s never“You mustn't!” when it can be, “David, you mustn’t!” Never, “Would you like fries with that?” when you can say, “Sheila, would you like fries with that?” This practice lends an air of comically mannered artificiality to all human interaction, which fortunately is right in step with the old-fashioned, histrionic performances director Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk, Move Over Darling) elicits from his cast. Even the reliably naturalistic (and, for my taste, tiresomely lusty) Anthony Quinn seems peculiarly hamstrung and stiff. 

A real comic highlight is the hilarious rain-slicked drive along curvy coastal roads scene which has Turner more or less recreating her scream scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice

Because the film's simple “Who’s blackmailing us and why?” plotline has to strain to build suspense and pad out its running time, the script has our star-crossed lovers making one boneheaded misstep after another. Their actions only serving to compound the many sizable obstacles they already face in trying to navigate (and failing spectacularly at it) the film's choppy sea of red herrings. A veritable rogues gallery of malcontents and secret-keepers which comprise their circle of friends, employees, and family members. In short order, events intended to provide dramatic conflict quickly play out like a farcical comedy of errors.

PERFORMANCES

As members of Ross Hunter’s unofficial film repertory company, Lana Turner, Sandra Dee, John Saxon, and the ever-regal Virginia Grey had each, by the time they made Portrait in Black, developed a firm grasp on the overly sincere, purple dramatizing required of this kind of melodrama. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say any of them actually make fools of themselves, in certain scenes (the tormented curtain-pulling episode in particular), Lana Turner comes awfully close.

Indeed, Lana Turner takes all the prizes for making Portrait in Black so watchable for me because hers is one of those truly awful performances that only the committed can give. She's marvelous to look at, oozes star quality out of every pore, but I honestly haven't a clue as to what she's trying for in her scenes. Whatever it is, natural human behavior doesn't factor into it. She gives one of those Master Thespian "Movie Star" performances that torpedoes realism, but makes for a hell of an entertaining evening at the movies.

Although he seems a tad out of his element, I have to say it's nice to see Anthony Quinn all gussied up for a change. Usually covered in stubble, sweat stains, and acting all earthy and robust, I welcomed this buttoned-down, Brooks Bros Zorba. Meanwhile, Lana here doesn't appear to be too pleased with her Minnie Mouse in Mink look. 

I've always found the troubled Sandra Dee to be a very appealing presence in movies, but here her innate charm is undermined a bit by the scornful, worrywart character she's saddled with. And by the efforts of Hunter and Universal Studios to glamorize and update the 17-year-old's teenybopper screen image. Personally, I kept hoping for Dee to break into her Tammy Tyree Mississippi twang and start lecturing these corrupt city folk on how much simpler life was down on the river with her grandpappy; all the while peppering her homey, colloquial diatribe with cute phrases like, "It's a puzzlement!" 

It would be a few more years before Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, and the youth movement at large encouraged young women to actually look like young women. Judging by Sandra Dee's glam makeover in Portrait in Black, the goal of sophisticated 17-year-olds in 1960 was to look like their mothers. Dee looks fabulous here, but honestly, she could pass for a woman in her 30s.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There are many categories of camp: there’s pretentious (Showgirls), clueless (Can’t Stop the Music), and my favorite--inadvertent. The enjoyment of pretentious camp is rooted in a kind of mean-spirited schadenfreude wherein you find yourself reveling in each failed attempt at legitimacy a film strives for. Clueless camp makes you shake your head over how out-of-touch the filmmakers can be, but can also make you feel a bit sorry for them (i.e. Mae West's Sextette). But inadvertent camp is guilt-free and the most enjoyable of the lot because the laughs come less at the expense of the individuals involved and more at how the passage time and the fickle finger of fate can turn what was once solemn into something that is now side-splitting.

The passage of time brings with it changing tastes and attitudes about everything from acting styles to fashion. So if a once-serious film falls victim to cultural shifts which render its content and themes outmoded (The Bad Seed), it’s nothing anyone could have foreseen, and laughing at it feels, well...just a little bit kinder. 

A few of my favorite things:

Richard Basehart as family friend Howard Mason, making a play for "grieving" widow Sheila Cabot a day after the funeral 

Turner's mink-clad stroll through San Francisco's I. Magnin department store (complete with doorman!)

Anthony Quinn going mano-a-mano with the Hippocratic Oath

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As fun as a movie like Portrait in Black can be for the occasional mindless diversion, reminding oneself that there was once a time when movies of this sort represented a sizable percentage of Hollywood's output always makes me grateful for the revolution in film that brought about the New Hollywood of the late '60s and '70s. Things really needed shaking up.
As Hollywood began to respond to the realist influence of European New Wave cinema and the naturalism of East Coast "Method" acting, old-school producers like Ross Hunter prided themselves on their efforts to bring "glamour" and old-fashioned family entertainment back to Hollywood movies. Hunter in particular made films that existed within a bubble of willful irrelevance so out of touch with the real world, they bordered on the surreal.

Portrait in Black marked the third and final screen pairing of John Saxon and Sandra Dee

Although he was gay, Hunter made films promoting staunchly status-quo heteronormative values which featured men and women occupying traditional gender roles, and people of color depicted, if perhaps more plentifully than many of his peers, always as occupying positions of a non-threatening, subordinate status. And, as befitting the times and Hunter's own closeted always-appear-in-public-with-a-beard-on-your-arm inclinations; gays were invisible or non-existent except as humorous reference points in his sex comedies.

Ross Hunter's films understandably struck a chord with those of an older demographic. Those moviegoers left bewildered by cinema's new permissiveness (or the term cinema, for that matter) and still enamored of the perhaps apocryphal Samuel Goldwyn quote, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union!" So while college kids in 1960 were lining up to see Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Ross Hunter was getting rich (and very little in the way of respect) releasing Portrait in Black, a movie so timely it was once considered as a vehicle for Joan Crawford.

Ross Hunter good luck charm Virginia Grey as Miss Lee- the proverbial secretary in love with her boss.
Fans of George Cukor's The Women will remember Grey as Pat, Joan Crawford's wisecracking shopgirl friend

I'm not familiar enough with Ross Hunter's work (and too much the devotee of '70s movies) to appreciate his contribution to film. But as a connoisseur of camp and good/bad movies, the outmoded, overdressed, overemotional charm of Portrait in Black places him high on my list of those who have made the most significant contributions to guilty-pleasure cinema.

BONUS MATERIAL
If you're a fan of Ross Hunter or late-career Lana Turner, check out these sites:
A terrific review of Imitation of Life can be found at Angelman's Place
Read all about Lana in Madame X at Poseidon's Underworld

Copyright © Ken Anderson