I recently got my hands on Universal’s very, very welcome three-disc set The Pre-Code Hollywood Collection, and the first thing I put in the player was 1934’s Murder At The Vanities. a delightfully thick slice of philistine vulgarity (which, as we know, there is nothing more exhilarating than) that I first saw over twenty years ago courtesy of a film collector friend who had a print. My pal had touted it as one of those you-ain’t-seen-nothin’ yet pre-code goodies, and he weren’t kidding. The picture, in which a couple of backstage homicides are unravelled by luggish flatfoot Victor MacLagen as manic stage manager Jackie Oakie insists that the show in progress must go on, is replete with ribald doozies, from Oakie’s constant refrain of “Judas H. Priest” to a musical number extolling the virtues of “Sweet Marahuana” (sic) to sights such as this:
The titlular “Vanities,” by the way, are those of one Earl Carroll, a Broadway showman who could be described as the missing link between Flo Ziegfeld and Busby Berkeley. “Through These Portals Pass The Most Beautiful Girls In The World” reads a legend above the stage door in this picture. Some of the chilliest, too, as the above image indicates.
The picture moves along at a very fast clip, and director Mitchell Leisen, who is also behind rather more distinguished ’30s fare (the sublime Easy Living, for instance), is quite deft at threading the narrative strands and musical set-pieces together. One of the biggest of the musical numbers—and the locus of the bit that kind of pulls a rug out from under the entire enterprise the film represents—is laid out for the audience via a peek at the program.
Boy, I hope none of the people who are having seizures about Observe and Report are reading this. I can see the blog headlines now: “Duke Ellington Condones Rape.” But seriously—the supposition that what Duke and his musicians do to Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody in this sequence is tantamount to a physical and sexual violation speaks volumes about the cultural assumptions of the era, even if here the concept is put forward in a (yes, very crassly) light-hearted fashion. But we’ll get to that (sort of) in a bit.
What’s really interesting and finally wonderful about the sequence is what happens when Ellington enters it. The act begins with a singer, impersonating Liszt, sitting at the piano, playing away, and singing some fruity lyrics about “my rhapsody.” A full orchestra is then revealed, and the actor who had been doing the Liszt-aping is replaced by a character played by the much taller…Charles Middleton, who played Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon pictures. A jazz band led by Ellington usurps the proceedings, and for the next couple of minutes we’re treated to Duke’s own “Ebony Rhapsody,” with the dapper bandleader playing up a storm.
Suddenly the kitsch factor that’s been the main source of the film’s entertainment value just melts away. Ellington’s presence, his exuberance, his music, wakes the viewer up to a “real” world of sorts. The screen feels alive. There’s no sense of datedness.
It’s very hard to pin down in a word what it is that produces this extraordinary effect. Ellington comes across as the most completely authentic presence in this film’s world…and yet we all know what a chimera that concept, authenticity, can be. Surely, though, it has something to do with his being an authentic creator of the music he’s shown playing, and to do with the innovation and joy of that music. But that’s not all of it.
Is it because he’s black? The eminent jazz critic Gary Giddins sees frightening racist overtones in the finale of the scene. Noting that “Ellington was no more willing to accede to what fans and critics expected of him as a jazz composer than to what society expected of him as a Negro,” he cites the scene’s finale, in which “the white conductor returns with a machine gun and—encouraged by the audience’s laughter and applause—murders the black musicians” as an example of “[j]ust how deadly those expectations could be.”
The number’s “Revenge” component aside, one look at the above screen grab tells you who’s the true victor in this particular culture war.
What’s utterly exasperating about the OBSERVE AND REPORT thing is that (SPOILER, I guess) he *stops* when he realizes she may be passed-out, then she tells him to keep going. So heroin, beating up skateboarders and point-blank gunshots are good for comedy; date-rape, not so much. Not that I disagree, but c’mon. This is a controversy?
It’s not even that good a movie, fer chrissakes.
I have to confess that all the racial stuff went right over my head. I was too busy being bored by Carl Brisson and Kitty Carlisle. Loved the sea of peacock fans, however. (Or were they ostrich?) But yeah, I was jolted by “The Rape of the Rhapsody” too.
Great to see Paramount’s pre-Codes finally coming out on DVD.
Any address for the Gary Giddins quote? Is he still reviewing DVDs? The N.Y. Sun archive of his articles ended last September.