Some selected images from Jeanne Eagels (George Sidney, 1957):
Yeah, I finally bit the bullet last night and watched the damn thing (the new DVD, that is, from the new Kim Novak collection from Sony) in all its glory on my 13-inch backup TV. Quite a whacked-out picture, surely; certain portions of it had me spinning my wheels, speculating as to whether Sidney was in fact some diabolical hybrid of Douglas Sirk and Ed Wood. A subject for further research to be sure, although I don’t know if I have the intestinal fortitude to go back to those late ’30s “Our Gang” shorts, in which all the kids have by now reached middle age, or something. Anyway. Eagels is cited by the Surrealist critic and filmmaker Ado Kyrou as one of those “sublime melodramas in which the most unbridled sense of the baroque remains senseless for those unable to read between the images.” Also on his lists are a couple of Sirks (Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life), which means maybe I’m on to something; the “admirable” Minnelli film which gives this blog its name; and, um, Jack Webb’s Pete Kelly’s Blues. Watching this again also reminded me of how, way back in the day, when I’d get into a political argument with my friend and then colleague Ed Hulse (whose book on Lone Pine in the movies you should definitely own), and he would have my back to the wall on some issue or other, the only thing I would have left would be to exclaim, “I don’t need you! I don’t need anybody! I’m Jeanne Eagels!” Which would crack him up to the extent that he would at least stop attacking me, sob.
Anyhow, as you may have noticed, I’m kind of queer for Novak. No, wait, that came out wrong. How about, I’ve ever been of the considered opinion that she can do no wrong. (My mom tells me that even as a very small child I “liked” her, but I’ve never asked for Mater to give me any more specific example of how said like was manifested.) I feel about her pretty much as that MacMahonist nut felt about Charlton Heston, that her mere presence in any film was enough to create beauty. And there, above, she is. How can one disagree, I wonder. Some things are just, you know, cinematically sound. Novak was always one of them.
UPDATE: “This photo needs a proper ‘lol’ caption,” notes commenter Dizzy, but his link doesn’t work. No matter, I found it, and decided that in this case simpler is better.
My mother always claimed that my father “liked” Sheree North, and not understanding exactly what that meant either, I asked him about it a few years ago. “Sheree who?” he replied.
Clearly a lot of people can disagree about La Kim, but they’re wrong. Wrong, I say. Some of them even seem to prefer Doris Day. I don’t know how we’re all managed to live in the same world together for this long.
Actually the first Kim Novak film I ever saw was *not* VERTIGO. Rather it was THE MIRROR CRACK’D, an Agatha Christie adaptation from the early 80s, which I watched because I was a Christie fan (I rarely went to movies as a boy or teenager).
It had Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple, solving a murder among a Hollywood troupe filming on location in St. Mary Meade. The troupe included Elizabeth Taylor as the star, Novak as the jealous-rival actress, Rock Hudson as Taylor’s husband-director and Tony Curtis as her exlover-producer (other than Liz, I had barely a clue about these people’s previous work). The scenes with Novak are camp delights of deliriously over-the-top acting. There’s actually a scene set in a producer’s office and we see Kim sitting on the edge of the table, looking it her handheld mirror, adjusting her hair and admiring her makeup. And I also loved Novak and Taylor doing the epigrammatic version of chocolate-sauce cat-fights – Kim to Liz when they take publicity photos: “chin up, darling. Both of them.” Liz to Kim: “that dress on you reminds me of a wedding cake. From which everybody’s already had a piece.” (I’m chuckling myself to Proustian tears even typing this stuff in, though I haven’t seen the film in … gawd … 15–20 years.) Needles to say, Novak is way better than Taylor in the bitchy vamp contest.
Glenn … it will test your limits for All Things Kim.
You forget, Mr. Morton, that you are speaking to a man who ALSO (with His Lovely Wife) worships at the Altar Of Lansbury, and who in fact last night watched two, count ’em two, episodes of “Murder She Wrote,” from Season 11, no less. So I daresay I’m likely to gobble up “The Mirror Crack’d” when I next encounter it. In fact, I may just have to buy the damn thing now…
Just to whet your appetite some more, in THE MIRROR CRACK’D Lansbury plays Miss Marple in a much more common-sensical, less-dotty mode than, say, Margaret Rutherford did in that early-60s string of Marple films. If it weren’t for the anachronism (THE MIRROR CRACK’D is from 1980), you could almost criticize Lansbury for playing Miss Marple too much like Jessica Fletcher. This was clearly the film that won Lansbury her defining TV role.
But if you and The Lovely Wife want Lansbury in a Christie setting, I’d recommend over THE MIRROR CRACK’D (yes, I know … Kim) that you see if you haven’t already the Ustinov-as-Poirot version of DEATH ON THE NILE. Lansbury plays one of the passengers, an alcoholic romance writer. She is one of the two great sources of comedy in the film (along with Bette Davis and Maggie Smith as a grande dame and her bitter-spinster companion).
This photo needs a proper ‘lolcat’ caption:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/dvd_reviews51/kim_novak_/Kim-Novak-Collection_DVD_R1_Disc2_Bell-Book_03215.jpg
Count me as a Novak fan, too. Didn’t come to it early, I’m afraid, but I *did* see “Lylah Clare” (which I adore) in its first run at Grauman’s Chinese – which must count for something. I also remember R. Crumb’s caricature of Novak.
I’ve yet to see the entirety of “Eagels,” but I like what have seen. Notably that quasi-hallucinatory appearance of Virginia Grey when Novak is onstage. I also remember, when I saw the last half if it on television, mentally comparing the Novak and Agnes Moorehead performances, and thinking “Given a choice between someone ‘acting’ like crazy [i.e. Moorhead] and someone who simply exists for the camera [i.e. Novak], the latter is going to win every time.
My mom loved “Bell, Book, and Candle,” and I saw it on TV when I was about 7 and it blew my little mind. She named our cat Pyewacket, too.
It must be a guy thing. The only time Novak has ever had that effect on me is “Picnic.” She does her usual sleepwalker routine for most of the movie and then she starts to dance with Holden and she is magic. It goes away again almost as soon as the music stops, but still, for a brief shining moment, etc.
Probably too late getting this info out (unless folks read take note of “Recent Comments” on the right), but TCM just ran the trailer to JEANNE EAGELS (wacky – “I don’t want to know you, Jeanne, I want to MARRY you”) as they going to air it this Wednesday, Sept. 1, I believe, at 10pm (EST).