Happy Anniversary, Café – I Left My Heart Again…

On September 13, 2009, I published my first post as a contributor to Rick Armstrong’s newly inaugurated classic film blog, The Classic Film & TV Café!  That first piece of mine was titled, “I Left My Heart…Five San Francisco Favorites,” and in it I proceeded to list and discuss five of my favorite films set in my favorite American city, a town just south of where I live now and where I once lived for many years. As part of my congratulatory return to the Café in tribute to its impressive tenth year, I thought it might be fun, for old times’ sake, to revisit the subject of that first blog post. So, here I offer, exactly ten years later, five more San Francisco-set favorite films.

Cleverly titled After the Thin Man (1936) this second - after The Thin Man (1934) - in the six-film series is the one I like best of all. It begins with stylish, martini-sipping, wisecrack-swapping Nick and Nora Charles returning home by train to San Francisco from the New York sojourn where the first film took place. The pair arrives at their mansion-with-an-amazing-view  (which looks like it’s either on Telegraph Hill or in Pacific Heights, both ultra-toney ) to find a “welcome home” party that’s already far past full swing. And poor Asta, their irrepressible fox terrier, comes upon an even more startling scene when he discovers that “Mrs. Asta” has, in his absence, been consorting with the Scotty next door. Pretty soon, once the party winds down and the Scotty is driven out, there’s trouble brewing, and murder, involving lots of shenanigans and tomfoolery until Nick reveals the killer in the final minutes of the third act. The plots don’t matter that much in Thin Man movies, they follow a pretty standard whodunit pattern. The attraction is in the characters – Nick, Nora and Asta – and the sophisticated, witty-banter-filled world they inhabit. It doesn’t hurt at all that Powell and Loy and Skippy (as Asta) are loaded with charm and chemistry and are, thus, entirely irresistible. Always interesting in the Thin Man films is the Runyonesque cast of characters Nick and Nora encounter on each case. Among the supporting folk in After the Thin Man is a very young James Stewart with a central role in this murder mystery. It’s interesting to watch him before he became a star and fully developed his onscreen persona.

The final scene, as Nick, Nora and Asta depart San Francisco by train, is quite cute but the change it portends will ultimately have the effect of taking some zing out of the series.

 

"...and you call yourself a detective..."

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Out of the Past (1947), Jacques Tourneur’s quintessential noir, is only partially set in San Francisco. Truthfully, among the film’s key locations – the others are rural Bridgeport, California, Acapulco, Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe – it’s not the most alluringly depicted of the lot. But San Francisco has gotten so much limelight in so many other movies that I won't quibble.

It makes sense, considering Out of the Past’s convoluted plot, that a convoluted series of locations is part of the story. The opening is set in rural Bridgeport, California, a small town in the Sierras, where Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) is leading the low-key life of a gas station owner/operator. Jeff’s tranquil idyll will be interrupted when an old acquaintance happens to catch a glimpse of him and then come looking for him. Jeff has a past. And into the past Out of the Past will go, in flashback, with voiceover narration. Back to New York, where Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) hired Jeff, then a private eye, to find the woman, Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), who shot him and took him for $40,000 (close to $500,000 in 2019 dollars). Jeff will track her to Mexico and once there he will find her…and fall for her and not care when she tells him she didn’t take Whit’s money. Jeff will lie to Whit and say he couldn’t find her, then he and Kathie will steal away to San Francisco, hoping to escape the past together. This, of course, doesn't happen in film noir. So, when Kathie nastily double-crosses Jeff and leaves him holding the bag with a potential murder rap, he heads for the hills. Literally. And in Bridgeport he will open his gas station and meet Ann, a nice girl, and once more try to leave the past behind. But that will never be possible, and he will trek to Lake Tahoe to face Whit. And he will go to San Francisco once more, this time at Whit’s behest. And, finally, in the Sierra Nevada, he will meet his fate.

Some San Francisco locales depicted in Out of the Past were filmed on a backlot...

the fictional "Mason building" in San Francisco

But there are also some nice location scenes, too.

on Broadway in San Francisco

Even more evocative - to the point of transporting - are the Lake Tahoe and Mexico settings, some of it studio work and some of it shot on location. Credit for this goes to Tourneur, the art director and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (1948 Oscar nomination for I Remember Mama). 

Kathie's bungalow in Mexico

Whit's estate in Lake Tahoe

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Kim Novak, Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth in Pal Joey

Pal Joey (1957) began as a 1940 Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hart. The story, by John O’Hara, followed the exploits of a conniving Chicago nightclub performer, primarily a dancer, who gets involved with a wealthy married woman. Gene Kelly starred, and it was the part and the show that would launch him to stardom and send him to Hollywood. When Pal Joey was adapted to the screen 17 years later, Joey would now be a so-so lounge singer newly arrived in San Francisco. With Frank Sinatra in the leading role, adjusting the character’s forte was not only logical, but necessary. The 1950s Joey would be nicer and more likable than the 1940s Joey, and the wealthy woman (Rita Hayworth) would now be an ex of his, formerly a stripper known as “Vanessa the Undresser” who’d married money and is now a rich widow. Kim Novak was third on the bill as the naïve chorus girl Joey falls for. San Francisco would play a  supporting role, providing locales like the ferry building, Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, Jackson Square, the Marina and Pacific Heights as a dreamy backdrop for all the drama and romance. It doesn’t stop there, though. Nelson Riddle would also be on hand taking care of musical arrangements, notably Sinatra’s renditions of “The Lady is a Tramp,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “There’s a Small Hotel” and the medley, "What Do I Care for a Dame"/"Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"/"I Could Write a Book." These performances alone would be worth the price of admission. The music, the racy elements (for the time) of the story, the glamour of Rita and Kim, and the tarnished charm of Ol’ Blue Eyes as Joey combined to make Pal Joey a very big hit that would go on to earn four Oscar nominations.

The Spreckels mansion served as the site for Chez Joey, Joey's club

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Bullitt (1968) provied Steve McQueen, already an A-lister when he filmed it, with his defining screen role. As maverick San Francisco police detective Frank Bullitt, McQueen is  the epitome of late '60s cool. The film was a monster hit and would turn out to be a precursor to the Dirty Harry franchise. In fact, McQueen was offered the Dirty Harry role (along with other renegade cop roles, like Popeye Doyle in The French Connection), but turned it (and them) down to avoid typecasting.

As James Stewart did in Vertigo, McQueen makes his way up, down and around the many streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, though in a hotter car at a higher speed. Location footage includes scenes in neighborhoods as diverse as Nob Hill,  Pacific Heights, the Embarcadero, North Beach, Potrero Hill, The Mission, South of Market (aka/SOMA) and downtown. McQueen, who produced, would choose Brit Peter Yates to direct because of his experience shooting on location for Tony Richardson and because of a film he’d made in 1967, Robbery, that featured an exciting car chase. Of course, the most famous sequence in Bullitt, it’s centerpiece, is a 10-minute car chase that winds through all parts of the city and climaxes in a takedown race over Mount San Bruno that ends in a deadly crash in Brisbane, a small town south of the city. That particular route was part of my daily commute for many years and every so often I’d think of that sequence when I reached the crest of the mountain and started down the other side. But I was never inspired enough to accelerate. Bullitt is another film in which the plot is incidental – a sort of MacGuffin. The real “story” is Steve McQueen’s character, Bullitt, and that tale is enhanced by the iconic chase scene – the “granddaddy of them all" – and the breathtaking city of San Francisco. For my full review of Bullitt on its 50th anniversary last year, click here.

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What’s Up, Doc?  (1972) was the second of the three films that made Peter Bogdanovich’s reputation as one of the top New Hollywood directors of the early 1970s (along with Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin and others). Before it had come his masterpiece, The Last Picture Show (1971), and following would be Paper Moon (1973). Bogdanovich’s standing - and career - as a director would suffer a dizzying plunge in the mid-'70s, but this was before that, and What’s Up, Doc? is an effervescent delight of a tribute to the screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s. Stars Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal share a fine chemistry and are supported by a dazzling ensemble cast including Madeline Kahn (in her film debut), Austin Pendleton, Kenneth Mars, Michael Murphy, Mabel Albertson and more.

Four identical bags...

What’s Up, Doc? has been referred to by some as a re-make of Bringing Up Baby (1938). It’s not. It’s not even a “loose re-make,” but it is a superbly crafted homage. The plot follows the confusion that is unleashed when four identical plaid suitcases arrive at the same San Francisco hotel at the same time. One bag belongs to musicologist Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal, wearing a pair of glasses a la Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby), and contains a set of important “musical rocks.” Another bag belongs to Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand), a wacky perennial college student who leaves chaos and trouble in her wake wherever she roams. Her bag is packed with her clothes and a dictionary. A third bag belongs to “Mr. Smith” (Michael Murphy) and contains confidential government documents. The fourth bag belongs to wealthy Mrs. Van Hoskins (Mabel Albertson) and holds her vast collection of expensive jewelry. As you might expect, an incredible mix-up occurs and madcap escapades ensue.

One of the highlights of What’s Up, Doc? is a riotous car chase through the city involving, first, a delivery bicycle and then a decorative VW Beetle. The sequence is a wild parody of the legendary Bullitt chase and ends with a splash in the San Francisco Bay. Written by Buck Henry (The Graduate), David Newman (Bonnie and Clyde) and Robert Benton (Bonnie and Clyde, who won Oscars for Kramer vs. Kramer and Places in the Heart) and based on a story by Bogdanovich, the film also features a soundtrack filled with songs, sung or just heard in the background, by Cole Porter, George Gershwin and others of that golden age of popular music. This is one film that deserves a whole lot more love and attention than it gets.

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Curious about my original five picks of 10 years ago? Click here. And if you have favorite San Francisco-set movies, tell me about it.

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Congratulations, Rick, and thank you for everything!

The Best Movies You May Have Never Seen (Dec 2015)

Recommended and reviewed by Lady Eve's Reel Life

German filmmaker Max Ophuls.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). Max Ophuls, the legendary German-born director most well-known for the films he made in France-- La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1952), The Earrings of Madame de… (1953), and Lola Montès (1955)--also directed four films in America during the post-war era. The jewel among these, and a film equal to his best French work, is Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948).

A romantic drama based on a novella by Stefan Zweig, Letter From an Unknown Woman charts the course of an ill-starred love affair. Such a narrative may seem sheer melodrama, but this film is a genuinely transporting experience. Credit this to Ophuls’ famed mastery of the mobile camera (moving here with the grace of a Viennese waltz) and staging, a polished script by Howard Koch (Casablanca) and strong lead performances by Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan.

Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan.

Letter From an Unknown Woman opens in elegant turn-of-the-century Vienna during the wee hours of a wet night. A well-dressed man (Jourdan) steps down from a carriage and, saying goodnight to his companions, jokes about the duel at dawn to which he has been challenged. Entering his well-appointed flat alone he tells his manservant that he will be departing again very shortly, "Honor is a luxury only gentlemen can afford," he remarks. The mute servant indicates a letter awaiting him and he opens the envelope and begins to read as he makes preparations to flee:

"By the time you read this letter, I may be dead," it says. The voice of a woman, the letter writer, begins to speak the words she has written, “I have so much to tell you and, perhaps, so little time…” As the man intently reads on, her tale unfolds in flashback.

The woman, Lisa Berndle (Fontaine), recalls how, as a girl, she became enthralled with up-and-coming concert pianist Stefan Brand, the recipient of her letter. Though the suave virtuoso had been completely unaware of her, Lisa privately harbored a deeply held fantasy that their destinies were entwined. And they are, but not in the way she imagined; the brief encounters they do share exact an incredible cost.

Lisa’s letter has come as a surprise and a shock to Stefan and he only finishes reading it as the dawn is breaking.

As the film circles from present to past to present again, it appears that both Lisa and Stefan have been the victims of their own misspent passions; she risking everything for an unattainable ideal, and he wasting himself on a string of shallow affairs. John, Stefan's mute valet, perhaps mirroring the director’s own viewpoint, observes the all-too-human folly around him and serves as a silent, compassionate witness.
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Recommended and reviewed by Richard Finch, co-founder of the Foreign Film Classics Facebook Group 

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Paulette Goddard.

The Young in Heart (1938). This Selznick production is a charming comedy about the Carletons, a family of con artists exiled from the French Riviera by the authorities. On the train to London, they are befriended by a gullible and lonely rich old lady named Miss Fortune (!) who has no living relatives, and they quickly concoct a plan to fleece her. She essentially adopts this family of scoundrels, who then set to work subtly persuading her to leave them her money in her will.

Roland Young as "Sahib."

To make themselves more credible, when they reach London they temporarily assume the appearance of conventionality and even get jobs. The more fond they grow of Miss Fortune, the more they unexpectedly find their new lives of respectability growing on them, and she becomes a sort of moral fairy godmother, granting the family not riches but ethics. The movie, released the same year as You Can't Take It with You, is in a sense a Capra comedy turned on its head, with a family of eccentrics finding happiness by forgoing their nonconformist ways and becoming conventional.

The Flying Wombat.

The Carletons are expertly played by Roland Young as the father, a blustering former actor who pretends to be a British colonel retired from colonial India and is called Sahib by his family; Billie Burke as the dithering, scatter-brained mother; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as the son; and winsome Janet Gaynor as the sweet-natured and intelligent daughter. The stage actress Minnie Dupree plays the childlike Miss Fortune, and lovely Paulette Goddard is Fairbanks's love interest. The movie also includes an incredible futuristic automobile called a Flying Wombat (actually a 1938 Phantom Corsair) that at several points plays an important part in the film. The typically high Selznick production values (including an elaborately staged train wreck), appealing cast, and plot that balances the roguery of the Carletons with the guilelessness of Miss Fortune, and humor with sentiment, results in one of the more unusual comedies of the 1930's and a very entertaining viewing experience.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)...a Lubitsch Christmas

The Shop Around the Corner, Ernst Lubitsch’s timeless 1940 romantic comedy, has grown old with grace over its 70 years; occasionally a great film will age like a rare bottle of Tokaji…

Balta St., Budapest

Director Lubitsch, known for his mythical “touch” and at the height of his artistry in 1940, seems to have taken special care with The Shop Around the Corner. It was one of his favorites of own films and he wrote, “Never did I make a picture in which the atmosphere and the characters were truer…” The atmosphere is unmistakable...from the first strains of “Ochi Tchornya” heard over Leo the Lion’s roar, to the dreamlike locale near Budapest’s historic Andrassy Street, to each of the film’s distinctive characters, the spirit of old Europe is alive on screen.

Set during Christmastime in the snow-sprinkled capital, the story follows a series of mix-ups and missteps among employees of a picturesque gift shop in the heart of the city. Two clerks carry on a battle-of-the-sexes while romantically pursuing anonymous pen pals; the genial store owner suspects betrayal at home and at work; a duplicitous clerk is into ugly mischief and a wisecracking errand boy aspires to move up in the world…


Matuschek's gift shop

Samson Raphaelson (Suspicion, Green Dolphin Street) penned a screenplay based on Nikolaus (Miklós) László’s play; William H. Daniels (The Naked City, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) was cinematographer and Werner Heymann (Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be) wrote the score.

The ensemble cast includes several of MGM’s top supporting players. Among them is Frank Morgan in one of his most interesting roles as Mr. Matuschek, the colorful charmer who owns the gift shop. A dark turn in the subplot concerning Matuschek gives Morgan an opportunity to portray affecting pathos.

Venerable Felix Bressart plays the meek/endearing clerk, Pirovich (shown in the scene below). Versatile Joseph Schildkraut defines ‘loathsome’ as Vadas. Also in the featured cast are Sara Haden, William Tracy and Inez Courtney.



The stars, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, shared a legendary chemistry on film and it is never more apparent than in The Shop Around the Corner. Stewart is at his most appealing as Mr. Kralik, head clerk and right hand man to Mr. Matuschek. In this role, Stewart's broad signature mannerisms are tempered by the sensitivity with which he plays Kralik's romantic yearnings. But it is Sullavan's performance that astonishes. Her Klara Novak, an idealistic but difficult shop girl blinded by lofty dreams, exudes breathless eagerness, brittle fragility, willfulness and so much more. Sullavan’s amazing voice, her eyes, her facial expressions and physical movements - all are musical.

Margaret Sullavan

Margaret Sullavan was discovered on Broadway by director John M. Stahl (Leave Her to Heaven) who brought her to Hollywood to star in Only Yesterday (1933) with John Boles. By this time Sullavan had already married and divorced Henry Fonda and would soon marry director William Wyler. By 1936 the actress was married to agent/producer Leland Hayward and about to make her best films: Three Comrades (1938), which garnered Sullavan a Best Actress Oscar nomination, The Shopworn Angel (1938), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and The Mortal Storm (1940). In the last three she co-starred with James Stewart. The pair had first worked together on Next Time We Love (1936), a result of Sullavan suggesting her old friend Stewart for the part. In The Shop Around the Corner, the third of the their four collaborations, the co-stars seem to practically dance their scenes together, such is the rhythm between them.

With the closing sequences of The Shop Around the Corner, Lubitsch demonstrates his consummate finesse…

Frank Morgan and Charles Smith

Mr. Matuschek returns to his store on Christmas Eve to total the day’s receipts, thank his staff and hand out bonuses. It is closing time and as the wistful shopkeeper departs, he says goodnight to, and we have a last glimpse of, most of the others as they leave to celebrate the holidays.

When new young employee Rudy (Charles Smith) emerges, Matuschek takes him under his wing and out to a glorious Christmas dinner of roast goose, potatoes in butter…and “a double order of apple strudel in vanilla sauce.” The two, no longer alone on Christmas Eve, strike up a joyful camaraderie.

Inside the darkened shop, Stewart and Sullavan move in perfect harmony as Kralik and Klara finally connect with each other. This last scene, one of the most deeply romantic and witty ever confected, contains the distilled essence of Lubitsch’s “touch.”

Ted Ashley...Warner Brothers...and "the New Hollywood"

I’d never heard of studio exec Ted Ashley until I became engrossed in the life and career of silent film star John Gilbert earlier this year. When I spoke with her in August, the actor’s daughter Leatrice mentioned that in the 1970s she had been invited to visit the storied home her father had built in the 1920s by its current owner, Ted Ashley. Leatrice was in the process of researching her biography of her father then, and Ashley had graciously welcomed her into his home.

Ted Ashley, Jack Warner, Jack Valenti

Leatrice’s memories of the 1400 Tower Grove Road property intrigued me and inspired me to look further into its history (click here to learn more about “The House That Jack Built”). I learned that the Gilbert estate had been home to industry names for 55 years. Among its noteworthy owners, Ted Ashley, in residence from 1969 – 1977, had been Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. from 1969 to 1980.

I soon discovered that Ashley's regime dramatically rejuvenated Warner Bros. when he took over – and this prompted me to find out more about him…

The Brooklyn-born son of a tailor, Ted Ashley entered the world on August 2, 1922 as Theodore Assofsky. At age 15, young Ted went to work in the offices of New York’s famed William Morris Agency, the premier talent agency in the U.S. During this time he attended City College of New York and studied accounting. Deeply ambitious, Ashley was running his own talent firm while still in his 20s. The Ashley-Steiner agency represented artists in the fields of literature, theater, films and, later, TV.

To understand a bit more about Ted Ashley's ascent in the movie industry, I took a quick look into the business of talent…

The William Morris Agency began in 1898 when a young man by that name became a vaudeville agent.
In 1918 the company incorporated in New York and, as silent films emerged, Morris encouraged its clients to work in the new medium while most competitors stuck with vaudeville. The company began to dominate the agency business with a client list that included Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, the Marx Brothers and Mae West. As radio developed, Morris clients were urged to work in this new medium as well. By 1930, the agency had opened an office in Los Angeles where movies, by this time talking films, were booming. William Morris died in the early 1930s, but his agency carried on under his son in the west coast office and long-time partner, Abe Lastfogel, in New York. 

MCA (Music Corporation of America) began in the 1920s in Chicago packaging band performances for hotels and radio broadcasts and arrived in Hollywood in the late '30s. In 1946, company founder Jules Stein named 33-year old Lew Wasserman president of the company. By this time MCA was reputed to represent about half the industry’s stars and had become known as "the octopus," an agency with its tentacles everywhere in the industry.

In 1962, MCA acquired Universal Pictures and merged with Decca Records and was forced, under anti-trust laws, to divest itself of its talent interests. As a result, the William Morris agency regained its eminence and other agencies made significant inroads as well. CMA (Creative Management Associates), founded in 1960 by Freddie Fields and David Begelman, became a boutique agency for major stars of the day like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.

With MCA’s divestiture, Ted Ashley’s Ashley-Steiner signed some of MCA’s foremost clients. Merging with Famous Artists, it became the Ashley-Famous agency. Among many things, Ashley-Famous was noted for packaging and selling TV shows such as “The Twilight Zone,” “Star Trek,” “Mission Impossible” and quite a few others.

Together with Lew Wasserman of MCA and David Begelman and Freddie Fields of CMA, Ted Ashley was part of an elite group widely considered Hollywood’s first generation of “super-agents.”

One of Ted Ashley’s long-time friends was business czar Steve Ross whose Kinney Corp. acquired Ashley’s agency in 1967. In 1969, Ashley helped Kinney acquire Warner Bros. (Jack Warner retired the following year). Ashley was made Chairman and CEO; his talent agency was sold to avoid a conflict of interest; the agency ultimately evolved into ICM (International Creative Management) through a merger with CMA in 1975.

At the time Ted Ashley took the helm at Warner’s, the ailing studio had some recent groundbreaking films to its  credit but was financially unstable and had made negligible profit during the year prior to his arrival. After its first year under Ashley, the revitalized studio made tens of millions.

What had happened to Warner Brothers? By the end of the 1940s, the post-war decline of the movie industry had hit the studio hard and it continued to struggle through the next decade. One contract player, James Dean, became a star but  was killed in 1955, just as his films were being released.  That same year the studio entered into a TV deal with ABC Television. It had a hit with the western series, “Cheyenne,” and this led to a run of successful western and detective shows over the next several years, including classics like “Maverick,” “77 Sunset Strip,” and “The Untouchables.”

Films remained a hit-and-miss proposition for Warner's into the 1960s, and in 1967 Jack Warner sold his
company stock to Seven Arts. A market slump in 1969 led to the deal with Kinney and Ashley’s ascendancy.

Committing to the kind of films that reflected contemporary themes and tastes, starred popular and emerging stars and featured auteur directors like Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, Warner's proved itself willing to take chances and set trends. And it was Ashley who gave the green light on all Warner's projects of the day as well as those of First Artists, Orion and the Ladd Company.

A selection of films made during Ted Ashley’s tenure includes a slew of Oscar winners and nominees as well as blockbusters, trendsetters and niche films: Woodstock (1970), Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), Klute (1971), Summer of ’42 (1971), Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Deliverance (1972), Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972), the studio’s first blockbuster of the era, The Exorcist (1973), Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), the Mel Brooks sensation, Blazing Saddles (1974), disaster epic The Towering Inferno (1974), Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975), All the President’s Men (1976), Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Superman (1978) and Chariots of Fire (1981).

Box office smashes like Dirty Harry and Superman spawned lucrative film franchises.

Ashley also oversaw production of several popular TV series, including “Alice,” “Wonder Woman,” “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and “Chico and the Man.” In the mid-‘70s he hired David L. Wolper to develop a new form of TV programming, the mini-series. In 1977 Wolper produced the historic series “Roots” for Warner Bros., a powerful launch of the genre and winner of nine Emmy Awards.

Some have referred to the Ashley years as “the silver age” or “the second great age of Warner Bros.” When he departed as chairman/CEO in 1980,  the stage had been set for modern filmmaking and marketing.

After leaving his post at Warner Bros., Ashley became Vice Chairman of Warner Communications, the studio’s holding company, which also owned the Atari video game company and the Six Flags theme parks. Ashley retired from WC in 1988 and the following year Warner merged with Time, Inc., becoming Time Warner.

Ted Ashley’s retirement years were devoted to his impressive art collection which included paintings by Leger, Gris, Miro and Rothko as well as sculptures by Brancusi, Matisse and Degas.

He died on August 24, 2002 in New York at age 80 of leukemia.

John Calley, who had been hired as production chief when Ashley took over Warner Bros., recalled, “He was one of the smartest men I’ve known. The studio had been losing money year after year. The first year we got there, the studio made $35 million...”  Others remembered Ashley as a caring as well as shrewd, knowledgeable and successful Hollywood studio executive.

Nuanced Terror - Jack Clayton's "The Innocents"

Light and shadow flicker across the screen. Sobbing is heard as a pair of praying hands, clasping and unclasping, come into view. The sobs continue.

A woman’s suffering face appears above the tortured hands. Birds twitter…her distraught voice whispers…

All I want to do is save the children not destroy them. More than anything I love children. More than anything they need affection, love, someone who will belong to them and to whom they will belong.

And then, as a man’s voice asks Do you have an imagination?, the screen focuses, suddenly revealing a well-appointed office, an elegant gentleman and the woman we have already seen…who now sits in a chair and speaks animatedly with the man who continues to ask questions and explain the situation he offers.

Director Jack Clayton

These first moments of Jack Clayton’s masterful 1961 film, The Innocents, set the stage for a chilling and absorbing tale of bewitchment.

Deborah Kerr stars as Miss Giddens, an anxious, fragile-seeming young woman who begins her first assignment as a governess for two orphaned children on a remote estate.

Michael Redgrave briefly portrays the gentleman, Miss Giddens’ employer, whose questions and revelations prime and subtly spook her, before she sets foot in the stately home where events will unfold.

The action intensifies when Miss Giddens arrives at Bly, a magnificent manor that far exceeds her expectations in its grandeur and beauty. She is “very excited, indeed” to be there and her two “angelic” and precocious charges easily charm her. An earthy housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), serves to ground the excitable governess…whose journey proceeds from enchantment to confusion, to torment and disintegration.

Henry James

American novelist Henry James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1898 while living in England in a large rambling mansion. James has recorded that the story was suggested to him by an anecdote he heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This scrap of a tale concerned young children haunted by the malevolent ghosts of a pair of servants who tried, again and again, to lure them to their deaths.

The James novella depicts a young governess on her first assignment, the care of two children living in a grand mansion on a vast estate. The plot deepens when the young woman, daughter of a vicar, begins to suspect the presence of the evil spirits of two deceased servants.

It was several years after James’ book was published before critics began to wrangle in earnest over the interpretation of the story. By the 1920s several had proposed that The Turn of the Screw was less a ghost story and more the tale of inexperienced and high-strung governess who succumbed to hallucinations and madness. A 1934 essay by prominent critic Edmund Wilson dramatically advanced this view.

Henry James himself was equivocal about his intentions, and statements he made on the subject have been cited to support both apparitionist and non-apparitionist views.

Fascination with The Turn of the Screw hasn't waned over the years and it has been adapted from the page to other mediums including opera, the stage, TV and film. In February 1950, Peter Cookson’s production of William Archibald’s stage adaption of the James novella debuted on Broadway as The Innocents; Beatrice Straight starred as the governess.

Eleven years later, the play was adapted to film by British director, Jack Clayton (Room at the Top). Though William Archibald was involved, it was Truman Capote who was primarily responsible for the polished screenplay.

Truman Capote

Capote endeavored to maintain the story’s ambiguity as he felt Henry James had originally conceived it – are the ghosts real or are they the fantasies of a governess gone mad?

Taking the modern view, it’s not difficult to interpret The Innocents as an intricately staged reflection of an unstable woman’s descent into madness: the film closely follows the increasingly erratic behavior and visible deterioration of the omnipresent governess; no one but the governess actually “sees” the ghosts she claims are present; by the film’s end, even the sensible and supportive housekeeper is at odds with the hysterical young woman…and there are many visual clues that the governess may be projecting her own imaginings onto her surroundings. It is no stretch these days to believe that a deranged governess would be capable of terrifying a frightened child to death.

But, viewed from another perspective, the tale can also be read as the story of an inexperienced but well-meaning young woman confronted with the supernatural in the form of malicious spirits. Her fervid determination to save the children from possession could explain her unorthodox behavior. And that is what most people believed when The Turn of the Screw was first published.

Enigmatic and haunting, The Innocents leaves the audience to its own conclusions.

A luminous turn by Deborah Kerr (in her own favorite film performance), Freddie Francis’ cinematography, the script of Archibald and Capote and Georges Auric’s original music all mesh under Jack Clayton’s accomplished direction to create the acknowledged masterpiece among the many adaptations of The Turn of the Screw.

Dial H for Hitchcock: North by Northwest at the Rafael...free to the public

When I was a little girl, the only director whose name I was familiar with was Alfred Hitchcock. Though I didn't see any of his signature films of the era in a theater - Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) - I must've seen the trailers, because I was well aware that he made exciting, colorful and glamorous movies.

Psycho (1960) was the first Hitchcock film I saw on the big screen, and it was a far cry from his elaborate VistaVision/Technicolor creations of the mid- to late 1950s. I saw Psycho second-run (I was finally old enough) at the local movie house, the Ritz Theater, with a friend who'd already seen it. Pal that she was, she nudged me just as Arbogast reached the staircase landing and a figure with a knife darted toward him...so, naturally, I shrieked long and loud ...

I was fortunate to be able to see Rear Window when it was re-released into theaters in 1984, but have seen most of Hitchcock's films on television. There's no question that his films come through powerfully on TV, but they were made to be seen on a theater screen.

This past July the Rafael Theater screened the silent version of Blackmail (1929). It was an incredible experience; the film exceeded my expectations in just about every way possible. I was surprised that it was so well-crafted and fluid and that it contained so many components that later became Hitchcock trademarks. Accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra underscored the action and added dimension. And it was thrilling to be surrounded by an appreciative SRO audience.

Six weeks later, at noon on Sunday, September 5, the Rafael presented North by Northwest free to the public as part of its quarterly "Everybody's Classics" series. At 11:40 a.m. the line was long, but good seats were still to be had. By show time Theater 1 was packed and anticipation ran high.

Then Bernard Herrmann's pulsing score began and Saul Bass's title sequence of crisscrossing lines filled the screen. North by Northwest was upon us and in just a few exhilarating moments I was whisked into the adventure.

Possibly Hitchcock's quintessential thrill-ride, North by Northwest incorporates many familiar themes and plot elements - an innocent man accused, a romance complicated by mistrust and betrayal, a double chase - the police after the innocent man and the innocent man after the true villain(s), a backdrop of international espionage...

North by Northwest has been linked to two of Hitchcock's earlier classics, The 39 Steps (1935) and Notorious (1946), but by 1959 the director, at the height of his powers, was in a position to control just about every aspect of his films, much more so than he had been 10 and 20+ years earlier.

He was able to get his favorite actor/star, Cary Grant, for the lead. And though he was unsuccessful in enticing Princess Grace back to the screen as his leading lady, he transformed Academy Award-winning method actress Eva Marie Saint into a stunning and complex femme fatale. James Mason, Martin Landau, Leo G. Carroll and Jessie Royce Landis rounded out his first-rate cast.

Bernard Herrmann, who by now had worked with Hitchcock on several films, was just completing the score for the pilot of "The Twilight Zone" when he began work on North by Northwest. Ernest Lehman wrote a sophisticated and witty script for which he earned an Oscar nomination. Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Burks, production designer Robert F. Boyle (also Oscar-nominated for this film) and others with whom Hitchcock had worked over the years joined the collaboration.

All of these ingredients plus glorious VistaVision and Technicolor added up to create one of Hitchcock's most successful films.

I've seen North by Northwest countless times. I felt like I knew the film well, but to finally see it on a movie screen was to see it with new eyes.

Cary Grant's starpower was almost overpowering - his screen persona was that commanding. What grace, what aplomb! It's not surprising that Bernard Herrmann adjusted his score to match what he described as Grant's "Astaire-like agility."

As for special effects, the crop-dusting set piece with its truck-explosion finale and the moonlit chase across the face of Mount Rushmore have long been legendary. Via the big screen I could almost feel the heat of the explosion and smell the night air of South Dakota. As I watched, I was reminded of how the crop-dusting sequence was echoed in early James Bond films...and of Steven Spielberg's homage in Close Encounters (1977) when he nearly replicated the set design of Hitchcock's night-time Black Hills.

Of course, the suspense seemed magnified, but I also noticed the film's humor seemed more overt and the seduction scenes between Grant and Saint more intimate and...erotic. The film was so precisely paced, with suspense building, then relieved with either humor or romance, then building again...

Afterward, I couldn't help wishing I'd been able to see North by Northwest back in 1959 at the Ritz. The young girl I was then would've thought she'd been on the greatest rollercoaster ride of her life!

Alfred Hitchcock has been widely acknowledged for his amazing ability to, with the artful use of various techniques, easily maneuver an audience's emotions and point of view. It's hard to maintain much distance from Hitchcock's best films. This could be why I often enjoy experiencing his films a bit more than I enjoy understanding them.

As with all Hitchcock films, North by Northwest has a a thing or two going on beneath its glossy surface. But on that Labor Day weekend in San Rafael inside a darkened theater full of laughing, sighing, cheering people, I was a kid again for a while. Happily immersed in a suspenseful, clever, sexy adventure, I didn't even notice that, from the first note of Herrmann's score to the final shot of a darkened railroad tunnel, we were all being swept along as if aboard a sleek 20th Century Limited under the command of a brilliant and crafty locomotive engineer.