At TCM, John Garfield is Star of the Month: On Tuesday Night, February 9, at 9:45 p.m. ET, He Appears in His Greatest Performance, in Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul (1947), Arguably the Greatest Boxing Picture of All Time; the Presentation Starts with The Sea Wolf (1941) at 8 p.m. ET; We Were Strangers (1949) at 11:45 p.m. ET; The Breaking Point (1950) at 1:45 a.m. ET; and Juarez (1939) at 3:30 a.m. ET

By David in TN
Tuesday, February 9, 2021 at 12:49:00 A.M. EST

On Tuesday Night, February 9, at 9:45 p.m. ET, TCM shows Body and Soul (1947) as part of John Garfield Star of the Month. It starts with The Sea Wolf (1941) at 8 p.m. ET, We Were Strangers (1949) at 11:45 p.m. ET, The Breaking Point (1950) at 1:45 a.m. ET, and Juarez (1939) at 3:30 a.m. ET.

If you listen closely during the early part of Body and Soul, it’s explained why Lili Palmer speaks with a German accent.

N.S.: When I was a kid (late 1960s), I used to see Julie Garfinkle movies all the time, on the local Million Dollar Movie, which was either on WPIX (Channel 11), or WOR (Channel 9). The was the show that ended with a video of people heading home after work on a weekday, either as straphangers on the subway, or commuters on the Long Island Railroad. You’d see a railroad coffee shop guy filling paper cups with coffee from one of those huge coffee urns, a job I would later do in the Jamaica LIRR Station in a section that no longer exists. (Every big urban railroad station has large sections, including bathrooms, that are buried behind walls for many years at a time. Only old commuters, workers, structural engineers and homeless guys know where everything is hidden. Occasionally, someone will write a book about the secrets of a really famous station, like Grand Central.)

The going-home video was always accompanied by Max Steiner’s main theme from Gone with the Wind (1939). Thus, I always associated Steiner’s theme with melancholy New York images.

I saw a number of Garfield pictures from the ‘40s on that show: Between Two Worlds (with Ida Lupino), a World War II fantasy in which two star-crossed lovers in London during the Blitz decide that their lives are meaningless, and that they should therefore end them, Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and, of course, Body and Soul (1947).

My friend and partner-in-crime, David in TN, may be Julie Garfinkle’s (Garfield’s) biggest living fan, and his promotion of Garfinkle/Garfield not only reminded me about the man, but caused me to appreciate anew his greatness as an actor. He was all about intensity.

When I saw him recently in Michael Curtiz’ The Breaking Point (1950), I was amazed by how much better he was playing the same role Bogey had introduced in Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not (1944).

(While I still find that picture very entertaining, due in part to the sexual chemistry between Bogart and his soon-to-be wife, Lauren “Betty” Bacall, its secret star was Walter Brennan, who steals the show as drunken first mate, “Eddie.” Eddie was a really big deal in some Hemingway stories, and had to have been based on a friend of Papa’s. I used to recall To Have and Have Not as a masterpiece, but no longer do, and have re-evaluated my stance vis-à-vis Hawks. Someone (David?) wrote that To Have is essentially a re-make of Curtiz’ 1943 masterpiece, Casablanca, but Hawks botched the ending. (As had Curtiz!) The heroes, Harry Morgan and Frenchie, are going to be killed by the Vichy authorities or the Nazis, but Harry is talking as if what he and Frenchie had done—beating a couple of Vichy officials half to death—were no big deal.

Hawks was a great talent, but after His Girl Friday in 1940, even his best pictures had serious flaws. Where the greatest directors would fade once they hit 60, he started to fade while in his forties.)

The Breaking Point’s biggest problem is that it’s Walter-free. In my opinion, Walter Brennan was the greatest character actor of them all. In his stead, the script called for a “magical negro” as first mate, who serves as Harry’s conscience. Curtiz cast Juano Hernandez in the role, and he’s excellent, but the role itself is the problem. Magical negro roles call for a double suspension of disbelief. First, the suspension of disbelief required by every work of fiction, and a second one required of any White who has any real-world experience with blacks.

The third version of Hemingway’s novel, Don Siegel’s The Gun-Runners (1958), starred Audie Murphy, with Eddie Albert as the heavy, and a splendid supporting cast—Gita Hall, Everett Sloane, Richard Jaeckel, Jack Elam, John Qualen, Herb Vigran, et al.

The Gun-Runners was the weakest of the three adaptations, and yet it is still worth watching. Hemingway was such a powerful writer that even the book considered his weakest novel could serve as absorbing material for three pictures. If Hemingway were writing today, not only would nobody film his stories, but he couldn’t even get published, in the first place.

I keep seeing references to this story as a “short story.” It’s a novel. Apparently, one content provider misrepresented it, and at least one other content provider repeated his misrepresentation.

 

Reprinted from Wednesday, January 22, 2020

TCM Doesn’t Just Show Great Tough-Guy Movies on Noir Alley! On Thursday Night, January 23, at 10 p.m. ET, See One of the Greatest Boxing Pictures of All Time, Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul (1947), Starring Julius Garfinkle, with the Beautiful Lili Palmer

Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 7:20:00 P.M. EST

By David in TN

On Thursday Night, January 23, at 10 p.m. ET, TCM shows one of the most famous boxing movies of all time, Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul (1947). John Garfield stars in one of his most famous roles, along with Lili Palmer, Hazel Brooks, William Conrad, Lloyd Goff, Anne Revere, Joseph Pevney and Canada Lee.

Film Noir Guide: “A heavyweight champion in the boxing noir category, Body and Soul has been hailed by some as the greatest of all boxing movies. Although The Set-Up has the more exciting boxing scenes, Body and Soul has Garfield and that's enough to make it a winner on any judge’s card.

“Garfield plays a hungry young pugilist whose only motive is the dough. Like most poor kids who make it big, he learns how to spend it quickly and frivolously. After years of living the wild life as the undefeated world champion, his mettle is tested when he’s given sixty grand and ordered to bet against himself in an upcoming championship fight.

“This film has loads of outstanding characters; Garfield's mother (Revere), who hates her son is mixed up in such a savage business; his loyal girlfriend (Palmer), seemingly willing to wait forever for her man to straighten out; a femme fatale (Brooks) out to get what she can for as long as the ride lasts; Garfield’s conniving manager (Conrad); a crooked fight promoter (Goff); Garfield’s trainer and childhood pal (Pevney), who hates the monster his best friend is becoming; and African-American ex-champ Lee, whose career was cut short because of a brain clot.

“None of the boxing clichés are missing from Body and Soul and its impact has been blunted by time, but the acting is great. Director Rossen was a professional boxer for a short time.”

[N.S.: They weren't “boxing clichés” at the time. Later screenwriters and directors turned them into boxing clichés.]

N.S.: I fell in love with Lilli Palmer when I saw Body and Soul on TV as a kid. During my first year in West Germany (1980-81), I was “adopted” by a local family. They would have me over sometimes on weekends, and I started reading Palmer’s German-language autobiography. The father told me I could keep it, so I gave him a slim, entertaining book called Your Swabian Neighbors, written by an American who’d been living in Southwest Germany for years. I think it was commissioned by the U.S. Army for G.I.s. I can’t recall which organization or agency gave it to me.

I didn’t recall that Palmer was a Jew who’d fled the Nazis. (I already knew from the picture that she was German; she played an expatriate beauty queen.) I recall her describing her father as a proper, stiff Prussian. Either my memory failed me, or Palmer was being very diplomatic. I (re-?)learned she was a Jew from her IMDB page.

My biggest disappointment, in reading her book, was that she had absolutely nothing to say about working with John Garfield on her biggest picture. No chemistry, I guess. She also had nothing of note to say about her marriage to Rex Harrison, but that was to be expected. Harrison demanded and got the concession in all his divorces that his soon-to-be-ex not say anything of substance about life with “Sexy Rexy,” suggesting to me that he was a sadistic bully. I’m guessing she had to submit the manuscript to his lawyers, pre-publication.

The only actor she talked much about was Gary Cooper. She swooned like a fan about “Coop,” with whom she made one sub-par, Fritz Lang espionage film, Cloak and Dagger (1946), in which he played a professor-spy, when his career was on a downward trajectory. However, it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see that Cooper was arrogant and aloof. Anytime they weren’t filming a scene, he would go off in a corner and take a nap. Palmer didn’t get to know Cooper at all.

Postscript, February 9, 2021: I read somewhere that Garfield’s character in Body and Soul, Charlie Davis, was a Jew. Now, there was no lack of Jewish pugs back then (e.g., Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Max Baer Sr., Maxie Rosenbloom, Battling Levinsky, et al.) but there’s nothing outwardly Jewish about Charlie Davis, unlike in Golden Boy (1939), where the Jewish violin student takes up fisticuffs, in order to pay for his lessons.

But WASP Ann Revere plays Charlie’s mother. I’ve never seen Revere have anything Jewish about any of her characters.

Revere and director-screenwriter Robert Rossen would both be blacklisted, but they were card-carrying Communists.

John Garfield died “in the saddle” with his mistress of a massive coronary, on May 21, 1952, at the age of 39.

On the one hand, doctors say that a man sleeping with a woman not his wife will experience a higher heart rate than he would while making love to his wife. However, they also say that there are no reliable statistics on these matters, because of the likelihood that when men died of heart attacks while in the saddle with their wives, the sawboneses who filled out the death certificate left out the particulars.

Garfield’s death has been endlessly exploited, unto today, by Reds, who turned him into a martyr of the blacklist. Although Garfield was not himself a Communist, many of his friends, including his wife, were. According to the official history, he was blacklisted by the studios when he refused to name names before Congress.

Six months later, he was dead.

Note that Garfield was a heavy smoker and drinker; had a permanently damaged heart, due to a bout of scarlet fever as a child, which made him 4-F for military service during the war; and hadn’t slept in over two days straight when he died, thanks to a marathon poker game; whereupon he joined his mistress for that last roll in the hay.

At AV Club, communist Gwen Inhat wrote five years ago,

“All of Hollywood became entangled in the egregious activities of the U.S. Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee. But the despicable movement had many more martyrs past even the blacklisted Hollywood 10. The list of performers and creators put on Hollywood’s ‘no’ list was much longer and spread wider, and included a brilliant actor who’s mostly forgotten today: John Garfield….

“He was an ambitious actor who greedily absorbed every part he was given, and had a rebellious spirit; he got written up on violations by the studio system 11 times in almost as many years. That spirit did Garfield no favors in his HUAC testimony; although his wife had been a Communist, Garfield was never one himself. But due to his testimony, Garfield was blacklisted regardless. By 1952, he and his wife had separated due to the stress of the blacklist, rumors predicted that HUAC was going to reopen his testimony on perjury charges, and he had no luck finding work. It is surmised that the combination of these stressful events led to Garfield’s death of a heart attack at the age of 39. His funeral was attended by thousands of grief-stricken fans, the largest funeral for an actor since Rudolph Valentino.

“Despite his personal troubles, Garfield left behind a small but solid body of work…”

Lies, lies, lies. There was nothing “egregious” about HUAC. The unnamed movement was anything but “despicable.” There were no Hollywood 10 “martyrs.”

Garfield is not largely forgotten. And there was nothing “small” about Garfield’s body of work.

Inhat does not list a single one of the factors that contributed to Garfield’s fatal heart attack. No honest person ever “surmised” (note the passive voice) that the blacklist caused Garfield’s death.

Gwen Inhat is such an obvious liar that I wouldn’t believe her assertions regarding matters where I don’t know for sure that she’s lying.

For Inhat, the Communists were the good guys, while the anti-Communists were the bad guys.

Let’s look at the score card. The anti-Communists wanted a free America. Conversely, the Communists—heroes to Gwen Inhat—wanted to enslave most Americans, steal their property, slaughter millions of them, and imprison millions of others in gulags.

My verdict on Gwen Inhat is that if she’s not a communist, she did an awfully good impersonation of one.