Hey, yo. Forgive a day of light posting. My Internet connection was on the fritz.
Emma’s Burt Lancaster piece is the first of five we’ll have on Million Dollar Movie this week celebrating the great American star.
More food, music, art and yeah, Yankee Baseball tomorrow…
[Photo Credit: efn.org]
Because “Bitter Smell of Vicious, Cynical Self-Loathing” Would’ve Been a Hard Sell at the Box Office
“I love this dirty town.” That’s the only line from Sweet Smell of Success that I quote on a regular basis, but only because I don’t quite have the presence to pull off “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” For that, you need Burt Lancaster.
Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen that includes almost no physical violence at all; it’s just funny enough to keep you from slitting your wrists afterwards, but with humor so cold and sharp you could use it for a razor blade. Anyone who thinks of the 1950s as a Norman Rockwell era of innocence should be sat down in front of this paean to cutthroat cynicism and soul-destroying ambition, then given a nice mug of warm milk and a hug.
Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, two good-looking actors with charisma to burn, have never been less attractive. It was a brave choice by both of them (and the studio was opposed to Curtis taking the role of smoothly sniveling Sidney Falco, a press agent who’s had all the empathy, dignity, and morality burnt out of him by a lifetime of humiliations), but I think especially by Lancaster. Sidney Falco is at least occasionally pitiable, but Lancaster’s Walter Winchell-esque monster J.J. Hunsecker is one of the least redeemable characters ever committed to film. (See his inclusion on the AFI’s list of all-time movie villains, although that is, now I look at it, one terrible list — if you think Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the “villains” of Bonnie and Clyde, you missed the whole damn point. And “Man” in Bambi as an all-time villain? Please. But that’s a whole separate post).
I first remember seeing Lancaster in Atlantic City, a favorite VHS rental of my dad’s (mostly for the line “You should’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean back then… it was really something.”). Later I saw him in From Here to Eternity and the cheesy fun western Vera Cruz, with his magnetic appeal on full display, and in the film noir classics Criss Cross and The Killers, where he was a dark, flawed, but handsome and charismatic figure. He is still my definitive Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – which came out in 1957, the same year as Sweet Smell of Success, but takes place in a staggeringly different America. Lancaster was a gorgeous young man, and still quite an eyeful in his forties, but J.J. Hunsucker is too despicable to have even a shred of sex appeal.
Words are the weapons in Sweet Smell of Success (written by Ernest Lehman and blacklisted lefty Clifford Odets, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick), and J.J. Hunsecker is its serial killer; Freddy Kreuger and Mike Myers earn more viewer sympathy. This is all by design, of course, and the merciless screenplay doesn’t pull a single verbal punch:
It’s a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it.
The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.
Like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.
Son, I don’t relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don’t you just shuffle along?
My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years.
Match me, Sidney.
Those last three are Lancaster’s, and only a handful of the movie’s best. (For full effect, of course, the last one needs to be quoted while holding an unlit cigarette). According to rumor the script was brilliantly rewritten by Odets months past deadline, while he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, and then rushed scene by scene directly from his typewriter to the set.
The movie was shot on location in New York, and I’m not sure you could say it has any affection for the city — really, I’m not sure you could say this movie has any affection for much of anything — but it certainly gets a jolt of jittery energy from its setting. The story could be transplanted to Los Angeles easily enough, I expect, but it wouldn’t be same without the rushing crowds its characters struggle past, or the packed bars and restaurants where glamor and power and desperation and slimy cunning are jostled together.
If Sweet Smell of Success has a flaw, it’s that the female lead, J.J.’s sister Susan, around whom the whole plot turns, is never really developed as a character, at least not compared to the devastatingly etched male leads. But on reflection I believe this is not really a gender issue – not because she’s a woman, but rather because she’s moral and kind. These are not the human facets that Sweet Smell of Success is interested in, and god bless it for that. Nice people are almost never any fun to quote.
Get to work.
Photo by Abelimages/Getty Images
I have to admit that for much of this weekend’s series in Toronto, I wasn’t at all convinced that the series was even happening. Sure, Michael Kay never crosses the border, but with Bob Lorenz in the booth, I was starting to imagine Capricorn One conspiracy theories. Were these games scripted by YES? Was I just watching a collage of highlight footage spackled together to look like an actual game? Did Bud Selig know what was going on? And the biggest question of all — if they really were scripting the action, why couldn’t they have at least written in a few hits for Mark Teixeira?
Ah, but I kid. Now to the game. For much of Sunday afternoon, the hitters were mere bystanders as Brandon Morrow and Javier Vazquez took turns making them look foolish. There was no scoring on either side for the first five innings, and the Blue Jays didn’t get their first base hit until Vernon Wells ended the drama (dramatically) with a no-doubt two-run home run to left, putting the Jays up 2-0.
As good as Vazquez was in the early going, Morrow was even better. He gave up only four hits and a walk, and at no point during the first seven innings did it ever look like the Yankees had a shot, mainly because of an unhittable fastball that was clocking between 95 and 97 all day long. I hate to bring this up, but Brandon Morrow is what Joba Chamberlain was supposed to be when he grew up. Projected as top of the rotation starters, both pitchers arrived in the majors in 2007 (Morrow was in Seattle back then) and brought their high octane stuff to the bullpen. Morrow had an extra year of experience, but he wasn’t nearly as effective as Joba. Since arriving in Toronto this year Morrow has worked exclusively as a starter, and if what we saw today is any indication, he’s in the right spot.
In the eighth inning, though, he was in the wrong spot. Even though he had thrown 104 pitches through those dominant seven innings, Morrow came out to start the eighth and plunked lead-off hitter Francisco Cervelli. Toronto manager Cito Gaston immediately replaced Morrow with Scott Downs, who then drilled Brett Gardner to put the tying runners on base with nobody out and the top of the order due up. As you might expect, this is when things got interesting.
With Derek Jeter facing a 1-1 count, Downs through a pitch which may or may not have tailed off the outside edge of the plate. Home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman called the pitch a strike, but Jeter disagreed as vigorously as he ever will. The field mikes at Rogers Centre were fairly sensitive all game long, so you could easily hear his disgust: “That was not a strike!” After pursuing the issue a while and repeating his opinion about the pitch, Jeter shook his head, stepped back into the box, and lined a double down the right field line, cutting the deficit in half.
Nick Swisher came up next and quickly found himself down in the count, 1-2. Desperately needing a strikeout, new pitcher Jason Frasor went for the kill on the next pitch, bouncing a splitter that Swisher couldn’t resist. Swisher started his swing, and replays clearly showed that the checked it, but Dreckman punched him out, ruling that he had swung at the pitch. (Somewhere in Cincinnati, Paul O’Neill put his shoe through the television screen.) For his part, Swisher was incredulous, immediately pointing down at third base to ask for an appeal that would never come. Joe Girardi had seen enough — enough of Dreckman, enough of the Blue Jays, maybe even enough of Canada — so he came out with the clear intention of getting kicked out. He even left his hat behind in the dugout, something I don’t remember ever seeing. What followed was the fastest ejection in history. Girardi pushed Swisher out of the way, asked Dreckman, “Are you shitting me?” and that was that. Showers.
So with one out and the tying and go-ahead runs on second and third and Alex Rodríguez in the on-deck circle, Cito Gaston, of course, decided to walk Mark Teixeira and his .211 batting average. (And by the way, isn’t it time to start thinking about dropping Teixeira in the order? I wouldn’t mind seeing Canó in the three hole with Teixeira hitting sixth. But I digress…) Gardner brought home the tying run on a wild pitch, and A-Rod struck out, failing for the first time in that situation, bringing Robinson Canó up with two on and two out and the score tied. Canó took one pitch then lined the next into left, scoring two for a 4-2 lead.
Joba Chamberlain came in to start the eighth inning, and even though the box score says he gave up two hits and a run, that’s a bit deceptive. José Molina led off with a double off Curtis Granderson’s glove, a drive that Gardner would’ve caught easily, and Fred Lewis’s RBI single was just a high-hopper that bounded through the middle of the infield. Joba recovered nicely enough to get Aaron Hill to ground into a double play, and his day was done. I’m doing my best to think positively about him.
There was a little drama as Mariano Rivera came in mistakenly (and was sent back) after that double play even though acting manager Tony Peña had asked for Damaso Marte, but he came back again in the ninth and used only five pitches to close out the 4-3 Yankee win. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about A-Rod, who was lifted for Ramiro Peña in ninth, he’s okay.
Next stop: Baltimore.
