Friday's Old Fashioned: Don't Bother To Knock (1952)

Despite having some knowledge of the direction in which “Don’t Bother To Knock” would go, it still wound up knocking me slightly dizzy all on account of Marilyn Monroe. When she comes gliding through the revolving doors of the McKinley Hotel on the mean streets of NYC, looking very much like the naïf fresh off the bus from Oregon that she is, taking a babysitting gig up on the 8th floor and reading her sweet little charge a sweet little story and then sweetly handing her a sweet little teddy bear, I swear I forgot anything I already knew. Even when she slipped into the nightgown, assumed the fuzzy slippers and donned the earrings of the mother of the little girl in her care, I merely fooled myself into thinking all Marilyn wanted was a daughter and family to call her own.

Then, finally, the camera finds a close-up of her wrists, and I saw the scars, and I was jarred back into my pre-gathered knowledge. Yet even THEN I found myself re-lulled into a false sense of security because, well, I thought, maybe she was so overwhelmed by the fury of life she felt she had no way out. But also, because she’s Marilyn Monroe.

Richard Widmark is the other one who can’t quite allow himself to be rid of her lilting clasp, no matter how frightening and tight it may turn. A pilot who has come to the McKinley to win back the woman who broke his heart, only to fail, he first spies Marilyn – let’s call her Nell – through the window across the hotel’s courtyard. Yearning for a whiskey drinking companion, Widmark – let’s call him Jed – invites himself over. She’s gorgeous, after all. But she’s also unstable. He sees a suitcase with the wrong initials. Nell says that belongs to her sister. He sees a man’s shoes. Nell says those belong to her sister’s husband. The sweet little girl bumbles sleepily out of her bedroom. Nell finally breaks down and admits the truth. Jed goes to leave. He doesn’t. He can’t. How could he?!

“Don’t Bother To Knock”, which was written by Daniel Taradash (who won the adapted screenplay Oscar a year later for “From Here To Eternity”) and based on a book by Charlotte Armstrong, never leaves the McKinley Hotel, and opens very much in the vein of noir. Jed’s ex, Lyn (Anne Bancroft), slumped at the bar, chatting up the bartender (“I’ve been thinking” – “That serious, huh?”), before the spotlight finds her and she takes up a mic and sings a standard. You have to respect a songstress who employs a barstool and a bar rather than a green room and a stage. Meanwhile, upstairs in his room, where apparently Lyn’s performance gets piped in, Jed smokes and drinks and paces and revisits Lyn’s Dear John letter. He’s come to win her back. We know this will end in failure. Unless the film wishes to turn down a different avenue. Which it does. Which is when Nell floats into the lobby.

Her Uncle Eddie (Elisha Cook Jr.) is the elevator operator, seemingly an amiable chap who just wants to help his niece and, thus, scores her the babysitting gig. She condemns him as pushy and manipulative, un-attentive to her real needs, but eventually we see this may merely be her imagination. This is because (and while I could issue a parenthetical spoiler alert, I will not) Nell is revealed as mentally ill, fresh out of the psychiatric ward, intent on re-setting herself, but shown to be much less than remedied.

This is what makes Monroe’s casting so genius. It might be fashionable to state she was playing apart from her usual bombshell roles and mining psychological depth, but I think that sort of misses the point. Consider Ray Liotta as the psychologically unstable cop in “Unlawful Entry.” His inherent Ray Liotta-ness is so pronounced that from the get-go you know – you KNOW – he’s unstable. How Madeleine Stowe fails to glean the Ray Liotta-ness emanating from his character in waves is beyond me.

On the other hand, because of Monroe’s inherent Marilyn-ness, you and Jed are on a completely level playing field. How can this woman – so soft, so angelic – be off her rocker? Even when she’s tormenting that sweet little girl and conking hapless Eddie on the head, it’s difficult for Jed to flee and difficult for you to want Jed to flee because, well, she’s Marilyn, man. Perhaps that’s the casting agent stacking the deck, but then that’s what I found so fascinating.

Theoretically “Don’t Bother To Knock” is about the way in which Jed is able to overcome his own needs to help this woman in obvious mental peril, and how this allows Lyn to see him in a new light. I was somewhat unconvinced, however, not least because of the final scene, which almost seemed callous in the face of Nell’s fate as she is led out those same doors she came in. But maybe that’s just my Marilyn-ness Affinity showing itself once more. And maybe that’s what “Don’t Bother To Knock” knew long before the real Marilyn met her sad demise – that no matter how bad things got for her, no matter how mismanaged her life may have been, no matter long she may have been gone now, we just can’t stop bringing ourselves to care for her.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Niagara (1953)

I have long thought of Henry Hathaway's fairly standard thriller "Niagara" as the ultimate Marilyn Monroe movie. Please do not misunderstand, it is not a better movie than "Some Like It Hot" and it does not contain an image as iconic as "The Seven Year Itch" and it is not as intriguing a sociological study as "The Misfits." But... The metaphor at which the filmmakers are driving is hammered home in a monologue delivered by Joseph Cotten, playing Monroe's onscreen husband, when he lectures the wife of a young couple: "You're young, you're in love. Well, I'll give you a warning. Don't let it get out of hand, like those falls out there."

In reality, the most interesting metaphors in "Niagara" are the ones unspoken, the ones viewed through the prism of time. Niagara Falls has always been fascinating to me, a place of unfathomable natural beauty and simultaneously a place overrun by tackiness and souvenir shops and yellow rain slickers. Don't you wish you could have viewed Niagara Falls as God intended, all on their lonesome, just you and the water and the roar, way back when in the 16th century? Oh, that must've been a sight to see. And isn't that, sort of, a woman named Norma Jeane? As beautiful a woman as God ever intended but ruined and ravaged by the hangers-on and the trauma and turmoil that surrounded her at every turn.

More to the metaphorical point, "Niagara" is not really even a Marilyn Movie. Oh, she's splattered all over that elegantly trashy poster and her name is billed first because of course it is. But if you simply read the screenplay without knowing who was playing who you would view her part as critical, a good part, but not the starring role. Cast Marilyn, though, and just like when she strolls into that posh party in "All About Eve" and guilelessly wrests the film right outta Bette Davis's overlord hands for a few moments, "Niagara" becomes hers. And then, just like her real life, she is moved out of the picture much too soon. (I mean, Spoiler Alert!!!)

"Niagara" technically belongs to Jean Peters. She is Polly, one half of a married couple that comes to the Canadian side of the Falls for their overdue honeymoon. Her husband is Ray, the kind of guy who hopes to "catch up on my reading" ON HIS HONEYMOON and never.stops.smiling. Seriously. Never. He is played by Casey Adams and the original New York Times review notes he is "a mite too enthusiastic." A mite? Just a mite? He is six million cubic feet more than a mite too enthusiastic, I assure you.

They roll into a romantic lodge with a romantic outlook over the Falls and wind up right next door to George (Cotten) and Rose (Monroe) Loomis. He is ex-army and just discharged from a military mental hospital. She is simply scandalouz, trotting around in high heels and curve-amplifying dresses and seeing a Casanova on the sly. At one point she coolly invades a party happening in the motel parking lot and while you don’t actually hear the obligatory record scratch, you will swear you do.

The driving plot point is that Rose and her Casanova are scheming to off George, but this seems more out of story necessity than any sort of acute psychology. There is no real exploration of George's mental breakdown aside from the traditional Throwing The Table Over Scene. Rose's Casanova has no personality whatsoever, established entirely through his shoes and his tune-whistling which are really just tiny pieces of story. Rose mostly gets by on her Marilyn-ness, which is considerable, waking up mornings already in full lipstick and staging a phony if glorious mental breakdown.

Meanwhile Polly and Ray find themselves dragged into this whole sordid affair simply on account of their proximity to the Loomis Cabin. Poor Polly. To her right is a murder mystery, to her left is a grinning jack-o-lantern of a husband who is more concerned about meeting up with Jess Kettering – the Vice President of his firm back home who is also at Niagara for some theoretical R&R – than he is with rubbing suntan lotion on his wife’s back. As such, the film sort of becomes a push & pull for the fate of fair Polly, and I can’t help but wonder if this was more apparent in the original script pre-re-writes to punch up Monroe’s part.

She tells George, returning to metaphor-speak, that she’s one of those logs in the river that just hangs around in the calm, resisting the allure of the rapids. Ah, but she seems curiously drawn to the marital parlor game of Mr. & Mrs. Loomis, as if desperate for some sort of drama. Can you blame her? Notice how every tourist attraction they attend, Ray over-protectively latches onto Polly’s arm and escorts her at a rate of speed at which she almost seems uncomfortable. He pours her a glass of water and puts it right to her lips and tips it downward, essentially forcing her to sip until, finally, she grabs that glass outta his damn hands to sip at her own chosen speed. CAN’T HE GIVE HER SOME SPACE???

The film’s inevitable conclusion involves an out-of-gas houseboat drifting down river, threatening to plunge right over the Falls and into the froth below. Naturally, Polly is aboard, placed in peril. She doesn’t care for the rapids, see, she wants the calm. Eventually she is rescued (spoiler alert!). But is she really? I’m not saying in twenty years when she reflects on the monotony of her marriage she will literally wish she had gone over the Falls, I’m just saying she will make that claim in a spousal argument.