Another Time, Another Place (1958)

Chances are, that if you mention the name "Sean Connery" everyone will know who you are talking about. And if they don't know him by his real name, they will most certainly know him by the name of his most famous character, "Bond, James Bond." Not only did Connery play the iconic character, he was also the FIRST to do so. However, he and the actors that played 007 after him, also appeared in many other films as different characters, both before and after they gained world fame. And THAT is the subject of today's Blogathon - You Knew My Name: The Bond Not Bond Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews and Pale Writer. 

Be sure to check out all of the other contributions to see what 

your favorite Bond was doing when he WASN’T being Bond.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

It is extremely rare for an actor to become famous from his very first on-screen appearance. Sean Connery was no exception. When he made the film Another Time, Another Place (1958) he was given an "INTRODUCING" credit UNDER the title (despite having been in a few movies and television episodes over the course of four years) with Lana Turner, Glynis Johns, and Barry Sullivan listed ABOVE the title. Lana Turner is still well known, but Glynis Johns is (unfortunately) mainly remembered for her role as Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins (1963) and Barry Sullivan only by Classic Movie fans. This film certainly didn't do anything for anyone's career, with OFF-screen events being far more exciting than anything that happened ON-screen. But we will get to that later.

The film opens with the voice of Sean Connery - lacking the richness and accent we are accustomed to - describing the defusing a bomb that landed unexploded in WWII war-torn London. He is BBC reporter Mark Trevor. US Foreign Correspondent Sara Scott (Lana Turner) shows up. They seem to be professional rivals, until they hop in a car to escape the pouring rain for a few minutes and we discover they are lovers.

There's a lot of this in the brief 30 minutes that Connery is in the film.

The bomb is successfully defused and the couple make their way to Sara's apartment where there is more of this...

And some of this...

And then of course talks of marriage from her until Mark confesses... he's already married and has a son.

Sara is devastated and they break things off. Her newspaper publisher fiancé Carter Reynolds (Sullivan) shows up and, learning about what happened, offers to take her back to New York. She refuses, insisting she must straighten her life out first. Mark comes for her a few hours later before he flies to Paris to cover the surrender of the German army and they vow to somehow make things work. 

The following morning, Reynolds informs Sara that Mark was killed in a plane crash. 

After spending six weeks in an institution after the shock of Mark's sudden death, Sara is finally set to sail home to New York. However, enroute to the ship she decides to make a quick trip to Cornwall, where Mark had grown up and lived. We get some shots of Sara walking around the picturesque village and looking down at the crashing waves against the rocky shore before running into Mark's son Brian and wife Kay (Glynis Johns). 

Kay Trevor

She feels faint at learning their identities and Kay, not knowing that Sara even knew Mark, invites her in. The women have tea and chat pleasantly. When Sara still appears unwell - after seeing Mark's study with folders containing copies of his broadcasts lying around - and the hotels being full up, Kay insists she stay the night and catch the morning train, which will allow her plenty of time for her ship departure. 

Even though Connery is only in the first third of the movie, this photo 

ensures that his presence is felt throughout the rest of the film.

During the night, Sara wanders around the house and, after accidently breaking the glass on a photo of Mark, runs wildly out into the night. 

When Kay discovers her guest gone and the bed not slept in, she calls family friend Alan, but before he gets there, she spies some locals carrying Sara down the street. When Sara comes to, she recognizes Alan, but he makes a motion for her to hide the fact that she knows him. 

Sara stays on with Kay until Alan warns her it is time to leave. Sara is not ready to go yet. Kay catches her listening to an old broadcast of Mark's and tells her that he had wanted to one day put them together into a book. Sara thinks aloud about how it could be formatted and Kay invites her to write it for him.

The two women get along well and both feel closer to Mark through the writing and reading of the book. Meanwhile, Reynolds finds out through Sara's doctor that she is still in England and flies over to fetch her. Kay invites him to join them for a dinner party, which becomes strained whenever Mark's name is mentioned. Later, Alan, who is in love with Kay, meets Reynolds at the pub and tells him Kay is becoming suspicious.

"There's a dead guy called Mark Trevor who's holding onto two women. That's a tough rope to cut."

That evening Kay goes to the movies with Alan. Afterwards she asks him about that last month when Mark hardly wrote to her and finds out that he had an affair. She still doesn't know who with.

Back at Kay's house, Sara has been packing. When Kay returns, she tells Sara what she learned. Sara decides to tell her that she was the other woman. Kay is naturally hurt and angry that Sara had dared come into her home. Sara then lies to Kay and tells her that Mark had ended their relationship and was planning on returning to his wife and son. Kay tells her to leave.

Later, as Reynolds and Sara are about to board the train, Kay appears with Alan to say goodbye and the film ends on a happy note, with each man getting the woman he loves.

Alan and Kay waving goodbye

Reviews for the film were pretty harsh. The New York Times was not at all impressed with the film, calling it a "turgid emotional melodrama" that was a "long way from making any contact with interests that might serve to entertain." Derek Monsey for the Sunday Express singled out "a newcomer to films, called Sean Connery," calling him "beetling-browed" and "unctuous-voiced," and concluding that he "will not, I guess, grow old in the industry." Anthony Carthew for the Daily Herald said the "Connery, in his first big part, gives the impression that he is reading his lines from a none-too-helpful prompt book."

Even Connery knew it was a dud. "The script was not entirely satisfactory; they were rewriting as they were shooting so they started with the end first, and I was dead at the end...so by the time they led up to me, I was only a picture on a piano. The film wasn't very good, it was beautifully lit but dreadfully directed."

While the events on-screen did little to capture anyone's interest - even today its only real interest is in seeing Connery-before-Bond - the events surrounding the making of the film are notorious in Hollywood history. 

The stabbing of Lana Turner's lover, Johnny Stompanato, by her 14-year-old daughter Cheryl is one of the most well-known scandals of Hollywood history. What many people might NOT know is Sean Connery's part in it. 

37-year-old Lana Turner had recently formed her own production company, Lanturn Films, as many big stars did in the fifties with the fall of the studio system. Another Time, Another Place was her first film. She had script and cast approval, and, for her love interest, she chose unknown British (Scottish) actor 27-year-old Sean Connery. 

In the film, I was supposed to be married to Glynis, but I was also having an affair with Lana and I died halfway through the picture. It was only when I was asked what it was like to make love to an older woman did I ever become aware of a woman's age.

~ Sean Connery 

Connery was not going to let an opportunity of working with a major Hollywood star to go by without trying his best. He meticulously researched his role, listening to tapes of famous WWII reporters and correspondents. He also got along well with Lana, despite often missing his marks and key lights. Lana, who had said goodbye to boyfriend Johnny Stompanato in New York - to her a final goodbye - had undeniably chemistry with her younger co-star and when Stompanato came to visit her in London he became convinced that they were having an affair. When he appeared on set one day, challenging Connery and threatening him with a gun, Connery, in true James Bond style, punched him in the nose (an article about the incident). Stompanato was banned from the set. Of the set, Johnny began to abuse Lana, nearly smothering her and damaging her larynx. He was quietly kicked out of the country. 

After the picture wrapped, Lana went back to America and Connery began work on his next film, Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People. Being in a Disney film meant he needed a clean background and, after Cheryl Turner stabbed Johnny Stompanato with a kitchen knife as he was beating Lana was not something he wanted to be associated with. Letters in which Lana described being shown around London with Cheryl and Connery were published and Connery was warned to get out of town (he refused but laid low). 

Lana is a lovely lady. We went around together during filming, and sometimes I'd pick her up on my motor scooter, and she'd be all dressed up for the evening, but she'd hop on anyway. A good sport. 

~ Sean Connery

Cute Photo of Connery and Turner in Cornwall

Another Time, Another Place was released four months early and one month after Stompanato's death to capitalize on the interest in Lana Turner. However, even with all of the publicity, the film flopped, not being able to compare with real life. You can currently watch the film for free on Pluto TV (website and app).

Sources:

Parker, John. Sean Connery. Contemporary Books, Chicago. 1993. 

Pfeiffer, Lee & Lisa, Philip. The Films of Sean Connery. Citadel Press. 1993. 

Tanitch, Robert. Sean Connery. Chapmans, London. 1993. 

Turner, Lana. Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth. E.P. Dutton, Inc., New York. 1982. 

Movies I Watched in June

This month I finished Taxi. The entire series is on YouTube. Then I watched season 1 of Who’s the Boss? free on IMDb. They only have 2 (out of 8) seasons though and only season 1 is on dvd. They’re supposedly rebooting it so hopefully the rest of the series will appear on tv or some streaming service. 

I watched my second non-Daniel Craig Bond movie. I watched From Russia with Love within the last couple of years but wasn't much on it. This month I watched Dr. No. I really liked the first part. The end turned into a sci-fi type movie that was definitely dated. 

Films with an * are rewatches.

1. Sworn Enemy (1936) - Robert Young & Florence Rice, Lewis Stone
2. *They Met in Bombay (1941) - Clark Gable & Rosalind Russell
3. The Saint in Palm Springs (1941) - George Sanders & Wendy Barrie
4. The Falcon Strikes Back (1943) - Tom Conway & Jane Randolph, Harriet Nelson
5. Her Kind of Man (1946) - Zachary Scott, Janis Paige, Dane Clark, George Tobias, Faye Emerson 
6. Let’s Make It Legal (1951) - Claudette Colbert, Robert Wagner 
7. Stage Struck (1958) - Henry Fonda, Herbert Marshall, Christopher Plummer
8. Imitation General (1958) - Glenn Ford, Red Buttons, Dean Jones
9. Darby’s Rangers (1958) - James Garner, Jack Warden, Peter Brown
10. Paris Blues (1961) - Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier & Diahann Carroll, Louis Armstrong 
11. Dr. No (1962) - Sean Connery, Ursula Andress
12. *The Longest Day (1962) - John Wayne, Robert Ryan, etc.
13. Battle of the Bulge (1965) - Robert Ryan, Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews
14. *The Great Race (1965) - Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn
15. The Torn Curtain (1966) - Paul Newman & Julie Andrews 
16. Persuasion (1995) - Amanda Root & Ciaran Hinds
17. *Walk the Line (2005) - Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon 

Least Favorite Film: Stage Struck wasn't as good as I had hoped. The girl was overly dramatic in a bad way (it's a remake of Katharine Hepburn's Morning Glory). And the "famous actress" felt like an Anne Baxter knockoff. Let's Make it Legal had a predictable story line bur Robert Wagner was cute ;) No movies made it onto my "never watch again list" though!

Favorite Movie: I really liked Imitation General. 

Rosalind Russell, They Met in Bombay (1941)

Robert Ryan: His Early Life and Career

When the name Robert Ryan is mentioned, the first image that comes to mind is a man with a hard glint in his eye and a menacing tone in his voice. But the man behind the oftentimes villainous character was a kind and quiet man at heart, content spending time with his wife and children and avoiding the Hollywood party scene.

My re-introduction to Robert Ryan was as a teacher at an all boys school in Her Twelve Men (the first film I saw with him in it was Flying Leathernecks but all I remembered about that movie is that his character and John Wayne's character did not get along. My second was Men in War which I watched for Aldo Ray...). I thought to myself, "Oh look, he plays a good guy in this movie." Even though I had hardly seen any of his films, I knew he was usually a bad guy.

I followed this film some months later with Tender Comrade (1943) in which he is the romantic lead in Ginger Roger's flashbacks. I fell in love with his character. And then Ryan. And then I started watching any film of his that showed up on TCM. And then I had to read his biography.

I was happy to learn that Ryan's personal life was quiet and scandal-free. Born Robert Bushnell Ryan on Nov. 11, 1909, Bob lived a happy childhood in Uptown, Illinois until the death of his younger brother at the age of six of lobar pneumonia. His life was lonely after that and he spent much of his time reading. His father signed him up for boxing lessons to help draw him out, which Bob loved. "Athletic prowess did a lot for my ego and my acceptance in school. The ability to defend yourself lessens the chance you'll ever have to use it."

Bob Ryan as a child

Bob also spent a lot of time at the movies - he never missed a Douglas Fairbanks picture. Aside from his fascination with how movies were made, it was also a way to get away from the smothering affections of his parents. "You cannot know the difficulties that attend an only child. Two big grown-ups are beaming in on him all the time - even when he isn't there. It is a feeling of being watched that lingers throughout life."

Bob as a football player for Loyola Academy

An Irish-Catholic, Bob attended Loyola Academy, during which time played football, becoming an All-City tackle his senior year. He also joined the literary society and wrote for the school's magazine The Prep.

Truly, I may say that a man's best friends are his books. Your companions may desert you, but your books will remain with you always and will never cease to be that source of enjoyment that they were when you first received them.

Bob's favorite book was Hamlet, which he memorized and which made him consider becoming a playwright instead of joining the family construction business.

After graduation, Bob spent the summer working on a dude ranch in Montana before heading to New Hampshire for his first year at Dartmouth. While there he won the school their first heavyweight title in boxing. During the first semester of his second year he suffered a football injury which caused his already average grades to drop. He left at the end of the semester and headed back home where he held odd jobs before returning to Dartmouth the following autumn. He defended the heavyweight title for two years, retiring from boxing in his senior year to focus more on literature

"Rum, Rebellion, and Ryan."

That was Bob's slogan when he ran for class marshal during Prohibition.

The stock market crash and some scandals with his families business made Bob even more determined not to join after graduation. He lived with a friend and tried out playwriting, did a little modeling to make extra cash, and worked a s a sandhog on the Hudson River. He even went in with friends on a gold mine, but pulled out when he realized it wasn't going anywhere.

In 1936 his father died and Bob returned home to take care of his mother. He tried to work at the family business but became frustrated with the way his life was going. It wasn't until a friend persuaded him to try acting that his life would change.

I never even thought of acting until I was twenty-eight. The first minute I got on the stage, I thought, 'Bing! This is it!'

Bob immediately signed up for acting classes and set his sights on Hollywood. He made the move to Los Angeles in 1938 and joined the Reinhardt School where he met his future wife, Jessica Cadwalader, a Quaker. The head of the school, Max Reinhardt, saw something in Bob and became his personal teacher as well as an important figure in his life, teaching him many things that he would carry with him for the rest of his career.

In 1939, Bob and Jessica wed. At the beginning things were rough, but after being noticed in the play Too Many Husbands, Bob secured a contract with Paramount where he was given several small parts. He was let go after six months, after which the Ryan's packed up and went to New York. The couple played in several theaters before Tallulah Bankhead saw him perform and picked him out to play a small role in Clash By Night with her (he would later play a bigger role in the 1952 film version with Barbara Stanwyck).

At the Robin Hood Theatre in Delaware, 1941.

The play made it's Broadway debut shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, causing the paly to close after forty-nine performances. Bob got good reviews from the critics and soon had a contract with RKO, where he held small roles in Patriotic pictures, most notably as a boxer in Behind the Rising Sun (1943). His break came when he was given a role in Tender Comrade (1943) as Ginger Rogers husband (see the opening scene in the video at the top of this post).

Bob's performance garnered him a spread in the April 1944 Photoplay.

I've never felt so at-home in a role in my life. Y'know, a lot of those scenes are retakes of things that have happened between Jessica and myself.

Ginger Rogers was skeptical when Bob was first suggested for the role, thinking his deeply lined face "too mean looking" as well as the major height difference - he was 6'4" to her 5'4". But after doing some scenes together she slipped a note to producer David Hempstead "I think this is the guy." Bob kept that note the rest of his life.

 

 

After completing one more picture, Marine Raiders (1943), Bob himself was finally called into service, with a promise that he would still have a job at RKO after the war. He joined the Marines and escaped the ragging that was typical of movie stars in the armed forces because, as a bunkmate said, "Most of these guys saw you beat that Jap in Behind the Rising Sun."

 

 

After completing basic training, Bob was frustrated to learn he would be recreation assistant and later a combat conditioner, teaching boxing, judo, and swimming. Jessica, who had quit acting and was writing for magazines at the time, was relieved. She moved near the San Diego base where Bob was stationed and started work on her first mystery, The Man Who Asked Why. In 1945, shortly before the end of the war, she found out she was pregnant.

 

 

Bob was honorably discharged on October 30, 1945 and was immediately put into his next picture, The Woman on the Beach (1947), directed by Jean Renoir. Bob played Scott, a Coast Guard suffering from shell-shock whose job is to patrol the foggy Pacific coast. He meets a woman (Joan Bennett) who is married to a blind artist (Charles Bickford) and they start an affair. Scott becomes convinced that Bickford is just pretending to be blind and takes him for a walk near the cliffs. Bickford falls off the cliff but escapes with only minor injuries. Scott then realizes what he's doing is wrong and breaks things off. In the end, Bennett goes back to her husband. Unfortunately the picture was cut and re-edited and so the final product did not do well at the box-office and it is evident that, while the film starts off strongly, it could have been a masterpiece.

Working with him [Renoir] opened my eyes to aspects of character that were subtler than those I was accustomed to.

On April 13, 1946, Jessica gave birth to Timothy. Bob was in between pictures and spent many happy days with his little son and wife. The couple preferred to stay away from the Hollywood scene and when they did entertain it was family and close friends only.

 

Bob with his son Timothy. 

While in the Marines, Bob had read a book titled The Brick Foxhole that featured a racist, homophobic character who, as a cop, enjoyed beating up and killing blacks and Jews. As a man who would later fight for equal rights and the end of prejudice, he was interested in the book as a film and met with the author, Richard Brooks, to tell him that if it was ever made into a movie, he wanted to play that character. In 1946, RKO purchased the rights and Bob begged for the part. The film, Crossfire, would also star Robert Young as the policeman investigating the murder of a Jewish man and Robert Mitchum as a fellow soldier who is brought in by the police to help find the murderer.

Mr. Dmytryk has handled most excellently a superlative cast which plays the drama. Robert Ryan is frighteningly real as the hard, sinewy, loud-mouthed, intolerant and vicious murderer (NY Times).

 

I like how Ryan plays the bad guy yet he's the only one smiling in this cast picture.

Crossfire is a frank spotlight on anti-Semitism. Producer Dore Schary, in association with Adrian Scott, has pulled no punches. There is no skirting such relative fol-de-rol as intermarriage or clubs that exclude Jews. Here is a hard-hitting film whose whodunit aspects are fundamentally incidental to the overall thesis of bigotry and race prejudice (Variety).

The role could have meant the end of Bob's career, yet while he was in Berlin shooting his next picture, Berlin Express (1948) with Merle Oberon, the film had broken box-office records (it beat Gentleman's Agreement, another film that addressed anti-Semitism, to release by a few months). Bob was nominated for an Best Supporting Actor Oscar but lost to Edmund Gwenn for his role as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Despite not winning, the role was just what his career needed.

Bob's next big role, and maybe my favorite film of his, was as an embittered ex-soldier in Act of Violence (1948) co-starring Van Heflin, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, and Phyllis Thaxter. I watched it twice in the span of a couple of months and it was just as captivating the second time as it was the first. Frank Enley (Heflin) is known as a war hero in his town and to his wife, Edith (Leigh). But he's hiding a dark secret that only Joe Parkson (Ryan) knows: he ratted out his friends while being held prisoners in a Nazi POW camp in exchange for food, leading to the death of all but Joe. Now Joe is out for revenge, following Frank across the country with the plan to kill him. You can read about the making of the film here.

TCM Tribute to Robert Ryan

Well, this post is turning out a lot longer than I anticipated so I am going to divide it into two parts. Look out for the next part in two weeks on the 17th!
 

Also to look forward to: keep an eye out for my post on On Dangerous Ground for The Good Cop, Bad Cop Blogathon at the end of the month and "The Westerns of Robert Ryan" on April 14 for The Great Western Blogathon (I'm pretty much using any excuse I can to write about Ryan). You can also read my post on Her Twelve Men (1954).

Robert Ryan movies airing on TCM:

March 7 - Return of the Bad Men (1948) & Trail Street (1947)
March 9 - The Dirty Dozen (1967
March 17 - Crossfire (1947)

There are also a handful of his films on YouTube that can be found by searching "Robert Ryan Full Movies."

Source:

The Lives of Robert Ryan. Jones, J.R. Wesleyan University Press, Middleton, CT. 2015.

This post is part of the Free for All Blogathon hosted by CineMaven's Essays From the Couch. Be sure to check out what everyone else wrote about for this fun and unique blogathon!

 

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