Never Let Me Go (1953)

I was thirty-two then, not an ideal age to be taking up so strenuous an activity as ballet.

So wrote Gene Tierney in her autobiography Self-Portrait on her experience playing a Russian ballerina in the film Never Let Me Go (1953) starring Clark Gable.

 

The film tells the story  of an American news correspondent, Philip Sutherland (Gable), stationed in Moscow who falls in love with and marries Marya Lamarkina (Tierney), a ballerina. When they try to leave Russia they are separated as Gable is forced to board a plane and Tierney is held back. Gable must then figure out how to get his wife out of Russia. He and his friend (Richard Haydn), whose wife is also being held in Russia, plan a bold sea rendezvous off the coast.

 

For a more in-depth summery and analysis of the film, check out Critica Retro's post!

 

Trailer

 

When Tierney's character Marya is first introduced, she is one of the ballerina's in the background of a performance of Swan Lake. After she is kept in Russia and must wait for her husband to come back for her, she becomes a Prima Ballerina. Near the end of the film, Gable, in disguise as a Russian General, swims ashore and attends the theatre where his wife dances the lead in Swan Lake. You can view the scene below (in two parts because there's a scene with Gable pretending to be a doctor in the middle. Sorry for the poor quality - I recorded it with my camera off the tv). Real life Russian ballerina Natalie Leslie doubled for Tierney in the long shots.

 

 

 

 

To get ready for her role, Tierney began instruction with dance master Anton Dolin, practicing two hours a day for six weeks "just to master enough technique to get on my toes and do the few steps that would be required of me." The work was hard and Tierney soon had blistered and achy feet. Gable "was patient and considerate. One weekend he flew to Paris and came back with some salve he assured me would relieve the pain in my feet. The ointment helped." Even though the work was exhausting and painful, it gave Tierney a special love of ballet for the rest of her life.

 

 

The movie was filmed at the British MGM Studios in Hertfordshire, England and on location in Cornwall, where Gable stays to devise his plan to rescue Tierney. Outdoor locations of Russia had to be faked, as the Cold War was really gearing up. As many scenes took place at night, and with the use of some stock and newsreel footage, this was fairly easily accomplished.

 

 

 

Both Gable and Tierney were a little depressed at the time of filming. Gable, who had recently divorced fourth wife Lady Sylvia Ashley, still greatly missed the love of his life Carole Lombard (third wife) who had tragically died over a decade before in a plane crash while on her way home from a successful bond selling tour of the US. Tierney, suffering from mental illness, didn't socialize much with her co-star, despite her mother's urging to pursue a relationship with Gable. The two did go out to eat at a pub in Cornwall once, as was customary between a leading man and his leading lady. Gable mostly talked about Carole as Tierney sympathetically listened. "For all his he-man, no-undershirt screen image, I saw him as sweet and gentle, a hard crust with a soft center. I thought that quality was what came across on the screen and made him adored by so many."

 

 

 

After filming completed, Gable went to Africa to film Mogambo while Tierney remained in London for a while before going to Paris, where she met Rita Hayworth's ex-husband Prince Aly Khan. They began an intense relationship before parting the following year.

 

 

Never Let Me Go did not fare well at the box-office, despite getting good reviews:

It is cheering to have the reassurance that Clark Gable is one fellow, at least, who can still make the Soviet Union tough guys look like absolute monkeys—and does. In his latest Metro adventure, "Never Let Me Go," which was launched in a wide-screen enlargement at the Capitol yesterday, good old Clark does again what he accomplished back in 1940 in "Comrade X": he kidnaps a beautiful Russian lady right out from under the late Joe Stalin's nose. And, what's more, he does it with the coolness of a big boy taking candy away from kids.

Anyone who knows adventure fiction and what to expect from such a film will not be at all disappointed in the brand of whoop-de-do we have here. For the writing is brash and eventful, the texture of the production is fairly real and the performances by all the actors are in the appropriate make-believe style. To be sure, the whole film is romantic and just this side of ridiculous farce in an area that isn't quite that funny. But, after all, it's good old Clark's affair, you know.

~ NY Times

Romance, daring, intrigue–that’s Clark Gable’s meat. That’s Never Let Me Go–the adventures of an American newspaperman in Russia who falls in love with a ballerina (Gene Tierney), marries her, and is forced to leave the country alone. His English friend, Richard Haydn, has also married a Russian and must also leave her behind. Gable lights on a fantastic idea. Why not sneak the girls right out of Russia? He decided to buy a fishing boat, sail it from England to a beach resort near the town where Gene is performing. At night the beach is crowded with bathers. No one would notice if two of those bathers swam out beyond the breakers to a rowboat, were taken by that rowboat to the fishing vessel, and freedom. Haydn’s skeptical, but what–besides his life–does he have to lose? Gable has a fiend, a radio broadcaster in Russia, whom he contacts and together they devise a code enabling Gable to make rendezvous plans with their wives. Everything works–up to a point. But there’s a run-in with a Russian patrol boat, and after that there’s Gable masquerading as a Russian Army officer, and after that there’s a chase right into the ocean. After that–well, see for yourself. 

~ Modern Screen Magazine

 

 

I greatly enjoyed this film. Tierney made a lovely ballerina, as can be seen in all the promotional photos below (click to enlarge) and the story was exciting, especially near the end where you wonder how they will get away with only minutes left to go on the film. And even though Gable is obviously older than Tierney - he was 54 and she was 32 - it somehow works.

 

TCM isn't showing this film anytime soon, but is available on DVD. I hope everyone gets a chance to watch it.

 

 

 

 

 

This post is part of En Pointe: The Ballet Blogathon hosted by Christina Wehner and Love Letters to Old Hollywood. Dance on over to their blogs to check out all of the other posts!

 

 

Sources:

Self-Portrait. Gene Tierney with Mickey Herskowitz. Wyden Books. 1979.

Clark Gable: A Biography. Warren G. Harris. Harmony Books, NY. 2002.

Cinema Wedding Gowns: The Razor's Edge (1946)

The Razor's Edge (1946) is a drama that starts not long after World War I in the year 1919. The wedding in the film is meant to take place sometime before the stock market crash of 1929, although the gown has more of a 1930s look to it.

The dress has a high collar, long sleeves, and gathering/rushing at the bust and stomach. The dresses is slim fitting all the way to the floor, where it ends in a small train.

Worn by Gene Tierney, the form-fitting lace dress was designed by Tierney's then husband, Oleg Cassini. The dress had originally been designed by Cassini for their 1941 wedding. However, the couple eloped and the gorgeous gown was not made until this movie. After filming, Gene Tierney’s stand-in Kay Adell Stork wore it at her own wedding. A few years later, Tierney and Cassini divorced.

The veil features a lace cap (reminiscent of Grace Kelly's) with a halo-shaped hat covered in matching lace. A slim tulle veil is attached and cascades gently to the floor.

A look at the back of the hatted-veil.

 Cutting the cake. Notice how the veil is draped over her arm.

Summer Under the Stars Day 1: Laura (1944)

 

 

I'll never forget the weekend Laura died.

And I will never forget the first time I saw Laura. The film was breathtaking, suspenseful, haunting, captivating, and unlike any other movie I had seen up to that point. It was one of the few film noirs I had seen, and before I was really aware of what a 'film noir' was. The other 'noirish' films I had seen (but was too young to appreciate) were The Maltese Falcon and It's a Wonderful Life.

The Opening

"I'll never forget the weekend Laura died." This first line, spoken by Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), immediately grabs the viewer and draws them into the story. Nino Frank wrote in his influential 1946 essay "A New Kind of Police Drama: the Criminal Adventure," that Laura was a "charming character study of the furnishings and faces, a complicated narrative, a perverse writer who is prosaic but amusing, and foremost a detective with an emotional life" (Daily Doses from the online Film Noir class Into the Darkness). When watching the opening scene after reading that observation, a whole new level of the film is revealed.

For example, in Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir, Janey Place and Lowell Peterson note that when detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), peers through the glass case in Waldo Lydecker's apartment, the case becomes "at once constricting and symbolic of a percarious situation which threatens at any moment to shatter to the floor" (72). It was these qualities that made Laura unique and which have made the film the well-loved classic it is today.

Otto Preminger's 1944 Laura marks an important transition in film history. Visually it harks back to Hollywood's Golden Era, flooding with light elaborate sets and the glamorous stars they hold--but at crucial moments a noir vision bubbles up to artfully blemish this smooth façade. It is a classic love story--except that it hinges on forbidden fantasy and murder. It at once gives a coy nod to the parlor psychology of the "Thin Man" variety of mystery, and looks forward to the dark Hitchcockian psychological thriller. It is a Janus of a film, and it may be eternally debated whether its double vision signals an end or a beginning.

Podcast on Laura



Laura, according to Gene Tierney, who plays the title character, has a "tricky plot: Laura, believed to be the victim of a murder, reappears to become a suspect" (Self Portrait, 113).


Laura/Gene Tierney

Gene Tierney described her most famous character as follows:

Laura dominated the story as a presence, felt but unseen, for half the movie. She was the victim of events she had not created and could not control. Laura was a woman of mystery and glamour, unattainable...

Laura is also the victim of male imaginings. Waldo Lydecker, who narrates the first half of the story, tells detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) and the audience who this mysterious "Laura" is and how he came to know her. Hearing, and seeing, his story unfold, also reveals something about his character. To him Laura is his own creation, someone who would not and could not exist without him. He is obsessed with her to the point of madness.

McPherson, on the other hand, falls in love with Laura, not as a person, but as a portrait. She becomes his "feminine ideal." He too becomes obsessed with her. He sits in her apartment and stares at her portrait, goes through her personal belongings, reads her diary. When Laura becomes real, as well as a suspect, McPherson must try and put his feelings aside to get to the bottom of the mystery of who killed "Laura."

 

 

Gene Tierney was 24 years old at the time of filming. She had been in nearly a dozen movies, playing everything from "a frontier girl, an aristocrat, an Arabian, a Eurasian, a Polynesian, and a Chinese." This time she had a chance to play the title role, a leading lady. The part for Laura had already been turned down by both Jennifer Jones (who would get her own, less known "portrait" movie in 1948, Portrait of Jennie) and Hedy Lamarr and even Tierney was not impressed with the script at first. She was worried over the short amount of screen time her character had (it took Tierney only 18 days to shoot her scenes). Darryl Zanuck, the head of Fox Studios, encouraged her to take the rule, and Tierney agreed. "I was in no position to be picky," she wrote in her autobiograpy. "I had not made a picture in over a year. My husband was still in the army. The extent of our baby daughter's problems was not yet known. I needed to get back to work" (Self-Portrait, 114).

Tierney was also going through a difficult period in her life. She had been exposed to measles while pregnant and her baby daughter, Daria, was born with multiple problems: she was deaf, partially blind, and would never be able to speak properly. This crushed Tierney and led to mental problems later in her own life. Laura, however, launched her to stardom.


Waldo Lydecker/ Clifton Webb

The role of Waldo Lydecker was played by Clifton Webb, who was a gamble considering he had only been in a few silent pictures and was a stage player. However, the role seemed to be made for him. It was a challenging role, he had long stretchs of dialogue and has to become a tragic figure to the audience. Tieney writes, "There was a wonderfully brittle edge to Clifton, his manner, his speech, the way he moved. Part of what came across on the screen, the impression of a man very tightly strung, was true in person. After we finished filming he checked himself into a sanitarium in New England. He came out rested and restored" (Self-Portrait, 115). Film Noir FAQ describes the character of Lydecker as "arch and affected" and "consistent." He is "almost entirely self-created; you get the sense that, growing up, he never was who or what he wished to be, and that he's spent his adult life cultivating something - somebody - better (3).

Mark McPherson/Dana Andrews

Mark McPherson is a different kind of detective than the pre-noir detectives (Philo Vance) and the hard-boiled figures of early noir (Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe). He starts out so confident and sure of himself and then falls in love with a painting and seems to lose focus of the job at hand. When Laura comes to life, he suddenly has to suspect this vision of murder instead. He has to be cruel to this beautiful creature and then protect her like he wanted to do all along.

This was also a big role for Dana Andrews. He was not quite yet a leading man, though he had recently been noticed for his role in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Laura was his third film with Tierney.

The Portrait

The hauntingly beautiful portrait of Laura is the focus of the film at the beginning. It has its own life as it enchants those who look at it and causes people to forget the real Laura and see her as the Laura in the portrait. It became a "potent, poignant symbol of loss – one that would inspire an urgent, irrepressible desire to bring her back from the dead" (source).

The real portrait used in the film was actually a photograph, taken by Frank Polony the studio photographer, that was then blown up and lightly brushed with paint to give it the ethereal look Preminger wanted. A painting was done by Azadia Mamoilian (also known as Azadia Newman) but Preminger was disatisfied with it. He was disastified with several things. Nearly everything went Preminger's way in the end.

The Music

The music of Laura is the second thing for which the film is most remembered. Preminger originally wanted to use "Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington.

However, the musical director of the film, Davie Raksin, wrote the melody that will forever be associated with the portrait - they go together, are meant for one another.

Later, Johnny Mercer wrote lyrics to go with it and it too became a classic.

 

. . . Laura is the face in the misty light,

footsteps that you hear down the hall;

The laugh that floats on a summer night

that you can never quite recall,

And you see Laura on the train

that is passing through.

 

Those eyes, how familiar they seem.

She gave her very first kiss to you.

That was Laura . . . but she's only a dream.

The Allure of Laura

What makes Laura so alluring? Why has it continued to capture audiences years later? We become just as fascinated with the portrait of Laura as the characters in the movies. Is it the beauty? The mystery? All of the elements of the film, its chemistry, its haunting title song, and its unique plot, all light the fire of our imaginiations and draw us into the plight of this girl who we have come to know through others memories of her. She becomes a memory for us also and we are just as surprised as McPherson when she suddenly walks in the room, alive and whole. We too think at first that we are seeing a ghost.

This post is part of the month-long 2015 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon hosted by Journeys in Classic Film. Check out all of the other great posts throughout the month here!

All images found via Pinterest

Sources:

Self-Portrait. Gene Tierney with Mickey Herskowitz. 1978.
Film Noir FAQ. David J. Hogan. 2013.

Additional Readings (from tcm.com):

Overview
The Essentials
Behind the Scenes
The Big Idea Behind Laura
Trivia
Pop Culture
Critics' Corner

Also, several extremely interesting articles about the characters and deleted scenes. The different posts on Laura are listed on the right side. Here's another great post.