Heidi (1937): Shirley Temple Climbs a Mountain

During the 1930’s in Hollywood, the top brass at 20th Century-Fox knew a good thing when they saw it and they saw it in a little tyke named Shirley Temple. Depression weary audiences flocked to the movies of the grammer school cupie-doll in droves, allowing her to single-handedly save her home studio from bankruptcy. Already the top box office draw in America for two years running, Temple was starting to age by 1937 (she was all of 9 years-old) and Fox studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck handed over the newest Temple vehicle, Heidi, to director Allan Dwan to see what he could do with it. It would be the first of three film collaborations for Dwan and Temple and the most successful, being a perfect vehicle for the star and keeping her at the top of the box office for a third year in a row.

Based on the classic children’s story by Joanna Spyri, Heidi is a little orphan girl, thrust upon her brusque and bitter grandfather by a mercenary and unloving aunt in the Swiss Alps. Cold and indifferent at first, the Grandfather (Jean Hersholt) warms quickly to the natural and loving child and the two become very attached. Enter evil aunt Dete again, whisking Heidi away to sell her into servitude to a wealthy aristocrat. While the Grandfather searches high and low for his beloved grandchild, Heidi begs to be taken back to her Alpine haven, only to be told she must stay in the opulent household to entertain a sad crippled girl named Klara (Marcia Mae Jones). All this is overseen by Klara’s sinister governess Fraulein Rottenmeier (Mary Nash).

Temple could have easily taken this to the saccharine, and some may say she did, but her natural charm and good humor shines through and makes for a highly entertaining family film. The fake snow proved a problem though when little Shirley accidentally swallowed some and had to be off the set for a day or two to recuperate. But if the snow was phony the settings are authentic in look and feel and that is mostly attributed to the fact that much of the outdoors was shot at Lake Arrowhead in San Bernardino County, California.

A musical number, “In Our Little Wooden Shoes” was inserted in the middle of the picture, much influenced by the miniature star herself. As a personal observation, the scene seems tacked on. It’s actually a dream sequence but lends nothing at all to the story. However, it is a cute way to interject Shirley in a few ornate costumes.

Heidi is a favorite around the holiday season. The snow, the classic story for children, the curmudgeonly Santa look-alike in the Grandfather all come together to give a Christmas aura (plus, the film climaxes on Christmas Eve). I know I first saw it as a kid on Christmas break from school. It was actually the first Shirley Temple movie I ever saw and for anyone who hasn’t seen one and wonders what she’s all about, it is a good film to get started.

Fallen Angel (1945): Fox Film Noir

With Laura (1944), 20th-Century Fox had a certified hit, both commercially and critically. Stylish and sexy, it also certified full fledged stardom for it’s leading lady, Gene Tierney, and propelled the status of it’s director, Otto Preminger. As always in Hollywood, the studio was eager to build on and duplicate the success of a film by using similar elements to potentially create a new one. This was the case with Fallen Angel, produced the year after the Tierney success. Laura’s male star, Dana Andrews was cast in the lead and Preminger assigned as it’s director.

Unlike Laura, the characters in Fallen Angel aren’t glamorous and wealthy eastern urbanites with razor sharp wit. They are denizens of a small podunk hamlet on the California coast. Although the characters reside on both sides of the tracks, the main focus is on the seedier “wrong” side. Down on his luck drifter Eric Stanton (Andrews) is kicked off a night bus bound for San Francisco, for lack of payment, landing in the burg of Walton, population 23 (an exaggeration, but it is a small, slow moving town). Drowning his sorrows in a cuppa joe at a late night diner, he happens upon Stella (luscious Linda Darnell); waitress, leggy lovely and local slut. As mercenary as she is beautiful, Stella, as Eric discovers within ten minutes of film footage, has a penchant for picking up admirers as quickly and handily as she does the day’s blue plate special.

Impetuous boy that Eric is, 24 hours later, he finds that he’s fallen head over heels with our girl Stella. She on the other hand has other plans. Being burned by Johnny-Come-Latelys before, she wants more than a chop suey dinner and a good time. Determined to give the sultry hash slinger the material possessions she craves, Eric sets his sights on local spinster June Mills (Alice Faye), attractive and financially well off. The plan: Marry June, grab her dough and take off with his viperous vixen. But when Stella is found murdered, Eric finds a target on his back.

Not only was Fallen Angel supposed to follow in the successful, noir-ish footsteps of Laura, but it was also supposed to be the dramatic debut of film songstress, Alice Faye. Longtime Fox musical star, Faye wanted to take her career in a different direction and was excited when her boss, head of Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck, chose this for her dramatic break-out (Olivia de Havilland and new Fox lovely Jeanne Crain were also considered for the role. DeHavilland specifically might have done well in it, as she successfully played a similar role in Paramount’s Hold Back the Dawn, two years earlier). Although not a flop, the film didn’t come close to the box-office powerhouse, Laura had been, and Faye was very unhappy with the way the film had been edited. After visiting the screening room to see the final product, she reportedly left the studio and retired from films (she would return to both films and Fox in 1962 for a remake of State Fair, in a secondary mother role).

Dana Andrews was riding a career high, starring in the aforementioned Laura, the hugely popular ‘45 version of State Fair, and headlined the following year’s Oscar winning Best Picture, The Best Years of Our Lives. But the big winner in Fallen Angel was Linda Darnell. Based on her strong performance in Hangover Square, also released in 1945, she was cast yet again as a dark vamp and the persona suited her. Her early roles had consisted of very young and virginal ingenue parts, but as the middle of the decade approached, she began being cast as naughty girls and her dark good looks only enhanced her burgeoning sexpot image. Stella can actually be viewed as a precursor to her acclaimed role as beautiful gold-digger, Lora Mae Hollingsway in the highly successful A Letter to Three Wives (1949). According to Darnell biographer Ronald L. Davis, there was even talk about an Oscar nomination for her performance in Angel.

Famed playwright Tennessee Williams recommended the movie, albeit denouncing the “awful” title, but the overall impression was that it just didn’t live up to it’s expectations. The fast pace of the relationships were inane, with Andrew’s character falling madly in love with a loose woman, meeting and marrying an upstanding lady and attempting to bilk her of her fortune, all in a very small town, and all in less than a week. But the noir elements, overall good performances by not only the three principals but also fine character actors, Charles Bickford, Anne Revere, Bruce Cabot and Percy Kilbride, and striking cinematography by Joseph LaShelle, make for a film from the golden age that can be enjoyed, if not wholly believed.
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The Mark of Zorro (1940): Robin Hood, Spanish Style

Picking up where Warner Brothers left off in the swashbuckling department with The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), 20th Century-Fox produced the extremely popular The Mark of Zorro in 1940, casting its biggest male star at the time, Tyrone Power in the lead. The top rate production was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, a visual and stylistic master of his craft. His images of Old California, though sparse are still romantic and visually decadent. The story, originally published in 1919, as The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, had been filmed to much fanfare in 1920 with the infamous silent film adventurer, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Power, although not as naturally athletic in the role of the masked avenger, was much younger than Fairbanks and with his matinee idol looks, made a more romantic lead.

Taking a page from the Robin Hood legend and even mixing in a dash of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the film begins in Madrid, Spain, where the daring and physically accomplished Don Diego Vega, a young aristocrat who is skilled with both a horse and a sword, is called home to California by his father, Alcalde (Governor) Don Alejandro Vega. The elder Vega has been replaced as leader of the region by a fat, conniving new Alcalde, Don Luis Quintero (J. Edward Bromberg), and his sinister henchman, Captain Pasquale (Basil Rathbone). Also in the new Alcalde’s household is his shallow and vain wife Inez (Gale Sondergaard) and his beautiful and innocent niece, Lolita (Linda Darnell).



When young Vega arrives home, he is confused at the frightened way he is greeted, being the son of the Alcalde, and when he realizes the tyranny and cruelty going on with the new regime, he hides behind the façade of a pompous fop, so as to do the real work that needs to be done in order to clean up the corruption. For this he takes on the persona of Zorro, the masked avenger, who rides through the shadows, dressed in black, robbing from the rich and callous to dispense to the poor and oppressed.

Fox head Darryl Zanuck began developing the Zorro film in the late 1930’s. According to Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century-Fox by Rudy Behlmer, instead of having just the standard love interest, which he felt was too static, he reworked the romance angle to have two females interested in Power’s character(s). Lolita, played by Darnell, would be the Alcalde’s niece and the new story addition would be his daughter (in the end, the flirtatious character would be the Alcalde’s wife, played by Gale Sondergaard).


In a December 1940 edition of “Hollywood” magazine, it was reported that over $7,000 was spent to create in Darnell, a Spanish senorita for the film, with 38 tests for hairstyle, make up and wardrobe combined. This also included Spanish lessons, to ensure correct pronunciation of the Spanish words, which cost $400 alone. Also included in the cost was $1,200 for her Spanish dances with Power. Darnell had many gorgeous close up shots and her fresh, virginal beauty was taken at its full advantage. Being a part of such an extravagant film directed by the prestigious Mamoulian only enhanced the starlet’s standing both at Fox and in Hollywood The pretty youngster, only sixteen at the time of filming, had made her film debut the previous year, as well as the first of her many movies with Ty Power. In his biography of Darnell, Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream, Ronald L. Davis relates Linda’s feelings on being so young, even still attending school classes on the Fox lot while filming romantic scenes. “I would be kissing Tyrone Power and the school teacher would come and tell me it was time for my history lesson. I never before or since have been so embarrassed”


Apparently, Tyrone Power could buckle the swash as adroitly as his cinematic rival over at Warners, Errol Flynn. According to the incomparable Basil Rathbone, who was a skilled swordsman in his own right, “Power was the most agile man with a sword I’ve ever faced before the camera. Tyrone could have fenced Errol Flynn into a cocked hat.” Fred Cavens, master fencer supreme, choreographed the sword fighting segments to a tee, and with such specimens as Power and Rathbone to bring the action to life, his work was a pleasure to watch. However, it could be argued that as appealing as Power was onscreen, he was no match for Flynn’s devil may care personality in such a similar role. Flynn wore his sarcasm and mischievous grin as a second skin, on Power it looked slightly smug.

Composer Alfred Newman’s zealous score was nominated for an Academy Award, and Arthur Miller’s black and white cinematography was fantastic. It is also worthy to note the performance of Gale Sondergaard. Always fun to watch, Sondergaard, never a raving beauty, has striking and interesting features and as she usually does, slinks and slithers in a most glamorously sinister way. Eugene Pallette basically reprises his Friar Tuck role from Robin Hood, as Frey Filipe, the padre with the pot belly.

Laura (1944): Sophisticated Murder

Gene Tierney was "undeniably the most beautiful actress in movie history" according to her boss at 20th Century-Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck. Indeed, she was one of the screen's most gorgeous stars, with a persona of elegance and cool sophistication. It was this graceful elegance which lent itself perfectly to Laura (1944), the stylish and sophisticated murder mystery that made her a star and is the movie with which she is most readily associated. Unusual in one respect, compared to most films of its time, the main character, Laura, doesn't appear on screen at all for the first quarter of the movie, except in the representation of a portrait above her fireplace, and for the next quarter, only in flashback.

The film begins in the plush New York City apartment of Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), an acid tongued, poison-penned columnist and radio personality who is being questioned by detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) while typing his newest column in his ornate bathtub (Thank goodness its not an electric typewriter....say, what's a typewriter). Detective McPherson is investigating the murder of beautiful Laura Hunt (Tierney), successful ad executive and protegee of Lydecker. McPherson's investigation finds a menagerie of decadent, amoral Manhattenites with various relationships to Laura. As the case progresses, the tough talking, hard boiled detective becomes infatuated with the portrait of the victim and obsessed with her via personal interviews and the dead woman's private papers. Falling asleep one night in Laura's apartment, under her mezmorizing portrait, he is awakened by none other than the object of his obsession. Laura is alive and it turns out that the dead woman, whose face was obliterated by the gunshot, is a model at the ad agency who was using Laura's apartment the night of the murder. So who tried to kill Laura and is she now safe?

The film was wrought with problems and delays from the outset. According to Tierney's autobiography, Jennifer Jones was originally offered the title role but refused (as did Hedy Lamarr). Stylistic director Rouben Mamoulian was originally assigned to oversee the picture but fired well into production. Producer Otto Preminger was then allowed to produce and direct the film, a job that was first denied him by boss Darryl Zanuck, due to an old grudge between the two. It turned out to be, what some call, Preminger's finest work, and the bald headed Austrian was nominated for an Academy Award.

Prissy and effete stage actor Clifton Webb was Preminger's choice for the prissy and effete character of Waldo Lydecker. Zanuck, however, didn't care for Webb, a known homosexual. After a test revealed that Webb's mannerisms were perfect for the character, Zanuck relented and the actor won both an Oscar nomination for the role as well as a long term contract with the studio. It is hard to believe that Webb's aging dandy would actually lust after the young and nubile Tierney~and even harder to believe that she would have any physical attraction to him. His interest would be seen as having more of a controlling rather than romantic nature, despite what the script might try to imply. It is also hard to imagine Laura's romantic involvement with her fiancee, Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), a weak, sponging Southern gigolo, who plays pattycake with Laura's wealthy aunt, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). Her vitality and vivaciousness is much more suited to the virile detective McPherson and an immediate attraction can be felt between these two. Both Tierney and Andrews had rather mediocre careers before they made the noir classic, but the films popularity made instant stars of both.

Besides the Oscar nomination for Preminger and Webb, the movie also raked in nods for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction (B&W) and Best Cinematography (B&W). The latter won the coveted prize for Joseph LaShelle. Composer David Raksin's score was also very notable including the haunting title tune which became a beloved standard. On the strength of her performance in Laura, Tierney was cast in the plum role of Ellen in the dark Leave Her to Heaven, the following year and received her own nomination from the Academy.