Our Man in Vienna

Casablanca and Serendipity

I favor starting out with a concept and carrying through to the denouement. However, sometimes chance is a better method than any method.

Ingrid Bergman didn’t jell with Humphrey Bogart and ditto for him. Ingrid also she wasn’t enthralled by the making of Casablanca. The script was ad lib, and there was no ending prior to the end of filming the film. The ending, in which the lovers sacrifice their love for the cause, was tacked on at the last minute. (Later, after Ingrid “eloped” with Roberto Rossellini, there would practically be no script at all for the five films he directed for her. So in a way, Casablanca broke her in.) My view on those films dissents from that of many film buffs. I think serendipity didn’t work out very well for Roberto.

Who is Herman Hupfeld? He is the composer and lyricist for Down The Old Back Road, A Hut in Hoboken and the stellar Goopy Geer. He also wrote that Fats Waller favorite Let’s Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep). And the classic As Time Goes By also came from his pen. Here’s the story of how Time became associated with Casablanca, as related by Frank Miller, the author of the book Casablanca:

”As Time Goes By had been written in the ’20s and had enjoyed moderate success in a recording by Rudy Vallee. But it was the favorite song Murray Burnett, one of the co-authors of the play Everybody Goes to Rick’s. He used the song as the love them for Rick and the leading lady (in the play she’s named Lois). Nobody at Warner’s questioned the use of that song, since the studio owned the rights anyway. When the film had been shot and Max Steiner was ready to score it, he tried to get them to change the song, claiming that it was so musically uninteresting that he couldn’t work it into the score. He also may have wanted to write a new song for the film and possibly make a hit (as he had done with It Can’t Be Wrong, the song he wrote for Now, Voyager). Hal Wallis was ready to make the change, but it meant re-shooting some lines for Ingrid Bergman. And she had already cut her hair short for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Unable to match up the shots, they had to stick with As Time Goes By, which became a bigger hit than ever as a result of its use in this film.”

Casablanca, in my view; is a pot boiler with nary a cliché missing. I’ve said that Michael Curtiz could get good juice out of bad oranges, and this juice is terrific. But Michael did get a little help from serendipity on this one. What if Ronald Reagan and Hedy Lamarr, who were first choice for the roles, had been the stars? And what if Ingrid had not had her hair cut?

At any rate, serendipity is responsible for the inclusion of As Time Goes By in Casablanca and it
“dictated” much of Casablanca, and in this case the right decisions were made.

 

The Best Screenplay

The Screen Writer’s Guild picked the screenplay of Casablanca as the best screenplay ever in 2006, 64 years after the film’s release. Wow!

Here’s what I wrote about Casablanca some years ago: “It is the melodrama of all melodramas and the pot boiler of all pot boilers. The camera is everything but static. It flows from one scene to the next, never stopping for breath, with rhythm that seems completely natural.

“I’ve seen it several times since first seeing it at the Princeton Playhouse, the year of its release. Nary a cliché is missing, but what marvelous direction! Michael Curtiz was a director who could get good juice out of the worst oranges. The script may be a bad orange, or even a lemon, but the film is so masterfully made that it hits the truth.”

Michael Curtiz got good juice out of that orange with some help from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. If Ronald Reagan and Hedy Lamarr, who were first choice for the roles, had played them, Curtiz could have squeezed and squeezed, but his efforts would have resulted in nothing but sour juice.

I suspect that the jurors, who picked the screenplay as number one, had judged the cinematic result, rather than the typescript.

On the other hand, due to the efforts of Michael, Bogey, Ingrid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, etc., maybe Casablanca is the best screenplay ever put to
celluloid.

Relishing Roles

Who was most instrumental in disseminating German and culture all over the world? That’s right, Adolf Hitler.

Hitler inadvertently helped disseminate German and Austrian culture internationally by driving artists out of those locations for “racial” and political reasons.

Not to be forgotten, there were many whose careers were permanently truncated by death and others whose careers were nipped in the bud. Yes, Hitler and his minions were efficient.

The ones that got away often ended up in the New World. Some went under, but others embarked on successful careers – especially in the arts and music

The roster of German and Austrian directors and actors who landed in Hollywood in the Thirties and Forties is endless.

After the United States entered the war, actors were needed to portray Third Reich villains. In the propaganda pot boilers of the time, who was better suited to play Gestapo and SS-officers than the emigrés in Tinsel Town? They had the accents without trying, and they had the mannerisms down to a T.

Many an emigré found himself donning the uniform of those who had driven him out of Europe.

 

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

The Faithful Husband

“‘Red’ Levine, a cold-blooded contract killer, who was a strict orthodox Jew and therefore did not murder on the Sabbath. Then there was the merciless syndicate boss Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter (sic) who loved his mother more than anything and was respected by the family-minded Sicilians.”
– From a PR Text for “Koscher Nostra: Jewish Gangsters in America 1890-1980,” The Jewish Museum, Vienna, November 2003.

In Lepke, starring Tony Curtis and directed by Menahem Golan, Louis “Lepke” Buchhalter, director of “Murder Incorporated” is the best father and husband imaginable. He is happily married and completely faithful to his wife. Lepke’s specialty is, of course, carrying out contracts. You have to eat, have a roof over your head and provide for the wife and kids. And a job is a job.

His number-one hit man is also his best friend. The boss and his toady are dedicated to each other and indeed they remain friends till the end, but they do not walk off into the sunset together.

Somewhere along the line, things go awry. The Italian families decide that the good pater familias, who took care of so many contracts for them, must be sacrificed to the law. They throw Lepke to the lions so that the FBI will get off their tails. It’s no skin of their ass since Lepke isn’t quite Italian. Being Jewish is as close as you can get, but it’s not the real McCoy. His former clients finger him and he has to take it on the lam. At his dingy hideout, a knockout of a gun moll has her sights on him and tempts him. The temptation scenes are done in somber dark tones and with a Biblical ambiance. It brings to mind Putiphar trying to seduce poor little straight-arrow Joseph. Can handsome Tony withstand the wiles of the sexy dame who gives him more than a glance of herself in the nude? David and Bathsheba come to mind. Alas, the handsome family man has a moment of weakness, but then a moment is all that it takes, and he falls prey to the skilled seductress. After all, a man is a man, and even the best of us give in to temptation once in a blue moon. The number of tumbles is limited to one, but a tumble is a tumble and being unfaithful is being unfaithful.

The conjugal transgression is followed by deep remorse, torn lapels and ashes on the noggin. And while our hero is gnashing his teeth for having fallen prone to his lower instincts, his best hit man is taking care of suspected squealers with an ice pick. There’s a shot of him puncturing the neck of a doxy in a slip with the pick. (This gory scene was cut out of the TV version.)

Lepke decides to give himself up, probably as penance for his lapse, and he and the toady both end up on death row. The faithful toady gets what he deserves for the puncturing, and the unfaithful Lepke gets he deserves for the penetration. The two culprits are allowed to meet and embrace before the cell doors clank shut. We know what fate awaits the toady, but we see the repenting Lepke walk the last mile before the lights go out.

 

Bugsy

Bugsy Siegel was a gangster’s gangster, a spiffy dresser and a raconteur. He hobnobbed with the stars and celebrities. Film gangster George Raft was Bugsy’s real-life friend. In Bugsy Warren Beatty plays Raft’s friend and Annette Benning is Virginia Hill.

The film presents Bugsy as a ruthless killer who could rub someone out from another family without blinking an eye. And if that someone was from his family, he may have flinched before doing the job, but the job was done.

Bugsy was a member of the mob, but he detested fascists. He had Italian connections and made plans to assassinate Mussolini. However, the partisans beat him to the punch by hanging the Duce upside down.

No doubt about it, Bugsy was a gangster, but he was a gangster with vision. He made plans to establish a gambling paradise in the middle of nowhere – nowhere being the Nevada desert.

Bugsy was a ladies’ man and it was easy-come easy-go until he fell head over heels for gangland moll Virginia Hill. Ginny became his accomplice in the desert scheme – which didn’t make it less hazardous. Ginny was not known as a penny pincher. She liked the bright stuff and the fluffy stuff and all the nice things that money could buy.
Bugsy’s gangster friends thought that he was off his rocker concerning Las Vegas, and they knew he was off his rocker concerning Miss Hill. ilVirginia had charmed him, and he had to use his charm to convince his colleagues of the validity of his venture.

Among Bugsy’s talents was creativity as a chef. There’s a scene when Meyer Lansky and cohorts surprise him at home making an omelette. There he is in the kitchen decked out in and an apron and a chef’s high cap.

He throws in more eggs and serves up an omelette to his guests that is a gastronomical delight. And while his gangster guests sit down to have a bite, he explains the desert idea with conviction, wielding a wooden cooking spoon for emphasis.

The Lansky and cohorts are skeptical, but nevertheless they invest. Bugsy is industrious and a hard worker, and things begin to happen. But of course there are snags. Bugsy isn’t very frugal, and with a little help from Ginny, he finds himself a couple of million in the red. That would be chickenfeed today, but in the Forties it was a fortune.

As we know, the mob doesn’t handle debtors with kid gloves. Bugsy gets a stay of execution while Ginny goes to Paris on a spending spree. There’s another stay, but when he can’t come up with what he owes, the mob’s patience comes to an end. The ambitious gangster is found riddled with bullets in Hill’s Hollywood house. I remember seeing photos of his bloody body in the tabloids back ’47 when I was a kid.

When Ginny gets the news of Bugsy’s demise in Paris she interrupts what she’s doing to enter a period of mourning. After she discards her black attire, she hangs around Paris for a while, and then takes the chance of coming back home. For some reason, the mob doesn’t send her to join Bugsy.

The Kefauver Committee beckons and Virginia goes onstage to become the star of the hearings. When the stodgy senator K. asks her why so many big-time hoods had an itch for her, she replies that she is the number one in the country in the oral arts. Apparently, the mob had let off the financial hook due to her singular talents or talent.

Virginia carried on for decades before dying under mysterious circumstances in, of all places, Salzburg, Austria.

But back to Bugsy’s scheme: Since the desert venture is so far advanced, the mob decides to take a chance on it, rather than scrap it.

And we know the rest. The investment more than paid off in the end. The paltry millions brought in countless billions and billions.

Our American gangsters aren’t like those of other nations. They’re not simply hoods and killers. They are men with foresight who dream the American dream and can turn it into reality.

And indeed Las Vegas with its gambling palaces, luxury hotels and theme parks has become an integral part of Americana. It stands today as a monument to one gangster’s vision and to gangland’s prudence. But that prudence had limitations. The mob rubbed the city’s founder out.

 

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner