[dir. Julien Duvivier; scr. Ben Hecht, Ferenc Molnár, Donald Ogden Stewart, Samuel Hoffenstein, Alan Campbell, Ladislas Fodor, László Vadnai, László Görög, Lamar Trotti, Henry Blankfort | uncredited: William Morrow, Edmund Beloin, Bert Lawrence, Anne Wigton, Malcolm St. Clair, Buster Keaton…?]
Julien Duvivier’s Tales of Manhattan (1942) is the star-studded story of a jinxed dress coat, and the disparate individuals into whose hands it falls. A drama and a comedy, about the rich and the poor, joy and despair, love, lies, and destiny, it was the brainchild of producers Sam Spiegel (then billing himself S. P. Eagle) and Boris Morros (a Soviet spy – codename: Frost – and from 1947, a double agent for the FBI). Duvivier, like so many others artists at the time, had left for Hollywood in the face of the Nazis’ rise in Europe. When offered the chance to direct a couple of sequences in the film, he replied he would happily direct one segment, or all of them, but not somewhere in between. He directed them all.
The movie’s story was constructed by something like twenty writers from what one source indicates was a total of 40 original stories or ideas bought for plot material;[i] another source hyperbolically suggested that number was as high as 150. (A couple of plagiarism charges were inevitably levelled.) Starting in 1941, the movie spent 64 days in production.[ii] Its chief points of difference: its innovative structure, and a cavalcade of cinema’s biggest names. In post-production, one of that number found themselves entirely cut from the film when their sequence was dropped. On release, the film was praised and picketed. The reaction would spur another of the movie’s stars to denounce Tales of Manhattan, and completely renounce their fiction film career.
On Your Marks
An anthology film, Tales operates as a network narrative (David Bordwell’s term). Such narratives can be thought of as broadly concurrent, juggling the simultaneous actions of a number of significant characters – a Feydeau farce might fit the bill – or consecutive, finishing with one set of characters before moving on to the next. Tales is the latter, with the e-pun-ymous jacket the connective element between each chapter.
We might describe this particular subset of consecutive network narrative as a relay narrative, the travelling plot object (in this instance, a tailcoat) the runners’ baton. The baton provides a unity to a story in which an ensemble might otherwise be stretched apart in space or time or theme. The baton is, in a way, the opposite of a MacGuffin (a plot object for the protagonist to chase, rather than to possess). Of course, the line blurs: a valuable item possessed by one person is often coveted by another, as is the case with the titular rifle in Winchester ’73 (1950), a concurrent narrative, but one where we are more likely than not to follow the characters in possession of the baton.
Firearms are a historically popular narrative baton. Numbering alongside the Mann classic are The Gun (1974, made-for-TV), Dead Man’s Gun (1997-1999 TV series), and American Gun (2002). In more MacGuffin-y fashion, there’s Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). In Lock, Stock and its follow-up, Snatch (2000), Ritchie revels in the farcical simultaneity and proximity of his characters’ machinations, as Tarantinoesque non-linearity plays with concurrency and consecutiveness. Situations, characters, dialogue, and ideas remain of a piece, even as the MacGuffins change from antique shotguns to a precious gemstone.
Jewellery, naturally enough, is another pre-eminent baton choice, from Diamond Handcuffs (1928), to Ophüls’ The Earrings of Madame De… (1957), to the second segment of Gene Kelly’s An Invitation to the Dance (1956), “Ring Around the Rosy”, inspired in part by the 1897 Arthur Schnitzler play La Ronde, itself a baton-less relay (or perhaps the baton was love all along). Or instead of expensive jewels, the baton could be as little as Twenty Bucks (1993). But it’s more likely to be something extraordinary: the pecuniary baton is a cursed piece of biblical blood-money in Walter Simonson’s 2012 comic The Judas Coin.
Extraordinary batons pass through various owners in The Red Violin (1998), and The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964). And if a motorcar, why not a mount, as in Spielberg’s War Horse (2011)? Or the beast of burden in Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)? Although, at a certain point, a sentient baton really moves us out of connective tissue territory, and into a road movie tradition. Perhaps in such films, the protagonist is but a human baton. In 12 Years a Slave (2013), this is the confronting historical reality, with a man traded as an object between other men.
Man-as-baton might just as likely appear dead as alive, as in the history of the Hunchback from the One Thousand and One Nights, wherein successive characters find themselves attempting to dispose of a troublesome corpse. The larger collection of tales also, and crucially, features important plot objects changing hands in one of the earliest examples of detective fiction. In fact, the whole of the collection has an aspect of the relay narrative to it, as the very position of storyteller is passed between a great many characters. There’s no denying the longevity of the device. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, R2-D2 and C-3PO found themselves traded between successive owners, in the storm’s eye of a sprawling, unspooling saga.
Many of these batons bring with them some feeling of the workings of fate. Maybe even a One Ring-like will of their own. Such elements could function just as easily at the level of a single scene as for a whole movie, and perhaps this level allows us to better see how the camera might convey the idea of a relay narrative. Before the protagonist of the animated Dinosaur (2000) is even born, his egg is passed along on a fateful journey through live-action footage brimming with (re-)animated life: an interconnected world designed to provoke a sense of awe. Robert Zemeckis floats with a lone feather through the air, at the start of Forrest Gump (1994), lending a lightly poetic touch, some vague idea of destiny, to the risible series of coincidences to come. More successfully, in The Polar Express (2004) we follow in an extended shot the journey of a lost ticket, carried by the wind, kicked up by running wolves, snatched by an eagle, coughed up by its chick, and caught in a rolling snowball, before finding its way back inside the train carriage whence it came. Spielberg took up the gauntlet, paying homage to this scene in a staggeringly complex chase sequence, involving not one but three pieces of paper, a tank, rushing water, collapsing buildings, a progressively deconstructing motorcycle-with-sidecar, and its own eagle, in The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
Yet another valuable ticket propels the plot of Le Million (1931), in which the protagonist endeavours to claim his lottery winnings, currently stowed in the pocket of yet another jacket passing through the hands of a series of owners. And so we come full circle…
The City and the Stars
The opening credits play to Gershwinian strains over a still image of a night-time Manhattan skyline, every gleaming dot of white another soul, another story. The all-star cast are billed, by order of appearance, with their names literally up in lights. It was in honour of Tales that on July 24th, 1942, at the 66th such ceremony, Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, and Edward G. Robinson cemented their stardom, leaving their hand- and footprints in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, a record number of individual squares for a single ceremony.[iii] (Ginger Rogers had made her marks in 1939; the black stars of the film’s final chapter, Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters, and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, apparently unceremoniously excluded.) The setting and the players thus proclaimed, we have only the baton left to introduce.
The package is borne in to the luxurious apartment of Mr Paul Orman by a procession of tailors. This worshipful company of haberdashers next transfer the tails from box to mannequin. Standing afore a mirror, the image recurs deep into the infinite: a premonition. Orman (Boyer) enters, dressing-gowned, and surveys his new suit, which the head tailor amusedly admits to his famous customer has apparently been cursed. An argument with the cutter over the lapels led to the man’s dismissal; he swore the suit would bring misfortune to all who wore it.
Duvivier’s anthology follow-up of 1943, Flesh and Fantasy, would continue this exploration of fate and fortune, within a club tales framing device. It emphasised the occult, the supernatural, the metamorphic. Tales hews closer to reality, but the notion lingers: the coat is cursed.
But the tale-telling tailor insists the suit is the best he’s ever made, “…and I know it will bring you good luck. Yes sir, this is a lucky suit, Mr Orman, and I guarantee your happiness in it.”
We dissolve to a close-up of a pistol in a woman’s hand. “Is it true?” she demands.
“Unfortunately,” says Mr Orman, “yes.”
She fires.
He falls to the floor, dead.
The Actor
Applause! We hear it. See the shadow of the closing curtains. And Boyer is resurrected. He is an actor on the stage. The curtain opens again, and Orman takes his co-star’s hand and bows. They close again, and he rushes off-stage.
“A smash hit! We’re over!”
“Great chief, they ate it up!”
“The biggest opening of the season, and you held them in the palm of your hand, just like that!”
Orman doesn’t stop for these congratulations. He goes through a door and up a set of steps, making straight for his dressing room; gets his things, comes back out and down the steps, and to the stage-door, the whole time ignoring his manager, who is pleading with him to take another curtain-call. From the moment he leaves the stage, it’s all one fluid tracking shot west, then east, ending with Orman’s valet-cum-chauffeur, Luther (Eugene Pallette), opening the stage-door, a rainy night awaiting.
“Tell them I don’t care to step out of character.”
“What character?” says his manager.
“A corpse,” replies Orman. “I am dead, remember?”
The camera is waiting in the car, as the rain pours down.
“Step on it, Luther.”
Manhattan turns to silvery watercolours, running in the rain, Luther’s eyes nestled in the rearview mirror. Either they drive far enough or for long enough that the night clears.
“You were lucky to get rid of her last year,” says Luther, in Pallette’s inimitable kitchen appliance timbre.
“It was a blessing,” Orman agrees. “Why did I have three flops in a row? Because she thought she could act. The minute I come on stage without her, look what happens. A smash hit.”
“You said it, boss. But what beats me is why you want to start everything over again.”
They drive past, observed from the terrace of a large house. The rumble of the vehicle fades away, replaced by Latin music. It’s a party; there are guests playing cards. As the camera moves to reveal her, a woman watching the car flicks her head round: Rita Hayworth – trademark locks and a shimmering gown with a midriff chevron. Her fidgeting fingers betray her thoughts. She goes inside, not unobserved herself: the camera pushes in on the smiling Halloway (Thomas Mitchell). He takes another drink.
Every transition has been seamlessly mounted, from the theatre to the car to the party. It doesn’t feel simply like Studio Era craftsmanship, but something especially fitting for a relay narrative linking characters and stories together. The other benefit is establishing coherent geography. Both of these ends are served as Ethel (Hayworth) enters the house, shadows of the dancers outside dancing still upon the wall.
“You fool. Why did you come?”
“Love,” says Ormand. “It sometimes blinds me.”
So there’s an affair, and a jealous husband.
“He suspects us constantly. The mere mention of your name, he raves like a madman.” Ethel checks the window: Halloway is still seated at his table on the terrace. Orman turns on a light, Ethel kills it. “Please go, Paul. I’ll be in town tomorrow at 10:00 to see you.”
“You little two-faced liar.” She hasn’t told her husband she wants to leave him, as she’d promised Orman she would, and he knows she’s accompanying him tomorrow on a hunting trip to Canada. Ethel checks the window again – an empty chair; Halloway’s gone. The music stops.
In the hall stands a foreboding figure in perfect silhouette, save cigarette (the consummate low-key Gothic lighting courtesy of cinematographer Joseph Walker).
Hayworth ignites her brilliant smile. “John, look who dropped in.”
“Hello, Mr Orman,” says Halloway, a few drinks past drunk. Mitchell plays the whole thing smilingly, which only enhances the sense of menace.
“Don’t you think you’re having too many, dear?” She tries to take his glass.
“Frankly, no.”
Some pleasantries; Orman wishes them a happy trip, and bids them farewell.
“You’re wasting one of your goodbyes. My wife isn’t going with me. She insists on staying behind.”
A pair of close-ups: Boyer and Hayworth. Afforded a brief moment alone, the lovers arrange a rendezvous.
Orman’s moonlit walk to the lodge at the end of the garden places him behind a foreground of long grass, seeding a visual and thematic motif: Orman the hunted. Entering the lodge, a cavernous black void fills the frame. Chiaroscuro as interior design: the slivers of light the edges of antlers. Orman finds the switch, and finally sees illuminated the whole interior: a great dome of antlers all pointing in at him, the long shot reducing Boyer to a small figure in this sublime, eldritch setting. (Cf. Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal.) Ethel arrives.
“Forgive me for doubting you,” says Orman. They embrace. Professions of love, regrets of the past: “I didn’t know then that love was anything more than a good scene, a charming scene,” says Orman. “I didn’t know it was something that– that could tear at your heart, and burn through greasepaint.” Proposals of marriage, tickets to Rio. But as Orman calls his manager to close the play, Duvivier focuses on Hayworth, Ethel clearly ill at ease with such a rupture in the status quo.
Her husband appears from an adjoining room: the gun room. Has Ethel changed her mind? Will she go with her husband? “Best shooting in the world, if you’re looking for moose.” He turns to the other man. “Have you ever hunted moose, Mr Orman?” A tour of the gun collection is in order. Much of the scene is played with the actors behind the weapons. We’re back in the long grass, or maybe it’s a cage. Halloway introduces Orman to his favourite firearm, Colonel Johnson.
“Please don’t point a gun in the house,” urges Ethel. There’s never any doubt as to where she fears this scene is heading.
“Don’t worry,” says Halloway. “The Colonel’s not loaded. I may be a trifle, but not the Colonel.” We’re treated to an early FPS POV, the barrel moving from a mounted elk, across Ethel, to Orman. Halloway asks him if he ever uses guns. Only on the stage, says Orman.
“Just blanks, eh?”
“Yes, only blanks. We actors prefer them.”
Ethel’s attempts to charm, to diffuse the tension, have no effect. Finally, she lets her anger show, at least for a moment. Orman wants her to go; Halloway, however, says he has no secrets from his wife, even if she has from him. He could never tell, he says, when she was acting. Which brings up the question of whether an actor can get along without truth and honour.
“An actor can get along without anything,” says Orman, “except a good play.”
“Sorry I missed your show. I understand you get killed in it.”
We’ve moved from mid-shots to close-ups, alternating between the three players. the inevitable showdown drawing nearer. Fear starting to creep into Boyer’s cool demeanour. We move in even closer – just hands now. Orman’s on his cursed jacket; Halloway’s shaking near the trigger; Ethel’s fingers turning over each other, just as they were when we first met her. Inter-cutting till boiling point: the Colonel fires.
As the wounded Orman staggers back, Ethel’s shock makes way for terror, not so much of her murderous husband, but of what’s to become of them. “This’ll ruin you – both of us.”
“It was an accident,” says Halloway. “I was cleaning my gun. You saw it.”
“Oh yes. Yes, of course.” Chillingly she turns to look upon her wounded lover, noir dame conviction rising to the surface: “It was an accident.” With his dying breaths, Orman honourably assents to this explanation.
With the corpse lying before them, Ethel reaffirms her commitment to her husband. She apologises. She’ll be his witness: “To the end.” And… Orman laughs, resurrected once more. Death scenes, it turns out, are his speciality; this one a lover’s test. “You were acting?” Hayworth’s line-delivery underplayed so as to recalibrate everything we’ve seen before it. His performance fooled her, but hers seems to fool herself. She insists it was an accident. Now Orman can at last say goodbye to Ethel, who does, in her own way, love her husband. As the camera pulls back, and Orman the Hunted escapes, it is Mr and Mrs Halloway briefly caught in the gun cage.
“Where to now?” asks Luther, opening the car door, only for his employer to collapse onto the seat. The last twist in this game of appearance and reality, acting and lies: the Colonel did not miss.
“Spoiled my best suit,” the actor laments. “Finest suit I ever had. It’s my own fault: I put it on the wrong dummy.” He instructs Luther to drive to the hospital. “Remember: an accident. No publicity. I don’t want you to spoil my scene. I was superb.”
“And that guy said this suit’d bring you good luck.”
“Perhaps it has,” says Orman.
Jungle Creatures
The second segment is to some extent a comic variation on the first – another story of lies and perception, hinging on a question of fidelity. Music and visuals signal the key change. We’ve moved from rifles to fallen soldiers, the empty bottles evidence of last night’s revelry. Broken glass on the floor, balloons on the ceiling, upturned furniture, lamps turned into makeshift goalposts – the post-stag-do debris generated by Harry Wilson (Cesar Romero) and his pals, and left to Edgar (Roland Young) to clean.
Luther links the segments. Edgar’s a friend of his, onto whom he intends to palm-off at bargain price the cursed tailcoat, no longer of any sartorial appeal to the hospital-ensconced Orman. Edgar identifies a hole in the jacket as a curious design feature. Moths, explains Luther. A .32 calibre moth, says Edgar, who nevertheless agrees to take the coat as collateral for a $10 loan.
It’s interesting that the bullet hole doesn’t play any real part in any subsequent segment, nor do split and mended seams carry over. And in chapters where something is found in a coat – love-notes in the second, a fortune in the final – it isn’t something planted in a previous segment. Everybody gets the coat as just a coat, more or less. Tales is, after all, an anthology film comprising discrete segments, in divers genres, penned by different hands. While this blank slate approach lessens the degree of interconnectivity between stories, it leaves the focus on the talismanic, singular aspect of the baton. Variations on a theme…
In this variation, an undressed Ginger Rogers is introduced as Harry’s bride-to-be, Diane. Her wedding day begins auspiciously with the arrival of friend Ellen (Gail Patrick) – hat wide-brimmed and countenance sorrowful, opening salutation: “Marriage stinks.” Perusing her husband’s pockets, she has stumbled upon evidence of a redhead, and a phoney one at that. Diane is of the opinion that this may be filed under the heading Comeuppance. Her pocket perusal policy, however, is subjected to re-evaluation when the two ladies, having gone to Harry’s apartment, are presented with the opportunity of digging into Harry’s own coat. “Listen,” says Ellen, “you’d be looking this very minute if you weren’t afraid I was right.” To prove her wrong, Diane commences the relevant rummaging. Their finds are innocent enough, until the discovery of a letter addressed ‘My passionate lion’, signed ‘Squirrel’. If downing Edgar’s hangover cure didn’t wake Harry up, hearing his fiancée reading that letter does. Dashing back to his bedroom with perfect panic, he gets on the blower to his friend George (Henry Fonda). He has a plan, and it requires a tailcoat, which conveniently, Edgar has.
In the interim, Edgar is sent out to curtail any further letter reading. The cut-to composition aligns with the sofa, the girls seated in the right third of the frame. Edgar re-enters upstage on the left, the space between them portending the difficulty and awkwardness of the task. Diane still reading, the camera dollies in to another two-shot of the girls, halting as, the correspondence coming to a scandalous head, she stops reading aloud. Edgar’s paltry interference is rebuffed.
A grinning Harry greets the girls, who offer him a predictably cold reception. Ellen decides to leave before the fireworks kick off, Diane waving the incriminating letter as her betrothed pleads ignorance. Not a moment too soon, George walks in from the kitchen with Orman’s tailcoat over his arm. A meek, mild-mannered man, he greets Diane, who barely registers his existence, limply taking his hand. Things will change, he says, once he takes that personality course. George “explains” to everybody that he went home with Harry’s tailcoat by mistake; Harry’s coat is really his coat. Diane’s first instinct is a relieved look to the man she’s to marry, but almost in the same instant her eyes are ignited by the new light in which she sees George. When George says he and Harry are about the same size, Diane relishes an inspection. George’s shoulders are just a little broader, she reports. Why don’t you have a nice clean shave like George, she suggests to Harry, who literally bounds off. “That’s the best friend a man ever had,” he says.
Left alone with Diane, George (unaware of the precise contents of the letter) is at a loss to explain her strange behaviour. Jungle music straight out of a Tarzan picture begins as, in a merry return to the first segment’s hunting motif, Ginger stalks the lion. She giggles and runs away when she gets too close. “What are you looking at me like that for?” asks George. “Haven’t you ever seen me before?”
“No,” says Diane, “I don’t think I have.”
George is no longer “dim” – now he is a lion with a shaking mane and soft paws. Won’t you do the roar? asks Diane. George meows. Diane is disappointed. George ROARS! Now he is the lion, now he’s stalking forward. But “Lions can be tamed,” notes Diane, picking up a chair.
All this primal play-acting leads to imaginary letter-writing. It’s the kind of scene where in a musical you’d find a song with two characters explaining why they couldn’t possibly be in love. Following that form, they gradually admit the lovelorn lines they’re reciting are not from letters, but out of their heads; not out of their heads, but from their hearts. But it’s the stuff of dreams: Diane will marry the now exonerated Harry. Cue the Squirrel.
Acting on his new-found leonine qualities, George endeavours to uphold the charade, kissing the blonde bombshell (Marion Martin) who’s come in search of Harry. But the secret soon gets out. Heads crowd round Diane as the true provenance of the tailcoats are revealed. “Just a minute,” says Diane. “It’s better if nobody explains anything to anybody.” Framed in the centre, with the two hunks on either side of her, she makes her choice. “Here’s your letter, Squirrel. And here’s your ring, Harry. And,” she says, taking George’s arm, “here’s my lion.”
“You ever want me to help you out again, Harry,” offers George, “just let me know.”
As in the first chapter, the tailcoat has brought both disaster and blessings – what once was hidden, now uncovered.
Maestro
Edgar and Luther sell the coat at an opportunity shop for $10, where it is admired by Mrs Smith (Elsa Lanchester). “It would be so nice for my husband,” she remarks.
“Why? Is your husband a waiter?”
No, she says, adoringly, “He’s a great musician.”
We’re looking up as adoringly as she at Charles Smith (Laughton, Lanchester’s real-life husband) amidst angels, playing an idle piano rhapsody. Pulling back, we find him performing to empty chairs in an undistinguished dive. Appearance and reality is again our theme.
The management is perturbed. We follow this guy from behind the bar to over Laughton’s shoulder, reality intruding on the original composition. Smith, his repertoire rebuked, gets to boogieing on the ivories. There’s audio of a door closing, and he shifts back to his original material; door opening, and he’s grooving again. A look at at the clock on the wall – there’s somewhere he needs to be. Against orders, he absquatulates.
At Carnegie Hall, a poster advertises the presence of the great conductor Arturo Bellini (Victor Francen). In contrast to the earlier pull-back from Laughton to a bare room, the move here reveals an orchestra on stage, rehearsing in full flight. Bellini appears a martinet, keeping time quite furiously and reprimanding his musicians (the piccoloist bears the brunt).
Cutting back to the established wide-shot, the camera pivots to catch Laughton bumbling in through the stage-door at the bottom of the frame, dwarfed by the interior space, amidst towering flats leaning on the back wall, and shadowy nooses looming above. Of all the film’s chapters, this is the least dialogue heavy. From the wings, Smith communicates via dumbshow with one of the cellists. This friend has for years been telling Bellini about Smith and the man’s compositional genius. Today’s the day for Smith’s big break, a chance to show Bellini what he’s got.
After waiting outside doors, and going down corridors, and a big build-up, Smith is finally alone with Bellini, who seems thoroughly disinterested. Smith goes to the piano, nervously pulling out his score. “What are you waiting for?” says the conductor, dunking biscuit in teacup. “Play.” Smith plays his opening bars; Bellini looks up.
And Smith is running back down the corridor and out the theatre, the quintessence of ebullience. He gets home, a cramped apartment blessed with railway views, and over the thundering of the engines gives his wife the good news: he is to conduct the work himself at Carnegie Hall.
The night of the performance a previously unforeseen snag arises: the dress-code demands white tie and tails. Fortunately, Mrs Smith knows where they can get one.
From the op-shop to Carnegie Hall, and Elsa Lanchester is running down the corridor, dark cape billowing behind her, outpacing the camera and disappearing. By the time we catch up and turn into the room, her husband is putting on the cursed tailcoat. Only there’s a problem: Charles Laughton may be noted for many things, but slimness is not one of them. The jacket fits like a glove – a very, very tight glove. Bellini’s set is finished; applause; for Mr Smith, the stage beckons.
Nervously he bows to the audience and mounts the rostrum. And the piece begins, everything as it should be – till Smith, cueing, rips one of his sleeves. Some audience members laugh; others shush, but when the accident is pointed out to them, join in. Smith cues a cymbal crash, and rips the other sleeve. The crash is both the cause of the dramatic beat, and also scores it – almost ouroboric. Indeed, all the music throughout the chapter is designed to work as the underscore for the scene. Smith’s opus, for instance, started somewhat mysteriously – what was to happen, now that the moment had come? Then this slightly sinister, rhythmic passage with these big emotional accents as the audience begins to laugh, first individually, then en masse. Now an urgent string ostinato, as the musicians try to figure out what’s causing this strange reaction. Smith notices the laughter behind him. But what could it be? Who knows? He even smiles himself. But the sound is unceasing. The music crescendos, Smith’s movements getting bigger too, provoking the mocking chorus to hysteria. In the balcony sit Mrs Smith and her mother, anxious and helpless. And in his box, the great Bellini looks on, stone-faced.
Finally, one of the violinists is able to alert Smith to the accident. The concert stops. Smith takes off the cursed tailcoat, and throws it down on the stage, eliciting the biggest laugh yet. He looks about, perhaps defiantly, but the pain is too much. He sits on the rostrum, fists to his forehead, and weeps. Then he notices the silence. He looks up and around and into the audience, every one of whom has their head turned, their gaze fixed on a box above: there stands Bellini, taking off his own tailcoat. He hangs it over the edge of the box. “Continue,” he says. “Please.” The orchestra applaud. Smith rips off his stiff shirt-front and remounts the rostrum. A new low-angle shot makes the dome of the Hall a halo for Laughton.
The musical theme is now presented in a kind of beatific processional, as an elderly gentleman in the audience stands, and takes off his own coat. Then two young women, amongst the first to laugh, give looks to the men by their sides – and the men take off their coats. And soon every single man in the audience is taking off his coat. Mrs Smith struggles to hold her tears at bay. To see this group who had acted so unthinkingly unkindly be inspired to a mass act of kindness is quite moving. To make sure it doesn’t get over-mawkish there’s a little button at the end: an usherette shows a latecomer to his seat. He looks around, and finds himself, embarrassingly, out of place. He sees one last gentleman de-coating. Cutting back to the latecomer, we find his jacket folded over his arm, and he and every other audience member rapt by the music.
After the concert, a merry Charles and co. make their way down a New York street (locations apparently lensed by an uncredited Eugen Schüfftan). Passing Molly (Mae Marsh), a missionary, Charles donates the tailcoat, now designated “a rabbit’s foot”. Just how its strange magic might work itself on the next wearer we are soon to discover. Like the first two chapters, the third and fourth work as companion pieces: peripatetic stories of dignity, humiliation, and decency.
Reunion
A letter arrives at the mission run by Molly and her husband Joe (James Gleason), addressed to one Avery L. Browne (“Fancy way to spell Browne, with an E”).
“You don’t suppose,” says Molly, “that could be Larry?”
Shortly, there’s another very long shot, as Joe enters a trash-strewn, washing-lined courtyard in a Chinatown tenement. Sleeping rough, not even visible at first glance, is Larry (Edward G. Robinson). This is how far he’s fallen, and how he views himself. The letter is an invitation to a 25th anniversary college reunion dinner, tonight. For six years, Larry’s been pipe-dreaming how he’s going to go uptown and get back on his feet. But booze, shame, and fear keep him where he is. Joe reckons maybe just being back in familiar surrounds – feet under a table, a thick steak, talking “your own language” – would get Larry back on track. “If you’re worried about your looks…”
Thus is Larry Pygmalion’d: dickie over his cheap old shirt, hidden by a waistcoat (“wescut”), and the coat. Just add top hat, and voilà: metamorphosis. Joe hands him some coins. “It’s enough for a couple of drinks, or it’ll take you uptown.”
This chapter, like the last, is set in a famous Manhattan landmark, the venue for this little party being the Waldorf Astoria. There’s no exterior establishing shot; the transition’s to a table of toppers, accompanied by the strains of the old school song. These as-yet-unseen men are signified by their apparel, inextricably linked to it. Through the door comes Browne with an E, and checks his hat with the others. A Rückenfigur on the frame’s edge, he listens to his old university chums’ chorus, a wanderer above a lost land of champagne and chandeliers. The song ends, Larry’s spotted, and soon he’s shaking hands and helloing, another honoured member of the Class of ’17. Even more so than the last segment, which had the orchestra and the male contingent of the audience all similarly clothed, this one places emphasis on the uniformity of costume. Only the viewer is privy to the secret that underneath one man is unique; the tension of discovery is ever-present. The narrative plays on our own fears of inadequacy, of being judged, of having our shortcomings and failures exposed to ridicule, and all our pretences exploded.
Larry is an impostor, impersonating himself, a device employed in more literal and comedic fashion in films like Happy Go Lovely (1951) and Let’s Make Love (1960), where an unrecognised millionaire is asked to perform his own identity. But Larry is not really the success he claims to be, so the situation is not comedic but dramatic, potentially tragic. Meeting his old teacher, Larry recites a line from Hamlet, “To thine own self be true.” Does Larry’s charade this night run against that wisdom? Or is this the world where Larry belongs? He minutely misquotes Polonius’ speech, and is promptly corrected. But the Bard does seem to have awoken something in him.
Professor Lyons (Harry Davenport) has his own regrets. He was a teacher, only a teacher; left behind, watching his pupils go off and conquer the world. Still, it can be rather fun, he says, “….to watch the parade go by.” But this puts Larry’s classmates in a likewise meditative mood. The dreams they had to “show the older generation what we’d do with their mess” were just dreams, it seems. But Professor Lyons says they’ve all made something of themselves. This one a judge, this one a doctor, and Larry’s been to China. It pains Larry to make this man he admires feel like he’s missed out on something. The prof says they’ve all attained what he believes constitutes success and happiness: family, jobs, friends. All these things Larry lacks.
He declines the drinks he’s offered, resisting temptation. He declines food, maybe because he fears if he eats too much he’ll burst out of the tailcoat; more probably because he feels he doesn’t deserve it. Everyone seems happy to see him, and are pleased with his supposed success. Someone even wants to hire his services. The ruse is working. So it’s about time for a villain. Enter George Sanders as the unctuous alum Williams, who bears a personal dislike for Browne. Time, too, for a mystery: one gentleman has just realised his wallet is missing.
All in fun, it is proposed that the supposed crime be reconstructed, and every be searched. Noticing Larry’s aversion to the idea, Williams insists on it. The taking off of tailcoats is debased from the previous chapter’s mass act of repentant tenderness into its opposite: one man’s desire to discomfort another. The act abased, the collective is corrupted; the party turns from a sort of recreation of their old university into an impromptu courtroom. Not only is the idea of being ‘discovered’ or found out literalised, now Larry is being placed on trial. The judge plays the judge; Williams, a prosecutor, plays the prosecutor. A diagonal arrangement of actors lends an impression of width to the composition. We’re placed behind the judge, the ‘jury’ take up most of the frame, and Robinson is left all alone in the deep focus distance. Williams refers to Larry as “the prisoner”. His goading threatens to bring out Rico Bandello, some burst of trademark Robinson gangster violence that would ruin everything.
Larry, however, does compose himself, and begins his defence, a confession of sorts. He recounts his personal history since graduation, of going to war, coming home, marrying the woman Williams also loved, beginning his legal career, getting himself mixed up with criminals, plunging into hot water with the bar association, losing his wife, and so forth. We learn his peers had once voted him Most Likely to Succeed. He reveals he’s been in Chinatown, not China; claims he only came to the reunion because of a bet over whether he could pull the wool over everyone’s eyes; and concedes he’s just the sort of lowlife who would steal a wallet, or at least would be convicted. He halfway takes off the coat, exposing to view his own shirt. He is laid bare. The judge stands up and puts the coat back up on Larry’s shoulders. Larry leaves the party. As he goes out, a driver comes in with the missing wallet, which had merely been left in the car. Mystery solved.
Come the morning, a soused Larry staggers back into the mission, to the disappointment of Joe and family. “The party’s over,” he says, taking off the coat. So much for the rabbit’s foot, they think. Take it to the second-hand store across the street, says Joe; maybe it’ll buy some stew. But as Larry makes his way upstairs, three more gentlemen arrive: the judge; the convivial Hank Bronson, who had suggested everyone be searched; and Soupy Davis, who had earlier offered Larry a job. They’ve come hoping Larry will be able to keep that last appointment. Joe tactfully explains Larry’s just sleeping off last night’s revels, but assures them the appointment will be kept. Listening on the stair, Larry smiles.
Twice in a row, the coat has somehow engineered a victory for goodfellowship. An item of ostentatious fashion, it ironically reveals what’s underneath. To thine own self be true. Go back just a few lines and you’ll find Polonius advising his son, “The apparel oft proclaims the man” — undoubtedly another central theme throughout the chapter, the film, and indeed in another Cinderella story, Easy Living (1937). Preston Sturges’ screenplay shares many preoccupations with this chapter — wealth, peripeteia, etc. — explored in a story revolving around an expensive coat which is both blessing and curse. It all begins when NY banker J.B. Ball throws his wife’s mink coat off a Fifth Avenue roof…
TOP OF MOVING BUS..LOOKING FORWARD..MARY SMITH (TRANSPARENCY)
On the rear seat sits a turbaned Hindu reading a
book. In front of him sits Mary Smith, a pretty
young woman, modestly dressed, her hat is jauntily
topped by a long feather. Her face is serene; she
enjoys the day. The seat ahead of her is empty, but
the rest of the bus is well filled. The coat falls
over Mary's head and she screams a muffled scream.
The other passengers stare as she comes out from
under the coat. Her feather is broken and hanging in
front of her face. She turns around and glares
indignantly at the Hindu.
MARY
What's the big idea?
CLOSE SHOT..HINDU - PAST MARY - (TRANSPARENCY)
Startled, the Hindu looks up and points to his book.
HINDU
Kismet!
Mitchell Leisen’s film adds to Sturges’ script with an ending promising the passing on of the coat to another young woman, introducing the idea of a cycle, of which this is just one chapter.
“What am I going to do with this now?” ask Molly.
“Why, take it over to Santelli Bros. just like I told you,” Joe replies. “It’s done its work here. Now maybe it’ll help somebody else.”
Liquid Saturnalia
In 1996, fifty-four years after Tales of Manhattan was released in theatres, something quite remarkable was discovered in a Fox vault: a missing chapter.
Each segment in the film inhabits a different genre; the lost segment was a broad comedy or farce (compared to the more sophisticated comedy of the Rogers/Fonda story). W. C. Fields stars here as what we shall crudely describe as a conman. The original version of this sequence opened with two salesmen (the Brothers Santelli, one assumes) played by Phil Silvers and Marcel Dalio cutting up newspaper, stuffing it into wallets, and the wallets into coat-pockets. “This world is full of suckers,” Silver says to his associate. “Everybody’s looking for something for nothing, we’ll give it to them. Only we give it a little twist – we give ’em nothing for something.” He laughs. “I wonder what kind of a sucker we’ll get today…”
Cut to W. C. Fields and his light-fingered pal (Jerry Bergen), riding in an automobile with Mme. Langehanke (Margaret Dumont). Fields is posing as a Professor Postlethistle or Pufflewhistle or something to that effect, a crusader against Demon Rum, and will this evening be giving a talk, at this good lady’s invitation, for the benefit of the Uptown Association for the Downfall of Alcohol. Fields gets out of the car, and after almost walking off with Dumont’s purse on his walking-stick, goes to that aforementioned emporium of previously loved apparel, in search of attire befitting a distinguished guest speaker (a la the previous segment, the coat here employed as a costume to deceive).
This is where an edited version of the sequence, restored on home video, begins. Inside, the salesmen get the cursed tailcoat onto Fields, who remains unsatisfied with the product until he feels the wallet in its pocket. The coat used to belong to a millionaire, one of the salesmen idly mentions. Fields begrudgingly concedes to pay a high price for the coat, wearing it out of the store. Once safely away from prying eyes, he opens the wallet, and the hornswoggler finds to his consternation that it is his horn that has been subject to swoggling of the highest order. The edited version is arguably the better cut, transforming this moment into a reveal for the audience.
Mr Langehanke (Chester Clute) is informed by his butler (Edgar Norton) about Margaret Dumont’s planned event for the evening. Her husband is apparently fed up with these events, and hatches a scheme of his own. Fields will shortly arrive to spruik the benefits of coconut milk, samples of which have been laid out in preparation. Langehanke operates a hidden switch that spins open a section of the wall where his grandfather’s portrait hangs, revealing a secret bar, behind it a towering shelf of bottles. “If Madame should discover this secret oasis…!” cautions the butler.
“She never will,” says Langehanke. “Take that,” he hands the butler a bottle, “you know what to do.” Any Gussies of the Fink-Nottle variety will at this point be experiencing traumatic flashbacks to the Market Snodsbury Grammar School prize-giving. The spikers’ motives in this instance are, of course, much less benevolent than Bertie Wooster’s.
In the unedited (but originally cut) sequence, Mme. Langehanke greets her assembled guests, and introduces them to a drunk (William Irving) she’s pulled off the street, whom she has it in mind to reform tonight. In the DVD version, we go from the drink-spiking to Fields’ arrival. He begins his exhortations to consider the coconut, while his associate hands out cups of the liquor-laced liquid, the taste of which seems to delight the Society. Whenever Fields takes a drink (to his delight also) a bell sounds. In the uncut (cut) cut, the drunk initially refuses the milk; but when he realises what’s in it, goes so far as to get up and bring a whole jug of it back to his seat, to Mme. Langehanke’s approval.
Everyone quickly becomes inebriated. When a woman asks her husband to open a window, he does so by lobbing a vase through the glass. It’s a different take on the audience. In Chapters 1 and 2 we had private performances for the benefit of one or two people; Chapters 3 and 4 focussed on judgemental but repentant groups; this chapter mocks the audience. And it is broad, complete with pratfalls, one-liners, and comedy props. Fields consults a diagram of human anatomy. “Where was I? Oh yes,” he says, pointing at the intestine, “here is the Burma Road. I remember the trip well…” And behind that diagram is a photograph of Fields, with a lovely bunch of coconuts, flanked by two beauties in tropical surrounds.
In short, the night is a tremendous success, and a copious quantity of cash is collected at the conclusion of the Professor’s address. As he goes to leave, however, he trips and accidentally activates the mechanism that spins open the hidden bar. “Ah, my car,” says Fields. The longer version of the sequence was distributed as a short by Castle Films (a Universal subsidiary) in 1953 before fading once more into obscurity. The version of the sequence on the DVD is not only shorter, but features different shots, lines, and cuts here and there; for instance, a different joke ends the sequence. On the DVD, Fields orders a drink from Mr Langehanke, who is behind the bar. “I’ll just have one finger,” he says. “No, no, not horizontal. Vertical.”
Of course, in the end the entire sequence was cut from the theatrical release, which helped shave the running time. Whether it was chosen for the chop because it stuck out tonally or thematically, or because its removal had few repercussions for the rest of the chapters, and therefore could be cut, or because most of the sequence was reportedly directed by Malcolm St. Clair, and everyone consequently felt less attached to it, or for some other reason, I couldn’t say. The story at the time was that the sequence was simply too funny. It is possible that W. C. Fields was not entirely unacquainted with the origin of this explanation.
As fate would have it, a similar situation occurred on Duvivier’s Flesh and Fantasy the following year, where the first of that film’s four sequences was removed, and expanded into its own movie, Destiny (1944). Its excision is apparently what necessitated the addition of the Robert Benchley framing device to the 1943 film.
Benchley’s character is grappling with some inner turmoil concerning dreams, fortune-tellers, and superstition. His clubmate pulls from a shelf a book he says might help. The camera takes us in to the illustration at the top of the chapter: a body being pulled from the water by a group of what look like demons (but who turn out to be regular mortals dressed for Mardi Gras). In the original sequence, this man, Clifford, was a robber on the lam, who pursued a young woman through the woods before meeting his watery end. In its feature-length revision, Forties flashbacks fill us in on a backstory explaining how Cliff was set up, and a happy ending is engineered. The chase through the forest becomes a nightmare interlude, leaving Flesh & Fantasy not just to open with the end of a story you never see, but to pick up where a dream left off. Which, in a way, becomes hauntingly appropriate.
It seems a strange case. On the other hand, there’s something of this process in every finished work – in every developmental iteration, each rewrite, each cut, each brushstroke, overpainting, mixing and sampling, cutting and pasting – a catalogue of constraints, choices, and changes, opening and closing windows to parallel universes. The histories of the Fields sequence and Destiny are tears in the fabric, little misprints of reality that serve as reminders. The mist-filled forest imagery that survives in the opening and closing titles of Flesh & Fantasy lingers as time-remnant, spectral scorch-marks. The following text (straight from the screenplay?) is glimpsable under the illustration:
Clifford’s body is borne away by the angry torrent, dashed against the rocks in its path. The stream broadens. Miles onward toward the sea, this corpse floats limply to the river bank. Strange figures wait there to snatch it from the water. Who can explain the ways of destiny or predict the future? A tiny straw, a petal on the current may change the course of humanity.
The morning after his eventful lecture, does Fields return the coat to Santelli Bros.? Or did he never come to possess it at all? Was this merely an excursion into an alternative history, some unassuming corner of the multiverse?
In the March 1943 issue of Hollywood, it was reported that Fields was “negotiating with 20th Century-Fox to purchase the [sequence of the] film, add several more reels and release it as a comedy feature.”[iv] This would not come to pass. The Fields sequence was not, however, the only thing to never make the cut. Ginger Rogers was meant to enter the film in a bubble bath: “Ginger, clad in the briefest of white bathing suits, stepped into the marble tub and the make-up girl heaped the glistening foam around her.” She proceeded to have a series of inexplicable sneezing fits. They ran two more baths, before conceding Rogers was allergic to the suds.[v] The film also ran into hot water with the first chapter’s steaminess: “When Charles Boyer and Rita Hayworth play a movie love scene, the celluloid – and the censors – burn. The Hays office eliminated eight seconds from one of their hottest clinches in Tales of Manhattan.”[vi]
A baton can, over the course of a relay narrative, take a variety of routes from character to character: an uninterrupted line, a back-and-forth, a random criss-cross, a satisfyingly complete circle, or – highly advanced, this – an uninterrupted line that eventually reverses and heads back to its origin (this mirror structure can be seen in the odyssey of the wrapping paper in the Hey Duggee episode “The Surprise Badge”). In Tales, the coat’s trajectory seems to take it, from chapter to chapter, down the socio-economic strata. But where – if anywhere – will its journey end?
Manna
We hear glass smashing. Two breakers-and-enterers (J. Carrol Naish and John Kelly) climb down into the old shop without so much as a glance at the till. Instead, they burgle the window dressing: the cursed tailcoat. Naish changes into the suit and the two crooks take a hot car up Park Avenue way, stopping at a big house. Naish knows the right thing to say to get in, and looks the part. Inside, the butler pulls back a curtain to reveal a host of affluent-looking ladies and gentleman playing games of chance. The burglar wanders amongst the gambling denizens, pistol concealed. We see a table, hands spinning roulette wheels, moving chips and cash. We hear “Stick ’em up!” The hands lift.
The crooks make their getaway. A plane is waiting at the airport for Naish. Kelly will ditch the car, and meet his partner in Mexico City in a week (which, frankly, seems naive).
Up in the clouds, the two-seater aircraft is having a bumpy night. Thunder cracks. Naish pulls the coat, with collar up, tight around his body. Some six hours into the flight, the engine sputters slightly. A coiled wire in front of Naish spits sparks, and the criminal’s clothes start smoking. Terrified, he throws the coat from the plane.
What’s past is prologue. The chapter begins in earnest, like Easy Living, with a fancy coat falling from the sky. Only we’re a long way from Manhattan now. The cash-filled coat lands at the feet of two sharecroppers, Luke (Paul Robeson) and Esther (Ethel Waters), who toil in an expressionist hellscape of barren land and shanties. In the Robinson chapter, James Gleason says, “We just got a dress coat in this morning. Probably sent right from Heaven.” It certainly looks that way now.
“Can’t you see the lightning put the mark of the Lord on this thing?” says Esther.
“I ain’t asking where it come from or why,” says Luke, “but it came at the right time. The day before Christmas.”
With the money, Esther can buy the brindle cow for which she has prayed. Luke can buy a tractor – maybe three tractors, and good land to farm, and a big house… Esther begins to worry that it might be sinful to have so much money. The thing to do is to go see Reverend Lazarus (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson).
When Luke enters the church with all the cash, Lazarus looks down on him from a gaping hole in the roof (a feature of the set affording opportunity throughout for interesting blocking and compositions). He’s joined up there by a young boy (Cordell Hickman).
“I’ve heard a heap of praying in my day,” says Lazarus, “but I ain’t never seen the Lord pass no miracle before.”
“That’s blaspheming, Reverend,” says the boy.
“Shut your mouth, Nicodemus.”
Esther believes the money should be given to everyone to purchase whatever it is they prayed for. The Reverend says he prayed for a horse and buggy, and new church roof. Esther cautions that the Lord is counting along with him. Lazarus looks up – and the camera whips up – to see the faces of a dozen kids looking down through the roof. Lazarus says maybe he only wished for the horse and buggy, and adds, “This is the most upsetting-est miracle I ever heard of.” The children come down, and are given money to buy what they’ve prayed for: good food, blankets without holes, new shoes, a wagon. Nicodemus says he prayed for a slingshot.
Lazarus says that’s a weapon of the devil, but Luke steps in: “He prayed for it, he gets it.” The kids are told to go tell their folks what has happened.
One boy runs into a ramshackle house. “Grandpa! You know that fine coffin you’s a-wanting to be buried in? Well you can have it!”
“What y’all mean? I ain’t dead yet.”
In short order, the church is filled with people; everyone gets their fair share of what they need or want. A man wants a kit of carpentry tools, a woman wants a barrel of flour. All are given the funds to pay. And still the vast majority of these funds remain: $41,545 – and 50 cents. Lazarus says they could build a new church. Someone else suggests they build a hospital. And Luke, struck with a new sense of purpose, outlines a vision for a new society, with a plan to buy land for the community, where everyone will work together, and share the fruits of their labour. “Won’t be no rich, and no more poor.”
Just then, Esther remembers one person hasn’t had the chance to receive a Christmas present – Old Christopher, the poorest of them all. Perhaps this man who has nothing has wished for everything? So everyone leaves the church and they go up the hill to find Old Christopher. Luke enters the poor man’s hovel, and tentatively enquires if he’s asked for anything for Christmas. At first, the man says he has all he needs, and Luke is pleased. Then, Old Christopher remembers there was something… Luke’s conflicted anxiety turns out to be for nought: Old Christopher’s prayer was for a scarecrow. And so, on a cross in a field, the coat finds its resting place. And the people sing.
The noble intent in this story’s inception was clear. Robeson signed on with stated reservations, but hopes that the final product could turn out well. While met with mainstream commercial and critical success[vii] (generally; it was Hedda Hopper’s Worst Film of the Year)[viii], the film encountered a rougher reception from many African American viewers and critics (and other sympathetic left-leaning writers) who objected to the sequence as another round of (however well-intentioned) ignorant, cartoonish, racist clichés. [ix] In the wake of this reaction, Robeson publicly denounced the picture: “…in the end it turned out to be the same old thing – the Negro solving his problem by singing his way to glory.”
“Yet,” Duvivier biographer Ben McCann notes, “the segment contains certain subversive elements,” including a then-rare depiction of “segregation and poverty within the black community,” and “the proposition of a Popular Front-like ideology of collective endeavour and joint ownership.” [x] Film historian Charles Musser observes the importance of analysing the segment’s intertextual links with other all-black-cast productions, such as Hallelujah (1929), Green Pastures (1936), and Cabin in the Sky (1943).[xi] (Although the latter film came out a year after Tales, the hit stage show it was based on had premiered in 1940.)
In Cabin in the Sky (directed Vincente Minnelli, the film starred Anderson as Little Joe, and Waters as his wife Petunia) a sudden windfall corrupts a morally weak black man; in Tales, the windfall is used not only responsibly but admirably, and generously, and promises true happiness. Rather than “an agent of moral corruption,” Musser observes, the money is “an agent of empowerment,” subverting the racist premise of the plotline in Cabin. “In a kind of cosmic justice,” writes Musser, “the money that has been extracted from poor black farmers is returned to them.” For Tales also depicts real poverty and struggle, in contrast to the clean domestic look of Cabin. In addition to this, the allowance of a slingshot as a gift suggests a less pietistic moralising, to its credit. In the same way, Stormy Weather (1943), despite its own handful of cringeworthy elements, seems superior to Cabin in its celebration of art/entertainment and music and dance, and its disinterest in perpetuating simplistic, demeaning binaries.
In the 1940s, cinematic depiction of religion in a black context was likely to be fraught, White American identity politics having for decades cast all Afro-American Christian worship as incapable of advancing beyond a childish conception of the divine. Reverend Lazarus is a potentially problematic figure. He’s no saint, that’s for sure – he’d have run off with the whole stash if not for Luke and Esther, for a start. But Musser suggests he “bears a family resemblance to many of the unprincipled parsons in black-authored writing and film” and operates as a subversion of the upright preachers of Green Pastures and Cabin. The other characters in the sequence are shown to generally be free of the reverend’s flaws; notably, the women and children, who have a perfectly sound understanding of their scripture. And, in the end, Lazarus is happy to distribute the money, and just as pleased as anyone with the promise of Luke’s future society.
It isn’t entirely fair to view Luke as credulous, outside of being someone who’s life’s course is altered by an utterly incredible event. His eventual awakening is, Musser writes, “a powerful transformation, a coming of political consciousness that originates from within the sharecropper – that does not involve a vacillating, externalised struggle between forces of good and evil.” The arc is, he concedes, underdeveloped. Part of the problem, of course, was that the chapter followed five others, all featuring characters of greater nuance.
Anderson, who was up for the soon-to-film Cabin, defended Tales; Robeson, who was set to star in a landmark Broadway production of Othello, condemned it. But, Musser concludes, “Although the star’s rejection of the film had pragmatic dimensions, it also involved deeper, underlying principles.” Robeson walked away from Hollywood. Perhaps he intended to come back one day… but he never did.
It was the Second World War, perhaps everything seemed to be ending – and so much beginning. Perhaps, to an audience of the time, the world felt fractured, and maybe a fractured film made a kind of sense. Connected to each other, and far apart; at the whim of forces beyond their control: fate and fortune. Play it, Sam. At home, the Cocoanut Grove was on fire, and, though it was not generally known, a very different Manhattan Project was underway. Play “As Time Goes By”. Attitudes were shifting, careers careering. New realities. But here was a promise that truth and human decency would out. For all the curses, there were blessings. It was Hollywood’s favourite story: hope.
On October 6, 1944, the Hollywood Reporter relayed that, following the Liberation of Paris, the first film shown to its citizens was Julien Duvivier’s Tales of Manhattan.[xii]
[FULL CAST AND CREW]
See below for endnotes and ephemera.
[i] Hollywood Reporter (February 5, 1942)
[ii] Hollywood, August 1942, p.32-33
[iii] Stacey Enders and Robert Cushman, Hollywood at Your Feet: The Story of the World-Famous Chinese Theatre (Pomegranate Press, 1993).
[iv] Hollywood, March 1943, p. 14-15
[v] Hollywood, August 1942, p.33
[vi] Hollywood, June 1942, p.8
[vii] A capsule review of Tales of Manhattan in Hollywood: “Star-studded film depicting adventures of a tail coat as it is handed down from one character to the other, bringing fortune or disgrace to the wearer. Each episode of the story is complete in itself. The huge and glittering cast is awe-inspiring.” A critics round-up in Motion Picture Daily (August 26, 1942) quotes Virginia Wright, of the Los Angeles Daily News: “Tales of Manhattan hurdles half a dozen milestones in filmmaking.” In Screenland (May-Oct 1942), “Your Guide to Current Films: selected by Delight Evans”: “Tricky, but terrific! Tale of a top coat told in short, punchy episodes with some of Hollywood’s brightest stars at their best.” Evans mentions “the superb and imaginative finale.”
[viii] Hedda Hopper, “My Own Super-duper-dilly Academy Awards,” Photoplay, April 1943. She also listed Charles Boyer as Best Lover; Ginger Rogers as the woman who Says Most (an insult, I think); and George Sanders as both Laziest Actor and Worst to His Fans (believable).
[ix] From: Don W. King (2011) “Into the Lion’s Den: Joy Davidman and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,” Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: 30.1, Article 6, quoting “Heroes are Human Beings” (Movie reviews of In the Rear of the Enemy, Desperate Journey, Manila Calling, and Tales of Manhattan). New Masses 45 (October 13, 1942): 30-31. “A second focus of attack by Davidman is Hollywood’s racist portrayals of African-Americans. At times, she admits, Hollywood appears to mean good in its presentation of African-Americans. For instance, she argues that Tales of Manhattan has “quite genuine good intentions”: The trouble with it is its ineptitude; it wants to do right by the Negro, but doesn’t know how. The Hollywood cliché of the Negro as clown has been with us too long a time, and, like all people who use clichés to save the trouble of thinking, the Hollywood producers have come to believe in their own creation. Many of them are constitutionally incapable of seeing the Negro as anything but uneducated, superstitious, yet happy-go-lucky. Thus it comes about that while Negroes of Tales of Manhattan are voicing the ideas of sober and responsible adults, they are simultaneously cavorting like . . . like cafe society.”
[x] Ben McCann, Julien Duvivier (Manchester, Manchester UP, 2017), 126.
[xi] Charles Musser, “Paul Robeson and the End of His “Movie” Career.” Cinémas, 19.1, Autumn 2008, 147–179. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cine/2008-v19-n1-cine2876/029503ar/
[xii] TCM Notes: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/92274/Tales-of-Manhattan/notes.html
Flesh and Fantasy (1943):
Destiny (1944):
You're Awful 