What gets me to watch a movie? Sometimes it's a film's reputation or who stars in it or the story or a film's subject matter.
If I'm watching TCM, it's because I'm talked into it by Ben Mankiewicz.
With his quick wit, easy going charm and an abiding affection for movies, Ben can talk me into watching a movie I've never heard of.
This month, Ben Mankiewicz is double teaming me with Mario Cantone, comedian, writer, actor, singer and gay as fuck. Mario is off the chain gonzo and makes for an interesting pairing with the more ground Mankiewicz. Think Andy Cohen paired with Anderson Cooper on New Year's Eve.
A few weeks back Ben and Mario convinced me to watch Sudden Fear is a 1952 film noir thriller starring Joan Crawford.
I think the formula works like this:
Joan Crawford is in the movie + Mario is gay = Mario likes the movie!
Directed by David Miller, the film also stars Jack Palance who has a weirdly shaped head.
Myra Hudson (Crawford) is a successful Broadway playwright who rejects Lester Blaine (Palance) as the lead in her new play.
As I noted earlier, Jack Palance has an oddly shaped head, like a quarter moon or something.
Myra's off on a train trip back to her home in San Francisco when guess who else is on the train?
Go on, guess!
No, it's not Ben Mankiewicz! Why would you guess that?
OK, enough dilly dally.
Lester is on the train too! And over the course of the train trip, Myra gets all twitterpated over Lester's wit and charm (but I assume not making eye contact because, damn, weird head, yo!!)
Once they get to San Francisco, Myra and Lester get married so they can enjoy legally sanctioned heteronormative sexual intercourse.
Which Lester is not enjoying at all.
Because he's GAY!
No, not that. (Mario, sit down!)
Turns out Lester is a better actor than we thought and has swept Myra off her feet for the express purpose of getting all her money and spending it with his hot blonde tomato on the side, Irene.
Irene is okay with Lester's moon head.
Lester and Irene are making plans to kill Myra for her money. They concoct a scheme in Myra's own office.
Where Myra has accidentally left her dictation machine turned on.
Myra is super distressed when she plays back the recording and hears this woman and her beloved husband plotting her death.
She really loved old Lester for his wit, his charm, all the legally sanction heteronormative sexual intercourse and even his strangely moon shaped head.
Myra seeks to store the recording disc somewhere safe but she winds of breaking the damn thing.
Well, there goes the evidence of Lester and Irene plotting her murder.
So what can she do now?
Hey, she's a playwright. She's going to create a perfect murder plot to put Lester and Irene out of commission before they can kill her.
What follows is a sequence of events involving deception and manipulation by Myra to lead Lester and Irene to think one has betrayed the other and framing Irene for Lester's murder.
Myra's convoluted scheme might work well for drama but for an actual plan to kill someone, well there are a lot of variables that Myra cannot always anticipate.
Including having the nerve to actually pull the trigger of Irene's gun and putting a bullet in Lester's lying moon shaped head.
Myra loses her nerve and runs away and Lester realizes that oh shit, Myra's on to him now.
What follows is a tense and dramatic chase through the late night streets of San Francisco, Myra scampering away in her heels and Lester in a big boat of a 1950's sedan trying to run down his wife and kill her.
Then Irene enters the scene and one case of mistaken identity and one out of control automobile later, Myra sort of gets what she wanted.
Joan Crawford received her third and final Oscar nomination for this film for her role as Myra Hudson. And she deserves it for the scene alone where she hears the Dictaphone recording of Lester and Irene's plot. Crawford has no scene partner, no dialogue, it's just her alone in a room silently processing the sickening realization that the husband she loves so much is not who he says he is.
Jack Palance also earned an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor for his roles as Lester Blaine and yeah, he deserves it, even with his strangely shaped head.
Sudden Fear is a powerful film noir and I'm glad Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone talked me into watching it. It's a movie that I am unlikely to have sought out on my own.
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