Unplain Jane

"She's b-b-b-b-beautiful," a flummoxed WIlbur—Lou Costello in a signature role—exclaims mere seconds after receiving an entirely unexpected kiss from Joan Raymond. Little does he know that her proclaimed "love at first sight" is hardly real, and that she's in fact a shrewd insurance investigator named Joan Raymond, hatching a scheme to entrap poor Wilbur. The film is 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and the indeed beautiful actress is Jane Randolph, whose death earlier in the month at age 93 just hit the papers today.

I know, I know, it's Cat People that everybody knows Randolph for, and Cat People every tribute to her is gonna lead off with, so why not commemorate her participation in this (some would say low-rent) comedy classic? Point of fact, she's pretty amusing in it, playing poor stupid Lou for a sap. 

As for 1942's Cat People, the menace-in-the-pool scene is a showcase for her, and deserves to be widely cited, but one ought not forget the through-Central-Park "chase," which ends with a fantastic shock sound effect that turns out to be...the hiss of a bus pulling up. So effective was this fake-out that for a while any such scares in subsequent films were referred to by pros and buffs as "buses." Randolph's Alice Moore has an appropriately harried and harrowed look on her face as she boards the vehicle. 

I always thought there was something kind of sociologically interesting about the shift in the portrayal of Alice from the '42 Cat People to the '44 sort-of sequel The Curse of the Cat People. In the first film she's the co-worker and eventual romantic interest of unhappily married Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). She's a touch wise-crackerish, a tint bohemian, full of sympathy and hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie, as implied by this smoke break by the water cooler:

The exemplary Manhattan career woman. Of course, give her a few more years and pathetic spinsterhood no doubt beckoned, at least by the lights of the zeitgeist.

In '44's Curse, Reed has married Alice, and since it's '44, there aren't quite suburbs to move to yet, so the couple head upstate, to Rip Van Winkle territory, to spawn. Still, Alice is now quite matronly, and the whole setup has a whiff of Revolutionary Road (the book or the movie, take your pick) avant la lettre to it. (Of course, Curse turns into something wholly other, and wholly wonderful.)

Judging from the news reports, Randolph herself married pretty well after a screen career that, for all intents and purposes, spanned less than a decade. There's always something intriguing about the actress—because it usually is an actress—who makes a strong impression as a young woman and then, for whatever reason, deigns not to grow old on screen. Mary Duncan of Murnau's '30 City Girl springs to mind—she made her final film in '33, and lived until 1993. Someone ought to do a survey of such figures. Maybe the Self-Styled Siren takes requests...

Comments

[george]

Someone could probably write a whole book about this. Watching old movies and TV shows, I'm constantly coming across fascinating young actresses I've never heard of (or was only vaugely aware of). I look them up on the Internet Movie Database and learn they appeared in a few movies, a few TV episodes, then disappeared.

And you're right, Glenn -- it usually is an actress who has a short career like this. I suspect some of them were beauty contest winners who were offered short contracts and didn't want to make the commitment to an acting career. Others were good actresses who, for whatever reason, didn't stay in the game.

[bill]

I think Richard Matheson, who would have been very young at the time, wrote a letter to Val Lewton to compliment him on the bus scene, and how the shot implied that whatever was coming would come from the left, and then the bus roars in for the right. This impressed Matheson no end, and Lewton was pleased someone picked up on the misdirection. So says Matheson, at least. Anyway, Lewton's influence is largely gone now, grumble grumble, horror, disappointed, saddened, etc.

Also, I always figured that the reason Randolph, and other carry-overs from "Cat People", don't quite feel the same in "Curse" was because Lewton obviously had no interest in making a sequel. Characters carried over simply to appease the studio.

One of my favorite shots in "Curse", by the way, is when Simone Simon is in Ann Carter's bedroom, standing against the window, between the bed and the camera. The camera pans across, past a chair that blocks Simon. When the camera reaches the other side of the chair, Simon is gone. Simple, elegant and wonderfully effective. The fact that Simon was more than likely simply crouched behind the bed is irrelevant.

[bill]

Oh, and hey, guess what: Ann Carter's first acting credit is from 1941, and her last is from 1952. She bailed at 16.

[Tom Russell]

"There's always something intriguing about the actress—because it usually is an actress—who makes a strong impression as a young woman and then, for whatever reason, deigns not to grow old on screen."

Like Deanna Durbin. I have a bunch of old Deanna Durbin movies on VHS, but since they're old and I don't have a working VCR, I've no recourse but to pray to the cinema gods that someone deems them worthy of a DVD release.

Even in bad movies (which most of them were), Durbin was appealing, sexy, funny, glamourous, and absolutely gosh-wow amazing. What a face, what a figure, what a voice! While her reasons for leaving show business are well-documented, and her decision perhaps warranted and at any rate certainly respected-- it's still a damn shame that there aren't more films featuring that divine, gorgeous singing voice and that immensely likable screen persona.

Damn.

[Steve Winer]

My father worked at Universal as a story editor during the 40's. He once described Deanna Durbin to me, succinctly, as "a very nice girl who didn't want to be a movie star."
Ultimately, you have to respect that.

[Tom Russell]

@Steve: I do respect that, totally and completely, and I'm eternally grateful that we have the films that we do.

Now, if only they were on DVD. That's one box set I'd buy without hesitation. (Would do the same, I might add, for a Complete Henry Aldrich box set.)

[george]

"A very nice girl who didn't want to be a movie star."

Reminds me of how William Goldman described Robin Wright on the set of The Princess Bride -- as a pleasant person and talented actress who didn't have the aggressive drive to become a major movie star. At least she's still around as a working actress.

[larry aydlette]

Glenn, you might find this story on Mary Duncan interesting. Sorry, not sure how to put a link into your comment box:

www.palmbeachdailynews.com/arts/content/arts/2009/01/16/sat_back_sanford0117.html

[Steve Winer]

BTW, another charming Universal girl singer who's still around is Gloria Jean. You can hear her as she is today on Youtube introducing the trailer for "The Underpup", which my father said was a very good film, and which I've never seen turn up anywhere. The only Gloria Jean film I've seen, and the only one available, is the W.C Fields classic "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" in which she gets understandably short shrift. And then there's Peggy Ryan, who made very popular films with Donald O'Connor. Now if someone at Universal would just bust open their vaults...

[Tom Russell]

Seeing the words "Donald O'Connor" and "short shrift" so close together reminds me of the Francis series; O'Connor once said something to the effect that he quit because after so many movies, the damn mule was still getting more fan mail than he did. The original "Francis" was a fairly funny wartime comedy (basket-weaving gets me laughing every time, and it's all O'Connor, who really was the best thing about the series), and I think the concept worked best in that mileau.

Stop me if this is a terrible, terrible idea, but I can't be the only one who would pay full-price first-run opening-day to see Francis the Talking Mule in today's Iraq.

[jbryant]

Tom: Universal released "The Deanna Durbin Sweetheart Pack," a 6-film DVD set back in 2004. It's in stock at amazon.com for $24.99 and can undoubtedly be found elsewhere as well. While no means definitive, it has a good selection of films: Three Smart Girls, Something in the Wind, First Love, It Started with Eve, Can't Help Singing and Lady on a Train. I've enjoyed it very much.

A more recent disappearing act(ress) is Meg Tilly, who married John Calley in 1995 and promptly retired from the screen. She has more recently resurfaced as a novelist, writing about the kind of childhood sexual abuse she suffered in real life.

I suspect a little thing called motherhood is a big reason so many actresses of previous generations left the biz.

[Glenn Kenny]

Of course I've always been something of a Deanna Durbin fan, and I reviewed one of her most unusual pictures, Robert Siodmak's near-surreal amour fou tale "Christmas Holiday," here:

http://glennkenny.premiere.com/blog/2007/12/a-very-special.html

...and point out its affinity to another surrealist classic here:

http://glennkenny.premiere.com/blog/2007/10/eternal-returns.html

Durbin in retirement (and she still is, God bless her; she'll be 88 later this year) is a subject of one of my very favorite mordant showbiz anecdotes, related by Gore Vidal in his memoir "Palimpsest" and cited by myself in an admitedly oblique context here:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2008/10/mea-culpa.html

[Tom Russell]

@JBryant: I don't know how I missed that. I know what I'm getting for my birthday next month...!

[cadavra]

JBryant, you're half right. Many women do leave acting for marriage and children, but a number then attempt to make a comeback years later only to be told they're too old and/or no longer "bankable."