Vengeance knows no age

Anthony Quinn, left, Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda and Frank Conroy
contributed wonderful performances to The Ox-Bow Incident.

The Ox-Bow Incident

(1943, Twentieth Century-Fox)

Starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews,

Anthony Quinn, Harry Morgan, Harry Davenport

Screenplay by Lamar Trotti

Directed by William Wellman

“A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands

and hang people without hurtin’ everybody
in the world.” — Gil Martin

Classic films often are “classic” because they continue to be relevant long after their release. That’s certainly the case with The Ox-Bow Incident, a 70-year-old picture that resonates with today’s headlines. In an age when terrorist attacks prompt a fearful populace to demand the instant identification of the perpetrators, regardless of the innocent lives that are ruined before the true killers are captured, this study of how prejudice and the often irresistible thirst for vengeance takes a heavy toll on everyone deserves attention.

The film is classified as a western because of its setting, but few of the usual conventions found in westerns are present. And the wide-open spaces so common of films in the genre are mostly exchanged for obvious studio and backlot sets, whose close quarters add to the claustrophobic feel of the tragic story.

It all starts in a small Nevada town, where a report of a popular rancher’s murder sparks the formation of a posse to track down the alleged killers and lynch them, despite the urging of a judge and a store owner to bring the offenders in to face trial. Eventually, the posse stumbles upon three sleeping men with a herd of cattle, and circumstantial evidence points to them being the killers. Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), the boss of the outfit, unsuccessfully pleads their innocence.

The shop owner and Gil Carter (Fonda) are moved by Martin and try to persuade the others to do the right thing. But the majority votes to hang the men, and the deed is carried out in a scene in which the dreadful act isn’t pictured, but the impact certainly isn’t lessened. Of course, the men are innocent, as it’s soon revealed the rancher is still alive and those responsible have been arrested.

The Ox-Bow Incident features a well-written, dark and compelling story of the danger of mob rule, as well as some striking performances, especially by Andrews. Fonda’s character is a witness as some individuals in the mob have other motives for committing the lynching while most were easily led down this slippery slope. Eventually, Gil stops being a witness and tries, in vain, to halt the inevitable.

Heavy stuff, I know, but great films often challenge audience members and enlighten those who take up the challenge.

Fatal Attraction

Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) will regret the day he
met the ravishing Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer)
in Out of the Past, the quintessential film noir.

Out of the Past (1947, RKO Radio)

Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas
Screenplay by Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

“But I didn’t take anything. I didn’t, Jeff.

Don’t you believe me?”— Kathie Moffat

“Baby, I don’t care.” — Jeff Bailey

Many film noir protagonists wind up taking the big sleep at the end of the movie. In Out of the Past, the male lead becomes a dead man walking the instant he glimpses the woman who will be his downfall.

Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) is a mystery man to the good folks in Bridgeport, even after several years of running a gas station there. However, a face from, er, out of the past appears at Jeff’s business to draft him into the service of Whit (Kirk Douglas), a mob boss who Jeff double-crossed several years earlier. Jeff reveals the details of the sordid affair to his girlfriend as they head toward his rendezvous with Whit.

In a flashback that features Jeff’s sardonic voice-over, we watch as Whit hires him to find Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), Whit’s lover, who shot him and ran off with $40,000, and to bring her back. Jeff tracks her to Mexico, where he watches the slinky Kathie stroll out of the sunlight into the darkness of a cantina. Jeff is totally captivated by this vision (as was I), and from that moment he knows he won’t be taking her back to Whit. What he doesn’t know is he also signed his own death warrant.

This meeting sparks an exhilarating ride that runs through a world dominated by greed, lust and a vain struggle to get out of the adventure alive. Greer brings to life the most fatal of femmes fatale, who doesn’t hesitate to switch sides or gun men down when she feels threatened. Mitchum fleshes out Jeff grandly as a smart guy who knows the angles, but that knowledge couldn’t keep him from being ensnared by this treacherous beauty.

With its dark shadows, where danger and deceit lurk, Out of the Past is a visually stunning film and is my pick as the best of master film noir cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca’s repertoire. As you’ll find in the best films noir, great dialogue, like the quotes above, snaps throughout. On imdb.com, fans have filled four pages commenting about the best lines.

Stay away from Against All Odds, the awful 1980s remake. You need to know only two things:

1) It was made in the '80s
2) Jeff Bridges plays the Mitchum role

Out of the Past is one of my favorite movies from any genre, and I find it exciting and entertaining to explore the dreamworld that is film noir.

Mellon Treasure Plundered

This was how the majestic banking floor of Mellon
Bank's landmark building looked before being gutted
to house a short-lived Lord & Taylor store.

This blog has featured success stories of historic buildings and sites that, through the foresight and passion of their owners, have made a successful transition into the 21st century.

These places, large and small, from the Schenley Hotel to Highland Towers to the McCook Mansion, remain functional and add a great deal to the landscape of Pittsburgh.

This is a story about the tragic loss of an architectural gem that was lost for no good reason.

The powerful Mellon family commissioned the architectural firm of Trowbridge and Livingston, which also designed the Gulf Building on Grant Street for the Mellons, to create a palace of money for them downtown.

Opened in 1924 on Smithfield Street, the Classical structure displayed a solid, conservative face to the city while the interior featured a forest of tall, Ionic columns that added dignity to the open banking floor.

Called “the Cathedral of Earning” by some witty folks, the interior was a remnant from another age.

But it wasn’t destined to last forever.

In 1999, then Mayor Tom Murphy, in an attempt to revive downtown Pittsburgh, lured Lord & Taylor to open a department store in the building.

The city pumped nearly $12 million into the effort that ripped the heart out of the banking floor by pulling down the columns.

However, Lord & Taylor couldn’t compete and pulled out in November 2004.

It’s been empty ever since.

In his book “Buildings of Pittsburgh,” Pitt professor Franklin Toker laments the fate of this elegant space:

“Serene and majestic on the outside, Mellon Bank has covered the block of Smithfield between Fifth Avenue and Mellon Square since 1924, but it has been destroyed inside. The long and airy banking hall, one of Pittsburgh's prime architectural and social spaces, vanished in 1999 when its short-sighted owners and an overeager city hall let Lord and Taylor rebuild it as a faux-Manhattan emporium.

“Fifteen tons of Italian marble in each of the Ionic columns was smashed and hauled away, leaving just their steel cores. Gone was the vast basilica-like space of the hall, 65 feet tall and 200 feet long; gone were the aisles coffered and painted deep blue with speckles of gold leaf; gone was any hint that the world's earliest venture capitalists once operated out of Pittsburgh.

“Befitting its place at the heart of Mellon operations, the hall commemorated [Andrew W.] and [Richard Beatty] Mellon with portraits and inscriptions on the walls of the vault.

"After Lord and Taylor's quick demise a few years later, the now banal interior awaits some new use.”

While it’s true that the building had been empty for some time before the tragic Lord & Taylor enterprise, that fact didn’t justify what was done to a unique building that New York would have been proud to claim.

However, the grand building will be re-entering the banking business after being purchased by PNC Bank in June, 2012, for $3.85 million. PNC expects to move 800 employees there in late 2013 or 2014 when renovations are complete.

In a June 11, 2012, story published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a PNC spokesperson said, “Our plan is to restore the exterior architectural integrity of the building, and we are considering restoring it to its original condition.”

It’s gratifying that someone wants to correct the great wrongs committed against this fine building.

The stately former Mellon Bank building is a shell
of its former self, but PNC Bank is riding to the rescue.

Mellon postscript

While doing research for this blog entry, I found a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of the biography of Thomas Mellon – founder of the family fortune and dynasty – written by his great-great grandson, James.

Thomas Mellon

A dour man whose only interest was business and the gaining of even larger piles of money, Thomas Mellon objected to city taxpayers supplying $40,000 for the creation of the Carnegie Library and the construction of H.H. Richardson’s internationally renowned masterpiece, the Allegheny County Courthouse. A plain brick one would do for him.

But what struck me about this piece was how little things have changed in 150 years.

With the Civil War raging and the Union, as well as his business interests, threatened, James Mellon, 18, wanted his father’s permission to put off learning the coal and iron business to enlist in the Army.

In withholding his permission, the elder Mellon held a belief that he saw as trumping any idea of patriotism or duty: His son should be making money.

This is what he told James:

"I had hoped my boy was going to make a smart, intelligent business man and was not such a goose as to be seduced from his duty by the declamations of buncombed [or bullshit] speeches."

So, just like today, the poor of the 1860s fought the fight for the rich.

The Start of a Beautiful Friendship

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall started their
relationship on the set of To Have and Have Not.

To Have and Have Not (1944, Warner Bros.)

Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan,
Dan Seymour, Marcel Dalio, Hoagy Carmichael,
Screenplay by Jules Furthman and William Faulkner,
from the Ernest Hemmingway novel

Directed by Howard Hawks

Seeing two people fall in love in a movie is so common that it’s completely unremarkable. But watching as their onscreen affair develops into an offscreen passion is much more rare. That’s what happens in To Have and Have Not, where veteran actor Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, in her first movie role, strike sparks that ignite a relationship that would last until his death in 1957.

The film’s genesis lies in a challenge put down by director Howard Hawks in which he boasted to writer Ernest Hemmingway that he could make a movie from Hemmingway’s worst book. They both agreed To Have and Have Not, which is set in Cuba, possessed that dubious distinction. Hawks then put author William Faulkner, who later would win a Nobel Prize and two Pulitzer Prizes, and Warners staff writer Jules Furthman to work on the script.

They moved the setting to the Caribbean island of Martinique, which was controlled by the Nazi-friendly Vichy government in France. Faulkner and Furthman also created a story that closely resembles Casablanca, the now-legendary film that made Bogart a star and continues to make money for Warner Bros. The appearance of Marcel Dalio (Frenchy), who had a small part in Casablanca, cements the connection between the two films.

Again, resistance fighters ask Bogart (Harry Morgan) to aid their cause, but Morgan sticks his neck out for no one – until he does. He battles and bests the Surete’s slippery Capt. Menard (Seymour) to win one for the good guys. There’s even a lively cafe with a piano player – Cricket (Carmichael).

But unlike in Casablanca, Bogart gets the girl, who takes the form of the feisty Marie (Bacall). From the first time we see her, when she barges into Morgan’s room for matches, to the fade out at the end, Bacall grabs nearly every scene she’s in. Watching the two actors banter and spar as they fall in love in both the fictional and real worlds is a great treat. I also found it amazing that first-timer Bacall keeps up with Bogart, which makes it seem Morgan truly has met his match.

Without the heat provided by Bogie and Bacall, To Have and Have Not would be just a derivative knockoff of another movie. Instead, it’s a fine film containing performances – and a love affair – that stand the test of time.

Memorial for a Monumental Man

The Westinghouse Memorial in Schenley Park

Ruthless Gilded Age business tyrants, such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Mellons, built monuments and landmarks in Pittsburgh to display their wealth and power, and as a way to achieve immortality.

They had to bestow such honors upon themselves because the employees they squeezed to earn their large fortunes weren’t going to do it.

George Westinghouse was a different case.

The man who made complex transportation systems possible with the invention of the railroad air brake and who made the production and transmission of electricity over vast areas possible was beloved by the workforce that stretched from East Pittsburgh around the world.

The working population held Westinghouse in high esteem because he believed an employer could make huge profits while treating his employees in a humane fashion.

At Wilmerding, the company town created for the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, the concern for living conditions, as well as the educational and cultural growth of employees and their families, was paramount.

George Westinghouse  

In 1869, WABCO became the first employer to implement nine-hour days, 55-hour work weeks and half-holidays on Sundays.

Although Westinghouse lost control of his companies after a financial downturn in 1907 and he died in 1914, the nearly 55,000 workers at his former firms decided they wanted to honor him.

To that end, the employees chipped in to erect a monument in Pittsburgh, the heart of Westinghouse’s industrial empire.

The Westinghouse Memorial is an elaborate sculpture that once faced a small pond and a fountain in a picturesque spot in Schenley Park, not far from what was the campus of Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University.

Architects Henry Hornbostel and Eric Fisher Wood designed the monument and the surrounding landscape, including the pond, trees, and location of black granite benches.

The organizers chose the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial statue, Daniel Chester French,  to design the sculptures, including a statue titled “The Spirit of American Youth,” a snapshot of a young man taking inspiration from the life of Westinghouse.

The center portion of the monument depicts Westinghouse between a mechanic and an engineer, with the surrounding panels (created by sculptor Paul Fjelde) illustrating Westinghouse’s achievements.

The Spirit of American Youth

At the monument's dedication Oct. 6, 1930, which was broadcast by KDKA and Westinghouse radio stations in Chicago and Boston, all the bronze figures and reliefs had been covered in gold leaf. After the festivities, Hornbostel said that finishing touch, “will be enhanced by the smoky atmosphere of the city, [and] will endure for thousands of years, as is shown by traces of gold still to be seen on the monuments of the Roman Caesars.”

However, the work of vandals forced the removal of the gold leaf in 1941.

On dedication day, nearly 15,000 people crowded the memorial site to hear the speakers and bands that were part of the festivities. A lavish banquet for the movers and shakers who came to honor Westinghouse was held the night before at the William Penn Hotel.

Reporters and photographers from Pittsburgh newspapers were on hand to record the ceremony for their readers and posterity.

Honor is Paid Westinghouse By Big Throng
Genius of Manufacturer is Eulogized
at Schenley Park Celebration, Banquet

Here is how the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s reporter described the scene for a Page 1 story in the Oct. 7, 1930, issue:

On the eighty-fourth anniversary of the inventor's birth, the nations of the world joined hands in extolling the character of the man who had rendered an “inestimable service to mankind and whose contributions to industry played so large a part in the progress of civilization.”

An admiring crowd that began to gather in the park during the early afternoon grew to immense proportions before the program was started and stretched far out over the adjoining hillsides, with thousands content to stand through the proceedings.

The keynote speaker was James Frances Burke, general counsel of the Republican National Committee:

“It was he who first made safety the handmaiden of speed. It was he who was a leader in multiplying the world's motive power on land and sea. It was he who brightened the pathway and lightened the burden of God’s children as they toiled and traveled on their never-ending journey down the ages.”

After Burke’s address, the unveiling took place to the accompaniment of the combined Westinghouse bands, with the industrialist's nephew, Herman Westinghouse Fletcher, in charge. Westinghouse’s brother, H.H. Westinghouse, also was in attendance.

Westinghouse and Union Switch and Signal Company employee choruses sang the “Star Spangled Banner” and “America.” The Right Reverend Alexander Mann, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, gave the invocation.

Labor, Capital Pay Honor to Westinghouse

The Pittsburgh Press also set the scene in a Page 2 feature:

Men from workshops which rest their foundations on the inventive genius of Westinghouse joined with leaders assembled from throughout the nation in dedicating the George Westinghouse Memorial in Schenley Park yesterday.

Representing the employees who funded the memorial, George Munro, a foreman at Westinghouse Air Brake Company, said, “Those who knew him best loved him most. … This memorial, in its beauty, symbolism, and strength, typifies the character of Westinghouse.”

U.S. Rep. James M. Beck of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh mayor Charles H. Kline also weighed in on the industrialist’s legacy.

“George Westinghouse was a master builder of this economic nation, which is more truly represented by the genius ability of this country than the documents of all its lawyers,”  Beck said.

Kline told the crowd, “Time may cause this memorial to decay, but when a thousand years have passed, the readers of history will find still brilliant the name of George Westinghouse.”

In a statement sent by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon to be read at the ceremony, he wrote, “George Westinghouse earned an important and permanent place in history by his many contributions to the advancement of civilization.”

Nations Honor Westinghouse

This was the lead of the story that was buried inside the Hearst-owned Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph:

Industrial giants of many nations paid tribute yesterday to the memory of a boy who toyed with trinkets — to George Westinghouse, who gave the world 400 inventions and almost single-handedly revolutionized modern mechanics.

In a supposedly exclusive column for the Sun-Tribune, but which bears the name of the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, former president Calvin Coolidge wrote from Boston:

“George Westinghouse had that combination which is so rare of both inventive and business genius. ... Because he lived, industrial life is more human, more safe and more productive. He ranks as one of the great benefactors of mankind.”

All in all, it was a fitting day of tribute for a giant who had changed the world.

The memorial's centerpiece

Saluting Soldiers and Sailors

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum

In an effort to honor the dwindling number of Civil War veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization comprised of Union Army vets, conceived the idea of a memorial hall in the 1890s.

In 1907, architect Henry Hornbostel, who designed many buildings in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, created a Beaux Arts masterpiece on a heroic scale for the GAR, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

The hall, which is the largest structure in the United States dedicated solely to saluting those who have served in all branches of the nation's military, contains a museum with rare artifacts from the Civil War to present conflicts.

It also has a 2,500-seat auditorium, a banquet hall and meeting rooms. The building also served as the setting for the Memphis courthouse scenes in the film "Silence of the Lambs."

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum, which is its formal name, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Cat People: Low Budget, High Quality

Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) confides her fears 

about an ancient Serbian curse to Oliver Reed (Kent Smith)

in "Cat People," the first in a series of inexpensive,

but high quality, horror films producer Val Lewton

created for RKO Radio Pictures in the 1940s.

Cat People (1942, RKO Radio Pictures)

Starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith,

Tom Conway, Joyce Randolph
Screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen; Produced by Val Lewton

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

While classic films often feature legendary stars and boast large budgets to help famous directors tell timeless stories, they aren’t a requirement. The above credits for "Cat People" are a great example. When the movie hit the screen 71 years ago, the participants were far from household names. After this collaboration, however, they forever will be connected with a masterpiece.

Financially troubled RKO ordered Lewton to create inexpensive and quickly made horror films to cash in on moviegoers’ fascination with the genre. What Lewton gave them in "Cat People" and eight other titles he produced for the studio went above and beyond the typical horror fare. They were thoughtful, sometimes beautiful, minor works of art.

"Cat People" tells the tale of Serbian immigrant Irena Dubrovna (Simon), who fears she suffers a curse in which she would transform into a dangerous cat if she feels jealousy, anger or sexual desire. Irena meets happy-go-lucky Oliver Reed (Smith) while she sketches a leopard at the Central Park Zoo. Later in her apartment, after she confides, “I like the darkness. It’s friendly,” Irena reveals her deepest fear to Oliver, who dismisses it as a fairy tale.

In spite of all this, they marry, but Irena keeps Oliver at a distance to reduce the chances of fulfilling the curse. After hearing this from Oliver, colleague Alice Moore (Randolph) recommends psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Conway), who tells Irena her fears have a more mundane source. Eventually, Irena’s treatment of Oliver pushes him toward Alice.

After seeing the pair together, Irena is overcome by jealousy and later stalks Alice down a dark street. Consisting of nothing more than the sight of some rustling foliage, the interplay of light and darkness as Alice walks under streetlights and the clicking sounds of women’s shoes as they continue down the street, an overwhelming sense of impeding menace is generated. When it seems that menace will appear, the hissing sound of a bus door is what we get instead. This device can be found in the thousands of horror films that followed.

In the end,  Oliver and Alice finally discover, “She never lied to us.”

With a budget of less than $150,000, Tourneur and Lewton knew plausible special effects were out of the question. Instead, they filled "Cat People" with shadows, sounds and an atmosphere of foreboding and melancholy that fire the viewer’s imagination, where the best special effects always are created.

Alice Moore (Joyce Randolph) isn't
sure if she's being followed
in "Cat People.