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.

100 Years on Highland Avenue

One hundred years later, Highland Towers, which was
designed by architect Frederick G. Scheibler Jr.,remains
 a unique and pleasant resident of Shadyside.

When it opened on South Highland Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood in 1913, Highland Towers Apartments was the height of modernity.

The building, which originally contained four 10-room flats, featured such mod cons as electrical connections in every room, clothes dryers, a central vacuum cleaning system and a room for servants in each unit.
 

This interesting architectural
detail can be found on the
facade of Highland Towers.

But architect Frederick G. Scheibler Jr., who designed many houses and apartments in the East End during his career, created an early modern gem that remains a delight to the eyes of passersby.

Scheibler, who was influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan while he was designing the structure, used four different colors of brick in patterns that impart a pleasing texture to the exterior.

Inside, he employed Rookwood tile, Carerra glass in the bathrooms and art glass windows.

“The Progressive Architecture of Frederick G. Scheibler Jr.” by Martin Aurand, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, contains a chapter about Highland Towers that features floor plans and promotional materials used to sell the apartments when they opened in 1913.

The Pitt Press posted a digital edition of the book at www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=34290

One hundred years later, Highland Towers still is the best-looking apartment block in that section of Shadyside.

It's a Wonderful (and Dark) Life

George Bailey (James Stewart) finds himself in the
film noir world of Pottersville in "It's a Wonderful Life."

It’s a Wonderful Life (1947, Liberty Films)

Starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore,

Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Gloria Grahame;

Screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra;

Directed by Frank Capra

This is one of the few films that you safely can assume most Americans have seen. When the copyright for this Christmas staple mistakenly wasn’t renewed in the 1970s, any TV station could broadcast “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and it seemed like all of them did.

That said, here’s a rundown of the basics: George Bailey (James Stewart) has a great wife, Mary (Donna Reed), several cute kids and the respect of nearly every citizen of Bedford Falls. But an $8,000 blunder by his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) gives greedy bad guy Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) the opportunity to shut down Bailey Bros. Building and Loan and to have George arrested. This unhinges George, who gets drunk before plowing his car into a tree. He then heads for a bridge, where he plans to end it all because he thinks everyone would be better off without him.

Violet (Gloria Grahame) tries
to get George Bailey's attention.

But the townsfolk’s prayers are answered and Angel Second Class Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers) is dispatched to convince George he is valued by showing him how charming Bedford Falls would have become nasty Pottersville if he’d never been born. Having done that, George runs home to find friends and family chipping in to raise the money needed to keep him out of jail, which provides the tear-producing happy ending.

The story’s demonstration of how one person matters in the greater scheme of things is what keeps viewers coming back each Christmas. However, all isn’t sweetness and light. During the majority of the film’s final 30 minutes, George is thrown into the film noir world that Pottersville represents.

This section of the movie has many features that mark the film noir genre and style. It spotlights a tortured protagonist plunged into a universe where nightmares come true and where fate always finds him. It shows scenes of a neon-lit city at night, and its pool halls and drinking joints crowded with a sketchy clientele.

Adding to the film noir feel is a cast populated by actors who made their marks in the genre. At the top of the list is Stewart, who later shoved his good-guy persona aside when he went over to the dark side in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope,” “Rear Window” and “Vertigo.” Barrymore (“Key Largo”) and Ward Bond (Bert the cop, “The Maltese Falcon”) appeared with Humphrey Bogart in a pair of film noir classics.

Another element of film noir evident here is the concept of the good woman contrasted with the not-so-good woman. In this case, Mary is held up as a paragon of virtue while flirty Violet (Gloria Grahame) is portrayed as easy in Bedford Falls and worse in Pottersville. Grahame strengthens the film’s noir credentials because she later became one of the quintessential femmes fatale in such classics as “Human Desire” and “The Big Heat.”

The trip to Pottersville was the flip side of the feel-good story that dominates the film and was the reality of the world forming outside the little town. Unlike in film noir, however, this protagonist escapes and discovers how wonderful life is, which also is a great Christmas present for us all. 

Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell, far left) and citizens of Bedford Falls
 join Mary (Donna Reed) and George for the heartwarming ending of "It's a Wonderful Life."

A House of Luxury Reborn

Lawyer and business executive Willis McCook wanted a new home for his large family, and $300,000 got him the above Jacobean mansion on Fifth Avenue in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh in 1906.

Located on Pittsburgh’s “Millionaires Row,” the mansion contained plenty of handcrafted woodwork, stained glass windows and even its own chapel.

Born in Ohio in 1856, McCook graduated from Yale, where he was captain of the university’s first football team, and studied law with a Pittsburgh firm and at Columbia University before joining the Allegheny County Bar in 1876.

McCook was a pioneer in corporate law and the personal attorney for industrialist Henry Clay Frick. McCook helped form coke companies for Frick and served as his attorney in a protracted lawsuit against Andrew Carnegie. The legal fees the attorney collected from that grudge match helped to pay for McCook’s mansion.

Scandal touched the McCook family in early 1911 when Willis Jr., one of McCook’s 10 children, ignored his parents’ objections and eloped with Margaret Norris, the daughter of a poor carpenter, and married her in Cumberland, MD.

The Catholic McCooks’ objections were centered on the bride’s Presbyterian faith. Both families initially disowned the couple, and young Willis was forced to find employment at the Pittsburgh Steel Company in Glassport.

The elder McCook eventually relented and offered his forgiveness – and his financial support – in exchange for Margaret’s conversion to Catholicism. She complied in February 1911.

The measure of McCook’s national fame was displayed by the coverage the New York Times gave to this episode.

McCook had a happier time when his daughter, Bessie, became engaged and he built a Tudor mansion for the young couple on Amberson Avenue, around the corner from his mansion. The house, now known as the McCook-Reed Mansion, was completed in 1905, a year before the main house.

The family lived in the house until the late 1930s, but the Great Depression took its toll on the McCook fortune and the city of Pittsburgh took possession in lieu of  $65,000 in back taxes.

Emil and Margaret Bonavita bought the property in 1949 and for 50 years it housed Carnegie Mellon University students. Residents included Shirley Jones, George Peppard and Andy Warhol. A February 2004 fire on the third floor ended the house’s time as student housing.

Richard Pearson, his wife Mary Del Brady and a group of investors bought the McCook Mansion for $1.4 million in 2005 with the intent of turning the mansion and the adjoining McCook-Reed Mansion into a boutique hotel.

After six years and about $8 million were spent bringing historic McCook Mansion back to its original condition when possible, the Mansions on Fifth opened in 2011. It has 13 rooms, including two suites; a 1,000-square-foot presidential suite; a small bar; a fitness room; a spa and a wine cellar.

The McCook-Reed Mansion is still undergoing renovations.

The Mansions on Fifth was added to the National Register of Historic Places in April 2011.

Visit Mansions on Fifth for information. Click HERE for photos taken before renovations began.

The McCook-Reed Mansion in 2011

Christopher Magee Memorial

Although Christopher Magee, the boss of the Pittsburgh political machine during the Gilded Age, and his partner William Flynn were called the most corrupt politicians in the country by muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, Magee still managed to receive a memorial, which stands outside the Carnegie Library's Main Branch in Oakland.

In his book “Pittsburgh: A New Portrait,” Pitt professor Franklin Toker writes that Magee's help in getting city land for the library probably explains its erection and dedication in 1908.

It also didn’t hurt when Magee, who also was the transit baron of Pittsburgh, came to Andrew Carnegie’s aid again when he offered a cabbage farm he owned for the site of Carnegie Technical School, now Carnegie Mellon University.

However, according to Toker, the powers that be — possibly Carnegie  himself — vetoed the addition of a bust of Magee to the monument.

Noted architect Stanford White designed the base. But after White's 1906 murder at the hands of crazed Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw at New York’s Madison Square Garden, it was left to Henry Bacon, who later was the architect of the Lincoln Memorial, to execute White’s design.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the creator of the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, the Sherman monument in New York and the nude statue of Diana on the tower of White’s Madison Square Garden that scandalized Manhattan, designed the bronze relief.

Unfortunately, both Magee and Saint-Gaudens were dead before the monument’s dedication July 4, 1908. Henry Hering, Saint-Gaudens’ longtime assistant, completed the work.

A 2008 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story published for the memorial’s centennial offers more information about Magee and Saint-Gaudens, whose studio and home in Cornish, N.H., is a National Historic Site. 

The Christopher Magee Memorial
features lines from Shakespeare's
"The Merchant of Venice."

No Happy Ending for Bogart

Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart) and Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame)
share a touching moment on the beach in "In a Lonely Place."

In a Lonely Place (1950, Columbia)

Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame,

Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid;

Screenplay by Andrew Solt; Directed by Nicholas Ray

Screen legend Humphrey Bogart gave magnificent performances in a number of iconic films, such as “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Big Sleep,” “The African Queen,” and, of course, “Casablanca.” His portrayal of Dixon “Dix” Steele in “In a Lonely Place” deserves to be among them.

An often dark story about a man who pays a terrible price because of his inner demons, “In a Lonely Place” also shines a less-than-flattering light on Hollywood and celebrity in a film powered more by character development than plot.

Dix is an antisocial, down-and-out screenwriter whose violent tendencies are displayed shortly after the credits end when he gets out of his car to fight another motorist. They turned up again a few minutes later when he punches a bar patron. Although he hasn’t had a hit screenplay “since before the war,” Dix bristles when his agent brings him an offer to write a script based on a trashy novel.

That doesn’t stop him from bringing home a hatcheck girl to tell him the plot of the novel so he doesn’t have to read it, however. When she’s found dead the next morning, the police take Dix downtown. Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), his neighbor across the courtyard, lifts the suspicion briefly when she tells detectives she saw the hatcheck girl leave Dix’s apartment that night. But despite an attempt by his cop friend Brub (Frank Lovejoy) to take some of the heat off of him, Brub’s captain (Carl Benton Reid) believes Dix is guilty and works hard to get the proof.

In many films, that plot line would be center stage. But here it takes a backseat to the love story that grows between Laurel and Dix. She tempers Dix’s dark side, takes care of him and becomes his muse as he writes a script that towers above its source material. The lovely Laurel inspires him to write this line: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me,” which I dare anyone to top.

But pressure from the police investigation begins to ignite his temper and Dix reverts to his old self. Those episodes prompt Laurel to believe that Dix is capable of murder, and she begins to fear that soon she will be a target of his wrath. It all culminates in one of the saddest film endings ever, one that touched me personally because my own demons cost me the love of a good woman as well.

As good as Bogart is, the quality of Grahame’s performance matches his. Known mostly for femme fatale roles in film noir, she is wonderful in the role of the sympathetic Laurel because she also makes the bitter Dix sympathetic. Even though you know their love is doomed, it’s hard not to root for things to work out.

I know I did.

Pardon me, boy, is that the Pennsylvania Station?

In 1898, Alexander Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and brother of painter Mary Cassatt, commissioned Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham to design a station/hotel/office building to serve Pittsburgh.

Burnham, a skyscraper pioneer who created the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, and supervised the "White City" of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, designed this classic structure for Cassatt and the PRR.

The finest feature of Union Station, which was completed in 1903, is the elaborately styled rotunda that sheltered passengers dismounting from their carriages.

Above is a view of the rotunda and its skylight. Below is a design element inside the rotunda that features Pittsburg with its missing "h," which was removed by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1891. It was restored in 1911.

The building was converted to apartments and ground-floor office space in the mid-1980s, and a rudimentary station serves Amtrak.

The rotunda entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 while the entire building joined in 1976. Both also have been recognized by the Pittsburgh History and Landmark Foundation.

For more on Burnham's fascinating career, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham