Thank you for stopping by BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us for a while. There’s no cover charge. The dress code is casual. We still have a couple of good tables available. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last week I asked you who was the Greatest Living Cub, since the passing of Ryne Sandberg last year. Most of you went back to the great team that almost was in 1969, with Billy Williams earning 52 percent of the vote and Fergie Jenkins finishing second with 31 percent. Both are Hall of Famers, of course.
Here’s the part where we listen to jazz and talk movies. As always, you’re allowed to pick and choose which parts you want to follow.
Tonight we’re honored to have saxophonist Kenny Garrett live in Tokyo earlier this year. Joining Garrett and his alto sax are Keith Brown on piano, Corcoran Holt on bass, Rudy Bird on percussion, Melvis Santa on vocals (and percussion) and the drummer is Ronald Bruner, Jr.
A few weeks ago I was asked by one of you what I thought of the various adaptations of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels. I had to admit that I had never seen Dick Powell’s portrayal of Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944), even though Powell is an actor that I generally like. I’ve now seen Murder, My Sweet and I can tell you that while I still like Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum are still the definitive Marlowes.
Powell became a big star in the thirties playing what’s known at the “juvenile lead” in musicals like 42nd Street and The Gold Diggers of 1933. While Powell enjoyed singing and dancing (and presumably kissing Ruby Keeler), by the 1940s he felt he was too old to play the young innocent in a musical romance anymore. He wanted something darker and tougher, and Chandler’s world-weary antihero was exactly what he wanted.
Murder, My Sweet is actually the first on-screen performance of Philip Marlowe, based on the novel Farewell, My Lovely. (Test audiences reportedly thought Powell in a movie called Farewell, My Lovely was another musical, thus the name change.) Powell’s performance of Marlowe predates Bogart by two years.
The Chandler novels were very popular, but there were some major issues adapting them to film during the Code era. The first is that topics like homosexuality, drug abuse, pornography and the like were all verboten, so they had to just be alluded to or written out of the script altogether. The other issue is something that everyone who has read Chandler (and I’ve read Farewell, My Lovely among others) is quite familiar with: Chandler sucked at plots. The Marlowe novels are all about the overall mood, atmosphere and Chandler’s punch-you-in-the-face prose. The plots are usually nonsensical if you think about them for more than a minute. That’s even before you have to take out the parts that don’t meet Code specifications. Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep also suffers from this same issues with a plot that just doesn’t hang together.
Murder, My Sweet director Edward Dmytryk was a B-movie director who yearned to direct A-pictures. He and cinematographer Harry J. Wild decided to borrow from what Orson Welles and Gregg Toland did in Citizen Kane: lots of long shadows and odd angles. In doing so, Murder, My Sweet was perhaps the most influential film in creating the look of film noir that lasted through the next two decades. As I watched Murder, My Sweet, I didn’t find the cinematography to be any more than a solid if unspectacular noir look. But it wasn’t until later that I realized how it seem imitative to me was because I’d seen too many films that imitated it.
The biggest source of controversy on Murder, My Sweet is Powell’s portrait of Marlowe. Some like it as very energetic and alive. I, along with others, don’t think it’s right for Chandler’s cynical, world-weary Marlowe who swims above the muck rather than in it. Watching Powell’s Marlowe made me think that Powell was giving a very good performance as Mike Hammer. Powell is much more action-oriented and emotional than Marlowe should be. Bogart’s Marlowe and his Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon can blur together. He played them pretty much alike, although the dialogue of Hawks and screenwriters Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman’s forced Bogart to correctly play Marlowe with a slightly lighter and more detached touch than Spade. That he was opposite Lauren Bacall instead of Mary Astor in The Big Sleep made a huge difference too. Powell isn’t bad, but he doesn’t quite capture Chandler’s antihero the way Bogart or Mitchum, thirty years later, would do.
Playing against Powell are Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley as Helen and Ann Grayle, stepmother and stepdaughter. One is supposed to be the heroine and the other one the femme fatale and we’re supposed to be guessing which one is which throughout the film. Unfortunately, casting Trevor as Helen and Shirley as Ann doesn’t leave much doubt as to which one is which.
I should mention that former pro wrestler Mike Mazurki is very good in the supporting role of the big but sensitive thug Moose Malloy.
There’s some things I almost forgot to mention. There’s a short drug-induced dream sequence in Murder, My Sweet that comes off as amusing and dated. I’m pretty sure that’s not the effect Dmytryk was going for. He also tries to recreate Chandler’s prose by having Powell narrate the entire film as a flashback. That effort is more successful, and Dmytryk wisely doesn’t overuse the narration.
Murder, My Sweet was rushed into production after the success of Double Indemnity, co-written by Chandler, earlier in 1944. The success of the two films are credited for kicking off the whole film noir craze that would run for the next 15-20 years in Hollywood. The Big Sleep, for example, was rushed into production right after Murder, My Sweet was a hit, although delays because of the war and a need to shoot more scenes with Lauren Bacall (after Bogart and Bacall become front page news on all the gossip magazines) meant that it wasn’t released to theaters until 1946.
Overall, Murder, My Sweet is a good but not great film noir that is more imporant for its role in kickstarting the genre than it’s actual quality. Powell is a bit off as Marlowe, although as I said, he’d have made a decent Mike Hammer. Dmytryk and Wild did a great job of recreating Chandler’s dark Los Angeles with lighting and angles. If the film seems a little derivative, that’s mostly because so many other filmmakers copied it.
Murder, My Sweet is on HBO Max.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
The Cubs announced that Matthew Boyd will come off the injured list and start against the Mets on Thursday this afternoon. Obviously that is good news for the beleaguered Cubs pitching staff.
What wasn’t announced was who was going to leave the Cubs rotation after Boyd returns. Currently, the Cubs five-man rotation stands at Shōta Imanaga, Edward Cabrera, Ben Brown, Colin Rea and Javier Assad. Yes, I know that only Imanaga and Cabrera were expected to be in the rotation at the start of the year, but Boyd, Jameson Taillon and of course, Cade Horton, are hurt.
With Boyd getting healthy, one of those five pitchers will have to move to the bullpen. Brown has been too good with a 1.70 ERA over eight starts to even think of moving him to the pen. Neither Imanaga nor Cabrera have any real experience pitching in the bullpen and the Cubs have always intended for the two of them to start.
So that leaves Assad and Rea, both of whom moved into the rotation because of injuries. Unless the Cubs decide to go to a six-man rotation (which is possible, I guess), either Rea or Assad will have to go to the pen. Luckily, both of them have a good amount of experience there. This season, Rea has made 12 starts and four relief appearances. He has an ERA of 4.99. His fielding independent pitching (FIP) is 4.83. Assad has made five starts and seven relief appearances with an ERA of 3.89 and a FIP of 4.42.
So Assad would seem like the natural one to stay in the rotation and Rea to the bullpen, right? Not so fast. For one, the FIP difference in the two pitchers is not nearly as great as the ERA, although there is enough of a difference that it’s fair to say that Assad has pitched better. But Assad also pitches better out of the bullpen than he does in the rotation (3.95 ERA to 3.78) and Rea pitches better in the rotation (4.92 vs. 5.29) than the ‘pen. Rea was also very good in his last start (six scoreless innings against the Blue Jays) while the bullpen imploded to cost the Cubs the game. Maybe the Cubs win that game if Assad is pitching out of the bullpen.
Assad also has minor league options that would allow him to be sent to Iowa to continue to start should they need him to fill in for another injured starter later on, although the Cubs are hoping to get Taillon and Justin Steele back sometime in July or August.
So which Cubs starting pitcher would you send to the bullpen to make room for Matthew Boyd?
Thank you for stopping by. Don’t be a stranger. Get home safely. Stay cool and dry out there. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow night for more BCB After Dark.
