Barbara Stanwyck No. 2: BALL OF FIRE Tonight on TCM

Yesterday we talked about Barbara Stanwyck month on TCM through the lens of The Lady Eve, her 1941 romantic comedy with director and screenwriter Preston Sturges. The movie TCM will be screening right after The Lady Eve is another gem, and Stanwyck is just as spirited and sparkly.

So what's No. 2?

It's Ball of Fire, a screwball take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs directed by Howard Hawks, one of Hollywood's most versatile directors, with a fizzy, funny screenplay by Charles Brackett and the legendary Billy Wilder.

In this one, Stanwyck is Sugarpuss O'Shea, which has to one of the best names ever in film history, a nightclub entertainer romantically linked to a gangster. Gary Cooper is her screen partner, but he's not the gangster He's Bertram Potts, a professor of linguistics currently working on an encyclopedia with a group of elderly academic types, each with his own specialty. They're cooped up together in a house, slaving away, desperately trying to finish their project at long last.

But Bertram takes a stroll over to the nightclub where Sugarpuss is entertaining, hears her delicious slang, and invites her to help him out by giving him the inside scoop on her jazzy lingo. She declines, until she needs a place to hide out. It seems the coppers are on her tail to drop a dime on her main squeeze, Joe Lilac, who is on ice after maybe bumping off a rival.

Once ensconced at the house where all the professors live, Sugarpuss takes over, sharing all her best slang with Pottsie (she's given Bertram that nickname) and her slinkiest conga moves with his colleagues. Things are great until Joe Lilac resurfaces, huge engagement ring in hand. But by that time, Sugarpuss is starting to have feelings for shy, awkward professor Pottsie.

Things go south from there. Or maybe west, since they all end up in New Jersey. Gangsters! Adorable old men in a conga line! Barbara Stanwyck in gold lamé with a bare midriff! Gary Cooper in a bowtie! Gene Krupa drumming "Drum Boogie" with matchsticks! It just doesn't get any better than that.

This time, the supporting players include Richard Haydn, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, Tully Marshall, Aubrey Mathers, S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall and Henry Travers as the encyclopedia scribes, Dana Andrews as Joe Lilac the thuggish boyfriend, and Dan Duryea and Ralph Peters as Duke Pastrami and Asthma Anderson, Joe's henchmen.

C'mon. Who can resist a movie with people named Sugarpuss, Asthma and Pastrami?

Don't resist. Give in to Ball of Fire. It's at 12:15 am (Central time) tonight on TCM, right after The Lady Eve. You'll be drum-boogieing all night long.

Barbara Stanwyck No. 1: THE LADY EVE Tomorrow on TCM

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating Barbara Stanwyck this month, and tomorrow night you have a chance to catch two of her best and most charming movies.

The first one, beginning at 10:30 pm Central time, is The Lady Eve, a 1941 romantic comedy from director/screenwriter Preston Sturges. Sturges was one of the Big 7*, the group of directors who made film comedy of the 30s and 40s so fabulous, and he was a step ahead since he did his own scripts. A definite wordsmith, Sturges specialized in movies with a) crazy characters, b) an amazing ensemble of character actors, and c) madcap situations that could get a little risque. So Trudy Cockenlocker, the girl in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek who got hit on the head during a USO dance and doesn't remember who she slept with to create the bun in her oven, is par for the Sturges' course.

Barbara Stanwyck's Jean Harrington is a con woman traveling over the Atlantic on a posh ocean liner with her cardsharp dad, played by the irascible and adorable Charles Coburn, one of those character actors I was telling you about. When sweet, dopey and rich Charles Poncefort Pike, played by Henry Fonda, gets on board their ship, every girl there tries to attract his attention. He is, after all, the heir to a beer fortune, even though he's more interested in snakes than Pike's Pale Ale. But Jean is smarter than most, and she knows exactly how to tempt Hopsie, as she begins to call him. Soon after she's got him hooked, she begins to fall for him, too, even though he has a cynical bodyguard, played by William Demarest, best known as grumpy Uncle Charley on the TV show My Three Sons, who has her number, and dear old dad, the cardsharp, is just dying to take Hopsie for all he's worth. Dad pulls his games, he and Jean are revealed as well-known shipboard swindlers, and all is lost between Jean and Hopsie.

Ah, but that's when the plot takes a detour. Because Jean is really angry that Hopsie dumped her, she takes on a new identity as Lady Eve Sidwich, a classier, more cultivated sort of woman. And then she cozies up to the Pike family at home, intending to pull the wool over the poor, deluded guy's eyes once again for revenge. Even though Uncle Charley, er, Muggsy, the right-hand man, insists she's "the same dame," Hopsie falls for it, hook, line and sinker.

Two more of my favorite character actors show up during this part of the plot, with the sly Eric Blore as a fellow con man who helps "Eve" get close to the Pikes, including gravel-voiced Eugene Pallette as the Pale Ale patriarch.

Everybody is wonderful, especially Stanwyck, who positively sparkles as naughty Jean/Eve, and Fonda, who comes off quite attractive even though his Hopsie is also completely befuddled. That's not an easy combo! The two show great chemistry as they navigate their way through all kinds of fizzy and sizzling little moments, and Stanwyck sells Sturges' crazy story with cheeky conviction.

The Lady Eve is outrageous, unbelievable, and yet so good-natured about all of it, you are perfectly willing to leap over that threshold of disbelief and root for Hopsie to fall prey to Jean's schemes so the two of them can be together.

There's just something about The Lady Eve.

*The other six were Frank Capra, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Mitchell Leisen, Ernst Lubitsch and Leo McCarey, according to a film class I took long ago. If you go find It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, Holiday, tomorrow night's Ball of Fire, Bringing Up Baby, Midnight, Easy Living, Trouble in Paradise, The Awful Truth and Sullivan's Travels, you will have a very nice overview of the best film comedies of the 30s and 40s, and they were each directed by one of those seven guys.

Joyeux anniversaire, Georges Feydeau!

Not only did Georges Feydeau (born December 8, 1862) turn the boulevard farce into an art form, he was a historical hottie. See photo at left. (Although his wild ways mean you should probably not sleep with him if you should find yourself traveling to Belle Epoque France in a time machine or through a Woody Allen movie.)

You may know M. Feydeau from Hotel Paradiso, AKA A Little Hotel on the Side (L'Hôtel du libre échange) or A Flea in Her Ear (La Puce à l'oreille), both often produced at colleges and universities, or one of the other sixty some plays he wrote between 1882 and 1916. His plays have been translated into countless languages and made into more movies than you can throw a Coq at.

A portrait of Feydeau painted by his father-in-law.

On the books, Feydeau was the son of Ernest Feydeau, a Parisian writer and scholar, but rumor had it he was the love child of Napoleon III or some other aristocrat. Royal or not, he had money problems and romantic complications most of his adult life. He married Marianne Carolus-Duran, the daughter of a famous painter, when he was 27, which kept him afloat financially for awhile, but certainly didn't make him happy on the home front.

They separated and eventually divorced, but that didn't stop him from writing some very unpleasant female characters late in his career that some feel were patterned after his wife. His plays were hugely successful, quickly garnering him a reputation outside France as well as in, but his gambling habits and predilection for wiling away his time at Maxim's, the seductive and beyond fashionable late-night Paris restaurant, kept him continually on the brink of financial disaster.

And if farce has never been considered as important as other, weightier forms of drama, Feydeau's farces rose above. Given the way his middle-class characters are tossed around by the whims of fate, battered by a crazy world they can't control, Feydeau is considered a forerunner of Theatre of the Absurd and surrealism.

Georges Feydeau died at the age of 58, probably from complications from syphilis.

Audition Reminder: LEND ME A TENOR and TIME STANDS STILL

Almost time for auditions for two popular shows. If you;re looking for a winter acting gig, if your audition monologue is up to date or you do a heck of a cold reading from a script, and you are somewhere between 20 and 80, there may just be a role for you.

First up, Community Players and director Cris Embree will hold auditions on December 10 and 11 for their January production of Ken Ludwig's opera-inspired farce Lend Me a Tenor.

Embree will be looking for four men and four women to play the following roles:

MAX, 25-35. Assistant to Saunders who fancies himself a tenor.
MAGGIE, 25-30. Max's girlfriend and Saunders' daughter. She has a major thing for Merelli.
SAUNDERS, 50s-60s. Maggie's father, General Manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera     Company. 
TITO MERELLI, 40s-50s. A world-famous Italian tenor, known as Il Stupendo to his fans. 
MARIA, 40s-50s. Tito's wife. She's fiery and passionate, and none too pleased with her husband's womanizing ways. 
DIANA, 35-45. A sexy soprano who will do what it takes to get ahead. 
JULIA, 55-65. Chairman of the Opera Guild. A grande dame. 
BELLHOP, 20-35. He, too, is obsessed with Merelli, opera and getting into that hotel room.

Lend Me a Tenor is scheduled for performances from January 25 to February 3 at Community Players Theatre at 201 Robinhood Lane in Bloomington. For more about Community Players' production, you can visit the CP website here or for more about Lend Me a Tenor, check out my longer piece about the play here.

Time Stands Still, from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, is a very different kind of play, delving deep into issues of personal responsibility and happiness, what it means to be a journalist, and what it means to grow up. Veteran director Sandra Zielinski, who was at the helm of Mauritius and Three Sisters last winter, will be holding auditions December 16, 17 and 18 at Heartland Theatre for a February production of Time Stands Still.

Roles to be cast include:

SARAH, late 30s to early 40s. An international photojournalist. She thinks of herself as fierce and fiercely independent. She is home recuperating after a serious injury from a roadside bomb.
JAMES, late 30s to early 40s. A freelance journalist and Sarah's significant other. He, too, came home after an injury. Unlike Sarah, he would like to stay.
RICHARD, 55. Sarah's editor.
MANDY, 25. An event planner and Richard's much younger girlfriend.

The play is provocative and thought-provoking about the world of onlookers who see and record big events, but don't actually participate. And what about the people who stay at home, build relationships, have families and lead more peaceful lives? Whose work is important?

For more information about Time Stands Still, click here. For audition info, click here.

Hooked on SCANDAL and Its Juicy Political Intrigue

OMG! Scandal shot President Grant!

Okay, that was last week. And if you watch Scandal, you know that I'm not talking about Ulysses S. here. This is President Fitzgerald Grant, played by Tony Goldwyn, someone I've always thought was handsome, but... Kind of opaque. If you're just catching up with Tony Goldwyn, I will tell you that my view of him was formed by his performances as Neil Armstrong in From the Earth to the Moon, the bad guy in Ghost and Goren's brother in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a lot of episodic TV (Without a Trace, The L Word, Frasier, L.A. Law, Murphy Brown, etc.), and most recently, playing slimy boss Sheldrake in the Broadway company of Promises, Promises. My feeling? Always hot, but kind of cold.

In Scandal, Tony Goldwyn is not cold. Not. Not. Not. Let's just get that out of the way. Goldwyn has been steaming up the small screen with Kerry Washington, who plays Olivia Pope, his former press secretary and a professional "fixer" who makes problems go away. The two fell in love and major lust when she was part of the crew running his presidential campaign, and they've had a really hard time keeping their hands off each other, in some very sexy scenes played out over the fifteen episodes of Scandal aired so far. The temperature rose even higher in last night's "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" episode that flashed back to some pivotal events in the Fitz-Liv relationship. Let's just say their method of writing a State of the Union speech is a little unorthodox.

Olivia may be a fixer, but for President Grant, she causes a whole lot of problems. He's already a mess, since, you know, he's President, he's married, his wife, the manipulative Mellie (Bellamy Young) is pregnant with "America's child," he has a scheming, ambitious, double-dealing VP (Kate Burton), and he only got elected because of a voting fraud conspiracy involving his chief of staff, Cyrus (Chicago's Jeff Perry, doing a terrific number as a Machiavellian politico), along with Olivia, Mellie, a Supreme Court Justice and a powerful business tycoon not above taking out whole office buildings to cover up his evil deeds.

As nosy folks get closer to uncovering the voting fraud, more people get mowed down. The stakes got even higher last week when shots rang out outside a presidential birthday bash, felling Fitz and his post-Olivia press secretary, played by Keiko Agena, AKA Gilmore Girls' Lane Kim. Fitz is clinging to life in the hospital, but Britta/Lane the press secretary didn't make it. Did Hollis, the billionaire pulling everybody's strings, call in a hit? Was it Mellie, tired of playing second fiddle to Olivia when it comes to Fitz's affections? Could the assassin really have been Huck, the scary, messed-up former spy on Olivia's payroll? What about the crazy Vice President, Bible-thumper Sally Langston, who pulled an Alexander Haig and told everybody she was in charge before the keys were out of the ambulance ignition? And what about poor Britta/Lane? Was she the real target in this assassination attempt because she knew something she shouldn't have about the rigged voting machines in Defiance, Ohio?

There's at least one more episode this year -- next week's "Blown Away" is billed in some places as the fall finale, but IMDB has another one, "One for the Dog," also listed for 2012 -- but you can pretty much bet we're not going to get answers to any of these questions anytime soon. Scandal creator/executive producer/writer Shonda Rhimes has shown with Grey's Anatomy that she knows her way around a cliffhanger, that she's not afraid to pile up a body count, and anybody and everybody is expendable. I'm figuring Olivia has to be around for there to be a show since she's at the center of it, but even President Grant could get taken out if Rhimes think there's more drama to be had with him out of the picture (or maybe with his brain preserved in a jar floating on a boat in the Potomac, like all the old conspiracy theories about Lincoln and Kennedy). That's part of what makes the show so addictive -- there's real suspense there as you wonder who might be in the next body bag.

I don't think I've ever been hugely interested in political thrillers, but the soapy aspects of Scandal make it very attractive to me. Well, that and Tony Goldwyn. It doesn't hurt that Olivia's other boyfriend is played by Norm Lewis, the Broadway star who lit up Sondheim on Sondheim with his amazing performance of "Being Alive."

You can catch full episodes at ABC if you want to catch up, plus there are some fun (free) podcasts available at iTunes for extra tidbits of info. After watching the episodes and listening to the podcasts, you'll definitely need to be there next week for "Blown Away," scheduled to air December 13, 2012, at 9 pm Central time. 

WGA Has Their Say with Noms for TV

The Writers Guilds (East and West) have announced their nominations for outstanding achievement in writing for television during the 2012 season. They also honor news, radio, promotional writing and graphic animation. Two simultaneous ceremonies (one in LA and one in New York) to honor winners will be held on Sunday, February 17, 2013.

So who are the big nominees in TV?

In the Drama Series category, the nominees are Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones on HBO, Breaking Bad and Mad Men on AMC, and Homeland on Showtime. The fact that Breaking Bad has four of the six total nominations for writing an episode of a TV drama says that they may split the vote in the episodic category, but they'll probably blow away the competition in Drama Series. Who knows, though? Homeland and Boardwalk Empire have mighty weapons of their own.

As I said, Breaking Bad dominates the episodic drama category, with episodes "Buyout," "Dead Weight," "Fifty-One" and "Say My Name" all nominated, along with the "New Car Smell" episode of Homeland and "The Other Woman" from Mad Men. "The Other Woman" was killer. Mad Men. S'all I'm gonna say.

Comedy Series with a Writers Guild nod include 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation on NBC, Modern Family on ABC, Girls on HBO, and Louie on FX. Modern Family will win, but Parks and Rec or Louie would be fine by me.

Modern Family almost corners the market in episodic comedy nominations, with Writers Guild love for "Little Bo Bleep," "Mistery Date" and "Virgin Territory," as well as "The Debate" episode of Parks and Recreation, "Leap Day" from 30 Rock, and "Episode 9" of Episodes. I like Modern Family as much as the next person, but I'm a little tired of automatically sending all the awards their way. "The Debate" was funny and smart and featured Paul Rudd as a sweet but stupid candidate for office in Pawnee. Ya gotta vote Paul Rudd!

Joining Fox's The Mindy Project and ABC's Nashville as nominees for Best New Series were Girls, The Newsroom and Veep from HBO. I'd personally go for Nashville if I had a vote, but really, you can give it to anything but Girls. Or The Mindy Project. Not trying to rain on the Girl Power Parade -- I just don't like Girls or That Mindy Thing.

And even though the daytime soaps are a dying breed, the Guild is still recognizing them. Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless, which still exist, will compete against the late and very much lamented One Life to Live in that category.

For the complete list of nominees, including Hatfields and McCoys, Conan and Kimmel and Colbert, anthrax and the Amish and The Ghost of Joe McCarthy, click here.

Magical CHRISTMAS CAROL Takes on More Luster with Joe Foust

Given just how many regional theaters perform Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol each and every year, it's kind of odd that we don't have a local production. But never fear -- Chicago's Goodman Theatre continues their annual Christmas Carol tradition through December 29.

And this year, you can catch Joe Foust, a U of I and Station Theatre alum as well as one of the founders of Chicago's gone-but-not-forgotten Defiant Theatre, in the role of Marley, the ghostly one with the chains who starts mean ol' Scrooge on his journey. I wrote about Foust as part of a "Where are they now?" piece a while ago, and you can read all the details here.

Larry Yando (L, Scrooge) and Joe Foust (R, Marley) at the Goodman Theatre

At the Goodman, Steve Scott directs a script by Tom Creamer, with one of Chicago's finest actors, Larry Yando, playing Scrooge for the fifth time.

Kerry Reid reviewed this 35th anniversary edition of the Dickens' classic for the Chicago Tribune, calling the show "beautifully realized this year at the Goodman" and noting that "Yando's Scrooge plays all the emotional notes to perfection, with finely honed comic bits...spicing up the proceedings."