Checking Amazon.com to see if The Best American Travel Writing 2008, edited by Anthony Bourdain, has hit store shelves yet (it has), I was surprised to find one customer review that gave it one star.

Could Tony’s taste be slipping?

Turns out the problem wasn’t with Bourdain’s choice of essays, but with the book itself. This reader claims the text of another book was on pages 45-111, and the replacement book Amazon sent had the same problem.

So I hot-footed to Barnes & Noble to see for myself. All 5 copies they had were fine. But they’ve only got 4 now; I bought one.

However, there apparently was some problem with the printing so, before you buy, flip through it and make sure what’s inside matches the table of contents.

I picked up two other interesting Tony tidbits this week…

Cats Working reader Adele kindly tipped me off to a special on the Travel Channel on October 20 at 10 p.m. ET called At the Table with Anthony Bourdain, where he’ll be talking to Maxim deputy editor Chris Wilson, Amy Sacco and Ted Allen and others over drinks and dinner in New York.

And it seems Bourdain’s got a thing for sultry, dark-haired actresses like the late Ava Gardner and silent film star Louise Brooks, who bears an eerie resemblance to Tony’s wife Ottavia. They would be guests at his ideal fantasy party, which he described to the New York Post:

"Chef Marco Pierre White and Keith Richards would be throwing something on the barbie in a back yard in Red Hook. Louise Brooks, the silent film actress, would be there, along with Ava Gardner, Orson Welles, [British spy] Kim Philby and the CIA director of counterintelligence."

It doesn’t get much stranger than that.

Mogambo is available at Amazon for $12.99. To Order click here
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• The Barefoot Contessa
• King Solomon's Mines
• Elephant Walk
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro
• To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)

Estrenada en Zaragoza en el cine Goya en 1.964

Realizada a continuación de "El último de la lista" (The list of Adrian Messenger, 1.961), estrenada asimismo en Zaragoza en 1.964 en el Palafox y que no merece mayor comentario ya que se trata de un pasatiempo irlandés y uno de esos films menores a los que John Huston era tan proclive.

"La noche de la iguana" es, ciertamente, otra cosa. Película completamente hustoniana que parte de una de las mejoras obras de Tennessee Williams, y deviene la más lograda de las adaptaciones al cine -junto a "Un tranvía llamado deseo" (A streetcar named Desire/Elia Kazan 1951 y “De repente el último verano” (Suddenly last summer/Joseph L. Manckiewicz 1958), normal dada la calidad de ambos directores– de autor tan bien servido por Hollywood.

Huston viaja a México para localizar exteriores, y a Madrid para convencer a Ava Gardner de que aceptase el papel de Maxine (desopilante episodio narrado por el cineasta en sus memorias “An open book” y en el que el rijoso director hizo lo posible y lo imposible por ligarse a la guapísima sin éxito alguno; eso si el productor Ray Stark que le acompañaba tuvo que ser ingresado de urgencias en un hospital madrileño a causa de tres noches seguidas al estilo Gardner). Consigue el reparto

que deseaba (Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon), filmar en blanco y negro y obtener los servicios del genial operador Gabriel Figueroa y escribir él mismo el guión sin interferencias de Williams.

¿En que coincidían los respectivos universos de Williams y Huston? La abrupta poesía del dramaturgo le convenía al director, el viaje más o menos iniciático del pastor protestante y alcohólico Shanon tambien. La misoginia exacerbada de un homosexual como mr. Williams para nada. Huston se las arregló para ocultarla, apañando el desenlace y despojando a Maxine (Ava Gardner) de su aura de mantis religiosa.

“La noche de la iguana” es un bello texto muy bien entendido por el Huston de las grandes ocasiones. Lo respeta pero hace suyos a los personajes para asi poder inscribirlos en la riquísima galeria de retratos fascinantes del mundo hustoniano(de “El halcon maltés” 1941 a “Dublineses” 1987, pasando por “El tesoro de Sierra Madre”, “Cayo Largo”, “La jungla de asfalto”, “La reina de Africa”, “Moby Dick”, “Solo Dios lo sabe”, “Vidas rebeldes”, “Reflejos en un ojo dorado”, “Fat city”, “El juez de la horca”, “El hombre que pudo reinar” y “El honor de los Prizzi”, el corpus por el que este irregular director merece estar en el Olimpo de los más grandes). El resultado es una ceremonia, un rito bellísimo de autodestrucción y/o supervivencia, alcohol, sexualidad animal… y sentido del humor que nunca le faltó al formidable personaje que, según él mismo y los que le conocieron, fue el hijo de Walter Huston. El opresivo itinerario del descreído reverendo y sus solteronas excursionistas cantarinas y/o reprimidas (veáse el amor lésbico de Grayson Hall por Sue Lyon, expuesto crudamente en genial chiste a cargo de Burton y Ava. Los enfrentamientos con la ninfómana propietaria de un hotelucho en la jungla mexicana (Ava Gardner, demostrando que con un buen papel era una actriz tan arrebatadora como su otoñal belleza), una mística etérea pero nada frágil Deborah Kerr (tan extraordinaria, o casi, como en “The innocents”), una Lolita que no podía ser más que Sue Lyon y, sobre todo, con sus propios demonios, dan lugar a un exorcismo bañado en alcohol, tabaco, sangre, sudor y lágrimas.

[caption id="attachment_464" align="alignleft" width="446" caption="Richard Burton y Ava Gardner"][/caption]

El desenlace parece, solo parece, desembocar en la serenidad y la asunción del fracaso sin que por ello deje resquicio a una improbable esperanza. Magnífica elegía de la desesperación de los marginados, que no siempre evita cierta grandilocuencia (probablemente debida más a Williams que a Huston, director poco dado a lo pomposo), “La noche de la iguana” permanece quizá como el más notable exponente del cine de su autor en unos años de divorcios, despistes y baja forma. Cosa sabida es que John Huston fue siempre un ciclotímico del mejor cine americano, y que llevó a cabo un buen número de películas que mejor no mencionar. Pero cuando fue autor, y no artesano de bajo calado, alcanzó cotas épicas y líricas de altísima calidad. Y si le damos la vuelta a las desdichadas frases de un joven François Truffaut (1), el paso del tiempo ha colocado a cada uno en su sitio y el autor de “Los 400 golpes” –cosa habitual en “Cahiers du Cinema” en toda su larga y, desgraciadamente, influyente historia– había metido la pata una vez más. “La noche de la iguana” no es una obra maestra. Sí una excelente película.

1) “es un director al que como se le da mal la puesta en escena dice preferir la vida”.

“Un solo plano de cualquier film de Hawks vale lo que la obra entera de Huston”.

En honor de Truffaut hay que decir que en los últimos años de su corta vida, abjuró de tales disparates, puso de vuelta y media a Godard (acto de estricta justicia) y ya no fueron Hitchcock, Hawks, Ray (el Huston del pobre no el gran maestro bengalí) o Cukor sus dioses sino que, con lucidez no exenta de arrepentimiento, estos se llamaron Lubitsch, Chaplin, Bergman y Buñuel.

Robert Wise directed Executive Suite (1954), a still-relevant portrait of cutthroat corporate shenanigans, starring Frederic March and William Holden (in a truly dazzling performance) as the sharks in the corner-office tank. Stanwyck plays an heiress with her trademark unflappability--and with possibly the steeliest business persona of them all. Extras include an enthusiastic commentary by Wall Street director Oliver Stone, as well as a vintage short and cartoon.

Annie Oakley (1935), the oldest film in this collection, went a long way toward cementing Stanwyck's tough-talking (and yes, straight-shooting) persona. Stanwyck is brassy and bold, and mighty fearless as the Old West legend. There's a fair amount of humor, too, in the screenplay and deft direction of George Stevens. Extras include a vintage short and cartoon.

Stanwyck stretches her acting wings in the soapy love story My Reputation (1946). It's hard to imagine the tough-dame Stanwyck worrying about anything so ephemeral as a reputation, but in this well-acted film, she's convincing as a young widow who cautiously tries to date again, only to set tongues wagging, and scandalizing even her own children. Extras include a great musical short featuring Jan Savitt and Band, and a vintage cartoon.

Mervyn LeRoy directs a fabulous cast in the film noirish thiller/melodrama East Side, West Side (1949), involving a bored married couple, past infidelities, and murder. Ava Gardner's a standout as the "other woman" who comes between Stanwyck's Jessie and James Mason's Brandon. The cinematography is atmospheric and taut. Even the supporting cast dazzles in its own right--Cyd Charisse, William Frawley, William Conrad, and a winsome Nancy Davis (the future First Lady). Extras include a short film and a fun Tex Avery cartoon, "Counterfeit Cat."

To Please a Lady (1950) may have one of the least appropriate film titles ever--it's a high-octane drama set around the world of early car racing, with a romance between Stanwyck and Clark Gable as the hook. But the film itself is a blast, especially for the well-shot, adrenaline-rush scenes of car racing, decades before the polish of NASCAR. Gable's a reckless driving champ and Stanwyck's the hard-nosed reporter who revs up his heart. Stanwyck's Regina catches racing fever: "It's like the Fourth of July and the heavyweight fight and the World Series all rolled into one." Amen, sister.

Jeopardy (1953) appears as a "double feature" on one disc with To Please a Lady. It's a fascinating psychological thriller that presages a whole genre of "ticking time-bomb" peril films, and also suggests a pivotal scene in Sometimes a Great Notion. Stanwyck plays a happily married wife, vacationing in Mexico with her husband (Barry Sullivan), who becomes trapped in the surf--and as the tide comes in, his luck may run out. A frantic Stanwyck has to make scary choices if her husband--and she--is to survive. The extra on this disc is an audio-only radio interview with Stanwyck. --A.T. Hurley

Barbara Stanwyck - The Signature Collection (Annie Oakley / East Side, West Side / My Reputation / Executive Suite / Jeopardy / To Please a Lady) is available at Amazon for $32.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

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Other Products of Interest

• TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female)
• The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (A Woman's Face / Flamingo Road / Sadie McKee / Strange Cargo / Torch Song)
• Daisy Kenyon (Fox Film Noir)
• The Bette Davis Collection, Vol. 3 (The Old Maid / All This, And Heaven Too / The Great Lie / In This Our Life / Watch on the Rhine / Deception)
• Dangerous Crossing (Fox Film Noir)

Robert Wise directed Executive Suite (1954), a still-relevant portrait of cutthroat corporate shenanigans, starring Frederic March and William Holden (in a truly dazzling performance) as the sharks in the corner-office tank. Stanwyck plays an heiress with her trademark unflappability--and with possibly the steeliest business persona of them all. Extras include an enthusiastic commentary by Wall Street director Oliver Stone, as well as a vintage short and cartoon.

Annie Oakley (1935), the oldest film in this collection, went a long way toward cementing Stanwyck's tough-talking (and yes, straight-shooting) persona. Stanwyck is brassy and bold, and mighty fearless as the Old West legend. There's a fair amount of humor, too, in the screenplay and deft direction of George Stevens. Extras include a vintage short and cartoon.

Stanwyck stretches her acting wings in the soapy love story My Reputation (1946). It's hard to imagine the tough-dame Stanwyck worrying about anything so ephemeral as a reputation, but in this well-acted film, she's convincing as a young widow who cautiously tries to date again, only to set tongues wagging, and scandalizing even her own children. Extras include a great musical short featuring Jan Savitt and Band, and a vintage cartoon.

Mervyn LeRoy directs a fabulous cast in the film noirish thiller/melodrama East Side, West Side (1949), involving a bored married couple, past infidelities, and murder. Ava Gardner's a standout as the "other woman" who comes between Stanwyck's Jessie and James Mason's Brandon. The cinematography is atmospheric and taut. Even the supporting cast dazzles in its own right--Cyd Charisse, William Frawley, William Conrad, and a winsome Nancy Davis (the future First Lady). Extras include a short film and a fun Tex Avery cartoon, "Counterfeit Cat."

To Please a Lady (1950) may have one of the least appropriate film titles ever--it's a high-octane drama set around the world of early car racing, with a romance between Stanwyck and Clark Gable as the hook. But the film itself is a blast, especially for the well-shot, adrenaline-rush scenes of car racing, decades before the polish of NASCAR. Gable's a reckless driving champ and Stanwyck's the hard-nosed reporter who revs up his heart. Stanwyck's Regina catches racing fever: "It's like the Fourth of July and the heavyweight fight and the World Series all rolled into one." Amen, sister.

Jeopardy (1953) appears as a "double feature" on one disc with To Please a Lady. It's a fascinating psychological thriller that presages a whole genre of "ticking time-bomb" peril films, and also suggests a pivotal scene in Sometimes a Great Notion. Stanwyck plays a happily married wife, vacationing in Mexico with her husband (Barry Sullivan), who becomes trapped in the surf--and as the tide comes in, his luck may run out. A frantic Stanwyck has to make scary choices if her husband--and she--is to survive. The extra on this disc is an audio-only radio interview with Stanwyck. --A.T. Hurley

Barbara Stanwyck - The Signature Collection (Annie Oakley / East Side, West Side / My Reputation / Executive Suite / Jeopardy / To Please a Lady) is available at Amazon for $32.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female)
• The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (A Woman's Face / Flamingo Road / Sadie McKee / Strange Cargo / Torch Song)
• Daisy Kenyon (Fox Film Noir)
• The Bette Davis Collection, Vol. 3 (The Old Maid / All This, And Heaven Too / The Great Lie / In This Our Life / Watch on the Rhine / Deception)
• Dangerous Crossing (Fox Film Noir)

Darrieux -- today at 91 years of age she's still acting -- studied music as a child in Paris and used this background to break into the French film industry while still a young teenager.  In 1938 she co-starred in director Anatole Litvak's Mayerling opposite Charles Boyer, a film that brought her to the attention of an international audience.  Darrieux's appeal was a combination of her tremendous beauty, onscreen grace and acting prowess, and she was constantly busy making several films per year.  In 1935 Danielle, barely eighteen, married director-screenwriter Henri Decoin, nearly thirty years her senior.  Theirs was a personal and a professional collaboration, and Decoin urged her to try Hollywood.   She made her American debut in 1938's The Rage of Paris, a Universal production opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr., but would not make another U.S. film until after World War II.

The War was a troublesome time for Darrieux.  When the Germans invaded and occupied Paris, Darrieux stayed in the city and continued her film career, a decision reportedly influenced by the Nazis who threatened to deport her brother to Germany if she left.  Her decision to remain in Paris was criticized by her contemporaries (the French Underground was allegedly after her for a time) who were unaware of the pressures put upon her, but staying there was also propitious for her.  She became acquainted with a handsome Dominican named Porfirio Rubirosa, the charge d'affaires of the legation of San Salvador who was stationed in Vichy, the capitol of Nazi Collaborationist France.

Good-looking, spoiled and intensely charming, Rubirosa was the son of a diplomat and had been raised in Paris, but returned to the Dominican Republic to attend military school and start his career.  The suave Rubirosa soon also started on what would end up being his second career, marrying well-connected women who could help him along.  He hooked up with the daughter of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and they were married in 1932, when Porfirio was 23 years old.  Gen. Trujillo posted his son-in-law to a Berlin diplomatic mission, but it was soon obvious that Rubirosa's eye for the ladies couldn't be controlled, and the marriage ended.  (But don't feel bad for the first Mrs. Rubirosa; she went on to have a total of nine husbands).  Rubirosa was clearly not a one-woman man, instead living out a near-fantasy existence with a succession of beautiful women on his arm and in his bed and more-or-less playing at being a diplomat.  His antics were ultimately considered terrific P.R. for the Dominican Republic's international image, though -- or perhaps because -- he essentially earned his keep thru his personal charisma and nature's blessings.  He was reportedly most spectacularly endowed precisely where it counts if you're a lothario, and he also had the requisite manners and skill to exploit that lucky break well enough to keep him circulating in important and glamorous circles.

Darrieux, the beautiful and well-off (highest paid in France) actress, and Rubirosa, the gallant gadabout, fell in love and were married at the Vichy Town Hall on September 18, 1942, the ceremony witnessed by the Ambassador to Brazil and the wife of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's nephew.  The couple also hosted a wedding breakfast at a prominent hotel with many dignitaries and celebrities in attendance.  It was a truly a union of two spectacular and glittering individuals.  Though both labored under the political strictures necessitated by the German occupation, Rubirosa ran into trouble with the regime.  He had been shot on the street by a mysterious assailant, and later, after some rash public comments, incurred the wrath of the Nazis and found himself exiled to Berlin and put under house arrest.  The missus managed to arrange for his release by agreeing to go on a publicity tour to Berlin for the Nazis in exchange for Porfirio's freedom, and soon afterwards the couple left France for Switzerland.

Darrieux continued her career and Rubirosa continued his quasi-official mission as a Dominican operative.  They were an attractive couple but Porfirio's uncontrollable womanizing hadn't stopped.  The self-described "man of pleasure" was as irresistible to women as they were to him, and in early 1947 (or thereabouts) he was spotted by Doris Duke, the multi-millioned tobacco heiress who spent a lot of time in Europe and ran in the same circles as Rubirosa and his actress wife.  Duke, divorced from her first husband, also was passing time as a correspondent for magazinesTime and Harper's Bazaar; one of her assignments was interviewing Darrieux and Rubirosa in Rome.  Infatuated by the ladies man, Duke found her fascination returned by Rubirosa and the two began a furtive romance.  Though Danielle and Porfirio were by this time semi-estranged at best, they were still legally bound.  Completely smitten and loaded, Doris offered Danielle a cool million dollars to agree to an uncontested divorce from Rubirosa.  Since the marriage was already on the rocks, the bribe sealed the deal. 

Darrieux and Rubirosa divorced in May of 1947, and Doris Duke and Rubirosa tied their own gilded knot on September 1, 1947, but not before Duke handed Rubirosa a prenuptial agreement which stated her money stayed hers.  Danielle went on to marry screenwriter George Mitsikides in 1948 and they had a long and happy marriage which lasted until his death in 1991.  Rubirosa, on the other hand, had barely gotten started.  He and Doris Duke stayed marriage a little over a year, and during that time Doris showered her bought-and-paid-for hubby with plenty of loot, including polo ponies, sports cars, and a huge private airplane.  When they split up, she gave him a townhouse in Paris and agreed to pay him $25,000 a year in alimony, which went a lot further then than it does today.  A few years later Rubirosa would latch onto another moneyed honey, this time Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who had already collected Cary Grant as one of her previous husbands.  Grant, in fact, called Hutton when he heard she was about to marry the Dominican Don Juan, and accused her of essentially buying herself a gigolo.  Didn't stop her, though, and though their union lasted only a few months, when they split up she laid three and a half million bucks on him for services rendered, and threw in a plantation to boot.

In-between and during his official marriages Rubirosa dallied with an assortment of international beauties, including many of Hollywood's most famous faces.  Reported to have succumbed to his considerable charms over the years were cinema favorites such as Gene Tierney, Veronica Lake, Ava Gardner, Dolores Del Rio, Kim Novak, Marilyn Monroe, Eartha Kitt, Eva Gabor and also her sister Zsa Zsa, a passionate liaison which took place during his brief marriage to Barbara Hutton, and which at one point had Zsa Zsa sporting a black eye.  Also falling in line for him were international celebrities like Eva Peron, Queen Soraya of Iran, various society dames and a few not-so-innocent debutantes.  His last marriage was to a young French actress, and they were still together in 1965 when the world's greatest lover had a bit too much to drink after a night alone out on the town in Paris.  As he sped home, Rubirosa crashed his Ferrari into a parked car and then headlong into a tree, killing him instantly at the age of 56. 

Gone was possibly the greatest playboy of the 20th Century, famous for being famous, famous for having a big one, and most famous for kissing the girls and making them sigh.  Enough of a resume for one lifetime, I should think.

Here's a little video tribute I found on YouTube, set to David Lee Roth's "Just a Gigolo":

Regie
Carl Reiner

Hauptdarsteller
Rachel Ward als Juliet Forrest
Steve Martin als Rigby Reardon
Cary Grant in "Suspicion"
Bette Davis in "Deception"
Ingrind Bergman in "Notorious"
Alan Ladd in "This Gun for Hire"
Edward Arnold in "Johnny Eager"
Veronica Lake in "The Glass Key"
Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend"
Barbara Stanwyck in "Sorry Wrong Number"
Lana Turner in "Johnny Eager" / The Postman Always Rings Twice"
Humphrey Bogart in "The Big Sleep" / "In a Lonely Place" / "Dark Passage"

Plot
Bei Tote tragen keine Karos geht es um den Privatdetektiv Rigby Reardon, der von Rachel Ward beauftragt wird , dem Tot ihres Vaters auf den Grund zu gehen. Bald findet Rigby heraus, das es kein einfacher Mord war, sondern eine Menge zwilichtiger Personen im Netz Carlotta's verworren sind. Wer oder Was Carlotta ist, will ich an dieser Stelle nicht vorwegnehmen, da ich euch ja nicht die Freude am Film nehmen will.

Kritik

Steve Martin spielt seine Rolle ohne Frage wunderbar, aber ist noch viel mehr, was diesen Film so gut macht, dass er auch nach ueber 25 Jahren noch zu begeistern weiss. Angefangen bei den Running Gags: Da waere zu erst einmal zu erwaehnen, dass Rigby immer wieder an der gleichen Stelle im Arm getroffen wird und ihm immer wieder auf die gleiche belustigende Weise die Kugel entfernt wird. Dann waere da noch der "beruehmte Kaffee" der auch auf ziemlich sonderbare Weise zubereitet wird. Besonders aufbrausend ist auch die Phobie vor dem Wort "Reinemachefrau". Auch sonst zuenden die Meisten der - wenn auch teilweise recht niveaulosen - Gags sofort und lockern die ohnehin schon belustigende Atmosphaere des Films immer wieder auf.

Neben Steve Martin treten noch eine Menge weiterer Stars in mehr oder weniger tragenden Rollen in Tote tragen keine Karos auf, als da Neben den oben genannten noch beispielsweise Cary Grant als laestiger Verfolger und die bereits aus Casablanca bekannte Ingrid Bergman als Flirtpartnerin waeren.

Doch Stars und eine Menge Witze machen noch keinen guten Film aus. Das muss sich auch Carl Reiner gedacht haben, als er sein Werk betrachtete und baute hier und da noch ein paar mehr oder minder hervorsehbare Twists in den Plot ein.

Fazit
Wer auf lustige Filme steht, und kein Problem hat, auch mal schwarz/weiss zu schauen, wird sicher seinen Spass an Tote tragen keine Karos finden.

Trailer (Englisch)

Links
Tote tragen keine Karos in der OFDb
Tote tragen keine Karos bei Amazon.de

On July 1^st, 1934, Hollywood glamour died.

That day, the American film industry implemented a strict policy of self-censorship that would limit the visibility of illicit and/or criminal activities onscreen for decades after. One of the particular targets of the Production Code Administration was the explicit and/or suggested representation of sexuality in movies.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) it was the representation of female sexuality that suffered the most under the Code.  The reason: in the pre-Code era, both onscreen and off, women threatened the double standards and social/sexual status quo which PCA religious-conservatives sought to preserve.

Disconcerting, perhaps, was the fact that glamour queen idols paid industry bills. Valentino might have been big in pre-Code Hollywood; but Swanson, Garbo, and Dietrich were altogether bigger, badder and more beautiful. Draped with furs and dripping in jewels, they glowed through gauze as carnal exotics but no less high-maintenance. Above all, they oozed a pure, unadulterated sexuality – even (or especially) if the sex was adulterous.

Actresses and the women they played polished their charms for fiscal and sexual reward. They presented themselves in such a way as to stand out as successful and yet hungry for more. And audiences lapped it up: men wanted to be with them, and perhaps more ‘dangerously’, women wanted to be them:

Witness Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932), all chiffon and ruffles, romance and yearning. Or Possessed by Clark Gable, the next best accessory to diamonds. Kay Francis having Trouble in Paradise and no problem with pelts. Dietrich and Hepburn enjoying pants but no less chic or (in the context of time) perversely gorgeous. And Norma Shearer, just your everyday Divorcee. They define glamorous.

Glamour, after all, is about clothes and attitude. It is not – emphatically not – about titillation, or worse, T&A. Jean Harlow might have worn a see-through number or three, some artful drapery from time to time, but her clothes were an accent, a decoration on a beautiful body that could and should be admired.

Glamour is about being a knockout in one’s own right. About appreciating what’s there on women’s bodies, what they choose to wear – not what’s underneath or removable. It’s about how a woman presents her sexuality, not an attempt to (re)create or prove it.

The PCA didn’t set out to censor costume per se. But in limiting women’s sexual freedom on film (essentially, post-Code premarital sex by a woman would mean death, jail, destitution, or a dead baby), censors did limit the number of roles and situations in which the potential for glamorousness could manifest itself onscreen.

In films released after July, 1934, ‘glamour’ has always seemed a little less glamorous than before. For decades post-Code, when a woman showed skin on the screen, she was usually either a chorus girl (of the Ginger Rogers sort) or a bathing beauty (Esther Williams). Sultry film noir types – a Veronica Lake, an Ava Gardner – wore impressive clothing and hair, but they were also femme fatales who tended to end up dead at the end of movies.

And dead, glamour is not. So where did it go? (I’d look everywhere but the centerfold.)

Whilst I like to think myself generally well read, I have to confess to there being some very sizeable gaps in my knowledge of literature. I am in my element talking about Dickens, Austen, Chaucer or Hardy but F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are a different matter. To my shame I have never got around to familiarising myself with the works of "The Lost Generation" - the works of the great American writers based in Paris in the aftermath of the first world war.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is based on a short story by Hemingway and tells the story of an American writer, who falls into a fever after being wounded and reflects on his failures both at love and in his writing. His neglected wife takes care for him as he slips into delirium, trying to keep him alive long enough for a plane to arrive to rescue them. In doing so she must listen to him talking of lost loves and prevent him from destroying himself or giving in to his sickness.

The film opens with writer Harry Street already injured, teasing us with two conflicting accounts of how he was injured. Harry argues that his skin was broken by a thorn in a bizarre twist of fate and that led to his leg becoming infected; his wife says he injured it when saving a young man who had fallen in a fast-moving river.

Screenwriter Casey Robinson establishes in this early scene each character's view of Street - Harry sees himself as unlucky and with self-pity, his wife thinks of him as heroic and capable. As the film plays out we learn more about these characters and their relationship, although it is far more interested in Harry's story than Helen's.

Feverishly Harry's mind races back to growing up in rural Michigan, breaking up with his girlfriend and running away to Europe where he encounters the striking Cynthia Green. As their romance develops, so does his writing. On a safari trip to Africa, Cynthia falls pregnant and, with their relationship at an end, Harry's life spirals into turmoil. He remembers another failed relationship before meeting Helen, mistaking her for Cynthia not once but twice.

These short flashbacks vary in interest and quality with the strongest being those centred on Harry and Cynthia, first in Africa and then Spain. Ava Gardner is superb as the playgirl who is challenged by the discovery that she is pregnant, realising that she does not want the same things from life that Harry does. In one scene she tries to tell him that their life will change, hoping that he will respond to the prospect of a new life with a family. The look on her face when he replies is heartbreaking and we know that their romance will be at an end.

Gregory Peck's easy charm as Harry perhaps feels a little out of character, yet it does help to explain why women would be interested in a man that bad-tempered and cruel. He handles the sarcastic dialogue well, though at times it seems as if the film would have been better served by someone with a more severe, cutting edge in their performance.

Susan Hayward, as his wife Helen, is anonymous for large chunks of the narrative as the script requires her to mop Harry's brow and be patient with him. Only towards the end of the picture is she really tested as an actress as Harry's sickness worsens and she is required to treat the infection on his leg herself.

The scenes between Helen and Harry take place, for the most part, on what is clearly a soundstage recreation of a camp in an African clearing. Camera movement feels restricted at points, particularly when compared with some of the often spectacular second camera crew work that was done on location in Egypt and Kenya.

Director Henry King mostly intercuts between the soundstage material and location footage, doing an acceptable job of marrying the two together although the joins are noticeable. However there is no excusing a sequence on a lake featuring some of the worst back projection I have ever witnessed. I always try to bear in mind the technical limitations of the period when looking at an older film but the poor execution of these shots ruins what ought to have been one of the most tense sequences of the picture.

His work elsewhere in the picture however is solid and he uses the camera and lighting well to signify a mood of nostalgia and then melancholy. Sound is used well to give the film a haunting, unnerving texture, the sound of animals in the distance giving the film a real sense of place.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is not a film that has stood up particularly well to the tests of time. It is hard to overlook its bizarre mesh of stylised, staged dialogue scenes and wildlife footage shot on location or the film's often slow pacing. Yet for all its faults the film still is affecting and, at moments, moving.

Lo aprendió el Duende desde el primer momento en que su inventiva empezó a a anotar y revelar parecidos razonables de las gentes de su alrededor. Si el epígono citado era notablemente bello, la reacción siempre era favorable. Si era considerado feo o fea, cabreo al canto. La gente suele ceñirse al resultante general, sin tener en cuenta que un guapo puede parecerse a un feo y viceversa. Por ejemplo, el  Muñeco Diabólico podría ser la caricatura del presidente del Congreso José Bono, y eso no desdice de la apostura del ilustre prócer

 Estos ejercicios de trasposición de personalidades eran muy habituales en la casa del Duende. Un día su madre le identificó con Manolo Gómez Bur, un cómico que habitualmente salía mal parado en sus papeles. Lo asimiló perfectamente, porque era verdad. Sin embargo tiene un amigo cuyo rostro es la clara inspiración de Shrek y no se ha atrevido a decírselo. Cuando era niño, encantado de su conclusión, advirtió a una parienta suya  que su niño se parecía al Pinocho de Walt Disney y se llevó un soplamocos de la madre ofendida. Y eso que se refería al muñeco de Gepetto antes de que le creciera la nariz, por mentiroso. Pero ni por esas: su hijo no podía ser comparado con la criatura de un carpintero. Qué vanidad.

Pero esa es una de las ventajas del blog en agosto, que puedes irte de la lengua -o de la pluma- y olvidarte de las represalias, porque no se entararán  los aludidos. Por ejemplo, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría es como esos pececitos/pececitas coquetas que aparecen en las películas de dibujos animados. Y es que la imaginería de los estudios ha dado mucho juego. Su compañera de partido Isabel Tocino tenía el mismo perfil que Flor, la graciosa mofeta de Bambi. Y a Pepín Blanco es fácil encontrarle alter ego en los múltiples roedores (castores, ardillas, ratones, etc) que proliferan en estas películas para niños.

Hay otros aún más evidentes: Obama y Hamilton, Carrillo y el chimpancé bailarín de El libro de la selva, Zapatero y Míster Bean. Pero en este último caso es más fácil distinguirlos, porque uno de los dos piensa más lo que dice.

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