When I see
that Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre
Are in a
movie, I'm never sorry;
And when I
see Elisha Cook
Is in it
too, I say, “I’ll have a look!”
None of
these first-class character actors played the main part
Very often. It was usually left to Humphrey Bogart
To supply
the grit and glamour. “Play it again, Sam,”
He’d mutter
granularly—though he was an honest, cheerful ham
Like the
others. You can see he’s having huge
Fun when
Lorre appears covered in rouge,
With his
hair pomaded and permed, in The
Maltese Falcon,
And says his
name’s Joel Cairo. He has lashings of gardenia and talc on,
And Bogey,
with wry irony, says “Is that so?” and not long after,
Punches him
in the face—he can barely conceal his laughter
As he does
it. But there's another treat
In store:
Kasper Gutman, played by Sidney Greenstreet!
“Look what
you did to my shirt,” says Lorre’s Joel,
In a way
that Sam Spade finds so droll
That he’s
inclined to minister
To Cairo’s
needs. Much more sinister
Is
Greenstreet’s Gutman: “By Gad, sir, you are a character,”
Says this
stout and entertaining racketeer.
“There’s
never any telling what you’ll say or do next— ”
He
continues, becoming dangerously vexed
When Bogey
refuses his increasingly desperate offers
(Cool insolence
instead is what he proffers):
“—except
that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”
Gutman’s
tone soon becomes grimly admonishing.
Elisha Cook,
as always, gets knocked about a bit—
Needless to
say, his character is a lout, a shit
(Cook
specialised in weaselly dead-enders,
Although later, in
real life, he was a friend of Wim Wenders).
I never
really thought Mary Astor was worth dying for—
Nor did
Bogey, who sussed her for a lying whore
Quite early
on. He strung her along and even kissed her,
But turned her in happily and never missed her.
As with so
many films of this kind,
The plot’s
hard to follow—Oh, it does wind
And twist!
But it gives these first class actors employment,
And their
performances give me a good deal of enjoyment.
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