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A Lady Without Passport, which aired last Friday on TCM as part of the Summer of Darkness series, takes place in Havana during the postwar era. Hedy Lamarr stars as a Viennese woman adrift in Cuba after WWII, hoping to immigrate to the United States. Believe it or not, the original idea for the film was to make a documentary about “a poor immigrant in Cuba struggling to come into this country,” according to biographer Ruth Barton in Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film. As MGM grappled with the politics of legal and illegal immigration, it was decided that a crime drama centering on a Cuban woman’s desperate efforts to immigrate was safer. Safer yet was to make the hopeful immigrant a European victim of WWII.
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PALM TREES AND SHUTTERS EQUAL TROPICAL PARADISE IN ‘HIS KIND OF WOMAN’.
I am glad the realism of a documentary was traded for the romanticism of a feature film because my favorite part of A Lady Without Passport is the re-creation of Havana in MGM’s studio. The film boasts location shooting in downtown Havana in addition to a touristy visit to the old fort, but those are not the scenes that come to my mind when I think of this flawed but highly watchable drama. I prefer art director Edward Carfagno’s interpretation of Havana’s legendary 1950s night life. The sumptuous, low-key lighting and tropical foliage create an enchanted interpretation of a Cuban club where a dancer in native costume shimmies to the beat of Latin drums (top). Later, Hedy Lamarr and John Hodiak meet late at night in a secluded outdoor café surrounded by palm leaves. Lamarr’s room and other indoor sets feature the wooden shutters, large fans, and wrought-iron ornamentation found in tropical settings. Some might find this décor a cliché of exotic Latin America, but I don’t care. While it would be interesting to visit the real Havana, I want to escape to this Hollywood Havana.
A few years ago, I realized my perception of distant, far-away lands has been shaped—or, perhaps warped—by Hollywood geography, which is what I call the old studios’ re-creations of foreign locales or exotic ports of call. While these set designs generated atmosphere and furthered the stories, they were seldom realistic or authentic. “Realism” and “authenticity” are so prized by today’s viewers and critics that they are often criteria used to judge a film. Reviewers fall all over themselves looking for a false detail in a biopic or historical drama to discount its authenticity—as though that matters in fictional films of any genre. However, that was untrue during the Golden Age, when audiences were accustomed to glamorous stars acting in romantic fantasies rendered in storybook realism.
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LIVING ON A RUBBER PLANTATION MAY HAVE LED TO INFIDELITY AND MURDER IN ‘THE LETTER,’ BUT IT LOOKED LIKE AN EXOTIC PARADISE TO ME.
Hollywood’s interpretation of tropical locales left me with a life-long love of palm trees, sandy beaches, lush flora, and exotic islands. The depictions of Mexico in His Kind of Woman (airing July 24 at 9:30pm), South America in Gilda (July 22, 8:00pm), and the fictional Caribbean island Saint Sebastian in I Walked with a Zombie are similar to Havana in A Lady Without Passport—palm trees, hurricane shutters, rich foliage, and shadowy cafes and clubs filled with people you would never find in the dreary every-day world. The tropical environs create a hot-house atmosphere that is mysterious, sensual, and titillating, which is perfect for sexual escapades—and crime. I keep searching for a place that oozes atmosphere like the Hollywood tropics. . . but I should know better. The look was used so often to suggest an exotic locale—any exotic locale—that it was echoed in Red Dust and The Letter, which are set in Malaya (now Malaysia) and in the 1952 film noir Macao (July 24, 3:00pm). When I saw Macao as a kid, I thought it was actually set in the South Seas, despite the Asian characters and motifs.
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THE RICH FIND ROMANCE IN THEIR STYLISH HOMES IN ‘MIDNIGHT’…
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…WHILE REGULAR FOLK FLIRT IN THE PARISIAN CAFES.
In Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, the protagonist so romanticized the expatriate era of the 1920s, a time when bohemians flocked to the city looking for art, love, and adventure, that he wanted to live in that world. Instead of Midnight in Paris, I want to live in the Paris in Midnight, the 1939 screwball comedy starring Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert. Ameche stars as Tibor Czerny, a cab driver in Paris who squires around gold-digger Eve Peabody, played by Colbert. The rich live in fabulous art deco apartments while the beret-wearing common folk frequent festive sidewalk cafes. Tibor and Eve visit the Moulin Rouge, the Club Pigalle, the Bolero, Chez Florence—all the night clubs associated with a timeless Gay Paree that never really existed. I want to live in a festive Paris with the characters in Midnight because they are all having so much fun in their romantic exploits.
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE: HOLLYWOOD’S VERSION OF VENICE, c. 1932
Other romantic comedies paint a different portrait of Europe. In Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 classic Trouble in Paradise, Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins star as two charming and elegant con artists who meet in an art nouveau Venice, then travel to an art deco Paris to rob perfume magnate Kay Francis. The following year, Lubitsch released Design for Living, with Gary Cooper, Fredrick March, and Miriam Hopkins living in an equally chic Europe. Here, Europe is a playground for sophisticates immune from problems that plague the rest of us, such as lack of money, lack of manners, or lack of style. The modernist production design by Hans Dreier reflects a modern attitude toward love affairs in these pre-Code stories, in which men and women pursue and bed each other. Even if I could escape to this version of Europe, I don’t think they would let me stay. I’m just not that classy.
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE: HOLLYWOOD’S VERSION OF PARIS
There are depictions of Paris in many other Hollywood films, including An American in Paris, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Ninotchka, I Met Him in Paris, Made in Paris (July 21, 4:30am), and many more, but the depictions of the city in those films did not make a lasting impression. They didn’t make me want to escape into the world of the movie.
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ELVIS IN NEW ORLEANS IN THE OPENING SCENE OF ‘KING CREOLE’
One city that is remarkably consistent in its cinematic incarnation is New Orleans, legendary for its unique exoticism, its foreign flavor, and its decadence. When I was a little girl, I watched The Buccaneer, a 1959 pirate adventure starring Yul Brynner as Jean Lafitte. As Lafitte swashbuckled his way through a story of unlikely alliances and ill-fated love, I became enchanted with the New Orleans backdrop. The city has been interpreted as a bohemian’s paradise or an outsider’s refuge in film after film, from King Creole to Walk on the Wild Side to This Property Is Condemned to Interview with a Vampire. And, it might be the one example of Hollywood geography that is true to the city. On my first visit, I was thrilled to walk through the alley in Jackson Square where the real-life Lafitte escaped authorities; on my last, I enjoyed a drink at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar during a ghost tour of the Quarter. The guide regaled us with colorful tales of killers, artists, and forbidden love.
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. . .OR, VISIT GODFREY IN HIS APARTMENT OVERLOOKING THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. ALAS, NOTHING IN NEW YORK IS THIS LARGE, OR CLEAN.
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I WOULD LOVE TO GET A DRINK WITH NICK AND NORA IN A FASHIONABLE NEW YORK CLUB . . .
Of course, falling in love with the Hollywood incarnation of a city or region can lead to disappointment when visiting the real-life location. Growing up watching musicals, melodramas, and romantic comedies set in New York City, I was enamored with the cavernous art deco apartments and night clubs in Swing Time, A Woman of Affairs, The Thin Man, My Man Godfrey, and more. In the Warner Bros. backstage musicals, the camaraderie of the showgirls and gold-diggers as they flirt, date, and dance their way through Hollywood’s version of the Broadway milieu created an excitement for big-city living. Musicals about the good old days of vaudeville depicted Times Square and the theater district in a way that made it seem like sacred ground. And, Eileen and Ruth’s Greenwich Village apartment in both versions of My Sister Eileen was as charming as their adventures in New York. So, imagine my disillusionment when I first visited New York City on a school trip in the 1970s. It was like stepping into Travis Bickle’s New York nightmare in Taxi Driver. Though NYC recovered from that dark decade in the city’s social history, I did not. I hold no fondness for the real NYC and have only visited for professional reasons. I much prefer classic Hollywood’s New York.