Turin, Italy ... April 22, 1939 ... SIESTA IN SUN HELPS DEFEAT "WHITE PLAGUE" — The first warm Spring sun here brought out 126 boys of the Camillo Poli National Social Welfare Institution to absorb the health-giving rays of the sun in their fight against the dreaded "white plague." The institution takes care of the youngsters suffering from tuberculosis. Under the supervision of experienced nurses, the boys lay out in the sun while Mother Nature helps with her own recuperative powers (original photo and caption © Wide World Photos).

MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Rum's not drinkin'. It's survivin'."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Jack, I'm gonna tell you something. The world that you and Paul live in doesn't exist; maybe it never did. Out there is a real world and it’s got real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. And either you go by the rules or you lose."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "The caves won't save us! Nothing can!"

This movie has something in common with the previous one; what is it?

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "That's nice talk, Ben — keep drinking. Between the 101-proof breath and the occasional bits of drool, some interesting words come out."

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Like the old days ... from the 30th Anniversary reissue of Blondie's "Parallel Lines" ... design by Tom Bejgrowicz.

MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "The love of a man for a woman waxes and wanes like the moon, but the love of brother for brother is steadfast as the stars and endures like the word of the prophet."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "YOU WERE A TOMATO. A tomato doesn't have logic. A tomato can't move."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Hello? I forgot my mantra."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Mau! Mau! Didi Mau!"

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One of the main locations in Henry Hathaway's melodramatic thriller "Niagara" (1953) is Rainbow Cabins, a small cluster of resort bungalows overlooking the American Falls at Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

The location is quintessentially Fifties Americana (even though it's on the Canadian side of the Niagara River), and the Technicolor treatment by cinematographer Joe MacDonald creates nothing short of a three-dimensional Curt Teich postcard. His camera perfectly captures ultra-vivid images of a time and place long gone, that era of motor courts with nickel Coke machines that were impossibly red in which the Cokes were impossibly cold. Where the lots were chocked with chrome-heavy convertibles with the widest whitewalls and fattest fender fins imaginable. Where Americans in singles, pairs, and groups stopped for rest and relaxation on a never-ending tour of their country at the height of post-war prosperity.

Complementing the circle of quaint rental cabins is a stone party hut, where a bunch of guests are treated to an impromptu song selection by Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe) in a scene that single-handedly defines va-va-va-voom. Here's the clip, in which MM comes off as a walking waterfall of sex that renders the real torrent in the background a comparative trickle:

It's all so Eisenhower-time. The cabana shirts, record player, cold beer and soda in plaid-pattern metal coolers, and red and white checked tablecloths on picnic tables festooned with bright yellow mustard and bright red catsup bottles. (You can screen the entire film, in nine parts, here.)

And there was, of course, Marilyn, in all of her burgeoning sexual glory, giving the performance that made her a star. "How to Marry a Millionaire" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" came out the same year, as did a reprint of a series of nude photos that had originally appeared in the first issue of Playboy; by year's end she had been voted "The Top Star of 1953 by a group of American film distributors. In these three films released in '53, her iconic look finally assumed its final form. But I, like others, think it comes mostly from the Marilyn of "Niagara" — so much so, in fact, that Andy Warhol would use a publicity photo from the film as the basis of his "Marilyn Diptych" in 1962.

"Niagara" takes pure advantage of her body in the film's three infamous "walking sequences," two of which occur at the picturesque Rainbow Cabins.

The first is captured in the above clip, in which a red-dressed Marilyn croons the song "Kiss" that features so prominently in the plot (in some photos, the dress appears more fuchsia). When goof-ball Ray Cutler (Casey Adams) catches Rose emerging from her cabin in this particular dress, he remarks to his wife Polly (Jean Peters), "Get out the fire hose!" Millions of moviegoers thought the same thing. Marilyn looks positively shrink-wrapped. All I can think of is a sugar cone with too much ice cream in it.

The second occurs when Marilyn sashays past everyone on her way to the bus station (or so she says) in a light blue two-piece number that is at least two sizes too small.

The last is often referred to as "the longest walk in cinema history" — 116 feet of film of Marilyn in a black skirt and red sweater walking away from the camera. In a daring shot for the era, MacDonald's lens tracks Marilyn's swaying posterior with unwavering devotion for nearly 20 seconds.

Each sequence binds (literally) Rose closer to the Falls in terms of suggesting that she — like them — as an example of a curvy, hyper-feminine woman of the new world, cannot be constrained, tamed, or held back.

Even now these scenes cause a lot of controversy, as they seem just downright exploitative. Many women still charge Monroe with using her body too much in "Niagara." But, there is a element of challenge offered in the shimmy. "Is this what you want?" she seems to say. "Is this sexy enough?" "Is this obvious enough?" Monroe was a trained actress, and had this to say about her characterization of Rose to columnist Dorothy Kilgallen (Female Icons: Marilyn Monroe to Susan Sontag, Carl Rollyson, iUniverse, 2005, p. 68):

... the girl I played ... was an amoral type whose plot to kill her husband was attempted at no apparent cost to her conscience. She had been picked out of a beer parlour, she entirely lacked the social graces and she was overdressed, overmadeup and completely wanton. The uninhibited deportment in the motel room and the walk seemed normal facets of such a character's portrayal. I honestly believe such a girl would behave in that manner.

I always wondered: Could the rarefied, magical realm of Rainbow Cabins really exist? Could one walk where Marilyn walked that walk? Sit where she sat? Lean against the same railings? Hum "Kiss," eyes closed, with the Falls roaring a few hundred yards away? See the rainbows she saw, and perhaps the very rainbow she was?

The movie features a few rainbows caught on film, and even this seems to be an achievement. I mean, a rainbow isn't really there, is it? It's beautiful, but unreal. And doesn't that describe Monroe herself? It seems objective, but it's totally subjective, dependent on the angle you're viewing it against the landscape or sky, and perhaps even on your ability to see it at all (some people just don't see them). The movie camera catches it for sure. But is it there? Was it? The rainbow? Monroe (the pot of gold)? The cabins?

According to George Bailey, in Marilyn Monroe and the Making of "Niagara":

Art Jolley ... employed 25 carpenters for the construction of the imitation [emphasis added] "Rainbow Cabins." The cabins were built on the edge of the Niagara River opposite the American Falls in Queen Victoria Park near [an] existing stone lookout called Inspiration Point (the lookout was removed for safety reasons by The Niagara Parks Commission several years ago). However, a similar lookout called Rambler’s Rest is still located north of the former Inspiration Point lookout.

So, there you have it. The cabins never existed except as the exteriors of the movie set. The cost? $48,000. (The interiors were done at 20th Century Fox's West Los Angeles backlot.)

Only the so-called party hut was real, an observation structure that provided spectacular views of the American Falls and around which the cabins were temporarily constructed. And that has been torn down (sometime in the mid-1990s considering the publication date of Bailey's book, 1998).

Since location is everything in "Niagara," what better place to situate the fictional "Rainbow Cabins" than directly opposite the real star of the film: the Falls themselves.

I love the tight juxtaposition of the laid-back tourist lodge and the wall of water directly across the river. No matter how safe and insulated visitors feel in such a romantic, idyllic place, where they almost believe time itself has stopped and love is forever, there is always the Falls. Undeniable and unstoppable, as relentless as time and truth itself.

As conflicted George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) cautions Polly: "Let me tell you something. You're young, you're in love. Well, I'll give you a warning. Don't let it get out of hand, like those falls out there. Up above ... d'you ever see the river up above the falls? It's calm, and easy, and you throw in a log, it just floats around. Let it move a little further down and it gets going faster, hits some rocks, and ... in a minute it's in the lower rapids, and ... nothing in the world — including God himself, I suppose — can keep it from going over the edge. It just ... goes."

The notion of the Falls as honeymooner's paradise is revealed to be a facade in the shadows of two of the world's most breath-taking natural wonders (and disruptive forces): the Falls themselves and Miss Monroe. She too is all crashing, unbridled passion, mist and spray, beautiful rainbows, and the threat of being swept dizzied into a whirlpool and drowned. She is just as uncontrollable as all that water. And as dangerous.

In the crane shot from the movie above, we see the Rainbow Cabins set after its completion, with the real Inspiration Point lookout at left and the infamous (but temporary) Cabin B exterior at right. Since the view is to the southeast, that's Horseshoe Falls in the background.



Today, many visitors to the area mistake the lone, surviving Rambler's Rest site for the Inspiration Point location. As the photos below show, the structures were different, perhaps subtly so at a glance.

Both observation structures were built in 1907, aside a concrete walkway paralleling what is today the Niagara River Parkway and what was then River Road, with the one at Inspiration Point replacing an existing wood and thatch version.

Below is a Google Earth aerial shot of the general area, annotated by me based on matching the roof contours for Ramblers Rest (top, in aqua), and assuming that the former companion lookout was sited on a similarly shaped "turn-out" along the riverwalk (bottom, in red). The area I pinpointed is directly opposite the American Falls, almost dead-center. If anyone can confirm (or clarify) the location of the former Inspiration Point lookout structure (labeled "Site of Rainbow Cabins Set"), please drop me a line.


In the wider shot below, you can see the above locations relative to the Carillon Tower, where Rose Loomis meets her fate.

The local tourism board reports that people still search today for those cabins where Marilyn and the rest of the cast shot those scenes over a two-week period in June 1952. The set, as you might expect, was torn down shortly after the production wrapped.

So much for my plans to drowse in the rumpled bed in "Cabin B" and be lulled to sleep each night by the thunderous rush of the water across the gorge, and perhaps the dream that "Marilyn slept here."

What would a MooT post on "Niagara" be without a few shots of MM, including several in that smokin' red dress (designed by the great Dorothy Jeakins) ...

MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "There's one big difference between you and me, George. I do this job because I've been trained to do it. You do it because you LOVE it."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "I said people come into this world without instructions of where to go, what to do. So they wander a little and then go away. Drift for a while and then ... vanish. And so make room for newcomers. Old goers, new comers. Goin' and comin', back and forth. Rush, rush! Permanent? Nothing!"

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Wow, Malden's gone at 97 and you just come away thinking, well, wow ... that's a life fully lived!

His performance as Archie in "Baby Doll" is one for the books. He channels it all: manic, desperate, dumb, sad, nasty, cruel, lost, beaten, scary, funny, triumphant, aching, bottled-up, and, ultimately, all too human. (Read more about "Baby Doll" at Tim Dirks' filmsite.)

And he was an actor that just, well, made you forgot you were watching a performance. He did that consistently, whereas some others just achieved that "transparency" some of the time. The rest of the time, you noticed THEM, not the character.

Think of his turn as Omar Bradley in "Patton" (1970), juxtaposed against both the character of General George S. Patton and actor George C. Scott. I only saw Bradley, not Malden, but I felt I was watching Scott more than I was watching "Ole Blood n' Guts."

As Carroll Baker's titular character drawls at the end of the film, "we got nothin' to do but wait for tomorrow and see if we're remembered or forgotten."

Out-of-timelings, I guarantee Karl will be remembered, by any one enraptured with just movies, regardless of age.

The NYT obit is here ...

MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "What did you see in that park?"

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "Yes, children, this is the cool-out corner. We're slowing it down for all the lovers in the house. I'll be giving you all the help you need. Musically, that is."

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MooT Clue-in-the-Dialogue: "You're on two per cent, two and a half, maybe even three. Depends on the usual bumflufferies. It's not about the money with you and me is it, Gal? It's the charge, it's the bolt, it's the buzz, it's the sheer fuck off-ness of it all. Am I right?"

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