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Dig A Hole: IRON MAN director dies!

May 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Joseph Pevney: Man of Ten Camera Setups

No, not Jon Favreau. That would really be a scoop! We lost Joseph Pevney, the director of the original Iron Man, a 1951 boxing clunker that starred Jeff Chandler as an ambitious coal miner who finds a more lucrative career as a pugilist.

Joseph Pevney, or “Peeny” as this ten-year-old and his friends used to call him whenever his name appeared in The Munsters credits, died May 18 at his home in Palm Desert, according to his wife, Margo. He was 96.

Born September 15, 1911, in New York City, Pevney began his 60-years showbiz career as a boy soprano in vaudeville. Between 1936-46, Pevney acted and directed on Broadway. He made his movie debut playing a killer in 1946’s Nocturne. He acted in three solid film noir (Body and Soul, Thieves Highway and The Street With No Name) before turning to directing with 1950’s Shakedown.

Pevney was a hack from way back and of the 35 features he directed, only a few are worth looking at for some ripe unintentional laughs. Far from her worst vehicles, Foxfire and Female on the Beach showcase Joan Crawford at her butch best. Aside from watching how Pevney managed to keep feuding Dean & Jerry apart during most of Three Ring Circus, it remains the duo’s worst film. Meet Danny Wilson is second rate Sinatra while Tammy and the Bachelor is top drawer Debbie Reynolds.

If I tell you how much I enjoy Man of a Thousand Faces, you must believe me that it’s for all the wrong reasons. Growing up on pan-and-scan TV viewings, Jimmy Cagney’s hydrocephalic anamorphic noggin cried out for Ultra-Panavision 70.

The stuff concerning Lon’s deaf parents has all the compassion and sensitivity of a 1940’s print ad for Aunt Jemimah pancakes.

“All my life, kids tagging after my mother and father, hanging signs, making faces, yelling ‘Hey, Dummy! Hey, Dummy!‘ So proud they could speak they had to be cruel.” (I don’t have a video copy to consult. Don’t need one. Every word and inflection of Cagney’s “dummy” dialog is trapped inside my head.) When his wife Cleva (Dorothy Malone) cautions Lon to keep his voice down out of respect for his parents, Cagney bellows, “They can’t hear you!”

Even Malone joins in the parade of pathos. When contemplating giving birth to a handicapped child, she breaks down crying, “I don’t want to be mother to a dumb thing.” All this and a young Robert Evans playing Irving Thalberg make for a grand guilty pleasure. (On the plus side, it’s photographed in black-and-white ‘Scope by Russell Metty.)

After directing Portrait of a Mobster in 1961, Pevney turned his back on pictures. Or was it the other way around? Turning to the small screen from 1961 to the mid-80s when he retired, Pevney directed numerous TV series including Ben Casey, Bewitched, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, eleven episodes of The Munsters, The Fugitive, Mission: Impossible, Marcus Welby, Bonanza, Adam 12, Fantasy Island and The Rockford Files.

Oh, yeah. He also directed a few episodes of Star Trek, if you go for that sort of thing.

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Filed Under Obituaries

3 RING CIRCUS / Joseph Pevney (1954)

October 3rd, 2007 by Scott Marks

3-ring-circus.jpg

3 RING CIRCUS (1956)

Directed by Joseph Pevney

Written by Don McGuire & Joseph Pevney

Starring: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Joanne Dru, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Wallace Ford, Sig Ruman, Elsa Lancaster & Phil Van Zandt

Running Time: 103 min.

Dean & Jerry play a couple of unemployed pallys who get a gig with the circus. This could be Martin & Lewis’ worst vehicle: the story is terrible, the storytelling even worse, there are no (intentional) laughs, it suffers from prolonged pathos and worst of all — there is a surplus of wholesome circus acts. Oofah! This clown stuff is the one facet of Jerry’s personality that I cannot come to terms with. Can’t stand clowns, never have, and clowns in a Lewis film generally indicate maudlin pathos, not (intentional) laughter. This was made at a time when the duo’s real life pardnership began to curdle. It’s a fascinating mess if for no other reason than you can actually see the contempt the boys had for each other. They spend a great deal apart — Dean sings to the animals while Jerry tries to make a bitter little girl with leg braces laugh — but when they’re on screen their mutual dislike is hard to mask. And a bearded Elsa Lancaster makes one understand what Laughton saw in her. It’s only one of two M&L films not released on DVD. The other, At War With the Army is just as bad. One thing is for certain. Joseph Pevney makes Norman Taurog look like Tashlin.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Three Ring Circus Images

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Filed Under Reviews