NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1968) ViaVision 'Imprint'

A star vehicle for superb character actor, Rod Steiger, director, Jack Smight’s No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) is often described as a ‘black comedy’ thriller, which is a bit bizarre. For although Steiger’s chameleon-esque transformations into everything from an Irish-Catholic priest to a German-accented plumber leave one with a richly satisfying irony for the actor’s craft – amusedly so, in fact – it is the utter creepiness by which Steiger’s cumulative performance haunts from the peripheries of the screen even after the houselights have come up that creates a genuine sense of foreboding and dread to permeate every last frame and beyond. No Way to Treat a Lady is not a farce. Nor does it veer anywhere near ‘dark humor’, unless you count Steiger’s congenial byplay with his victims. These extended dialogue scenes are wickedly convivial – Steiger – as actor/theater owner, Christopher Gill, and his menagerie of manipulative alter egos, at first, ingratiating to both the damned and the audience. Indeed, at the outset of the story there is no reason to suspect the man in cleric’s collar, ebulliently whistling a happy tune as he struts confidently down a crowded street in Brooklyn Heights, playfully patting children’s heads while eyeing a rather attractive young woman passing him by, is up to no good. Besides, bright young things are not Gill’s métier. No – he is much more interested in elder frumps of every shape and size who remind him of his deceased mother (Norman Bates, anyone?); women, living alone and of a certain ‘trusting’ air, marking them as easy prey. And so, the carnage begins.

In the role of investigating homicide detective, Morris Brummell, Smight campaigned for – and eventually won out over Paramount CEO, Robert Evans – to cast George Segal. Evans had hoped for Tony Curtis. Alas, Curtis had already made his splash that same year as The Boston Strangler, and Smight may have feared too direct a parallel between the two pictures, even if Curtis was shilling for the other side this time around. Besides, Segal is no second fiddle, having risen through the ranks of mid-60’s cinema, on the cusp of showing great promise as a ‘leading man’ in pictures like Ship of Fools (1965), King Rat (1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967). Segal, part of the famed ‘Actors Studio ensemble, began his career as an understudy in Broadway’s The Iceman Cometh. The stage afforded him a certain air of confidence he later carried over to his first studio contract with Columbia in 1961 – his big screen debut in The Young Doctors (1961), followed by a lucrative spate of appearances on television that helped build his notoriety with the public. By 1968, Segal was practically a veteran of all three media venues – stage, films and TV; one of the hardest working actors of his generation with a solid repertoire as his calling card to open even more doors.

No Way to Treat a Lady isn’t really a high-profile gig for Segal – his ‘play it straight’ Brummell, a wan ghost flower to Steiger’s uber-ingenious, varied and venomous Gill. The other star-turn somehow lost in this shuffle is Lee Remick’s Kate Palmer – a real ‘nothing’ of a part as Brummell’s burgeoning gal/pal, and Gill’s next intended victim. Remick, who left us much too soon – age 55, due to complications from kidney cancer – manages to make something out of this stock character; a testament to her abilities as a real/reel star of the first magnitude. Like Segal and Steiger, Remick hailed from the stage first, before segueing into steady television work in the mid-1950’s. Her fresh look and intelligence brought her to the attention of director, Elia Kazan who cast her in A Face in the Crowd (1957). This led to Remick being typecast as something of the sultry southern bumpkin in movies like 1958's The Long, Hot Summer, Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Wild River (1960 – again, for Kazan). But by 1962, Remick had broken free of this image; first, by playing the stylish and cosmopolitan elder sister in Blake Edwards’ Experiment in Terror, then, as the devastatingly irreproachable alcoholic ‘other half’ to Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses (both in 1962).

John Gay’s screenplay for No Way to Treat a Lady sticks fairly close to its source material: William Goldman’s novel of the same name, written – reportedly – during an acute case of ‘writer’s block’. The premise, while simple enough, proved a bit of a challenge in the reworking from page to screen; Goldman’s plot, borrowed wholesale from case files about the real Boston Strangler (which suggested two men might have actually been competing for kills). This was eventually distilled into a more straight-forward tale of good vs. evil. By October, 1966, producer Sol C. Siegel had signed on to produce a movie based on the novel – part of a 3-picture deal with Paramount. Siegel hired Gay to adapt, a decision fully supported by Goldman who believed a novelist – much too close to the source material – should never be allowed to adapt his own work for the movies. Soon, Smight signed on to direct and, shortly thereafter, Steiger and Segal came into the fold. And although Paramount CEO, Robert Evans usually had his hand in such things, Smight would find his needs more closely aligned and met by executive, Peter Bart.

The picture’s lynch pin remains Steiger’s ruthless serial killer with a mother fixation, bone-chillingly played as something of a satire at the victim’s expense. An interesting Janus-faced parallel is drawn between Steiger’s Gill and Segal’s Brummel – each, besieged by an overpowering matriarch; the former, driven to avenge his sexual frustrations on unsuspecting women who remind him of ‘mama’, the latter, deftly to flee from the overbearing if stereotypical Jewish harridan by falling into the arms of a gentile, Kate Palmer, a more liberal and accessible sexpot at his disposal. It’s an interesting comparative analysis, involved in what turns one man into a murderer while another into the submissive mate for this gorgeous and put-together woman about town. Kate’s flirtations draw Brummel out of his shell, but they also disturb and enrage Gill. What was it they used to say about ‘one man’s poison’? And Gay’s screenplay is so utterly clever about introducing his principals before even they realize they are going to get much more involved with one another. The very first scene after the main titles puts Gill and Kate in close proximity; Gill – frocked as a Catholic priest – passing Kate on the steps of her tenement on route to Alma Malloy’s (Martine Bartlett) apartment. The widow Malloy is quite unsuspecting of her fate, inviting Gill in for a glass of port, and unquestioningly allowing him to become familiar, telling stories and tickling her to distraction before being strangled and left for discovery with the killer’s trademarked ‘red lipstick’ painted across her forehead.

Impressed with the killer’s handy work, Segal makes a curious friend/enemy of Gill, who phones in his modus operandi for five more planned murders which Gill is certain he can pull off without being revealed. While Segal involves Kate in a query about ‘the man’ she saw approaching Malloy’s apartment, Gill next poses as a German plumber, entering the flat of Mrs. Himmel (Ruth White) – a middle-aged retiree from Frankfort. Pretending to hail from her place of origin, Gill eats some of the widow’s home-made cake before strangling her over a photo album and applying lipstick to her forehead, telephoning Segal with Himmel’s address and details of his latest crime. From here, the perilous game of cat and mouse only gets more bizarre, with Gill donning clever disguises as an effete hair stylist, stoic beat cop - performing a ‘public service’ by warning single women of their imminent peril, a fairly convincing – if slightly butch – woman, and finally, an Italian waiter who speaks with a Southern drawl. Steiger holds nothing back for any of these ingenious transformations, and, in tandem, appears to be channeling caricatures of the famous to leave Brummel bemused and bothered by his inability to be one step ahead of this angel of death.  At one point, Gill even telephones Brummel from Kate’s apartment. But beneath these wild and wooly – even playfully permitted – disguises lies the soulless abyss of a truly deranged man.

So, although No Way to Treat a Lady is rooted in the conventional crime story, its most compelling bits are anchored in Steiger’s conflagration of caricatures. Even Gill’s purpose for committing these heinous crimes, to rid New York of its growing population in lonely old maids and widows, is perversely ironic.  The counterbalance here is, of course, Segal’s Brummel, nebbish and dominated by his own mother (Eileen Heckart), an Oedipean monster, who could easily drive any fellow to madness and contempt for all feminine influences, if otherwise not so self-involved in running the timid into the ground. It all could have been taken much too seriously, except screenwriter, Gay pens the tale as a colossally absurd farce in the Brit/com vein, while Smight directs with an unusual bright and breezy flair for both the hellish string of homicides that baffle the police and Brummel’s pending desire to get to the bottom of things, even as the body count continues to rise. The singular narrative hiccup here is Gill’s motivation; why, a seemingly successful Broadway actor/producer should suddenly snap and take his craft far too grimly, plying its precepts to the art of murder instead.  The lesser oddity is why Remick’s Kate – a self-professed ex-swinger who slinks about the proscenium with a ‘come hither’ stare requiring no subtitles, should fall so hard for Brummel – a guy diametrically devoid, and thoroughly incapable of satisfying her smoldering sensuality. We have yet to mention the coy cameos featuring Michael Dunn as Mr. Kupperman, an insidious ‘little person’ who professes to having committed these murders. When Brummel points out the crimes were done by a man of normal physical stature, Kupperman regroups and insists he is the greatest master of disguises yet.

No Way to Treat a Lady was shot entirely in New York – the original plan to do all of the interiors back at Paramount eventually scrapped, and actually, proving far more economical in the long run.  Reflecting on the project, George Segal regarded it as a showcase for his co-star’s formidable talents. “It's Steiger's film…I just stop by and watch him.” Meanwhile, Eileen Heckart made the movie while appearing nightly on Broadway in You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running. And while producer, Sol Siegel was reportedly displeased with the picture’s finale, he was overruled by its director and star. To coincide with the movie’s release, Goldman’s novel was given another printing, for which The New York Times, in review, labeled it, ‘dazzling’. The movie begins with Christopher Gill – a character very much gleaned from the Ed Gein-styled closet of disturbed middle-age men; Gill, obsessed with his late mother, a noted stage actress. This seems to be the only inspiration Gill needs to prey on older women. A Broadway theatre owner and director, he adopts various disguises to put his victims at ease. Meanwhile, Detective Morris Brummell, assigned the task to seek out the killer, is quoted in the newspaper as all but complimenting the killer on his well-planned murder. Gill is flattered and telephones Brummel to taunt him with particulars about this and future crimes.

On the home front, Brummel's domineering mother browbeats him to be more like his successful doctor/brother and settle down. Taking mama’s advice to heart, Brummel finds a new love in Kate Palmer who is quite certain she glimpsed Gill, disguised as a priest, moments before the first murder occurred. Kate is clever and manages to win over Mrs. Brummel by offering to become Jewish; also, by pretending to dominate Morris in front of his mother. This meets with Mrs. Brummel’s approval as she firmly believes Morris lacks direction in life. Brummel insults Gill during one of their phone conversations, causing Gill to set his sights on avenging his anger against Gill by murdering Kate. Attacking Kate in her apartment, Gill is forced to flee before finishing the job. The resulting manhunt leads Brummel to Gill’s theater where he chats up Gill while obtusely unaware, he is staring directly into the eyes of the killer; that is, until Gill offers up a portrait hanging in the lobby as his late mother – the woman’s deep red lipstick, a dead giveaway that Brummel has found his man. Confronted with Brummel’s suspicions, Gill feigns nonchalance, allowing Brummel to investigate the costume room backstage. Finding nothing unusual, Brummel is savagely attacked by Gill, who attempts to strangle him with the rigging. While taken aback, Brummel manages to fatally shoot Gill who suffers a dying regression into all his past murders before expiring.

No Way to Treat a Lady is a passable thriller, shot gritty and real by cinematographer, Jack Priestley. However, without Steiger’s tour de force central performance there really is not a lot going on here to keep the viewer enthralled. The Brummel/Kate romance is admirably acted by Segal and Remick, but offers little outside of tongue-in-cheek playful badinage to fill the gaps between the crimes, while doing very much to diffuse the mounting dread and suspense elsewhere achieved. It’s an odd disconnect, and one I am not entirely certain serves the central narrative. Gay’s script is solid, and Smight’s direction scarcely leaves anything to be desired. And yet, the best to be said about the picture in the end is that it effortlessly fills the time with diverting vignettes that, once seen, do not linger in the mind or heart much beyond the final fade to black. It’s a genuine shame too, since the three stars assembled here are, if not altogether in their element, then nevertheless doing everything to ensure smoothly stylized performances are the order of the day. Never having seen No Way to Treat a Lady I am not entirely certain what I was expecting from it. I only know those expectations were not fulfilled. Regrets.

The same can be said for ViaVision’s newly minted Blu-ray. This one is monumentally disappointing. When ViaVision announced it was releasing ‘region free’ Paramount catalog to 1080p, I was sincerely over the moon, expecting (as one might) Paramount (the custodians of these deep catalog titles MIA from public view) would be putting their best feet forward in remastering and restoration to ensure optimal quality. Alas, after an initial spate of promising releases from ViaVision, to include War of the Worlds, The Duelists, and Waterloo, the second round of titles, marketed under ViaVision’s ‘Imprint’ line, do not rise to a level anywhere near deserving of my admiration. No Way to Treat a Lady on Blu-ray does not fare much better than a tired old VHS copy! The image is soft and fuzzy with nondescript details. Only close-ups escape such scrutiny, and even then, fall well below par for what ought to have been gleaned from either an original camera negative or interpositive. But no – what is here is wan colors, faded, weak contrast, film grain that is gritty – or worse – homogenized with liberally applied DNR, rendering everything a dull, thick mess.  Worst of all, no digital clean-up has been applied to rid the image of age-related artifacts. These are obvious throughout and, on occasion, are heavy enough to completely detract from the movie. What a crock! The 1.0 Dolby Digital mono is unrefined and, likewise, has not received the necessary upgrade. Extras? Another rambling audio commentary from Kat Ellinger, whose prowess as a commentator on vintage cinema has always baffled me. I much prefer her authorship to her insights here. Bottom line: a thoroughly sloppy job from Paramount for which ViaVision ought to have insisted on better elements before slapping this one to disc. No point to this release. None at all. Pass and be glad that you did.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

2

EXTRAS

1