The Maggie (High and Dry), 1954. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, written by William Rose. Starring Paul Douglas, Alex Mackenzie, Tommy Kearins, Hubert Gregg, James Copeland, Abe Barker, Andrew Keir, and Meg Buchanan.
Quite possible the only place to get this remarkable movie is at Netflix.
Did I ever tell you the story of when I first saw Alexander Mackendrick’s The Maggie? This was ages ago, when I was still in college, still wasting my time hungover, eating cold Whoppers first thing in the morning (two for two bucks meant breakfast, too), still thinking I was better than everyone else, you know, smarter, cooler, wiser even at twenty-two. A jerk, basically, so I still find it incredible, even to this day, that I actually paid attention to this lovely little film and came away feeling like I’d been keelhauled. Emotionally.
I used to drag my sorry ass down to a funny little bar called The Pickle Barrel nearly every day. The Barrel was the only place near my Midwestern campus that didn’t have a television. They had a jukebox that was friendly to anyone who had decent taste: aside from the usual standards (Doors, Beatles, Creedence), you could find Beat Happening, The Breeders, and, at my insistence, all four of the Feelies albums. Inexplicably, there was also Tom T. Hall’s Songs of Fox Hollow, whose track “Sneaky Snake”, the neighborhood mailman used to play after a half-dozen Anchor Steams. The Barrel was relatively quiet, with dim lights that had the soft, waxy glow of gas lamps and a bar-sized pool table in the back. The place was run by an old fellow named Hickory who used to drive truck for a chicken factory, a job he used to describe as “the worst job an American could have”. That was why he didn’t serve chicken sandwiches in the place, because of that “feathered holocaust”. They did serve the best hamburgers in town, and, in the mornings, the worst doughnuts–deep fried in the same grease as the prior night’s onion rings.
The place was owned by one Jack Sullivan, a guy who’d made his fortune in real estate and rentals. He owned a pair of strip malls with high turnover, the usual head shops and comic book stores, beaderies and sub shops that pop up like dandelions near any campus. I once rented an apartment from him, a dingy place with a carpet in the kitchen that smelled like feet. The Pickle Barrel was in the middle of Sullivan’s empire, and was, in fact, owned by the man himself.
Mr. Sullivan took all his meals at the Barrel, four doughnuts and the Barrel’s hideous coffee for breakfast, a basket of fries and a diet tonic water for lunch, and a Swiss cheese burger and a Miller Lite for dinner, followed by his four cigarettes. He used to suck down three packs a day, Hickory once told me, but cut down to four smokes a day after the death of his brother. All four at night, while the lonely Sullivan sat and listened to the ballgame on a headphone radio at the end of the bar. He would not ask for the music to go down, or anyone to be quiet. “Sully knows it’s not guys like him that keep this place afloat,” Hickory said.
So Sullivan never appropriated The Pickle Barrel except once: on a balmy May evening some twenty years ago, now that I think of it. I should tell you, too, that we used to have some fun at Sullivan’s expense: the guy was roly-poly, seemingly unmarried, none too friendly, and as a landlord could be a real dork–he once asked me to hang a plastic Santa Claus on my window one Christmas because it would cheer up the place–I did, and thereafter had to suffer through baubles for every holiday, from St. Paddy’s day to Easter to a black curtain over the door on Memorial Day and a Spanish flag on Columbus Day.
This May evening, some pals and I were hungry for some beer and grub and irritable that the patio of The Barrel was packed, and would be for some time. We settled down inside and grumbled at the silence, and I made my way to the jukebox only to find it unplugged. “Sully’s going to show a flick tonight,” Hick told me. Sure enough, there was a screen and a little projector in the back, and a pile of six movie cans on a table, next to a pitcher of diet pop.
“Shit, does that mean no talking?” I asked.
Hick shrugged. “It’s not my place.”
So the lights dimmed to candle strength. Hick had taken down the large oil painting of the Liberty ship he used to sail on and hung the screen–acutally, just a plain bedsheet–and Sullivan got the show on the road. A shaft of light with smoke, and the crunch of peanut shells, the tinkle of glasses and dim conversation filled the place. With the credits my pals and I were really laying into it, with its silly Scottish jigs meant to lighten the jowls of every Englishman. I perked up at the sight of Alex Mackendrick’s name on the credits: he’d helmed Sweet Smell of Success, an acrimonious film of the highest order, a classic amongst bastards like myself and my friends. So we shut up for a moment, and watched.
Well, The Maggie wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. It was goofy and sentimental, hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking. This coot, Mactaggart, has this old puffer ship that chugs along the rivers of Scotland hauling freight and in violation of every British naval code there is. They get the hammer dropped on them right at the start, told that they’re not seaworthy any more. As fate would have it, they manage to get in the right place at the right time, and end up hauling a rich American’s cargo to a distant Scottish Island. The American realizes his error and tries to stop the ship, eventually boarding it at one point, and hilarity ensues.
Only it doesn’t. As The Maggie rolls on, the scenes of unchecked chaos become more and more heartfelt. The three men and the bowl-cut kid (we actually see the haircut) are really down on their luck; in fact, they don’t eat well and are as crotchety a group as you’ll likely see. But the heart of this amazing film, what got me while I was sucking down yet more beer, was Paul Douglas as the American. Douglas, I found, played heavies most of his life, finally freeing himself from the choke-hold Hollywood put on him, only to die of a heart attack at a young age.
Douglas, as the American, is going to learn a lesson for sure–he’s hauling tons and tons of supplies to build a dream house for the wife he’s neglecting. A bundle of nerves, he seethes and argues, threatens to sue anyone that laughs at him, all the while slowly becoming enamored of the little ship.
The drunker we got, the more we started laughing at this lovely little film. Everyone in the bar would sit and chuckle, whoop and applaud, at various points shouting toasts the crew of The Maggie after squeezing out of yet another scrape.
Toward the end there’s a scene I’ll never forget: Mactaggart is ignoring his duties, and has docked the Maggie in a small town in order to celebrate Davy Macdougall’s hundredth birthday. The American watches from the shadows as the townsfolk celebrates the life of this cackling little blind man. And then, without bluster, without fanfare, he’s invited inside, and simply dances with the lovely Scottish girls.
Douglas didn’t miss a beat. Later, he asks the young girl he danced with about her two suitors. One is a simple fisherman, not so handsome, who goes out with his brothers on the boat; the other a handsome young man who owns a store and is about to buy the other. It seems, says the American, that the choice is obvious: the latter will give you whatever you want, and is an ambitious young man who will go places.
True, replies the girl. But I’ll go with the other, because when he comes home, she says with a wistful sigh, he will think only of me and not his future.
There is virtually no catharsis in The Maggie, no sense that the men who run the boat will be spared the encroaching changes of post-war Britain, or that the American will salvage his marriage. In fact, one gets the distinctly opposite feeling–and when the last reel flipped to an end, filling the Barrel with a harsh white light, there was a long silence.
Mr. Sullivan relooped the film and began rewinding each reel. He appeared terribly pained, clearing his throat every now and then. The sounds of the bar quickly rose again, and he nodded to turn the jukebox on, which blared “Fly Like An Eagle”, which grated on my nerves. But I was curious as to where old Sullivan found this movie, and what he thought of it.
“Good movie,” was all I said. He didn’t answer, so I pressed on. “What is it you liked about it?”
“I don’t like anything about it,” he told me, while clearing his throat halfway through that short sentence. “It’s a piece of crap.”
“Piece of crap? I loved it. Why would you show it if you thought it was a piece of crap?”
He gathered up the cans under each flabby arm, grunted, and said, “You kids never pay attention to anything.” As he walked out the bar he shook his head, and kept clearing his throat.
“Six!” Hick said as I ordered another beer. “Guy smoked six cigs tonight, instead of the usual four.”
“Said he hated that movie,” I said.
“That’s what he always says. But he must’ve paid a good penny for it, and the projector. And he shows it here every year for the last four years. Last year, I swear I saw a tear in the poor man’s eye. Something about it gets to him. Gets to me, too. It’ll hit you when you get older. If you ever see it again.”
Mr. Sullivan died a few years after I left school, and he left Hickory the bar. Hickory still honors him by showing The Maggie once a year. “When Sully died there was a note in his will that I got the movie, and instructions simply to keep it in one of those mini-fridges he also left me. I guess if you keep the film cool it’ll last. I didn’t have to show it, didn’t have to watch it, just keep it. If I got tired of it, he told me to find someone who would appreciate and care for it. But I show it every year because I like it.
“I don’t quite get the thing, except to say that it hurts when it’s over, like the good ending isn’t quite there. Over the years there’ve been some weird reactions–one guy calling it the worst thing he’s ever seen, another woman bawling because of a throwaway line from one of the crewmen, something about being hungry all the time. Some people dig the boy, others the American. I like the old man. Every year it’s something different. That little puffer ship really gets to people.”
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