THEY MADE HER A SPY (1939)

In this RKO B-thriller; Sally Eilers plays the sister of a solider whose death is the latest to be attributed to sabotage. She volunteers to spy for the government and, quite improbably, despite her total lack of experience, is accepted on the spot. She infiltrates a spy ring run out of a Washington restaurant; the leader is Fritz Leiber (father of the famous sf/fantasy writer), but she suspects he is answering to a more powerful boss. Along the way, she meets up with handsome Allan Lane (later known as "Rocky" Lane when he starred in a number of B-westerns, and later provided the voice of Mr. Ed on TV). He seems to be part of the spy ring, but it doesn't take long to figure out from the romantic sparks the two generate that he'll wind up as a good guy. This movie is short and obviously made on a low budget, but nicely acted by Eilers and Lane--although I had never heard of either of them before, they display some good romantic (and, in one scene, comic) chemistry. Eilers manages to add some quirkiness to her otherwise blandly written character. The climax, set at the Washington Monument, is disappointing--it seems to be heading for Hitchcock territory, but with the low budget, that's out of the question, so it ends rather abruptly and unthrillingly. Still, it's worth watching for fans of the simple joys of the B-movie.

PAYMENT DEFERRED (1932)

A tidy little early sound thriller, with obvious stage roots, in which Charles Laughton plays a weak-willed, middle-aged man in dire financial straits who murders a visiting nephew (a very young Ray Milland) who has just come into a large sum of money. Laughton and his family are able to live comfortably for a while but some obstacles come between Laughton and happiness. For one, he can't move from his modest home to more upscale diggings because Milland's body is buried in the yard. Next, he begins an affair with a tarty French woman (Verree Teasdale) who winds up blackmailing Laughton to get some money for herself. I kept waiting for Laughton to kill someone else (his wife, his mistress) but the plot takes a surprising turn on its way to an ironically fulfilling ending. Maureen O'Sullivan is quite good as Laughton's snobbish daughter. Laughton, as usual, is superb. This doesn't show up very often, so if you're a fan of stage-mysteries turned movies (WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, WAIT UNTIL DARK), catch this one if if comes around.

2 CLEOPATRAS

In a completely unplanned twist of fate, I wound up with the opportunity to see both CLEOPATRA (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor and CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (1946) with Vivian Leigh in the same day. First, I have to say that the 1934 version with Claudette Colbert remains my favorite. But the Taylor film isn't as bad as its reputation had led me to believe. At four hours, it's way too long, and Taylor is the weak link as far as acting—I eventually got used to her thin, little-girl voice, and she is undeniably sexy in the part, but she is unable give the character much depth. Richard Burton is good as Marc Antony, and Rex Harrison (Caesar) and Roddy McDowell (Octavian) are even better. The sets, costumes, and photography are astounding, a DeMille wet dream come true. Still, I wound up coming away from it exhausted rather than exhilarated. Character development overall is weak—the writers seem to assume that we will flesh out the characters and situations with our own knowledge of the story (and virtually all of mine comes from the movies).

The plot, in a nutshell: Caesar comes to Egypt to mediate in a battle for the throne between young Ptolemy and his older sister Cleopatra. He installs Cleopatra on the throne, then stays on longer than he should; captivated by her beauty, he becomes a pawn in her plans for Roman power, although she does appear to genuinely love Caesar (an epileptic according to this script, although that plot line goes nowhere). On a return to Rome to declare himself emperor (and Cleopatra queen), a group of Roman Senators assassinate Caesar. Intermission. Next, Marc Antony comes to Egypt and he too is swept away by Cleopatra. More power struggles follow until the inevitable tragic conclusion. Burton and Taylor have the chemistry, Harrison makes a great Caesar, and Martin Landau and Hume Cronyn stand out in a cast of many supporting players. Roddy McDowell is quite good as Antony's rival, Octavian; his performance as his character moves from effete lad to a scheming cad is Oscar-worthy. The letterboxed DVD was beautiful. This is one movie that definitely should not be seen pan-and-scanned.

CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, based on Shaw's play, was shorter but far more tedious. Vivien Leigh does a fine job taking Cleopatra from kittenish and naive to mature and conniving, and Claude Rains is good (as he always is) as Caesar, especially in the earlier scenes. Even though it's just a bit over 2 hours, it felt longer than the Taylor version. The film covers the first half of the same story, but nothing much really happens; people just talk, philosophize, pontificate, and try to be witty. Sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn't. The opening scene where Rains and Leigh meet accidently in the moonlight is as good as it gets. At the time, it was the most expensive British production ever, but it's an ugly looking movie. There are lots of extras, but little sense of spectacle. I can't imagine sitting through this one again, but I might be tempted to see the Taylor film once more before I die.

MOLLY AND ME (1945)

I'm a Monty Woolley fan so I was pleased to stumble across this one in my basement on a tape I had made years ago and forgot I had. It's a predictable but pleasant little movie. Woolley is a stuffy old divorced man with a son (a very young Roddy McDowell) he feels distant from. Gracie Fields (a legendary British music hall star who never really hit it big in the US) is an actress who finagles her way into the household as a maid and eventually brings all of her out-of-work acting friends into the house as servants. Of course, she messes things up but eventually proves her worth by reconciling the father and son. Reginald Gardiner (who had a small but important part with Wooley in MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER) is wonderful as a fellow actor who is Woolley's butler. I need to see more movies with Gardiner—he steals most of the scenes he's in. Natalie Schafer (better known as Mrs. Howell from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND) was also quite good in an important supporting part, doing a Billie Burke-type of role as a rich scatterbrain. The climax, where Fields and her friends play a threatening scene designed to get Woolley out of a potential blackmail situation, feels a bit rushed and underwritten. Otherwise, a nice movie for a lazy afternoon.

MATA HARI (1932)

Apparently, I remain immune to the charms of Greta Garbo. I find it hard to get past her heavy accent and her propensity for overacting. The movie, however, was mostly fun. Garbo plays the famous WWI spy, who was also an exotic dancer and the toast of Paris. She is providing top-secret Russian documents to the Germans (Lewis Stone is her "spymaster," and he does a good job of overcoming the Judge Hardy persona I associate with him), seemingly with the assistance of her lover, Lionel Barrymore, a Russian general. I was never clear how much he was implicated in her spying—he knows about it, but he also tries to betray her in the end. I may have missed a plot point somewhere. Ramon Novarro, a Russian pilot who is instrumental in carrying secret documents in and out of Paris, falls head over heels in love with Garbo and eventually she falls for him, which leads to her downfall.

Novarro feels awfully lightweight up against Garbo, but he does convey a certain youthful romanticism and innocence fairly well. He's also handsome and the scenes of the two making love (in the old fashioned sense, although in this pre-Code movie, it's quite clear that they spend at least one long night in carnal embrace) are nicely photographed. There's a memorable but short scene showing fellow spy Karen Morley stalked by a club-footed assassin who later comes after Garbo. As I said, this was fun, but Dietrich and Sternberg made a much more interesting movie with very similar material in DISHONORED the same year.

THE HATCHET MAN (1932)

Edward G. Robinson stars as a Chinese tong council member in San Francisco's Chinatown. He's sort of an enforcer and executioner for the tong, and his specialty is throwing hatchets at people's heads. The first third of the movie is set 15-20 years in the past with tong wars at their height, and the sets, lighting, and cinematography are all wonderfully atmospheric. Robinson has to execute his closest friend, and winds up inheriting the friend's business and daughter, who is just a child. Many years later, with Chinatown quite modernized and tong wars a thing of the past, the daughter has grown up to be Loretta Young and is herself quite modern and assimilated. Robinson marries her, which I found pretty creepy since their relationship seems so close to father/daughter. Soon, another tong war rears its ugly head and Young is seduced by a young gangster and basically sold into servitude (and, it's implied, prostitution). Robinson allows the young man to take his wife because he had vowed before Buddah to do nothing to cause her sorrow. His fellow tong members don't find his behavior honorable, so he is expelled and is forced to retire, sell his business, and work as a farm laborer. He gets a message from Young, now in China, begging for help, so he polishes up his hatchets and goes to rescue her.

Despite the fact that virtually all the main Chinese parts are played by Caucasian actors, the movie is still quite watchable, even fun. It's a pre-Code film which allows some skirting of the strict moral code (Young leaves Robinson on her own accord but doesn't get a divorce) and the climax involves a hatchet and a human head that must have been pretty strong stuff for 1932. (And maybe even now, since TCM rated the movie TV-14). The opening scene is very effective: as a funeral winds its way through the twisting streets of Chinatown, a gigantic tong war flag is unfurled and gongs are sounded, signaling the beginning of a war and sending the entire populace running and screaming through the streets. Robinson and Young are both quite good. Perhaps because of the non-"PC" nature of the movie, it doesn't show up very much, but it's worth seeing.

FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952)

I've wanted to see this movie since I was 10 and read its description in TV Guide (war, children, and dead animals--it sounded a bit like an artsy horror movie to this young monster movie fan!). In WWII rural France, a 5-year-old girl loses her parents and her dog during a bombing raid (from which she herself barely escapes alive). She carries the dead dog around, meets up with an 11-year-old boy and becomes part of his household. She and the boy bury the dog and, because she thinks the dog will be lonely, the boy starts killing small animals (insects, chicks) and burying them near the dog. Then, more or less at her request, he begins stealing crosses to mark the graves, which triggers a village scandal.

This movie works on many levels; it's really a dark satire involving religion, ritual, death, rivalry, the pettiness of humans (certainly not just French peasants), war, and childhood. Robert Osborne, hosting TCM's showing, prepared me for a real tear-jerker, but aside from the opening when the dog dies (I felt sadder about the dog than about the parents), I had dry eyes. Both of the kids are remarkable but especially the girl, Brigitte Fossey, who really was only 5 when this was made. The ending, though I didn't cry, is haunting.

SOCIETY DOCTOR (1935)

An MGM B-film, I think, though it feels more like a Warners programmer. Chester Morris is the head intern at a hospital which seems to have a high percentage of wealthy and powerful patients, and lazy doctors who have solidified into an "old guard" and have led to Morris's gradual disillusionment with the medical profession, at least as practiced at this hospital. Robert Taylor is Morris's friend and chief rival. Virginia Bruce is the nurse in love with Morris, even though Morris has proclaimed himself a confirmed bachelor because of his dedication to his profession. Morris gets fired after irritating a rich old fat cat, but he winds up reinstated after risking his life in a showdown with a gangster. In the climax, he manages to save his own life as Taylor operates on him, following Morris's instructions.

Taylor comes off a little less than butch, especially during his melodramatic "I'm really a doctor now!" speech. There's a little beefcake in scenes with Morris and Taylor cleaning up after operations. Morris also executes a nice little bit of casual comic relief, balancing a shoe on his foot as Bruce is lecturing him about being more respectful to the stodgy old doctors. Short and cheap, playing out like an episode of "Ben Casey" or "Dr. Kildare." Billie Burke is a society matron who simply must be attended to by Morris; Donald Meek is an unscrupulous insurance man; Raymond Walburn is one of the villianous old doctors.

RADIO CITY REVELS (1938)

An RKO variation on a Warner Brothers "Gold Diggers" movie; a weak male lead drags the proceedings down, but some of the songs are fun and it offers a rare chance to see Milton Berle in a movie role. Jack Oakie is a down-on-his-luck songwriter who is living beyond his means in a spacious, high-rise, art deco apartment with his partner, pianist Berle. They are on the verge of being evicted, even though Ann Miller is doing her best to plug their songs. A "hillbilly" from Arkansas (Bob Burns) who has been taking mail-order songwriting lessons from Oakie comes to New York to finish his lessons in person. He thinks he's a total flop, but it turns out that he writes and sings great songs in his sleep. Oakie discovers this and starts publishing his songs, taking full credit for them. Meanwhile, Miller is in love with Kenny Baker (a real-life radio singer); her sister, the wonderful Helen Broderick, falls for the hillbilly, who himself is sweet on Miller. In the end, Oakie's cheating is exposed, but he makes good all around (rather improbably) and all the romances fall into place.

The songs are clumped at the beginning and end, leaving long dry patches in the middle filled with lame comedy and far-fetched plot twists. Neither Oakie nor Burns are personable enough to carry the picture, and Baker is a bland romantic lead, though Berle is good and the femmes are fine. Victor Moore, whose schtick is slow, bumbling talking, plays a producer who helps Oakie hit it rich. The impressive apartment looks like a leftover from an RKO Astaire/Rogers movie. Of course, Ann MIller gets to tap--her best scene is the opener where she impulsively tap dances during a radio show and steals the audience's attention. "Take a Tip from a Tulip" is the catchiest song, and the finale, "Speak Your Heart," sung by Jane Froman (a real-life singer whose life story was brought to the screen by Susan Hayward in WITH A SONG IN MY HEART), would be worthy of being included in a real "Gold Diggers" film.

THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1940)

As "mad scientist" B-movies go, this is one of the better ones, with good atmosphere, above average acting, and a nice mix of science fiction and supernatural elements. Boris Karloff is a professor of science at a university who has discovered that human brains give off electrical discharge in "waves" that can be read by a lie detector-type graph. We see him give a successful demonstration for a group of doctors, using his wife as the subject, strapped into an upper-body harness-helmet contraption. He theorizes that these waves are as unique as fingerprints and could eventually be "read" in some fashion. Shortly after the experiment, Karloff's wife is killed in a fluke auto accident. Distraught, he throws himself back into his work and soon discovers that his dead wife's brain waves are still being received by his machine. He winds up working with a medium (Anne Revere) who, though a fake (exposed in a nicely played scene), exhibits strong potential for electrical discharge; together, they begin a series of experiments using dug-up bodies of the recently dead as "amplifiers" to try and read Karloff's dead wife's communications. Of course, with all this meddling in God's domain, we know that everyone involved will come to no good.

Revere, an acclaimed stage actress who later played more mainstream character parts, is excellent as the medium who is at first angry at her unmasking but who quickly takes almost an upper hand in Karloff's experiments. Her character could be seen as a serious version of Frau Blucher in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. She and Karloff work together well. The experiments, with a bunch of corpses seated around a table, are appropriately creepy, as is the effect of a swirling vortex of eldritch energy that appears in the middle of the table and pulls the corpses inward. Other performances are average: Amanda Duff, who plays Karloff's daughter, narrates the story but remains mostly a passive onlooker, as does Richard Fiske as her ineffective boyfriend. Ralph Penney has a couple of good scenes as the "simple" assistant who becomes an Igor-type figure. At just over an hour, you don't have much time to think about the plot loopholes. Recommended for fans of Universal 30's horror movies, although this one came from Columbia.

THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE (1933)

There's almost no way that this notorious pre-Code rarity could match its reputation. After seeing this, I felt like I did after seeing THE OLD DARK HOUSE, another film with a strong reputation that was difficult to find for quite a while: I was a little disappointed, but found it fascinating viewing anyway. It's based on a scandalous novel by William Faulkner, toned down considerably for the screen. Miriam Hopkins is a hot Southern belle with a reputation for being a cocktease (as some graffiti makes clear); there's a great scene early on where we see her from inside her bedroom as she's slipping in through the door, denying entrance to a lust-besotted boyfriend. We hear dialogue but see no faces, just her hand fondling the doorknob! William Gargan is a nice-guy public defender who is in love with her and who would probably be good for her, but Hopkins has no desire to settle down. One night, she gets in a car accident with a drunken lad and has to spend the night at a ramshackle "hillbilly" place with a bunch of drunk and horny men. This scene reminded me of a cross between THE OLD DARK HOUSE and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!

Toward dawn, a gangster named Trigger (Jack La Rue) tracks her down out in the barn, shoots and kills her naive young protector, and rapes her in a non-explicit but nevertheless effective scene. She winds up running off with him, living in a brothel and perhaps working there as well, although that's left ambiguous. Soon, Gargan, defending Irving Pichel on murder charges stemming from the shooting, tracks Trigger down, sees Temple, and leaves disgusted. Temple finally takes matters into her own hands, leading to a redemptive (and rather far-fetched) finale in a courtroom. Some critics have claimed that Temple is shown to enjoy her rape, but it seems clear that she is traumatized by it and joins up with Trigger out of shame, perhaps thinking that she "asked" for it based on her past history with men. All of this is up to individual interpretation. But Hopkins is very good in the part, giving maybe her best performance. The cast features Florence Eldridge (the wife of Fredric March), Louise Beavers, and, in a very small part, Grady Sutton, who would later perfect the "tubby sissy" part in comedies of the 30's.

FAITHLESS (1932)

A pre-Code melodrama, memorable mostly because it's one of the few movies that Tallulah Bankhead did. She plays a flighty rich girl who ignores the advice of her bankers and loses her fortune during the Depression. Robert Montgomery, her middle-class fiance, had wanted her to give up her money and live on his, but he too loses his money. For a time, she becomes a kept woman and continues to live the life she's accustomed to. Soon, they meet up, both flat broke, and get married. He gets sick and she takes to the streets to pay his medical bills. After everyone's suffered quite enough, with Montgomery's brother butting in to tattle on Bankhead, there is an abrupt and unrealistic happy ending.

Bankhead comes off a bit like Bette Davis--husky voice, big eyes, similar screen presence--which is ironic given that Davis was accused of stealing from Bankhead's stage performance in THE LITTLE FOXES when she did the movie. This is turgid stuff, saved by a couple of memorable scenes. When Bankhead is told by a man that he is a metallurgist, she asks, "What kinds of metals do you urge?" There's also a bizarre scene where a cop, threatening to arrest her for soliciting, makes her vow to give up her sinful ways, pulls out a small crucifix and demands, "Kiss the cross!" This is mostly humorless and slow going, with only a handful of short scenes toward the beginning giving any sense at all of Bankhead's potential for humor.

THE MURDER MAN (1935)

Spoilers below!!
Spencer Tracy plays a reporter whose specialty is juicy murder cases. He's also apparently going to seed, spending too much of his off time getting and staying drunk (there's a memorable scene of Tracy sleeping off a bender on a merry-go-round). Virginia Bruce is a secretary at the paper who is sweet on Tracy. His latest case involves a shady businessman who is suspected of bumping off his equally shady partner--the two have bilked dozens of people out of their life savings and even driven a couple of people to suicide. It's fun to watch Tracy dig up evidence, lead the cops around by the nose, and then write up his headline stories just as the cops are making their moves. The business partner is found guilty and sentenced to death. In a twist which is not totally out of the blue (it's clear that there's more to Tracy's character than meets the eye), it turns out that Tracy committed the murder for revenge--his wife was one of the people who got bilked and killed herself. At almost the last minute, Tracy comes clean, making his confession his last big scoop before going to the police. It's intimated in the last line of the film that a jury may be lenient with him.

Tracy and Bruce are good, as is Lionel Atwill in a rare turn as a good guy, but Tracy's character is underdeveloped; we are *told* things about him but we don't see much of anything happen so the twist feels hollow. On the one hand, we're supposed to accept that his drinking is a real problem; on the other hand, it doesn't seem to have hurt his career much or lessened whatever charm he held for Virginia Bruce. It's only 70 minutes and was probably intended as a second feature, which may explain the lack of characterization. This is also notable as James Stewart's feature film debut as a Jimmy Olsen-type reporter. I wonder if Tracy's character was one of the first anti-hero vigilantes of the Production Code era?

DISHONORED (1931)

I loved THE SCARLET EMPRESS so much that I've been trying to catch other Dietrich/Sternberg collaborations. This a wonderful camp fest (though I can't believe it was meant to be received that way at the time), though not as delirious as EMPRESS. Marlene Dietrich plays an Austrian widow who has descended into prostitution and accepts an offer to become a spy, code named X-27, using her feminine wiles to smoke out Russian spies. In a beautifully shot multilevel (physically and metaphorically) scene typical of Sternberg, we see her at a masked ball dressed in a tight, dark, but spangly outfit, snaring her man. She is also suspicious of the man's friend, burly Victor McLaglen, who is in fact a spy; the fireworks between them as they alternately seduce and betray each other make up the rest of the film. In one scene, he berates her for her cheating and lying; she says, "Perhaps I don't always cheat and lie." He replies, lustfully, "The more you cheat and lie, the more exciting you become, X-27!"

The acting is a bit over-the-top by all concerned, especially when McLaglen is leering at Dietrich, which is in most of his scenes. Supposedly Sternberg wanted Gary Cooper, who would certainly have been sexier, but maybe not quite so lustful and almost obscene in his desire. One standout scene has Dietrich in disguise as a simple peasant maid at an inn where McLaglen and his men are staying; she looks completely unlike herself, so that it took me a few seconds to realize it was her with the plain face and plump body. The last scene is a famous one where Dietrich gets all whored up to face a firing squad (in her cell, she asks for a mirror to fix her makeup and has a large shiny sword thrust in her face). Overall, it's something of a mess, but a wonderfully excessive one.

THE GOOD FAIRY (1935)

If I hadn't seen the credits with my own eyes, I would have sworn this was an MGM production from Ernst Lubitsch. After all, it has Margaret Sullavan (at her most radiant) & Frank Morgan, a glossy backlot Budapest, whimsical romantic entanglements, and a strong supporting cast. It's practically a prequel to THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, one of my very favorite movies. But it actually came from Universal, was directed by William Wyler, and written by Preston Sturges (based on a Molnar play). Despite some lulls in the middle, this is a lovely, light confection with lots of laughs and fine performances.

Sullavan is an orphan named Louise Ginglebusher (her last name becomes a running joke) who is chosen by theater owner Alan Hale to be an usherette. She goes into the world determined to do a good deed for someone every day (like a good fairy). Her first night on the job, she is befriended by a somewhat gruff but good-natured waiter (Reginald Owen, Scrooge in MGM's A CHRISTMAS CAROL, acting very un-Scroogelike) who invites her to a glittering party where he's working, then keeps an eye on her as she gets the attention of rich philanderer Frank Morgan (at full befuddled bluster). Through a string of somewhat far-fetched plot twists, Sullavan winds up pretending she's married to a man whose name she picks at random out of the phone book (Herbert Marshall). Morgan gives the man a job and money as a favor to her and Sullavan is happy to have been a "good fairy" to someone. But the plot is just picking up steam as she winds up getting directly involved in Marshall's humdrum life.

Marshall is miscast in a romantic part, as he often was in the 30's, but everyone else is practically perfect. Beulah Bondi and Cesar Romero have small but memorable parts, and Eric Blore gets to shine playing something other than a butler or hotel manager--he's a rich doctor who, briefly and drunkenly, also tries to befriend Sullavan. Morgan perhaps overdoes the bluster, but it fits the rather artificial character and plot. At one point, he even has a line that seems to foreshadow his most famous part when he compares himself to a "wizard." I like the fact that everyone winds up being a "good fairy" to someone or other in the film, even if I'm not so happy that Sullavan and Marshall wind up together. If Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart had played the part, this would almost be a perfect 10.

The British Army in India: THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) & THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCE (1935)

I'm sort of a fan of this subgenre of film, about stiff-upper-lip British Army soldiers fighting uprisings in India with courage, wit, and sacrifice (not to mention a phallocentric Colonialist viewpoint!). I love GUNGA DIN and BEAU GESTE, though I'm not a big fan of THE FOUR FEATHERS. These are the last two of the great 30's movies in that category and both are certainly worth watching. In LIGHT BRIGADE, Errol Flynn plays a major in the army and Patric Knowles is his brother (that family had good genes!). Both men are in love with Olivia de Havilland. She has been "promised," so to speak, to Flynn but in his absence, she and Knowles have grown cozy. Unlike the romance elements in DIN and GESTE, this feels organic to the story rather than thrown haphazardly into the mix. Indian villain Surat Kahn (well played by C. Henry Gordon) has had his government subsidy cut off by the British, so he cozies up to the Russians and Kahn and his men fight against the British in the Crimean War (which I admit I nothing about). Before the conflict breaks out, Flynn saves Gordon's life when a tiger attacks him. Later, when Flynn and his men are forced to surrender, Gordon allows Flynn to escape during a massacre in which many women and children are killed. Naturally, Flynn seeks revenge and gets his chance on the Russian front. The foolhardy climactic charge (based on an actual historical incident) is well photographed, although it looks like some horses got seriously banged up or worse during the staging of the attack. David Niven is quite good as a fellow soldier and Nigel Bruce and Spring Byington are good light comic relief as a officer and his wife.

BENGAL LANCER is all about male bonding, of all kinds: between friends, between soldiers, between father and son, between soldier and officer. Gary Cooper is a gruff but good-hearted lieutenant who takes under his wing a newly arrived soldier (Richard Cromwell) who happens to be the son of the commanding officer (Guy Standing). Cromwell isn't toughened up yet and Standing resents his presence. Occasional stabs at reconciliation fail. Franchot Tone plays a fellow lieutenant who gives Cooper a hard time about his "mothering" instinct, but they develop a respectful friendship and ultimately both risk their lives when Cromwell is tricked into captivity by the wicked Indian warlord (another well-played villain, this time by Douglass Dumbrille). There is torture (bamboo under the fingernails, I think, though the scene is rather oblique), betrayal, sacrifice, and redemption before the fadeout. Though not quite as fun or thrilling as DIN or BRIGADE, this has a more substantive plot than some of the other movies of the kind, and the acting is uniformly strong (except for Cromwell who never seems worth sacrificing for).

A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1932)

In my experience, Hemingway has not been well served by Hollywood. They got close with this one, but his sparse writing style, which usually gives his work a certain tension and immediacy, is lost in the translation of this novel to the screen. Gary Cooper is Lt. Henry, an ambulance driver in France during the First World War. He meets up with a nurse (Helen Hayes) and falls in love. They have a brief, torrid affair (clearly involving sex, a point that could not have been made so boldly only a few years later when the Production Code kicked in) and while he's hospitalized, a priest whispers a wedding ceremony for them so they can feel married in the eyes of God, if not the state. A jealous commanding officer (Adolphe Menjou) tries to keep them apart, but also, oddly enough, occasionally helps get them together; it's almost like he's a capricious god playing blithely with their lives. While apart, she goes to Switzerland to have a baby (with Menjou assuring that their letters do not get through to each other, Cooper doesn't know she's pregnant). Cooper eventually tracks her down but not in time to avoid a tragic ending.

The director, Frank Borzage, was clearly not terribly interested in the war angle, which comes across more stongly in the novel. We see little in the way of battle except for an impressionistic montage late in the movie. The cinematographer, Charles Lang, deservedly won an Oscar for his luminous and fluid black and white camera work. A standout sequence is shot from Cooper's point of view as he's carried through the hospital on a stretcher; we see the cathedral-like main floor, the intruding faces of nurses looking down on him, and finally Hayes bending down to kiss him/us. As Hemingway, not great, but worth seeing for the acting and the camera work.

Two B-Thrillers

DARK EYES OF LONDON (aka THE HUMAN MONSTER) (1939)
A British B movie which was marketed as horror is really a fairly traditional crime thriller with Bela Lugosi as a man who is murdering people in an insurance scam and dumping the bodies in the Thames. The opening scene of a bloated body floating in the river sets the atmosphere nicely. The plot, from an Edgar Wallace novel, is unnecessarily convoluted what with insurance policies, a connection to a home for the homeless blind, an obnoxious American detective tagging along mostly for lame comic relief, and the obligatory damsel in distress. Lugosi plays a dual role that actually surprised me--his voice in the second role must have been dubbed in by someone else, but it's well done and the unmasking scene was nicely underplayed, given Lugosi's usual hamminess. Actually, Lugosi is good throughout. Occasionally interesting camera work helps make up for the lack of budget reflected in some of the sets. The "monster" of the American title is a hulking, deformed blind man who helps in the killing, and a couple of the most effective scenes involve him: one in which the camera observes from a doorway as a man is brought into a room and the "monster" is suddenly coming at him, and another when the monster menaces the damsel in a dark room (he reaches out and smashes a glowing light bulb with his hand, a trick which looked almost too real to me!)

FOG ISLAND (1945)
This really cheap PRC production is a variation on AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, with bits of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL thrown in. George Zucco, who has just been released from prison for embezzlement, invites a group of his old cronies (who were apparenly just as guilty as he, but who escaped jail) to his fog-shrouded island for a "party." He tempts them there by hinting about the possibility that some missing money could be hidden at the house, but his real motive is revenge. Lionel Atwill and Jerome Cowan (Spade's partner in MALTESE FALCON) are two of the ill-fated guests. If you like this kind of "old dark house" movie, it has its moments, but the low budget and only serviceable acting get in the way of any real thrills or fun. Of course, there's a romantic couple who come out OK while just about everyone else gets what they deserve. It passed the time, but it's not one to search out.

THE PHANTOM OF CRESTWOOD (1932)

This is B-movie mystery material that seems to have been given A-movie treatment, resulting in a fun, atmospheric film with a truly unique frame: apparently, the story was originally done as a 6-part radio play without a conclusion. Listeners were then invited to submit their ideas about "whodunit" and the mystery was finally wrapped up with the release of the movie. After an introducion by a radio announcer (who seems genuinely uncomfortable in front of a camera), the story begins with Karen Morley as a woman who is in the process of blackmailing a number of rich and important men with whom she has had dalliances. Her motive seems to be to get a lot of money quickly and retire for life. She gets H.B. Warner to gather the men at his estate, Crestwood, for a party where she will drop her bomb. Anita Louise is Morley's sister who is set to marry Warner's son, but Pauline Fredrick, as Warner's sister, doesn't want that to happen (her nephew is too good for Morley's sister). Ricardo Cortez is a crook who has been hired to steal some of Morley's letters.

Everyone winds up at Crestwood, trapped for the night due to storms and mudslides. Morley ends up dead with a dart in her neck and Cortez turns detective to clear himself before the police arrive at dawn. Practically everyone in the house has a motive, and like a good mystery, there are red herrings and surprise discoveries along the way, including a ghostly figure that crops up from time to time, with the face of a former suitor of Morley's who killed himself (or so it seemed). Flashback sequences are done in a odd technique in which the camera pans back then zips around in circles to stop abruptly and pan back in at the flashback scene. A very good example of the trapped-in-a-house thriller genre, complete with secret passages and a climax played out in the mist just before dawn. Definitely worth catching.

THE MIRACLE WOMAN (1931)

You can already see in this early talkie many of the standout elements of Frank Capra's style. Certain things here reminded me of scenes or themes in AMERICAN MADNESS, MEET JOHN DOE, MR. DEEDS, and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. The opening scene is the most powerful. Barbara Stanwyck plays the daughter of a preacher who has just been let go by his congregation (unless I missed something, we never know why except perhaps that he was old). He dies in her arms while writing his farewell sermon and she goes out to the pulpit to read it. Her anger, passion, and disgust for the congregation come out strongly and without any over-the-top artifice that Capra sometimes allowed in his later movies. A slick but slimy character (Sam Hardy) talks Stanwyck into a career as a revivalist and faith healer (her character is based loosely on the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson) and she hits it big. Stanwyck is not as convincing in evangelist mode, but she only really has one big scene like that. A blind man (David Manners) is about to commit suicide, but he hears her on the radio and is inspired to live and to attend one of her services. They meet and fall in love, and when she decides to leave the faith-healing racket and go straight, Hardy threatens blackmail or worse.

The revelation here is that David Manners is really quite good. This came as a shock to me, given his mostly wooden performances in DRACULA, THE MUMMY, and THE BLACK CAT. I've also seen him in other films including BILL OF DIVORCEMENT and THE MOONSTONE, but he made no impression on me in those films. Here, he does a nice job of underplaying the part of a blind man, something that could easily have wound up sappy or exaggerated. I actually believe that the more worldly Stanwyck could have fallen for him. (His scenes with a ventriloquist's dummy, however, should have been left on the cutting room floor!) Stanwyck's character isn't fleshed out enough. Clearly, she's in on the trickery involved with her faith healing, but she also seems genuinely unaware that she might be hurting innocents with her charade, even though her motivation for starting her career is to get back at her father's hypocritical congregation. I've read that Capra wanted to do a movie much more critical of fake religious leaders and that the studio wanted him to tone it down, which may be why her character is so ill-defined. But this is still a very good movie with good acting and some interesting camerawork, not to mention what must have been a fairly big budget, given the scenes in her flashy tabernacle.

STAGE STRUCK (1936)

A drab and dismal musical, showing that the Warner Brothers 42ND STREET & GOLD DIGGERS formula was running out of steam long before GOLD DIGGERS IN PARIS (which I enjoyed much more than this movie). You'd think that with Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, and Busby Berkely, there'd be some nice musical numbers and some decent comedy, but oddly enough, although there are attempts at comedy, there isn't even a stab made at a real production number. The money ran out, perhaps? A few songs get sung, but the closest they come to a flashy number is a bizarre comedy/novelty song, "The Body Beatufiul" by an obnoxious troupe called the Yacht Club Boys. It's got a couple of surreal touches, but it's not a full-blown production number. Ultimately, when all wrongs are righted and the understudy is about to take the stage on opening night, the movie ends without even a single peek at any fully staged songs or dances. It feels like the last reel is missing.

Dick Powell is a dance director working for producer Warren William. Joan Blondell is a high society dame, in the news for wounding her husband during a domestic argument--she offers to bankroll William's new musical but insists on starring, depsite having no discernable talent. This leads to friction between Blondell and Powell, and William uses a sort of reverse psychology to make Blondell think she's in love with Powell, which keeps things running smoothly for a while. Powell's real love interest is a pretty young thing, new to show biz, who (of course), at the last minute, gets the starring part.

The movie is lifeless throughout, although Blondell and Frank McHugh try their best (McHugh is especially game, taking over for a leading lady during a rehearsal of a musical number early in the movie, and managing to generate a couple of laughs). However, Jeanne Madden, who plays the ingenue, gives perhaps the worst leading performance I've ever seen in a movie from a non-Poverty Row studio! She seems to be literally reading her lines from cue cards with no comprehension of what they mean. She is utterly incapable of expressing any emotion stronger than fatigue. Madden only made two other movies before retiring from the screen. Spring Byington is fine in a small role and an actor named Craig Ryenolds is appropriately handsome as Blondell's leading man. Jane Wyman has a two-line bit as a chorus girl named Bessie Fuffnick (yes, the name is the punch line!). Unless you have to see every movie Powell or Wyman ever made, don't bother with this one.

THE BARBARIAN (1933)

Spoilers Below!
Myrna Loy, in one of her early exotic roles, plays a half-Egyptian woman who visits Egypt with her rich fiance, a blond, puffy-faced prig (Reginald Denny). She hires Ramon Novarro to be her guide and servant; he's a smooth-operating quasi-gigolo who gets money and jewels from appreciative female tourists. For a while, the movie is comic in tone as Novarro falls in love with Loy and works his way into her entourage and her favors. Suddenly, about halfway through, it's like a different writer took over and, in a rather melodramatic turn, he kidnaps her, tells her he is a prince, and tries to marry her against her will. She escapes, he catches her, she fights against him, he whips her and then frees her. Just as she's about to marry the prig, Novarro returns, serenading her from her balcony. So, naturally, she leaves with him.

I've never read a traditional romance novel (Harlequin, bodice-ripper, or otherwise) but I imagine this is what many of them are like. I guess we're supposed to be glad that Loy goes off with Novarro, but between the abductions and the violence, his actions are just short of rape (perhaps not even short of it) and I found it difficult to be happy for her. Of course, I didn't want her to wind up with Denny, either. Novarro is a steamy exotic lover, but he is also fairly toadying and even a bit effeminate. Loy is lovely and intelligent; I wonder if her "half-caste" status is supposed to make us assume that it's only natural that she should take to Navarro's treatment. C. Aubrey Smith and Edward Arnold are around to do their usual things. Louise Closser Hale plays Loy's uptight, pruny chaperone, but she's the only one who isn't surprised that Loy leaves with Novarro. A strange movie for our times, with the romantic violence a little unsettling, but if nothing else, the desert scenery was lovely.

MY LOVE CAME BACK (1940)

Hiding behind this drab, generic title is a charming little romantic comedy with the trappings of farce (multiple misconceptions about characters and motivations) and the atmosphere of a musical, although it's not a musical or a farce. If this Warner Brothes picture had been done at MGM with Rooney and Garland, it would have fit right in with the "Babes" series. Olivia de Havilland plays a violin student studying at a conservatory; low on money, she decides to leave school and join a swing orchestra with her friends Eddie Albert and Jane Wyman. Charles Winninger, a rich patron of the school, takes a shine to de Havilland and subsidizes her education, laundering the money through Jeffrey Lynn, the manager of his business. The head of the school, Grant Mitchell, lets her believe that the money is from a scholarship. Soon, of course, farcical complications involving Winninger, his wife (Spring Byington), his son (William T. Orr) and Lynn arise. This may have been one of the earliest movies with a "swing vs. classical" theme, which leads to a couple of fun numbers where the band swings Liszt and Mendelssohn. The cast is great fun throughout. Albert and Wyman are especially good. S. Z. Sakall, playing a stuffed-shirt conductor, appears in one of his first American movies. Jeffrey Lynn is the best I've ever seen him—his hopped-up look is downplayed and he makes a perfectly fine romantic leading man for de Havilland. A very entertaining piece of fluff. I have absolutely no idea what the title has to do with the movie!

LONELYHEARTS (1959)

This is an odd little movie. It feels like a long Twilight Zone episode without any hint of the supernatural or sci-fi. Like some of Rod Serling's stories, it is rather preachy with lots of stilted dialogue and obvious speechmaking that stops the action dead in its tracks. Nevertheless, it was worth watching. Based on a story by Nathaniel West ("Day of the Locust"), it's about a fledgling reporter (Montgomery Clift) who takes a job as a "Miss Lonelyhearts" columnist under a cynical and mean-spirited editor (Robert Ryan). Ryan tries his best to "educate" Clift in the ways of the world--the fact that people *lie* seems to be the main lesson he wants to impart. Maureen Stapleton got an Oscar nomination for her part as a bored and lonely housewife who writes to Clift and eventually meets him. Myrna Loy plays Ryan's wife, a completely beaten-down and empty person--in some ways, she reminded me of the Alison Janney character in AMERICAN BEAUTY (the wife who walks around like she's in a coma) although not quite as scarily passive.

The film is wildly misogynistic; all the women in the movie are presented as whores (metaphorically speaking) except for Dolores Hart, Clift's girlfriend, who is a saint. I read that this was Clift's first movie after his terrible car accident; he looks fine, but he doesn't always seem to be altogether there. Robert Ryan is very good, especially given that his character is one-note and his dialogue is wildly artifical. Loy is fine, and I felt the sorriest for her character, largely because of her performance. Although the movie has a leisurely pace, the ending feels a bit rushed and strains for an upbeat tone. Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester on "The Addams Family" and a big juvenile star in the 20's, especially in Chaplin's THE KID) has a small part.

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM (1932)

Because this pre-Code film is based on a Philip Barry play, and I liked HOLIDAY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY so much, I figured I'd like this. I did, but it's the weakest of the three Barry movies I've seen. Leslie Howard is a publisher of fine art and philosophy books who is about to marry Myrna Loy when his old friend and occasional lover (and free soul) Ann Harding turns up more or less out of the blue and expresses interest in getting married and having a child. It's interesting that it's the desire for a child, not necessarily "true love" that makes her propose to Howard. Howard says no but wants to remain friends—Harding can't face that, so she breaks things off. Soon, Loy is trying to run Howard's life by getting him away from his somewhat bohemian friends and pushing him to publish crappy but popular books to make more money. Harding re-enters his life and Howard has to make important decisions involving his women and his career. Loy and Howard are both good, with Loy especially sexy and conniving. In one scene, she gets Howard to stay home with her by nuzzling his neck while wearing a remarkably revealing negligee. There's a wonderful scene near the end where she implies that she will have sex with him in order to give him a child if he will sell his business for a great deal of money. Howard catches on and basically treats her like a whore. For a 30's movie, the unsavory connection is remarkably clear; I'm sure it couldn't have been if it had been made just a few years later. Harding was the weak link. Maybe because it's a Barry play, I kept imagining Katharine Hepburn in the role; she certainly would have been more lively than the wooden, stagy Harding, who I found difficult to believe as a bohemian. William Gargan is Howard's butler and sort of the moral center of the film. Ilka Chase is fun in a fairly small part as a friend of Loy's.

DIVE BOMBER (1941)

Despite its title and year of release, this is not a war picture. It tells the story of the discovery of the pressurized suits that pilots used when flying in their bombers. If it can be said to belong to any genre, it would be medical-science melodrama, with male bonding in place of opposite-sex romance (despite the brief presence of the lovely Alexis Smith). Errol Flynn plays a cocky Navy doctor who goes into research, trying to find a solution for the dangers of pilots blacking out at very high altitudes. Fred MacMurray is his nemesis, a pilot who thinks that Flynn's bad judgment was responsible for the death of his buddy. The two wind up reconciled, partly due to the efforts of Ralph Bellamy. Regis Toomey is a doomed pilot; Allen Jenkins provides some ill-timed comic relief with various escapades involving hiding from his shrieking harpy of a wife, Dennie Moore, who reminded me of Bewitched's Gladys Kravitz. Lots of good flying footage and nice use of Technicolor, but a little too predictable.

TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1933)

This is a light comedy-fantasy that might have benefitted from the Capra touch. Lee Tracy plays a man in his 30's who owns a small cigar store and is apparently barely making ends meet for himself and his wife (Mae Clarke). In the shop one day, he runs into an old friend (Otto Kruger) who has become rich and successful as a bank president. He offers to invest Tracy's savings to make him some quick money, but Clarke doesn't want to risk it. Drunk and pissed off, Tracy is hit by a car and he slips into a coma and dreams of what his life might have been like if he had taken a different path and become rich and famous, essentially trading life situations with Kruger with the knowledge of coming historical events, like WWI and the Depression. Of course, like in WIZARD OF OZ, he learns: 1) be careful what you wish for; you might get it!, 2) there's no place like home (above a cigar store with Mae Clarke). The dream life is realistically portrayed until toward the end when it becomes a nightmarish fantasy sequence. One touch that seems right out of a Capra movie involves the rich Tracy pledging a million dollars for WWI servicemen to draw on when they return home from the front. I don't usually like Tracy, but his character is much more likeable here than in most of the other movies of his that I've seen. My one complaint about him is that he's really too old, even with makeup, to look right in the scenes where he's supposed to be 20 again. One other minor OZ connection: Clara Blandick (Aunt Em) and Charley Grapewin (Uncle Henry) both have small parts in the movie.

PICNIC (1955); Or, My 50's Problem

I wonder why I find it relatively easy to accept 30's and 40's movie conventions, but I have such a hard time opening myself up to 50's movies? Inge and Williams and Faulkner all wrote material that exposed the repressed longings of everyday (or regional or small-town) Americans, and I guess that was considered new and shocking back then. For me, these movies don't hold up well now. The psychological depths feel rather shallow, the novelties of the widescreen and full color techniques are no longer novel. And the acting seems so overheated, so melodramatic; perhaps it was the screen discovering Method acting, or something like that. But many 50's films just grate on my last nerve. This is one of those. William Holden is a drifter who arrives in a small Kansas town, just in time for the big doings at the Labor Day picnic. He comes seeking a job from his successful fraternity brother, Cliff Robertson, and he gets tangled up with Robertson's reluctant fiancée, Kim Novak. Things remain at a simmer until that night when spinster schoolteacher Rosalind Russell gets tipsy and sets off a chain reaction of exploding passions. This all may have felt daring back then, suggesting that not all heartland families were like Andy Hardy's, but it's hopelessly dated now.

I liked both Holden and Novak; Russell was over the top, but it seems like an impossible role to start with—the repressed schoolteacher is played mostly for laughs, but suddenly in the middle of the movie, she becomes the catalyst for all the roiling passions to boil over, and the scene where she tears Holden's shirt is just silly (mostly because of the ridiculously dramatic music that accents it). My biggest problem was with the ages of the characters. Novak is supposed to be 19, but she was really 22 and looked about 25. Holden and Cliff Robertson are supposed to be roughly the same age, a few years out of college, but Holden (in his mid-30's) looked much older than Robertson. I will say that Holden was in damn fine shape, which is a good thing given that he spends half of his screen time shirtless. This overblown soap opera reminded me at times of THE MUSIC MAN without irony, humor, or music—the disreputable Holden (Harold Hill) drifts into town, stirs up trouble (with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Picnic) and gets caught up with the confused girl (Marion the repressed librarian). Still, I found this worth watching mostly for Novak.

TORRID ZONE (1940)

Though I don't number James Cagney as one of my very favorite actors, I usually find his presence makes a movie worth watching. This, however, is surely one of his lesser films. He seemed to be operating at half-energy throughout--maybe he was conserving his energy for YANKEE DOODLE DANDY which he did a year or so later. The plot combines elements of THE FRONT PAGE and RED DUST; Pat O'Brien, head of a powerful banana company stationed in Latin America, tries to trick old buddy Cagney into coming back into the fold. One problem with this situation is that they don't have much chemistry here; their friendship never seems very believeable. The RED DUST element comes from the character of Ann Sheridan, as a singer who O'Brien tries to have deported (apparently for loose morals, but her charaxter isn't developed well enough for us to know that). She falls for Cagney (who is tied up temporarily with upper-class Helen Vinson); he helps Sheridan out and eventually falls for her. Sheridan is not terribly convincing as a shady dame, but she looks great and has some snappy one-liners aimed at Vinson; otherwise, the movie is slow going. George Tobias (Abner Kravitz on BEWITCHED) and George Reeves are improbably cast as natives, but their very improbability actually makes them fun to watch. Only for die-hard Cagney fans. The only other Cagney film that I have liked less is THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D.

HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO (1944)

Preston Sturges is very hit-and-miss with me. I've enjoyed some of the films he's directed and/or written (THE PALM BEACH STORY, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, REMEMBER THE NIGHT), but others have left me cold (MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK, CHRISTMAS IN JULY, EASY LIVING). Part of it is due to my love/hate thing with screwball comedies. MIRACLE, which I'd heard so much about, was especially disappointing, but I enjoyed this one quite a bit; given the presence of Eddie Bracken, the military, a small town, and a wayward romance, this often feels like MIRACLE'S smarter brother. Bracken plays a mild-mannered guy who, during WWII, tries to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather by joining the Marine Corps. He is discharged quickly due to chronic hay fever, but can't bring himself to return to his small town and be a disappointment to his mother. One evening, he buys drinks for a group of broke Marines on furlough; they take pity on him and concoct a tall tale to tell his mother about his heroism. They decide to escort him home by train and when they arrive, all hell breaks loose. The whole town has turned out to "hail the conquering hero." From there, the situation snowballs until he is thrust into the position of running for mayor based solely on his supposed heroics. There's also an ex-girlfriend and her fiancé (son of the current mayor) to contend with.

The movie is played at a screwball pace (though not quite as fast as MIRACLE), but the romance plot winds up being secondary to the rest. Bracken is great, as is William Demarest as the sergeant who does the most to get Bracken in deeper and deeper. Franklin Pangborn does a variation on his usual flustered and frustrated type. Raymond Walburn is very good as the mayor (although we're supposed to want Bracken to run against him and beat him, he really isn't seen as such a bad fellow) and Ella Raines is fine as the girlfriend. Lots of things get satirical jabs, including patriotism, romance, motherhood, politics, and small towns. From a current day standpoint, there's nothing too terribly subversive here, but considering it was released at the height of WWII, I'm amazed Sturges got away with so much. It does have a fairly traditional ending that salvages the idea of heroism and allows the town and Bracken to save face. Overall, quite enjoyable.

BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE (1938)

At last, a full-blooded screwball comedy I can love! I've never heard much about this movie; it seems to fly under the critical radar. Most of the movie guides I consulted didn't like it much. I've discussed my love/hate relationship with screwball comedies here before. In some ways, this resembles one of my least favorite movies, the archetypal screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY, with the heroine pestering the hero to death until he finally gives in, but in BLUEBEARD, I can understand better why she's doing the pestering. Gary Cooper is a millionaire businessman visiting the French Riviera. When he raises a ruckus by stubbornly and obnoxiously insisting on buying just pajama tops at a clothing store, Claudette Colbert steps in to offer to buy the bottoms. Cooper is immediately taken with her and begins a whirlwind courtship. Her father, Edward Everett Horton (at his best in a very Prussian buzz cut and mustache) is titled but out of money and Cooper basically attempts to buy her from Horton. This, of course, disturbs Colbert, who also finds out that she will be Cooper's 8th wife, a fact Cooper thinks is unimportant. She goes through with the marriage but gets back at Cooper by withholding sex; if he can treat their relationship as a business transaction, so can she! She vows to make him miserable and to wind up being the worst investment he's ever made.

The screwball tactic of mixing love and irritation works well here, and I think it's mostly due to Colbert's underplaying. It's actually fun to see Cooper get emotional occasionally, contradicting his usual quiet and stoic persona. At one point, he lets out with a piercing war whoop in joy. Toward the end, he's institutionalized (a plot point that works better here than in LOVE CRAZY) and has to be put in a straitjacket, leading to a climactic (in more ways than one) sight gag. Ernst Lubitsch directed and his touch is in evidence in several places, including some nice bits for supporting players, and a few scenes that don't really advance the plot but are lots of fun (for example, a scene at the asylum where a man seems to be cured of thinking he's a chicken). A young and attractive David Niven plays another admirer of Colbert's and Franklin Pangborn is in high dudgeon as a hotel manager. There are lots of one-liners and many wonderful scenes with Colbert and Cooper; this, along with the 1934 CLEOPATRA, has given me a newfound appreciation of Colbert. Highly recommended!

Two Ann Sheridan B-Movies

HONEYMOON FOR THREE (1941)
I should have learned my lesson with FOUR'S A CROWD about B-level screwball comedies, but Ann Sheridan lured me in. Although it's rather tedious and not nearly as funny as it thinks it is, Sheridan does make it worth watching. The initial set-up is like MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, with George Brent as a famous writer lecturing in an Ohio city (Cleveland) and Sheridan in the Bette Davis part as his secretary; in this case, the two are romantically involved and the plot hinges on an old college flame throwing a wrench into their romance. The underdeveloped plot isn't worth much more comment, but Charlie Ruggles steals every scene he's in, and Jane Wyman and Lee Patrick add color in supporting parts.

THE PATIENT IN ROOM 18 (1938)
In this one, Sheridan plays a nurse who has a thing for a detective (Patric Knowles); together, the two solve the murder of a rich patient and the theft of the valuable radium that had been used in his treatment. A very light touch and a running time of an hour made this quite bearable. It's not nearly as good as the previous film with the same characters (WHILE THE PATIENT SLEPT with Aline McMahon and Guy Kibbee playing the characters very differently), and it's not nearly as atmospheric as a mystery in a hospital should be. Knowles and Sheridan are both easy on the eyes.

MUSIC IN MANHATTAN (1944)

TCM unearthed this RKO B-musical during their Oscar salute month because it was nominated for a sound engineering award. Otherwise, it's hardly award material. It was very hard to find any information about this movie from the usual reference sources, which led me to expect a dismal bomb, but it turned out to be a pleasant and unpretentious comedy with music (it's not really a full-fledged musical, though it has a few numbers in a Broadway setting). Anne Shirley (whom I just saw as the daughter in STELLA DALLAS) plays a singer who, with her friends, is struggling to keep a Broadway musical revue running. Dennis Day is her wimpy leading man on stage (and her boyfriend off stage); he's an Irish tenor with a squeaky speaking voice who has his masculinity made fun of throughout. Through some creaky plot mechanics, she gets mistaken by the press for the "secret bride" of a recently returned war hero (Phillip Terry) and the rest of the movie tells how: 1) she saves the show, and 2) how she and the hunky hero fall in love. Raymond Walburn is fun as a music professor who is helping to back the show and Jane Darwell (who looked 65 all of her life, it seems) plays Terry's supposedly sickly mother, who looks as healthy as a horse. I just saw Terry as Ray Milland's brother in LOST WEEKEND, and he's completely different here—he's easy on the eyes and is good if not great as a light comic leading man. I don't know why he didn't do more films like this. The title is totally generic. The musical numbers can't compare to those that RKO mounted for Astaire, but they're clever and pleasing nonetheless.

THE SCARLET EMPRESS (1934)

The juiciest of the collaborations between Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, this truly is one of the strangest movies to ever come out of a major studio. The storyline, of the rise of Catherine the Great of Russia, though not exactly ignored, is almost secondary to the rich visual feast constantly displayed on screen. Much of the time, this felt like an avant-garde movie. Occasionally, it reminded me of VAMPYR, as the narrative's power comes not from dialogue or exposition, but other elements like images, the "choreography" of the actors, and the music. Scarely a moment goes by that doesn't have blaring music (including Wagner and Tchaikovsky) and stunning camerawork.

Dietrich is Catherine, a German princess (I think; I wasn't clear on where she came from) who is chosen to be the wife of Peter III, an "idiot" who will take the throne when his mother dies. Catherine's job is to give Peter a son, but they never consummate the marriage. In the beginning, Catherine has high ideals about being a wife, but after getting pushed around by the Empress and ignored by her husband, she learns how to build her own power base (largely by sleeping with practically the entire Russian army). She provides a male heir (fathered by a soldier), but when she realizes that her own standing and indeed her life itself are in danger, she takes steps to get rid of Peter.

The narrative is always coherent, due partly to the occasional title card that explains what's happening. There are long stretches when there is little or no dialogue; the images really tell the story. An opening montage, where Catherine (as a child) is told horrifying stories of the brutality of past Russian rulers, is stunning, both for the fairly explicit scenes of torture and the bizarre transition at the end, looking up the skirts of the adult Catherine as she sails back and forth on a gigantic swing. The palace sets are lush, filled with carvings (often on the furniture itself) of grotesque and oversized human figures and shot with lots of light and shadows. Sam Jaffe, as Peter III, looks like the idiot child of Harpo Marx and Rose Marie. Dietrich is fabulous, coming off as wide-eyed and innocent in the beginning, and wise, crafty, and sensuous by the end (it's obvious how much Madonna has been influenced by Dietrich's look and manner in this film). The rather hunky John Lodge plays her first post-marriage lover and Louise Dresser is fun as the obnoxious mother. The finale, with dozens of men on horses stampeding around inside the palace, is truly almost a sexual climax. There's lots more to say about the movie, but nothing can substitute for the delirious experience of seeing it.

REMEMBER? (1939)

This is a cute little comedy of romantic reconciliation with a rather silly gimmick (an amnesia potion), but a cast strong enough to carry it over its rough spots. It's not manic enough to be screwball, but some of screwball's plot conventions show up. Lew Ayres goes on vacation and meets Greer Garson; they fall in love, return home, and decide to marry. All that happens before the movie's first scene, which has Ayres arranging for his best friend (and co-worker) Robert Taylor to meet Garson over lunch. Somewhat improbably, Taylor and Garson fall for each other at first sight and eventually elope. Ayres takes it in stride (again, a bit improbably) and there's even an interesting suggestion that they might work things out as something of a menage a trois; if this had been a pre-Code film or a play by Noel Coward, they might well have done so! But, this being a mainstream MGM comedy, we're just meant to think that they're being very Three-Musketeersish about it all, remaining friendly despite Taylor winning Garson's hand.

But it's only half over. Six months go by and Taylor's workaholic tendencies have irritated Garson to the point where she initiates a separation and impending divorce. Ayres slips them an amnesia potion (we're meant to think that a drug company has actually developed one intended for public consumption!) and the pair forget everything that happened over the last six months, leading us back to the situation at the beginning of the film, with Ayres, Taylor, and Garson all meeting at lunch again. Ayres engineers things so they'll work out better this time.

The actors put this half-thought-through whimsey over quite well and make this an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes. Taylor is handsome, Ayres is charming and Garson is lighter than air, presenting a very different persona from the later roles that made her famous. A substantial sideplot involving Garson's rich family allows Billie Burke and Reginald Owen to shine. Burke especially is wonderful with her usual befuddled mannerisms. Henry Travers, Sara Haden, and Laura Hope Crews have small parts, and an older actor named Richard Carle is fun as the stone-deaf boss of Ayres and Taylor; it's a one-joke part that, amazingly, doesn't get too stale over the course of the film.

LITTLE MISS THOROUGHBRED (1936)

This is the kind of movie (horses, racetracks, kids) that I usually avoid, but I watched it because it features Ann Sheridan in a fairly early starring role. It's a horse-racing story reminiscent of a Damon Runyon tale. Little Janet Chapman plays an orphan who dreams at night of a father; the other orphans make fun of her (I kept expecting her to break out into a rousing chorus of "Tomorrow"), so she leaves one day to find her dad. Gambler John Litel winds up claiming her in order to get out of a speeding ticket; he, the girl, his buddy (Frank McHugh), and their neighbor (Ann Sheridan) become a kind of impromptu family, though the whole time Litel just wants to ditch the kid, but because it seems that she brings him luck at the horse races, he keeps her around. Eventually, of course, there's a happy ending when Litel has a change of heart and decides to keep Janet for good.

Sheridan is very good and so is McHugh, who I always like. Chapman is certainly no Shirley Temple or Margaret O'Brien, and her career went nowhere. Her line readings seem rather amateurish, even compared with the other bit-part orphans. But Litel is the real "weakest link" in this movie. He played lots of supporting parts in the 30's and 40's, most notably perhaps as Nancy Drew's father, but obviously he was not cut out for stardom. He looks uncomfortable around not only the kid, but Sheridan as well, although he and McHugh work up some comic chemistry. There were a couple of strange scene transitions where it seemed as though the last line of a scene was missing, even though I saw this on TCM which usually shows complete prints. It's nice and short, so it doesn't wear out its welcome, and Sheridan made it worthwhile.

THE BIG HOUSE (1930)

This apparently set the mold for all later prison dramas. I usually avoid films set in prison (I haven't even seen THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), but the prison-movie cliches are so prevalent that I know most of them, and practically all of them are in this movie: stool pigeons, the gruff but well-intentioned warden, the cafeteria scene, solitaire, the guy too soft for prison life, and the breakout. At the time, they weren't cliches, but they do help to date the movie to a certain degree. The saving grace here is the acting. As much as I like Chester Morris, this movie confirms an observation about him that I had some time ago--I don't know if it's his acting or his roles, but even when he's the star of a movie, he usually gets overshadowed by someone else. He doesn't have enough to do in ALIBI and FIVE CAME BACK; other stars steal his spotlight in RED-HEADED WOMAN and PUBLIC HERO #1. In this one, Wallace Beery (a notorious scene-stealer) winds up making more of an impression despite having a slightly smaller role. The plot centers on Morris as a forger in prison who, just as he's about to be released, gets framed for a major rule infraction and is put in solitaire. When he comes out, he escapes, meets and falls for a girl, then is caught and tossed back in prison just in time to play a crucial part in a Thanksgiving Day breakout. Despite Morris's central role as "hero," the movie begins from the point of view of Robert Montgomery, a pampered rich boy who killed someone in a drunk driving accident and is put in the same cell as Morris and Beery (a hardened murderer). The prison code is exemplified in the behavior of the three. Morris knows how to survive and remain human; Beery's too hot-headed for his own good (though despite his crude and violent behavior, we do have some sympathy for him); Montgomery can't learn how to play by the rules and it's not long before we know he'll come to no good. (Leila Hyams, the only woman in the story, is the girl Morris falls for--who is also Montgomery's sister, in a plot twist that doesn't really have a payoff.) The violent breakout scene is very well handled, although the film drags a bit in getting to the climax. Morris looks good as always, especially in a couple of scenes where his usually greased-back hair is allowed to look more natural.

BOMBSHELL (1933)

I've always liked Jean Harlow as a personality, but in BOMBSHELL, she proves she can really act. Like many screwballish comedies, the movie wears out its welcome about halfway through, but Harlow more than carries the picture. She has some very good long-take scenes where she rises to wonderful pitches of anger or hysteria. She was only 22 when she made this film; I seriously doubt that any of today's actresses could give such a solid performance at that age--Paltrow? No. Cameron Diaz? No. Bullock or Roberts? I don't think so.

It also does some interesting stuff with self-reference that wasn't done much back then. The plot, about a star who lives with her leeching family and puts up with an overactive agent, has some reference points in common with Harlow's own life (especially the family situation). There's also a scene where the Harlow character, an actress named Lola Burns, is reshooting a scene in a movie to placate the Hays code folks. If I heard correctly, they call the movie RED DUST and mention Clark Gable, and the scene she re-shoots is reminiscent of a real scene she did in that real movie.

Other quick notes about it: I think I don't much like Lee Tracy, or maybe it's just that I always see him play unlikeable characters. His character is hateful, but we're supposed to like him by the end--I did not. And there were a few racy jokes, the best one involving Louise Beavers, as Harlow's maid. She comes in wearing an evening wrap instead of a negligee, telling Harlow that her negligee had "got all torn up" the other night. Harlow replies, "You're mighty hard on your negligees on your days off." Beavers smiles. In acknowledging that servants (and black women in particular) had sex lives, it was ahead of its time. The presence of some solid supporting players (Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone, Una Merkel) is also a plus.

SOUTH PACIFIC (1958)

Years ago, I saw the pan & scan version of this on cable and I didn't much care for it. This morning, I gave it another chance with the letterboxed DVD. Visually, with its beautiful natural settings and lovely Technicolor cinematography, I found the widescreen version to be a feast for the eye, but my overall opinion of the movie didn't change much. It's basically two love stories that take place during WWII on a South Pacific island where a bunch of sailors are waiting for war action (and wishing for some "dame" action). Nurse Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor), a naive young woman from Little Rock, falls for a worldly French civilian (Rossano Brazzi). When she finds out that he has two half-Polynesian children from a previous marriage, she freaks out and the romance is threatened. Similarly, Lt. Cable (John Kerr), a naive young man from Philadelphia, falls for a Tonganese woman (France Nuyen). When their talk of marriage (mostly done through her mother since the Nuyen character speaks no English) gets serious, he freaks out and the romance is threatened. This time around, I was impressed with the dramatic structure and how the two romance stories came together in the last third of the film. But the acting sinks the movie. Mitzi Gaynor and Ray Walston (who plays a conniving sailor) are pretty good; everyone else with a speaking part is pretty terrible. Brazzi is miscast and Kerr is just hopeless--I never believed for one minute that he was in the armed forces, or that he was in love with Nuyen (Harry Connick Jr. was much better in the recent TV version). Another hindrance to the performances is the poor dubbing; most of the leads except Gaynor have their singing dubbed by someone else, and even when they're saying their own dialogue, it's often dubbed, just as poorly. For some reason, the dialogue dubbing of Kerr and Juanita Hall (as Bloody Mary) is especially bad.

The message of the need to overcome prejudice is a noble one, but the song that carries this message most directly ("You've Got to Be Carefully Taught") is bizarrely upbeat and doesn't play out well. The rest of the music is fine, and the letterboxing allows us to see lots more shirtless men during the "Nothing Like a Dame" number---I'm now a member of the Ken Clark fan club. For a movie that is relentless about "opening up" the material for a more realistic look, it seems odd that the climaxes of the love stories (involving a tragic death and a heroic rescue) are played off-screen. Tom Laughlin, who later played Billy Jack, is good in a small part at the beginning and end as a pilot. Ron Ely, TV's Tarzan, is seen as a navigator. And the Technicolor is truly gorgeous, except for those weird experimental shots involving color filters that were supposed to enhance the emotional mood of the songs. They don't.

THE TIME, THE PLACE AND THE GIRL (1946)

I saw Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson star together in IT'S A GREAT FEELING, a sort of Hollywood in-joke movie where the two play themselves trying to make a movie. They had good chemistry together, but they tended to be overwhelmed by the star cameos (lots of Warners' stars including Joan Crawford, Ann Sheridan, Sydney Greenstreet, and Edward G. Robinson). This movie, made a few years earlier, is a much better showcase for them as a light musical-comedy team. The plot is a variation on the old fashioned "Gold Diggers/Let's put on a musical!" movies. In this case, the film begins as Morgan and Carson are attempting to open a nightclub, which is situated next door to the home of a famous conductor (S. Z. 'Cuddles' Sakall). The club is shut down by Sakall's manager (Donald Woods) because he assumes Sakall will object to the loud swing music. It turns out that Sakall and his opera-singing granddaughter (Martha Vickers) actually like the club, but the manager, who is a prissy cold fish rather incredibly engaged to Vickers, gets it closed anyway. They all work together to put on a musical and the manager and Sakall's wife (Florence Bates) try to stop that, too. The first half-hour is the most fun, as we get to know the characters. Janis Paige and Angela Greene are the two lead female singers who get into various romantic entanglements. Alan Hale is a rich Texan who pops in and out of the movie when appropriate. As the somewhat far-fetched complications piled up in the last half, I got bored with the plot and only stuck with it for the actors and the music.

The numbers are better than one might expect from a 40's Warners musical. One song, "A Gal in Calico" (danced by women dressed up as cows, sort of), was nominated for an Oscar, but I preferred the first song, "I Happened to Walk Down First Street." In "A Thousand Dreams," a classical pianist and his piano levitate while he plays. In a nifty inside joke, a woman sees Sakall in the nightclub and calls him "Cuddles," which befuddles him. There's an amusing bit involving an attempt to define "canoodling," a term I've loved ever since I saw THE MUSIC MAN. The hip vs. classical plot complication, rather cliche even then, gets a nice twist when Sakall joins in on a jam session with his flute. Morgan and Carson are fun together--there's even a running gag that casts aspersions on their heterosexuality (and the movie ends with them kissing each other, not their respective girlfriends). I'm sorry they didn't star in more light musicals like this one. Very fun, for at least two-thirds of the running time.

THE LOST WEEKEND (1945)

I had long avoided this movie because of its reputation as one of the first serious Hollywood treatments of a "social problem," alcoholism. I assumed it would be dated and overly melodramatic. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. I'm still not a fan of Ray Milland, but he did a good job with the unlikeable character of an alcoholic writer who falls rather spectacularly off the wagon one weekend, betraying both his brother (Philip Terry) and girlfriend (Jane Wyman). The opening is great: Milland and Terry are packing to go away (with Wyman) to the country for what is supposed to be a restful reward for Milland having stayed sober for an extended period of time. Milland seems a bit nervous, and it turns out that he has a bottle of booze hanging out the window; he's waiting for the right time to reel it in and surreptitiously pack it for the trip. He's caught, however, and things spiral out of control for Milland from there until he hits rock bottom and decides to kill himself. Milland never descends into sloppy and obvious exaggeration--he is quite believable most of the way through as a drunk. Howard Da Silva is good as a sympathetic bartender who, nevertheless, can't bring himself to cut Milland off.

There are two scenes that stand out. One involves Milland desperately combing the city looking for a pawn shop that's open to get money for alcohol (it turns out it's Yom Kippur), and the other is when he's thrown into a drunk ward at a sanitarium. Frank Faylen, the friendly taxi driver in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, plays a snippy, effeminate attendant who gives Milland a hard time. It's a short but memorable scene. A later scene where we see what Milland sees when he gets the DT's is a bit laughable at first, with a mouse poking out of a hole in the wall and a bat flapping about the room, but when the bat attacks the mouse, it *is* a startling and effective moment. The ending is a bit pat, with the promise of Wyman's love saving Milland--they've been dating for months, so why did it take so long? Wyman doesn't have much to do and gives a rather bland performance; Philip Terry is better (with a slightly better part) but also suffers from lack of screen time. But overall, a good movie that is not nearly as dated as I was afraid it would be.

MISSISSIPPI MERMAID (1969)

I'd read the Cornell Woolrich novel that this movie was based on ("Waltz Into Darkness") and liked it a lot. Last summer, another movie from the same book was released, ORIGINAL SIN with Antonio Bandaras, but I didn't read a single good review of it, so I finally tracked this one down. It's flawed, especially compared to the novel, but well worth watching. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a rich tobacco grower who marries a mail-order bride (Catherine Deneuve), then begins to suspect that she's not exactly who she says she is. A mildly perverse cat-and-mouse game begins. Belmondo does a good job of being convincing as someone who might need a mail-order bride--even though I didn't see the recent version, I wondered why on earth Banderas couldn't find a woman on his own. Deneuve is lovely and mysterious, though not quite as tough-as-nails as I imagined the character from the novel. At a full two hours, this drags some in the last third, and the French atmosphere is not as evocative as the New Orleans setting of the book, and the ending isn't quite right, but I'm glad I got a chance to see it.

NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH (1940)

This relatively unsung film is great fun and should be better known. In atmosphere, it's a lot like Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES, but I actually think it's better. It involves the same producers, same writers, and a few of the same actors, but it's directed by Carol Reed. Like LADY, it's a spy thriller with a fairly light atmosphere, some unconvincing but nevertheless charming use of miniature sets, and a few scenes set in the snow. A scientist is smuggled out of Prague just as the Nazis come marching in. His daughter (Margaret Lockwood) is thrown into a concentration camp but escapes with the help of a fellow inmate (Paul Henreid, in one of his earliest English language films). They make it to England where the father is being protected by British agent Rex Harrison, but due to a major few snafus, they all wind up back in Germany, trying to make one last escape just as England enters the war. One major character is not what he or she appears to be; it's given away early in the movie, but the revelation scene is too much fun to be spoiled here--I gasped out loud when it happened.

The mood throughout is light and exciting with lots of humor and throwaway jokes. Caldecott and Charters (Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford), the stodgy, unflappable, comic relief Brits from LADY who talk incessantly about golf and cricket, reappear here with even bigger roles. In fact, they play an important part in the climactic action. The pace never slows down, which hinders character development a bit, but that's not a huge loss. Harrison even gets to sing a little bit. I liked it so much, I watched it twice in one day.

MAISIE (1939)

This is the first of the long series of movies about the adventures of a lively young chorus girl with a hard exterior but a good heart. In this one, big city Maisie (Ann Sothern), stranded out west, finagles her way into a job at a ranch, working for Robert Young, who himself manages the farm for Ian Hunter. She keeps getting under Young's skin and just as he is determined to get rid of her, Hunter and his wife (Ruth Hussey) show up and Maisie ingratiates herself with them, becoming Hussey's personal maid. Up to now, the movie has been a light romantic tale--you know that Young and Sothern will eventually hit it off. But suddenly, a tale of adultery unfolds with Hussey being a hussy and slipping off to carry on an affair with Anthony Allan. Things take a melodramatic turn involving suicide and mistaken murder charges, but Maise rights things in the end. Given the code rules against depictions of suicide, I was surprised they were as explicit as they were here--we don't see the actual act, but we see the dead body moments later, and it's not explained away as accidental. I liked Young better here than in most of the other B-films I've seen him in; he seemed less callow and more serious, although his acting was actually more relaxed. Hussey was good in a fairly thankless "bad girl" role. It was OK, but it didn't make me want to search out any of the others in the series.

CLEOPATRA (1934)

What a delight! I'd seen bits and pieces of this over time and had no real interest in watching the whole thing until I read a positive review online some time ago. I'm glad I went back to it. In the beginning, it has that feeling of a hopelessly dated historical epic which more or less sunk THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII for me. But if you stick with it long enough, and accept the sometimes dated look and acting mannerisms, Cecil B. DeMille comes through with flying colors.I've only seen two other DeMille pictures, SIGN OF THE CROSS and the 1956 TEN COMMANDMENTS (I think I've seen most of his silent TEN COMMANDMENTS as well, but I don't remember much about it). CLEOPATRA feels very much like a Biblical epic, even though it has nothing to do with the Bible that I know of. Claudette Colbert is Cleopatra--it took a while to get used to her. Sometimes, she plays it like a Sex Kitten of the Nile and goes a little over the top, but as with the look of the movie, I got used to her fairly quickly. Warren William is Caesar, her first Roman conquest. Even though he shaved his mustache off, I still saw him as an amoral business executive (a la EMPLOYEE'S ENTRANCE & SKYSCRAPER SOULS) in togas. The supporting cast is fine, with the reliable C. Aubrey Smith (and his eyebrows), Irving Pichel, and Joseph Schildkraut in small roles.

The standout aside from Colbert is Henry Wilcoxon as Marc Antony. IMDb says he played supporting parts in MRS. MINIVER and TEN COMMANDMENTS, but I don't remember him. However, he made a strong impression in this film: he's rather sexy with a solid build and handsome features. His highlight is when he's seduced by Cleopatra in a fabulous sequence set on her barge. It's played like a musical number, complete with dancers and trumpets and swirling drapes and phallic symbols, and the definite pre-Code implication of sex that would probably not have been possible a year later. I got quite caught up in the storyline--this is the first time I've ever been clear about what Cleopatra is famous for, although I assume gargantuan liberties were taken with history (though we do get Warren William getting his on the Ides of March, muttering, "You too, Brutus?"). The sets and costumes are first-rate all the way through, and DeMille's camera is far from static. Highly recommended.

PENTHOUSE (1933)

Leonard Maltin gives this one three and a half stars and calls it a neglected gem. I didn't feel quite so positively toward it, but it is a must for Myrna Loy fans. The set-up is presented at unnecessary length and in a rather convoluted manner. Suffice to say that Warner Baxter is a rich and famous lawyer who has just gotten gangster Nat Pendleton off on a murder charge. We're to believe that Pendleton was indeed innocent, but that he nevertheless has a history of crime in his past. But he's sort of a low-level gangster with a heart of gold and he's so grateful to Baxter that he assigns bodyguards to him night and day, just for the heck of it. Because Baxter won't promise not to represent such shady characters in the future, his law firm fires him and his fiancee dumps him all in the same day.

Then things get complicated. Basically, his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend (Phillips Holmes) is accused of the murder of *his* ex-girlfriend (Mae Clarke). We see the events leading up to the murder, on a penthouse balcony during a big party, and eventually we discover that the boyfriend has been set up by a big-time gangster (C. Henry Gordon). Baxter's ex begs him to defend the boyfriend. In the course of things, Baxter is set up with call girl Myrna Loy; they take a shine to each other and she helps him get the goods on Gordon. The movie is described in film guides as a comedy and is sometimes compared to THE THIN MAN, but don't you believe it. Despite the murder and mayhem, the proceedings do remain light, but it's really stretching it to call it a comedy. It gets rather bogged down in the middle; Loy is the reason I stuck with it. Pendleton is good and so is Charles Butterworth as Baxter's butler; both provide nice moments of comic relief. At 90 minutes, it feels a bit too long.

5 FINGERS (1952)

A spy thriller based on truth (although apparently quite embellished by Joseph Mankiewicz, the director and co-writer). James Mason is very good as a valet for a high-level British diplomat in Turkey during WWII. For money (not ideology), he sells top-secret documents to the Germans, although they wind up being afraid to use any of the information for fear that he might be a double agent. I wonder if Mason was playing one of the earliest of the Hollywood anti-heroes; ultimately, Mason does get punished, but there are no dashing heroic figures on the side of the Allies (except Michael Rennie, who doesn't get a chance to make much of an impression). Though not exactly admirable, Mason's character is sly and unflappable. A femme fatale of sorts (Danielle Darrieux) creates most of the intrigue. A wonderfully Hitchcockian scene late in the movie involving a tripped fuse and a maid with a vacuum cleaner had me tense.

PICCADILLY JIM (1936) & My Robert Montgomery Problem

Sometimes, I like Robert Montgomery, sometimes I don't. This movie, based on a story by PG Wodehouse, falls in his negative column for me. Montgomery is a cartoonist (an American living in England) who falls in love, rather on a whim, with a young lady. It turns out that she is the niece of a woman that Montgomery has been making fun of in his comic strip. Complications ensue. At almost 100 minutes, it's way too long to keep up its whimsical tone. The supporting cast is wonderful, with Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, and Robert Benchley all doing nice work. Eric Blore really saves the day as Montgomery's butler--he is perhaps at his very best here. He steals every scene he's in, even when he's competing with Frank Morgan. The female lead, Madge Evans, is rather bland, and Cora Witherspoon, as her mother, gets a bit shrill after a while.

But the real problem is Montgomery. He just is not able to pull off the charm needed to make his character sympathetic. He sees Evans at a nightclub (while he's quite drunk) and immediately and rather improbably falls head over heels for her. His pursuit of her would be called "stalking" today; a different actor (or maybe Montgomery working with better material) could have pulled it off, but the more the movie went on, the more I wanted Montgomery to just fall off the face of the earth, and wanted Blore, Morgan, and Burke to take over all the parts. When Evans finally gives in, it's for no good purpose at all except that the damned movie had to come to an end sometime! When I look back on Montgomery's movies, I realize that I frequently have this problem with his leading romantic parts--and the more whimsical or lighthearted he is supposed to be, the worse it is: BUT THE FLESH IS WEAK, TROUBLE FOR TWO, MYSTERY OF MR. X. I guess I like him best when he's not the leading character (THE DIVORCEE) or in a different genre. I liked him very much as Lord Peter Whimsey in BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON, and I also liked him in FAST AND LOOSE and NIGHT MUST FALL. But I'm seeing an unpleasant pattern when it comes to his lighter, earlier films.

FAITHFUL IN MY FASHION (1946)

This was another interesting B-comedy that tried hard but couldn't quite overcome a small budget and less than top-notch writing. Tom Drake is a soldier who returns from the war to the department store at which he worked (in the shoe department), expecting to find his old girlfriend (Donna Reed) who worked in the stock room--she's still at the store, but now she's a buyer and she's unofficially engaged to someone else. An artificial time constaint is put in place (he's only home for two weeks, then he has to go back to a miltary hospital for tests before he's done with his wartime duties) so that Reed and their friends in the shoe department (Edward Everett Horton, Spring Byington, Margaret Hamilton) try to keep his illusions intact to give him a lovely two weeks. Of course, Reed falls back in love with Drake.

The plot is full of holes and underdeveloped ideas--we are told much more than we are shown about the background of the couple and about Reed's current situation. The pleasures here are mostly in the supporting cast. Byington comes off best. Horton was getting a bit long in the tooth for his befuddled whimsey, but he's still fun to watch. It's nice to see Hamilton playing a modern-dress part, although she is underused. Harry Davenport (looking like Death personified--and two years away from his own real death at the age of 83) gives a nicely understated performance as Drake's great-grandfather who helps to bring the two together. A scene with Horton getting "fried to his eyeballs" on the town with some friends (and trying to make sure that Reed and Drake's date is successful) comes close to buidling a SHOP AROUND THE CORNER atmosphere, but the film can't begin to touch Lubitsch. One last note: this was the same year Reed broke through in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE; it's two years after Drake was in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, but he actually looks younger in this film.

TWO B-COMEDIES: RICH MAN, POOR GIRL (1938) & CURTAIN CALL (1940)

Both of these are examples of movies that might have been better with bigger budgets or a little more care taken in the writing or acting. RICH MAN, POOR GIRL starts out like a rip-off of YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. Robert Young is the rich businessman in love with his secretary, Ruth Hussey. Hussey's family is poor and eccentric, and includes Lana Turner as her jitterbugging sister and Lew Ayers as a politically inclined brother who can't hold a job. Guy Kibbee is good as always as the father. Young gets to know the family and, in a departure from YOU CAN'T, he becomes the eccentric one, threatening to give away all of his money, leading the family to help to commit him. Of course, a happy ending is in store. It's short (under 75 minutes), and like a lot of B-movies, feels rushed--the various plot threads get tied up too quickly or just get ignored. Young and Hussey aren't quite up to carrying the movie, but luckily the supporting cast is good, especially Ayers, doing a variation on his HOLIDAY role but more hyper and mostly sober.

The main point of interest in CURTAIN CALL is that it was scripted by Dalton Trumbo, later famous for being one of the blacklisted writers of the McCarthy era. The plot is similar to the one Mel Brooks later used for THE PRODUCERS: the producer and director of a Broadway show buy a really bad play in order to make a flop to hurt the career of their tempermental star who is about to sign a contract with a rival producer. The material seemed sound, but the acting was mediocre all around. Even though I'm not the kind of movie fan who worships stars, this movie, with virtually no star power at all, suffers because of that. Alan Mowbray and Donald MacBride are the scheming pair--they're OK, but they're both a bit old for the parts and rather listless. I can imagine Robert Taylor or Dennis Morgan or Wayne Morris doing better jobs. Helen Vinson is the star and she's pretty good. Barbara Read plays the playwright, a naive young Midwest girl who thinks she's written a masterpiece. People keep telling her how bad the play is, but the light bulb never comes on. You just want to throttle her, though I'm not sure that's because of how the part was written or how it was played. Frank Faylen, the taxi driver in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, has a small but fun part as a PR guy named Spike.