CAVALCADE (1933)
THIS HAPPY BREED (1944)

These two movies are both based on plays by Noel Coward, both celebrate the British and their way of life, and both are structured in a very theatrical fashion, each as a parade of episodes spanning a number of years in the life of a family. CAVALCADE won the Best Picture Oscar, but has largely been forgotten, even dismissed by some critics as the worst movie to win the top prize. It is hardly that--BROADWAY MELODY is much harder to sit through, and for my money there are several later films that are less entertaining, such as LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA and CHARIOTS OF FIRE. It is, though, very much a product of its time. A concise plot summary is provided by a title card at the beginning: "This is the story of a home and a family--history as seen through the eyes of a wife and mother." An upper-class wife and mother (Diana Wynward), as it turns out, whom we first see toasting in the new century on New Year's Eve, 1899. She is nervous about her husband (Clive Brook) heading off to fight in the Boer War. Downstairs, the maid (Una O'Connor) is also upset about her husband, the butler (Herbert Mundin) doing the same thing. This theme of war worries remains a primary narrative thread, not a consistent pro or con view, but more an acknowledgment that war is a scourge of civilization that will never go away. The rest of the film consists of a series of short scenes that follow the fortunes of Wynward's family (and, when they overlap, the fortunes of O'Connor's as well) over the next 30 years. Both men return from war; Brook is knighted and Mundin buys a pub, taking O'Connor with him. The two women stay in touch for a while, as do the kids of the two families. By 1908, Mundin has let his regular customers get away with not paying, and turns to drink himself, coming to a tragic end. In 1912, Wynward's oldest son (John Warburton) goes off on his honeymoon which we discover at the end of the scene is on the Titanic. In 1914, her other son (Frank Lawton) goes off to WWI, but not before he falls in love with chorus girl Ursula Jeans who is O'Connor’s daughter. And so on, until the last scene, with an aged Wynward and Brook toasting in the year 1933. The stagy dialogue scenes are OK, though to today's viewers, they seem the epitome of the brittle British stiff-upper-lip stage melodramatics that have been so often parodied over the years. These sequences are interrupted by some fairly exciting montages, some created by renowned production designer William Cameron Menzies, mostly of the war and the Lost Generation era afterward. Wynward is a British Norma Shearer, or at least a version of Shearer's respectable wife persona of 1939's THE WOMEN; she's good, but sometimes a bit over-the-top in her suffering. The cast includes Bonita Granville (later to play Nancy Drew) and Margaret Lindsay. Almost every sequence has a musical number of one sort or another in the foreground or background, with the highlight coming late in the film when Jeans sings "20th Century Blues." [VHS]

Eleven years later, in the middle of WWII, David Lean directed an adaptation of Coward's THIS HAPPY BREED, basically a between-the-wars CAVALCADE which follows a middle-class family from the time they move into a suburban house in 1919 until they move out in 1939. The same structure is used, with a focus on Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons (Celia Johnson and Robert Newton) and their family and friends. A Christmas scene in 1925 sets up the primary relationships which are then tracked in a series of episodes that barrel through the 20's and 30's: one daughter (Kay Walsh) is in love with a neighboring sailor (John Mills) but also vaguely unhappy with her stifling middle-class life, and she runs away from home and takes up with a married man; another daughter (Eileen Erskine) falls for a political radical (Guy Verney) who softens into complacency over the years; the son (John Blythe), who falls under the influence of Verney early on, becomes a labor agitator and is in constant strife with his father until he too embraces middle-class values and gets married. We also get to know Mills' father (Stanley Holloway) who is an old friend and drinking buddy of Newton's, and a cranky spinster aunt who is constantly clashing with Johnson's cranky mother until she gets a vague form of religion. Despite having been made in the thick of WWII, war is not a theme here, though the march of time is marked by references to historical events (the death of King George) and pop culture (the Charleston, the rise of the talkies), and it winds up being lighter in tone than CAVALCADE, though the families still have occasional domestic tragedies. It's in color, and the acting is much less stagy than in the earlier film, but I still think CAVALCADE is a more entertaining film. The later breed may have been a bit happier, but the earlier breed was apparently more interesting. [TCM]

UNDER EIGHTEEN (1931)

Despite the rather salacious title, this is an average pre-Code melodrama about the romantic problems of working class girls. The film opens with the wedding of Anita Page and Norman Foster; he plans to hit the big time through his pool playing skills, but he doesn't have much else going for him and, sure enough a year later, the couple and their new baby have to move in with Page's widowed mother (Emma Dunn) and teenage sister (Marian Marsh of the title reference, though she actually seems much closer to 21 than 18). Marsh works as a seamstress and has a steady boyfriend, nice guy milkman Regis Toomey, but she's frustrated with her economic status and his lack of ambition. At the dress shop, Marsh sees rich, well dressed women every day and assumes they're happy--this theme of money and/or happiness is evoked frequently throughout the movie. Eventually, Toomey proposes, but by that time Marsh has attracted the attention of rich playboy Warren William and she begins imagining a life of ease with someone like him. When her sister's marriage collapses, Marsh asks Toomey for $200 to pay for Page to get a divorce. He hesitates and she angrily calls off the engagement, telling Toomey, "Any time I hand myself to a man for life, it's cash on delivery." At a party at William's swanky penthouse pad, complete with drunken rich folks leaping fully clothed into a pool to dive for jewels, he suggests she "take off [her] clothes and stay a while" (though he's actually suggesting that she change into a bathing suit) and she asks him for the $200. Toomey, who in the meantime has had a change of heart, arrives at the penthouse and has a scuffle with William which leads to a near tragedy, then a comically implausible happy ending for all, even for the troubled Page and Foster. Marsh, best known as Trilby opposite John Barrymore in SVENGALI, is beautiful and handles the role well, though as I noted earlier, she never seems to be under eighteen, and her age is never an issue anyway. William, as usual, is fine, but Toomey and Foster are even better in their quieter ways, though Foster's character, a passive loser who gives his wife a black eye, is a problematic one for today's viewers. The "decadent" pool party scene is the only thing that makes this stand out from the many other cautionary tales of the era. [TCM]

THE GAZEBO (1959)

This was an early entry in the "black comedy" genre, and though it may have seemed daring in its day, it feels rather dated now. The film starts with a murder, which we find out is actually part of a live TV drama being directed by a frantic Glenn Ford. His doctor tells him that stress is making him sick, but the doc doesn't know the half of it: Ford's about to take on the assignment of writing a movie for Alfred Hitchcock, and he's trying to figure out how to deal with a blackmailer who wants lots of money to turn over some old nudie shots of his wife (Debbie Reynolds) who has just become the toast of Broadway in a new musical. Ford thinks he'll have to sell their new, spacious suburban house (to which they are having a backyard gazebo added) to raise the money, and to get Reynolds (who is in the dark about the blackmail) to go along with his plan, he has started booby-trapping the house, mostly its plumbing system, so nothing is working like it should. When Ford asks friend (and district attorney) Carl Reiner, in the guise of needing to know for a script, how to deal with a blackmailer, Reiner suggests murder, and Ford decides to plot the perfect crime. He sets everything up one night, and does manage to shoot and kill a figure in the dark, though (in a genuinely funny sequence which includes a phone call from Hitchcock) most everything else goes wrong. He buries the body in the gazebo's foundation, then discovers the next day that the blackmailer was killed in his own apartment by someone else. Naturally, Ford wonders who the hell is buried in the gazebo, and soon, heavy rains and an eager construction crew threaten to bring evidence of Ford's crime to the surface. It's a comedy, so through some torturous, last-minute plot developments, it turns out that Ford didn't actually kill anyone, though there is indeed a dead body under the gazebo. Ford is front and center for almost every scene in the movie and he is mostly up to the task, though the writing sometimes lets him down, and the frantic pace of the film is a bit too much--it feels like Ford is working too hard at being "on" all the time, rather like James Cagney in his equally frantic turn in ONE TWO THREE. John McGiver is a construction worker who pronounces the title edifice, "gaze-bow," Martin Landau has a small role as a thug, and most amusing is Doro Merande as a shrieking maid. [TCM]

CHEERS FOR MISS BISHOP (1941)

I have a shocking lapse in my film buff background: I have yet to see all of GOODBYE MR. CHIPS; I've seen bits and pieces, maybe even an entire 20 minutes, but it's one of those movies I know so much about, I feel like I've seen it several times already so I never plunk myself down to watch the whole thing. However, I have now spent time with what is undoubtedly the female version of Mr. Chips in Miss Bishop and I feel even less inclined to view the original. This film covers fifty years in the life of the college English teacher of the title (Martha Scott) starting in the 1880's with Scott as a freshman at a newly established school, Midwestern University. Fired up by a speech given by college president Edmund Gwenn, Scott decides to become a teacher. Delivery boy William Gargan is sweet on her, but she puts him off to devote all her energy to her studies and then, after graduation, to her career teaching at Midwestern U. Her students, of course, all love her right away. One evening, while putting candy out on the roof to cool, she gets locked out and has to depend on the kindness of a passing stranger (Donald Douglas) to get back in. He's a lawyer, new in town, considered "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," but Scott falls for him anyway (much to Gargan's hidden dismay). Unfortunately, just before their marriage, he confesses that he's fallen in love with Scott's cousin (Mary Anderson) and he marries her instead. The humiliated Scott decides to leave town to take a job as a librarian, but when a pregnant Anderson returns home after her husband leaves her, then dies in childbirth, Scott stays to raise the child.

The movie skips the next 18 years, during which time I guess nothing at all happens to Scott (except the child grows up to become Marsha Hunt), and then she falls in love again, this time with new teacher Sidney Blackmer, who is in the midst of a divorce. However, that romance falls though as well. More years pass, Gwenn retires, Hunt marries and has a daughter (who goes to Midwestern U), and we're brought up to the present day at a surprise retirement dinner for Scott. Gargan has remained loyal to her even though it never seems like he gets much out their relationship, and the film ends (as it began before entering flashback mode) with Gargan and Scott going over old days. Scott is fine in what is basically a colorless role, as is Gargan, who despite co-star billing has little to do. Sterling Holloway plays the college gardener who is involved in a tedious running gag about his flower beds which keep getting trampled. Also with Dorothy Peterson, John Archer (father of actress Anne Archer), and Rosemary DeCamp in her first movie role. There are two quotes I enjoyed. One, which is the point of the movie, comes from a poem that Blackmer reads to Scott: "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another." The other comes from Scott when being ushered out to her surprise dinner and told she looks "snappy"; her curt reply: "I must above all things be 'snappy.'" A little more of that kind of bite would have made this movie more interesting. [TCM]

LADIES IN RETIREMENT (1941)

Because every plot summary I've read of this movie mentions two "nutty" or "batty" or "crazy" sisters, I had it in my head that this was a dark comedy on the order of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. It's dark, but it's not a comedy; it's more like the ARSENIC situation done in the style of a Gothic thriller like NIGHT MUST FALL. Ida Lupino is the housekeeper for a retired actress (Isobel Elsom) who lives in a quaint old cottage out on the moors. They have a good relationship, with Elsom saying she thinks of Lupino almost like a daughter, until Lupino gets word from London that her two nutty/batty/crazy sisters are about to get thrown out by their landlady. She brings them (Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett) to the cottage for what Elsom thinks is just a short visit which stretches into six unbearable weeks. The sisters aren't exactly dangerous, but they are definitely eccentric what with Lanchester constantly "cleaning" the moor, bringing twigs, dirt, and dead birds into the cottage and the more whimsical but still annoying Barrett fluttering about. The old lady issues an ultimatum and when Lupino balks, not wanting to dump her sisters in an institution, Elsom kicks them all out. Lupino, at the end of her rope, kills the old lady; she tells the sisters that she's bought the house from Elsom, and she tells the neighbors that Elsom's gone on an extended vacation. Enter Lupino's charming but ne'er-do-well nephew (Louis Hayward) who has embezzled money from a bank and needs a place to hide out. Lupino has no choice but to let him stay for a while, but when he begins putting two and two together and realizes that Elsom must be dead, a war of nerves ensues.

The film is rarely truly tense, but it is well paced and occasionally creepy, though a scene that involves the possible appearance of a ghost could have been handled better. Lupino is excellent from first to last, underplaying her part and making it all the more effective, and Lanchester matches her in a role quite different from any other I've seen her in. Evelyn Keyes does good work as Elsom's maid who gets drawn into a flirtatious relationship with Hayward, and Emma Dunn has a small role as a nun who pops in every so often as a plot device to announce one thing or another. The sets are very stagy but spectacularly atmospheric; the foggy moors look weird even in daylight, and the cottage seems cozy, lived in, quite inviting, and spooky all at once. The script is also stagy; like the film versions of NIGHT MUST FALL and the later WAIT UNTIL DARK, it's clear that this hews closely to the original play, but that's not a liability. There seems to be an interesting element about the relationship between Lupino and Hayward--a past flirtation or some such weirdness--that is only hinted at. The ending is, in my eyes, both too pat and a bit too ambiguous, possibly in order to satisfy the Production Code, but it doesn't ruin the film. This is another of those gems from the Columbia Pictures vault which has been out of circulation for a while, so if it crops up on TCM again, see it while you can. [TCM]

THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1959)

I found the Faulkner novel this movie is based on to be willfully difficult to little purpose, but some of the characters are memorable. The movie has little to do with the book's non-linear narrative, and does lots of messing around with the characters, but taken on its own, this is one of the better sweaty Southern family melodramas that seemed so popular in the late 50's. The opening is marred by some clunky narrated exposition introducing Quentin Compson, a wild child (apparently high school-age but as played by Joanne Woodward, looking at least as old as a college graduate) who has been raised by her uncle Jason (Yul Brynner), or more precisely her vaguely European step-uncle Jason, as no effort is made to hide Brynner's thick Russian accent. Living with them in a dilapidated mansion are Quentin's retarded brother Benjy (Jack Warden), her alcoholic Uncle Howard (John Beal), and their maid Dilsey (Ethel Waters) and her young grandson Luster (Stephen Perry) who is Benjy's unofficial caretaker. Quentin's mother Caddy (Margaret Leighton), who had Quentin out of wedlock, left her the day after she was born and periodically sends her money, most of which is "stolen" by Jason (though we learn later for a benevolent reason). The restless Quentin flirts with a hunky shirtless carnival worker (Stuart Whitman) and decides to go on the road with him until Jason scotches that plan by showing that Whitman is only in it for the money he thinks she's got. Caddy shows up out of the blue, looking for a place to stay and for a relationship with her daughter. Benjy, riled up inarticulately about Quentin's naughty ways, attacks her and gets sent to an asylum. Jason and Quentin seem to come to a respectful understanding at the end, though the incestuous vibe between them may lead a viewer to wonder.

Brynner, though on the surface no one's idea of a Southern patriarch, is really quite good; he seems awkward and unmoored at the start, but his performance gains strength along the way. He does a nice job of keeping us at an arm's length from the character; in the first half, when we're mostly seeing him through Quentin's eyes, he comes off as cruel and unfeeling, but as we slowly get more insight, he becomes more sympathetic. And he has hair, which helps to distance him from his earlier royal roles as the King of Siam and Rameses. In general, he comes off as a sort of dissolutely attractive and conflicted bully. He's probably not a Faulkner scholar's idea of Jason, but he does help make the movie interesting. Woodward, whom I usually love, isn't at her best here and I can't pinpoint why--maybe she's just overshadowed by others, particularly Leighton as her mother, who comes off a lot like Vivien Leigh playing Blanche DuBois, but with a little more backbone. Though the maid plays an important role in the book, Waters is reduced to just a few lines here and there. Several of the novel's famous setpieces (Dilsey going to church, Quentin climbing the tree) are only glancingly referred to here, almost as in-jokes for fans of the book. Whatever profundity people find in Faulkner won't be found here, but as a potboiler melodrama, this is entertaining enough, and a must for fans of Brynner. [FMC]

ALL MY SONS (1948)

I tend to like movies based closely on plays, even when they're a bit stagy, so I was predisposed to like this one, based on Arthur Miller's first hit play. It's a powerful family melodrama, though not as powerful as the play since, as Robert Osborne noted on TCM, Hollywood took out any references to the possibility that greed and corruption are inherent in the capitalist system, making it instead a story of one man's greed and corruption. When the film opens, WWII has been over for a while, though not so long that missing-in-action soldiers might not plausibly show up alive. Edward G. Robinson is a manufacturer, a self-made success, who made airplane parts during the war. His partner (Frank Conroy) was found guilty of knowingly shipping defective parts which resulted in the deaths of 21 American pilots and is still in jail; Robinson was exonerated. One of Robinson's sons (Burt Lancaster) is ready to take his spot in the family business; Larry, the other son, is officially MIA, but his mother (Mady Christians) is certain that he will show up one of these days, and everyone else tiptoes around the issue when in her earshot. Lancaster has fallen in love with Larry's fiancee (Louisa Horton), who is also the daughter of Robinson's disgraced partner, but Mom assumes that Horton will wait for Larry, and Robinson asks Lancaster to cool his jets for a while. Though Robinson is generally liked and respected in town, we see that some folks believe that he was just as guilty as Conroy, but that he was clever enough to stay out of jail. Not long after Lancaster awkwardly proposes to Horton, her brother (Howard Duff), a lawyer who has been digging into his father's case, shows up in town, sullen and distrustful of Robinson's family. The matronly Christians softens him up a bit, but Lancaster begins to doubt his own father's story (Robinson was supposedly sick and off work the day that the defective parts were shipped), so he goes to visit Conroy in prison where we get a flashback view of what really happened. It's no spoiler to note that Robinson indeed bears some responsibility for the shipment, but I won't give away the machinations that lead to the tragic climax, which is played out very powerfully by Robinson in perhaps the strongest acting of his career. Even though I figured out what was coming, Robinson moved me to tears. The character is a bit like a Scrooge figure who figures out his lesson ("Mankind should have been my business!") too late for redemption. I enjoyed one throwaway line from a secondary character: "Sleep's a wonderful thing--best thing about living." A few years ago I would have laughed at that, but now I can appreciate it. The cast also includes Arlene Francis (the stalwart "What's My Line" panelist) and Harry Morgan as chatty neighbors who are mostly present to provide exposition. Lancaster, Christians, and Duff are fine, Horton a little less so, but it's Robinson's game all the way and he's reason enough to seek this gem out, which Universal issued on VHS but not yet on DVD. Now if only Columbia would unearth the rarely-seen 1951 film adaptation of Miller's "Death of a Salesman." [TCM]

TORTILLA FLAT (1942)

This relatively plotless, light-hearted drama is based on what I understand is a relatively plotless, light-hearted book by John Steinbeck, a collection of vignettes about the folks who live in an impoverished neighborhood in Monterey, California. In the movie, most of the characters are poor Mexican-Americans, played almost entirely by Anglo actors. John Garfield is a roughneck youth, led astray by the older Spencer Tracy who, in the opening, helps get Garfield out of jail but proceeds to basically ruin the lad's life, financially and romantically. Garfield inherits two houses on Tortilla Flat from a dead grandfather and due to Tracy, both wind up burned to the ground, events which are taken rather lightly by Tracy and his gang of ne'er-do-wells. Both actors are fine, though I found Tracy's character totally unlikeable (and I'm pretty sure he's not supposed to be). Most everyone seems like they belong in a Damon Runyon story, and your tolerance for Runyonesque atmosphere may well determine how much you like this film. Hedy Lamarr does what she can with the underwritten role of a sexy but sweet homegirl. Frank Morgan is fun, hiding behind a thick, fake-looking beard as a dog-loving, St. Francis-worshipping eccentric who winds up, at least briefly, in Tracy's orbit. There is solid support from Sheldon Leonard, Akim Tamiroff, Allen Jenkins, and Connie Gilchrist. The whole thing suffers from being a bit too studio-bound; it might work better today as an small indie effort, and in fact this film's atmosphere feels a lot like that of the 80's film version of Steinbeck's CANNERY ROW which, while not an indie effort, could pass for one. [TCM]

SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955)

An uncharacteristically light Ingmar Bergman film, pretty much the polar opposite of one of his more typical "heavier" films (like WINTER LIGHT). This was turned into a Stephen Sondheim musical (A Little Night Music) and it served as a direct model for Woody Allen's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY. It's a frisky romantic roundabout in which all the mismatched partners eventually find happiness. Fredrik (Gunnar Bjornstrand) takes his very young wife Anna (Ulla Jacobsson) to the theater to see famed actress Desiree (Eva Dahlbeck), who also happens to be Fredrik's former mistress (and whose name he blurted out earlier during an unsuccessful bout of lovemaking with Anna, who is still a virgin after 2 years of marriage). Henrik, Fredrik's mopey son from a previous marriage (Bjorn Bjelvenstam) who is half-heartedly studying for the clergy, clearly has a thing for Anna but isn't above a little dallying with the maid (Harriet Andersson). Fredrik visits Desiree after the show and as they reminisce and bicker about old days (Fredrik discovers that Desiree's young son may be his), her current lover, the martinet Count Malcolm (Jarl Kulle) arrives and threatens to instigate a duel, no matter that Malcolm is himself married. Desiree gets her mother to invite the whole bunch to a weekend house party at which they are all served wine supposedly spiked with "breast milk and stallion seed" which apparently serves as a kind of honesty/love potion. Through the night, the unsettled couples go through a series of incidents which has the effect of getting everyone settled again, albeit in different combinations than those in which they arrived. The film is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, and indeed touches on serious adult relationship issues, but it is amusing and even whimsical. There are some notable one-liners, or as close as Bergman gets to giving us one-liners. When Desiree is catching up with Fredrik, she tells him, "I’ve been 29 for three years which is nothing for a woman of my age." Irritated with Fredrik's apparent placidity, she yells, "I wish just once you'd shatter to the core, so much so that not a fart was left." Later, the pompous Count Malcolm announces to Fredrik, "I can tolerate my wife's infidelity, but if anyone touches my mistress, I become a tiger." The black and white cinematography is lovely, especially in depicting the long bright summer Swedish night which serves as the backdrop for the last half of the film. [DVD]

THE SOUTHERNER (1945)

Before I saw this film on Turner Classic Movie's schedule, I had never heard of it, or at least it had never made a blip on my movie radar. From the title and the presence of actor Zachary Scott, best known as an effete cad in films like MILDRED PIERCE and FLAMINGO ROAD, I was expecting a Southern Gothic campfest, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Instead, it's a beautifully filmed, well-acted drama which focuses on a poor sharecropping family--it's a less self-consciously artsy GRAPES OF WRATH. Scott and Betty Field play a couple with two kids who are barely eking out a living as migrant cotton pickers. When his uncle collapses in the field, his dying words are, "Grow your own crops," so Scott arranges with his boss to rent a patch of idle land to farm, though first they have to put all their time, effort, and what little money they have into rebuilding the rickety house. The film consists of short episodes following the family through their first year, autumn through summer. Things start out tough and get tougher; in addition to the hard labor, chilly weather, and insufficient food, they also have to contend with Scott's incredibly cranky grandmother (Beulah Bondi) who keeps needling him about not living up to his manly ancestors. In the winter, Bondi has to give up part of her blanket to make a coat for the little girl so she can go to school in the cold. In the spring, their boy develops a serious skin disorder due to a lack of fruits, vegetables, and milk in his diet. A neighbor (J. Carroll Naish) develops a confrontational relationship with the family, worried that their success will somehow diminish his long-fought-for status as top dog in the nearby community. When Naish's animals destroy Scott's vegetable garden, a near-fatal brawl ensues. At harvest time, things seem to be looking up for the family, and when Scott's mother (Blanche Yurka) marries the local grocer (Percy Kilbride, best known as Pa Kettle), the whole town celebrates, but that night a huge storm hits and floods out Scott's cotton (and his diary cow). Scott hits rock bottom and is ready to join a pal in turning to factory work, but his family inspires him to keep trying.

The main thing that makes this film stand out is the way it usually undercuts cliches or heavy-handed symbolism. You expect Scott to eventually smooth things over with Naish, and he does, but not until they've gone through hard-fought battles of both words and fists. I kept waiting for Naish's daughter (Noreen Nash) to seduce Scott (as happens in a similar film, OUR DAILY BREAD), but it never happens. I also kept waiting for Bondi to die, of age or illness or just plain meanness, especially after we see her talk about the future while using a hand fan imprinted with the logo of a local undertaker, but to the film's credit, that never happens, either. She does soften her stance a bit, but remains mostly a nasty ol' cuss right to the last shots of the film. Directed by Jean Renoir, much of the film has a documentary feel, occasionally reminding me of the look of THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS, which helps it retain a fairly gritty tone. Scott is a revelation here; he's quietly strong, a bit like Henry Fonda, but there are times when he seems just about beaten, or when we question his judgment; even in the end, we're not sure that his family will make it. Oddly, despite being grimy and dressed in mostly the same dirty dungarees all through the film, he's also sort of sexy, and in general he's a much more appealing figure than I've ever seen him be. It's a shame his career led him into a rut of slimy bad guys. Field, perhaps best known as the doomed sexpot of the 1939 OF MICE AND MEN, is fine and the two feel right together. Norman Lloyd (Dr. Auschlander on St. Elsewhere) has a small role as a somewhat feeble-minded nephew of Naish's. Bondi is practically the archetype of the shrill, shrewish granny, and her performance is all the more interesting when you realize that just one year later, she would embody the opposite archetype, the sweet, wise granny, as Mrs. Bailey in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. This may not be a great movie, but it deserves to be better known and more widely circulated. See it if you can. [TCM]

GOOD NEWS (1947)

The archetypal college musical (c.f. TOO MANY GIRLS and COLLEGE SWING): glossy, colorful, and filled with catchy songs. Fall semester 1927 is in full swing at Tait College. Peter Lawford, the football star, is hot for new transfer student Patricia Marshall, who is actually a gold digging socialite interested only in men who come from money. June Allyson, working her way through college as a librarian, is talked into helping Lawford learn French to impress Marshall so she'll go to the big dance with him, even though she's superficially smitten with the Rich Man on Campus, Robert Strickland. Along the way, Lawford and Allyson fall for each other and when he finally realizes that he has no chance with Marshall, he asks Allyson to the dance, but when Marshall thinks (erroneously) that Lawford is rich, she weasels her way in as his date, leaving Allyson dateless. When the unhappy Lawford flunks his French class, he can't play in the big game until he retakes the test, and once again Allyson is called upon to help tutor him for good old Tait. This time, things work out so there's a happy ending for Lawford and Allyson. There's also a romantic triangle subplot involving Allyson's best friend, Joan McCracken, the musclebound lug who has claimed her as his property (Loren Tindell), and the skinny but sweet football hero-wannabe (Ray McDonald) who McCracken actually wants.

The musical numbers are all fun, especially a cute novelty song called "The French Lesson" and the big finale, "The Varsity Drag," but the main reason for watching is the presence of Joan McCracken. She was a rising star on the Broadway musical stage in the 40's, but this is the only movie she made (aside from a cameo in BROADWAY CANTEEN) and she's delightful in her high energy role, particularly in her spotlight number, "Pass That Peace Pipe," in which she is paired up with McDonald (another fine dancer who never got the movie breaks he deserved). As I was watching the film this time, it amused me to view it as an Archie Comics story, with Lawford as Reggie, Allyson as Betty, Marshall as Veronica, Tindall as Moose, and McCracken as Midge, which I guess would make McDonald a cross between Archie and Jughead. The movie also features Mel Torme as a slightly dissipated student (maybe a slave to the reefer), Connie Gilchrist as a sorority house cook, and Donald MacBride and Tom Dugan as coaches. All the actors look too old to be college-age (except McDonald), especially Allyson, who looks like she could be McDonald's mother, but the movie is mostly fizzy colorful fun, and to be treasured for the rare McCracken appearance. There's a great biography out of McCracken, called "The Girl Who Fell Down" which I've just reviewed on my other blog. [DVD]

DETECTIVE KITTY O'DAY (1944)

Poverty Row mystery from Monogram with a pleasantly goofy leading man, hurt by a drab leading lady and weak comic timing. The title character (Jean Rogers) is not really a detective but a secretary to businessman Edward Earle. She has to deliver a train ticket to his home one night, and her slightly befuddled boyfriend (Peter Cookson) jokingly threatens to kill Earle for messing up their plans for the evening. Unfortunately, a taxi driver (Pat Gleason) overhears his threat and later that night, at Earle's house, Rogers discovers her boss dead. Both she and Cookson become suspects, as do Earle's widow (Veda Ann Borg), her lover (Douglas Fowley), and Earle's butler and lawyer. Inspector Tim Ryan (who also co-wrote the screenplay) and his sidekick Edward Gargan (who you'll recognize as a cop from dozens of 30's and 40's movies) provide the necessary comic police bungling while Rogers and Cookson race around trying to clear themselves and find the real killer. If you blur your eyes, you might imagine that the lead pair are Cary Grant and Claudette Colbert, and in fact Cookson does affect a Grant-ish accent. Cookson is nice looking and quite amusing. He made a handful of B-movies in the 40's and did some TV work before retiring, and was married to Beatrice Straight (later an Oscar-winner for NETWORK). Some of the comic situations have potential, but between the very low budget and the weak pacing, most of them don't come off. Still, I’m glad to have seen this if only to see one of Cookson's few leading roles. [TCM]

GAMBLER'S CHOICE (1944)

A slightly sub-B drama which follows the formula of any number of 30's crime films (from MANHATTAN MELODRAMA on) as it focuses on three childhood friends who take very different paths in life. This one opens with a gang of pickpocketing kids getting caught by the cops; Mike and Mary, first-time offenders, are let off, but Ross, a no-good kid with a brutal father, goes to a detention home. Years later Ross (Chester Morris) is a gambler, Mike (Russell Hayden) is a cop, and they both love Mary (Nancy Kelly), a singer. Morris, who works at Sheldon Leonard's gambling club in the Tenderloin, is fleecing a society woman (Lee Patrick) to get seed money to start his own club. He hires a singer who goes by the name Vi Parker (and who performs in a giant floating crescent moon prop) but who is really his old pal Kelly. As Morris gains money and power, he is able to get his cop friend Hayden promoted and he begins romancing Kelly, which irritates Patrick. Leonard and Patrick connive to get rid of Morris, but in a scuffle, a cop is killed by mistake and Hayden gets all the clubs shut down. Morris sees to it that Hayden is demoted to a rural beat, but eventually a special prosecutor brings Hayden back to head up a massive clean-up campaign. Stuck in the middle of all this is Kelly and her aging father (Lloyd Corrigan). There's a plotline involving Leonard conspiring with gangster Lyle Talbot to make it look like Hayden is on the take, but Morris gets all noble and breaks into Leonard's place to steal the phony evidence. In the end there's a shootout in which Morris sacrifices himself so Hayden and Kelly can live happily ever after. For a short movie, there's a lot of plot; it never becomes incoherent, but I also never really felt much for any of the characters. Had this been done at Warner Brothers, there might have been some spice to the proceedings, but it was, I believe, an independent film released through Paramount, and it winds up as nothing special. [DVD]

SECRET COMMAND (1944)

A solid WWII domestic espionage story which is a minor B-effort in production but is nonetheless packed with action and fun to watch. Pat O'Brien, out of touch with his family for years and apparently down on his luck, returns to his hometown and asks his brother (Chester Morris) for a job at a shipbuilding yard. There is some bad blood there since O'Brien left behind his loyal girl friend (Ruth Warrick) who is still getting over him (but who is currently dating Morris) and didn't even return for their mother's funeral. Morris grudgingly gives him a job and we learn that O'Brien is a government agent, set up in town with a fake wife (fellow agent Carole Landis) and kids (two refugee children), in order to uncover a spy ring which is attempting to commit sabotage at the yard. He can't spill the beans to Morris, though when Warrick meets Landis and the kids, she suspects that the situation isn't quite right. Barton MacLane is a tough-guy worker who has little use for the influx of wartime newbies, whom he dismissively calls "McGees," and he gives O'Brien a hard time until, after some knock-down, drag-out fisticuffs, the two become buddies. Wallace Ford is a co-worker, also a planted agent who has infiltrated the spies and is leaking information to O'Brien. When the saboteurs try to pull off their first job, Morris foils it but gets hurt in the process and O'Brien saves him. One of the spies recognizes O'Brien (who spent time in a Berlin concentration camp) and comes after him at his home, leading to a tense scene which itself leads to a climax involving explosions, murder, and another brutal fistfight before the saboteurs are routed and the romantic complications settled. The movie is well paced and exciting, and it was produced late enough in the war that its propaganda elements are not obtrusive. As a fan of Chester Morris, I was sorry that he essentially disappears halfway through the film, returning briefly at the end. O'Brien was a bit too old and sluggish for the part (personally, I think Morris, who was close to O'Brien's age but seemed younger and more energetic, would have worked better), but he gives it his best and comes out OK, and Landis shines as the fake wife who O'Brien begins to fall for. Also with Tom Tully (as a Nazi) and Erik Rolf. [TCM]

BARABBAS (1961)

A biblical epic with, as is the Hollywood way, little direct connection to the Bible. Based on a novel by Per Lagerkvist, the story imagines the life of Barabbas, a character who is basically a footnote to the story of Christ's crucifixion; when Pilate (Arthur Kennedy) allows the crowd to pick one prisoner to be set free, they choose the thief Barabbas (Anthony Quinn). When he's freed, he goes back to his mistress Rachel (Silvana Mangano) who much to his dismay has become a follower of Christ. The crucifixion, filmed during an actual eclipse, is well done, and unfortunately is the last truly compelling part of the 140 minute movie. Rachel is the first person to see Christ's empty tomb on Sunday morning, but Quinn is not convinced, and even after talking with Lazarus and the Apostles, he returns to his carousing ways. Later Rachel is stoned to death for preaching Christianity and Barabbas is accused of blasphemy for stealing temple money. As a pardoned prisoner, he cannot be put to death (and since he thinks Jesus died for him, he also thinks he can't be killed by another human). He is sentenced to a life of hard work in the sulfur mines, where men routinely go blind from the poisonous air. Many years later, Barabbas and secret Christian Vittorio Gassman survive a cave-in; nobleman Rufio (Norman Wooland) believes they are charmed so he takes them to Rome to become gladiators. The action scenes in the arena, which feature Jack Palance as a particularly fierce fighter, are pulled off quite well. The film ends with Nero's burning of Rome; Barabbas, who has been fighting the pull of Christianity, finally comes to believe that the huge fire is a sign of the apocalypse and meets up one more time with the apostle Peter (Harry Andrews) before meeting his death in a nicely ironic fashion. Much of the film is lovely to look at, with nice widescreen compositions, but except for Barabbas, no other character comes close to being fleshed out. As is the case in many Biblical epics, the supporting actors (including Ernest Borgnine and Katy Jurado, who were married at the time) aren't really allowed much more than cameos. Quinn is fine but seems a bit beaten down by the sprawling script. But the main problem here is the overlong running time. Had it been trimmed down a bit, especially in the middle hour, it wouldn't seem like such a slog. Still, if you're tired of movies like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS or BEN-HUR at Easter, this might be an acceptable substitute. [TCM]

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1936)

I must preface this review by saying that, despite having a Master's degree in English and having taught American literature in the past, I have never read a single page of James Fenimore Cooper, and even more heretical for modern-day movie fans, I have never seen the recent Daniel Day-Lewis version of the story. So I came to this film with few expectations and I enjoyed it immensely. The setting is New York State in 1757, during the French and Indian Wars, in which the British were battling the French, who were allied with the Huron Indians. The somewhat foppish British Major Hayward (Henry Wilcoxon) is asked to take the Munro sisters, Alice (Binnie Barnes) and Cora (Heather Angel), to their father who is the commander of troops at Fort Henry. The Indian Magua (Bruce Cabot), who was born a Huron but made a blood brother of the vanishing Mohican tribe, agrees to lead them, but Hawkeye (Randolph Scott), a white American scout who was raised by Indians, is suspicious of Magua. Even though he doesn't get along with Hayward, he and his Mohican friends Uncas (Philip Reed) and Chingachgook (Robert Barrat), who are the last survivors of the tribe (killed off by the Hurons), follow at a distance. Sure enough, Magua, in leading his party down a side trail that he claims will save time, is actually sending them into a trap from which Hawkeye and friends save them.

As the group continues on to the besieged fort, it's clear that Alice, despite being more or less promised to Hayward, is growing sweet on Hawkeye, and Cora, despite being lusted after by the traitor Magua (and despite the Production Code's strictures against portraying "miscegenation"), is growing sweet on Uncas. At the fort, the French, in possession of a note from British forces that instructs the British troops to surrender, work out a deal to let the men leave with their arms, but the Hurons scalp and slaughter them anyway, and take the sisters. Cora is rescued by Uncas, but both ultimately meet a tragic fate together, leading to an interesting scene of a burial ceremony that unites Christian and Indian rites. Hawkeye decides to give himself up as a sacrifice to free Alice, but Hayward knocks him out, puts on his clothes, and goes off to do the sacrificing, posing as Hawkeye. After some wild Indian dancing, the scourging of Hawkeye, and a threatened burning at the stake, Hawkeye prevails and even makes a friend of Hayward (and maybe someday a wife of Alice). Most of the actors are top-notch, with the exception of the bland Barnes; Scott, who can sometimes be a bit wooden, is at his absolute best here. Cabot is quite savage (and sometimes a little sexy), Reed is silent and strong, and Wilcoxon is good at striking a balance between being hissable and likeable. At 90 minutes, the action never stops, albeit 1930's Hollywood action, which may seem somewhat slow going to today's audiences. A most enjoyable movie which has given me new respect for Randolph Scott and should be out on DVD. [TCM]

FRESHMAN LOVE (1936)

Odd little B-movie which is part-romantic comedy, part-college sports story, and part-musical, but at barely an hour in length, it can't commit to any of its possibilities and remains a scattered hybrid which is pleasant enough but never really comes together. The one interesting element is that instead of football, the focus of the film is competitive rowing. Frank McHugh is the crew coach at Billings College; the board of trustees is under pressure to fire him, not only because of another losing season, but also because the grade point average of the team is so low. McHugh enlists the help of the college president's lovely daughter (Patricia Ellis) in attracting some promising talent. She snags two men in person (Warren Hull and Walter Johnson), and behind her back, McHugh and his secretary (Mary Treen) sign her name to a rather breathy letter and send it, along with a glamour shot pic, to dozens of other prospects, which results in a landslide of men for the new school year. Hull, the best prospect for the team (and best romantic prospect for Ellis), is rejected due to his grades, so McHugh gets him in under an assumed name. George E. Stone, a bandleader who is also the son of an alumni rower, sets the rowing rhythm for the men by playing jazz harmonica. Romantic rivalries, academic problems, and a fierce competition with a neighboring campus (not to mention Hull's fake identity and McHugh's phony letters) all lead to complications which are resolved predictably in the last five minutes. The sports aspect of the plot is the only one which gets any development. The romance between Ellis and Hull is lifeless--the actors are OK, but they don't get much screen time as a couple so we don't care what happens between them. As far as the musical side, there are three songs, two of which are realistically presented as entertainment, but one (the title song) is framed as an anemic, low budget version of a Busby Berkeley number in a soda fountain and it really doesn't belong. It is fun to see Stone, who usually plays comic relief tough guys (as in the Boston Blackie films), stray so far from type as a 30s' version of a collegiate hipster. Worth seeing as a novelty. [TCM]

THE BARONESS AND THE BUTLER (1938)

An attempt at a frothy class-conscious romantic comedy that doesn’t quite gel. William Powell (wonderful as usual) is the indispensable butler to a Hungarian count (Henry Stephenson) who is also Prime Minister. Unbeknownst to the family, Powell is running for a seat in Parliament as a member of the Social Progressives, who are directly opposed to Stephenson's policies. It isn't until Powell's unexpected win is announced on the radio that the family finds out what's happening. Stephenson actually seems pleased, especially when he finds out that Powell wants to stay on as butler, but the rest of the family, including the wife (Helen Westley) and daughter (Annabella, just Annabella) aren't so happy. Powell quickly becomes a popular opposition figure, and the movie's best scene occurs during one of his fiery speeches in Parliament, during which Annabella, in a fit of anger, throws her purse at him, sparking a free-for-all throwing match. Soon Stephenson loses a vote of confidence and has to give up his office, which doesn’t bother him nearly as much as the prospect of losing Powell as a butler. Meanwhile, Powell and Annabella fall in love, although she already has a passive and effete husband (Joseph Schildkraut, looking exactly like Jack Cassidy) and an older admirer (the blustery Nigel Bruce). Despite the threat of blackmail, there is, of course, a happy, if somewhat abrupt ending. Annabella is a French actress who only made a handful of movies in America; she's fine here, though her thick accent is a little disconcerting, given that all the other Hungarian characters speak in American or English accents. Lynn Bari has a small role as a maid. [FMC]

CHARLEY'S BIG-HEARTED AUNT (1940)

The play "Charley's Aunt" by Brandon Thomas is a famous stage farce first performed in the 1890's and still revived occasionally. The most famous film versions are the 1941 Jack Benny film and a 1956 musical version with Ray Bolger (and oddly, neither version is readily available for viewing these days). The only one I'd seen until now is a 1930 film with Charlie Ruggles, who seemed a bit too old to play the lead, an Oxford student who dresses in drag to impersonate a fellow student's aunt so his buddies can have a chaperoned visit with some co-eds--though, to be fair, Benny and Bolger were certainly no closer to the age of a real undergrad. This version, a relatively low-budget affair from England, is actually a clever variation on the play rather than a direct adaptation. Arthur Askey plays an undergrad who is playing the lead in an Oxford production of "Charley's Aunt." When he and his roomies get in trouble for some drunken shenanigans, Askey is barred from leaving his room. His friends manage to sneak him out so he can perform in the play, but the proctor (Felix Aylmer) recognizes him onstage and a merry chase ensues in the auditorium and across campus. The whole lot are threatened with being "sent down" (British term for expulsion), but when they find out that Aylmer needs $5000 to finance an Egyptian dig, they tell him a story about a visiting Aunt Lucy, who is rich and just happens to be interested in Egyptology, the assumption being that if Aylmer stops their expulsion, she'll help fund his trip. Askey dresses up as Aunt Lucy, but there are two things he doesn't know: 1) the real Aunt Lucy, related to roomie Albert (Graham Moffatt), was a barmaid in Oxford in her younger years and a few of the school masters, including Aylmer, remember her fondly; 2) she (Jeanne de Casalis) is on her way to Oxford to confront her nephew about his frivolous spending. Of course, farcial antics follow, the funniest of which involves Askey (in drag) canoeing with a flirtatious Aylmer and both of them winding up in the water. Overall, this is a fun little confection, and if you know something about "Charley's Aunt," you'll have even more fun with the references to the original, like a recurring line about "where the nuts come from" which makes no sense here otherwise. An actor named Richard Murdoch plays one of the roomies, nicknamed "Stinker," and he is billed in the credits as Richard (Stinker) Murdoch. [TCM]

THE CRIMINAL CODE (1931)

Howard Hawks prison melodrama which provides a nice showcase for Walter Huston as the star and also for Boris Karloff in a juicy supporting role. Meek and mild Phillips Holmes gets a bit drunk and is arrested for attacking a man he claimed was trying to assault his girlfriend. The man dies and Holmes is charged with manslaughter. Huston, the district attorney, notes that a good lawyer could get Holmes off, but he goes after the kid since what he calls the "criminal code" calls for "an eye for an eye." Holmes gets 10 years and the sympathy of his cellmates, one of whom is Karloff, embittered because when he was out on parole, he was caught by a cop drinking a beer at a speakeasy and tossed back in the slammer. Years pass and Huston is appointed warden of the prison. On his first day, he shows the men who's in charge when he quells a "yammering" protest in which the men congregate in the prison yard and loudly chatter nonsense syllables. Holmes learns that his mother has died and he has a breakdown. Huston, remembering his case, makes him his personal chauffeur and for a while, Holmes improves, partly because he gets a crush on Huston's daughter (Constance Cummings), and the warden begins working on a parole for the boy. When prisoner Clark Marshall squeals on some guys planning a breakout, Huston knows that he'll be a marked man and feels responsible for his life, so he puts Marshall in a room off of his own office, but Karloff, in a well-staged and suspenseful scene, manages to sneak in and kill Marshall. Holmes sees the crime but won't rat out Karloff, instead winding up facing the murder charge himself. Huston realizes that Holmes didn't do it but is following another criminal code: don’t snitch. The final sequence is tense and satisfying. Huston is solid and commanding, as usual, and Karloff is equally good at being a slimy bad guy with whom you also sympathize. (This came out in January of 1931, and between this and his breakout role as the monster in FRANKENSTEIN in November, he appeared in twelve other movies!) It's based on a play and some scenes are a bit talky, but overall this remains a highly watchable film, mostly due to good acting all around. [TCM]

THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1955)

I was afraid I had come to this movie at a disadvantage, having seen the recent remake with Ralph Fiennes but not having read the original Graham Greene novel. Since it's about religion and extramarital passion, two topics considered controversial under the old Hollywood Production Code, I assumed the 50's version could not hold a candle to the 90's version which had the freedom to be open about both themes, but though the Fiennes version is indeed much more explicit in its depiction of the affair, it is not as good a film (in look, acting, or writing) as the first. During WWII, Van Johnson is a wounded American soldier who has been discharged and has decided to stay in London to pursue a writing career. Because he's writing a novel about a civil servant, he befriends one (Peter Cushing) to learn about his life. At a party, he sees Cushing's wife (Deborah Kerr) stealing a clandestine kiss with another man and is immediately attracted to her. They begin an affair, though he is bothered that she can lie to Cushing so easily and that she has no problem leaving him after their stolen moments to return to her husband's drab world. We see them make fun of a street corner speechmaker (Michael Goodliffe) screaming of his anger at God (a plot point which will be important later). During a leisurely afternoon rendezvous at his flat, a bomb strikes the building, pinning an unconscious Johnson under debris. Kerr, thinking him dead, goes to a window, sinks to her knees and appears to pray. A few minutes later, a dazed but not seriously hurt Johnson enters the room, saying he feels like he came back from a long journey. After this incident, she refuses to see him, and he thinks it's because she was hoping he had died. A year later, Johnson encounters Cushing, who believes that Kerr is having an affair, and a jealous Johnson, still smarting from her rejection, hires a detective (John Mills) to follow her. Sure enough, she is seen having afternoon meetings with a man named Smythe. When Mills steals her diary, however, Johnson reads it and realizes that all is not as it appears, and we get an extended flashback presenting her side of the events of the narrative so far. It turns out that when she thought Johnson was dead, she prayed to God, offering to give Johnson up if He would let him live. The man she was seeing on the sly was the angry atheist Goodliffe, whom she was hoping could talk her into turning her back on God and going back to Johnson. (She also sees a Catholic priest, apparently in an attempt to be fair, but his advice isn't what she thinks it will be.) There are a few more surprises yet to come, including a final meeting between Johnson and Kerr before the tragic ending. This is a serious attempt to tell a story about the effect of religious belief on people who have never thought much about spirituality, or what passes for such in our culture. I like that it doesn't come down unequivocally on one side or the other, and oddly it actually seems a bit more sophisticated about the issue than the 1999 film. Kerr is great; Johnson, though he takes a little getting used to in such a serious role, is fine, and the two work up some sparks. Mills is a scene stealer and Cushing is quite good in what wound up being one of his rare featured non-horror roles. I hope to read the book someday and I might wind up wanting to revise my comments, but for the time being, I would recommend this version wholeheartedly. [TCM]

ARROWSMITH (1931)

Early John Ford film, not the kind of action movie he became known for, but an excellent example of a director overcoming the drabness of the early talkie style to forge an effective sound style. Ronald Colman stars as Martin Arrowsmith, whom we meet as a medical student who wants to be a research doctor but is convinced to put in some time as an M.D. He meets a no-nonsense nurse (Helen Hayes) whom he marries, opens a small town practice, and does research on a cure for a cattle disease. A local veterinarian resents his meddling (and his single-minded aim causes him to be absent when Hayes suffers a miscarriage), but his discovery gets his name known and allows him to go to work in New York City doing research (in a fabulous art-Deco high rise) under the auspices of his former mentor (A.E. Anson). His first major discovery, an anti-bacterial breakthrough, gets blown up in the press (deliberately, by the clinic's PR guy) and then fizzles out when they discover that Louis Pasteur got there first. Soon Colman, inspired by another mentor (Richard Bennett), decides to go to the West Indies to experiment on a serum for bubonic plague; when told he will need to give half the sufferers a placebo in order for their tests to be valid, he resists at first, but then agrees. However, the plague winds up hitting home, with both Hayes and Bennett succumbing, and Colman, after a drunk scene which climaxes with him yelling, "To hell with science," gives the serum out to all. In the end, he turns his back on big-time research and goes off to Vermont with a pal (Russell Hopton) to do independent work.

Thematically, what I find interesting is that in the battle between "heartless" scientific research and humanitarianism, there seems to be no clear winner; I didn't see a strong attempt made at delineating good and bad characters, just different ways of looking at a situation. The one thing I believe is being critiqued is the desire for fame and glory, which is exactly what Colman gives up in the end. The film looks fantastic, and its visual style (shadows, gliding camera movements, and some spectacular sets) helps get the viewer through some sluggish sections. A few scenes are memorable for their startling backgrounds, especially a lecture in which a huge map dwarfs the speaker, and a restaurant scene played before a large tilted wall mirror. The way in which Hayes contracts the plague is absurd (Colman leaves an open vial of plague virus lying on the coffee table) but the camerawork makes it a memorable sequence. The acting is mostly fine--I have no problem with Colman but Hayes is rather bland. Myrna Loy has a small role as a woman with whom Colman has a one-night stand during his plague duty (another nicely shot moment), David Landau continues his string of mean, cranky characters as the vet who opposes Colman's cattle research, and Clarence Brooks plays a completely non-stereotypical black doctor, a common enough role now but rare when this film was made. A bit slow at times, but interesting to see for its visual style. [TCM]

THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)

This perfectly acceptable B-thriller has become something of a cult item among horror/sf fans for two reasons: 1) the title implies that it's a sequel to the earlier cult film DOCTOR X; 2) it has Humphrey Bogart in a supporting role before he became a superstar. The horror content is actually secondary to the science fiction elements, and even those are used in support of a more traditional crime story. Reporter Wayne Morris is on his way to interview a famous actress (Lya Lys), but when he arrives, she's dead, stabbed in the chest and drained of blood. His paper prints an extra with his sensational story, but when the cops get there, the body has vanished and soon she shows up very much alive, threatening the paper with a lawsuit. Morris's job is on the line so he gets Dennis Morgan, a doctor pal of his, to help investigate this mystery, and when a rare blood type-donor is found murdered and drained in a similar fashion, they ask for help from esteemed surgeon John Litel, who winds up knowing more about both cases than he first lets on. Litel has a rather fey but creepy assistant (Bogart) with deathly pale skin, a buzz cut with a "Bride of Frankenstein" white streak, little round glasses, and cold, cold hands, and he's often seen holding and stroking a white rabbit. Our heroes discover that Bogart is actually a disgraced doctor named Xavier who was executed for killing children during experiments and was brought back to life by Litel using artificial blood. The problem is that Litel then needs fresh blood to keep Bogart alive. (The "living dead" actress is in the same boat.) In a nifty "Re-Animator"-type scene, Litel brings a dead rabbit back to life. The climax involves Morris and Morgan chasing Bogart, who is holding nurse Rosemary Lane hostage. This is likely to disappoint classic horror fans for the same reason that the 1932 DOCTOR X is often disparaged: too much comic relief. I'm a fan of B-thrillers and of Wayne Morris, so I enjoyed the film and Morris's bouncy, light performance, but fans of Bogie and horror films probably will not, despite some nice shadowy sets, impressionistic cinematography, and mad-scientist touches. Morris and Morgan make a nice pair, and if you like this, check them out in FLIGHT ANGELS. Litel is rather bland, though it's nice that he's more civilized than the traditional deranged doctor. Lane has little to do, and though some don't like Bogart's performance, I like it because it verges on camp without losing a menacing edge. John Ridgely has a one-line role as the murdered blood donor. [DVD]

PHFFFT (1954)

The odd title of this film is really the only noteworthy thing about it. It's largely an updated version of THE AWFUL TRUTH (with little of that movie's zany wit and charm) with a dash of THE ODD COUPLE thrown in. A (very young) Jack Lemmon plays a lawyer and Judy Holliday is his wife, the creator of a successful radio and TV soap opera. One evening, while he's trying to read a mystery novel and she's pacing the floor restlessly, they simultaneously realize that they're bored with each other and decide to divorce. Lemmon moves in with his buddy Jack Carson, who thinks he should immediately get back in the dating game and tries to show him some of the ropes, including setting him up with the sexy Kim Novak (doing her best Marilyn Monroe imitation). Holliday is approached by an actor from her soap opera for what she thinks is a date but is instead a gripe session about his character. She and Lemmon wind up taking dancing lessons at the same Arthur Murray studio, and more or less accidentally end up doing a mambo together at a night club, but just when it looks like the spark has returned, they have a spat while he's doing her taxes. In the end, Carson, sure that Lemmon and Novak are hitting it off, puts the moves on Holliday, which ensures that Lemmon will show up to get rid of Carson and patch things up permanently with Holliday. Holliday is fine, but Lemmon and Novak are sexy and energetic and work up quite a bit of chemistry, and honestly I was sort of hoping that they would wind up together--though that would break all the rules of the screwball "comedy of remarriage" genre to which this film belongs. There is a cute bit involving a statue with glowing electric eyes that Carson puts in his apartment window as a "Don't come a-knockin'" signal. At only 90 minutes, this still feels a bit too long; individual scenes work well (the mambo scene, Lemmon's dates with Novak, a bit with a French teacher), but it just doesn't quite come together. [TCM]

CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON (1934)
CHARLIE CHAN IN PARIS (1935)

The Charlie Chan movies have a sticky reputation today, largely based on the fact that the main character, a Chinese detective who works for the Honolulu police, was played by a non-Chinese actor, Swedish born Warner Oland (and after he died, by American Sidney Toler). This would almost certainly not happen today, though Asian roles were still being played by Anglo actors into the 70's (David Carradine as the half-Chinese Buddhist priest Caine in TV’s "Kung Fu"). I can understand the discomfort that some viewers today might feel watching a performance that could be described as "Asian blackface," but it was a Hollywood truism for many years that American audiences would not accept Asian actors in leading roles. If you can get past this problem, the Chan movies are generally quite fun, and even could be seen as "politically correct" in content if not performance, as Chan not only always remains dignified in the face of prejudice, but also always outdoes or outfoxes the Anglo good guys and bad guys. Though there were several previous movies in which Chan was either featured or starred, LONDON is one of the earliest that still exists intact. Drue Leyton's brother is about to be executed in three days for murder, but she's convinced he's innocent and goes to Chan for help. When the brother's attorney, Ray Milland, who is also Leyton's fiance, confides to Chan that he thinks the brother is guilty, Leyton breaks off their engagement. Chan agrees to help and attends a house party at which are present most of the principals of the case. There is a sinister butler, a drunkard, a horse's groom, and a bumbling country inspector (E.E. Clive) who keeps calling Chan, "Chang." There is also a reenactment of the original murder, an apparent suicide, a secret military invention, a near-fatal horse accident, and some gunplay before Chan cracks the case. The familiar supporting actors include Alan Mowbray, Douglas Walton, and Mona Barrie. (BTW, this is the movie that one of the producers in Robert Altman's GOSFORD PARK is supposedly researching). The next film has Chan arriving, umm.. IN PARIS to investigate bank fraud. He gets a stern warning delivered with a rock thrown through his taxi. He meets up with the son of the bank president (Thomas Beck, who appeared as a major character in several Chan and Mr. Moto films), then goes to see exotic dancer Nardi (Dorothy Appleby) who has some information for Chan but who is murdered at the end of an acrobatic dance number. There is a mysterious beggar, counterfeiters, blackmail, and a chase through the sewers of Paris, but most notably this film marked the first appearance of Chan's westernized son, played here by the handsome Keye Luke who would play the same role in not only six other Chan films, but even in a Mr. Moto film. Erik Rhodes, one of my favorite supporting comic actors, has a more serious role here. I find the plots of the Chan movies, like those of the Thin Man movies, to be interchangeable, but what they lack in narrative originality is made up for by Oland's excellent performances. [DVD]

BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1929)
BULLDOG DRUMMOND IN AFRICA (1938)

The Bulldog Drummond series was not one that was featured on TCM, but I recently got a chance see to the first Drummond talkie, a well-regarded film which is difficult to run across. The title character is Captain Hugh Drummond, retired from the British Army, who, in the novels by H.C. McNeile, drifts into becoming a brawny two-fisted adventurer, though in the movies, he wound up more like a typical movie sleuth. In the 1929 film, the dapper Ronald Colman plays Drummond, who is bored with his quiet post-war life; the first scene, featuring the comic shattering of the total silence of a men's club room, must have been the inspiration for the similar opening scene of the Fred Astaire classic TOP HAT. Colman advertises his services as someone looking for excitement, and he finds some when he gets involved in helping Joan Bennett, whose uncle is being held against his will in a mansion-like sanitarium. It's interesting seeing Colman as a thriller hero, playing against his usual laid-back persona; he even gets to strangle a bad guy to death with his bare hands! Another pleasure is the peculiarly fey but amusing acting style of Claud Allister as Drummond's buddy Algy. The shadowy mansion sets are wonderful, with a Caligarish look now and then (courtesy well known production designer William Cameron Menzies); sometimes the rooms look like they are right out of a Universal mad doctor castle. Lawrence Grant, Lilyan Tashman, and Montagu Love are suitably evil as the chief villains. The director, F. Richard Jones, has some nice "moving camera" touches. This is a solidly entertaining, mostly light-toned thriller, and a good one to see even if you think you don't like early talkies.

Between 1937 and 1939, Paramount made nine Bulldog Drummond B-movies, beginning with BULLDOG DRUMMOND ESCAPES with Ray Milland--and if memory serves me, I believe that one basically recycled the plot of the Colman film, though instead of an uncle, Milland rescues a young woman (Heather Angel) from a similar foreboding mansion filled with baddies. Most of the Paramount films, however, had John Howard in the title role, an actor I know mostly as Katharine Hepburn's loser fiance in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, with Angel continuing as the woman Howard is constantly on the verge of marrying before he is tempted away on the eve of the wedding by some mysterious case or matter of national import. IN AFRICA begins with Howard and his butler (E. E. Clive) stuck at home without guns or trousers so they can't go anywhere before the wedding. However, Scotland Yard inspector H. B. Warner is kidnapped by notorious spy J. Carroll Naish, who spirits him away to Morocco to get the secret of a new British invention, the radio wave disintegrator (sounds like a good enough McGuffin to me!). Angel sees Warner being abducted and frees Howard so they can chase after him, in Howard's own plane, along with Clive and sidekick Reginald Denny, taking over the part of Algy. There are thuggish henchmen (including Anthony Quinn), ferocious lions, and a hidden bomb for our gang to deal with before the predictable but still exciting finale. Except for its exotic setting, this film is typical of the series. Howard is not the most dashing hero, but I grew to like him as Drummond. As the series goes on, the wedding shenanigans become tiresome, but are thankfully kept to a relative minimum here. Film buffs will recognize Fortunio Bonanova as a Moroccan cop. Short (just under an hour), fast-paced, and enjoyable, like most of the Paramount Drummonds. The series was later picked up by other studios in the late 40's with a variety of actors, but those appear to be out of circulation. [DVD]

THE LONE WOLF SPY HUNT (1939)
THE LONE WOLF MEETS A LADY (1940)

The Lone Wolf, like the Saint and Boston Blackie, wasn't a traditional Sam Spade-type private eye with an office and a secretary. Like the others, he's a man of independent means who helps out folks who happen to cross his path, and though he'll work with the police when he has to, he seems to spend just as much time avoiding them. Michael Lanyard (played here by Warren William) is the Lone Wolf, a former jewel thief, and his character's situation underwent a major change between the first William entry in the Columbia series (SPY HUNT) and the third (LADY). The Lanyard we meet in SPY HUNT has a young daughter (Virginia Weidler) who lives with him, and is therefore always a potential "damsel in distress," and the tone of the film veers uneasily toward screwball comedy. The movie opens with William snatched off the street by thugs in order to crack a safe. He refuses, saying he's reformed, and he's let go but not before the gang boss (Ralph Morgan) has swiped a couple of William's cigarettes, a custom brand made for him. Morgan has a past score to settle with William and when his men break into a safe and steal some plans for a new anti-aircraft gun, they plant one of the cigarettes. The next day, William has to answer not only to the cops but also to his high-strung girlfriend (Ida Lupino) for why he stiffed her on a date. When Morgan discovers that his men only got half the plans, he sends sexy Rita Hayworth after William to coerce him to get the rest. He does, but manages to hide the gun plans and substitute pages of baby carriage plans. There are more chases, more alibis, and both young Weidler and William's droll butler (Leonard Carey) get involved before it all gets resolved. The best scene is at a surrealist party, with guests dressed as Dali clocks, alphabet blocks, and bunches of flowers. William is his usual debonair unruffled self, and I enjoyed watching him pull his little double-crosses against practically everyone, but Lupino is miscast, trying but failing to strike the right comic tone in her jealous rages. The familiar character actor Tom Dugan plays one of the cops.

In MEETS A LADY, William has lost the daughter and gotten a different butler, the priceless Eric Blore, who is much more amusing than his predecessor. Jean Muir, about to marry into the rich Penyon family via the son, Warren Hull, has to wear the family's valuable heirloom diamond necklace at a high society party. We see family member Marla Shelton telephone Victor Jory to tell him the necklace's whereabouts. Later that night, Muir's ex-husband (Roger Pryor), thought dead, shows up at her apartment and demands the necklace, but before he can get it, he is shot and killed by an unseen person. On the streets, William and Blore almost hit Muir with their car and they're all taken downtown by a traffic cop. When William hears her story, he gives her an alibi, but she gets nervous and bolts anyway. William poses as a cop, gathers all the partygoers, and begins to get the bottom of the case, which involves an imitation copy of the necklace being passed off as the real thing. This film, though definitely not aiming at a screwball tone, manages to be breezier and more fun than the first one, largely due to the interplay between William and Blore. Other Lone Wolf entries might be worth watching just for these two actors. Otherwise, the series doesn't seem all that different from the Falcon or the Saint. Still, fans of the short, light detective thriller will probably enjoy these. [TCM]

CRIME DOCTOR (1943)
CRIME DOCTOR'S STRANGEST CASE (1943)
CRIME DOCTOR'S WARNING (1945)

A B-movie detective series, with a bit of a twist on the gentleman/ex-con sleuth formula. Based on a radio serial, the first film is an "origin" story, telling how Warner Baxter becomes the Crime Doctor. We first see Baxter being dumped unconscious from a speeding car. When he comes to in a hospital, he has amnesia, though otherwise he makes a good recovery, and he's taken in by a kindly doctor (Ray Collins) who inspires Baxter to turn from the temptation of a self-pitying life spent in drunken dissolution to making something of himself by going to medical school. He has a successful career as a psychiatrist, taking the name Ordway, but he occasionally finds himself shadowed by John Litel, a figure from his past whom Baxter does not recognize. We find out that Baxter was a mastermind thief named Morgan who crossed up his own gang, leading to the beating and dumping of the first scene. Baxter hid some money from the gang, and Litel wants it back, though he also realizes that the amnesia is real and not an act, so he bides his time. Because Baxter has a good influence on prisoners (we see him work his wonders on convict Leon Ames), he becomes a member of the local parole board. Eventually, of course, Baxter does confront his past, is put on trial, and makes a speech to the jury saying that if they convict the guilty Morgan, they'll imprison the innocent Ordway. In typical B-film fashion, the ending is rushed but satisfactory. Margaret Lindsay is Baxter's romantic interest.

The second film, STRANGEST CASE, is a straightforward mystery involving a murder in a houseful of suspects. Lloyd Bridges plays an ex-con who was charged with poisoning his employer until Baxter's testimony got him released. Bridges' new job is very much like his previous one, secretary to a rich man, and soon that rich man is found dead from poison. Bridges goes on the run but there are plenty of other suspects for Baxter to hound: Virginia Brissac is an odd, almost otherworldly housekeeper whose surreal dream, which we see depicted on screen, may or may not hold a key to the mystery; Gloria Dickson is a cook who is most assuredly not who she seems to be (and she gets a wonderful unmasking scene); Rose Hobart is the dead man's young wife; Reginald Denny is the dead man's nephew; Jerome Cowan is an eccentric songwriter who is also a firebug (to both serious and comic effect). Baxter, with some help from cop Barton MacLane, discovers an abandoned nightclub which plays a crucial role in bringing up buried secrets from the past. The movie, with its long roster of colorful suspects and intertwined relationships, is a little underwritten, with a rush of information just told rather than developed. But it's still a lot of fun, less like a Boston Blackie cops & thugs crime thriller than an old-fashioned Philo Vance mystery, and the sometimes wooden Baxter is perfectly adequate here, especially with the colorful supporting cast around him.

By the time of WARNING, the fifth in the series, things have gone decidedly downhill in writing and production values. Here, Baxter is trying to help sensitive struggling (and handsome) artist Coulter Irwin with his bouts of memory lapses, especially when Irwin becomes the chief suspect in the murder of two lovely models he had worked with, one of whom he wanted to marry. John Litel, the chief baddie from the first movie, is Baxter's cop buddy in this one, and the suspects, all from the lower echelons of the New York art world, include John Abbott as a silhouette artist, Eduardo Ciannelli as a gruff male model angry that women are getting all the good jobs, Miles Mander as a museum curator, and Alma Kruger as Irwin's smothering mother. There is promise in the set-up but so much information is delivered as tedious exposition that practically nothing actually happens on screen (except for one creepy moment when the second model is killed). The sets look cheap, though William Castle, in an early directorial effort, tries to conjure some mysterious atmosphere to hide that fact. It's fun to see a Hollywood version of a 40's Greenwich Village milieu, with a roomful of artists almost looking like before-their-time beatniks. Most of the acting is fine, but Baxter, though only in his mid-50s, seems old and tired, and a couple of his flubbed lines are left in. Much as I enjoyed the first two, this one left me not anxious to see any others. [TCM]

DICK TRACY'S DILEMMA (1947)

Of all the 40's crime fighter movie series I've been watching recently, the Dick Tracy films (based on the long-running comic series created by Chester Gould) are the cheapest looking and the least exciting ones, but if this film is typical of the short-lived series, then there are some simple pleasures for film buffs to enjoy. In two earlier films, Tracy was played by Morgan Conway, but apparently there was popular demand to replace him with Ralph Byrd, who played Tracy in a couple of serials in the 30's (and who also was Tracy in a 50's TV show). I haven't seen Conway and I'm not all that familiar with the comic strip (though I do remember watching the animated series when I was very young) but Byrd seems well cast as the no-nonsense cop. What doesn't translate as well is the colorful milieu of the comic strip, with its fairly graphic violence, exaggerated characters out of Damon Runyon, and bizarrely named villains. One night, a hulking, limping man named the Claw (Jack Lambert) who has a hook for a hand, breaks into a warehouse where he and his cronies steal some furs and kill a night watchman in the process. Tracy and his sidekick Pat Patton (Lyle Latell) are on the case with some help from an old man named Sightless Silas (Jimmy Conlin) who hangs out in front of the Blinking Skull bar pretending to be blind, picking up bits of info to sell to Tracy. Silas overhears the Claw and, in the movie's best scene, is eventually tracked down and disposed of. Tracy suspects that the fur company's recent change of insurance companies may be tied to the theft, and he's right, but is the bad guy Peter Premium, the insurance agent (William B. Davidson) or the fur company boss (Charles Marsh)? Retired (and very hammy) Shakespearean actor Vitamin Flintheart (Ian Keith) gets pressed into service by Tracy, as does Longshot Lilly (Bernadene Hayes). The low budget is obvious in the threadbare sets and costumes, and the film doesn't do justice to the strange world of the comic strip, although a solid noir mood is established in some scenes. I was surprised that Tracy's longtime girlfriend Tess Trueheart (Kay Christopher) had so little to do. The brutish Lambert is quite scary and the pompous Keith is fun. Bryd anchors all in a steadfast fashion. With a one hour running time, the film goes by quickly, which is a plus. [TCM]

MEET BOSTON BLACKIE (1941)
ALIAS BOSTON BLACKIE (1942)
ONE MYSTERIOUS NIGHT (1944)

Last year, I reviewed two movies in the Boston Blackie series. These mysteries were done on the cheap and it shows, but I generally enjoy actor Chester Morris and the light touch he brings to the character, so I was pleased to see a batch of Blackies show up on TCM recently. MEET is the first in the series (not counting a handful of silents which seem to be lost). Morris, on a passenger ship returning to the U.S., saves Constance Worth from molestation by Nestor Paiva. When the ship docks and Paiva is found dead, Morris, already under suspicion by inspector Richard Lane for selling stolen jewels overseas, is now under suspicion for murder. Morris and his sidekick The Runt (Charles Wagenheim) follow Worth to Coney Island where she's killed in the Tunnel of Love by a supposed mechanical man. Morris gets away from the scene when he hops a ride with innocent bystander Rochelle Hudson, and she helps him clear his name (despite Lane's insistence to Morris that he's "gonna sizzle like a squab in a pan!") and expose a spy ring at the park. The proceedings remain lively, though the climax is too short--I guess when they got close to an hour, the bosses at Columbia just said, "Cut!" There are a couple of fun running gags, one of which has Morris leaving messages for Lane written in soap on mirrors (nicely counterpointed at the end when Lane leaves one for Morris on his windshield). I like that it's implied that Morris is indeed guilty of the jewel robbery but that Lane lets it slide. Schlitze (real name, Simon Metz), one of the "pinheads" from FREAKS, can be seen here in a freak show scene. One problem with the low budget is that Morris lives in the most under-designed and under-decorated penthouse ever.

By ALIAS, the third in the series, underrated character actor George E. Stone had taken over as The Runt, a happy occurrence, and he appears in most of the rest of the films. Looking back on my earlier reviews, I see that I wasn't all that crazy about Stone, but now I have come to appreciate him more and I think he does fine work here. With my weakness for all things Christmas, I was pleased that this film opens with Morris and Stone decorating a Christmas tree. That's about it for any real holiday spirit, however, as the two head off to take part in a volunteer vaudeville show at the local prison where Morris does a magic act (magic was a real-life interest of the actor). Afterwards, one prisoner (Larry Parks), who claims to have been framed, dresses up as a clown and escapes with the troupe, and to show the Inspector (Lane again) that he wasn't in on it, Morris has to track him down. Of course, Parks has a sister (Adele Mara) who gets Morris to help prove Parks' innocence. Lloyd Corrigan as Morris' rich, eccentric friend Arthur is carried over from CONFESSIONS, and Cy Kendall begins the recurring role of Jumbo Madigan, an underworld contact. There's a fairly exciting climax and a Christmas toast at the end.

A couple of years later, Columbia made a stab at expanding the audience for these films by giving them titles without the Boston Blackie name. ONE MYSTERIOUS NIGHT doesn't come anywhere near living up to its title; "Inspector Boston Blackie" would. The famous Blue Star of the Nile diamond disappears in broad daylight from a charity exhibition and the Inspector calls on Morris for help, even deputizing him and giving him a badge, then spreading a cover story in the press that Morris is wanted for the theft. Brassy, nosy reporter Janis Carter becomes a pain in the ass for Morris (and oddly, never becomes a romantic interest until the very last minute of the film). William Wright makes a fine thuggish bad guy. Morris and Stone get to don a few disguises (and Morris wears them very well, especially his "old man" outfit). Mark Roberts plays a hotel manager who is implicated in the crimes and Dorothy Malone (at this point in her career still uncredited) is his sister who tries to get him out of trouble. It's about average for a Boston Blackie entry, but there isn't much "mysterious" about it. Generally, I find these films not quite on a par with the George Sanders Saint films but they're a bit more memorable than some of the other B-thriller series of the era. [TCM]

THE SAINT STRIKES BACK (1939)
THE SAINT IN LONDON (1939)

Recently, Turner Classic Movies devoted an entire month to detective movie series of the 30's and 40's, so I took this opportunity to catch up on some of the series I've missed or haven't seen in a while. I like mystery novels, but I'm not a big follower of series characters; when I've read a couple by any given author (like Martha Grimes or P.D. James, for example), I've usually had my fill, no matter how good they are. Generally I feel the same about these movie series, and the closer they are to formula programmers, the stronger I feel. I admit to getting the Saint and Falcon movies of the 40's mixed up, mostly because George Sanders played both for a time, and the character types are similar: suave, quiet, upper-class gentlemen with a bit of the rogue about them who help folks in distress, sometimes with and sometimes against the police. Sanders is always fun to watch, and STRIKES BACK was his first movie as the Saint, real name Simon Templar, who is explicitly referred to in the film as a Robin Hood type, not above a little larceny for the right reason. This one begins with a bang in a San Francisco nightclub at a New Year's Eve celebration. Wendy Barrie, who has made headlines on a crusade to clear her dead father's reputation as a corrupt cop, is seated with a couple of men. When the lights dim at midnight, one of the men gets up, pulls out a revolver, and takes aim at another man, but Sanders, hidden behind a plant, aims at the gunman first and kills him. In the ensuing uproar, Barrie sneaks out, followed closely by Sanders. The two don't exactly hit it off, but he does find out that Barrie and her boyfriend (Neil Hamilton) have become mixed up with a gang of shady characters who they hope can help them in her crusade. Sanders himself is on a mission to bring down mysterious underworld boss Waldman, and since it was Waldman who framed Barrie's dad, Sanders and Barrie eventually overcome their adversarial relationship to work together. The supporting cast includes Barry Fitzgerald as a safecracker, Jerome Cowan as a criminologist, and Jonathan Hale as the police inspector who gets a goofy hallucination scene when he gets sick from eating lobster. As often happens, the plot strands got a bit difficult to follow, but Sanders' dry delivery makes it worth sitting through. No real romance develops in this one, though my favorite line has Sanders saying to Barrie that he loves her, but that he also loves "fireflies and mockingbirds and pink sunsets."

LONDON also has a memorable opening, with Sanders getting his pocket picked by David Burns, then Sanders returning the favor, and then hiring Burns has his valet. Sanders is on the trail of crook Henry Oscar who is behind a counterfeiting ring. Young socialite Sally Grey, wanting some action, tags along with Sanders as they break into a safe and find a beaten-up man along the road, a foreign count (John Abbot) who was forced to cooperate with Oscar's gang. Sanders hides him at a boarding house, passing him off as police inspector Teal (Gordon McLeod), but the bad guys get him anyway, and the real Teal gets involved. Again, there are some confusing plot strands, and the cast of British supporting players were mostly unknown to me and they all started looking alike, so I had a harder time than usual keeping characters clear in my mind, but with kidnapping, espionage and murder (at least one at the hand of Sanders), and the sometimes bungling attempts of Burns and Grey to help, things stay lively to the predictable end. More sleuth series reviews coming up. [TCM]

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING (1960)

I have not seen many films from the "Angry Young Man" era of British cinema, realistic stories of the working-class generation of the late 50's and early 60's. I picture these movies as grimy documents of drab, desperate lives lived in smoky bars and oppressive factories, with characters who are unhappy with their present situations, and rather incoherently angry at their parents, their bosses, and society in general. Well, based on the evidence of this film, the one that brought the young Albert Finney to stardom, I wasn't far wrong. Finney works at a soulless (and occasionally dangerous) factory job in Nottingham and lives with his parents in a crowded little house. His father, also a factory worker, is content to come home and veg in front of the TV, not really paying attention to anything around him. In these domestic scenes, Finney comes off as a more sociable Alex (from CLOCKWORK ORANGE), frustrated but not knowing exactly why or what he wants. He seems to live for his partying Saturday nights, which usually end in fistfights and hangovers--we see one example early on in which he gets into a drinking contest with a sullen sailor (Colin Blakely). Finney is sleeping with a slightly older woman (Rachel Roberts) who is married to a pal of his (Bryan Pringle) at the factory, and flirting with a girl (Shirley Ann Field) he meets in a pub. Soon, Roberts is pregnant and Finney casts about randomly for a solution, notably miscarriage recipes from an aunt (Hylda Baker). Roberts considers an abortion but ultimately decides against it, and in the movie's most memorable sequence, Pringle gets some soldier friends to come after Finney at a street fair and beat him up. In the end, he chooses to marry Field and think about buying a house in a suburban project, though he claims not to want to end up like his folks, who have the basic necessities but are "dead from the neck up." A scene in the middle of the film in which Finney watches a frustrated old man throw a rock through a storefront window is echoed in the movie's last shot in which Finney impotently throws a rock at the newly built projects, suggesting that the amorphous frustrations he feels are not gone, just being displaced. Norman Rossington, best known as the Beatles' manager in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, plays Finney's best friend, in generally the same boat as Finney but a little less hot-headed. Roberts, a fine actress (PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, FOUL PLAY) whose career highlights have been obscured since her untimely death in 1980, is excellent here, completely matching Finney, who with swagger and charisma to spare, turns what could have been an unlikable character into someone with which the audience can empathize, if not take to its heart. He also has some memorable dialogue: early on, he proclaims, "What I'm out for is a good time--all the rest is propaganda," and later in a similar tone, "Whatever people say about me, that's what I'm not!" (recently appropriated as an album title by British indie band Arctic Monkeys). A sidenote: Roberts' journals, published as "No Bells on Sunday," make for fascinating reading. [DVD]

TOWER OF LONDON (1939)

This nicely mounted historical piece is often classed as a horror film, mostly because it comes from Universal and stars Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Vincent Price. It does have some Gothic-type trappings (a torture chamber, beheadings, a particularly creative murder) but is otherwise squarely in the costume melodrama mold. I have to admit I don't know a Plantagenet from a pomegranate, but I was able to follow the film of royal intrigues with little trouble. Based on the same events that Shakespeare dramatized in "Richard III," the story is set in England during the late 15th century; Edward (Ian Hunter) has just deposed the senile King Henry (Miles Mander) who wanders the castle in a fog, wearing a paper crown. Rathbone is Edward's devious brother Richard, frequently referred to as "Crookback," though Rathbone doesn't overdo the deformity of the hunchback. Price is the sniveling brother, the duke of Clarence, who winds up, in one of the best scenes in the movie, drowned in a vat of wine. The main narrative thread follows Rathbone on his quest for the throne. He has a little doll's house set up with figures standing in for all those in his path, and each time one is put out of the way, the figure is tossed away, moving Richard's figure closer to the throne. It takes years but he soon gets his wish, after having killed off several folks, including the two rightful child heirs, with the help of Karloff as Mord, his faithful torturer and executioner. Karloff cuts a very creepy figure here with his bald head, club foot, and swinging axe; in some ways, he's almost scarier here than he is as the Frankenstein monster, because the monster has some sympathetic moments but Mord does not. There is a romantic subplot that bubbles up from time to time involving young lord John Sutton and lady Nan Grey, and the exiled Prince of Wales spends most of the movie waiting in France for the right time to lead a revolt, which does indeed come at the end. Other cast members include Barbara O'Neil (as Queen Elizabeth), Leo G. Carroll, Ralph Forbes, and Rathbone's son John Rodion as Lord Devere who gets the axe early on. [TCM]

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (1959)

[Spoilers follow!] Glossy 50's soap operas aren't usually my cup of tea, but I enjoyed watching this one and I'm not sure why. It's like a mild VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, or a more serious (and non-musical) HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS. The attitudes about women, business, and morals are dated but not so foreign to us that we can't identify with the situations. The set-up reminded me of THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, as we follow the stories of three roommates in New York City, all of whom work in the secretarial pool at a large publishing company where virtually everyone is having an adulterous affair or two. Hope Lange, fresh out of college with a boyfriend (Brett Halsey) forging a career overseas, is new to the city and has aspirations to work as an editor; Diane Baker is a young secretary, a little ditzy, more in the market for a husband than a career; would-be actress Suzy Parker is temping until she can land a role in a play. Their stories: 1) Ambitious Lange works under and has the occasional run-in with Joan Crawford, a tough-as-nails senior editor. At one point, Lange dares to take home a manuscript that Crawford has rejected as "trash"; she thinks it has potential and bypasses Crawford by giving her notes on the book to big boss Brian Aherne, who apparently likes her spunk and gives her a job upgrade to reader and eventually to editor. When Halsey calls her long distance to tell her he's married someone else, she gets involved with handsome but brooding editor Stephen Boyd, but later, when Halsey comes to town and announces his marriage is falling apart, Lange has to make a choice. 2) Baker falls in with rich but slimy playboy Robert Evans who goes to work right away on, in his words, "storming the citadel"; when she gets pregnant, she assumes he's going to marry her so she gets all decked out in a nice civil wedding outfit, but instead he's decided to take her to get an "underground" abortion, so she leaps out of his moving car in Central Park and winds up having a miscarriage.

3) Parker, who clearly hates her day job, auditions for director Louis Jourdan and doesn't make the cut, but when she's introduced to him socially, they hit it off. She moves in with him and he gives her a part in his play but it soon becomes apparent that she's not very talented and she loses her role as actress and as mistress, which drives her to obsessively hiding outside of his apartment, spying on him and going through his trash. As in most "three on a match"-type stories, there has to be at least one tragic figure and Parker is it here. The acting helps make most of this palatable; Crawford in particular is quite good and is given enough of a separate subplot to be more than just a cardboard bitch. Evans, later a producer at Paramount (best known for CHINATOWN) is the exception, seeming to sleepwalk through a role that could have used more charm and/or grit. The sexual politics are laughable but entertaining, and sometimes not as antique as we might like to think, as early on when Boyd suggests that Lange should "prove what you have to prove" then leave the business world to get married. [FMC]