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Little Women (1949)
Prettified
MGM's 1949 remake of RKO's 1933 adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic resembles it in many ways, down to using much of its screenplay (the writers receive credit) and much of Max Steiner's score (Steiner doesn't). But it's filled with MGM pageantry that undercuts the storytelling of the proud, poor Marches of New England. They live in a pretty Technicolor house that doesn't look bereft of anything, and they traverse through colorful soundstagey-looking New England exteriors. June Allyson, at 32 a rather... mature Jo, has that appealing husky voice and attacks the role with fervor, but to my eyes, she also overacts-she doesn't just pout when facing some adversity or other, she looks like the Greek mask of tragedy. Of the other sisters, Elizabeth Taylor is a suitable Amy, Janet Leigh a Meg who doesn't make much of an impression, and Margaret O'Brien a touching Beth; she gets the best scenes, the episode involving the piano gift, and her final scene with Jo. Peter Lawford, probably at his Metro peak, is an all-right Laurie, and Mary Astor gives the one performance, as Marmee, that betters the 1933 original. Rosanno Brazzi arrives very late, later than Paul Lukas did in1933, and hasn't much time to make an impression as Professor Bhaer. Most of the beloved scenes are there (the penny-dreadful drama Jo wrote, oddly, goes missing), and of course we're touched and gratified at this plucky family facing adversity head-on and triumphing. But Katharine Hepburn, in 1933, simply WAS Jo, the New England resolve and the liveliness and the deep feeling of every emotion. June doesn't have that.
Peach-O-Reno (1931)
The lovely Bert Wheeler
Wheeler and Woolsey were popular comics from the late Twenties to Woolsey's early death in the late Thirties. They dealt heavily in wordplay and bad puns, and were generally charlatans; Woolsey's remarks have a strong Groucho tinge to them. They're certainly corrupt in this 1931 confection, directed, inevitably, by William A. Seiter, where they're divorce lawyers by day and casino operators at night. (There's a fun sequence of their office converting into a gambling parlor, echoed in 1964's "Robin and the Seven Hoods.") When long-married Joseph Cawthorn and Cora Witherspoon arrive in Reno seeking a divorce, they take both cases, and for reasons not worth going into, Wheeler is forced to go into drag. The surprise is, he's actually a rather attractive woman! He gets the look, the voice, and walk right and even does an acrobatic pas de deux with Woolsey. The couple's daughters, Zelma O'Neal and the always adorable Dorothy Lee, arrive in Reno to try to prevent the divorce, and a few more plot shenanigans happen before Wheeler and Lee, who were usually partnered and always worked well together, stop the proceedings for a terrific song-and-dance number about how the path from Niagara to Reno is growing shorter. It's a discombobulated movie, the beginning not having much to do with the end, and yes, there are groaners among the jokes. But at just over an hour, it doesn't wear out its welcome, and you'll positively marvel at Wheeler's drag act.
Give a Girl a Break (1953)
First-rate second-rate musical
A 1953 musical that lost MGM a packet, and a concoction of many familiar elements, this 83-minute slightly B-unit item has a lot going for it. What it definitely does not have going for it is the screenplay, but Goodrich and Hackett-these people wrote "It's a Wonderful Life," really? It's a hackneyed tale of which of three dancers is going to get the lead in a Broadway revue ("review," on the marquee in the movie), and what their efforts will do to their love lives. Marge Champion is William Ching's steady but still carries a torch for ex Gower Champion, while Debbie Reynolds is being ardently pursued by Bob Fosse (he dances wonderfully, of course, and even did his own choreography, but that acrid Fosse personality does come peeping through), while Helen Wood can't choose between career and wifedom. (Wood had just been on Broadway, in the "Pal Joey" revival; she dances beautifully too, and seemed headed for bigger things, yet ended up in "Deep Throat." Look it up!) The supporting cast is familiar and unexciting-Larry Keating, Lurene Tuttle-and one has to assume that Kurt Kasznar's harried composer was intended for Oscar Levant. The saving graces are pretty much entirely musical and choreographic: The score, by Burton Lane and Ira Gershwin, is a minor delight, with a couple of songs, notably "Dream World," relegated to the background. The Champions do two great extended pas de deux, Kasznar galumphs around Wood, and Fosse and Reynolds, who's clearly the one Metro is building up here, have two nice numbers, one a little overdependent on trick photography. The plotting is plodding and will surprise no one, but the Technicolor is bright and cheerful, and there's probably a good line or two hidden in that meandering screenplay. Give it a break!
The Critic (2023)
A full canvas for Ian McKellen, and that's something
Convoluted melodrama from Britain, but with a lot of atmosphere and some splendid acting. Especially from Sir Ian, relishing the opportunity to be front and center at 83, and revealing himself to be spry, enthusiastic, and as mesmerizing an actor as ever. He's Jimmy Erskine, a smug drama critic in 1934 London, powerful and feared, and amused by that. Some staff changes at his newspaper compel him to maneuver to remain on top, and that triggers a blackmail scheme rather more complicated than what screenwriter Patrick Marber ("Closer") probably intended. But it does afford some good opportunities for Gemma Arterton, as an ambitious actor who gets caught up in his web, and Mark Strong, as the paper's wealthy new editor, who conjures up some sympathy even as he plays a philandering cad. The 1934 ambience is strong and expert, with some particularly eye-filling interiors, and the morality of the day-Erskine is gay, with an attractive young secretary/custodian, and wants to have his fun even as he's aware of how dangerous that can be-is presented unflinchingly. In the end it's rather conventional and somewhat predictable, and the pacing isn't all it could be. But you'll love watching McKellen, and appreciate the pithiness of some of the dialogue.
Portrait of Jennie (1948)
Very, very Selznick
It's a bit overproduced, it strains to be different, and most of all, its a valentine to Jennifer Jones, who's frankly miscast. A swirly mystical supernatural romance from the late '40s with a Debussy-inspired score and a prestigious if not exactly ideal cast, it's an alluring canvas, quite gorgeously shot, and affecting-up to a point.
Aimless painter Joseph Cotten (never my favorite actor, and he's competent and uncharismatic here), wandering around 1934 Central Park in search of inspiration, confronts a mysterious little girl in 1910 dress, Jennifer Jones. She's an unconvincing 13-year-old, and she has a child voice that sounds too practiced and rehearsed to persuade. She exudes a profound psychological grip on him, and we get right away that she's an apparition from several decades ago long before he does. But there's plenty to divert us: his growing friendship with gallery owners Cecil Kellaway and Ethel Barrymore, who keeps needlessly referring to herself as an "old maid" but is very appealing and restrained. There's also roistering at an Irish bar with David Wayne and Albert Sharpe, both just having finished their run in "Finian's Rainbow" on Broadway, and a visit to a convent with Mother of Mercy Lillian Gish, who hasn't much to do. There's an exciting climax at a Cape Cod lighthouse, and some lovely silent-movie-esque tinting, before we arrive at the inevitable conclusion that these two lovers, though separated by time, will coexist eternally in some netherworld.
I like swoony '40s romances, and I certainly love the way this one looks, but I'll take "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" over it.
Storm Warning (1950)
"The Socially Conscious Studio" becomes socially conscious again
That was Warners' unofficial moniker in the 1930s, when it was making things like "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" and "G-Men," and it applies again to this surprising 1950 melodrama. Especially surprising in its casting: Ginger Rogers and Doris Day, and if that makes you expect a lighthearted musical, think very much again. Ginger arrives in a Southern backwater where, in an incidence of very bad timing, she witnesses a Klan execution of a journalist dragged from his jail cell, which he was sent to on trumped-up charges by the Klan. She's further imperiled by seeing that the man who pulled the trigger was the brother-in-law she never met, Steve Cochran, doing his usual smarmy-lowlife thing to excellent effect. The DA-Ronald Reagan, and he's better than usual-wants Ginger to talk, but if she does, she ruins her sister's and brother-in-law's lives, and if she doesn't, the many Klansmen and their cohorts in the town get to walk and are encouraged to commit further atrocities. I find Ginger actressy in a lot of her nonmusical roles, but she's persuasive here, if a bit mature to be a magazine-cover model, and Doris is fine. One curiosity: Though it's relentless in its disdain for the KKK, race is never mentioned, and aside from a few shots of Black townspeople, it's never even an issue. The KKK savagery is quite explicitly rendered, though, and the ending, surprisingly, approaches the tragic. Stuart Heisler was mostly a B director, but he's more than up to this one, and it's also strikingly, noirishly shot, with gleaming rainwashed pavements and dark corners throughout. A stronger picture, with stronger performances, than I expected.
Kisses for My President (1964)
Anyway, professional
Tracy-and-Hepburn-esque comedy has Polly Bergen as the newly elected chief executive, and Fred MacMurray as her bumbling, impatient, addled husband, who's resentful of having to assume the role of First Lady. That's a pretty thin premise, and the screenwriters don't do much with it. The main plot points have to do with the prez's strained foreign relations with a wily, randy South American dictator (a hammy Eli Wallach), her sparring with a resentful senator from the opposition (Edward Andrews), and MacMurray's will-he-won't-he flirtations with an old flame (Arlene Dahl) who wants him in her employ, and in her boudoir. Bergen's a quite convincing, attractive, authoritative president, while MacMurray's unable to wring any real laughs out of his annoying character, and both spend too much time trying to raise their two rambunctious kids while attending to affairs of state. But it is, at least, a professionally done Warners production, directed by the reliable old studio hand Curtis Bernhardt, not overlong, and if the fadeout resolution looks ridiculous by today's standards, it was probably rather appealing in 1964. Around the same time, Irving Berlin and Lindsay and Crouse attempted a similar normal-folks-in-the-White-House Broadway musical, "Mr. President," and they quickly ran out of ideas, too. There still may be a winning comedy in the premise, and now that we may have an actual woman president on the way, somebody might want to give it a try. But it will have to be cleverer than this.
The Big Knife (1955)
Overheated
Robert Aldrich rarely kept his actors' emotions in check-I mean, look at "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" He lets them run wild here, in a not-very-cinematic adaptation of a Clifford Odets play. Odets' famous penchant for overwriting is much in evidence, and the lines are given ripe readings by Jack Palance, as a movie star with a terrible secret, and Ida Lupino, as his loving but highly skeptical wife. A short scene or two aside, it's a one-set affair, Palance's Bel Air mansion, where Hollywood types keep dropping in, frequently unannounced: hostile movie mogul Rod Steiger, unscrupulous PR whiz Wendell Corey, predatory neighbor Jean Hagen, dumb starlet Shelley Winters. It's meant to be a scathing look at lack of morals in the Tinseltown community, but it doesn't entirely persuade. Palance, hardworking as he is, just doesn't seem the swashbuckling matinee idol type, and Lupino, an actor I admire tremendously, overacts. The most attractive personalities, in fact, are Wesley Addy, as a friend of Palance's who covets his wife, and Nick Cravat, Burt Lancaster's old acrobatic buddy, as Palance's masseur/general fixer. Steiger's hideous overacting is amusing, and Corey, having to underplay for most of the length, finally gets to vent some emotion as the plot careens toward (unconvincing) tragedy. Well photographed, well scored by Frank De Vol, and worth one look, but I won't be revisiting it.
House of Women (1962)
Sorta "Caged," sorta "Women's Prison," lotsa fun
As a fan of this genre, I'm predisposed to like "House of Women" anyway. But I was surprised by the amount of professionalism and thoughtfulness that went into what's clearly an early-'60s Warners B, riffing on the then-12-year-old "Caged" and adding some trendy contemporary refs, like inmates arguing over the relative merits of Troy Donahue. Shirley Knight, always wonderful, is the naive young thing who took a five-year rap for assisting her boyfriend in a robbery, and is entering the Big House with a baby on the way. She quickly allies with the brassy Barbara Nichols and the hard-as-nails Constance Ford (she's excellent), and snags a relatively comfy job in the home of warden Andrew Duggan, who goes from rat to sympathetic to rat again. (Also in his domestic employ: Virginia Capers, who won a Tony some years later for "Raisin.") There's the usual we're-taking-over-this-joint roistering and unsympathetic parole board, and a somewhat not-credible climax where the prisoners get everything they want. But it's pretty well directed, and certainly well acted.
Is My Face Red? (1932)
Cortez marking time
I like Ricardo Cortez--he tried on a number of identities in a long career, from Latin lover (he was actually Jake Krantz from the Lower East Side) to cocky leading man to dignified elder-statesman character actor, and succeeded at most of them. He was handsome--in some shots, he looks alarmingly like Gene Kelly--and he even did a bit of directing. In this quick RKO programmer, a mild spoof of the Walter Winchell sort of gossip columnist popular at the time (Winchell gets a mention, and so does Ed Sullivan), he's lively and busy, but somewhat overselling the charm. He's also playing a rotter, and unable to charm his way out of that. While devoted to girlfriend Helen Twelvetrees, top-billed but without a lot to do, he's also carrying on with socialite Jill Esmond, cheating fellow reporter Robert Armstrong out of scoops, and laughing over the witnessing of a murder, by Italian (!) mafioso Sidney Toler. Some nice moments with harried switchboard operator ZaSu Pitts and bootlegger Clarence Muse, and Esmond and Twelvetrees were always worth watching, even stuck in uninteresting parts as they are here. But the tone is off--is it a comedy? An expose? A satire?--and, much as I generally like Cortez, this role's a much more natural fit for a Lee Tracy.
Athena (1954)
Smug
MGM's "musical with young ideas," as the ad copy had it, actually has some pretty old, musty ideas disguised as social satire in this rather smug spoof of a then-burgeoning health craze. The Martin-Blane score is far from their best, and, as if to show Metro's anxiety, the movie opens with Vic Damone singing a pronoun-altered "The Boy Next Door," borrowed from "Meet Me in St. Louis." He's a TV heartthrob who enlists the services of Army buddy Edmund Purdom, who's nursing a political career, and for reasons not worth going into they end up involved with a family of health nuts, led by pater Louis Calhern and Evelyn Varden, and most prominently featuring daughters Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds. It feels like the screenwriters are straining to be fair to everybody, but they do indulge in cheap shots at health foods, health regimens, and Buddhist-inspired health reveries. It ends up at a bodybuilding competition, featuring young Steve Reeves (billed as "Mr. Universe 1950"), but even there there's an air of, look at these unconventional zealots. Some of the musical staging is lively, Damone certainly had a lovely voice, and Powell, this being a Joe Pasternak production, also gets to raise her voice in a bit of "Daughter of the Regiment." But with the never-interesting Richard Thorpe helming it, it's a sluggish ride, and the witless swipes at vegetarianism and weightlifting and such haven't dated well.
The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951)
Viva Thelma, of course, but the writing is slack
Who doesn't love Thelma Ritter? She was maybe the best character actress we ever had, able to both knock back a comic line with flawless timing and make us care. I'd been looking forward to seeing this, her only genuine starring role (though she's third-billed), which also benefits from George Cukor direction and some tasty early-'50s location New York filming. But it's a rather mild affair, and we blame the Charles Brackett screenplay, which doesn't go much of anywhere. Jeanne Crain is the model and Thelma the marriage broker, a disappointed-in-love matron who makes matches among her not particularly attractive clientele and gets involved in one unusual pairing, of Crain and radiologist Scott Brady (in his handsome-leading-man days, which didn't last that long). Thelma has an interesting array of clients, including Nancy Kulp, Zero Mostel, and Frank Fontaine, and also a conniving sister-in-law, Helen Ford, who was a major star in 1920s Broadway musicals, especially those by Rodgers and Hart. She also has a pleasant but dull suitor, Jay C. Flippen, and a simpatico card-playing buddy, Michael O'Shea, who'd been starred by Fox back in the '40s but by now was relegated to supporting roles. It goes by easily and pleasantly, and Thelma, not unexpectedly, makes us both laugh and care. It just added up to less than what I'd expected.
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
Solid O'Neill, solid Ford, even solid John Wayne
Dudley Nichols neatly cobbled four short Eugene O'Neill playlets into this atmospheric adaptation, detailing the lonely, dangerous, difficult life at sea. It's moody and blustery, with a crew full of actors I don't like much doing better than usual. Barry Fitzgerald's forced Irish adorableness is kept in check, and John Wayne, as a Swedish rube trying to get back to farm and family, though top-billed, is just a part of an ensemble, and manages to steer through the O'Neill without embarrassing himself. There's also excellent work from Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter (as the most interesting character, a depressed alcoholic with a past nobody knows about), and young Mildred Natwick, as a shady lady conspiring against Wayne during a seaside sojourn. The Gregg Toland photography's absolutely excellent, with a really frightening storm at sea and a scary attack from the air, and John Ford strays a bit off his usual subject matter and proves thoroughly capable. Hollywood ruined a lot of O'Neill but occasionally got it right, and here's an instance of that. It's brawny and convincing. It's a movie with hair on its chest.
A Majority of One (1961)
Accept the now-cringey miscasting, and enjoy
A late-'50s Broadway hit gets a dutiful and more than competent filming in this Warners opus from 1961, employing many veterans who reunited there the following year for "Gypsy." There's screenwriter Leonard Spiegelgass, adapting his own stage success; Mervyn LeRoy, directing with good late-career acumen; and Rosalind Russell, eye-opening casting as a Brooklyn Jewish mom transported to Japan when her son-in-law is appointed to the diplomatic corps, but I think she pulls it off splendidly. Gertrude Berg had played it onstage, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke had been the Japanese tycoon who meets and is delighted by her, non-PC casting that doesn't get any better here: It's Alec Guinness. He doesn't look remotely Japanese and does predictable things with his R's, but it's still a dignified performance, if you can overlook how innately wrong the casting is by today's standards. There's also Mae Questel, spelled Questal in the credits for some reason, as Roz's bigoted downstairs neighbor who somehow turns tolerant between the first and last scene. What I like about it is, it's unforced and warm, a study of how two people who are predisposed to loathe each other learn to look past their prejudices and see their feelings blossom into respect, affection, and possibly beyond that. And I haven't seen anyone praising Ray Danton, as Roz's son-in-law, or Madelyn Rhue, as her loving but edgy daughter; they're both excellent, and both nice to look at. Max Steiner's score is less obtrusive than usual, and less wedded to repeated themes. Yes, the thing is horribly dated, but it probably made quite the point in its day about overcoming innate prejudices. At two and a half hours it's leisurely, but that's about how long it would have been onstage, and I salute it for being well-produced, well-directed, and unexpectedly touching.
The Great Lillian Hall (2024)
Not a fun watch. But strong!
A lot of folk who have been around theater collaborate to provide a convincing look at putting on a show, and how difficult it is when your leading lady, "the first lady of the American theater," is in the early stages of dementia. Supposedly it's based on the latter-day career of Marian Seldes, and Jessica Lange is, as others have said, rather magnificent in suggesting a Broadway star's pride, neglect of loved ones, and denial of her medical crisis. The theatrical details are by and large convincing, though that's clearly no Broadway house (the movie appears to have been made largely in Marietta, Georgia), and, much as we'd like it to be true, opening-night audiences these days don't dress in formal wear. Good acting all around, especially from Kathy Bates as Lillian's no-nonsense caretaker and Lily Rabe as her justifiably resentful daughter; Pierce Brosnan is also around, as an aging-roue next-door neighbor who provides acid commentary and sympathy where it's really needed. Michael Cristofer, an award-winning playwright from way back, directs capably, and if the ending feels a bit unrealistic, it's still a compelling, if often hard-to-watch, journey to it.
Callaway Went Thataway (1951)
Callaway didn't go much of anywhere
Pleasant enough spoof of early TV and the westerns that populated it, this Panama-Frank comedy gives a nice opportunity to Howard Keel, whom MGM was building up, and who should have been a bigger star than he was. In a dual role, of a has-been cowboy movie star and the likable lookalike who's hired by a couple of advertising sharpies to impersonate him, he gets to sing a bit and also create two distinct personalities, and even have a fistfight with himself, thanks to some clever doubling. Those two ad sharpies, though, are played by Fred MacMurray and Dorothy McGuire, and they're tiresome. He's an opportunist, and she's a bore. There are some wild credibility gaps, and the supporting cast isn't up to much, though Natalie Schaefer has a nice cameo as a wealthy socialite charmed, and why shouldn't she be, by Keel's howdy-ma'am personability. Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner stop by for cameos, and the background music pleasantly includes a couple of tunes, "Too Late Now" and "You Wonderful You," that Metro was flogging at the time. It's well-produced, and Panama and Frank knew their way around writing for kids, a number of whom have small speaking roles. It's short on real wit, though, and MacMurray makes his ad-man-sharpie even less appealing than he'd be on paper.
Wings for the Eagle (1942)
Limp propaganda, but the stars did have something
Mostly a documentary-style salute to the tireless workers at Lockheed and how quickly they're turning out aircraft for the war (which we're not in until the end of the movie), this Warners assembly line effort is unremarkable in pretty much every way. It stars Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson, who were teamed in several other movies, usually more felicitously, as sort of a Warners Hope and Crosby. They're old school buddies, and when Morgan makes it out to California to work, he bunks in with Carson and almost immediately is flirting with his wife, Ann Sheridan. The three yell at each other an awful lot, and you may notice, neither of the guys is a really good guy: Morgan's a lazy cynic and Carson a quick-tempered idiot. Both are eventually redeemed, of course. The comedy's limp and the romance unsatisfying, and the one really good performance comes out of George Tobias, of all people, who's the immigrant supervisor who makes wry remarks and eventually encounters tragedy. The patriotism is thick even by the standards of the day, and the musical score intrusive, and don't expect any surprises. But what he heck, I enjoy Morgan and Carson, and Sheridan did have oomph. A period piece, indifferently directed by Lloyd Bacon, but not too bad as a time waster.
Cry 'Havoc' (1943)
Tough broads!
Nurses, trained and un-, provide first aid and feminine comfort in a ravaged section of the Bataan front in MGM's 1943 filming of a 1942 stage flop. It's effectively adapted by Paul Osborn, and directed a bit stodgily by Richard Thorpe, who was one of Metro's longest-lasting and least-interesting contractees. It's stagy, limited mainly to the no-frills living quarters of the nurses, and, despite some snazzy quips coming from Ann Sothern and Joan Blondell and the comic-relief ditherings of Diana Lewis (who later married William Powell), a ditzy Southern blonde, pretty bleak. Margaret Sullavan is the no-nonsense workaholic, under commander Fay Bainter, and among several other worthy actresses, there's the always-worth-seeing Marsha Hunt, plus Heather Angel and Ella Raines. It's not subtle, and the main conflict, with Ann getting flirty with Maggie's man, feels a little inconsequential amid all the dying soldiers and bombs. But it's certainly effective propaganda, and the ending, a downbeat one, is a surprise.
Random Harvest (1942)
Sorry, not buying it
The third and least of Hollywood adaptations of James Hilton (preceded by "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"), this ungainly romance has Ronald Colman, twice the age of the character he's playing, suffering from wartime amnesia and wandering out of the asylum he's in, to be rescued by too-nice-to-be-believed Greer Garson, a music hall performer. She falls in love with him; it's not clear why. They settle into a happy domestic existence and he becomes a successful writer; they have a son, who dies, a plot point that could have been excised entirely; off to Liverpool for a job interview, he's hit by a car and forgets the previous three years of his existence but recalls everything that preceded it. It seems he comes from a rich family and is expected to take over the family business, which he does with great acumen, while he's ardently pursued by Susan Peters, a friend (and relative? It's not clear) who has loved him since childhood. They're engaged, which is a little creepy given their respective ages. All the while we're wondering what happened to Greer, and it turns out she's become his secretary. The Peters-Colman union doesn't happen and he and Greer enter a marriage of convenience, and I kept screaming at the screen, WHY DON'T YOU JUST TELL HIM WHO YOU ARE, but she won't. We know where this is headed, but it takes its time getting there, and Mervyn LeRoy is in no hurry. Well-engineered, with moody lighting and a suitably slurpy Herbert Stothart score, it has too many credibility gaps. I love old Hollywood romances, and this was a huge hit, but I'm not buying it.
Shane (1953)
Sorry, not seeing what the fuss is about
Acclaimed as one of the greatest westerns ever, maybe THE greatest, and what I see is a pretty good western with a standard story, nice photography, and some OK acting. The plot's very familiar: stranger comes in from nowhere and tries to stay out of the virtuous homesteaders fighting the greedy, evil ranchers, but he gets pushed into it. That's Alan Ladd, effectively underplaying, but with his marcelled hairdo and 5'6" frame, it's hard to buy him as a burly fighter and ace shootist. He befriends homesteader Van Heflin, who's excellent, and Jean Arthur, whom we always love, but here she mostly spouts concerned-mom dialogue and hasn't a lot to do. Their son, Brandon de Wilde, was terrific in other things. But here, director George Stevens forces his line readings and lingers too long on the kid's reactions. It's prettily shot, and some appealing supporting players turn up: Elisha Cook Jr., Ellen Corby, Edgar Buchanan, even Nancy Kulp in a couple of bits. But the central conflict, who gets to own the land and further the American dream, is conveyed in dozens of other movies just as effectively, and the man's-gotta-do-what-a-man's-gotta-do dialogue gets tiresome, and de Wilde's worshipfulness of Shane becomes just a bit creepy.
Symphony of Six Million (1932)
Well, Ricardo Cortez was born Jake Krantz
So it's not much of a lapse of logic to have him play Felix Klauber, doctor extraordinaire, raised and schooled on the Lower East Side. This melodrama from a Fannie Hurst novel goes in for emotional excess at every turn, but it does provide a rare, compelling look at an urban Jewish community up to and into the Depression, something Hollywood proved extremely reluctant to do. The plot, quite similar to Rodgers and Hammerstein's not-quite-hit "Allegro," has Cortez abandoning his principled work at a Lower East Side clinic, urged by his unscrupulous brother to open a ritzy Upper West Side office and cater to rich hypochondriacs, until he sees The Error of His Ways and returns to the good works he practiced in his old neighborhood. Anna Appel is quite good as his Mrs. Goldberg-esque Yiddishe mama, and Gregory Ratoff, unrecognizable if all you know of him is "All About Eve," is also good as his dad. As the lame schoolteacher who loves him silently and eventually is rewarded for it, Irene Dunne is, as several posters have noted, miles away from Essex Street. Much as I love some of Gregory La Cava's work, it's overheated here, and there's almost nonstop irrelevant Max Steiner sawing through it. Some unusual moments lift it up, notably Cortez operating on his infirm dad and watching him die on the table, and some Lower East Side episodes inserted largely for atmosphere. Good it ain't, but I'm glad I saw it.
Red Dust (1932)
Quintessential Clark and Jean, and thank you, John Mahin
Influential pre-Code drama pours on the atmosphere and the sex in a most un-MGM way, and this is the one that made a star out of Jean Harlow. She'd been decorative but not much good in such notable movies as "Hell's Angels" and "Public Enemy," and somehow Victor Fleming turned her into an ace comedienne who could also make you care. Here she's Vantine, a no-better-than-she-should-be spirit who happens upon Clark Gable's Malaysian rubber plantation, just as he's receiving assistant Gene Raymond and his comely wife, Mary Astor. And the battle of the women is on, as Harlow and Astor vie for Gable's attention. He's all man in a way even he seldom achieved, and we understand his surliness even as we admire his competence and efficiency. There's atmosphere galore, including a lengthy sequence on how rubber is made, and everyone's helped immensely by John Mahin's rude, funny, sexy screenplay, which allots ripe ripostes to Gable and Harlow, who reel them off expertly. Astor's gorgeous and womanly as ever, and we believe her conflicting feelings for Gable and Raymond. (In "A Life on Film," she answers the question many asked her, "What was it like to kiss Clark Gable?": what with Victor Fleming yelling and hot lights pouring on them and technicians running around, not much.) You have to put up with the casual racism of "those lying, cheating coolies" and a comic-relief manservant whose function is to laugh idiotically at everything, but accept that and you have a lively, adult, HOT movie that showed what Harlow could really do, and further developed the masculine characteristics that Gable displayed in many, many movies.
Roberta (1935)
Well, thank heaven for Dorothy Fields
The 1933 Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach musical, adapted from a novel by Alice Duer Miller, wasn't that well reviewed to begin with. But audiences liked the songs, especially "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and the gowns, and loved a scene set in a bar with 1,000 actual liquor bottles (Prohibition had just been repealed). Most of Harbach's unwieldy, and rather unfunny, libretto gets preserved in this film adaptation, and while the score is considerably reduced, as usually then happened in Hollywood, some of the missing songs at least survive as underscoring. He wasn't the most dexterous lyricist, either. ("Now laughing friends deride/ Tears I cannot hide." Some friends!) Fortunately, Dorothy Fields was retained to rewrite some Harbach lyrics (she's billed with Jimmy McHugh, but he had nothing to do with it), and contribute one new song, the lovely "Lovely to Look At." That helps the musical presentation; nothing's going to help this slim plot. Irene Dunne, a little over-prim to these eyes, is the dress designer who variously loves and hates an impossibly handsome Randolph Scott, the Indiana bumpkin who's come to Paris to visit his aunt Helen Westley, a renowned couturier. He's traveling with Fred Astaire's band, and Fred hooks up with Ginger Rogers, who's a cabaret star with a fake Polish accent (a tribute to Lyda Roberti, who did the part onstage) but is really, coincidence of coincidences, his old flame, Lizzie Gatz. Sit through this tiresome plot and you'll get rewards, mostly Fred and Ginger dancing, and a brief display of Fred's excellent jazz piano playing, Irene's pretty soprano, and Ginger's way of hoisting a so-so comic line. Also dresses, lots and lots of dresses. Claire Dodd plays her patented shrew, ably, and it's over in under two hours. William Seiter's direction is nothing special, and the screenplay certainly isn't. You'll have a good time anyway.
The Pleasure of His Company (1961)
Aptly titled!
Maybe I'm overrating this; it's just a pretty-good adaptation of a pretty-good boulevard comedy that fit snugly into the theatergoing atmosphere of 1958. But viewed from this advanced vantage point, it conjures up a long-lost world that looks incredibly seductive. The Paramount mountain appears, Alfred Newman's lush scoring begins, some gorgeous still photos of 1961 San Francisco grace the credits, and we're off to an appetizing array of sophisticated bon mots, expert comic playing, and the most glamorous sets and costumes this side of "Pillow Talk." Astaire, not just playing Astaire and genuinely acting, oozes charm and regret as the long-neglectful father of Debbie Reynolds (who does overplay a bit), returning to San Francisco to witness her marriage to Tab Hunter, who's surprisingly excellent. Ex-wife Lilli Palmer, now married to gruff Gary Merrill, eyes her ex's intervention with well-justified suspicion, while dad Charlie Ruggles makes caustic remarks and quaffs a lot of bourbon. It's a very white world, and the casual racism thrown at the well-played Japanese servant becomes wearying, but it's such and eyeful and earful, and Astaire's so marvelous, you end up loving it. And when he dances a few steps with Reynolds and Palmer, you think, why on earth didn't they give him a whole number.
Thirteen Women (1932)
Fun pre-Code, but also a bit slipshod
Judging from the TCM print, which runs just an hour, as opposed to the original, 15-minute-longer version, this is a tense little thriller with a few loose threads. First, despite the title of the novel on which it's based, there are not 13 women in it, at least not the 13 alluded to in the title. The ones remaining are all former sorority sisters being tormented and summarily bumped off, mostly through the power of suggestion, by jealous former student Myrna Loy, still in her Eastern-temptress phase, though not for much longer. She's the most interesting thing in it, quite gorgeous and with a cool hauteur that suits Ursula Georgia very well. The most rational and combative sister, Irene Dunne in her noblest mode, is rather a dullard. She's widowed and lives, awfully well, somewhere near Beverly Hills, and has an irritating adorable son whom Loy targets. Other women include Kay Johnson, reduced to supporting parts after such disasters as "Madame Satan," and Jill Esmond, then married to Laurence Olivier, who has a lilting British accent and gives off an intriguing, somewhat Sapphic vibe. Peg Entwistle, about to throw herself off the Hollywood sign, is another, and her footage is too brief to reveal much about her. Ricardo Cortez, always welcome, is the uninteresting detective who pieces the case together, and some of the murders--a nervous trapeze artist, Johnson's--are quite strikingly filmed. It's far-fetched and racist and wildly unlikely, but entertaining, and an excellent look at the pre-Nora Charles Loy.