On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Film: On Moonlight Bay (1951)

Stars: Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Jack Smith, Leon Ames, Rosemary DeCamp, Mary Wickes, Ellen Corby, Billy Gray

Director: Roy del Ruth

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Doris Day: click here to learn more about Ms. Day (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

All of the women we'll profile this year bore the title of "America's Sweetheart" at some point during their career.  But few of them got bogged down with that title in quite the same way as Doris Day did in her career.  As we'll find in the coming weeks, Day was wildly successful as America's Sweetheart, holding that banner for nearly twenty years, and it was the primary foundation for most of her movies, to the point that by the end of her career, she'd practically become a punchline for being the "world's oldest virgin."  But a film like On Moonlight Bay shows exactly why she was so good at that.  Virtually all of the tropes we associate with being America's Sweetheart, Doris Day lived in her time as a leading lady, which by 1951 was starting even if she wasn't the proven box office phenomenon she would eventually become.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Marjorie Winfield (Day), whose father George (Ames) has moved his entire family to a more respectable & wealthier part of town to live in a nicer neighborhood.  Initially something of a tomboy, Marjorie falls for an idealistic young man named Bill (MacRae), in the process becoming far more traditionally feminine in hopes of pleasing him, though both of them don't feel that they think marriage is the correct path for them as a romantic couple.  As the film progresses, they fall deeper in love, even though her father doesn't want her to pursue such an untraditional young man, but after he goes off to war (and adjusts his views on marriage), he condones the union and they end up in each other's arms before the film finishes.

On Moonlight Bay is not a direct remake of Meet Me in St. Louis, but it is clearly borrowing from the film.  The movie is about Day, but it's really about her family-her kid brother Wesley (Gray) might honestly have more screen-time than she does if you get out a stopwatch, much in the same way that a lot of the other actors in Meet Me in St. Louis share the spotlight with Judy Garland.  There's even a Christmas scene to complete the comparison.  The issue here is that Meet Me in St. Louis is a sentimental masterpiece, with bright costumes, moody cinematography, & toe-tapping musical numbers, and On Moonlight Bay...isn't.  The film was a big hit, and even got a sequel out of the deal called By the Light of the Silvery Moon (with pretty much the entire cast returning, including Day & MacRae), but it's just too feather-light and the music doesn't have enough panache.

Day's part here is one that she'd know well.  One of the more psychological tropes of the America's Sweetheart genre is a woman who doesn't at first present to the norms of respectable femininity, but by the end of the movie the man in her life has convinced her that's what she needs to do to be happy.  This is true for everyone from June Allyson (Little Women) to Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady) to even modern examples like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.  This is something that Doris Day excelled at, starting this film as a tomboy in dirt & pigtails, and then transforming into a blonde goddess.  It's not hard to see the appeal to the male gaze on this one-the idea that beneath every girl is a ravishing movie queen, if only she'd listen to the man in her life.  I'm hopeful as we continue this month that we'll see Day step out of that shadow, as her pluck & talent deserve a movie that sees those first, before catering to her lesser co-leads.

OVP: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Film: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Stars: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Richard Benedict

Director: Billy Wilder

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

We've talked about this before, but with noir, it's not always clear when I'm headed into the movie whether or not the film in question is, in fact, film noir.  Ace in the Hole is one of the bigger titles that has this problem.  Directed by Billy Wilder in 1951, the film was poorly-received when it first came out and flopped at the box office, despite Wilder coming off of the critical acclaim of an undisputed film noir like Sunset Boulevard the previous year.  The movie has since been rescued by critics, but it's debatable whether or not it's actually a film noir.  In 2022, Eddie Muller (the president of the Film Noir Foundation) said it wasn't, that it was more a depiction of sleazy journalism, and to a degree I agree with him.  This film doesn't entirely fit within the traditional confines of noir, even if it has elements of it.  But because it's oftentimes called noir, I thought it was a good choice for our series this month.  And whatever it is, it's indisputably a great movie.  

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Chuck Tatum (Douglas), a ruthless, ill-tempered journalist who is forced to work for a small town newspaper after becoming basically unemployable at larger papers.  Tatum comes across a man named Leo Minosa (Benedict) trapped in a cave, an amiable guy whom the sheriff assumes he can get out in about 12 hours.  But Tatum, understanding that people will clamor for such a human interest story, convinces the sheriff and Leo's unhappy wife Lorraine (Sterling), who was about to leave him, to take the long way to rescue Leo, therefore extending the rescue to a week rather than the initial 12 hours, and getting him a big story.  It works-he gets national news attention, which results in huge sales for the local paper, and gives Chuck the chance to get back on top.  But in the process, Leo's prognosis gets worse, with him eventually getting pneumonia.  Chuck tries to save him the original way, but it's no longer an option because they've damaged the path by going the long way.  Leo dies, but before that he tells Chuck he has left an anniversary present for Lorraine in their home.  Chuck forces Lorraine to wear it (a fur stole), nearly strangling her with it, and in the process she stabs him in self-defense with a pair of scissors.  Chuck eventually confesses to his crimes, though it's clear that they will never reach the readers who were enthralled with Leo's story, and then dies from the wound that he got from Lorraine.

This is one of of three movies (along with Sunset Boulevard and A Face in the Crowd) that Wilder made in the 1950's that was about the media, specifically critical of the way that journalism & entertainment were merging in an unhealthy way.  As I mentioned above, only Sunset Boulevard was financially successful of the three, and it's easy to see why that resonated more with audiences, given that it was about a "crazy" movie star, and people love to see a celebrity fall.  The latter two are more indictments on their audiences, and Ace in the Hole in particular.  This is a nasty story-it's about how people will turn a man who is in danger, someone we should want to save, into a story.  The ending of the movie is literally a carnival (the alternate title of this is The Big Carnival), with people celebrating in some aspects Leo getting out of the cave, but more so their own stake in his misery.  There are fights between people over who has been at the cave the longest, and watching people put in their own claim on a piece of one man's fame-through-misery.  The focus is obviously on how characters like Chuck & Lorraine are profiting off of Leo, putting his life at stake for a few dollars, but honestly what struck me about my screening was the people they were catering to.  In an era where we literally watch the Capitol be stormed, and the focus is less on the horror & more on the reaction from politicians of how it happened...it's easy to see the terrible way we all contribute to the degradation of our humanity just for a few dollars and a few moments of macabre entertainment.

It's helped by a pair of wonderful performances from Douglas & Sterling.  Kirk Douglas is a complicated actor for me, as there are times I genuinely do not get his appeal, but other times I'm totally invested in him.  I can't quite say I'm a fan, but when he's good, I totally can subscribe to it, and this is a case of him being very good, playing his Chuck as someone who has never questioned his own morality, mostly because he finds such a thing a nuisance on his way to the top.  Sterling is also good.  I loved the way that she throws herself at Douglas, a love story that even he knows makes little sense, mostly because it's the only thing she knows she can use against a man.  She's been stuck so long that she struggles with changing her own plan even if it means a faster means to an end.  I kind of wish the film had the guts to give us one last moment with her, though the Hays Code might've gotten in the way there.  Lorraine essentially gets out of this with cash & a widow's lease on life...I wish we'd either have seen her completely get away, or forced into her own nightmare, being "Leo's Widow" as the only way to make money going forward (which is probably what would've been her fate).  That lack of focus and maybe a minute or two of repetitive storytelling are my only complaints, though.  This might not be noir, but it's proof that Wilder (more than any other filmmaker of his era) could see the dawning of a new era in America...and it wasn't shining.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

The Prowler (1951)

Film: The Prowler (1951)

Stars: Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes

Director: Joseph Losey

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

The concept of a "deep cut" is definitely one of my favorites when it comes to classic cinema.  With all of Golden Age Hollywood, but especially things like film noir where B-studios and Poverty Row would crank out movies, it's basically an infinity sign that you'll never actually see all of the movies, but the further you get away from the tried-and-true classics, the less likely it is you'll find an undiscovered gem that you didn't know existed.  So far this month, while I'd had some good movies come up, none were quite in the same league as Laura and Kiss Me Deadly, film noir giants.  But today we get to such a movie, a film I had never really heard of before adding it to our list of deep cuts, and I leave a changed man, absolutely in love with this twisted film noir, a gender-swapped Double Indemnity homage called The Prowler.

(Spoilers Ahead...though you should really see this one if you haven't) The movie starts with Webb Garwood (Heflin), a corrupt cop who is investigating a peeping tom at the home of Susan Gilvray (Keyes).  Webb takes a quick shine to Susan, and initially you'd be forgive for thinking that this is just a case of a married woman being enamored with a single, brooding man.  But as the film progresses, we come to learn that Webb isn't what he seems.  Beneath the veneer of respectability afforded him by his cop uniform is a nasty, greedy bastard, one who is intent on taking the insurance money afforded to Susan if her husband dies for himself.  He begins an affair with Susan, and then uses the pretense of the prowler to kill her husband in the line of duty, which Susan is aware is probably murder but can't say anything for fear of revealing her affair.  Things get crazy afterward when they wed, with a disproportionate amount of press following them, but there's a problem-Susan's pregnant, and since we know that her husband was infertile (as does his brother), it'll be clear that she got pregnant before the murder, and that she & Webb knew each other before (which she's stated wasn't the case under oath).  They run out to a ghost town, where they can have the baby in secret, but when there's complications, Webb hires a doctor, one he intends to kill...but Susan catches on and gives the baby to the doctor & tells him to flee.  Webb is on the run, but dies in the chase, Susan left behind, her baby safely out of reach.

The movie is grand, and even by film noir standards, is black as pitch.  The way that Heflin's character unfolds, you don't entirely know in the first 15 minutes or so that he's an actually rotten villain and not just a guy trying to score with a married woman.  But that's the impressive thing about Heflin's work here.  He uses our expectations about a police officer of this era to be noble, or at least obviously corrupt, to the story's advantage, showing just how rotten he is as the movie continues.  It's clever writing (Dalton Trumbo, writing under a pseudonym, penned this story), but it's aided by a masterful piece-of-work from Heflin, better here than even his Oscar-winning turn in Johnny Eager.

Also strong is Evelyn Keyes.  Keyes is best-known to modern audiences for her work in Gone with the Wind, playing Suellen O'Hara, Scarlett's bratty younger sister.  She never really took off as a leading woman despite a few opportunities in high-profile movies (including The Jolson Story and The Seven Year Itch), but this movie showed she has the goods to do it.  Rather than playing Susan as a damsel-in-distress or as a femme fatale that's in on the murders, she instead plays her as a lonely, incredibly horny housewife, someone who has wanted adventure & sex from a man (which her husband has not given her), but whose moral compass knows that Webb is wrong for her even though she can't help coming back for more.  Like Double Indemnity before it (which this is a spin on, with Heflin taking on the Barbara Stanwyck role and Keyes playing the part of Fred MacMurray), this movie is smoldering & sexually-charged on top of an ace thriller that keeps you guessing right up until the end.

OVP: The Blue Veil (1951)

Film: The Blue Veil (1951)

Stars: Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell, Richard Karlson, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Totter, Natalie Wood, Vivian Vance, Dan O'Herlihy

Director: Curtis Bernhardt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jane Wyman, Supporting Actress-Joan Blondell)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

The Oscar Viewing Project, which drives maybe 70-80% of the reviews we do each week, is a project doomed-to-fail.  I've talked about this many times, but there are a number of lost films that were nominated for Oscars, and a few more that are next-to-impossible to see anywhere even if they aren't technically "lost."  But then there are other films that are just next-to-impossible to catch despite clearly having cache, and while I'm still brimming with films that I need to see that are readily available on streaming platforms (or even on my counter from DVD Netflix) to watch, I'm aware of these movies & make a point of seeing them as soon as they are made available to me.  By chance, a connection on Twitter turned me on to The Blue Veil recently, one of the most elusive films nominated for a major Academy Award out there.  Never released on commercial home video & never put on TCM for some reason, The Blue Veil has remained an enigma to me.  It was nominated for two major acting Oscars, and the cast list-just look at it!  Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Natalie Wood-these are big name stars, the kinds that usually (and especially in conjunction with Oscar) demand at least a DVD release of the movie, if not regular screening on TCM.  Thankfully, I caught the movie now, and while it wasn't good (we'll get into it), it's finally off of my "how am I ever going to see this?!?" list.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on LouLou (Wyman), a young war widow whose baby dies in infancy while she's still in the hospital after birth, and as a result she must take a job as a nursemaid to a widowed industrialist (played by Laughton).  She grows to love the job, but not Laughton's Frederick, so after he proposes to another woman (played by Vance-and how weird is it seeing Vivian Vance without Lucille Ball?) she's heartbroken to give up the child, but moves on to another job.  The film continues to explore these relationships that she has, at one point nearly getting married, but ultimately never finding love again or having her own children.  Toward the end of the film, she falls particularly hard for a young boy named Tony, whose parents abandon him & she raises him as her own for a number of years.  When they return, she attempts to kidnap the boy (seeing him as hers now), but ultimately must give back the child to the couple.  The final scenes hearken to a Mr. Holland's Opus type of situation, where LouLou, now broke & unable to have children to look after anymore, sees all of her former wards grown up, starts a relationship again with an adult Tony, and is asked to be the nanny to the children of one of her former kids, thus finally feeling like she has a real family.

The movie is saccharine to the point of being insufferable.  It's not clear at any point why LouLou, at the beginning young & attractive, doesn't seem capable of finding a man, or really a declarative sentence.  Wyman is not an actress I've ever truly enjoyed in a film (seriously-I don't think Oscar has ever crushed so hard on a performer with so little charisma), and here she's particularly bad as LouLou, never understanding what is driving this mousy, boring, saintlike woman's dreams or desires.  Wyman is downright bad in some scenes, and while you might cry in her big speech trying to win back Tony (surely where she won her nomination), it's just because it's being manipulative, not because it's any good.  Thankfully Wyman lost the Oscar, but she won the Golden Globe so it's not inconceivable she might have taken the Best Actress trophy.  And she won that Golden Globe for this one-dimensional piece-of-work over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, potentially the greatest performance in film history.  Let that sink for a second.

The film won two nominations, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Blondell here.  Blondell is cited over a slew of brief parts (Moorehead & Laughton have similarly-sized roles) as a working single mother (she's an actress) who doesn't have time to raise her daughter (played by Wood).  Blondell is not actively bad like Wyman is-she has spark in her performance, and it's easy to see in a sea of vanilla why she stood out.  That said, there's nothing to this role other than sheer charisma...we don't see a lot of what's driving Blondell's character, or if she actually wants to be an important part of her daughter's life.  There's room for interesting commentary here-her Annie's views of what a mother should be are different than LouLou's, and in a different era this would've been worth asking whether our sympathies & support should reside with her rather than Saint Wyman.  Alas, The Blue Veil is not a complicated enough movie to consider such questions.  Considering its historical nature in the careers of some of its high-profile stars, though, it should definitely be more available for home screening than it currently is.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Film: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Stars: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Arthur Franz, Nancy Guild, Adele Jergens, William Frawley

Director: Charles Lamont

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We have entered the 1950's, at which point most of the Universal Monsters were being retired, or at the very least put into storage until a new generation could appreciate them.  That is, unless they were being revived by Abbott & Costello.  In 1948, the comic duo teamed up with some of the major stars of the genre (Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Lon Chaney, Jr, and Glenn Strange) reprising their roles for the last time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  The film was a hit, and Abbott & Costello saw an opportunity to put themselves in similar situations, meeting more of the Universal Monster canon (you can see my review of their Frankenstein outing below, but I loved the movie).  We're going to get to the second of these films today, with Lou & Bud teaming up with the Invisible Man, though not in the same way as their 1948 outing.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Lou (Costello) and Bud (Abbott...it was not uncommon for the actors to use their same names onscreen), who have just graduated from private detective school.  Their first client is Tommy Nelson (Franz), a boxer who has been accused of murdering their manager & is on the run from the law, and is trying to convince his fiancee Helen (Guild) that he's innocent.  Tommy also wants her uncle Philip to inject him with a serum to make him invisible until he can prove his innocence.  The serum works, and Lou & Bud work with Tommy to try and prove he wasn't the killer, and he was framed as part of a coverup when he refused to throw a match.  They do this through a series of shenanigans involving Lou pretending to be a champion boxer (with Tommy doing most of the work), and in the process they find the real murderer.

The movie is funny, for sure.  My favorite parts were obviously involving Lou (Abbott was a great straight man, but no one comes away from these movies talking about anyone other than Costello), and in particular William Frawley as a dumbfounded police detective who is trying to figure out what's going on, and who thinks that Bud & Lou are involved in some way with the murder.  But it's also a movie that disappoints after Frankenstein, and makes me a little bit reluctant in what might be in store for the remaining Abbott & Costello films, which we'll tackle next season of our Monster Movie films (we have one more Universal Monster horror film this month before we look at a pair of other 1950's horror classics to close the month, but it won't be played for comedy).

That's because while Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is brimming with nods to the horror films that made it possible, Invisible Man isn't really in the same canon as the rest of the stories.  There's only one nod to the original Invisible Man (the serum that is made was invented in this picture by Jack Griffin, the character played by Claude Rains in the original movie), but otherwise this is entirely removed from the Universal Monster canon, and doesn't really contain any of the other characters.  Abbott & Costello would meet both Jekyll & Hyde and the Mummy (their last big-screen dalliance with a Universal Monster), but this was an indication that the only reason audiences were showing up were for the comic duo, and not for the Universal Monsters.  That's fine (I like Abbott & Costello), but compared to the genius of their previous outing, it's a bit of a letdown.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Film: On Dangerous Ground (1951)
Stars: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond
Director: Nicholas Ray
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ida Lupino-click here to learn more about Ms. Lupino (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We continue on with the work of Ida Lupino this week with On Dangerous Ground, considerably later in her film career than last week.  By the early 1950's, Lupino's career from the outside looked like it was on the wane.  Her contract with Jack Warner had expired in 1947, and as an actress she was largely doing freelance work in forgettable noirs and dramas at pretty much every other studio about-town.  However, personally it feels like Lupino was at the peak of her powers in Hollywood, as she was enjoying the fruits of her many suspensions of Warner Brothers, where she learned about the behind-the-scenes work of directors and writers, and had begun to direct films herself, including Outrage with Mala Powers and The Hitch-Hiker with Edmond O'Brien.  While our focus this month is on an actress's career on the big screen, rather than in the director's chair, we'll be focusing next week on one of the few films that Lupino made where she actually starred, so we'll have the great joy of seeing Lupino in front-of-and-behind-the-camera in a movie where she became the first female star of any renown to actually direct herself.  First, though, let's take a look at one of the movies she decided worthy of her starring in that took her away from her groundbreaking behind-the-scenes roles, and perhaps the one that looks most interesting on-paper considering it's directed by someone as celebrated as Nicholas Ray: On Dangerous Ground.

(Spoilers Ahead) In the film, Jim Wilson (Ryan) plays a cop-in-the-city who has clear anger problems.  He gets results, but does so through violence and intimidation of his witnesses and suspects.  He's assigned a crime in the country to investigate the death of a young girl whose father Walter Brent (Bond) basically threatens to beat Jim to "enacting justice" on the man who killed his daughter (he's going to kill the murderer himself).  While they are investigating, they eventually realize that the man who killed Brent's daughter A) likely has some sort of mental disability and B) is the brother of a beautiful blind woman named Mary (Lupino) who lives alone except for her brother, and is cautious but protective of him.  She makes a deal with Jim that she'll convince her brother to give himself up for the law in exchange for his protection from Brent, and that trust eventually gives Jim something of a change-of-heart about his "city ways."  Despite that, her brother still dies in an accident during the chase, and Mary is left alone...until in the film's final moments Jim decides to go back to her, as he's clearly fallen in love.

The movie's noted for a few reasons.  For starters, it's hard to pinpoint the genre of what this picture actually is.  The film obviously has the tenets of a noir, with the central death of a young woman driving so much of the plot, but it feels more like an intimate character study.  Though it clocks in at only 82 minutes, the plot is short for a noir (a genre noted for throwing in a number of curveballs and misdirections), as we know who the killer is almost from the onset, and thus it's really the interactions between Jim, Brent, and Mary that drive the catalyst of the story.  Lupino is quite good as Mary, finding aspects of the character that aren't in the script, like her rigidity both in her principles & simply in the way she walks.  This is the sort of role that had won Jane Wyman an Oscar three years earlier, and while I doubt Lupino would have had such illusions for On Dangerous Ground (it's hardly the big-studio showcase that Johnny Belinda was), she gives more subtlety than Wyman did in the biggest moment of her career.

The movie's most marked characteristic, though, is its score.  For anyone who has ever seen, say, Citizen Kane or Psycho or Taxi Driver, you're familiar with the work of Bernard Herrmann.  This film is composed by Herrmann, and was considered one of his favorites.  The movie is the original source of the famed Have Gun Will Travel theme, and has a gorgeous recurring theme surrounding Lupino's Mary featuring the viola d'amore, a set of the music that Herrmann was so smitten with he gave the musician who played the instrument, Virginia Majewski, credit on his own title card.  Combined with a plot that's interesting enough to keep you guessing (even if you know the ending a mile away) and the always consistent actorly sensibilities of Lupino & Ryan, Herrmann's score is another way for me to recommend this picture-it's genuinely lush, the sort of gemlike work that you don't expect to find in a seemingly throwaway B-movie of the 1950's.

Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)

Film: Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)
Stars: Ruth Roman, Richard Todd, Mercedes McCambridge, Zachary Scott
Director: King Vidor
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roman (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to cheat a little bit here in our profile of Ruth Roman's career by going back a few months before the release of last week's Strangers on a Train, but in a lot of ways this feels like a step in a different direction in Roman's career.  At this point, we've profiled three films where Roman had top billing, but she's never actually "been the lead" in any of the movies we've taken a gander at in these pictures.  Frequently Roman's career was marked by forays into westerns or noir, genres that usually have a main female role, but rarely center upon it.  This week, though, Roman actually gets to be the proper main character in our film (even getting to GASP act opposite other women!), and like Strangers, it's helmed by a man who would be cited for Best Director five times in his career.  This week, we come across the little-known Roman picture Lightning Strikes Twice.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Shelley Carnes (Roman), a stage actress who is essentially trying to flee from her life.  After a grueling tour of Othello leaves her at death's door, she decides to go out to a dude ranch run by Liza McStringer (McCambridge) & her brother String (Darryl Hickman, in one of his few adult roles, and I believe one of the last roles before he joined a monastery), only to find that it's largely abandoned, as they no longer take on guests.  This is all happening in the shadow of a famed trial where Liza exonerated Richard Trevelyan (Todd), who was accused of murdering his wife (and most people assume he did, in fact, kill her).  The problem is that Trevelyan is living on a nearby ranch, hiding from his surrogate parents (whom he thinks killed his wife), and of course as he's the male lead, Shelley is going to fall for him.

The movie's second half is some batshit crazy melodrama, enough to make this worth checking out if you're a lover of the Douglas Sirk-style of filmmaking.  It turns out, of course, that Richard wasn't the killer (how else will he end up with Shelley in the end of the picture?), and it's not Scott's Harvey, who is a louse (which Zachary Scott characters aren't louses...see also our recent Roman picture Colt 45?), though there is a truly bizarre scene after Shelley turns down his marriage proposal where we're very much supposed to believe he's about to rape Shelley, even though all he's doing is reuniting her with Richard...if I missed something here, I'd love for you to tell me as I didn't understand what the hell was going on during that scene.  Either way, though, it turns out that mousy Liza was the one who killed Richard's wife when she found out she was having an affair with pretty much every other male character save her brother (and not for a lack of trying on his part), and has every intention of killing Shelley too, but doesn't, because she (and her brother) both go down in flames in a car chase just while Shelley & Richard, now exonerated, skate away to a happy life together.

The film's best element is its camp value.  McCambridge, one of the best supporting players of the era, brings it up to the rafters as Liza during those final scenes, chewing scenery as much as possible (I haven't seen it, but I've heard this is one of the more appealing aspects of putting her opposite another scene-stealer, Joan Crawford, in Johnny Guitar).  However, Roman doesn't really get much of the camp.  She's fun in this part-there's an amiability to her onscreen presence that's likable, but she doesn't really know how to land the movie against actors who understood the material better like McCambridge and Richard Todd (just two years after his Oscar-nominated work in The Hasty Heart, his career was already on the bit of the skids, and would need to go to Disney to play Robin Hood to continue keeping his name in lights).  Roman, as a result, shows that even with a central role in an interesting if not particularly strong picture, that she doesn't know how to elevate when she's made captain of the ship, instead being better as a supporting player.  Next week we'll conclude our look at Roman's career with a film from much later in her time as a leading woman, but in the meantime, share your thoughts on Roman so far in the comments, and if there's a crucial part of hers I've been missing in this series that might ignite more love for the actress.

OVP: Strangers on a Train (1951)

Film: Strangers on a Train (1951)
Stars: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Laura Elliott, Marion Lorne
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roma (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


When I selected Ruth Roman as our star of the month, one of the main reasons I did so was I wanted to see her most noted film, Strangers on a Train.  I didn't realize at the time that this would be a complicated decision in retrospect.  Roman's time on Strangers was probably a mixed one.  At this point in her (relatively short) career as a leading woman, she'd had a few hits (which we've profiled already here and here), and with this picture she was about to get her closest brush with immortality in what is generally considered to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's best pictures.  However, personally this was a rough shoot for Roman.  She and Hitchcock (who would never work together again) detested each other, with Hitch (after Jack Warner forced him to hire Roman, whom the director thought "lacked sex appeal") frequently harassing her.  Hitchcock was known for his intense, in some cases predatory, treatment of his leading ladies, and one wonders how much Ruth Roman liked being most associated with a film that was hell for her to make.  However, it is impossible to take a look at the career of Roman and not talk about Strangers, so here we are.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on two men who meet by chance on a train (strangers, if you will): Guy Haines (Granger), a tennis star who in in a messy divorce with his cheating wife Miriam (Elliott), and who desperately wants to meet the classy senator's daughter Anne (Roman), and Bruno (Walker), a man who wants to kill his father so that he won't chastise him and will give him his fortune.  Bruno proposes that the two men "swap murders," solving both of their problems, and Guy politely laughs, thinking the man is just being morbidly silly, but in fact Bruno is serious, and takes this chuckle as an agreement to the bargain.  Bruno then does, in fact, kill Miriam (who has refused to grant Guy a divorce, ruining his chances at happiness), and the film unfolds with Bruno essentially blackmailing Guy into trying to commit the murder he didn't really agree to, all-the-while having planted enough suspicion on Guy that he might be able to pin Miriam's murder on the tennis player if he doesn't go along with the plan to kill his father.  The film ends with a chase on a carousel (which apparently didn't use as much trick photography as you'd think, which makes this scene one of the most literally dangerous you'll probably ever see in an actual movie, as a man climbs under an actual moving carousel), and eventually the police reveal, despite him lying with his last breath, that Bruno is in fact the killer of Miriam, exonerating Guy to marry Anne.

The movie is great.  I love Hitchcock in general, and so I was predisposed to this, but probably put it more in the camp of North by Northwest than a film like Vertigo or Notorious (I've never released my personal favorite Hitchcock list on this blog because I'd have to admit to not seeing a few classics, but this puts it right on the cusp of the 4-star brilliant ones and my 5-star beloveds).  Walker is sensational in the role of a lifetime (sadly, he'd die almost immediately after this film so it wasn't a movie that he could capitalize on), and Granger looks sexy as hell as Guy.  Obviously Anne is in love with Guy, but Bruno clearly is also (Hitchcock intended Bruno to be coded as gay, and it works-there's no confusing this for merely a brotherly swapped homicide), but who can blame him-Farley Granger in his tennis whites is the stuff that makes men realize their inclinations.  The film's plot has been so borrowed from that watching it for the first time nearly seventy years later likely doesn't have the same impact that it did in 1951 (you can't fault the movie for that, though-it's not its own fault it was such a landmark), the acting from the likes of Walker is timeless enough it's still sensational.

Roman, our star of the month, continues her curse of having top-billing for supporting parts, and she's good in the film, acting lovely and occasionally getting some interesting scenes (particularly one at the tennis match), but she's no match for her female costars.  Hitchcock's antipathy to her might have been because, for possibly the first time in his filmography, he gave the impossibly gorgeous woman the least interesting part in the picture.  After all, Strangers on a Train is brimming with great supporting turns for the ladies, from Elliott's vicious Miriam to Patricia Hitchcock's brainy-but-oblivious Barbara (proving that nepotism can occasionally advantage the audience) to Lorne's doting, enabling, and probably knowing mother-of-the-murderer.  Roman gets saddled with the love interest and doesn't really have enough script to stand out in a picture filled with standouts.  At this point, Life Magazine had proclaimed "The Rise of Ruth Roman" across its cover, but in looking at her key films of the era, we haven't actually seen her rise to anything other than the woman-behind-the-man.

The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951)

Film: The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951)
Stars: Glenn Ford, Edmond O'Brien, Rhonda Fleming, Alan Reed
Director: Leslie Fenton
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Rhonda Fleming-click here to learn more about Ms. Fleming (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


As I mentioned in our kickoff discussion of Rhonda Fleming, this is really the first time we've had a star of the month who had a significant, interesting film career prior to becoming a leading woman.  While other actresses we've profiled (save for Lizabeth Scott who just started at the top) worked their way up in the film industry, Fleming had significant supporting parts in films that are still widely seen today like Spellbound and Out of the Past.  As a result, though we're starting with The Redhead and the Cowboy, our first real look at her career as a leading woman, I want to make sure to plug that we're kind of already three chapters in with Fleming as a star.  The early parts of her career were tied to David O. Selznick, when she was a supporting player, but while she technically became a leading lady under Selznick, she became a star when she left him, heading over to the studio that would be her home for her biggest years in Hollywood, Paramount.


(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Glenn Ford playing Gil Kyle, but really playing Glenn Ford because that's who Glenn Ford always played.  By that I mean he plays a stoic, honorable, but gruff (and handsome-can't forget handsome) cowboy who doesn't have time for politics, even though we're in the middle of the Civil War and everyone is taking sides.  He is joined by Edmond O'Brien's Maj. Dunn Jeffers, who is either a Union officer or a confederate spy (the last twenty minutes are so convoluted you'll be forgiven for never following which he ends up being).  Kyle is drawn to Candace Bronson (Fleming) who is a confirmed Confederate spy, trying to get to the Confederates information about a caravan filled with gold, which will be used to further the Civil War as it's 1865 and it's clear the South have the losing hand.  The movie follows them on their (brief-it's only 82 minutes journey), eventually coming across Fred Flintstone himself, Alan Reed, playing a bombastic Confederate colonel.

Reed's work here is arguably the most noted if anyone remembers this film at all today, as he's scenery-chewing fun as the colonel, clearly a double-crosser in a movie that needs him to liven up the picture.  The movie actually has a lot of promise as a historical curiosity even if it's not that good.  Taking place in 1951, the movie is not exactly friendly to the Confederate cause, but it doesn't really play every Confederate as morally bankrupt either.  Fleming's Candace, for example, is a double-crosser but she's also clearly destined to end up with our hero, so she can't be all bad.  It's interesting to see Reed come in as someone it's easy to see the audience rooting against to stop the grey areas we're getting with these characters-Candace isn't necessarily a good person, and we don't actually find out why she supports the southern cause, just that she does, but she's someone that we are expected to forgive because Gil does.

Fleming, unfortunately, doesn't do a lot with this plump material, unusual for a female role in a western circa 1951 (or, let's be honest, circa any era).  She plays Candace as a gorgeous object-of-desire, delivering her death stares with great gusto but not necessarily embracing the weird material for all its worth like she did in Out of the Past.  This might be because this is a standard western at Paramount rather than an auteur-esque film noir, but it's striking to see her not finding the same level of intrigue that she did with Meta Carson before her because Candace Bronson is a ripe opportunity for an actress as written.  Her work here is standard, trading on her beauty rather than her actorly abilities, and as she has the only properly interesting character in the film, the movie never rises above okay.

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)

Film: Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)
Stars: Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, Robert Beatty, Terence Morgan, James Robertson Justice, Christopher Lee
Director: Raoul Walsh
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Virginia Mayo-click here to learn more about Ms. Mayo (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Most people today would think of A Streetcar Named Desire and Strangers on a Train as the watershed moments for Warner Brothers in 1951.  After all, they were both critically-acclaimed hits, the former an Oscar behemoth still recalled today while the latter is considered one of the best Hitchcock films of its era (or any era).  But if you looked at Box Office receipts, no film could compare with this little-remembered Gregory Peck vehicle based off of the novels by CS Forester (weirdly enough, this isn't the best-remembered film based on a Forester novel from 1951, as he also wrote The African Queen).  Initially thought to star Errol Flynn, the former swashbuckler was worse-for-wear by 1951, and so Peck was cast; for his leading lady, he wanted Margaret Leighton, but she declined so Walsh went with one of his most frequent actresses, Virginia Mayo.  And since Mayo is our star of the month, I chanced upon Horatio Hornblower, one of the biggest hits of the 1950's.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the first three novels by Forester (according to accounts I read while researching this article-I've unfortunately not yet read his books).  Hornblower (Peck) is a captain in King George's navy, and is currently on a mission to help arm a man who wants to steal the Americas away from the Spanish, with whom the English are at war.  Once he reached the island, after months at sea, he makes a pact with the madman of an island king (who basically fancies himself a god).  The man, who seems to despise Hornblower for not instantly worshipping him (there's a lot of problematic things about this particularly segment of the picture, a big part of which is because white actor Alec Mango is playing the role in brownface), convinces Hornblower to take down a Spanish ship so that he can use it to burn the Americas to the ground, but once Hornblower takes down the Spanish ship, it is revealed that the British and Spanish are now allies (oh what you wouldn't give for a cell phone in 1807), and thus Hornblower has essentially commit treason in trying to do right by his country.  He eventually destroys the ship with the island king on it, thus saving his own reputation.

This is the first 50 minutes or so of the film, and arguably the best 50 minutes of the film as Peck is a commanding presence who is aided by some pretty terrific effects during the ship battle sequences.  It's at this 50 minute marker that our Star of the Month shows up as Hornblower's love interest Lady Barbara.  It feels unkind to disparage our star so, but it's not entirely Mayo's fault that Lady Barbara feels like such a downer compared to the rest of the voyage.  It feels fairly certain that Forester's original novel had little interest in Lady Barbara as a character, instead focusing mostly on the adventures of the male protagonist, and it shows.  Mayo is a charming actress, and can play a character whose description basically could be "beautiful love interest" with ease, but considering how good she is in White Heat or The Best Years of Our Lives, it's a pity that one of her biggest hits basically has her there as an ornament.

Its disinterest in the female characters aside, this is a good action film.  I liked Peck, stoic & strong, in the lead even if he basically plays Hornblower as Superman.  There's some great costumes and while the dramatics of the romance never work, almost all of the action set-pieces do.  If this movie had been made today, it would have had endless sequels (wait, it was and it did-hi Ioan Gruffudd!), and it's a pity that Warner never made the same investment in Peck's career.  The film's ending feels a bit unearned (Mayo's Barbara has once again been absent for a huge swath of the film), but there's enough to recommend this picture for me to give it 3-stars.

Along the Great Divide (1951)

Film: Along the Great Divide (1951)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Virginia Mayo, John Agar, Walter Brennan
Director: Raoul Walsh
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Virginia Mayo-click here to learn more about Ms. Mayo (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We continue our month devoted to the career of Virginia Mayo this week with a film that I had never heard of from her filmography before I started researching, and honestly even after I researched her a bit, this was one that slipped by me.  However, as one of the films I wanted to profile fell through (thanks a lot, Amazon Prime), I decided to add this since it was randomly available on streaming (thanks a lot iTunes!).  The movie is actually more significant to Kirk Douglas than Mayo, as it was his first ever western, a genre that would become a cornerstone of his career, and he decidedly has the lead even though he shares top billing with Mayo.  Mayo, though, is well-served in the film, particularly considering the pedigree of Raoul Walsh behind the camera, the man she worked with most in her career (making four pictures together).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers on upstanding Marshall Len Merrick (Douglas), a man of the old west who has recently come to the area as a lawman and stops the lynching of a suspected murderer Keith (Brennan), who is being hanged by the family members of the dead man whom Keith claims he didn't kill.  Merrick forces them to hand over Keith so he can bring him to have a proper trial-by-jury, but the men pursue Merrick & his deputies throughout the desert as they try to return to civilization.  Along the way, the group is joined by Keith's tomboy daughter Ann (Mayo), who initially mocks Merrick but they slowly begin to fall in love.  As the film progresses, we get a twist (that if you were paying attention at all you'd have figured out in the opening frames), and as a result Keith is exonerated and Ann & Merrick get to (literally) ride off into the sunset together.

The film is brief, clocking in at just 88 minutes, and this ends up being a relatively wise decision.  The story here is sparse, with the love story getting short shift perhaps because Mayo & Douglas's chemistry works better when they're fighting, and so there isn't much need for an extra twenty minutes of wooing.  Still, Walsh is a proper director (the man behind White Heat, which he did with Mayo and High Sierra is no one's idea of a hack), and you get some really gorgeous shots of the desert, as well as a strong bit of leading work from Kirk Douglas & Mayo.

Douglas is not my favorite movie star, but he was in so many films that occasionally he pops for me (I feel similarly about Burt Lancaster), and this is one of those roles.  I love the tortured look he gets when he must condemn Keith at the trial, having to relive the melancholy that happened when he had previously damned his own father.  He also gets to have a weirdly homoerotic relationship with his deputy (played by John Agar) that shows perhaps the lonely desert roads might have taken a tour through Brokeback Mountain.  All-in-all, it's a fun role, and it's easy to see why westerns became a hallmark of his career.  Mayo is also good, sinking her teeth into her country girl role, and doing quite well with the big dramatic scene at the end of the picture where she tells off Merrick.  Next week we'll get to the Walsh/Mayo reunion I had planned on investigating during this month, but for now I'm glad that I caught Along the Great Divide, a pretty solid western where pretty much everyone rises above the material to produce a succinct picture.

OVP: Teresa (1951)

Film: Teresa (1951)
Stars: Pier Angeli, John Ericson, Patricia Collinge, Richard Bishop, Peggy Ann Garner, Rod Steiger
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the truly great mysteries of the Oscar Viewing Project that I'm going to have to figure out at some point is what the precise difference between Best Motion Picture Story and Original Screenplay was.  It's not a case of semantics here-the categories existed concurrently so it's not a Best Art Direction/Production Design situation.  They seem to have roughly the same goal, so I genuinely don't know how to judge them.  We've got a few years before I start to investigate the 1950's in the Oscar Viewing Project (we aren't close to finishing any of those years in the near future), but it's still a puzzling situation.  If you know the difference, please illuminate me below in the comments.  Until then, let's get into one of the Best Motion Picture Story nominees: Teresa.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Phillip Cass (Ericson, who is weirdly good-looking by modern standards in this movie, to the point where he'd likely have been a bigger star today than he was then), a young man dealing with PTSD and a lack of purpose after coming back from the war in Italy.  While he was away in Italy, he fell in love with a young Italian woman named Teresa (Angeli), who is shy and a little unsure, but genuinely steadfastly in love with him, even if she wants a traditional life with him and can't understand the stress he's dealing with after the war.  The two struggle to find a place for themselves, particularly in the shadow of his lazy father (Bishop) and domineering, critical mother (Collinge).

The film runs the gamut from being quite good to being, well, quite bad on a regular basis.  As this is Fred Zinnemann, the love stories may be the best part.  Watching Phillip and Teresa fall in love, it's a beautiful thing; we don't get one upper-hand situation, as both are learning about themselves in addition to falling in love with the other.  The writers are smart enough to keep Phillip from being the "all-knowing" man compared to Teresa, and it's fun to watch the naïveté play out onscreen, as that's something that rarely happens as writers need someone to be the expositional eye for the audience.

The film tries, in vain, to make the PTSD work, but it feels like (considering the length of the picture) there's one too many cooks in the kitchen here and perhaps it should have been left on the side in favor of the strange relationship that Phillip has with his mother.  Patricia Collinge doesn't overplay her domineering mother (this isn't a Lelia Goldoni in Bloodbrothers situation), but it's not clear at first that that's what is holding Phillip back, and quite frankly it's a more interesting commentary.  Yes, people struggle with multiple problems at once, but movies don't always have time to sort through all of those things, and it feels like the PTSD and his toxic family life are cured in the same full swoop by Teresa giving birth.  All-in-all, the second half of the film suffers even though there's mountains of potential in this particular tale.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Has anyone seen Teresa, and if so, what are your thoughts on it?  If not, anyone have any opinions on Ericson (an actor I'd never heard of before this picture) or the tragic Pier Angeli?  And again-what is Best Motion Picture Story?!?

OVP: Kind Lady (1951)

Film: Kind Lady (1951)
Stars: Ethel Barrymore, Maurice Evans, Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn, Betsy Blair
Director: John Sturges
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The thing that I was thinking while I was watching Kind Lady was how odd that it hadn't been re-made in the years since.  While this particular version, starring the great theater actress Ethel Barrymore, was in fact a remake of a 1935 film with Aline MacMahon, the film hasn't been touched since, and I think that's a shame considering Maggie Smith or Judi Dench or Vanessa Redgrave all are still working voraciously and this would make an excellent BBC TV movie or spring art house picture.  It's a pity, because the story is quite good even if it's a bit simple, and because I think that a modern interpretation would have breathed a bit more life into it than the dignified but dull work that Ethel Barrymore brought to the movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a wealthy, kindly old woman named Mary Herries (Barrymore) who collects art and general bric-a-brac.  She is taken in by a con man called Elcott (Evans) who initially seduces her with his sad life story and his talents as a painter, but then she soon learns that he has taken over her household, and begins to lie about her mental status to the police and to well-wishers.  After all, whom will they trust-the man who claims to be her nephew, or a dotty old woman saying that this man is an imposter?  It's a clever ruse, and one that doesn't have an obvious set of ways out for our heroine (it also seems sadly still possible, looking at something like the case of Brooke Astor, for example).  The film continues to unfold with Mrs. Herries foiled at every turn until Elcott's wife (Betsy Blair, who would be blacklisted for four years after this film for her political views), who is essentially being blackmailed to help him, helps stage Mrs. Herries' faked death, causing Elcott and his cronies to be found out.

The film is extremely short, which is good because it's pretty much a staged play and would have worn out its welcome without a bit more color between the characters.  Barrymore, always very strong and reserved, is perfectly fit for the role, but doesn't seem to want to give it any sort of fire.  Her Mrs. Herries is lovely and kind (just like the title of the film indicates), but there's so much solemnity and not enough theatricality in what she's doing that I found her pretty boring in the role.  Angela Lansbury (who would, admittedly, also be a fine choice for the title character if they remade the film) is much better in a side role.  Lansbury was always so great in character pieces and starred alongside some of the finest actors of the era even if she never became a proper headliner in cinema like one would have expected considering her later stature on Broadway and in television.  Here she's constantly playing a bawdy woman, knowing full-well that she's over her head, but disguised by a bit of fear and initially a whole lot of greed (though that subsides in a way that Evans never does).  It's a fun side performance from an actress that made a career out of them.

The film received one Oscar nomination in 1951, for Best Costume, but I don't really understand that.  The costumes, what little we see of them, are largely fine, but they're relatively minimal-Barrymore seems to be wearing the same frock in every single scene, as does Lansbury, and this seems like a throwaway nomination for a period flick, which frequently becomes the case for the Costume category.  A better investment would have been an Art Direction nomination, as the actual set becomes a key part of the film, and is a subject piece for the plot.

Those are my thoughts on this short British film-have any of you seen it?  If not (and I'm guessing that's a lot of you-it's a pretty obscure picture), what are your thoughts on Barrymore and Lansbury as performers?  And considering the plot, whom would you like to see tackle a remake?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Golden Girl (1951)

Film: Golden Girl (1951)
Stars: Mitzi Gaynor, Dale Robertson, Dennis Day, Una Merkel, James Barton
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Never")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Mitzi Gaynor is one of those stars of yesteryear that could have lit up any marquee in America in the 1950's, and yet very few people today could pick her out amidst the Bacalls, Hepburns, and Marilyns of the era.  It's a pity too because Gaynor, one of the biggest actors in 20th Century Fox's cavalcade, is one of the last living silver screen headliners of the 1950's.  Gaynor's biggest claim to fame would come some seven years later, when she would be the lead in Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific.  Golden Girl was a tremendously important film in her career, however, as it was the first one where she was the main attraction, grabbing top billing, and thankfully it became a big hit and she would go on to be a major star of motion pictures for years to come.  Her work here was as a much older (chronologically) actress and singer, Lotta Crabtree, once nicknamed "the Nation's Darling" and one of the biggest actresses of the Civil War era.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes a severe amount of liberties with Crabtree's life, in a similar fashion to Calamity Jane two years later with Doris Day (one of Gaynor's cinematic "rivals" at the time).  The movie focuses on the plucky Lotta as she begins her career as an actress and show-woman.  She remains obsessed with Lola Montez, the leading actress of her day (and one of those fabulously scandalous actresses that they should make a film about immediately-the daughter of a member of Parliament, she ended up having affairs with Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas pere, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria, afterwards she went on to be a wildly successful actress in America and Australia before being a women's history advocate-who wouldn't watch that?!?), and is intent on becoming just like her.  We soon learn that she can sing wonderfully (she is, after all, Mitzi Gaynor) and that she has the pluck to be a successful star.

It's kind of heartwarming to see a Classical Hollywood take on the "rising singer" story, since it's become so riddled with cliche in recent years (drugs, loss, redemption, and "always about the music" could be used to describe every musical biopic of the past fifteen years).  We don't actually see a lot of struggle in Lotta's corner-she's a star from the get-go (which actually mirrors real life, when she became a headliner as early as six-years-old).  This refreshing bit, though, making it largely about the music, means that we get a Classical Hollywood cliche: the stifled and stuffed romantic subplot.  The film would be perfectly fine to have Lotta simply struggle to be her own self and reach success, but since it's filmed in the 1950's and heaven forbid a woman want something other than a strong, handsome man, we get a ridiculous subplot with Dale Robertson playing a mysterious paramour from Alabama who is secretly a bandit helping the Confederate Army.  The fact that the movie ends with that (we think he's dead, and then he comes back to life even though in real life Lotta never actually married) seems silly-this was always about her struggles to find stardom and her wonderfully odd relationship with her parents (James Barton and Una Merkel, both doing their character actor best to be a drunken gambler and a grumpy stick-in-the-mud with a heart of gold).  We also get a deeply uncomfortable penultimate scene where Lotta sings "Dixie" after the Civil War ends, trying to heal the wounds of the nation, though in the film it doesn't have that context and it makes her seem like a southern sympathizer with no interest at all in helping the North.  We didn't need that for the ending to what was generally a likable movie.

The reason I caught the film, other than for the sheer joy of supporting Turner Classic Movies (Mitzi Gaynor did the intro with Robert Osborne, always a treat getting tidbits about the film straight from the star), was that it is part of the OVP, and received one nomination for Best Original Song.  The song "Never" isn't actually sung by Gaynor, but instead by her costar Dennis Day, who was most noted for his years as one of Jack Benny's sidekicks; you can hear the song here.  The music and song is beautiful-classic and lovely, seemingly plucked out of a Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy film (if Eddy could have sung just a bit higher), but it has absolutely nothing to do with the principle plot-the subplot involving Day's unrequited love for Lotta goes absolutely nowhere (even though he has a more interesting chemistry with her, considering she's the one in charge of that relationship), and it just becomes an odd stand-alone ballad in a film swimming with fun, danceable ditties.  It's always hard to judge these sorts of songs in terms of Oscar, because the music itself is wonderful, but it doesn't fit (Royal Wedding, another nominated film that same year, had a similar problem).  We're years away from tackling this OVP year, but I can tell you that it's already a close race between the two.

Those are my thoughts on this musical-what are yours?  If you haven't seen the film (and I'm guessing many of you haven't), what are your thoughts on Mitzi Gaynor, and do you have a favorite performance?  Would you see a Lola Montez biopic (and who should play her)?  And how do you judge the Best Original Song category-is it all about the music, or are context/theme just as important?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Royal Wedding (1951)

Film: Royal Wedding (1951)
Stars: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, Sarah Churchill
Director: Stanley Donen
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Too Late Now")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Continuing on with our wedding week OVP viewing, we have one of those films that is marketed as "classic" even though there's a good chance you've never heard of it: Royal Wedding, from 1951.  The film sure feels like a classic-it has golden age stars Fred Astaire and Jane Powell (though they oddly are not romantically involved, but instead are paired as brother-and-sister instead) and features singing-and-dancing in a bunch of well-orchestrated numbers that you've never heard of, but feel you should.  Is it a classic, though?  Let's take a look, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film opens for us with Tom and Ellen Bowen (Astaire and Powell), a brother-sister vaudeville dancing team (shades of real life, since Fred Astaire got his start with his sister Adele on the same circuit), and both have very similar attitudes toward love: they like love, they hate marriage.  Ellen, in what has to be the closest I've ever seen a 1950's studio film get to showing female empowerment through sexuality, juggles beaus on a regular basis (she doesn't have the heart to break up with them...though they're all pretty good looking and I suspect that Ellen just is having a fun time), and Tom is all work and just the occasional ladies' man.  The two of them are hired to go to England during the wedding season for the young prince and princess (clearly inspired by the recent wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip, which had been enormous news around the world at the time).  Off-they-sail, and on the ship, Ellen meets a handsome young lothario named John Brindale (Lawford) who charms her and quickly becomes her one-and-only.  We also get a hilarious dancing number onboard the ship (did anyone else get massively freaked out by the wave crash during that cutaway and worry they'd accidentally started watching The Poseidon Adventure?), with Powell and Astaire being rolled around the floor, despite the tables, chairs, and other patrons of the performance staying stagnant.

Once in England, Astaire falls quickly for an English dancer named Anne (Churchill), whom he becomes enamored with despite her not having the verve one usually associates with an Astaire love interest (I know this is weird to say, but Powell and Astaire had such good chemistry you secretly wish the writers hadn't made them brother-and-sister, and instead had them falling in love), and both siblings wrestle with their attitudes toward marriage, to of course decide in the end that they should follow the prince and princess down the aisle.  With only ninety minutes of runtime, it's a very light and fluffy film, but not without anything to lend itself.

As I mentioned before, Astaire and Powell own the screen here.  Both absolute MGM pros who could sell pretty much any musical number, each radiates charisma and whenever they're playfully sparring with each other, the film comes to life (which is often).  You kind of wish that the entire film would just consist of the two of them going out and doing musical numbers, then running back to their dressing rooms and talking about their respective love lives and then going out and doing another musical number-I think I could watch that for hours.

The film isn't nearly as fun when they are apart, though.  I know that Powell got the film's Oscar nod for her solo number "Too Late Now" (which is beautiful, if a bit out-of-place in this light of a comedy), but they never achieve the sort of chemistry with their romantic counterparts that they do with each other.  Astaire in particular is saddled with Sarah Churchill, an actress with an extremely famous last name (her father was Winston Churchill) who made some waves as an actress in the 1940's and 1950's in television and cinema, with this being her most significant film.  Churchill had a tragic life (alcohol and failed marriages), and probably would make for an interesting biopic someday, but as an actress I wasn't impressed at all in her signature role.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Did you, like me, find yourself adoring this film way more than you thought you would?  Who thought "Too Late Now" deserved the 1951 Oscar?  And since it's Wedding Week-which casual wear dress was the better bridal gown-Powell's or Churchill's?  Share in the comments!