The Fog (1980)

Film: The Fog (1980)

Stars: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook

Director: John Carpenter

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

John Carpenter has come up twice before in these horror retrospectives, and in both cases, he kind of knocked it out of the park.  Halloween is a classic of the slasher genre, in many ways it invented the modern slasher genre, but it also is a titillating look at one of the most iconic horror villains.  The Thing is a quintessential alien thriller, one that features great work from Kurt Russell & Keith David, and one of the best endings I've ever seen from a horror movie.  So as I finished off this trilogy of Horror Movies from the 1970's-90's, I needed to find a way to pay homage to my favorite director discovery of the project, and in this case it was a third film that is generally regarded as another horror classic, The Fog.  One of only two movies to unite "scream queens"/mother-and-daughter Janet Leigh & Jamie Lee Curtis, the movie was initially dismissed by critics as middling, but has since been saved by a cult of devotees (horror fans will eventually find quality if it's there), and after watching it-I think the modern critics have it right.  The Fog is a really fun (and spooky) ride.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in a California bay community, one where 100 years earlier, a ship crashed on the rocks.  It turns out this was done on purpose, the goal being to kill those onboard, as they were afflicted with leprosy and the town founders didn't want a leper colony nearby.  The centennial has brought a mysterious fog to the town, and with it, the ghostly crew of that ship are coming for revenge.  We alternate as we learn this between a few different locales.  First there's Father Malone (Holbrook), who discovers the revenge plot, and is a descendant of the town founders.  We have Elizabeth Solley (Curtis), who is a hitchhiker just passing through town who comes across the fog by accident.  There's Mayor Kathy Williams (Leigh), who is trying to keep the town safe...while also prioritizing the importance of the centennial celebration.  And best of the bunch is Stevie Wayne (Barbeau), a disc jockey who, from the lighthouse, is in real time trying to help the people of the city from the fog.

This element of the film, Barbeau's disc jockey, is easily the best part of the film and what makes it special.  In a lot of ways The Fog feels akin to the old Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast, as we are hearing warnings to the town in real time.  In an era before smart phones or even cable news, this is a realistic way that people might get the news, and it's chilling because frequently the movie makes a point of Stevie's warnings coming too late, her getting the news after a death or after the fog has moved to another area of the town.  That unreliability (not even the hero can save you) is good movie-making, and something that more horror films should employ without having to underline it (you'd usually see a lot of regret from the hero if they couldn't save someone...here, that's not the case).

The movie isn't as succinct or well-scripted as Halloween or The Thing.  The film isn't entirely logical, particularly muddling the reasons for the fog itself and the revenge plot feels convoluted, but if you look past that, Carpenter makes it genuinely creepy.  One of the realities that three years of doing this has taught me is that horror movies aren't always scary (this month there's maybe 1-2 that have actually had me nervous in the way, say, The Blair Witch Project did the first time I saw it), but The Fog has true elements of horror, particularly a late killing that feels like a nasty coda to the film, and the way that it plays with the mistakes we make when we panic.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Little Women (1949)

Film: Little Women (1949)

Stars: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Rossano Brazzi, Mary Astor, Lucille Watson, C. Aubrey Smith

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Cinematography, Art Direction*)

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 June Allyson: click here to learn more about Ms. Allyson (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we missed June Allyson, because I was in the office all week & it was the Oscars (which as you can imagine, is quite the event around my house), so today you're going to get a double dip of Ms. Allyson, both films from 1949.  Circa 1949, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger name in Hollywood than June Allyson.  Allyson's lack of an Oscar nomination relegates her to a category of actress that isn't super discussed today (we'll talk about this in a couple of weeks, but a few decisions late in her career also contributed to this decline in stature), but she was a big deal on the MGM lot, rivaling figures like Judy Garland or Joan Crawford (at a competing studio) as one of the most noteworthy actresses in Hollywood.  One of the biggest films she made at the time was the all-star rendition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, one of four big-screen studio incarnations of the story, and arguably the one with the most buzz-worthy cast.  In a lineup that included Mary Astor, Peter Lawford, Janet Leigh, and Elizabeth Taylor, it was Allyson who got top billing & the leading role.

(Spoilers Ahead...though do you really need a spoiler alert for Little Women?) The movie is about the four March sisters: headstrong Jo (Allyson), dutiful Meg (Leigh), vain Amy (Taylor), and sweet Beth (O'Brien) who used to be rich, but now live in relative poverty (relative being the operative word here given their house is pretty swanky in this film) with their nurse mother (Astor), while their father is out away fighting for the Union in the Civil War.  The film unfolds with these four women trying to live their lives, at the center of it a love square between Jo, Amy, handsome-and-rich Laurie (Lawford), and handsome-and-studious Professor Bhaer (Brazzi).  Love, tragedy, and even death ensue (we all know that Beth dies), but it's a family drama with all of the trimmings...I could go into it more, but let's be honest, you've either seen one of the movies or read the book if you're on this blog.

I will own that I've never really gelled with this story.  Even the recent critically-acclaimed movie by Greta Gerwig I was just in the middle of (let me tell you-my 3-star review of that picture stands OUT compared to my friends on the platform).  But watching this, I get why Gerwig's film enchanted so many, as it takes a relatively formulaic story and gives it life, particularly through the performances from Timothee Chalamet & Florence Pugh.  The 1949 film has no such luck, giving us little invention, and as a result, playing all of the characters as flat.  Star power will get you a little bit (Elizabeth Taylor is delicious if nowhere near as good as Pugh, playing pretty Amy), but the rest is a struggle.  Jo March is a tricky heroine (she bucks convention, frequently makes somewhat cruel mistakes about people, and spends much of the film not knowing what she wants), and Allyson doesn't know how to land her.  The first and second halves of the film feel like separate Jo's entirely.

The movie won several Oscar nominations, and here I'm onboard.  The technicolor cinematography looks divine, with all of these beautiful actresses framed perfectly in snow-covered houses and richly-detailed libraries.  The art direction in generally is also strong-I get why this, with these houses that actually have personality, won the statue.  I'm surprised, honestly, that it didn't get in for costuming too, which is fun (particularly Elizabeth Taylor's gown in the film's final scene) and lovely.  But there's not enough life in this film to make any of these lush decorations truly sing.

Act of Violence (1949)

Film: Act of Violence (1949)

Stars: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, Phyllis Thaxter

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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.

One of the holdups with classic noir is that they almost always have to follow formula, and not just in the sense that they're in the same genre.  Detective literature of the 1940's broke barriers, but film noir had to stay within the confines of the Hays Code.  This meant that the good guys, while they could be rough-and-tumble, were required to be good at the end of the day.  Humphrey Bogart & John Garfield were figures that your dad might not approve of, but they were the kinds of guys that he'd secretly respect.  Act of Violence, a late-1940's film noir from Fred Zinnemann kind of upends that idea, giving us one of the more complicated protagonists I've seen in a film noir, one who definitely skirts the line between honor and betrayal.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Frank Enley (Heflin), who is a WWII veteran who lives with his wife Edna (Leigh) in suburban California.  They live a life of secret, but when one of Frank's fellow soldiers, Joe Parkson (Ryan) shows up at their doorstep, it becomes clear that there's more to Frank than he's letting on.  The movie continues with Joe essentially trying to kill Frank, and we soon learn he does so with good reason.  During the war, while they were both in a POW camp, Frank played informant to Nazis about a planned prison riot, and in the process all of his fellow countrymen were killed save for Joe, who played dead.  Now Joe is running after him to enact revenge.  Eventually Frank leaves his wife, and works with Pat (Mary Astor as probably a prostitute, but it's not entirely clear as, again, the Hays Code) to set him up to die...only at the last minute Frank comes in and saves Joe's life, finally finding retribution for his behavior during the war.

The movie is solid, but it easily could've been better, and a big part of that was the Hays Code.  In the end of the movie, we're essentially led to believe that Robert Ryan was our hero and Van Heflin an antihero, but come on-it would've been far more interesting had Heflin just been the villain.  The movie is talking about PTSD behind-the-scenes, a thin metaphor for the emotional wounds that soldiers carried coming back from the Front, and making a veteran be totally bad would've been a nightmare for MGM if they'd tried it, but it'd make a better movie if Frank never repented, or better yet, got away with it, using the guise of his uniform & status as a veteran to start over again, his sins buried in a German grave.

That said, it's still a good movie.  In a cast of strong actors, Mary Astor stands apart as the best performance, perhaps because she encapsulates the promise of the film better than anyone.  For much of the film, she's basically throwing herself at another man's husband (sweet, innocent Janet Leigh), obviously in love with him (and let's be honest, they're having sex even if they won't say it in the movie), and playing her character as a strange combination of world-weary and naive, the sort of woman who didn't want this life for herself, but still got it anyway.  It's a solid bit of acting from Astor, who rarely got to play such seedy parts after her legendary turn in The Maltese Falcon, in an era where she was usually a wife or mother.

1940's: 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, 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 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, 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

OVP: The Naked Spur (1953)

Film: The Naked Spur (1953)

Stars: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

His work with Anthony Mann opened up a new chapter in Jimmy Stewart's career, and one that led to far more interesting films being made by the actor in the 1950's than he had made in the 1940's.  This included Anatomy of a Murder in 1959, which dealt with the subject of rape (groundbreaking for its time), and won Stewart his fifth & final Oscar nomination.  But more importantly in film history, this is the decade when he worked repeatedly with Alfred Hitchcock.  Stewart's relationship with Hitchcock actually preceded the 1950's, when he appeared in 1948's Rope for the director, but critics at the time were divided on the film, and on Stewart in the lead role (I tend to agree with them that he is poorly chosen, and perhaps a star with more natural sexuality onscreen like John Garfield would've been a more suitable choice).  However, his work in the 1950's is harder to dismiss.  Between 1954 and 1958, he made Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo, an enviable list from the standpoint of 2022 even if it wasn't quite as glowing in 1959.  It's hard to believe now, but Vertigo, which is considered by many to be the greatest film ever made (and features Stewart in what is likely his best acting performance), was disliked by critics at the time.  While there were hiccups critically & commercially for Stewart in the decade, it's hard not to look at what he did in the 1950's and think of it as the best qualitative chapter of his career, and that includes our movie today, the chilling The Naked Spur.

(Spoilers Ahead) In the wake of the Civil War, Howard Kemp (Stewart) chances upon Jesse Tate (Mitchell), a grizzled prospector, and he makes a deal with him.  If he can help him find the man he's looking for, Ben Vandergroat (Ryan), he will give him $20.  As they move, they come across first Roy Anderson (Meeker, brilliantly sexy in this role & threatening to steal the entire movie in all of his scenes), a morally questionable former cavalryman, and then they come across both Vandergroat & his female companion Lina Patch (Leigh).  It is revealed at this point that Howard tricked Jesse, as Ben is worth far more than $20...there's a $5000 reward for his capture, and so, after some debate, Jesse, Howard, & Roy decide to split the money by bringing Ben into town, getting their reward and letting him hang in the process.  Along the way, though, they face the difficulty of Ben pitting them against one another, and Lina, who believes in Ben's innocence, trying to convince them to stop the endeavor entirely.

The Naked Spur feels like a setup for a western, and indeed what I just profiled is only about 30 minutes into a 90-minute movie.  But it's worth noting that the film doesn't take the easy way out here.  While there are technically other actors who show up after this in very small, extra work, but instead remains these five performers, as we never actually get to town & see them collecting the reward.  Instead what we get is a chamber play of sorts, filled with psychological drama, betrayal, and trauma, as we learn that Howard was once betrayed by the woman he loved & lost his ranch, which is what he's trying to get back with this arrest.  It works really well playing this as a bottle episode of a western, us never leaving the shifting dynamics of these five as they learn more about each other and shift alliances, frequently to their doom.  Westerns almost never got nominated for writing Oscars in the 1940's & 50's...it's a testament to how perfectly this is structured that this one did.

I had planned on introducing Stewart this week with Hitchcock because you can't discuss Stewart without discussing Hitchcock, but I was surprised by how clear the parallels are between his Howard Kemp and Scottie Ferguson, his character in Vertigo.  Both are obsessed with women who betray them, both are given the opportunity to be with a more conventional woman who genuinely loves him, and both want something that they know is impossible.  Plus our love interest is Janet Leigh, star of Hitchcock's most famous film Psycho!  Unlike Scottie, Howard ends up with the woman who loves him in this movie, and it works, but it's a question mark if that will be how this ends, and that tension is brought on by the way that Stewart plays Howard, loose, angry, & miserable...it's hard to see much of George Bailey behind an actor who was clearly stretching his public persona, and doing it beautifully.

Words and Music (1948)

Picture: Words and Music (1948)

Stars: June Allyson, Perry Como, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Ann Sothern, Tom Drake, Cyd Charisse, Betty Garrett, Janet Leigh, Marshall Thompson, Mel Torme, Vera-Ellen

Director: Norman Taurog

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Ann Sothern: click here to learn more about Ms. Sothern (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the late 1940's, about the time that Ann Sothern would be soon entering her forties (she was born in 1909), her career had hit a decided slump.  The Maisie pictures ended in 1947, and while she had consistently made movies throughout the decade, other than Maisie the movies hadn't really caught on in the same way-she wasn't an established star like Judy Garland or Gene Tierney, not the kind who could demand respect & acclaim & Oscar nominations, and as a result her contract was in peril with MGM.  In 1948, she tried to jump-start her career with two musicals, April Showers, which was a poorly-reviewed musical for Warner Brothers, and then Words and Music. Words and Music was a weird film for Sothern because by most standards, it was a hit, wildly popular both domestically & abroad...but due to exorbitant costs (including giving Judy Garland a fortune for what amounts to little more than a cameo), the film couldn't break even, and as a result, Sothern's star continued to diminish.  Today we'll look at Words and Music which, despite an all-star lineup of MGM talent, is listless & forgettable.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a semi-autobiographical look at the creative partnership between Richard Rodgers (Drake) and Lorenz Hart (Rooney), two of the bigger names of the early 20th Century for musical theater.  Most modern audiences know Rodgers for his partnership with Oscar Hammerstein, which produced classics like Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, and South Pacific, but his time with Hart was very successful.  American songbook classics like "The Lady is a Tramp," "Manhattan," and "Blue Moon" came out of their partnership.  Throughout the film, we see how Rodgers wooed his eventual wife (played by Janet Leigh here) while Hart's stature causes him to suffer with women, and tumble into a deep depression.  This is interspersed with "cameos" from much of the biggest names in the cast doing musical number versions of classic Rodgers & Hart numbers.

The film's biggest problem is that, even for an MGM musical, the plot is pretty thin.  Rodgers' life seems idyllic & pretty much an overnight success (in a fourth-wall break in the opening scenes of the movie, he basically admits as such), which might make for fine domesticity in real life, but isn't great for a movie.  Hart's life was much more complicated, but it was his homosexuality (and the homophobic culture of the 1940's) that caused his alcoholism, self-hatred, and eventual friction with Rodgers that led the partnership to break up.  No one in the film can pull off him simply being upset about being short work (since him being gay in an MGM movie would've been unthinkable), particularly Mickey Rooney.  Forget for a fact that Rooney is about as good of an example as you can come up with for a short guy whose success led to romantic touchdowns (the man married Ava Gardner, for crying out loud); Rooney is simply not a good enough actor to play a part this subtle, and his histrionics totally derail the movie.

The film's best part are the musical cameos, though our star Sothern hardly stands out in this regard.  Admittedly, Sothern is a fine singer but her skill-set is best used in comedy & dialogue.  When you put her next to Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, & June Allyson, all four troupers whose biggest talent was as musical-comedy stars...you just can't compete.  Garland had $100,000 worth of medical bills at the time & used her cameo here to get them all paid off, but honestly the real highlight of the movie is Lena Horne, singing the hell out of "The Lady is a Tramp" in what is the most-remembered sequence in Words and Music.  Alas, Horne was too much of a financial risk in Southern theaters at the time, and so we don't get enough of her...and the rest of the movie can't compare.

OVP: An American Dream (1966)

Film: An American Dream (1966)

Stars: Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Eleanor Parker, Barry Sullivan, Murray Hamilton, Joe De Santis

Director: Robert Gist

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"A Time for Love")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I watch two channels in my house with such constant abandon they might as well be my roommates: Food Network & TCM.  The latter I know every host, and I know what kinds of films they will like (and what they will & won't say about movies).  Ben Mankiewicz is the biggest name on the channel since Robert Osborne's passing, and while Mankiewicz will never be Osborne (no one will), he has his own charms & I've grown fond of him.  I also can tell when he's introducing a movie that he doesn't like (Osborne this was much harder to deduce), but I've never seen Mankiewicz introduce a movie quite like An American Dream (based on the novel by Norman Mailer) recently, where he essentially called it trippy and quoted a truly terrible review of the film...essentially daring the audience to hate watch what they were about to see.  Doing this at the beginning of the movie is something TCM simply doesn't do, and honestly, I was shocked...but proving their marketing department is onto something, was intrigued enough to stick around.  As a result, I got to see one of the weirdest, straight-up messed up movies I have seen in a long time-a film that fails at both camp & competence, and takes three Oscar nominees on the rides of their careers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Stephen Rojack (Whitman) who is a TV commentator and former war hero who is married to Deborah (Parker), a drug-addled alcoholic who he likely married for her money, and who won't grant him a divorce even though their marriage is hell.  During a fight, Rojack throws her out a 30-story window to her death.  He claims it was a suicide, and without more proof, the police have nowhere to go, but they do make a point of introducing Rojack to a mobster named Ganucci (De Santis) whom he's badmouthing on TV and he meets Cherry McMahon (Leigh) a nightclub singer & a former flame of Rojack's.  This results in Rojack being hunted down by the mob, trying to stop his television campaign for justice, while he & Cherry rekindle their love.  The film ends with Cherry inexplicably double-crossing Rojack (right after he's gotten away with the murder of his wife as they have no evidence), and as a result he dies, gunned down by the mob as the credits roll.

The film is a mess.  The first fifteen minutes you almost get the sense that it might be a really campy, fun mess, as Eleanor Parker is bonkers as a strung-out, drunk heiress, never more than ten feet away from her bed, and in differing stages of undress.  You almost feel like you're watching a horror film the way she torments Stuart Whitman.  But after she dies, the movie becomes sporadic in a dull way, if that makes sense.  Whitman's character's motives are never clear (some scenes he is begging to confess, others he is trying to cover his tracks), and the treatment of Janet Leigh's character is totally sporadic as well.  Leigh is clearly meant to be a prostitute, but (as written by men) that's meant to mean that she doesn't have any morals, which is why she betrays the man she seems to love in the end.

The film was nominated for one Academy Award, for Best Original Song.  While the song is in the middle of the movie (not an end credits scene), it has little to do with the film.  Leigh lip syncs to it in her nightclub, and it stretches forever, but it's not memorable or catchy, and while the team of Mandel & Webber had just won the year before for The Sandpiper (that's likely why they were so soon on the Academy's radar, even for this stinker), the song itself is a snore & doesn't even have the manic energy of the actual catastrophe of a movie.

OVP: Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Film: Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Stars: Janet Leigh, Dick van Dyke, Ann-Margret, Maureen Stapleton, Bobby Rydell, Jesse Pearson

Director: George Sidney

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Ann-Margret-click here to learn more about Ms. Ann-Margret (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our look at Ann-Margret's career this month with where most people started their looks at Ann-Margret's career.  The redheaded actress made high-profile films before this feature, including Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis and the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical State Fair with Pat Boone, but it was 1963's Bye Bye Birdie that turned Ann-Margret from a prominent supporting player into a genuine movie star.  The all-American girl with clearly a little mischief in her eye, her work here would turn her overnight into an icon, a new sex symbol for the post-Marilyn era, one that would be so prominent that decades later her work would be central to an episode of Mad Men.  But what was it about Bye Bye Birdie that made Ann-Margret so intoxicating?  Let's investigate.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a musical, largely inspired by the real-life decision of Elvis Presley to join the army.  Here, an Elvis-like figure named Conrad Birdie (Pearson) is drafted, and before he goes into the military, they decide to have one last appearance of Birdie on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Songwriter Albert Peterson (van Dyke) is down-on-his-luck, and so his girlfriend Rosie (Leigh) convinces Sullivan (playing himself in the movie) to use one of Peterson's songs for the show for Conrad to sing (therefore making him a fortune).  Rosie intends to do this so that perhaps Albert will marry her, though he's unable to break free of his mother Mae's (Stapleton) shadow.  As part of the appearance, they run a contest that will have a local girl being sung to by Conrad, and he'll kiss her in the end, and this girl is Kim (Ann-Margret), who wants to kiss him even though her boyfriend Hugo (Rydell) is jealous.

Things unfold as I think you'd imagine based on the plot.  In the end, both Kim & Rosie get their men, as well as success, though Conrad never gets his kiss (Hugo punches the singer on live television).  The musical is cute, and I liked some of the numbers, particularly the ridiculously sexual ones that Pearson is forced to sing as Conrad Birdie (Pearson is so much fun in this movie).  I'm not wild about Dick van Dyke's movie roles during this era (he was a very big star) even if I love him as a celebrity (then & always), and that's true here-he's too one-note, and it's kind of hard to imagine what va-va-voom Janet Leigh, smart & sexy as Rosie, sees in him, but it's a musical so it's time to suspend some belief.  The sound was also Oscar-nominated, and while Birdie's numbers have an elevated quality I liked, the rest is more middle-of-the-road pleasures.

And as for Ann-Margret?  Yeah, I get the draw.  The movie actually opens on the actress singing the title song, seemingly as if she's on a treadmill running forward against a blank blue screen.  It's weird-she's a good singer, but not a great one, but it works so well.  She's intoxicating, alluring, magnetic.  It's hard to imagine what this must have been like to watch for the first time in 1963 (we have, in retrospect, the knowledge that Ann-Margret would become a legend), as it's pretty much a textbook example of star power in its rawest form.  The rest of the movie never quite lives up to that jaw drop of an opening act, but Ann-Margret is an actress who can command the screen, and I'm excited to see what she does with our three other films this month.

A Mother's Day Celebration: Hollywood's Best Mother-Daughter Pairs

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought it would be fun to look at my five favorite mother-daughter pairs in Hollywood.  Below I have ranked the best mother-daughter pairs at the movies:

5. Diane Ladd and Laura Dern

Laura finally started to catch up with mama Diane at the Oscars this past year.  The Rambling Rose costars have had a long history with Oscar, with Ladd nominated three times versus Dern's two nominations.  Both are brilliant performers who also costarred on HBO's Enlightened.

4. Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher

Debbie was one of the biggest stars of the 1950's, headlining dozens of romantic comedies, and is still celebrated today (she recently won the SAG Life Achievement Award), while Carrie Fisher would have enormous success in front of the screen in the Star Wars films (she'll be in Episode 7 later this year) and behind the screen as a comedian and screenwriter.

3. Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson

Goldie Hawn is perfect, and I've always LOVED these two together whenever they do interviews or talks on the red carpet.  Kate hasn't had the career her mom has, but she's always insanely fun and I constantly wish she'd pull her mom out of retirement for some sort of mother-daughter comedy (who wouldn't want that?).

2. Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli

Both legends in their own-right, two of Classic Hollywood's biggest stars both won Oscars (Judy a juvenile award, while Liza emerged victorious with Cabaret), and both became immortal for their singing prowess and stage presence.

1. Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis

Janet's a Hollywood icon, starring in three of the best films ever made (Touch of Evil, Psycho, and The Manchurian Candidate) while Jamie Lee Curtis has headlined films as diverse as Halloween, True Lies, and Freaky Friday.  Together they're not just Scream Queens of different generations-they're my favorite mother-daughter pair in Hollywood.

Those are my favorites-how about yours?  Who else would you add to this list?  Share in the comments!  And Happy Mother's Day!

OVP: Hitchcock (2012)

Film: Hitchcock (2012)
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Danny Huston, Toni Collette, Michael Stuhlberg, Jessica Biel, James D'Arcy
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Makeup)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The films of Alfred Hitchcock are amongst the finest ever committed to celluloid.  Few directors (if any) have ever so seemlessly melded art with what is popular.  Though some of his films weren't hits initially (most notably Vertigo, now considered his finest work), movies like North by Northwest, Notorious, and Rear Window are all mesmerizing examples of artistic boundaries being pushed, while also creating edge-of-your seat popcorn fare.

In taking on this director, and the legacy of the film's focus, Psycho, Gervasi has stepped into shoes that he cannot possibly fill.  No one can be expected to make a film as grand as Psycho-it's a Herculean task that even Hitchcock himself would have trouble fulfilling upon demand.  Unfortunately, Gervasi is not only not up to the task, he seems intent on simplifying the life of a man who is beloved, but also was notably and famously imperfect.

The film tells the tale of Hitchcock's life via 1959-60.  At this point in his career, the legend is most definitely solid: he's made Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rope, Rear Window, and just come off the wildly successful North by Northwest.  One of the film's opening scenes is a reporter asking Hitchcock why he doesn't hang up his hat and call it a day?  For a genius like Hitchcock (Hopkins), he takes that not as a suggestion, but as a challenge.

Today it is difficult to understand just how ground-breaking and out-of-bounds a film like Psycho was. Implied nudity, murder, and especially killing off the top-billed star, Janet Leigh (Johansson), so soon into the film (you didn't need the spoiler alert there-it's in every Oscar clip show) as he did were all rather shocking and taboo.  The story walks us through the many hoops that Hitchcock had to endure, all the while watching him face the many travails that come with trying to balance work and career and watching work win the war.  His wife, Alma (Mirren) starts to see another man (Huston), not necessarily romantically, but clearly emotionally, and Hitchcock goes through some surface-level fascinations with his leading ladies, including Leigh and his former muse Vera Miles (Jessica Biel, and don't you secretly want to know what Miles, the only major character portrayed in the film who is still alive, thinks of this movie?).

Unfortunately for all of us, Gervasi spends more time on Hitch's crumbling, but clearly fairly foundationally solid marriage, and less on his infamous obsession with the women who starred in his pictures-the icy blondes that would become his mainstay (in addition to Leigh, there were of course Madeline Carroll, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, and soon to come, Ms. Tippi Hedren), and his obsession.  For all his many fine attributes, Hitch's obsession with his leading ladies is the stuff of Hollywood lore, and Gervasi's intent to not focus on this, by far the most interesting thing about his biography, and instead turn the film into a Lifetime movie with a happy ending and a lot of winking, is an enormous disappointment.  When I learned that Helen Mirren (whom I adore, for the record), would be the lead, rather than supporting player in the film, I suspected a bit of a cover-up, and I have to admit that I was disappointed we wouldn't see the dark underbelly of one of the most iconic cinematic men of the twentieth century.  That Hitchcock is worth making a biopic on-this Hitchcock might as well be any old guy, struggling through a late-life crisis and coming out a winner.

That's not to say that there aren't things to enjoy in the film.  For cinema aficionados, there's all the fun "you can see which scene of Psycho this is going to hearken back to" moments, and you have to love all the subtle moments they throw into the film with cute, smirking teases, like the constant devotion Janet Leigh exhibits to her husband Tony, whom she would divorce two years later, or the not-so-subtle reminders that Tony Perkins was gay or the adorable ending (which I saw coming ten minutes in, but still), with an allusion to the forthcoming feature The Birds.  Additionally, while I wasn't surprised by the scenery-chewing fun of Helen Mirren, both Johansson and Biel take their roles and run with what little they were given, though I suspect both actresses were secretly begging to make the movie that I mentioned above, considering Hitchcock's difficult relationship with both Leigh and Miles on-set.

Yet for all of these fun moments, there are a dozen missed opportunities.  Not only is there the largely missed moment of Hitchcock's obsession with his leading ladies, there's also far too little of his famous pranks, and the whole Ed Gein as his muse thing could have been handled, far, far better.  Also, and I know the title of this film is Hitchcock, but it would have been more interesting if we had focused not just on Hitch but on Miles, Leigh, and Perkins, and made this a more well-rounded version of Psycho (even the great Toni Collette's snarky sidekick, who is barely used and is clearly channelling Ruth Hussey, would have been fun to see at home).  Additionally, and I'm glad that Hopkins is out there attempting to find material that stretches him, but this is a performance the man could do in his sleep, and occasionally it seems that he's taken a shot of novocaine, bringing all accent and no feeling to his scenes.

Julie Weiss's costumes may be the film's only real shot at getting an Oscar nomination (the Costume branch is one of the Academy's best at ignoring Best Picture frontrunners for its nominees if the Best Pictures don't also have a solid wardrobe department).  You have to love the cheeky way, for example, we're introduced to Scarlett's Janet, not focusing on the blonde platinum hair or her famous lips, but instead on what Hitch probably noticed first about her, the view from the back.  Weiss's work captures the time well, though aside from some smart choices for Johansson, I don't see a huge amount of inspiration on-display from a woman who has definitely been better.

All-in-all, a massively underwhelming film that had a lot of potential, but I shall give you the chance to speak-what did you think of Hitchcock?  Do you think Psycho was the right choice for a biopic, or would you have, like me, preferred Vertigo?  And for those of you who have seen both (I haven't)-who is the better Master of Suspense-Anthony Hopkins or Toby Jones?

OVP: That Forsyte Woman (1949)

Film: That Forsyte Woman (1949)
Stars: Greer Garson, Errol Flynn, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Young, Janet Leigh
Director: Compton Bennett
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

There are film twists that, currently, seem like obvious choices that years later actually lose a bit of their potency, and this is where I start on this rather dour and overstuffed movie.  The Forsyte Saga, for those familiar with the series of books by John Galsworthy or the Masterpiece Theater classic starring Gina McKee and Rupert Graves, is a terrific soap opera about an upper-middle class family in Britain, and truly great fodder for a film.  However, this particular movie has all of the mechanics of a soap opera, but none of the suspense and fun.

Perhaps I should go to the first, seemingly obvious choice that falls flat on its face, the casting of Errol Flynn as the brutish Soames Forsyte, a man who gets what he wants, especially when told he can't have it.  Flynn seems like an obvious choice for this, and if off-screen rumors are true, was fairly similar to Forsyte in multiple ways.  However, Flynn cannot seem to master any of the emotions that are required to play such a complicated character (Damien Lewis was much better years later), and only manages to be domineering without giving any indication as to the "why" behind his character's decisions.  Granted, this is Classical Hollywood, but Bogart, a similar leading man, was able to do this beautifully in most of his films in the 1940's.  With such a blank slate at the leading man, everyone else's fears and actions seem terribly out-of-balance.

Greer Garson, of course, is intensely watchable in tragic melodramas, and gives her all, but her leading men continue to be too dour and too dull to compare to her.  Walter Pidgeon has undeniable chemistry with her (they appeared in eight films together during her years at MGM), but he's so briefly onscreen, and quite frankly, casting him sort of ruins the suspense of the movie.  (Spoiler Alert, though if you've made it this far, you're probably already familiar) Throughout the film, there's actually a solid question of whether Garson will end up with Flynn or Pidgeon, but casting her opposite her favorite leading man sort of seals the deal.  And the less said about Robert Young, who is badly miscast and is the least appealing of the three leading men whatever Garson's Irene decides toward the end, the better. Garson has the most fun onscreen with Janet Leigh, who is a joy to see in her vivacious young glory.  Janet, like another woman who shares her last name, is eternally attached to a few classic films (in Janet's case, Touch of Evil, The Manchurian Candidate, and of course Psycho) and rarely does anyone notice the remainder of her long and impressive filmography.  As I continue working my way through the 1950's, I expect I shall.

The film received only one Costume Design, but there's little arguing with it.  The Costume Design in the film is beautiful and incredibly bold.  The designs seem to be borrowing as much from the 1940's as they do the 1880's (that remarkable black-and-white number that Garson wears seems far too modern for Victorian England), but it becomes the thing you most look forward to from scene to scene: what decadence will Garson and Leigh be wearing next?  Also of note, and if anyone can point this out to me, I'd appreciate it-this film, according to both IMDB and Wikipedia was released in the US in 1949, but was not nominated until the 1950 Oscars, putting it against the unstoppable Samson and Delilah (it may have had a better chance the year prior).  Anyone know why that is?  Did it really take that long to get the film to Los Angeles?

What about you-which version of the Forsyte Saga do you prefer?  Do you have a favorite Pidgeon/Garson matchup?  And what is truly Janet Leigh's finest hour?